All Work and No Play…

IF I DIDN’T already write enough words in the day as a journalist, I’ve taken on the challenge of writing a novel in a month. It isn’t really a novel idea. More than 100,000 people have signed up for National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) with the goal of writing a 50,000-word novel from scratch by midnight November 30. That’s 1,667 words a day. As of day two, I am at 1,284 with another 2,000 or so scribbled in notebooks and on scraps of paper, carefully kept out of the reach of kids and animals.

Can I do it?

The synopsis (so far) is:

Evan Donnoley is a young reporter and even younger husband. His wife is pregnant and Evan has a bright idea. He’s going to make a documentary about having a baby, even against his wife’s protests. What he discovers with his camcorder is more than he bargained for and this will turn his life upside down.

Intriguing? A sleeper?

At the pace of this challenge, who knows?

What may be certain is that I will probably wind up strung out on mescaline, cannabis and whiskey like Raoul Duke out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or turn dangerously inward and start writing line after line after line of the same thing like Jack Torrance in The Shining. Watch out kids!

Or maybe I’ll come out of this as the next Hunter S. Thompson or Stephen King?

The Three Sleuths

WHEN I WAS in elementary school a mystery lay under our feet. I forgot who first told me but they must have heard it from an older kid. Grenades, guns and rockets – they and other weapons were stored in tunnels that ran under the asphalt banks at the edges of the school and probably elsewhere. Access was off bounds. It was somewhere in the janitor’s quarters. We were certain of this. This was the Cold War era so we were sure the weapons were a precaution if the Russians were to strike. Weapons under our feet and in schools across America. I seem to think we once tried to get down there but to no avail and the dreams of sleuthing and mystery faded with the years and the asphalt banks became better for running up and down and then for skateboarding and then sitting on and chatting about what to do after school. Real stuff, not imaginary.

Well, my six-year-old daughter came home from school the other day with her imagination flying. At school, she told me, three dead bodies were buried up on the roof. It was very dangerous and scary, she told me, shuddering at the thought. Her and two friends are going to find them. They have to sneak up the stairs to get there, right under the noses of the teachers. They may get caught. They’re going to go and take a photo of the three dead bodies and take it to the police so they can solve the murder.

The joy of the imagination, I think as I listen to the mystery and the adventure of the three sleuths. At least, I hope it’s all fiction.

Up In Smoke

CANNABIS LIVED A short life as the name of a new sushi-bar in Pinamar. It’s opposite our favorite video rental shop in the new and trendier part of town. We saw it on the grand opening day, freshly painted and with chairs and tables set up outside and doors open for visitors. The owners, no doubt, were thinking what a smoking name for the joint. But town officials weren’t so amused. A day later we went to return the video and there across from us the “C” was gone. It had been replaced by a “W.” A promotion of the high life replaced by an endorsement of trying to be something you’re not: Wannabis.

Savages

WE’RE IN PINAMAR and a friend of my two eldest kids has come over. They’ve made the garden-cum-forest their playground and within minutes they’ve become Indians and are racing around and hooting. They’re dodging gunslingers, sheriffs and villains – and from getting shot, scalped or burned at the stake. There they go now over there, running up the pine needle-covered slopes with sticks in their hands and now down the sandy bank over there and through the bramble and back up the other side and down again and up a tree. Now they’re at the clubhouse and then the top of the garden – the edge of what's known to them. Beyond lies a great forest run wild with baddies. They gather together and talk hurriedly among themselves, seeming to confer on how to keep the house – and us – safe.

Or are they thinking of turning bad themselves?

There's no time to think. They've rushed to a clearing in the garden and set about to build a bonfire, throwing in sticks and pinecones, bigger and bigger it gets. Now the friend has found a long stick and they’re jabbing it into the middle, all three of them working together to jab it down. The stake! They dance around the bonfire, round and round, hooting wildly, round and round. Then they stop and they turn and race down the hill to us the parents and the youngest girl, still too little to play such wild adventures. They’re rushing down the hill fast and gaining speed, their eyes glazed as if in a trance of their own war dance. The bonfire, the stake! And now they’re upon us and they start circling us. I pick up the youngest as the savages circle in closer, hooting and chanting what we cannot understand. The stake! I think.

Then they stop and my eldest daughter is the first to speak. “We’re hungry,” she says. The others join in. “We’re hungry. We're thirsty. We want to watch TV. Please!”

Don’t Tread on Me

IN THE RACE to outer space at the dinner table – the one who eats the fastest gets to the stars first, a game invented by the kids – a question came up after my four-year-old son decided he wasn’t going to fuel his rocket with the evening’s lentil stew. What happens if you don’t eat?

I posed the question.

My six-year-old daughter looked at me as if I had two heads.

“You won’t grow, silly,” she said.

Then she said, “I know what will happen. You will shrink and you’ll turn into an ant. That’s what will happen.

“And then you’ll have to be very careful so that nobody eats you by mistake, and you’ll have to watch out for Maple (our four-ton dog) or else she will lick you up and swallow you. And Rain (our new kitten), oh boy, she will play with you like a toy and then you’ll get hurt. She may even eat you up, too.

"I know what you have to do. You have to build a cage to keep safe on the floor and on the table. Everywhere.”

The two kids sat in silence for a few seconds and then my daughter started digging into her dinner again. The four year old looked down at his plate of stew, picked up his fork and plunged in, now eating with relish. The pace picked up and they were off again on another race to outer space.

It seems safer up there.

Who’ll Stop the Rain?

WE HAVE A new cat. The two eldest kids have named her Rain. She’s adapted quickly to her new home, finding her favorite spots to sleep and hang out – on the sofa, on my desk, on my keyboard and in my trashcan, and under the covers of my four-year-old son’s bed with him giggling loudly.

Rain has a shiny silver coat with black, gray and white streaks. So it’s an apt name.

What isn’t apt, maybe, is that she’s a cat. She’s more like a dog. She tries to tag along when I take the true dog out for a walk on the streets of the big city. She follows us around inside the apartment, sits with us. She’s not into any of that solo cat stuff. She’s even taken to playing fetch. My wife will throw a ball of crumpled paper from the sofa and she’ll race off quick as lightening after it and then trot back with the ball in her mouth, her chin held up high and proud. She’ll jump up on the sofa and sit down, drop the ball and sit poised for another go.

All this has got the dog a bit miffed. Big and slow, she can’t keep up with Rain as she zips across the floor to fetch the paper ball. Not to be outdone again, she’s ready this time. So when the paper ball flies across the room the dog – four-ton is her nickname – bounds as fast as her huge frame can take her across the room and skids with a bang against the wall. The feat has proved successful. The ball is at her paws and she picks it up with her mouth and looks over at the startled kitten and with a look of, “Look who's boss now!” she swallows it whole. “Game over, cat!”

1,000 Words

A PICTURE SPEAKS a thousand words. That’s the saying, right? Well, as a writer I’d rather write the words, or more, without being verbose, of course. But this picture, well, that’s us. The family, as drawn by my six-year-old daughter, with the four-ton dog up top, the three kids, my wife and me. Well, you get the picture.