The Anti-Mendel forces (AMs) and the Pro-Mendel forces (PMs) are growing and rioting. News of Mendel’s assasination makes international headlines. Poul figures out the truth about Mendel’s death and Beasely takes advantage of it to take Mendel to even new heights of popularity.
Length: 13:28
Size: 19.9 MB
Poul finds that Beasely has been secretly working to try to capture Mendel and make him a media star. Poul passionately argues that society would be the death of Mendel. Beasely reveals that he’s created the Mendel Search Force and will hunt him down. To stop Beasely, Poul does something that shocks the publisher into submission, something totally unthinkable. Poul leaves to find Mendel, feeling that something large, dark and unstoppable is about to happen.
Author’s note: this is a big file but an important one.
Length: 30:19
Size: 27.7 MB
The Anti-Mendel forces gain momentum. Mendel has a vision on a beach that pulls him into despair and rage. Out of control, he curses God, contemplates suicide, writes more songs, and leaves the region forever.
Length: 7:00
Size: 6.3 MB
Well, maybe a couple of you found Chapter 14 of The Perfect Song when it was up for 45 minutes. I checked the chapter and it had a couple problems. First, it is supposed to be 30 minutes long. On the blog it was 30 seconds. Secondly, it was missing the first two pages, crucial pages. I checked all my audio files, the mixes and the raw wave files. The first two pages, (crucial pages) aren’t there. So I guess I’ll be back in the studio tomorrow to re-record the chapter. While I’m at it, I think I’ll break it into two parts so it’s not quite as long.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what happened to those pages. I know I recorded them!
For those of you who have been waiting for the next chapter, my apologies.
Bungling happens.
Jared, my Jedi blog master, ignore my g-mail. On the other hand, answer so I know the cyber-force is still with you.
Okay. I owe everyone and update and explanation. I haven’t posted anything for nearly two weeks for three reasons.
1. We drove across country — 3,000 miles — in 4 1/2 days. It was a blur of deserts, mountains, plains, hills and East Coast curves and construction. Motels were a pit stop for showers, a couple drinks and sleep.
2. I didn’t have time to make notes.
3. I lost my domain. I have four email accounts, something no human should ever let happen. On one of the accounts I noticed a note from my domain host that my account was up for renewal but with trying to keep up with the chores while Leigh was gone, and then leaving myself, I didn’t follow up on it. When I got home, I tried to get on The Perfect Song Website and it was gone.
Let me tell you, I panicked. I have two years worth of writing on this site. My life story, my novel and my audio novel are on thsi site. If someone else bought the domain name, “www.perfectsong.net,” I was dead. Everything would be gone.
Fortunately, I contacted the company and was able to renew. So I’m back up, kind of.
My laptop, which has all my software programs for creating and uploading my news, novel and audio, is blocking me from getting on my wireless connection. So we’re working on that. Leigh is the expert in that field but last night through some kind of freak lifting thing, she injured her neck muscles and is in terrible pain, so the computer has to wait.
There you have it. Humans bumbling their way through life, making the best of it, waiting for tomorrow.
Bear with me. I know it’ll get better.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Note: The days between the last post and this were nasty. I have to leave them out.
It’s evening. We leave tomorrow morning. Amy has been hired back for four hours a day to help Marianne. She starts tomorrow. We took Marianne to the PX to buy a small rug and to the commissary. On a Navy base, there are no fat people. Everybody, male and female, military or civilian, they are in pretty damn good shape.
We paid for Marianne’s rug and walked outside. A car starting honking in a rhythmical way. It was Donald’s car. Then the honking stopped. The keys were in Leigh’s pocket so there was no way she could have hit the alarm button to set it off, let alone to turn it off.
“Cool. Donald’s letting us know he’s watching over you,” I told Marianne.
She smiled. “Yes, he is.”
Came home later went up to Orange Ave. Fourth St. and Orange were wall-to-wall traffic as the shift on the base changed.
I liked Coronado 20 years ago. Now it’s so overdeveloped, so overcrowded and so laden with rich people that I have no use for it anymore. I think I said that last year, too.
Was a nervous wreck today. Politics. Fights. Deception. Greed.
Get me out of here.
Wednesday, June 7
We made the trip from Denver to Coronado in two days. We ate a leisurely supper at Johnny Carino’s Italian restaurant in El Centro. It’s a large, classy place which this night had a family of very energetic, noisy kids.
We drove into Coronado at 7, just after rush hour. Marianne said hi, as if Linda had never left and I had always been here.
Quiet past couple days. Marianne talks about Donald a lot, of course, but she’s determined to live in her house with minimal help from a Home Helper professional. It’s probably a combination of stress, change and age but she’s very forgetful. She hides her pocketbook and forgets where it is. She tells the same stories over and over, but hell, Donald did that, too.
I’ve been working with her on using the WebTV but it’s all new to her and I don’t know if she’ll have it by the time we leave. She wants to learn but her attention span short and it’s hard for her to pick up the basics because it’s all like magic to her. Everything we take for granted – a keyboard, the @ sign, the Enter bar – all are new to her.
How will she make out when we leave? Hard to say. Donald was everything to her and until last year, did everything for her.
That might have been nice at the time but she’s paying for it now. She has a hard time grocery shopping because they always did it together and he told her not to look at prices, just buy what she wanted. She has no idea how to pay bills or what’s being paid automatically. Fortunately a Home Helper will assist her.
The rest of the time I sit on the patio and read or walk several blocks for exercise. Most folks on this end of the island are Navy people or retired Navy people. On the ocean end are the multi-millionaires and billionaires.
Sun June 4,
We drove 10 miles looking for a restaurant before we doubled back and found a Denny’s in a rundown section of Peorea. The waiter screwed up my order but we waited a long time for it so I didn’t say anything.
From there we headed to the Denver Zoo. The plan was to leisurely see the everything in the zoo and take her to the airport at 5. It was sunny and very hot.
Around 2:30 Kim’s cell phone rang.
“Mom, Dad you have to take this!” Something really really bad has happened.” All I could think of was something happened to Nathan and we were three days away. Leigh took it.
It was Nathan with the news that Donald died.
We were three people in a crowd of thousands. We stood there in shock and mourning. No, I wasn’t shocked. He’s been dying for a long time. Today he took the final plunge. I knew Leigh would want to return, and I couldn’t blame her. It is the only thing to do.
We still had a couple hours before Kim’s plane left so we walked around but the animals didn’t look as interesting now.
We found a snack bar and bought drinks and sat outside at the café tables and had little to say.
Took Kim to the airport. Had coffees and chips and salsa. Hugged Kim goodbye. Three days earlier she had been talking with Donald and doing things for him. Now he is dead and she has to return to Alaska. It was really hard for her.
Leigh and I got on the highway and headed south. We arrived in Pueblo at 8:30, ate at a Mexican restaurant with super slow service and went to our room at Best Western that Leigh booked on the road.
I don’t know how this all worked but Donald’s timing was perfect. If he’d gone a couple days earlier, we’d have been stuck having to wait for Kim’s plane. If he’d died tomorrow, we’d have been headed toward Wyoming.
There’s so much we don’t understand. “He waited for us,” Leigh said. “He waited until we came out. We were able to take him out to supper for the first time since last year, we took him to the Navy Base and to San Diego. He spent one night in his bedroom with Mom for the first time since last year. The other night he stayed up till 11 with her, something he hasn’t done in a year. She said she had the best time of her life. Just before we left he complained of nausea. Mom said he’s been complaining of the same thing since we left. He’s been throwing up his food.
“He was ready.”
Sat June 3
Climbed rocks at McConkie Ranch and looked at petroglyphs . These are some really distinctive drawings on the sides of boulders that were featured in National Geographic years ago. They’re on a private ranch but the owners left them open to the public.
To get there you drive through Vernal, Utah, go up a side road for seven miles, turn right on a dirt road and park in a lot surrounded by wooden fences decorated with dozens of deer antlers. You leave a donation in a little shack that is covered with post-it notes from happy visitors. Then you begin climbing over the rocks and red boulders around juniper and strong smelling sage under an intense blue sky.
I’m not as interested in petroglyphs as Kim and Leigh. I keep thinking maybe we’re all way off base. Maybe they weren’t drawn to help with hunting, or battles, or fertility. They remind me a lot of graffiti that kids draw in places that seem to defy a human’s ability to get there.
Or maybe they were cartoons for rock dwelling kids.
I do have to admit, though, some of these petros are different that anything I’ve seen. These look distinctly Egyptian. Head dresses, square bodies. Maybe there was a Petroglyph Artist Exchange Program at one time. I can imagine the dialogue between the Middle Eastern artists with our natives who weren’t so advanced:
“Here, Hap-To, stop with the stick figures all the time. Draw a square body with skirt.”
“We’ve always done stick style, Rama.”
“You’re sooo behind, Hap-To. Stick figures are so, I don’t know, post-Neanderthal I’m telling you, 10,000 years from now people are going to chuckle at your backwardness.”
“They’re going to wonder why you wear skirts, Rama. Real men don’t wear skirts.”
“Ah! Speaking of skirts—I just have to etch the headdress that our rulers wear.” He makes some scratches into the rock. “Cool, huh?”
“Looks like a square bonnet to me.”
“Well, open your mind. That’s what this Petroglyph Artist Exchange is all about.”
“Can you etch — what did you call it– a camel?”
Rama shakes his head. “No. We have to think of the future. No camels in America. People are already going to wonder about square-bodied petros wearing headdresses. We’re making history here.”
Rama studies Hap-To’s work. “You know, Hap-To, the more I look at your work, the more I like it. It’s so, hmm, minimalist. Show me how you do the stick legs. . . “
As the sun sets, the two men from different cultures create art on rocks that will cause petro-maniacs to ask the questions over and over: “What does this art mean? Who were these guys?”
By the time we were done two hours later we were tired and dehydrated from the dry air, sun and wind.
Drove down to Rt. 70, had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Glenwood Springs and pushed on. Rt. 70 between Vail and Denver is winding and not much fun. Arrived at motel about 9 p.m. Kim is upset because Leigh and I hook up our computers and work for an hour or two every night.
Friday, June 2
In parking lot of Best Western in Craig, CO there are six white 4×4 pickups, a Ford from Co, A Ford from Utah, a Chevy from Montana, a GMC from New Mexico. They were lined up perfectly next to each other, showing off. Hmm. I guess white pickups are part of the Cowboy Contract. I continued walking and found a blue pickup parked behind a dump truck. I guess the blue pickup cowboy was ashamed and hid it.
And then there’s the white pickup For Gov’t Use Only. We’re paying for a gas guzzling huge white Ford pickup?
From Craig to Vernal is just plains, boringly beautiful . No development. Everywhere else seems to be bursting with, new businesses and housing developments. We took a back road over the Rockies through the Roosevelt National Forest. The scenery was beautiful. The snow-capped mountains were both gorgeous and, to this Eastern guy, unnatural. There shouldn’t be snow in June. I don’t care if we’re a mile-and-a-half above sea level. In some spots the snow was still four foot deep.
Dinoasaur National Monument. Been here before. The bones are still in the rock. Nothing’s changed, including the people. Old folks with canes. Men with red, sun-creased faces wearing battered cowboy hats. Little kids bored silly and wanting to run and when they can’t they cry. I don’t blame you kid, I want to do the same thing. Instead I go outside and smoke my pipe.
Dinosaurs appeared 250 million years ago and disappeared 100 million years ago. They were here for 150 million years.
We have a recorded history of a few thousand years and claim we know the truth.
Supper at The Whitewater grill in Vernal. The floor is concrete and the walls are decorated with hastily framed photos of whitewater rafters. There’s a bowl of peanuts at each table, which turns out to be a good thing since we wait a half hour for service., Seems that two waitresses didn’t show up. Since Leigh and Kim and I have been together all day, no one has much to say.
There are two TVs. The one in our room is on ESPN which is showing football highlights. The TV in the bar, which I can see through an opening in the wall, is showing a rerun of The Shield. TV becomes a surreal and entertaining thing with no sound. I watch a cop kick the crap out of a bad guy. Another guy is shown in a motel room bloody and unconscious as the lead actor yells for help. Two cops in uniform kiss each other in an aggressiveness dance that makes me hope they never get their clothes off. They’ll tear each other apart with manly love.
For some reason with the sound off, I realize that no one on TV laughs. If TV is a reflection of our culture, we don’t have enough easy laughter. I’m not talking about the sit coms where artificial laughs come as a result of sexual innuendo or sarcastic remarks. I’m talking about genuine laughter that comes from having a good time being around people you like. There is none of that on TV.
As a culture, maybe we’re too serious.
Finally a waitress appears. Leigh has a burger. Kim and I have a Portobello mushroom sandwich which is really good. We go to a grocery store for soda where teens are roaring their car and truck engines looking for fun in a western town that’s no different than an Eastern town. Kids feel isolated and have too much energy and sex drive. Later the boys will chug beers on a mountain road, try to get laid and go home drunk and disappointed.