Dinosaur Valley State Park

 Our trip to Glenrose and the Paluxy river dinosaur tracks. Spectacular and thought provoking.

A run for fun

22 Celsius in January is enough even to get this hibernating runner out on the road. The only PB this time was for the Garmin, it was online in 5 seconds. This made me very suspicious and yet speeds seemed ok. Perhaps reception is better in the States who knows. As for my atrophying muscles and calcium deposited joints, they had their share after 5 km, and by km 6 I was glad to be back home. I played around with the POSE type of technique focusing on impact, stride, and not landing on the heel, tried to keep the bounce going for 5km and suffered 2 days with my calves sounding their Swiss bell alarms. Tomorrow they call for -8C, I think i'll stay inside and read about you guys' runs.

Dot

A recent after hours challenge given to us was to write a paragraph without using any dots. In other words, no "i" and no "j". I took on this challenge and it turned into a poem:

.

        Dot was a blot,           

A blot of Robot blood clot,

Dot was not sought,

By Scott, Watt, or Knot,

Boycott by hotshot Jot,

The thought of Robot blood clot taught,

Dot ought not get caught on thought,

Straught not to rot as kumquat, or snot,

Dot plot to fraught the lot,

Who trot on dot somewhat,

Dot fought, and plot got hot,

Onslaught, swat, gunshot,

Robot, sunspot, Robot, foxtrot, snot,

Robot begot a garrote,

GreatScott,

Dot caught clot and forgot the plot. 

Just in case it doesn't make any sense to you, I assure you there is some logic, here is my summary:

Dot Exposed

(Dot was a blot

A blot of Robot blood clot)

                        Dot existed as a minute blood clot inside a robot conveniently named Robot.

(Dot was not sought,

By Scott, Watt, or Knot,)

                        Nobody wanted anything to do with him because he stunk of death (their demise.)

 (Boycott by hotshot Jot)

                        His own friend Jot  (Jot was the third of the triplets (Jot, Dot and Tiddle)) even                                 boycotted him.

(The thought of Robot blood clot taught,

Dot ought not get caught in thought,)

                        When Dot existentialized, in his introspection he realized his own identity would be                                     the cause of his death (his fate.) His response was not to think about it.

(Straught not to rot as kumquat, or snot)

                        He didn’t want to think about things dying and rotting like Kumquat or snot.                                                (Straught, like distraught)

(Dot plot to fraught the lot

Who trot on dot somewhat)

                        His own isolation invoked retaliation towards the Robot body to which he was a part of, who was walking all over him.

(Dot fought

and plot got hot)

                        Dot fought them and his existence hung in the air, if he won he would die, if he lost he would live.

(Onslaught, swat, gunshot)

                        He attacked (his onslaught, first with a swat, that didn’t work so he tried something                                     more lethal; the gunshot.

(Robot, sunspot, roblot, foxtrot, snot

Robot begot a garrote)

                        The Robot saw stars (sunspots, he surged in and out of reality, foxtrot (when a robot dances he has really lost his marbles) In desperations attempt to fight back, Robot, in all his robotic abilities accidentally invented (begot) a garrote (a tool of execution by strangulation.)

(Greatscott)

                        In an unthinkable move of defense Robot strangles himself inducing a blood clot.                             (Robot can’t think straight at this point because robotic intestinal juice (his snot) is oozing out of him from the gunshot wound.

(Dot caught clot and forgot the plot.)

                        Dot’s existence (his purpose for living) has finally come into fulfillment and fades into                    oblivion as Robot and Dot fall to the ground dead, unable to coexist, they succumb together.

                        Every line has a comma, except for the last, which has a .

A Camels Drool Is Not to be Under Estimated.

Exercise: Write a short story using this weeks teaching ending with one of these three phrases.

“Their lips met.” OR “I want a divorce” OR “the phone went dead.”

    “My throat is seething from the dust in this dessert, Where are you?!” Nobody answered.

     Could sand or wind or mirages or a camel really answer in the heat of this wilderness? For 5 days Kodi had been walking though the Gobi desert with his camel Conchita, expelled from his home searching for the Kingoo tribe 300 miles to the east.

     “Conchita, why don’t you answer, my faithful friend in times like this why must you remain a camel with your stupid camel lips!?”

     He longed for companionship, but this harsh reality was slowly eating away at his own sanity. Hour after hour, minute after minute the sun slowly setting making the dunes appear even more red and hard then they already were. He had no more desire to live, no more hope, and worst of all he had no more water. Even the urine he was recycling with his little plastic distillation kit seemed to dry up. At last he stumbled off Conchita and fell hard into the sand. An unknown time went by and delusions past through his mind as he imagined a better time when he first met his wife, as he was coming back into consciousness he felt something moist in his mouth, drinking, what was he drinking, it had an awful odor but it gave him a new vitality he opened his eyes to see Conchita hovering over him with her fat drooling lips, alive because “their lips met.”

Exercise in creating "Anticipation"

Exercise:  Write a boring anticlimactic story.

As Jason took down notes in class, he realized that the notes were full of spelling mistakes, but it didn’t really matter since he was the only one reading them.  The sentences slowly were tapped on his computer one after the other giving him no satisfaction knowing if he wanted to review them in the future he would have to go back and manually fix every mistake one by one.

            Then rewriting it to add anticipation:

As he tapped away on his keyboard taking notes in class, Jason’s Swiss background suddenly became visible. Who had moved all the letters on this computer keyboard? A Y for a Z a Q for an A. What would Monika say with all those errors? He soon realized that this could serve in his advantage as he would have a viable excuse on any spelling mistakes in his assignments.  He gave it a go and on his first assignment the words he had botched were Hill (with only one "l") and Vacuum (with only one "u" .) Monika didn’t really accept the explanation that his keyboard only had one L and one U. He supposed he should get a new keyboard.

The foundations of writing

Week 1

Being in a classroom with 9 other literary lovers creates a contagious creativity that is a lot of fun.
We learn new writing concepts and straight away can try them out in flash 10 minute real time exercises. Most exhilarating of coarse are the moments when we can share our inspirations and read out to the class our latest paragraph or short story.
I am learning about my style and have discovered that I quite like making people laugh, throwing in a few tidbits of irony or humor, a couple of times even making the whole class burst out in laughter. What a rush. So I have discovered that I am somewhat of a humorist. I suppose when writing about anteaters at the zoo or crossing the dessert on the hydration of camel drool your bound to get some kind of response.
    Its extremely refreshing to do this kind of schooling, so different from a standard university theoretical type course. However, after one week I am slightly less ignorant as to certain considerations when writing:
Audience, creating anticipation, defining characters, and tags, planting seeds etc.
We had a challenge to interview a co-student and write an anecdote of their lives, then we assessed them in critique groups and later went and wrote the second draft. What a challenge that was! The first draft felt like fun, easy peasy, just write and don't think too much. However rewriting is exhausting. Actually structuring things requires a lot of thought and consideration.
Next week we will learn about editing and how to do a proper interview. Looking forward to it, will keep you posted.

Montreal to Texas

Driving from Montreal to Lindale, Texas in the dead of winter with minus -12C outside and snow storms all along the east coast is generally discouraged. Did we have winter tires, or all season tires? . . . it was too cold to try and find that little inscription so I waved it off knowing it shouldn’t cause any problems. We drove through the night from Peterborough through Toronto, slaloming the ExpressWay and the Service road. Nine lanes in one direction seemed to be too much even for the GPS.  In Canada all the way to Windsor and then came to the border in Detroit.

            We crossed at 01:00am, greeted by American border police hospitality. Mr. Harveys, and Mr. Wendys each had their turn with their interrogations. Forced to wake the children and get out of the car, we then filled out forms for an hour. Mr. TacoBell and Mr. DominosPizza managed to have us surrender our fingerprints to their databases. Meanwhile a bored Mr. KentuckyFriedChicken infringed our trunk and all our luggage. 

          We continued our journey soon finding ourselves on two lane highways in the dead of night with 18/22/26 and 30 Wheeler trucks weaving in and out among themselves. I felt like a lanky wimp being bullied by the bigboys. This was their terrain and all we could do was attentively anticipate their thoughts and steer clear as they gave one blinker and swerved into the fast lane.  It was a sobering scene as I watched the oncoming highway closed from an accident, A Ford F-150 pulling a mammoth sized mobile home managed to flip the mobile home but stay on its own wheels.  Why was there also an 18 wheeler truck stopped 50 meters down the road?

          After 14hours of driving we arrived in Nashville where a light dusting of snow greeted us as we pulled up to the Marriot and treated ourselves to their Kings Suite to recharge our batteries. 

We also discovered the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain, an all you can eat Chinese buffet and 1 week of diarrhea for the family. What in the world do they put in the food here!

          One more days travels and as we pulled into what has become our home for the next three months. I checked the gauges: 2900km’s and 29 hours of driving. To my relief the children were less traumatized by the drive then us. We found the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) campus and located our cabin in the woods, welcomed us with a “Follow your dreams” sign on the doorway.

Finally we had arrived.

2011 The Year of the Writer

According to the Swiss/Canadian calendar, 2011 is the year of the writer. perhaps this writer will grow long ears for not respecting his rabbit counterpart, but that is the risk I am earnestly willing to take.

CAUTION, ROAD WORK AHEAD 

The Swiss people love perfection, especially when it comes to road work, that is why no matter where you go in Switzerland you are bound to find some stretch of the autoroute under construction, drilling new tunnels, adding extra lanes, installing speed cameras, or simply redoing an old (10 year) stretch of road. This has lead me to accept the inevitable fate of the Swiss driver;  DETOURS!

Here is my account of a three month detour from the engineering highway to the writing myway.