Fifty years have flown by at supersonic speed. I can flash back on memories of my childhood and adolescence and remember them clearly as if they happened yesterday. I try to be present for each remaining moment. I forget. I get lost in my head. Again and again. A week slips by in a day. Does time go slower when we are young? I think it does.
How is time going by for you?
I thought Joni Mitchell wrote and popularized “Who knows Where The Time Goes.” It turns out a British folk rocker named Sandy Denny wrote the song and Judy Collins made it famous. A little research can go a long way. Here’s my version of the song based on the way the late great Eva Cassidy played it.
Science Fiction Writing Tip For Today:
“You have to be out of your mind while knowing what you’re doing most of the time.”
“I live for a sense of a feeling of purposefulness in this world, you know, that I could stop my life at any point and feel that my life has been worthwhile; that the people I’ve loved and my children have all reached a point where their lives are now going to come to fruition. And as far as something I live by, it’s to try to be as alive as possible and feel free to make my mistakes and try to be as honest as I can with myself.”
Kate Wolf–Singer Songwriter–1942-1986
Perhaps Kate Wolf had these thoughts in mind when she wrote the song “Unfinished Life.” It’s a haunting ballade filled with hard-won wisdom, exquisite beauty, grace, and focused determination. The song is also ironically prophetic. Kate Wolf died tragically of Leukemia at the age of forty-four. Despite her abbreviated lifespan, she wrote over two hundred songs and performed them at venues in her native state of California and around the world. Kate’s life was, indeed, unfinished, but she left behind a treasure trove of beautiful music.
I first recorded “Unfinished Life” using a free-form guitar strumming method. Recently, while driving in my car, I listened to the song with a different pair of ears. I noticed the unique and highly effective guitar-picking technique Kate used to express the words and melody of the song. After some trial and error, I’ve come up with a version that approximates Kate’s recording.
“The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.”
This is the prologue to the new edition of “Three Days to Darkness.” I’ve extensively rewritten the original novel (first published in 2010) to bring it up to date. It’s amazing how the world has changed in eleven years, but some things never change, like the themes grounding the story. I’ve also added a paperback edition to the digital edition, along with a spiffy new interior design. Don’t miss this heartwarming, humorous, and action-packed saga available at major online retailers worldwide.
Darius McPherson never saw it coming. His thoughts were elsewhere. On the kids. The ones he could save. They weren’t kids, really. Some of them were older than him. They were all tough and uneven around the edges, but a few of them were diamonds in the rough. They were the ones he considered his kids. They had real potential. They just needed someone to care about them. They needed a role model and some inspiration. Darius was happy to provide both. Not a bad summer gig for a guy waiting for his first year of law school to begin.
He pressed the bell on the side of the barred wooden door. The royal blue paint under the ugly bars gleamed in the direct sunlight and looked completely out of place in the burned-out industrial neighborhood in midtown Detroit.
He waited patiently to be buzzed into the youth counseling center. “Be right with you, Darius,” his supervisor said through the intercom. He liked Allison Turner. In her late thirties and twice divorced, she had managed to stay kind-hearted despite rough circumstances. She was also extremely capable. Allison had taught him more about inner-city teenagers than he could have learned in a decade on his own.
The door opened and a group of youthful offenders burst into the street. Darius knew several of them. They were attending classes at the center as part of their plea bargains. Darius smiled at them, even though he knew most of them were as dangerous as plastic explosive wired to detonate at the slightest provocation.
“Hey La Vonn” Darius called to the tallest boy in the group. “I hope you learned something today.”
“Yeah. How to stay outta’ the crowbar hotel,” the slender boy replied.
“Do you mean learning how to game the system or how to stay out of jail?”
Darius noticed La Vonn’s eyes open wide. He turned around in time to see a gray Lincoln Navigator with shiny, twenty-inch wheels and dark tinted windows round a nearby corner. No rap music blared from inside the car, which made Darius suspicious. He heard the sound of footsteps running away from him. He thought it undignified to run. And why would anyone in the neighborhood want to harm him? When the windows came down in unison, a cold chill went through his body. Darius saw young men wearing ski masks inside the car. He had no time to react.
The first shots hit the cinderblock wall of the youth center. Not unlike fireworks on the Fourth of July, Darius remembered thinking before a bullet pierced his chest. At first, he felt like an ice pick had stabbed him in the heart. Then there was a burning sensation. He remembered seeing his body lying on the cracked sidewalk in a pool of blood. The last thoughts that went through his brain were of his parents, his older brother and younger sister, and of course, Rebecca. After that, he sensed his awareness swirling down a dark tunnel opening at the far away end into some kind of scintillating light.
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“Lay me Down Easy” is technically a blues song. To me, the song sounds upbeat with a whisper of the blues in the background. And there’s definitely an element of wry humor in the mix. Maybe “bitter sweet” is a better description of “Lay Me Down Easy.”
I’ve been playing many of Kate Wolf’s songs lately. The beauty of Kate’s music steals its way into my heart the more I listen to one of her songs. As illustrated by the photos, I’m feeling the joy and the love in the song more than the backdrop of the blues. Listen, and let me know how you receive it.
Photo by Vlada Karpovitch on Pexels
We must continually choose love in order to nourish our souls and drive away fear, just as we eat to nourish our bodies and drive away hunger.
I first heard “Cornflower Blue” as the opening song on Kate Wolf’s 1983 double album “Give Yourself to Love.” As I listened to the album many times over, “Cornflower Blue” grew on me (no pun intended). I began to appreciate the exquisite beauty in the lyrics and in Kate’s lovely singing voice. I especially like the last verse of the song which goes:
“Cornflower Blue, deeper than the evening sky. Peaceful as a river. Bluer than goodbye. Blue like a diamond, when the light shine true. If love came in colors, I’d choose this one for you.”
Isn’t it, you know, beautiful?
Oftentimes, songs like this one will find their way into my heart and I feel compelled to play them myself. With this song, I had my doubts. The chances were good that I might not pull it off. Learning how to play “Cornflower Blue” like Kate does was like learning how to walk again. The style is completely counterintuitive to what I’m used to, but I’m glad I made the effort. I hope my cover of the song conveys some of the mystery and beauty of the original.
“The path forward may sometimes be unclear. And it may be messy. But the shared heart is calling, and we have an opportunity to make lasting shifts toward love and justice in our world.”
A place where I can spend days basking in meditation
Soaring close to the Heart Sun
Inevitably, I must arise and live in the world
Where the only way to move forward is to take a leap
Into the deep unknown
Into who knows what
Or where
I don’t want to jump
I’m not looking for trouble
Or confusion
Or more suffering
But walking in weary circles leads to “nowheresville”
As my Dad used to say
And holding on doesn’t work
So, a path cluttered with dried leaves is unveiled
Beckoning me towards a seemingly un-crossable crossroad
A paradox or a dilemma
The wise ones say, “Be who you are where you are”
Really? What if that place is constantly under water?
Unless I do something
Like making lemonade from demon lemons
I want to feel real love
I want to feel real peace
I want to feel real joy
If I take the leap
Will I find these delights?
Within reasonable bounds (if reason is necessary)
And so, I am pushed by unseen forces
To the edge of a cliff
Where I must decide
Without Knowing
“The path forward may sometimes be unclear. And it may be messy. But the shared heart is calling, and we have an opportunity to make lasting shifts toward love and justice in our world.”
Put them in the hands of children, and they are apt to draw Moms and Dads, third-grade teachers, tulips, and dragons.
Pencils in the hands of adults are apt to write brilliant plays or novels.
The work of Robert Ludlam and Lee Child comes to mind.
In adult hands, pencils are also useful for solving complex mathematical problems.
Or sketching landscapes, faces, and naked bodies.
Or drawing just about anything, like plans for an invention to wash, dry, and put away a month’s worth of dirty dishes.
What if pencils came with the option of connecting to a vast reservoir of primeval energy?
In order to make your dreams come true?
How does it Work?
First, you’ll need a supercharged pencil at a cost of three-million-five-hundred-sixty thousand dollars for the special writing implement. Then, you’ll have to cough up another one-million-seven-hundred-fifty-three thousand dollars for the one-time primeval energy hookup.
The primeval energy bubbles and bursts somewhere deep in the bowels of the Earth. The exact location is kept under wraps for the sake of National Security.
Visually, I’m told by confidential sources, the energy resembles molten lava amped up on mild steroids.
The connection to the energy is wireless.
The special pencil allows the user to manifest (bring to life in three dimensions) anything the operator’s heart desires.
If you are thinking: where do I get one? please be advised that the item is backordered well into the next century.
And you must pass a battery of exhausting psychological tests to have the privilege of placing an order.
Due to the long lead times required to process many of the orders, the manufacturer assumes science will develop the technology to extend human life spans and thereby delivery dates.
If science fails to adequately extend human life spans, or if a purchaser tires of his or her two-century life, then the buyer will have the right to bequeath the order to a qualified heir.
If you lack the patience or funding, then try making your dreams come true the old- fashioned way.
Some say, “WTF. I give up. I don’t care about it anymore.”
Some may be fortunate enough to have the meaning they seek fall down on their heads like summer rain. As it is said, “Seek and ye shall find.”
Then, there are those who make their own meaning. They refuse to “surrender,” as so many religious pundits counsel them to do.
Instead, these intrepid souls stand up and refuse to be shredded by the unkind cuts of life.
They make their own meaning. They have the courage, the confidence, the motivation, the talent, and the perseverance to make it happen.
Above all else, I believe motivation and the intelligence to use talent wisely are the most important qualities for making a beneficial impact personally and inter-personally.
Talent without the requisite qualities to use it beneficially is a waste. We’ve seen too many examples in the media of people who can’t handle their talent. Who think it’s a curse rather than a gift. Who take their talent for granted. Who don’t accept the responsibility that comes with the gift.
Where am I going with this?
Ah, yes.
I’m simply making meaning in my own little way.
Through the haze and uncertainty of these hard times.
Three Days to Darkness 