Author: Brandon L. Rucker

The Call

++ Post #547 ~ 66 words of dialogue ++

Created: 8.8.2018 by BLR

– Hullo?

– Hullo. Is that you?

– Last time I checked. Who is this?

– You know who this is.

– Mmhm. What do ya want?

– For some reason you’ve been showing up in my dreams lately. I just wanted to make sure you were still alive.

– Why do you care?

– Well, even though I hate your two-faced, lying, conniving, backstabbing ass, it doesn’t mean I want you dead. Yet.

Fin.

Inspired by a true event. Sorta. It’s complicated.

stagisti-e-tirocinanti_icon

Advertisements

Get Away

[Post #545 | The Evening Muse #9]

In light of the start of vacation, here’s a related entry written back on June 30, 2018.

Lately when I close my eyes I see myself in a certain, uncertain setting: in a moving vehicle with a sun/moon roof open, a big bright blue sky overhead with scattered cotton-like clouds, the wind blowing through open windows and an open, sprawling road laid ahead with a variety of surrounding landscapes and scenic vistas.

In recent weeks, at least since true Spring and Summer weather finally broke in May, I have been stricken with an unrelenting wanderlust. Actually, I’m not sure that’s the most apt term, because getting away from it all seems to be the main mission. Particularly this past week or so the echoing thought in my mind has been to get away from all the noise of everyday mundane life and escape to a place of unparalleled peaceful and quiet serenity.

My head has been a jumbled mess of thoughts, hopes, dreams and frustrations and it seems I could use a few days somewhere remote and secluded to simply confront and mentally resolve all those haunting voices. The only way to achieve it so be effectively gone away from and devoid of all the usual responsibilities — if only just for three days or so.

img_1762

Inner Peace

[Post #544 | The Morning Muse #13]

There’s no outer peace on this side of death.
I’ma use these next 5 days of vacay to try to achieve a modicum of inner peace.

That was my opening post on Facebook today as today is the first day of a rather impromptu and haphazardly planned/not-quite-planned pre-back-to-school/off-to-college family vacation of sorts. It’s complicated.

But nevertheless, while any sense of external peace in this life is nigh-impossible prior to dying, I hope to maybe find a bit of the internal stuff during our little getaway. Of course I don’t kid myself into think it’s very likely, especially given how The Plans aren’t going quite as planned, yet I concede it may be infinitesimally possible that eschewing many mundane daily responsibilities for a brief spell will somehow reward a body and — more importantly —  a mind the reprieve it so desperately needs.

Here’s a picture I shot in Niagara Falls, NY from our 2016 vacay.

img_0864

Metallica – Live S**t: Binge & Purge

[Post #543 | Daybook #13]

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve listened to METALLICA’S 3-disc live set Live S**t: Binge and Purge, recorded and released in 1993 (the Mexico City portion of the box set). Tonight I was bopping around Spotify looking to cue up Metallica’s instrumental songs (“Anesthesia – Pulling Teeth”, “The Call of Ktulu”, “Orion”, “To Live is to Die” and “Suicide and Redemption”) to use as a soundtrack for a brief stint of writing when I scrolled to this particular live concert recording I’d been shunning for so many years. I jumped right to “Creeping Death” in the track listing and what I immediately noticed was how much better the live songs sounded twenty-five years ago compared to modern times. Not because of the band’s performance or anything like that. No, it’s because back then their guitars were tuned to E-Standard tuning (A440) rather than the E-Flat tuning they’ve been using the last fifteen years or so (I believe since the St. Anger “Madly in Anger” tour in 2003, at least). These days when I hear modern live versions of their songs it’s a bit of a bummer because the majority of the songs sound off — because they are off, by a half-step, or semitone in musicology terms. I’ve been listening to Metallica for thirty-plus years, so it seems only natural that when a fella puts on the music of the soundtrack of his formative years that he’d want it to sound like it’s supposed to sound at least in terms of the original tuning, even when it’s via a concert, live or otherwise. [End old man rant].

The Drive

[Post #542 | Daybook #12]

Driving. Something I’ve been doing a lot lately just to get to a place of solace where I can get out of my head (or more accurately, get into my head so I can un-clutter it). When I need to do that I tend to drive out into the country (I live in the suburbs, sandwiched perfectly between the urban and the rural) and I’ll usually play music of a deep or moody nature to soundtrack my travels and hopefully inspire my contemplativeness while also prompting me to sing. Is there a greater joy, really, than singing? I mean aside from playing guitar or drums? No, I can’t think of much.

At any rate, below is a picture I snapped last week of one of my driving excursions. The sky may or may not have matched my inner mood.

img_1724-1

Station Identification – Testing, Testing!

[Post #541]

cropped-radio-tower-512-icon-2013105433-500x500

Is this thing still on? If you’re able to read this then it means I have survived my recent untold misadventures into the unknown!

I haven’t made one of these station idents in nearly two years, so here we go . . .

Hello and welcome.

Thank you for visiting and taking the time to read anything I post here. I think all writers write with the hope — hell, the dire need for a reading audience and I am no exception, despite the recent dearth of postings here of late.

Obviously this is my little humble corner of the Interwebs and blogosphere where I’ll pretty much muse and rave about the creative things I’m doing or consuming, which is predominantly reading, writing and rocking out to the music I love, and everything in between. My posting activities here have been very sporadic the last year or so, but I intend to use this space more regularly starting this week.

Curious newbies can learn more about me here.

This blog contains a number of running journals: Daybook, Lifebook, Journal Juice,  Notebook, Thinkbook, The Evening Muse, The Morning Muse and Workbook, which can all be more directly accessed via the menu above. I will continue to add to them periodically as the need arises.

As for social media follows, they are as follows:

And if you have a comic book fetish you can join me there where I occasionally share my graphical fiction indulgences.

iWrite

PROJECT MISERY (codename for a developing serial)

iRead

SOUTHERN BASTARDS: Vol. 4 – Gut Check by Jason Aaron & Jason Latour

iRock

APOSTLE OF SOLITUDE – From Gold to Ash (CD)

 

“The One Habit Every Writer Needs. Right now.”

Post #540

Guest Blog | The following quotes are from the Medium blog post ‘The One Habit Every Writer Needs. Right now.‘ by @shauntagrimes

Here are the steps:

Choose a goal.

When I say teeny, tiny, I’m not kidding.

You want a goal so small that it would actually be more difficult, psychologically, to skip it than it would be to just sit down and do the damn thing.

My go to teeny, tiny writing goal is ten minutes. No matter what, even on my worst day, even when I’m sick, even when I’m travelling, even when I have a million other things to wedge into 24 hours, I write for ten minutes.

If for some reason ten minutes became something I could skip — if it lost it’s status as the goal that’s so small I’d rather do it than skip it — I’d shrink it.

Five minutes.

One minute.

One page.

One paragraph.

Hell, one word. Seriously. If that’s what it takes, set a goal of writing one new word on your manuscript everyday.

The secret of the teeny, tiny goal is that it’s not the finish of it that matters. It’s the start. The magic is in the way that little bitty goal gets you from NOT writing to writing.

sihgh0asfn