Thursday, May 24, 2007

Alzheimer's, yearning and sex


I'm struggling between cudgeling my brain to remember things I shouldn't have forgotten so quickly and longing for a trip to Spain as an exchange student. I was chosen as an exchange student when I was in high school but was told my parents couldn't afford to send me. There are times I wonder what would have happened had they allowed me to go. I don't allow those thoughts to surface often, but I was looking for a translation program for a writer who needed to translate English dialogue to Spanish and stumbled across the exchange student site. The translation program, if anyone is interested, is Babel Fish, aptly named of course.

Aah, Spain, home of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and one of my favorite literary characters: Don Quixote. I shouldn't forget Dulcinea or Sancho Panza either. I read Don Quixote in Spanish when I was in school but I had already read it in English many times. I've seen the play with Giorgio Tozzi as Cervantes and Don Quixote and the movie with Peter O'Toole (Man of La Mancha and starred Sophia Loren as Dulcinea). Peter O'Toole reminds me of My Favorite Year when he played Alan Swann, which was written by Dennis Palumbo, who also wrote one of the books I'm reading now.

Writing from the Inside Out has turned out to be a very valuable writing book about the psychology of writers. I'm barely into it and already I've learned quite a lot about myself and my writing relationships. I bought the book and am waiting for it to arrive in the snail mail but Amazon offers a new service. You can download the book for a nominal fee and begin reading and highlighting and sticky noting the text on your computer right away. It keeps the hard copy clean and it fills that need for instant gratification that is sometimes so difficult to ignore.

Right now, everything has taken a back seat to writing and reading about writing and reading writing. I've no time for anything else and I even begrudge the need to work every day. I don't mind getting up before dawn even yawns near the horizon since it means I have that much more time to write and make notes and edit and read.

It's a good thing I'm not seriously involved with anyone since I wouldn't have the time to spend with them anyway. With a book coming out, two books in the works (both from the same information), coordinating Q&As with writers for the two books, and dealing with the changes necessary on one book, I just don't have the time for romance.

Unfortunately, my moaning whores can't seem to get that through their hormone-laden brains and keep plaguing me with lurid dreams that leave me aching and sweaty come morning. Nothing like sleeping in the wet spot alone, especially when it covers nearly half the bed. Well, the whores will have to keep on moaning because I can't hear them since I bought noise canceling headphones, which don't actually work for the whores' moaning, but work and writing help to tune them out, just not when I sleep. Oh, well, it could be worse and I could be trawling bars and singles' hangouts looking for meaningless sex. Still, I could take one gentleman up on his offer of no-strings attached sex, as long as he could fit his libido into my schedule. Something to think about, but for now . . .

That is all. Disperse.

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