SHOT OF FICTION #5:Up and To the Right

I hope I don’t have it. Yo No La Tengo. Wait…. Is that right?
It’s been so long since I’ve taken Spanish (twice). Taking a language course in high school is as useless as the D.A.R.E. program to a college aged kid, but in college, I really enjoyed it. Finally, a class that was basic, simple, but still challenging… a curriculum with succinct answers as opposed to the myriad of questions that bloom as you go deeper in the subject. Well, the only question I have now is: do I have it? I hope I don’t.

I have been SOOO damn interrupted in my “whale-age”, my time to me, myself, and kinetic journey that is Save the Whales Please. I have been boy, interrupted, and it’s been annoying. Work, sleep, hunger, lethargy, Coachella, divine music making, meetings for Sutasi, it’s all been great, except that little corner in my head I reserve for myself and whale adventures. The perhaps that is my managing the relationship… afterall I hate it when I know the end is coming. The once fat book with all the pages in world is slowing coming to an end and maybe I have delayed, read in small bites, because I know it will be over soon. Shows like “24” are awesome/terrible because you have that damn ticking clock that’s winding down and the multiple screen of different scenarios playing out like a choose-your-own-adventure before they focus on one of those cells and its this horrible cliffhanger that leaves you screaming at the TV. I hate 24. (Sorry 24, it’s just that you drive me crazy with your ways… I love you 24.)

So in this world where things are out of your control, slow reading is at least something I can exercise. Gosh, I almost wish there was more of a line in this Urgent Care. I am now the only one in the waiting room (I really gotta submit my insurance papers to SAG…grrrr…) and it is quiet and sterile like … well, an empty hospital with only the cool sound of the air conditioner as my companion… my keystrokes sound like drunk elephants in a curio shop.

I been seeing the author of Save the Whales Please posting these whaling related links on Twitter and I wonder… the book does have an environmentalist/ecological viewpoint, sure, but I feel more over it is the backdrop to good old fashion actin packed story telling. Yet, those links being posted offer a view that the authors (at least one of them) really is keeping a watchful eye on all things whales… I guess I just thought he was more storyteller and the subject matter was just a device… so in a way, writer, this is a compliment to you that this reader believed you were “story first”, which if you think about the boring heavy handed, un-sexy pap that is out there for causes, it’s better serve to have the art/style at a high level to better deliver the message. (Speaking of ‘causes’, I found this great website that does exactly that: make causes [for lack of a better word] …cool: www.causecast.org]).

Oh, the Doctor will see me now….