Joe Haldeman's Blog, page 10

Dropped entry?

(I probably sent this, back on the Erie canal, but it's still on the desktop.  Just in case it didn't go through     . . . )

<Looked up from the screen and found myself hidden in a canal, steep walls on both sides of the boat!> <Olfactory clue, the slight smell of diesel exhaust.>

September 21st, hovering around my combat anniversary.  On September 14th, 1968, I was wounded in Vietnam.  Standing guard on a captured ammunition pile, part of it blew up and ended my career as a soldier.  (And started my much longer career as an ex-soldier!)

That I remember that moment with crystalline clarity is probably an artifact of repetition.  Revisiting it constantly . . . refining it?  Editing the memory or letting time erode it?  The actual moment of impact is just white noise.  I barely remember staggering, rotating half around, hitting the ground and then tearing at my clothes to ascertain the severity of the wounds.  Couldn't open my belt because the clasp was too slippery with blood.  Men crawled up to me at first, thinking we were under fire.  I think a medic started to apply a tourniquet, and then just wrapped the major wounds up tight.  Someone cut away my pants leg.  There was a long wait in the bright sun.  After a minute four guys held up a blanket or a tarp to shade me.  When the morphine came on I felt muffled all over.  Time was strange, not compressed or stretched, but somehow elliptical, waiting for the next thing to happen.  Or for life to peter out.  I was only slightly anxious, if I remember correctly; I was obviously out of the decision chain, the atropine and/or morphine in control of my time sense.

Cruising along the Snake River in the shank of summer, it looks more like Arabia then America.  Sere cliffs rising up into shimmering pale sky.  The Suez Canal might feel like this.  Last night we pulled through a wide spot, a body of water perhaps a quarter-mile to the left and right, and it felt strange that the water didn't smell of salt.  But in fact it didn't smell  like fresh water, either; no noticeable vegetation.  It's very plain, but unearthly.

Trees now, dusty in the still morning heat.

(Days later)

Boring is not the opposite of exciting.  This environment is interesting, but it hasn't changed in days.  Sparse suburbia sprawled along the steep hillside as the sun comes up over the slowly moving water.

In 1819 john Keats, at 23, was despairing of the loss of his poetical gifts.  He wrote to his brother,

"Nothing could have in all its circumstances fallen out worse for me than the last year has done, or could be more damping to my poetical talent."

But these days, Keats scholars call 1819 the "Living Year," the "Great Year," or the "Fertile Year." Keats had written almost all his great poetry during that year, including a series of odes during that spring and summer, among them "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "Ode to Psyche." "To Autumn" was the last of these odes. Keats died from tuberculosis less than two years later, at age 25.

. . . so who ever knows, who ever knows?  I should give myself a little kick and get back to work.

Stephen Becker

David Adams, at Open Road Books, is bringing out ten titles written by Stephen Becker, who was my favorite teacher at the Iowa Writers Workshop.  You might pick up some of these if you're unfamiliar with them.

The Season of The Stranger
Juice
A Covenant With Death
The Outcasts
When the War Is Over
Dog Tags
The Chinese Bandit
The Last Mandarin
The Blue-Eyed Shan
A Rendezvous in Haiti



I wrote to him:


At the Iowa Writers Workshop we neophytes worked with more than a dozen of the finest writers a generation or two older than us, and among all those luminaries Stephen Becker stands out as the one who wrote actual stories for actual readers.  Steve was impressive in his intellectual gifts and the breadth of his experience with the real world -- but he wasn't out to impress anybody.  More accurately, he said that a writer, or any artist, should want to accomplish four things with his work -- educate, impress, edify, and entertain.  An artist can make a living, he said, by doing any one of those four.  A good artist does at least two.  A master, like Becker himself, can do all four, and well.



Joe Haldeman

V-Con 40

Things are proceeding apace here in Vancouver,  at VCon 40.  I gave a five-minute (!) reading last night, an event called "Multi-author Book Launch".  It was difficult to come up with something so short, but in fact I think it was an interesting constraint.  There were a couple of dozen of us reading, and even the worst writers can't be boring in that length of time.


I'll have a proper reading today, an hour in a small room with trufen.   That will be at noon, so I'll lose a number of potential customers to lunch.  Doing panels on "Killing Off Characters" and "Caustic Soda Podcast Recording," which is not described.  I guess I'll find out when I get there.


(Curiously, they didn't put me on panels that I volunteered for – "How Did That Get on my Book Cover?" and "Science of Time Travel."  I guess they have their own favorite local writers for those.)


So I can't complain of overwork, considering that as Guest of Honour I'm getting actual Canadian money for showing up.  It's kind of funny-looking, but the local merchants accept it without question.


I am very much ready to get back in the saddle.  I've never felt more elderly at a convention.  Surrounded by kids like scurrying squirrels.  Some of them strangely resemble females of my own species, but I can tell from their lack of interest that they can't be.


Somewhere between the cruise and here I've misplaced a leather case with three fountain pens.  Only one was valuable, a $175 red Aurora that was a favorite.  Gay wrote to the cruise line asking whether the case might have been turned in, but no response yet.


Well, gird my loins and go face the frenemy.  "Where do I get my crazy ideas?  I'm glad you asked that question."  Actually, I just stumble around in the dark and run into them.

Joe
 

Vancouver 2

I should post the information for other people, Mitch.  The outfit we used is UnCruise--http://www.un-cruise.com-- though I'm not sure what's "un" about it, except that it's un-snooty and un-complicated.  Not cheap, either, but you get what you pay for.  As much relaxation or as much activity as you wish, tilting somewhat to the lean-back-and-enjoy-it side.  There are hardier venues for the athletic, but you know who you are and you know where to go.  What a mean thing to say.I won't regret having employed them and plan to do it again.  Greek islands next, I think.Meanwhile, I must be getting back to the grindstone.  I did spend most of yesterday working, while Gay enjoyed Vancouver with sister-in-law Barbara (who hails from here) and Doris Nabors and Barbara's relatives.  And a huge lovable dog who I might have enjoyed traveling with.This hotel has a good place to work, a cavernous dining room that's pin-drop quiet with silent efficient waitstaff and good tea and nibbles.  I wrote a few solid pages yesterday.  Off touristing today, I think.Joe

Going, going … (Ore-) gone!

Gay and I spent the last week with Brandy and Christina on a boat trip down the Columbia and Snake Rivers, an "un-cruise" on the SS Legacy.


The boat ride was an interesting experience.  You would think it ideal; on paper it looks that way – plenty of time to work and lots of lazy time otherwise. 

A problem was that there really was no absolute privacy – I would sit down to write in this gorgeous Victorian lounge about dawn, on an overstuffed couch next to a neverending urn of good coffee, along with espresso whenever I wanted to use the machine (not often, lest I get hypercaffeinated), but the old darlings I was sharing the boat with came drifting in one at a time, and of course they all had to come and say good morning.  One dear old fossil had the same conversation every morning:  Oh, are you writing a book?  How fascinating.  What is it called?  Oh, science fiction! My little boy used to read science fiction . . . and so forth.

The cabin was really too small and cramped, with two people, to sit and write in there.  Quite adequate as a cabin, with a nice shower and not too much engine noise.  (In fact, you stop noticing it after awhile.)

The food was much more than adequate; always good and often delicious.  I took a tour of the small kitchen and was amazed that they could come up with such complex and varied fare.  (For 66 guests and 30 crew.)  Of course we weren't exactly traversing the Antarctic wastes; the cooks could pick up fresh vegetables etc. almost every day.

Getting aboard the cruise was as simple as walking down the street and up the gangway.  They had already taken our luggage aboard; we literally stepped on the ship, checked our cabins, and went down to the Grand Salon for champagne.

The next day we steamed to the entrance of the Bonneville Dam and toured the impressive fish ladders that route salmon up past the huge structure – there was a big aquarium room where we watched them climbing underwater.  The gorge is 80 miles long and up to 4000 feet deep, the only sea level route through the Cascade Mountains to the Pacific.

The next couple of days we went down the Snake River and through the spectacular geology of Hells Canyon. We occasionally saw bighorn sheep looking down from the top of the cliffs, and golden eagles swooped along.  In most of the canyon the river was hemmed in on both sides by vertical walls of stone, brown and gray and amber and red. 

We zoomed down and back in a covered jetboat, 100 miles round-trip.  Stopped at a research center for a nice picnic box lunch where lots of sheep watched us eat.

A couple of places we stopped to look at ancient Indian petroglyphs incised and painted on the cliff walls.  "Watch out for the white man," the signs said; "They will take your sheep and build Walmarts."

We did actually go to a Walmart, in the middle of nowhere, Clarkston; a surreal experience.  Docked the boat and walked through a fancy huge motel up to a superstore glowing like a capitalist Mecca on the hill.  I just walked through it like a gaping tourist.  Didn't buy anything, although afterwards I realized I could have used some Walmartia, like Tums.

We descended into American History along here, with lectures and shore excursions all about Lewis and Clark.  A fascinating part of American history that I'm not too familiar with.

We spent a noon hour at a winery, whose name I unfortunately didn't write down.  A pleasant brand-new place with only its second vintage in casks.  Nice bag lunches in the warm valley breeze. An art display of interesting sculpture, too.

The next day we went into the Dalles, Oregon, which had a little personal interest to me – my parents lived there when my father was doing a residence after medical school in Oklahoma, before I was born.  On his way to the more exciting residence flying with bush pilots in Alaska.

We went to the decidedly odd Maryhill Museum, a beautiful mansion on the top of a hill overlooking the Columbia Gorge.  A large eclectic collection of European paintings and sculpture assembled around Marie, the Queen of Romania's personal effects.  Neither Brandy nor I could quite remember the classic poem by Dorothy Parker, which I present here:

"Oh, Life is a Glorious Cycle of Song,
A Medley of Extemporanea;
And Love is a Thing That Can Never Go Wrong,
And I am Marie of Romania!"


We enjoyed stopping in "the quaint Victorian streets of Astoria" and Fort Clatsop, with its reconstruction of Lewis and Clark's fort, right on the edge of dense woods that had a steep path down to the water.  (Have to admit that I didn't avail myself of the opportunity to enjoy the authentic exhaustion of the climb.  There was a large bookstore to investigate.)

The farewell dinner aboard ship was sumptuous, followed by a slide show of all the guests doing not-too-embarrassing things.  (The only picture of me was during my reading – I had read six or seven of my satirical animal poems from ­Beastliary.  Gay was in several scenes, improving them.)

A morning back in Portland, where we walked the streets for a couple of hours, enjoying a classic doughnut at the Voodoo Doughnut Shop – "The Magic is in the Hole!" – which may be the only tourist attraction in the attractive city that's truly unique.  Well, other cities do have doughnut shops – I highly recommend the one in Nameless Somewhere, Mississippi – but this one has a mind-numbing assortment of delicacies and a clientele that ranges from obviously millionaire to homeless, all shuffling along patiently in line.  Now on to the train station to head for Vancouver.

Joe

It was International Talk Like a Pirate Day -- Arrrgh!

If you want to talk like a _Spanish_ pirate, go to

http://www.spanishpod101.com/spanish-vocabulary-lists/international-talk-like-a-pirate-day?utm_source=EmailDirect.com&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Content+Marketing+2015+-+Pirate+Day+Campaign+-+ES

Aarrrgh-o.

on biking

(from sff.net) --

Of course every time I roll down my driveway and point the bike toward the outside world, I'm aware of taking a finite chance of disaster happening.  A truck could obliterate me or a bike-hating maniac could blow me away – or, realistically, a wheel might fall off and pitch me face-first onto the pavement.  The sum product of all those freaky probabilities is large enough that it would give me pause if I thought I was going to live forever.  The chance that I might lose my ten or twenty remaining years in exchange for total safety – I don't waste any time worrying about it.  Get on the bike and roll toward destiny.Joe

army intelligence

When I was in combat in Vietnam I came back to a rear area for medical treatment, and got a look at my personnel file.  At the top of the first page was a box for IQ, where they'd scrawled "145."  I told the doctor that army life must be making me dumb; I'd had an IQ of 200 in junior high.  He said that you couldn't have a higher number than 145 -- that was a perfect score in the army's intelligence test!  How metaphor becomes reality when you put on a uniform!

joe_haldeman @ 2015-09-13T16:19:00

I should say the same of my Aunt Kat, thewayne. She'd kill a couple of chickens and make a couple of pies and a pressure-cooker full of string beans and potatoes, and scatter the table with salad and beets and okra and shoestring onions. Big bowl of walnuts and pecans shaken from her own trees.

I was out of college before I fully realized how foreign that part of my family -- Oklahoma born and raised -- was from our urban Washington D.C. existence. My kin, my blood in the traditional sense, but almost as distant from my day-to-day existence as European farmers trudging behind the kine.

It's interesting to think that they were close to the mainstream of American life then -- as close as I am now, making a living from a virtual universe delimited by a 6" X 10" glass screen, whose avatars literally could not be described in a vocabulary they would understand.

Life may be the same, bordered by birth and death and family, work, and play -- but _living_ is rather different. I'm just as glad to be here.

Joe

Is that a new spot?

A friend from Ormond Beach, back in the seventies, just wrote to remind me about the time I was shot by a drive-by marksperson . . . .

[June,] I remember hanging around the emergency room wrapped up in brown paper like a chicken, because the police had taken my shorts as evidence -- attempted homicide, after all -- and finally going home that way.  I got some looks from people in the hospital parking lot!And the surgeon who looked at the new bullet wound and the old scars, along with X-rays of all the shrapnel and bullet fragments from Vietnam.  He chuckled and said "What's one more spot to a leopard?"  A pretty good line from someone for whom English was not a first language.They never caught the asshat who shot me.  I sincerely hope some other victim caught up with him long ago.Joe