Note

Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

Okay, it's 5.20 pm. Thursday, February 6th. And I'm driving north from 5.80 just past Richmond Parkway. I think we're there. Yeah, the exit to Richmond Parkway. I see the sun slightly behind the hills. I started to get warm today. I think, you know, it might be back in the warming trend, I don't know. So, yeah, what happened today? Or today gave the web developer talk. Yeah. What else? Oh, funny thing happened to me. I work, I was working on the command line on the server. And of course, I always, I mean, was typing LS. And I was typing, and it came out instead of LS, I typed SL. And apparently Rob had installed some little prank package. It's a command line tool that shows a train go by an ASCII video when you type SL and it's short for steam locomotive. And of course, I thought we were getting hacked and I missed something up. But no, that's all it was. And, you know, kind of funny. I shared it out with a group. Matthew knew about the little prank and thought he'd never see the day where someone actually fell for it. Well, I fell for it today. Yeah, it's fun. So, that's what happened today. What else? So Heidi's going to go meet Jen tonight. So she and Jen are sure are excited to talk to each other. And yeah. I don't know what else. Feeling kind of tired, I guess it's just a week. It's been a four day straight meeting. It gets tough sometimes. I don't think I've had four days straight since the New Year started, but maybe. Anyway, I'm on the bridge now. And yeah, I think that's enough of my kind of context dictation now. It gets better.

Alright it's 5.23. Thursday, February 6th. And I'm not feeling like I've got a lot of creative juices flowing today. I'm going to give it a try. Got a couple brainstorming ideas about Rosalithia and Florence. So if I add... So Rosalithia's ultimate goal. I'm assuming it's her ultimate goal. At least what she thinks her goal is, and maybe it turns into something else is to find and meet the girl who owned the diary. And... But we learn things about, you know, the girl who wrote the diary, who owned and wrote it, throughout the story. Is it possible that she, Florence, is the narrator? And the story ultimately comes to a point where Florence is talking directly to Rosalithia in her house, face to face, in real time. That would be pretty cool because Florence's diary foresaw what she was going to do. And then the story, the narrator, is foreseeing what Rosalithia is going to do. Now, does the story end when the reader discovers that Rosalithia is about to meet Florence? Is there any point to having that talk? I don't know. I mean, it seems pretty magical just on that scale alone. But what is the meaning of it all? What is the meaning of a narrator being able to predict? Well, there we go. If I am going to use the concept that an author should always know where their characters are, then that's a pretty cool trick. Basically, you know, you don't get the payoff until the end. And so we learn of a character, basically named Rosalithia, who takes a creative writing class. And maybe even writes a short story about the son of Florence, the owner of the diary. And his name is Horace. Maybe she writes, you know, because she has the diary in possession, in her possession. And maybe she writes some story about it. And maybe even her story is like, you know, she's... Maybe in her creative writing class, you know, she creates a character named Horace, who is, as she says, a dashing fellow from a dashing, tan-skinned fellow from... from an exotic land. And that's where teachers, you know, criticizes her, perhaps, you know, not being more specific. And so she works on it a little bit more. You know, maybe she even cheats a little with Florence's diary. Something like that. Yeah, maybe one night she's with one of her friends. In her apartment. And... How do I keep wanting to say let me sign? I don't know. But maybe it's in Lubbock. And... You know, they're just... she's procrastinating on her project. And her creative writing project. And her friend is a little nosy and picks up... Yeah, it picks up Florence's diary. And Rosa gets a little serious, but she packs off a little... Hey, don't touch it. That's very serious. What is this? Your diary? No, it's complicated. It's not my diary. It's... why do you have it if it's not your diary? I found it, okay. And... she's like, well, who's is it? Don't they want it back? And... and maybe she then explains to her friend... It's not that... it's complicated. They... I don't think they want it back. What do you mean they don't want it back? And... Well, this isn't the first time I found the diary. And she's like, I don't even know what that means. And she'll maybe... she'll tell her, well, you remember that? That time... well, I don't know if she'll say it that way, but... Yeah, I... this is actually the third time I've found this time. And she will kind of be... So you're telling me that you found this diary multiple times. So that means you tried to return it. So you know the person. Well, they give it back to you or something? Or did they just... you know... you're joking, right? You're just like, no, I'm not joking. And I don't know who it is. I don't know who owns it, or who wrote it, or anything like that. I found it when I was nine years old. And Sheila, or whoever it is, Sheila, you know, I'm using that name right now for her adopted mother. I took it home from school and that was the... It was during that time that I was stealing a lot. And, you know, like a kid, nine-year-old, I... I was a little gum, I think... I had the pigly wiggly. I took some socks from Kmart. Little kid stuff. No, I stole that Barbie from Kmart. Oh, and so your mom was trying to teach you a lesson. It's not my mom, remember? You're adopted mom. Whatever. She sure does take good care of you for an adopted mom. So anyway, she made me go to the police station and tell them, look, we found this diary. She did not steal it. And it has to go. They have to look for the owner. And they had already remembered me from the socks. Maybe it wasn't socks that she stole me with something else. But they remembered me. And they were teasing me and everything like that. And they were kind of confused because it was a personal object. Not worth anything to anyone else. I mean, there was no money in it. So secrets to the stock market in it. And there's no map to a buried treasure or anything like that. They just, they didn't know what to do. But that, yeah, that was that. My Sheila made them take it. And I never saw it until. I was 14. What do you mean you never saw it until you were 14? Well, remember how I told you I used to smoke? Oh, yeah, right. At the bleachers at lunchtime, right? Yeah, well, you know, I was 14. And I was, I was, or after school, I was, I was, I was gone to go for a smoke, you know, under the bleachers. And I had no idea, you know, I was just mining my own business. You know, I light up and then I hear this loud bang. And it's almost like it was so loud I could have sworn it fell from a much higher distance, like, you know, the sky or something. But it had tape on it. And you see those marks? So that's where the tape was. What? It was like tape somewhere? Yeah, it was taped up underneath the bleachers. And I guess over time, over those, it was the same book that I found when I was nine years old, I swear. And it had the doodles that I put in it. You wrote in it? Well, see you here on this page. When I was, you know, when I was nine, I just, I just wanted to have, I just wanted to write on it. So I did. It was paper. So you're still telling me, this is not yours. It is not mine. I even asked Sheila if she had the police report that she made them file. See here it is. We went to the police station. And that's Sheila. She is crazy. Look, they're nice people, but yeah, they're... It's better that we're a part right now. That's a little too heavy. I don't know. So why didn't you just keep it at 14? See, that's the thing. I don't know what happened. I had it for like a week and lost it. I lost it. I have to think about how she lost it. I don't really know. But yeah, I didn't see it again until I was 21. We're just seeing it that time. It's not a school library. You saw it in a library? Yeah, it was a weirdest thing. It was like one of the few times I didn't want to go out on the weekend. I didn't want to hang out. I just needed some quiet, some peace and quiet, and I went. I put my books down, and I just wanted to sleep. So I don't know why I didn't want to sleep in the dorm room. I thought I had to be outside and had to be doing something. I didn't want to just... It felt too lonely in the dorm room. So I went and I just found a table and I fell asleep. I was supposed to be studying, but every time I opened my bio book, I fell asleep. So when I woke up, it was there. I don't know how it got there. I don't know who was there to tell me or who knew that I... I don't know what to think. I mean, the book dish appeared. Man, that's gotta be the tallest tale I've ever heard. Come on, Rosa, you cannot be serious. I'm dead serious. Don't call me a liar again. You know how I feel about that. All right, all right, all right. So what you gonna do for this assignment? Man, I don't know. Well, have you ever read the diary? Well, yeah, I read the diary. Read it a couple times. Don't make no sense. What do you mean, don't make no sense? Well, I mean, I know what's going on, but I don't really know what's going on. I think, honestly, I think the person who wrote it was a little crazy. I think, you know, like, it was for, like, therapy or something. Well, what are the things that says? Well, you know, like, I think it's a lady who wrote it. Definitely a lady. And, well, you know, she talks, talks. She wasn't, she wasn't all there in her head. You see, she, I don't know, I'm sounding a little dumb instead of, I don't really know. She, you know, how the only thing I could think of was, if you were to, you know, when you tell someone about your dream, and, you know, you use things like, I was in a big room where a bunch of people were eating at tables. But you don't say restaurant, because it's a dream. You don't even know if you're out of it. I mean, you would know if you were out of restaurant if there was a server who came. But then all of a sudden things get all jumbled up and you don't really know if you're out of restaurant anymore. So, when you say you're out of restaurant, it's like, things happen so weird in dreams that, I'm going to pause this for a second. There is definitely a fire. I am looking at it. I'm passing all in Polly right now. And about, I would say a mile, to a mile and a half, to my right, which is, I guess, to the east. There is a fire over on Lakeville. I wonder what that is. I'm driving past the train cars that have the graffiti on them and the fire is just beyond them. It's hard to tell if it seems bigger than a vehicle fire. I don't even see, I can't tell if I see fire engines or not. Yeah, there's definitely a fire over there. Anyway. So, back to this, you know, dialogue. So, like, look here. I'm going to open it up to this page. And, you know, Rosalithia opened the diary up to... And I was on the plane, crying because it would not turn around. And I was on the plane crying, wearing the red dress. And I got off the plane. And everybody was smiling. They knew me, but they had never seen me before. They hugged me and kissed me. They were happy to see me. And he was there. And he hugged me for a very long time. And I was happy. I was happier than I had ever been in my life. Why don't you say her name? Why doesn't she say his name? Where is she? That stuff you would either a kid would say or someone who's been dreaming. Or someone who's crazy. I don't know, but it sounds pretty. It sounds like poetry. Are you sure that's a diary? Well, what else could it be? I mean, seems like... These are... Read more. I want to hear more. Here, over here. And I will have a child. And the boy will come home. And I will name him after the Falcon God. And he will fly. And when he flies, he will carry you back and forth. And you will be safe with him. Now, what am I... But what is that supposed to mean? But it sounds so good. I mean, it sounds like a story. You know what you should do for your creative writing assignment? You should write about that. You should actually just write that stuff. I don't know anything about this stuff. How am I supposed to write? What am I supposed to write about? So, I don't know. This is one possibility for a dialogue between Rosa Alitia and one of her friends... In her dorm room or in her apartment. Well, she's in her dorm room and she has the diary, which means... Which is proof that he returned to her. I don't know, Rosa. That sounds like the diary special. It sounds like it's magic. Well, why can't it pay off my student loans then? Why is something magical gotta be weird? It's just weird. It sounds too good. Why can't this diary help me get a better summer job? Hmm. I don't know. But this tangent that I just went on was... Let me pause and see where I am now.

Okay, it's 5.51, Thursday, February 6th. And I had just finished dictating a possible dialogue that Rosa Alitia would have with one of her friends. She's talking about the diary. And it's a good introduction into how Rosa Alitia found the diary and her relationship to it. And how her friend seems to think that this book is destined to be in her possession. So that means that, well, and that's just how I would kind of introduce that aspect of the story. That Rosa Alitia cannot live without the book. The book is part of her. And the suggestion by her friend that it has magical powers is, yeah, alluding to the transformation that it will have on her life. But what is the super story? Like if there's a, or the super text is, or the problem is, well, not a problem. I want to bring the reader into the subtext and slowly walk them out of the text. And... I think that's actually quite powerful. I mean, that's what... How does this relate to me? Well, I feel like I am the subtext, the child text. And I have to talk about it like that. And that the entire story is, like, I'm living my mother's story. And I'd have to explain that in a book. How does someone know they're going to have a kid and a boy? And how do they know what that boy's going to do? How do they know that? And that's a suggestion that it is a story, that life is a story. And so it's almost like your own kids are characters in your story. And so, yeah, that's what I kind of want to convey in this. So, yeah, that's a nice duality where, again, the creative writing teacher tells her, you know, we're going to have a lesson on knowing your characters. What's the purpose of knowing your characters? How well should you know your characters? You're characters, again, like I said, class. You should know exactly where your character is right now. And in order to get you accustomed to that, or to help train your writing, train your story in her storyteller, we're going to have an assignment. And it's going to be just write a story about, the story is not going to be part of your main story. It is a side story, a tangent, a vignette. And in it, you're going to write a story about one of your characters. You're not going to, it's not the main story. And that is going to help inform the parental story, which is, you know, the story in which the character participates. And it's going to be simply like saying, you know, an ant lives on a leaf, which lives on a tree, which is sitting on a hill, which one do you want to talk about, the ant, the leaf, the tree, or the hill? And so I'm saying, let's talk about the ant. And then when we know everything that the ant is doing, we can talk about the leaf. Until then, forget about the hill and the tree. I like this. There's more to it than that. You can play with this topic in many different ways. But yeah. So I'm going to, this helps again. It's confirms or reaffirms the suggestion that I should keep going down this path of knowing your characters and a path of story within a story. And even some would suggest the story cycle that, you know, repurposes or reuses the same character. But yeah. That gets us through that part. Does Florence essentially narrate the story and pause during different aspects, different scenes? Like, you know, the scene between Rosalithia. Sorry, I'm yawning. Rosalithia and her roommate or her friend, I don't know which one. So yeah. To be continued, I'm pausing now.