Preserving our memory capabilities would be a huge benefit for all of us. As years slip away so does our memory. Modern science has yet to find the answer. But I have a thought.

Recently I ran across a medical report about my father when he was in his eighties. I had forgotten about it but vividly recalled my reaction at the time. Most of the report was not of great interest but it indicated that he was showing signs of cerebral atrophy. Convinced this was a devastating finding I called his physician on the verge of panic. He reassured me by telling me that cerebral atrophy is a normal part of aging. Anyway I kind of found that reassuring.

But now that cerebral atrophy seems to be a reality in my life as I watch my ability to remember things ebb away I think it is time to review the subject. I have heard several people report that they feel their brains are full. A lifetime of memory has overloaded their storage capacity. Recently I went to save something on my thumb drive and found it full. I had to dump some of what was on it to save new material. Can it be that this is the answer? Clean out our memory banks!

We can begin by dumping memories. In order to dump memories one tactic is to clearly delineate it and clarify it then state it openly. At that point an autohypnotic suggestion would be used to erase the memory. If you are not conversant with the simple matter of autohypnotic suggestion you can go to a hypnotherapist and get the short course in its use. Then you are ready to go to work.

It is not necessary to set aside time for your memory cell project. It can be done anywhere. Just so long as you clearly indicate the memory which is to be erased. This can be done by telling someone else your memory. For example, you are on an elevator and you can tell the person next to you about your aunt Helen who likes to terrorize her neighborhood on her Harley. One day she got her boa caught in the spokes. Not the feather kind. The constrictor kind. It made a terrible mess and one of her neighbors made off with the carcass and had a barbecue. He made the mistake of telling her about it. He eventually recovered from his injuries. Face it, this is not a memory you need clogging your storage capacity.

Or you can tell the person on the other side of you about Uncle Helmut who suffers encopresis and what a hit he was at last years Thanksgiving feast.

Choose your time and place. Maybe you don't have a high regard for bikers and harbor prejudices. You clearly don't need to keep associated memories concerning this prejudice of yours. So, the next time you find yourself at a stoplight with a 300 pound biker next to you let him know that you consider him a person who is clearly compensating for his inadeqauacies and that you believe he is, at heart, a pansy. You may have to ignore the view you have of him in your rearview mirror as he follows you home. He might actually help you to reduce your unwanted memories further.

When the spirit moves you you can go out on your front porch, if you have one, and do things like reciting the Gettysburg address, if you can remember it. Or, if you live in an apartment you can do it in the hallway. It would be even better if one of your neighbors observes you doing this as it will help delineate and define the vividness of the memory. Dumping it works even better then.

Be creative. Use your time on the subway to good effect. Tell the person next to you about the intractable sexually transmitted disease you acquired from a hooker last month. Just be sure in each instance that you use the autohypnotic suggestion.

I think you get the point. It is a noble experiment. If it proved successful, the world will be eternally grateful. If you choose to try this form of memory enhancement, please stay away from me and don't tell anybody I suggested it.

Column 14 - Recently I had the experience of having a book walk in the door. Well, not just the book. The concept of the book complete with characters.

When we started writing A Dream Across Time we just thought we were writing a book. Vaguely we thought there might be a continuing story but not a whole saga. We built a home in St. Lucia and it took over our lives. First came the house, then came a travel business focused on the Caribbean and then a saga.

I used to believe that a person could plot their course in life. Now, after all these years I realize that life will often plot our course for us. That is exactly the case with what has developed from our first novel, A Dream Across Time. After A Dream Across Time was finished we began work on what we thought was the second book in the series. It was more of a struggle than the first book. Our lead character,Yvie, was giving us fits. She is a character who would not behave herself in the book and she wouldn't behave for her creators either.

Then one day I went out to run errands which I find really boring and so my mind drifts. At the time we lived way out in the country and so I spent a lot of time on the road. While I was out, the second book walked in the door or at least into my head. Maybe I should have expected it after reading Stephen King's On Writing. After all we were struck by the validity of his belief that writing novels is like unearthing fossils. If we viewed the saga as a fossil entity and that it is unearthed piece by piece, then it is perfectly logical that we were going to find things which were unexpected.

When I got home I laid out for my wife the plot, the characters and found myself detailing what will be the book, A Circle of Dreams. It was clear that we could not write the book we had started until we had written the second. The characters for the third book were begging to be introduced. No, actually, they were demanding to be introduced in a book which lay between the first and the one we had begun work on. What was even more appalling was that we found we had inserted plot elements and characterizations in the first book which were prerequisite to the second book.

And I thought I could lay a course and was in command of it. I really needed to get real.

"Alas". Alas? When we were seeking agents and publishers this word came up in some of the rejection notices. It is a word I had not heard or seen much for a very long time. It seemed a curious word to use since the nature of the communication itself suggested rejection and did not imply real regret. Just being nice I guess even though it was often part of a note which had been hacked out of a larger sheet with a paper cutter.

But, it appeared to have a deeper meaning and caused me to go looking back at the material in the agents listing. What leapt out at me from the words they used to describe what they were seeking was the word "literary". Literature has a variety of meanings and I associate it with such things as literature racks which might contain anything from travel brochures to religious tracts but it can also refer to novels.

We understood that what we were writing lay somewhere on the literary landscape. Being grouped generally among the romances, it is possible to lie among "bodice rippers" and mainstream works. We were very clear we were not writing bodice rippers but also believed we were not writing "great" literature. What did this word mean in this context?

There came a defining moment. We were visiting my mother-in-law and my wife was reading her Christmas letters to her. They were mostly letters about people I did not know and people my mother-in-law did not know either. But it filled the time. Being bored, I picked up a book lying next to my chair. I leafed through it and read the review snippets inside. They were striking in that they used words to describe the book which would appear in the 98th. to 99th. reading level percentile of a vocabulary list. That is, the reviews were often from such places as the New York Times.

I began to read this highly regarded book. I'm a reasonably intelligent person but I ran into sentences that were dumbfounding. I had to stop and mull them over, trying hard to determine their meaning. Early on in learning our craft we were told that they were called "stoppers". Supposedly bad things. These sentences clearly stopped the flow of the manuscript and not to good effect. The lead character in this book was in distress both physically and emotionally but the author had left me caring not one whit about her or her distress. Rather than pressing forward to move the story the author lapsed into a dissertation about the cultural ramifications and origins of her distress. It was clear that the focus was on the thoughts and the choice of words. Could it be that I had found an example of literature which was word driven?

Running into that book at that moment was striking for me in that I was, at the time, reading a novel by Maeve Binchy. I love her Irish characters and get caught up in their lives and their speech as she depicts their lives. Her vocabulary is not lofty but the creation of the characters is striking and I come to care about them. In short, she captures me in something which is story driven and people driven. The story flows and I am never stopped. The differences between her writings and the book I had picked up clarified for me what we are writing. We will never be reviewed by the lofty critics of "literature". Our works are not word driven. Rather our stories are image and story driven. We wish to catch the human heart but not through thought or the turn of phase.

Perhaps I am being unfair about literature but in this experience I became clear that it is "literature" that is found in my great pile of "50 page books" I never finished. They are the ones that do not capture my imagination or my feelings. My wife was an English major and frequently mentions that it took her years to be able to begin reading again after college. I have to confess that my experience was similar.

I am a psychologist who is steeped in the world of Carl Jung. His work goes deep into mythology and thereby deep into the human experience well beyond human thought. Jung's work on personality types is particularly instructive. Certain kinds of books are written by certain personality types. Their diversity of approach and perception offers us richness in the human experience. It is the art within each type of writing that captures us in each genre and enriches us depending upon our particular personality. As such, aside from variables of talent, there is often little use to rank one against the other.

Column 13 - Toward A Circle of Dreams

It's January (but you knew that) and the second edition of A Dream Across Time has been formally launched. (Maybe you didn't know that.) If you will look back over prior posts you will find numbered columns mixed in which discuss our characters, the setting of the book and our thoughts about writing. These columns help bring out other dimensions of the book.

You may not be aware that A Dream Across Time is the first book in a saga. In the columns which will now be posted we are discussing themes, characters, and background material related to the second book in the series, A Circle of Dreams, which will debut in June.

And now, Column 13, the first in the series of columns about A Circle of Dreams,the second book in the series.

Column 13 - I don't believe in ghosts.

In a former incarnation I was a clinical psychologist. As an undergraduate I took the inevitable first psychology course, Psych 101. It was at the University of Michigan which has been a bastion of experimental psychology. In the first class the lecturer took the stage and dramatically proclaimed the fateful words, "Psychology is a science!" So, clinical psychologist or not, it seems I am a scientist and, naturally, I do not believe in such silly things as ghosts. Not me. Oh no!

Except of course, I lived in a house with a ghost.

I left North Carolina with my young wife, brand new baby girl, an antique Jaguar which inevitably leaked oil and my newly minted Ph.D. from Duke and moved to Maryland. We had found a really neat three story stone farmhouse for rent right in the middle of a 300 acre farm. Worn floors, creaking stairs and several fireplaces. We absolutely loved it.

But in the evening when we had settled in we began to feel we were being watched. It was a strange sensation. Our laid back dogs would suddenly come to alert. At the top of the house was an attic room with a hasp. I fixed it shut with a peg of wood in the hasp. Next time I checked the peg was on the floor. This happened repeatedly. Finally my wife said, "It feels like we have a ghost." I felt exactly the same way. We set up a series of questions and wrote down our answers so that we did not contaminate each others responses.

We agreed it was an elderly man who came from the attic down the stairs and he went to a small "study" adjacent to the livingroom. He never came into the livingroom or the upstairs bedrooms. But he did stop at the door to the livingroom. We never actually saw him. But we certainly could feel him, hear the creaks on the stairs and the dogs clearly were taking note of something.

The funny thing was that it did not feel like he was an ominous presence. In fact, since we loved the house, we felt a sense of protection. As if he loved his house and wanted people there who loved it as well. So, we settled in to live with our "nonexistent" ghost.

Finally I summoned the courage to ask our landlady about the house and people's reactions to it. She said it was quite curious. Renters either loved the house or fled suddenly after staying only a short time. Some left in the middle of the night. As far as I was concerned that fit. If they were iffy about the house or didn't like it then they were virtually driven out. If you loved the house, you were quite welcome. Great. We loved it there.

And then we found our very own 18th. century stone house in the country to buy and set about preparing to leave. All hell broke loose.

The house was not just noisy. It was nuts. The dogs would not settle down. They were constantly patrolling and on alert. We felt a presence in the hallways much more frequently. It seemed the old gentleman was not happy about our decision to leave.

It was with some regret that we moved on to our new home which we loved but had nothing even suggesting the feel of a ghost. At least inside the house. It was another matter outside on the old road from Baltimore to York, Pennsylvania. But that's another story.

So, that's an interesting story you might say. What does that have to do with anything?

It has to do with suspending your disbelief. A true scientist is not dismissive. All of us have to consider the "what if". Go to our website www.annierogers.com and read the prologue and first chapter of A Circle of Dreams. See what you might conclude about what might happen to our little family in St. Lucia and how it might play itself out. Look for A Circle of Dreams in its entirety in June.

Here's another restaurant review for those who are inclined to eat around here in Easton, MD.
Yes, I'm a busy little beaver today with three posts. Could it be there are some other things I am putting off?

When we are in New York we have a favorite Italian restaurant called Il Grifone which is at 244 E. 46th. It is absolutely outstanding but not the subject of this review.
Il Grifone comes to mind because last night we happened to go to a new Italian restaurant here in Easton (MD) with a decor which is New York sophisticated.
It is Scossa and is on Washington St. opposite the courthouse in downtown Easton. The decor is softly neutral, very elegant and sparked with well placed lighting and luscious candlelight. I felt immediately at home and very, very comfortable. Such a pleasant feeling.
Now, when I enter such a setting I am often afraid that I will be disapponted somehow. There were absolutely no disappointments. I chose a scallop and shitake mushroom starter which couldn't have been more lovely. I followed it with a light pasta dish. Roma circa 1962 was when I had a cenneloni like this. Heavenly shell with a meltaway stuffing of veal and cheese. My wife had a veal dish which was wonderful and it included perfectly prepared mash potatoes and vegetables which were neither too raw nor too done. We had chosen a carafe of the house pino grigio which proved to be the perfect compliment. We took a deep breath almost not daring to hope that dessert would be as good. The fruit tart flamed with Cointreau was beyond our hopes.
Oh yes. I forgot the service. It was not to be faulted.
If you are ever in Easton, don't miss Scossa.

I can't resist posting this.
In my last post I mentioned my 100 year old aunt who died six months ago. Several days ago I at last received a final check from Social Security. It came after they requested a birth certificate (presumably to prove the person they paid benefits to for 35 years had actually existed) her death certificate ( Yep. She's dead. That's why I'm asking you to stop sending money.) and a marriage certificate (Sorry. She was never married and I have no certificate proving a negative).
Today I received the following letter: (Our government at work!)
"You will soon receive a check for $(amount deleted) because we owed money to (your aunt). Do you think we are wrong? If you disagree with this decision, you have the right to appeal." Blah, blah, blah.

Self Publishing and Unemployment.

America is supposedly the land of the entrepreneur. But we have a curious attitude toward people in a number of positions in our society.

My wife and I have been self-something-or-others most of our adult lives. Mostly it has been self employed. That means we have to be self starters. If we don’t get ourselves moving, no one is going to do it for us. If we don’t make something happen for ourselves, no one will. Some of us are more comfortable than others with the fact that it can be all up to us to make our way.
In this environment there are many people who are then generally classified as being "unemployed" in one way or another. Here are some of them:
1. Self employed people
2. Housewives
3. "Retired" people
4. Publishers.

In the public mind it is clear that a person is employed if they have a job which has been made for them by someone else, where they are provided with a paycheck and benefits. If you receive none of the above then you are "unemployed".

Self Employed People
Those of us who are self employed and have created are own jobs are assumed to be available, at the discretion of others, to run errands and do other odd jobs since we are not actually "working". Even so, others assume we must have a pension plan or 401 K and will ask "What kind of a 401K plan do you have?" Answer, "None, I’m self employed." Or they are outraged that they now have to pay 15% of their health insurance premiums and ask, "How much are YOU expected to pay of your health insurance premium?" Answer, "All of it." We are truly to be pitied.

Housewives
The next class of the unemployed is the housewife. The debate about how much a housewife should be paid if she actually received a paycheck has been raging forever but it seems that employed people continue to wonder what housewives actually do all day. As if the children have been stuffed and put in a corner. Not to mention all the things that people in a marital partnership do as part of their lives together even thought only one nominally receives the compensation. It is assumed that housewives should be doing something directly remunerative and should be striving to "have it all". That means career, children, glorious fulfilment in their marriage etc.
Fortunately with the advent of the women’s movement we have gotten beyond the embarrassed woman who says shyly that she is "just a housewife". At least now she is more prone to say she is a "stay at home Mom" among other things. Still the suspicion lingers that she does not really do much and, therefore, is unemployed.

Retired People
The third class of people are "retired" people. When I was a child most men retired at age 65 and were dead, on average, at age 67. So unemployment or idleness was not much of a worry. It was all to be over soon. The old attitudes have lingered on for decades.
People assume that anyone past the age of 60 must be retired. The sad fact is that many people of all ages are bored or unhappy with their jobs. They assume an older person couldn’t actually be working or want to work. When I ask an older man what he does, I am asking about his skills, his history, his interests. I continue to be surprised by responses like, "I’m retired." Period. Total response. Does that mean retirement is a vocation and all prior history has disappeared?
I’m really struggling with the definition of retirement because I have no idea what it means anymore. We have several images of the retired person: 1. They sit at the end of a dock and fish 2. They play endless rounds of golf or 3. They ride around on their motorized scooter with grandchildren following behind on tricycles or in line skates. What a fulfilling way to spend your later years! Is it possible that some people might dare to do something gainful late in life?
My 100 year old aunt died recently and was "retired" for 35 years which means in her case that she actually did not do much of anything. Is that a model to be emulated?

Publishers/Self Publishers
Then last on my list are publishers. Nobody seems to know what publishers actually do. They don’t write. Authors write. They don’t edit because that is what editors do. They publish but no one knows what that is. Since no one can figure out what they do, they must be unemployed or at best slackers.
Isn’t it curious that in this land of the entrepreneur we have this attitude about people who are self starters, make their own way or in other ways are independent? As for me, I’m having a really good time watching people’s faces. They assume at my age that I am retired. Without really knowing about my life they ask me how I am enjoying my retirement. And then I tell them I am a publisher. That’s bad enough but then I compound it by telling them I am a self publishing publisher. Fortunately the bias against self publishing seems to be breaking down quickly. But most people still seem clueless about publishing and self publishing. I know I shouldn’t be making them uncomfortable. I’m a mean person. I also don’t like unexamined prejudices and stereotypes.

Happy New Year!

Long long ago in a land far far away there was a journalist who wrote an article. Yes, children, in those days journalists actually wrote articles. They did more than clip together press releases sent by people such as myself. The time was the sixties and the place was Massachusetts. The journalist wrote about an ashram located in Western Massachusetts and indicated that the people there sought through meditation to achieve vegetable consciousness. Over time they would work themselves from broccoli and cauliflower consciousness down through the lettuces ultimately reaching carrot and radish consciousness. At that point they were said to have achieved vegetable nirvana.

You may have guessed by now that this account was apocryphal at best and certainly satirical. To the amazement of the journalist he was besieged by callers wanting contact information for the ashram. They wanted to join up!
Now I have to admit that achieving vegetable consciousness is a goal I seek at times. After a day of fighting the good fight in self publishing and dealing with my faithful computer, Hal, I have been known to seek such a level of consciousness. Such is particularly the case when Hal has been in his evil incarnation and has eaten my data, trashed my work and entered catatonic states from which he is hard to rouse.

Fortunately there are ways to get assists in achieving this state. Among others one can listen to rap music, play your favorite album of yodel music or watch certain movies on television. It was my good fortune to find that Hulk was being shown the other night after a particularly trying day.

I had seen the ads but did not understand that it was pretty mainstream as a sci fi flick. It had all the essential hallmarks. For one it was clear that a central theme in this morality play was " Don’t F— with mother nature". Well, let’s call that "mess with mother nature" since the dashes slow up my typing. One of the best known pieces demonstrating the dangers of messing with mother nature was done by Mary Shelley. She evidently went on a very boring vacation with her poet hubby and came up with her classic about Dr. Frankenstein. Anyway, Hulk’s Dad seemed to have messed with his biochemistry which had a dramatically bad effect later on.

Our hero is a scientist and has a fair damsel with whom he works. Unfortunately she seems to have back to back bad hair days. Personally I think it was the director’s fault since I think he wanted her to look geeky, her being a scientist and all. But an interesting thing happens which leads us to characteristic number two in this type of flick. Our hero begins to have major problems with his biochemistry.

I mean really bad problems. It seems he is having world class testosterone spikes. Naturally our heroine responds with a care giving set of responses which have an unexpected effect. She suddenly becomes more fetching and gets over her bad hair days. Amazing. So now we have the age old beloved story of beauty and the beast. The woman soothes the man who is having problems with his testosterone spikes. It brings a certain equality to life to see this. Hormonal spikes and shifts are not just something that women must deal with. Hulk brings this fact to life big time. So we move away from sexist viewpoints to an equality of the sexes.

Which brings us to the third hallmark of a film to help you achieve vegetable consciousness. It goes under the name of "I’m gonna get you sucka." You might assume that it involves violence and you would be correct. Violence is hardly unusual among humans. We generally seem more interested in killing each other than getting along and Hulk, with his testosterone spikes, is certainly prone to violence.

Now you have to understand that although my own cognitive functioning was sinking ever lower into my brain stem while watching this movie, it still had me involved enough that I had not taken so much as a mini-nap to which I am prone when watching televison in the evening.

All in all it became clear to me that there are wonderful ways to become relieved of the day’s tension through the seeking of vegetable consciousness. We probably need a rating system which would rank films on the three hallmarks of 1. Don’t mess with mother nature 2. Beauty and the beast and 3. I’m gonna get you sucka. With a sufficient dose it is then possible to feel refreshed, renewed and capable of returning to whatever your good fight might be.

So, actually what is the point? There are two point. The first is that this blog medium is a gas and you get to have fun with it. The second is more serious. Let’s not forget that life needs fun and that writing can be fun. It does not have to be deep. We often take ourselves too seriously particularly when it comes to writing. Popular genres can be wonderful if we can let the kid in us out to play.

The last few months have been a travail in a lot of ways as I fought my way through the publishing venture. Now that that is more under control my wife and I are getting back to what we really like which is the creative writing. I sat down yesterday and took one of our characters, Lissa, out for a spin in the third book. I took this lovely young woman to Martinique and helped her through a difficult period. And, I got to show off this young woman to the reader. It doesn’t get much better than being able to have fun either with someone else’s work whether it is grade B, better or worse, or your own work.