I came up with a new story yesterday and a new main character.  The first thing I heard out of my character's mouth is "I am not an evil person". You have to love a character who says things like that. So I wrote in my new character's voice and this is what he had to say.  His name is Cyrus Henry Goodlight.

I am not an evil man. Oh, I know what people have written about me but despite what they say, I am not evil, notorious maybe but not evil. My detractors and there seem to be many of them have written ad nauseam about me, and as an avid reader I read their diatribes, their comments, their hit pieces, their exposes, everything that been been written good or bad about me. I made my fortune by being able to research theories, discovering their truth, and then turning that truth into something that someone would find useful and want to pay money to obtain it. I am a carpe diem type of man and ex nihilo nihil fit. It’s my gift as one kind reporter wrote. And if I turn my gift to find out the truth about myself, I can honestly say from what I’ve been able to research is that it is all false.

No, to be fair, and I do want to be absolutely fair, is that some of it is true but most of it is false. What’s true is that I have amassed a fortune that makes me the richest man in the world. My father, who was a scientist and researcher himself, repeated to me as a child when I wanted to wanted something to think to myself veni vedi vici, and I took that to heart. What is also true is that I have made my fortune by providing items to the planet that people, businesses want to purchase. I have provided the technology to find cures for most diseases. My research companies are world renown for their contribution to medical cures through genetics. My environmental companies have come up with the technology to rid our planet of almost all of the pollution in our environment and in our food. My new foundation is starting to collect people’s stories, which is offered in a database that can be researched for free by anyone. I have a nobel prize for my foundation for preserving the stories and literature of disappearing cultures.

So a large part of what is written about me is in praise of everything that I have done for this planet.  It’s the other things that people written about me that I find to be false.  Most of it I believe is because people just assume that someone with money is up to no good, and that person wants world domination. What a load of crock. I am not hosti humani generis. If I wanted world domination, I could have gotten that a long time ago. Do I have governments and world leaders that I can call on for favors? Yes, of course I do. I’ve done good things for this world and those leaders respect me.

I think people are mesmerized me, so they make up stories about me. Sometimes I think maybe money is a liability. If I had been a researcher who just discovered good things and eschewed money, people would worship me. What nonsense; faber est suae quisque fortunae.

My money allows me to be able to follow up on my obsession, and that is its reward to me. And what is thing that I want more than anything that even money cannot buy me? Time, tempus fugit. I want to live forever. I have much to do and much to discover. There are legends, stories in the bible about people who have lived for a very long time. And for all all our progress in cleaning up our environment and curing diseases, we have made absolutely zero progress on life extension.

The world deserves my genius, the world needs someone like me to live forever so I can make a make the world a better place. And who better than me to live a long and glorious life with all my knowledge and all my wealth. So to all critics, I will find a way to outlive you all and since I am a kind person, your vitriol will not be remembered in the future. I will see to that personally.

Another odd piece of writing from my writing box.  This piece was written on February 1, 1999. I think I was trying my hand at stream of conscious writing because the piece is full of fragments, like I was riffing on a musical phrase.

Writing in a box - all angular - black and white - parralel stories - endings have to end - no ambiguities - has to make sense - sense to me - not to any one else - writing flows like a stream of light - a single light - a bright light - with an equational light - not a pastel light - but a bright in your face color - no subtlety - it hits right between the eyes - and rocking - like driving along a brightly lit country road and BOOM, a summer thunder storm - unexpected and frightening - dark mood and dark light - to hit your sunny day - bright square of color like a modern American painting - it makes no sense but if you stare at it long enough - it starts to make sense - only because your mind has to have it make sense - uncertainty is like death - the mind can only handle uncertainty for so long - before it cracks - stories must make sense - somebody's sense - from a point of view - whose point of view? - my point of view - a character's point of view - but all characters are me - in one way or another - different facets unexplored - dark valleys - dark visions - never plundered - never dared to go - characters speak words I can never say, never want to say - whose world do they inhabit? - harsh landscapes with harsh lightning - no pink light to hide the wires, the cracks, the wrinkles - no rose colored lighting to smooth out the way - but harsh, harsh light - studio lights - light so hot your makeup melts - melting slowly off revealing someting yet unknown - magic, my story - more light and less light - inherent darkness - valleys of no return - signs that say no trespassing, dark and windy twisted roads - roads that go nowhere, everywhere, round and round, never ending - roads that you to home, from home - roads that take you away, away from harsh, harsh light and even the sense of scrutinity - roads that comfort and soothe you on your journey.

In the midst of all this creation, you need to find a place to live. You have to inhabit that which you create.

Here's something else I found in my writing box.

These sentences were written on February 23, 2004, and I think these sentences look like writing prompts where the writing teacher gives you a phrase and you are supposed to construct a sentence out of the phrase.

These sentences are very intriguing and I want to keep them, so I am posting them here.

• Two Alaskan Kodiak Bears joined a small circus where the pair appeared in a nightly parade pulling a small covered wagon. (WTF is this?)
• Once I had a vision of being a general.
• I found a knife under the refrigerator while the man I love and I were cleaning our house.
• Rachel is the one whose hair is golden like her mother's.
• Once upon a time during the reign of terror, mass arrests become the order of the day.
• Here at the bottom of our country, our windows drip with summer.
• Even when she was very little, her hunger was worth something; hunger tougher her to dance.

It's been awhile since I have posted. Lots of stuff going on at work, but I think it will be resolved in the next few weeks.

Anyway, I was going through a box of writing notes and I found an email I wrote to a friend in June  2000. That friend named Amy H incidentally passed away two years later, which still makes me sad. I had written to my dear friend that I wanted to write a book of short stories called "Isn't it a Jupiter moment and other short stories of modern girl's life." I think that Jupiter reference must come from that Train song that I don't even know that I really like, and I have no idea what that story wouldn't have been about. But here are the titles to the short stories in this book that I wanted to write:

• Isn't it a Jupiter moment?
• My thing with Steve
• Putting up the Sun Shade
• His Tenses freak me out (this title makes me laugh)
• Art is scary
• The Bat Mobile Car
• Loking through a big glass ball
• The Blue Haired Buddah on Union Street
• We were just chatting online
• Dreaming of Texas (I turned this story into a novel)
• Watch out for the Gnats
• It's way to deep for me
• Flashbacks at the produce section
• Tall and white from Detroit
• Sundown on the Bay Bridge
• Four California Girls in a Car

I read the titles and I sort of remember why I wanted to write the story. But then there are some titles that I have no idea what story was supposed to go with that title.

As a friend would say, if you can't remember why you wanted to write the story, then it must not have been that important.

I am thinking it might be fun to do free writes on these titles just to see what comes out. And I can see myself doing that on a day when I can't work on the writing I am supposed to be working on, and I want to write something.