Not Shakespeare’s Macbeth

JWise Photo of the Day

Macbeth X-Series MKII Backend Filter - Eurorack

After a nearly five-year wait, my Macbeth Eurorack synthesizer combo is complete. In April 2020, within a brief five or ten-minute window of being able to order before they sold out, I managed to snag a spot on the waiting list for a very rare offering of an updated X-Series MKII Oscillator and Filter from maestro of custom synthesizer manufacturing, Ken Macbeth. In October 2023, I was notified by Schneidersladen in Berlin, Germany, that I had a number of days to wire the funds to their bank or lose my hold on the oscillator. I have to say, I wanted to be reluctant as there was no certainty that the filter would ever be completed, and I seriously wanted the pair. I paid anyway, and less than a week later, the oscillator arrived at my front door.

Exactly a week ago, I received the invoice for the hoped-for filter; it was finally ready to ship. Fifteen minutes later, the money was wired to Berlin, and that shipment was sent the next day. It arrived in the U.S. by Thursday, but a snowstorm in Kentucky kept it there until UPS could deliver it to Arizona on Sunday and then to me today. This brings me to over 20 oscillator voices to play with, and there’s not one I’d part with, as each has its unique tonal qualities, but the warm depth of the Macbeth combo is unsurpassed.

In other news, yesterday was our 31st anniversary, and Happy New Year.

Alone With Cats in Duncan, Arizona

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Simpson Hotel in Duncan, Arizona

There I was on December 12th, not doing a thing for Caroline’s birthday, when a text from Deborah arrived, asking if we’d be interested in a gratis stay at their fabulous Simpson Hotel in Duncan over Christmas while they’d be away traveling. While the tiny hotel wouldn’t have other guests during our stay, there were a bunch of cats that we were being invited to keep company. Who could resist?

Maliki the Cat at the Simpson Hotel in Duncan, Arizona

But there was an issue, not an issue regarding Maliki the Cat performing a flying leap into a diorama, but by that date I’d been on the verge of finishing part one of the novel with which I’m threatening the world. That was not really an issue either: the problem truly raised its head when I actually finished said part of my book on the following Thursday, one day before our scheduled departure to Duncan. You see, I would have liked a break from the writing routine, which, at that point, was pressing into the 45th consecutive day of intense wordsmithing. On Friday, December 20th for those who are curious, we left for Duncan, the home of the Simpson Hotel and refuge where Maliki, among other felines, resides. And while I penned not a thing all day Friday, I couldn’t face spending a week in Duncan, where I typically find an incredible focus to go further with words, without at least attempting to keep the fire going; thus I had to give up the idea of taking an extended break from my self-imposed toil of keeping my nose to the grindstone.

Ranch House Restaurant in Duncan, Arizona

When Saturday morning rolled around, I took up my traditional spot in the parlor, resigned to the idea I would write. The empty page was emblazoned with the words “Part Two” and nothing else. I could still see the riveting beginning of part one, which I’d love to tell you about, but that would obviously arrive with spoilers, so that’s a no-go. What I will share is that I had this idea that the beginning of part two should also arrive with a zinger of epic proportions. I sat there, stewing in a lukewarm pot of word soup, unable to assemble the overcooked alphabet noodles that would dissolve under my touch before I could string them into words. There was nothing left to do. I would have to tap the literary genius of the “invisible hand” to help me craft a book I’m certain she would not want credit for, well, at least not in this wonky draft state. Upon telling my wife approximately where I was at in the story, she made a suggestion that precisely fit the situation and gave me the push that allowed me to find the onramp to continuing down the story highway.

Woodhouse toad in Duncan, Arizona

You could say that Caroline kissed the frog (or toad in this instance). There I was, a reborn man, and by Saturday evening, I was able to bring 300 words to the page, a solid enough beginning, and by Sunday morning, traction was well established. Over the subsequent days, I didn’t exactly flounder but was operating at marginal capacity, eking out barely 1,000 words a day.

Duncan High School Class of 1964 from Duncan, Arizona

This could have been considered a partial failure, but at least it wasn’t a wash, and sometimes we just have to take the minor wins where we can find them. Then, out of the blue, or might I say, through the flue, a Christmas gift arrived in a dream, not delivered by Santa Claus, but to him, if you consider the idea that I might resemble him to some small degree. I woke before 4:00 from a lucid dream, that inspired me to sit up, grab my phone, and write furiously for the next hour, before I lay back down to continue sleeping. In the morning I transcribed this 1,037-word note that absolutely energized me. It was Saturday again, the day of our return to Phoenix following a walk over to the Duncan High School and another hour of writing in the parlor where, my inspiration still fueled by my dream, I quickly wrote another few hundred words. As for the dream, it’ll be edited and modified for inclusion in the book, should I find a proper place for it. Over the next week, I set into a routine of consistently pushing out more than 3,000 words a day; such was the inspiration from a dream that shook me from slumber at 3:45 on a cold, dark, post-Christmas Day.

December Morning Walk

JWise Photo of the Day

House decorated for Christmas

The astute will see this Christmas-drenched trickery as a transparent act of trying to make up for lost ground after not posting for more than a month by backdating this missive. Maybe I’ll be called out for dating this post December 9th, when it wasn’t published until January 8th, as though I hoped that no one would notice that my posting frequency had fallen off a cliff. Well, as my then-teenage daughter once told me once, “You can suck it!”

It’s not that I’ve had nothing to say; it’s just that I’ve been busy. Let me rephrase that: I’ve been beyond busy. I’ve been absolutely consumed since November 4th working (toiling is more apt), writing this thing I want to believe is an evolving novel. Writing is all I do while I’m living in a zone, neglecting everything else and focusing exclusively on finding my way into the story, which is unfolding into an ever-expanding document that now contains so many words that it likely exceeds most humans’ ability to express such a number. Santa promised that if I wrote like the wind, he’d not fill my notebook with coal, and so, like one of his slavish elves, I work every day for others’ future enjoyment…

Pinnekjøtt

JWise Photo of the Day

Pinnekjøtt with rutabagas, potato, carrot mash and mushy peas

The food just gets uglier here in the Wise household as we do our best to escape the gravitational pull of traditions. Not only did we skip the turkey, which had the knock-on effect of leaving us without leftovers, but we cooked up some dried-out six-month-old mutton that was likely dispatched in springtime, salted, and then hung in the rafters of somewhere in Norway before becoming this Scandinavian holiday favorite called Pinnekjøtt. Five pounds of funky dried sheep ribs exuding a slightly peculiar (not pleasant) cheese-like stench sat wrapped in a paper bag, stinking up our place for over a month. Before you ask, no, we didn’t seal it in a bag and risk it molding; it needs air to breathe, nor did we put it in our fridge, as it’s never been in one anyway.

Cooking it, on the other hand, that was where the experience got real. To me, it smelled like we were cooking the corpse of the infamous Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who influences how I say the word Pinnekjøtt, which Caroline insists is pronounced: “PIN-neh-SHOHT.”

Enough of the semantics. First, we soaked the sheep ribs overnight. Then, we simmered them for nearly three hours. Oops, this was the first mistake, as that amount of time was meant to cook more than we were preparing. From there, I put them on our barbecue, trying to bring them to a crispiness, not the dried-out slivers of meat and charred fat we ended up with. It’s a good thing we have another three pounds that can linger in our apartment until Christmas, when we take a different approach to preparing them instead of just throwing them away while they continue insulting our olfactory.

Thanksgiving Seal

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Canned seal meat from Newfoundland, Canada

I’m calling this bowl seal meat because I don’t want to admit that Caroline and I have taken to eating dog food so we can better afford our exorbitant travel expenses. For the astute, they’ll notice a stunning lack of photos from the Oregon Coast this Thanksgiving (a possible first), all because we cannot afford the life we’ve come to expect. Don’t feel too sorry for us; we had started with dry kibble, but the constant crunching of enough dry food to satiate us was driving me nuts. Any of you who know me will realize I have an incredibly low tolerance for things I don’t want to hear, such as others talking to interrupt my sermons.

Rrrzzzzt….rewind the tape here; where is the lie and the truth? Everything after the seal meat reference is questionable because this is legit seal meat. We’d dragged a jar of it back with us from Newfoundland, and it just continued to get uglier in our pantry. Seeing how we were skipping our annual Coastal Oregon pilgrimage due to travel fatigue and that I wasn’t about to go all traditional Thanksgiving dinner, why not break out that jar of seal meat we’ve been saving for a special occasion? That’s just what we did.

Because people have asked, I pan-seared it in butter, onion, and garlic with the guidance of one of my many Artificial Intelligence overlords that steers my life after I have given up my autonomy, and then I added beef broth, rutabagas, potato, and carrots for an authentic taste of Newfoundland. Searing it emphasizes the umami taste, while stewing it allows for tenderizing the meat, bringing out its rich, gamey flavors. That’s what the A.I. told me to share, so yes, that last sentence was cut and pasted.

Seriously, though, Caroline and I both enjoyed our first taste of seal, which surprised us. While we couldn’t be at the sea this year, we could still partake in its bounty as though the sea came to us.

Out Duncan Way

JWise Photo of the Day

Looking west near Duncan, Arizona

Behold, the view of indulgence, the image of selfish absorption, the horizon of nothing but self. I was not traveling into the sunset but away from it. This required me to stop, get out of the car, and look back at where I’d come from as I was escaping all other responsibilities to snatch hold of my focus, holding fast to a singular purpose. On my way east into the darkening sky, I was alone and ready to be self-absorbed for days while remaining well aware of my good fortune to have such privilege. Duncan, Arizona, was my destination, and truthfully, this photo was taken with the reluctance that I somehow feel compelled to publish reports on my blog instead of leaving large gaps so that it might appear that nothing is happening out of the ordinary. That impression would be false, as every day is extraordinary when so much time is allocated to exploring some aspect of creativity, love, and dreams.

Bonnie Heather Inn in Duncan, Arizona

My excursion is leading me into a place dwelling inside my head. There are no beer taps or pool tables to be found there, though they could be manifested if the story required such props. I’m at the edge of New Mexico to explore pages that are yet empty, awaiting the tippity-tappity click-click of chicklet keys recording strings of letters being telegraphed to fingers that do the bidding of throwing down words that might one day find their way into someone else’s eyes and mind.

This photo is from inside the Bonnie Heather Inn, which, in all the years of our visits in and through Duncan, has not once been open, but today, it sees the light of day. I suppose that, in a sense, it is like the brain hiding a book, painting, or composition within it until the door is ready to be opened. As I set out on a morning walk, a delivery truck was parked next to the building; the front door was open, which was my invitation to walk into this relic that had been sitting quietly for so long. The proprietor shared how they’d sold the River Front Lodge on the opposing corner and would be opening this place on a more frequent basis. So, while it appeared long abandoned, the saloon/bar/inn is still active and ready to welcome celebrants.

Dry bed of the Gila River in Duncan, Arizona

Since mid-June, the novel I’ve been crafting/sculpting/expelling has been on hold; maybe it appeared abandoned. It was not because my fountain of blathering had run dry like the bed of the Gila River in this photo. On the contrary, I still wrote with raging intensity, but instead of adding two more novels worth of material to my draft, I posted two more novels worth of musings here on my blog in the form of travel missives.

This update is my unenthusiastic attempt at dropping breadcrumbs, while my preference would be to maintain a singular concentration on my novel now that I’ve dipped back into the flow. My visit to Duncan was meant to push into high gear the kind of persistence of vision that allows absolute intensity to be given to my pursuit of authorship, and it worked.

View north from Skyline Drive in Duncan, Arizona

After days with my head in the clouds of drifting storylines, I was ready to return to the loving arms of Caroline in Phoenix, though the embrace of my characters is also a fun place to be. As a note to myself, I came back around to my evolving manuscript on Monday, November 4th, with some anxiety because, after opening it for the first time in 143 days, I felt lost and somewhat unfamiliar for the better part of a day as I tried finding the storyline. First, I read a paragraph or two to find myself, but that wasn’t enough. I then attempted going back a few pages, looking for a thread, before I remembered to just put down any word, and the rest would follow.