Sunday July 31, 2005
Short blog today....

I've been busy as heck since getting back to Arizona. There's much to catch up on, and I'm working to get the Amber Page book in good enough shape to send it out to reviewers...

I'm a perfectionist, man, and now that I know what I can do at Lulu, I'm trying my best to do the absolute best job I can with this next book. The cover art by Chris Ashby is deliriously good, and I just count my lucky stars that our paths crossed. She's really good, folks...

Check out some of her work at the Amber Page site: www.amberpage.com

And let me know what you think! I love to hear from you...


Friday July 29, 2005
Home sweet home...

We made it back to Phoenix in one piece. It feels like I've been on the road for a month straight...

Wait a minute; I have been on the road a month straight!

We drove today from Barstow to Phoenix: I-40 to Needles, State Route 95 to Blythe, then I-10 from Blythe into Phoenix.

Had dinner tonight at Pei Wei....

Love that Kung Pao!



Thursday July 28, 2005
We went to the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival's performance of Macbeth last night. The festival's in its thirty-third year, and the stage is set right out on the edge of the lake at sunset. They allow you to eat and drink, and so Susan and I brought a cooler loaded with snacks! They even serve dinner, and I had the Kung Pao Chicken....

Alas, parting is such sweet sorrow... but we gotta hit the road today for Barstow, CA.

One night in Barstow, and then we'll be make it back to Phoenix tomorrow.


Tuesday July 26, 2005
Had an awesome day yesterday...

Susan and I rented a motorboat and went out on Lake Tahoe. We took the boat across the lake to Emerald Bay, where we had a picnic lunch just off of that island in the middle of the bay. Took the boat up to Rubicon Bay after lunch and went swimming along the rocky coast. The water in Lake Tahoe may be the clearest water I've ever seen (with the only exception possibly being Maui). It's really clear.

Came back to the hotel afterwards, hit the rooftop hot tub, took a nap, then got cleaned up and ready for dinner and casinos....

This is where the day got fun!

I'm not usually a big casino guy, but when I do hit the casinos, my game is Jacks or Better video poker. All the casinos near South Lake Tahoe are on one block in downtown Stateline, Nevada. We started at Harvey's, then hit Caesar's, then walked over to Harrah's. I made a little bit of money at Harvey's, then at Caesar's a little more. Jacks or Better is purely a game of statistics, and you have to know what's better among about forty possible hands. For example, if you draw a suited Ten and Jack, is that a better or worse hand than a suited Ten and Queen? (Ten-Jack is better because the chance for a straight is greater.)

We printed up a table of odds before we left, so I knew what to hold onto each hand.

We were getting ready to leave Harrah's for the night about eleven o'clock, and I had won steadily but slowly all night, and so sat down on a dollar machine and started playing "max bet" (which is like five bucks a hand). I picked up three of a kind on my fourth hand, kept the three and picked up an additional pair, making a full house. Because I was playing maximum bet, the return was pretty good, and so I cashed out for the night, and Susan and I drove back up into the hills a little heavier in the wallet.

I love a winning night in a casino. Usually I've found that I have to "build it" -- if that makes any sense. Start slow but steady, winning a few bucks, then when you sense the time is right, go all in and either walk home a winner or walk home a loser. I just got lucky last night. It was fun.

We're going horseback riding today at Camp Richardson.

Stay cool...


Monday July 25, 2005
We went out on Lake Tahoe yesterday on a jet ski. It was a blast. Had lunch at Bob Dog Pizza, where we had the "Hair of the Dog," quite possibly the single best pizza I've ever had...

We're going out on a boat today.


Sunday July 24, 2005
Planning to go jet skiing on Lake Tahoe today. We may also ride up the gondola at Heavenly Ski Resort. I bought a T-shirt last night that reads "Heavenly" on the front. Susan and I thought it was funny.

At some point, I'm going to try to make it into one of the Casinos up here to try and win some money.

I saw actual money-dispensing video poker and slot machines yesterday in a grocery store down in Stateline. Can you imagine: "Honey, I'm going to head up to the grocery store for some bread, soda, and to play a few hands of Black Jack!"


Saturday July 23, 2005
After two days of driving, we are at our resort near Stateline, Nevada that stands perched on a 7,700 foot ridge overlooking Lake Tahoe to the west and Nevada to the east. The view from my window right this moment is about 70 miles to the east, and there are huge ponderosa pines spread throughout the hillside resort.

The temperature is in the high 70s, and there are outdoor pools, tennis courts, and other recreational facilities.

Probably one of the more interesting features of the resort is the gondola that carries guests to Heavenly Ski Resort, and this resort caters to skiers in the winter.

For now, it's a beautiful, sunny day outside. Susan and I are talking about driving down to the town of South Lake Tahoe this afternoon. We may do a trip around the lake (there are towns all along the shore), and we wanted to see about seeing a play at the Tahoe Shakespeare Festival.

I'll keep you updated...




Wednesday July 20, 2005
I have my stopwatch set to "countdown" mode starting at 70 seconds....

In 70 seconds, how many words can I come up with that rhyme with "blog"?

Are you ready...

Set...

Go!

frog, hog, bog, log, fog, nog, jog, wrog, tog, dog!, crog, frog!, cog!, wog?,....

Oh, too, bad... time's up.

Okay, how did I do? (admittedly, some of these aren't actual words and I said "frog" twice)

If we're only counting actual words in the standard English language, it looks like I got eight. Not too shabby...

How many can you do?


Monday July 18, 2005
I think the temperature hit 312 degrees today...

Phoenix ain't no place to be in mid July.

In fact, Susan and I will be leaving for Tahoe on Thursday (that's if our car doesn't melt on the way out of town). We'll be staying at The Ridge Resort, and I'll carry my laptop. Hopefully we can find a wireless connection.

We were lucky in Alaska last week.


Sunday July 17, 2005
I read the first two essays in Carl Jung's The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious the past two days. The book is a compilation of essays and lectures Jung wrote between 1933 and 1960. They are arranged in a way that gives a brief introduction, explanation, and overview of the concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious.

These two concepts are considered to be among Jung's most important contributions to the field of psychology, and so this book is really a great place to start if you want to try and tackle some Jungian psychology. I wanted to read it primarily as a gateway to get into Joseph Campbell's work, specifically The Hero with a Thousand Faces because it was a major influence on George Lucas when he conceived of Star Wars. Furthermore, the novels I have been writing in the Amber Page Series (which will see publication in the coming year and a half) come from a kind of "comic book" mythology, and I reasoned that if I want to keep writing novels in this tradition that I should ground myself with at least a cursory knowledge of what has been said on myth and mythology in the 20th Century. Campbell's a good place to get an overview of mythology, but as Campbell was strongly influenced by Jung, I thought that would be the best starting point. Plus, I actually had Jung's book on my bookshelf at home. Campbell's I'll have to obtain.

So Jung saw at least three major aspects of the human mind: 1) the conscious; 2) the "personal unconscious"; and 3) the "collective unconscious."

The conscious is the aspect of thought that you're aware of. You look at your hand; you see your hand. That's a conscious process. You decide to got to the store because you need groceries; that's a conscious process.

The unconscious, on the other hand, is a gathering place of forgotten or repressed contents. Essentially, all of the memories of your life are your "personal unconscious," those you remember vividly and those you don't remember at all (like that cheeseburger you ate on August 17th in 1985:). To remember something is to bring it up from the unconscious into the conscious via images (of sight, sound, touch, taste, smell) that Jung calls "archetypes."

But the personal unconscious is only one aspect of the unconscious. The other aspect is the "collective unconscious," which he theorizes "does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn"...[it is] "a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature which is present in everyone of us."

My particular take on the collective unconscious is that it is that part of the human mind which is pretty much universal. That is, every human being basically goes through the same fundamental processes of life and there is an innate drive to do so: you are born, you mature, you develop some sense of self-awareness, you fall in love, you have children, you grow old, you die. There are many more common fundamental processes of human life, but this is where Jung gets murky.

At any rate, these common fundamental inborn needs are sort of like instincts. Via human imagination they manifest themselves in images or "archetypes" -- symbols that people readily recognize: a mountain, a tree, a lake, a man and woman rowing a boat together on that lake, etc.

Jung is implying that there is also some sort of psychical connection, too, shared by all people, which perhaps motivated him to explore concepts like synchronicity and ESP. I'm skeptical of the latter of these two, though, in my own life I have experienced extraordinary degrees of synchronicity. That's my experience. Ironically, though, Campbell disagreed with Jung on the concept of synchronicity, so it was not something that factored into his life in any significant way.

So to summarize, there are three aspects of the human mind in Jungian terms: 1) the conscious; 2) the personal unconscious; and 3) the collective unconscious.

An archetype is "essentially an unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being perceived, and it takes its color from the individual consciousness in which it appears." Images and thought that takes the form of images.

To me, it may be safest to describe the collective unconscious as the part of the human mind that drives our fundamental processes of life. When these processes come up from the unconscious via imagination they take the form of images (i.e., the stuff of stories and movies), and we recognize these symbols and have emotional reactions to them: a scene of heartbreak in Romeo and Juliet, for example; we recognize it, even though we haven't been in that exact place before. We know what it means.

To some degree, the job of the writer or filmmaker is to recognize the common shared archetypes among all people and to realize them in fresh and innovative ways artistically.




Saturday July 16, 2005
So, my wife and I watched Troy on HBO last night...

When I got done with the movie, I was thinking about myth and mythology, and I convinced myself I needed to read some Joseph Campbell. All I knew of Campbell was that his non-fiction work on the history of mythology had a strong influence on George Lucas, when he (Lucas) conceived of Star Wars.

For those who know Campbell well, you might just skip this blog.

To me, it was really interesting to read about Campbell's life and to try to figure out which of his books would be a great starting place. Campbell was an autodidact (i.e., he was largely self-taught). After receiving his Master's degree, he moved to an isolated setting in upstate New York for five years of intensive self-education and did the kind of reading he would have done in a PhD program at the time.

This was very similar to my decision in 2001. When I graduated with my Master's degree, I made a very conscious decision to not take employment in the university or further my education in a PhD program. I felt that my education would be better served by moving to an isolated setting and by writing full time. So, I moved to Oracle, Arizona from North Carolina, and I read voraciously and have been writing full time ever since. It's been four years almost to the day since I moved to Arizona.

Campbell was strongly influenced by Jung, specifically Jung's work on archetype and the collective unconscious. I've done a fair amount of introductory reading on Jung, specifically his work on Synchronicity (see also synchronicity).

It seems that Campbell diverged with Jung on the concept (he didn't believe in synchronicity, as such), but he was very much influenced by Jung's work on archetype and the collective unconscious.

Sooo, I broke out my copy of Carl Jung's Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious last night.

My instinct tells me that the best way to approach Campbell is first through Jung.

One of the more interesting insights I had while reading last night was the realization of a theory for why Christianity flourished among the Germanic European tribes between 50-350 A.D.

The symbols and message of New Testament Christianity in those years would have been powerfully anti-Rome, which would have made it palatable to the Germanic tribes of Europe at that time who hated Rome. I mean the symbol of the crucifix alone would have said, "This is what Romans will do to you, if you let them."

As such, Christianity was as much a political alliance against Rome as it was a faith. It had a very powerful political drive that allowed it to flourish in Europe for four hundred years, and with the fall of the Roman empire, it was entrenched into the culture of that time with no end in sight.

900 years later, authorities used Christianity again as a political tool to unify people and give order to the masses, but in a very different way. By 1300-1500 A.D. Christianity itself had become a controlling political force. Which of course gave rise to Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.

Protestantism in turn caused a huge rift between the masses and the powerful Catholic elite of Europe, which then caused folks to leave England for the the New World in search of political and religious freedom, and that gave rise to the United States of America.

Sorry, if that's a little too condensed, but it was neat to see a glimpse of Christianity's history while reading Carl Jung. I'd never understood exactly how it flourished in the three centuries after Christ, until last night.

Now, it makes better sense.

Feel free to comment...



Friday July 15, 2005
I had a dream last night in which I was trying to explain what Quantum Foam and "Fermion bosons" are to two or three people and no one would listen, except for this one homeless guy who was standing in front of a coffee shop. The homeless guy was obviously crazy, but interested.

Awake, I'm not sure that "Fermion bosons" actually exist (i.e., I think it's just a made up phrase).

Coffee is good. Of that, I can be sure.

...Okay, I just Googled "Fermion Bosons" and it turns out they do exist, but "fermions" are one thing and "bosons" are another. See Bosons and Fermions as well as Quantum Foam for more details.

Ain't that nifty!



Thursday July 14, 2005
Ahhhhh, I am finally back at home, sitting in front of my computer, which is in front of my 6'x8' window onto my back yard. I have a cup of coffee on my desk. Familiar territory is so nice!

Life is good.


Wednesday July 13, 2005
Home in Phoenix; we flew first class all night from Anchorage to Phoenix.

For most of the flight, I worked on edits for a new novel whose first draft I've completed. It's 10:14 AM local time as I'm writing this, and I'm very, very tired.

More later...

Tuesday July 12, 2005
We spent two days up at Denali National Park where we took an eleven-hour tour into see Mt. McKinley. Along the tour, we saw a gray wolf, a grizzly bear nursing cubs, a porcupine, a herd of Dall sheep, Caribou, an Arctic fox, and all kinds of birds including the Willow Ptarmigan, which is the state bird of Alaska.

Drove five hours this afternoon from Denali back to Anchorage, and our flight leaves tonight around midnight. I'll be back in Phoenix at eight o'clock tomorrow morning.

That is Mt. McKinley (also known as "Denali") behind me in the photograph. At 20,320 feet, it's the highest point in North America.