I’m impatient

I have over-animated insides. I’m hyper and impatient. Just writing this line, I’m thinking, “Why aren’t I at the end of the sequel to this book?” I like writing, but it doesn’t happen fast enough for my measurement scale of what’s tolerable. I learned to meditate a ways back as a way to try and relax. I do it regularly twice a day. It hasn’t slowed down the inner revving though. It has given me an acceptance of my naturally accelerated ways.

Time travel is perfect for me because it allows instant getting to the place and time I want to be. Of course there is the packing of snacks (some time and space destinations have abysmal food choices), then the walking to the machine, and finally typing in the destination, and sometimes all that seems to take forever (about ten minutes at the most), but I grin and bear it.

Today I took a time travel trip to just outside Caldwell, Idaho, June 10th, 1903. I waited alongside a dusty and dirty barely a road. The waiting wasn’t difficult because I brought a ping pong paddle and ball and began hitting the ball repeatedly up in the air. Sure it’s repetitious if you have to watch me do it, but doing it is illustrious for my mind.

I once waited six and a half hours for Columbus to arrive at the Bahamas in 1492 and the entire time I bounced that ball. I only had to restart four times. When he landed, Columbus was entranced with my ping-ponging and asked if he could try. I said no. He got upset and asked me again. I said he could have it for keeps if he left and went back to Spain. He wanted it so badly he agreed. I gave it to him and traveled back to my present day. When I got home, I got on Wikipedia to see if I changed history. I saw that not only had Columbus lied, venturing down to Central and South America, but he was considered the founder of ping-pong, which was now called Columbusing.)

Suddenly on the Idaho dirt road I smelled the distinct odor of gas and oil. Then I heard the approach of a loud put-put-puttering from an old-timey automobile. And then there it was, the Winton Motor Carriage, with two human passengers and a dog, coming my way. They stopped, got out the car, and introduced themselves. It was Horatio Nelson Jackson, Sewall Crocker, and their dog, Bud, all wearing goggles. They were in the midst of attempting the first car cross-country drive.

I bent down and pet Bud’s head. It was a nice thick head. That morning I’d seen a Ken Burns documentary about their famous drive, and was enamored of Bud from old silent film newsreel footage that was shown. That was the reason I took this trip. I once time-traveled to 1786, Mount Vernon, Virginia just to meet George Washington’s dog, Madame Moose.

Little by little

Today I time travel visited the movie set of Frankenstein, at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, 1931. I’ve been a big fan of the movie since I saw it when I was five and got so scared that afterwards I literally couldn’t sleep for two weeks straight. I would lay in bed each night, imagining the Frankenstein monster coming into my room, tearing me to shreds. After three days of no sleep, my parents brought me to our family doctor, Dr. Splouster, who prescribed me to drink an entire 16 oz. bottle of Nighttime Nyquil before bed. I drank the bottle that night, lay in bed, and hallucinated the monster ripping me in two. My parents brought me to the doctor again the next day,still gripping Mr. Bixby, my lucky blankey. This time Splouster prescribed me to drink an additional bottle of Nyquil for each night I couldn’t sleep, up to nine bottles. I don’t want to go into details, but I’m still going through therapy to try and recover from those trying fourteen days. Yet, I love the movie. I own the 9 DVD Special Legacy edition!

So there I was on the set of the movie. I went to the actor who played the Monster, Boris Karloff’s dressing room and knocked. The door opened, and there was the monster, seven feet high, glowering down at me. I panicked, running in circles and gargling, my go-to reaction. A soft-spoken and gentle British-accented voice from his grey-green lips said, “It’s okay, it’s just me, Boris-a-doodie-doo.” I snapped out of it and took a few long and deep breaths. Karloff offered me a chair and I sat. He sat across from me, sipping tea from the tiniest tea cup. I apologized for my nuttiness, and shared that I was a time traveler, and revealed my previous paragraph’s experiences. He believed me because he saw the results. Plus I still have the personality of a five year old.

Karloff said he felt badly that I was so adversely affected, and asked how he could help. I got out my smart phone, and asked if I could film him saying soothing things to me through the camera, so I could watch it later whenever I got flashbacks. He said of course. I turned on the video, and soft voiced he said, “Hi, Brooksie! It’s me, Frankie! Do you wanna play? Great, lets pretend we’re flowers. I’m a daisy, what are you?…Oh, I love those. (Sniffing) Mmm, you smell nice! Hey, do you wanna play hide and seek?…Me too! Okay, I’ll hide first. Close your eyes and count to five….(His huge bulking frame is barely and obviously hiding behind a small chair.) Oh, I can’t believe you found me! Now you hide. (Covering his eyes) Okay. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Where are you hiding? I can’t see you at all. You’re really good at this. Okay, I give up….Oh, there you are!! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Time travel’s technological hiccups

The technology of time travel is amazing, but not perfect. Sometimes I’ll type in a destination that I’m excited to visit and then I end up in some shithole. For instance, yesterday I wanted to visit the parting of the Red Sea, May 7th, 3:37PM, 1201 BC. I’d seen it a few times and it never gets old. But instead I ended up in some unknown place, 4.5 billion years ago, when the Earth was basically a newborn planet. Strange gasses filled the air and made it very hard to breathe, and there was a dearth of things to look at. Sure, I can’t stand buildings, and large groups of people, but it felt like the life was being sucked out of me by the utter nothingness in order to get something going. I struggled to get back to my time machine, barely making it. I zipped back home and slept two days straight.

Then there was that time I wanted to visit Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. I’m not necessarily a devote, but he was one of the most funny people I’ve ever met. I attended the Sermon at least seven times, and every time it’s hilarious. The text was in the earlier versions of the Bible, but churches found people were showing up to church for the Sunday sermons to enjoy a good laugh and left disappointed because, I’m telling you, no one was ever as funny as Jesus. So the church took the jokes out the Bible. I have a copy of the earlier funny version if you want to borrow it. Anyway, I thought I was going to the Sermon, and the time time travel machine mistakenly took me to Judea, the year 12, and the induction ceremony for  the new Prefect, Annius Rufu. Words were spoken in barely audible tones, there was little or no movement, it must have been 120 degrees, and it lasted 7 hours. I stayed because I was taught it was bad manners to leave when something was unpleasant.

I love swearing

I swear a great deal. It comes shooting out of my mouth like a spout out of a whale. It’s automatic, like burping after a big meal. I was told not to cuss when I was very young. To get around that I learned to use those oh so special words when no one was around, or I would think them when in the hearing vicinity of the punishers.

It’s noon here, and I’ve already sworn over thirty times. After one of these curse eruptions a thought came, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t swear so often.’ But then the thought saw how foolish it sounded and slinked off.

Earlier today I time travel visited my good friend President Abraham Lincoln at the White House, April 1864. He was beyond stressed from the endless Civil War. He swore more than I’ve ever in a day. Here were some of my favorites:

Ox balls, bird turd licker, butt rainbow, dandy-doody-doer, and fart cloud.

I can’t get enough of words

I like words like other people like pies, cars, dogs or cats, parties, the opera, the outdoors, winning and praise. Words are nice packages of meaning. I see a word and exalt. Even if it’s a word whose meaning I don’t care for. Like dull, puke, force, putrid, or remiss. My mind salutes all words.

And how great it is that I don’t have to pay for words? Every word I’ve used so far in this piece cost me nothing. I never have to rent or buy a word. They are offered up for free in my mental chamber. I’ll never receive a bill for these tasty letter assemblages.

And if this wonder wasn’t enough, I take what I got for nil, organize it into an entertaining semblance, give it a title, and get money. For words, I got for free!

I like to meet other word assemblers. Especially the dead ones who lived long ago. There’s something about word corralers from back a ways that’s fresher for me. Maybe it’s the words they used were newer long ago. New things shine because people haven’t stopped noticing them. They still have the wow factor. Even though those author’s books are read today, they still have that fresh mind shine.

That was the reason for my time travel visit today to 1870, San Francisco, and the office of The Overland Monthly magazine. I walked into the office of one of its staff writers, the great wordsmith, Ambrose Bierce. Back then you never needed an appointment to visit someone. You showed up and they had to deal with you. It was before the advent of Scheduling, whose concept was invented by Senator Charles Sumner on his death bed in 1874, when he was reputed to have said, “If I knew the Reaper was to have come calling this day, I would have gone fishing.”

I shared with Ambrose that I was from the future. He thought that was a funny concept and wanted to hear more of my story. Writers want to hear other writers words from both their hand and mouth.

I told Ambrose about the time I came from, the device I travel by to other times, and some favorite stories from my travels. I shared a recent time trip to Greece, the year 321 BC. I met up with the philosopher Aristotle after he had just given a lecture on the nature of the Universe and the particulars. I asked Aristotle if he would like to snort with me. We held hands and snorted out loud as we walked through the countryside.

Bierce said my wording was marvelous. I asked him to share with me some his words. He related the story of the dog and the duck. The dog was constantly on edge about the possibility of intruders venturing onto his person’s property. If the dog was asleep, and the wind rustled a leaf, the dog would leap to standing, belching out boisterous barks to the imagined trespasser. One day a migrating duck flying over the property was overcome by fatigue and landed within the confines. Within seconds, the dog was on the duck, with the intention of its demise. But soon the dog was sneezing up a fit due to a feather allergy. It was apparent the dog might meet its own conclusion, when the duck began to sing the ditty, Camptown Races. The dog ceased its sneezing, and during the opportune moment, sang, “Oh! doo-dah day!”

Bierce and I sang a few rousing rounds of Stephen Foster’s words. Then sat in silence for a half hour. Worders often enjoy bouts of quietude. It allows us to watch words prance around in our minds, like deer through the pine forest.

The things I do to try and get published

For the tenth time I sent manuscripts of my book of time travel stories, It’s About Time, for consideration to major publishers, Penguin, Hachette, Mcmillian, HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, but they wrote back saying they were not interested. I stopped submitting my writings to them because I figured ten times was enough since I have ten fingers and ten toes and they are enough.

I came up with a new and I was sure a better way to get my writings published. I got in my time machine and traveled to 1839, Philadelphia, and the offices of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, with the idea that due to a dearth of writers during that time period, they would enthusiastically consider what I’d written. With my manuscript tucked under my arm, I asked who I thought was the clerk if I could speak with the publisher, William Evans Burton. The clerk was a sickly, thin and malevolent man who said I could do no such thing. It was then I realized he was Edgar Allen Poe. I looked off and pretended that I was interested in a spider web on the ceiling. This was my way to not let on that I was in the ecstatic state of a celebrity sighting. Pre-1920s, the status of a celebrity hadn’t been invented. People we now consider as famous, back then were just another person who did something during the day.

I’d read that Poe was unkind to other writers, and so after calming down, I looked at him and said, “You must be Mr. Poe. I sincerely enjoyed reading your short story, Manuscript Found in a Bottle. I wish I’d written it.” Poe smiled. A writer loves to hear from other writers that they wish they’d written something the he or she wrote. It’s our way of saying that a power greater than us is the author our word musings, and sometimes the transmission we get is jack shit in comparison to the gems others receive.

Poe said he recently became an editor of the magazine and would be delighted to take a look at what I’d written. With huge misgivings I handed my manuscript to Mr. Poe. He said I should come back in a few hours to hear his assessments of my work.

I left and went for a stroll down the streets of Philadelphia. I came across The Betsy Ross Bespoke Tailoring and Victuals Shoppe. I went in and was met by a cantankerous elderly woman chewing tobacco and sewing a garment. I figured that was “her” and I looked up at where there wasn’t a spider web on the ceiling. Betsy spit her chaw onto my shoes and yelled at me that she had no time for skulking vagrants.

I left and walked a little further until I came across a street musician busking for pennies. He was singing Oh, Susanna, one of my favorite songs. I started to sing along. He stopped singing and asked how I knew that song since he’d only written it that morning. I realized it was the composer Stephen Foster, pre-fame. I looked at him with the celebrity stalker gaze, and he asked me if I was ill. I’d forgotten to pretend look at the cobwebs on the ceiling because we were outdoors. I lied that I wasn’t feeling well, left a dollar in his jar, and went back to walking. From behind I heard him exclaim about the dollar, but then with disdain blurt out that it was counterfeit, the date on it being 2007.

I ran for blocks until I came to the wharf. I looked out at the water. Whenever I feel out of sorts while time traveling, I like to spend time near trees or water because of their relaxing effects. Though after a few minutes, the putrid smell of rotting fish from fisherman’s boats made me nauseous and I left.

I returned to Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, only to discover that Poe had sold my stories to Burton, claiming that he was the author. I called out Poe for being a liar and he slapped my face with his glove and challenged me to a pistol duel. I met him an hour later in a field just outside the city.

Poe brought a box containing two pistols. I chose one and he the other. We marched twenty paces away from one another, turned and fired. My shoulder had been grazed. When the smoke cleared, I saw that Poe lay dying. I went up to him, hoping he would apologize for stealing my stories. Instead he was happy that his dying would help sell a great amount of copies of It’s About Time, making him the talk of the town. I mentioned that he would be dead and wouldn’t be able to enjoy the theft of popularity. He didn’t understand the point and died with a smile on his face.