The black cat arises, no train passes by Family; the state of my in progress books; Melanie on St. George Island
Friday, August 20, 2010 at 6:01AM 
I had planned to discipline myself and to eat oatmeal this morning, but sooner or later it happens after every trip that I make - I collapse. It happened this morning. I woke up at about 6:30 and thought about getting up. I woke up about 7:30 and thought about getting up. I woke up at 8:30 and thought about getting up.
At 9:30, I woke up again and then noticed that Jimmy, my good black cat, was sleeping atop my left rib cage. "I will sleep a little longer," I thought to myself. "When the black cat gets up, I will get up."
Jimmy got up at 10:12 AM. I didn't feel like following, but I did, because I had said I would, so I figured I had better. Plus, I had gone to bed early the previous night, just before midnight, and so I figured I really should.
After I got up, I thought about cooking oatmeal - the steel-cut variety. But I didn't want to. It takes about 15 minutes and the oatmeal has to be stirred often. I did not want to stir it.
So I thought about eating cold cereal -Oatmeal Squares. Same thing, right? Except you don't have to cook it - all you have to do is to spill it into a bowl and pour milk on it, then grab your spoon.
But I didn't want to spill it into a bowl, pour milk on it or grab a spoon.
"Given our finances, there is no way I can justify going to Family Restaurant," I told myself.
But I wanted to go to Family Restaurant. Even though I was now awake, I wanted to continue on in the pleasant state of collapse that had kept me in bed until 10:13. I figured that I could do that better at Family Restaurant than standing by the stove, stirring steel-cut oatmeal.
So I went to Family Restaurant. The lady who seats people tried to usher me to a table alongside the east wall, but I did not want to sit by the east wall. I wanted to sit by the south wall, because through the south wall windows I could see the train if it were to pass by.
So, reluctantly, she sat me by the south wall.
No train came by, but this couple did.
Now they will be seen all across Alaska, elsewhere in the United States; India. Who can say what all places they will be seen from?
Then this guy zipped by on a bike. He was carrying a box of some kind - maybe a tool box. On the other hand, there is a nail and pedicure place just beyond Family Restaurant. Maybe that is where he was pedaling to. If so, then perhaps this box was filled with nail polish, and little brushes with which to apply it.
There were a couple of dogs in the back of a Toyota truck in the parking lot. When this guy left the restaurant, he went straight to the dogs. He petted them. I thought he would then get into the Toyota and drive off with the dogs, but he didn't. He got into another vehicle and left them behind.
The dogs got kind of excited when they first saw this guy coming, so I thought maybe he was their man. He wasn't. In fact, those dogs were still in that Toyota when I left. I thought about going over there to give them each a pat myself, but I didn't.
The hopes of those dogs had already been raised only to fall in disappointment enough. I didn't want to give them more false hope and then disappointment them all over again.
As for breakfast - ham, eggs over easy, hash browns and 12 grain toast at the end, lathered in butter and strawberry jam - it was good and I enjoyed it, but I would have enjoyed it more if the train had come by.
Maybe I had better go back tomorrow and see if the train comes by then.
I think I will. Then I will drive to Anchorage and pick up Margie, Kalib and Jobe. Jacob and Lavina are going off together on a business trip for a few days, so the little ones will be staying with us. We will go see some dinosaurs.
People often ask me if I am working on another book. By my way of reckoning, every moment that I live I am working on a book. But the truth is, for the past couple of years I have been very laggard about actually transferring any words from head through a keyboard into a form that can become a book. I do have a number of books in progress, plus several about one cat or another that I have finished but which need to be reworked, but they have all just been languishing inside my computer, going nowhere.
Before I got hurt, I had been going fairly hard and heavy on my novel about a Mormon missionary in Lakota country, but I had encountered a huge problem. I had written about 200 pages, yet had only got the missionary off the beach in California where the marvelous, liquid, woman in the blue, string bikini came sauntering by just as he was leaving and then through three days of his mission.
Much had happened in those three days and in my own humble opinion I think I had put down some good material, the likes of which no one has ever written before and if ever completed it would surely go down in annals of great American literature - but I had taken 200 pages to get that missionary through three days in the mission field and he still had a good 720 days ahead of him. It looked like it was going to take about 100,000 pages to finish the book.
So I fell, shattered my right shoulder, got a new one and then stopped working on the novel for awhile.
Then, in the spring of '09, I started a new book, although I didn't realize it at first. I thought I was working up a proposal for a fellowship that could really change my life - were I ever to win it. I worked on that proposal for months, for a half-hour or an hour just about every day - even when I was out in the field traveling on ice, damn near getting killed on the India highway or chasing caribou on the tundra - and then I realized that I was creating a new book - based on the same material as the novel but non-fiction: words written against the photos that I always take of Mormon missionaries whenever I see them.
Despite all the time I had put into it, when it came time to submit the fellowship proposal, I didn't feel like it was ready, so I didn't submit it. I put the project down early last September and have not transferred any more of it through a keyboard since. The book has undergone some radical changes in my head, changes which have left me confused as to how I should proceed.
For all of this summer, I have felt this urgency to get back to my books, to work towards getting at least one of them done. All summer, I have been telling myself to just pull one back out - any of them - a cat book, novel, missionary book, my book on Wasilla, my book about Missoula, Montana, my White Mountain Apache book, my book about my dead brother Ron, my novel about a surfer working on a ranch in Idaho... any of them... except for one - my Alaska book, my memoir of 30 years roaming Alaska. That one, I could not pull out.
I had concluded that this book will just have to wait until I get the others done. Why????? At best, if I could work on it every damn day for the whole day it would still take me years to finish it - three, I figure. And if I never finish it, if I die before it is done, then at some point someone will sort through all this work that I have done and they will put it together for me.
They will. Of this I have no doubt. The raw material is all there. Nobody else has a package of raw material like this one. Just me. And there is one hell of a story in it. It just needs to be put together and some scholar from some big university could pick it up and do it. Or maybe one of these young Native adults who sometimes come to me and let me know they are writing, taking pictures, who tell me they grew up on my pictures and stories and were motivated by them... maybe one of them could do it.
It doesn't have to be me who assembles this raw material that I have created into a book.
But these other books - if I don't do them, no one will. No one else can. Not a single other person in all this world. Only me. The stories reside in my head and nowhere else.
So last night I said it is time. I must get back to work on my books. One half to one hour a day - even when I am traveling - as long as I am in a place where I have power and can plug in a computer. But which book to work on?
I created a new folder and labeled it, "Books in Progress." I then moved the various books that I have mentioned above, along with a few others, into that folder and then opened it. I looked at the various titles and said, "pick one - any one - but not the Alaska book."
Yes, it was the Alaska book that I finally opened. I pulled out Chapter 1 and started to revise. I spent an hour at it and completed one page, which I will probably have to revise at least 15 or 20 times more.
After I returned from Family Restaurant, I pulled the book out again. "Kid," I told myself. "I've got lots to do. I can only work on this for half-an-hour." I worked on it for four hours and revised four pages.
The truth is, anyone with the proper skills can assemble a book from the raw Alaska material that I have created and it will probably read a lot smoother than it will if I do it.
But they can't write the book I will write - not even using my raw material. Even if their work is smoother, it won't be as good. I'm the only one who can do it right. It is time to get it done.
But I can't work on it for four hours a day. I have to discipline myself and work on it for only half-an-hour; an hour max. True, if some grant funder or philanthropist somewhere were to get smart and back me up, then I could work on it four hours a day. I could work on it eight, 12, 16 - knowing myself, there would be days I would work on it all day and all night too and then maybe the next day as well and if afterward I was so exhausted that I could not do anything for the next three or four days, what would it matter?
This is how I naturally work. When I was young, knowledgable people put structures in front of me and told me, "this is how you must do it," but I never could do it that way. And people who manage grants tell me, "this is what you must do in your application if you want us to help you." But I can't do what they say I must. I simply can't. I can't explain why. Other people can do it so I should be able to, but I can't.
Yet, I can produce some exceptional works. It would help if someone with the resources to help me out would come along, someone who would not try to force me to conform to that which I cannot conform to, but even if no such person or institution ever arises, I must do it anyway.
After I spent my four hours working on the book, I took a bike ride.
Then I got in the car. I was hot and sweaty. I drove to Metro Cafe and found Shoshana at the window. She asked me if I wanted my usual - an Americano with cream, and two raw sugars, but I told her, no, it was too hot. I ordered a raspberry frappe. It was cold and it was good.
Just before I left to go to Barrow, Shoshana let me read another piece that she had written. She is 19, but her talent shone in that piece. She is a writer. As of yet unpublished, perhaps, but a writer.
Shoshana, in Through the Metro Window Study, #9232
I drove the long way home, sipping my raspberry frappe. I passed by Mahoney Ranch and looked out to see if I could spot Ron Mancil somewhere. I couldn't, but I did see this dog.
Same place, different dog, other side of the road, coming back. Again I looked for Ron. Again I did not see him. Are you out there, Ron?
As I neared home, I saw this kid, riding his four-wheeler down the bike trail upon which motor vehicles are prohibited. If you look just beyond him, you can see that a dirt trail runs alongside the bike trail. That is the trail four-wheelers are supposed to use.
I kind of hope the kid's parents see this and tell him to use the dirt trail and to keep his four-wheeler off the bike trail or they will ground him and take the four-wheeler away from him for two weeks.
People being people, though, it is just as likely that if they see it they will scold me instead of him.
I am sure he is a good kid at heart. He just needs to learn not to drive his four-wheeler on the bike trail.
The red truck was still there...
Melanie just returned from St. George Island, way out in the Bering Sea. Before she left Anchorage to go there, she was talking on the phone to Sally Merculief who would pick her up at the St. George airport. "Are you Bill Hess's daughter?" Sally asked.
"Yes," Melanie answered.
As it turns out, Sally reads this blog.
And Alvin Merculief sent me these two pictures of Melanie out on St. George Island.
"For the last week I've had the pleasure of working with your daughter Melanie, operating the excavator for her while she conducted her geotechnical survey of our roads here at St. George," he wrote.
Yes, my daughter is a pleasure to be with.
Thank you, Alvin, for sending the pictures and thank you, Sally, for greeting Melanie at the airport and making her feel comfortable.
As for Melanie, she told me she enjoyed working on St. George, in part because there are no bears there and she did not have to carry a gun. I suppose once in a great while in a heavy ice year a polar bear might hitch a ride on a flow and then hop off at St. George to look around and perhaps sample a seal, but not this time of year.
Given the warming sea and the retreat of the ice, one wonders if such a thing could ever happen again.
For any newcomers here, this blog is a record of the world as I see it through my camera. So, when I post a picture taken by someone else, I try to first take a picture of that picture as I saw it - in this case, on my computer monitor.
Reader Comments (8)
This was a great blog Bill! I hope you finish your book.
The cat book, the Missoula Montana book, the Alaska book, the fellowship book, the book about your brother.....I want to read them all!
Good luck, and may your philanthropist find you today so you can live and write.
Take care, Bill.
I love the bicycle pictures! And the writing as usual.
Love reading your blog. Look forward to any books that you are working on. Pretty sure they will be great reads!
Keep writing.
I love the photo of Melanie and the Excavator.
Looking forward to your book! But no more than 1 hour a day on it now. By the way, I think the case the boy on the bike is carrying is a flute case.
Hi Bill;
It was great working with Melanie. I have been reading your blog for months so I felt like Melanie was family :) Thank you for your kind words, and you are very welcome. I hope that you pay a visit to our beautiful island one day, and that Melanie will come back for another visit.
Sally
great idea to set aside time every day to work on a book. that's what i did for my novel, for which i'm seeking an agent. just put a little surprise for you into the mail. also, very interesting sidebar you wrote on wasilla. you've got the midas touch for writing.