Warm up

Nice warm-up.

I say that a lot. Mostly to illustrate that what you once (as recently as ten seconds ago) thought was work, suffering and pain, was nothing of the sort. It was, as the opening suggests, merely a warm up. Or, as Cormac McCarthy might phrase it, 'if that isn't a warm-up it will due until the real one arrives.'

We have been back working daily on our writing. Guess I can dispense of the plural and admit that it is all but a singular attempt on my part to add some discipline, consistency and routine to this endeavor, but truth be known (always our my goal) that is just the half of it, creativity in story telling, continually pleading for a bigger part in the drama.

And today, it is my EXTREME pleasure to announce that as a direct result of this exercise, we now have a plot. An outline. An idea. Yes, dear readers it is time to break out the 3x5 index cards and start anew. 

If you, as I, are a fool for back story, I will sketch the way this brainchild was conceived.

My last screenplay was about the USS Indianapolis, The Enola Gay, and the incendiary conclusion to WWII. One would think that with all that as historical backdrop it would be easy to fit in an interweaving sub-plot or two to dial up the conflict. As hard as I tried to do so, every attempt was discarded by my inner editor as either too cheesy, hokey or inappropriate. Despite the fact that at the time of writing I had the US Navy as a willing consultant (being on a US Naval Facility charged with the morale, welfare and recreation of almost 5,000 sailors and contractor personnel), cross cutting a love story as yin to the inhumanity of war's yang, proved a bridge too far. I dropped the project, wrapped the index cards in butcher paper and bound them with a large green rubber band. That parcel has been collecting dust since 1996.

Two days ago my sister hit town to visit Dad. As we were catching up I asked about her daughter, my niece. They had moved three years ago to a 40 acre slice of Heaven in Northern California, very close to the Oregon border. As we exchanged notes, I recalled that Medford is my gateway to Crater Lake and she that the kids often drive into Brookings, OR for tax-free gas, something odd happened. Thoughts swirled, atoms crashed and memories rushed to the subliminal surface.

This perfect storm of inspiration met its target yesterday as I wrestled with the effects of whatever was in that anesthesia cocktail that knocked me so completely to the colonoscopy canvas.

I awake in a panic. I am sweating. I don't remember how I got here, but it appears that I am in my own bed and it is, (craning neck to see the diodes) 0345. I know that I have to get up in an hour to sub a spin class. But something has reached critical mass of my consciousness. It is in the form of a question.

Why the gap between Pear Harbor, December 7, 1941 and the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945?

Almost four years.

Why?

Nice warm-up.