Sunday, May 31, 2009

Strands of Lucky Dog




SECTION ONE - El Niño


The boy’s past and fate.

The boy’s relationship to El Patroncito. He is curious (more so than in previous text)

Dogs in Chamula. Cocodrillo, the colectivo driver.

The boy’s relationship to La Fuente.

La Fuente’s home.

The Anglo and his Pill.

The ruins of Hacienda La Fuente and a baobab stump. The job of the Anglo: broadcasting random numbers via low power transmitter. La Fuente calls him a spy. The Spy.

La Fuente’s religious angle: mayan mysticism from her old muchacha.

The Talking Cross. La Fuente tells the boy an old mayan cross talks to her in a field.

The boy and the Spy become closer.

The Spy teaches the boy about the use of an OTP (cryptographic one-time-pad).

The boy’s teacher (Adara).

FLASHBACK {The truth about Hacienda La Fuente. El Bisabuelo (El Patron de la Fuente), his GOLEM, his beautiful muchacha india, his spurned wife. A horrific event. The great house burned to its foundations. El Patron is killed in the fire. The arsonist is his son in law. The girl El Patron wronged, his own granddaughter, is left to live in the waterworks of the old estate. She lives there alone with her old mystical muchacha. The girl becomes La Fuente. Their illegitimate son goes to live in San Cristobal to fill in his bisabuelo’s footsteps. The footsteps of El Patron. The boy becomes known as El Patroncito. The GOLEM roams free, loose of his Patron’s intentions.}

The boy’s father, AKA the Spook.

The boy and Adara. He prays for protection from the GOLEM at the Talking Cross. A pistol appears at the foot of the cross.

SECTION TWO – El Espia


Assassination in San Cristobal by the GOLEM.

FLASHBACK {The Spy’s memories of Invasion of Panama. El Escogido, The Chosen One. Who is the chosen and for what? Rescued by the Spook (the boy’s father) in DF}

The job and historical, electrical innovations in Mexico and not in Mexico

The new transmitter and its usage. FLASHBACK {The rest of the story: the Spy’s job in Chamula }

El Patroncito’s relationship with the Spy {El Patroncito’s relationship to the Spook’s job for the Spy}

Cocodrillo drives boy to San Cristobal in his colectivo. El Patroncito’s visit with the boy. {Story of la muchacha india, her soul eaten by a dog. La Fuente searches for her soul and protects the dogs in Chamula.}

The Spook arrives in San Cristobal, presses for more from the Spy, into the job.

The Pill, return of.

Adara’s “molojov coctele.” She steers the Spy advertently away from finding the OTP, como los jovenes in the parks. Overt connections to Panama, obvious to Adara

El OTP presente. Inside a dog hit by car in San Cristobal’s central park. Boy finds it. Aided by Cocodrillo.

The Spy seeks the OTP. Clues lead him back to Chamula.

The revenge on la muchacha through the dogs is El Patroncito’s manipulation.

Dogs in Chamula, dead. (some torn up “OTP doggie style”) La Fuente is dying, she has poisoned her dogs. She gives the Spy the OTP from the boy.

FLASHBACK {uncover the reason for the work the Spook has the Spy do. Chamulans use Spy’s made up numbers for Loteria. “Find the OTP,” says the Talking Cross.}

Talking Cross tells the Spy “Slam Arc On It. E.” Helicopters hang in the Chamula sky.

FLASHBACK {El Chorillo, Panama City, 1989. Experimental weapons test. The Spy’s invention, Ice Cream Truck, draws out a young boy into courtyard. Unexpected (to the young Spy) Death Ray melts the boy’s rescuing mother.}

Spy returns to San Cristobal. {Why was the Spook’s call sign “E?”} Cryptogram: “Trade La Fuente for “some names”.

SECTION THREE - El Cliquero


Mexican military hunts El Cliquero: the GOLEM. Pay for the death of the boy.

FLASHBACK {The boy’s death in front of El Cliquero}

Adara helps El Cliquero (she reveals she works with EZLN) {“The world must end through you.”}

El Cliquero and Spook. Learns of the Spook’s role in Panama.

El Cliquero matches PSYOP patch on yeoman’s fatigues to the Spy.

FLASHBACK {Origin of El Cliquero. Panama. Helicopter. The Spy’s invention: Ice Cream Truck. The Spook’s invention: The Death Ray. El Cliquero brought under Ice Cream Truck’s audio mind control. His mother killed by death ray. His face burnt by her melted flesh.}

El Cliquero’s wrath, his destiny. If he is a GOLEM, he is an accidental GOLEM. He chases the Spy.

Spy returns from Chamula with the true OTP.

Helicopter rotors reveal the truth. Slam Arc On It. E. {Spy’s POV. How does knowing this reveal what is in the Spook’s head? All along he has wanted to make contact with Nikola Tesla and G. Marconi locked away in their subterranean city hideout. }

The Spook is dead. {The GOLEM?}

Countdown to the Spy.

Mexican NASCAR. Colectivo driver takes a bullet for the Spy.

The Spy is caught in El Cliquero’s sights. Clicker: 000.

The Spy’s mayan sermon. Adara observes in slo-motion.

Who is El Cliquero?

SECTION FOUR


The Spy’s replacement message and multiple targets {DF, La ciudad subteranea de los Andes, the boy}

The Spy’s proposed journey to the Andes.

FLASHBACK {Origin of the Spook}

The GOLEM




There are underlying stories and there is a process of revelation through the present day action.

What are the underlying stories?


The story of Hacienda La Fuente.
The story of the Death Ray in Operation Just Cause, 1989.

What are the overlying stories?


An American spy is hiding from his past, and in attempting to avoid it, involves himself in something far worse.
A spy, a young boy, and a Mexican teacher form a bond under the influence of a mystical old woman.
The motivations for a CIA spook’s terrible acts come to light—he is trying to contact Nikola Tesla and a subterranean city deep in the Andes.
An old man schemes to reclaim his place as rightful heir to an estate with a horrific past—by summoning the family’s long dormant golem.
And old woman struggles to find spiritual remnants of her loving muchacha

Ketchup




"Listening to you I get the music.
Gazing at you I get the heat.
Following you I climb the mountain.
I get excitement at your feet.
Right behind you I see the millions.
On you I see the glory.
From you I get opinions.
From you I get the story."

Cranked up The Who so loud on Friday that I had to turn down the subwoofer. It's funny when you stumble on a song that has been around for a long time and it hits you right between the eyes. An older song can affect you even more strongly. The sonic wave replays itself from the time it was released and played on buses and transistor radios and car radios with sweaty, fumbling fingers and budweiser mucus, cheap hops exchanging places from tongue to tongue. And there was the song. And the basement record shop. And the back of the notebook, written with circle-dotted Is about some junior high school crush that wouldn't amount to anything. And the gaps in time since then. Running the 800 yard dash. Dash. Throwing the discus. Shooting what would now be three pointers from the sidelines. The bus. Cold mornings flecked dark with Indiana corn stubble strobing past the dirty windows. Get a seat over the heater I hope. And the nowhere gaps, lost doing pushups in the basement in Athens Ohio. And the time spent watching birth. No Who there. It's when you're alone that The Who can span those gaps like Chuck Yeager in some pre-space bullet cockpit and pierce your skin, or at least frighten you with the sonic clap behind your back.

I too have overcome the gaps. I'm looking at the notes I've taken since May 4. The notes that have lead me to where I am right now. I have discovered how to make this novel into something that fits between a book's covers.

Where was I going wrong?

I didn't want to make this about Mexican culture. I can't really.
I dragged myself into unfamiliar territory.
The story often flowers and splits, requiring even more info, back story, research, etc.

I was too focused on the reality of an un-real narrative.

Unreal: Under the Volcano, 1984, Metamorphosis, Neuromancer. The more I think unreal, the ore I like writing. THe more I consider details of 1905 Chamula, the more I want to change stories. But isn't a good portion of the punch of this book its relationship to US? To make it a faceless, analog-less nation will weaken it, won't it?

Riding the line.

Can I make the foundation of the novel historical reality and still have the freedom to move? The freedom to move.

Looking at the outline, I cut so much continuity out of the Spy section. It no longer flows. It's more like a list made from memory of things that happened to whom? When? Gaps. What happened to the boy? From where does El Patroncito arise for the Spy? From where does Adara arise? I need to go through the same process I went through with the boy at the beginning of this project. I don't know the Spy.

Do I know the boy? Yes. And I can write the boy, too. I have more of the Spy in me, so he's easier to write, but as a real char, I don't know him.

He's shown an aptitude for audio, and fell into a seminar where he learned and later experimented with biological connection with audio (sub-aural freq). Frequencies and atomic weights. Music and the spheres.

For a moment, all spheres orbited in concert: galaxies, solar systems, planets and planetoids, moons, satellites, atmospheres, winds, jets, financial cycles, cicadas, menstruations, gestation, falling out of love, hunger and digestion, parasitic life, plankton swells, paramecium swimming laps, cells sloughing, the electron making its own year around a proton nucleus, a quark spins left, its left, and neutrinos seek love in their alternate universes.

An element (with its atomic weight) series as a model for galaxies and for systems not so large.

As I rewrote the outline for David I thought that I naturally know how to tell a story. I feel the pull and the tinkle and the lit keys for the writer to hit when I place a plot point that requires exposition or development--and I know where they need to go, I just don't have an interface that allows me to place the other points easily.

The project is huge.

I can feel the story starting to crystallize. Flakes form and swirl then break apart, but the solution is finally starting to could.

I highlighted (low-lighted) the flashbacks in the outline. I wanted to read through the present day only.

Layers

Time passes swiftly. Basketball with David Schweidel on Wednesday.

We shot around in the defunct Hillside School playground in the Berkeley Hills. Court is uneven, tree limbs overshadow one rim; it's post-apocalyptic.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to get out of the session. I think, mostly to shoot with David. I got a bit of feedback on the materials I sent him a week or so ago. But mostly we shot. And this was fine because I got quite a bit out of preparing for the talk.

Lucky Dog is going to shift once again.

I need to create a pathway for the reader to follow or criss cross. The reader needs to see the path.

As I described it to DS, I feel like I'm beating a field clear of its mice, scaring up bits of story with each swat of the broom, forcing the reader to pick and discover narrative strains on their own. It's no good. This is what I've been doing in film for years. I want to overcome that impulse this time.

I must.

Monday, May 4, 2009

A lot to catch up on


I'm way behind in transcribing my notes. I have over a month's worth of notes to transcribe. But should I? The last critique gave me some things to chew on. Now I am working on an overall outline, no, a summary that walks the reader through all four parts. I need this to get started on my summer's workshop.