218

Both of my "elderly" parents, with separate, serious ailments are in two separate nursing care facilities. But, they are both, as of this week, in the "same" room, Room 218.

That kind of thing happens in movies, and plainly happens in the real. I've been to both rooms.

His room is marked "isolation" because infectious types need to stay away while he's on a throat aspirator and getting better from pulmonary artery chest surgery.

Her room isn't marked, accept with her name and the name of her roommate. But, she's in a demential state of her own world, and her roommate is always asleep when any of us see her. Isolation.

He can't speak, except to mouth, and sometimes manage a soft whisper, but when he's awake he's "with" me.

She speaks to be heard but talks of imaginings and jumbled things we haven't the ability to comprehend. And thus speech and communication of things heard from her lips are less useful to our minds and emotions than the few things he can mouth to us.

He's a minister and has preached much.

She's a take charge lady, who put much store on her superior mind and communication abilities and of all the times she "had to speak, when you're father was afraid." And yet, he's quiet and at peace and steadily improving and she's spastic, angry without visible reason, speaking of many fears long suppressed and afraid she'll lose her place at home.

Which is oddly karmic or of balance or whatever, the goal is to keep her home, as much as possible, as much to our ability and sanity, and yet her strange behavior with its ability to endanger us may make that....

This is "write what you know" or feel of think, whichever or all. These things in one's life, use them or else your characters may be fine but shallow like cut out dolls and not like those who are so much a part of us that they are icons, some with their own addresses, like Sherlock Holmes, they own ways explaining how to handle things like fiery Captain Kirk or cool, "logical" Mr. Spock.

It's our flaws, or lack of them--since I have lately noticed that while ALL of us have stories of goofy days and little or great mistakes we've made, she hasn't one. She's not told us one story that said or even implied that she failed at something.

How's that for character?

NEW Game Available--Margrave Manor 2: The Lost Ship with story by Neale Sourna

Adventurous Edwina Margrave endangers her life when she searches her treasure seeking grandfather's derelict ship for more clues about the crime of how it and its crew were lost, about her famous late grandfather, and many clues about where its cursed treasure is hidden on board.

Inertia Software Games / Big Fish Games
http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/5730/margrave-manor-2-lost-ship/index.html?channel=sem&identifier=usgooglsmgravem2&afcode=af3189dbeebd&src=bfg12y09engsmgravem2&sem=usgooglsmgravem2&kw=margrave%20manor%202&adid=3113849812&gclid=CLex0sWV1JsCFVRM5QodFW3fLA

http://www.inertiasoftware.com/

Character: HBO's "Rome"--Julius Caesar, Octavian Augustus

In the process of thinking of male characters, especially "alpha" males, don't always assume that they were raised by alpha male dads. More than likely, with some of the most successful men on the planet, they were raised to their maturity and success by their moms, alone, and not by their fathers.

Fathers, who, traditionally, are fully obtuse and ignore their children, until they do something or become something they want, for their own paternal pride, can breed rather cloying, hyper "see me, see me, see what I can do dad, am I doing what you like, dad" men: General Douglas MacArthur, David O. Selznick, every Kennedy brother of the John F. Kennedy clan generation, George W. Bush, and such.

Ambition and the success it can generate, and the "manliness" to handle and govern other men, as in politics and in war, doesn't need a blood father who raises and goads the boy into manhood.

Can any of the men mentioned above surpass--and some have actively tried--the ancient success, as men among and above men, ruling men, as Big July, Julius Caesar, and his grandnephew / adopted son delicate, fay Octavian Augustus Caesar, Emperor of Emperors of the extensive state of Rome? Or Temujin, Genghis Khan who formed the formidable Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire in history?

Nope.

--Neale Sourna

Character quandary in life and fiction

07-08-09

The quandary of cutting a parent away too soon, or anything/anyone really, too soon, clinging too long, distorting what it meant in your soul and heart. Cutting and running too soon to the eyes of all and to the eyes within you, all of that dross and crap (interior and ext) are the most annoyingly sharp and critical.

And often wrong.

The quandary of coordinating all your own hopes and perceived inadequacies with those we love, and who depend upon us, no matter what the fantasy of what they say. She says.

You see the realities and she sees nearly only pure fantasy. And I was the one who was the "daydreamer" with my "head in the clouds."

But, now her perception is cloudy as the cataracts upon on her eyes, cloudy in vision and mental vision. Seeing horror and pain and divisiveness everywhere, that's truly the hard part, when the mind turns away lost.

Recognition isn't lost, but her knowing is gone. And with it a part of my security in who I was, when she was strong.

--upon dementia and life's bright strength waning

Neale Sourna