ramble

Paranoid Much?

I haven’t written about my clients before – both because they’re not always very interesting and because I’m not technically supposed to. I work for a credit card company, so I get to talk to just about every sort of person you could imagine: Smart, dumb, confused, annoyed, happy, thankful, nice, sweet, appreciative, secretive, and a hundred other moods and traits. It’s interesting to hear the different people and the different voices, and it’s interesting to see how differently people act with their money.

Today, however, I actually have an interesting story about a client, a specific one. The call started out nice and polite – he wanted to know his credit limit and what money will be coming out of his bank account. He was very sweet, talking to me a bit about where our company is in the country and making sure we were away from any danger [Israel is in a “situation” right now.] Then, somehow, slowly but surely, he started telling me about problems he had with banks in the past.

I thought, at first, that he was just a rambler – there are some people like that, who are lonely or bored and take the opportunity to get some conversation into their day when they call us. Soon, though, he started telling me, in a calm voice, about how his phones are tapped, how he’s followed everywhere, how his mail is examined and stopped, how he’s been cheated in place after place.

Eventually, he made me understand that the sole reason for his telling me all this was because he knows our calls are monitered and recorded for future reference if needed, and he told me he planned to use the calls he makes to us in court – to prove… something or other. I really have no idea. It was rather creepy though – the man sounded so sane and on top of things, and then I felt, as the call progressed, that there was something seriously wrong here.

But who knows, right? Maybe in six months there will be a big story in the paper about this man. You never know I suppose.

Phases

As you may know, if you frequent this page, I am a walker. I walk daily, and a day without a long, brisk walk is a day that is plain wrong. Tonight, as I was taking a walk, I realized that my walks have phases, and they are the same phases each and every time.

The Beginning: When I set out, I am normally optimistic about the coming walk – thinking to myself how good it is to be out, breathing the fresh, hopefully cool, air. This feeling fades though, rather quickly, and this phase doesn’t normally last more than three to four minutes.

The Misery: This is the phase that comes over me as the muscles in my legs begin to ache, as I begin getting warm and uncomfortable, as I begin to think longingly of getting home already. My music begins to annoy me, I feel everyone is staring at me, my muscles burn and my hands freeze or seize up. I begin a fierce, silent battle in my mind – a small part of me trying to convince the rest of me to cut the walk short, to take a shortcut, to give up, that it’s not a big deal. I hope never to succumb to this feeling. Shortly after the halfway point of my walk though, this phase blissfully fades away.

The Glass Half Full: About three minutes after my halfway point, I begin feeling optimistic once more. I think to myself – I’ve finished half already! Even though the weariness in my muscles is still prevailing over my physical well being, my mood begins to lighten and I feel the very beginnings of what will come in the next phase…

The Reason I Walk Every Day: This is my favorite part. On a good day, it lasts almost half my walk. This is the part where my energy and stamina suddenly rise, adrenaline pumping through me, my muscles miraculously become free of pain or discomfort, only full now of the urge to move on and on and on. I feel like I could walk forever, and keep enjoying it. I suddenly feel like bouncing, running, jumping. Every breath of wind feels like a blessing, as if it knows I need the cool air on my face. I feel elated, so proud that I didn’t cave into my discomfort, so in control of my body and energy.

The Ending: This phase is a more tired state of the previous one. It happens only as I walk into the driveway of my building, shaking a little still with the force of the energy flowing through me, out of me. I feel exhausted,  but pleased, satisfied, proud and content all at once.

Can You Say “Urgh”?

If you can, say it with me, loud and clear. URGH.

My favorite band of all time, AFI, are hosting a contest. And, of course, you’re only eligible to enter and win if you’re a legal US resident. What does my citizenship do for me now, huh? WHAT, I ASK?

Needless to say, I was freaking out over what I was going to post in my video, which is how you enter the contest, and how I was going to dazzle the band with my wit and voice and the weirdness of me living in Israel. And then I thought that I should read the rules of the contest to make sure I could enter. And then, of course, I couldn’t enter.

I’m sorry for the lack of good writing, eloquent descriptions or interesting stories tonight. Migraines and disappointment tend to ruin your creativity a bit.

My Goal – To Have Voices In My Head

Writing descriptions is all very well, but no work of fiction is complete without dialogue. It doesn’t have to be incredible, it doesn’t have to be witty, it doesn’t have to be much – except that you have to be able to hear it. You have to able to have two characters, two characters that feel real, and you have to know that when you’re reading, or in my case writing, their conversation, you can actually hear two distinct voices in your head that make sense.

You wouldn’t think that would be such a hard thing to practice. It is though. I’ve realized lately that I love writing descriptions and indeed, I know I write them fairly well, at least well enough. But I don’t know, or rather haven’t attempted to know, how to write dialogue, and that’s bad. I need to learn how. The problem is that I can’t just practice dialogue for the sake of itself. I need to have a situation, characters, voices that I can clearly imagine.

I’m not managing to find a way to practice this. I might be obsessing over something silly, but I truly feel I need to learn to write believable conversations. And for that I’ll need people, stories. So that’s what I’m going to try to work on in the next few days.