Upon Attempting to Be a Novelist

All praise to any novelist who takes us out onto thin ice, under which large, dark shapes are discernibly swimming. Michael Cunningham

As a rule it is not a good idea to tell someone a story before you write it. Any comments or feedback will distort your vision before you have committed the words to paper or cyber-storage. About eight months ago I told two good friends and trusted critics the first part of my novel. I had what I thought were all 35,000 words written and I was interested in their reaction to the big reveal that finishes part one. Indeed it was at this point all of my large, dark shapes came into view and I did indeed have my readers out on very thin ice without them even noticing they had been led out onto a lake.

Unfortunately, neither of them liked the dark turn my story takes and I was concerned that the tale was way off track. So I turned back to the pages and began to edit, I could have simply changed the big reveal but I was sure I had it right. Must have been the lead-up twas lacking. After several weeks the 35,000 words had burgeoned to 63,000 and I sent the newly fattened part one out to six readers, including those same two I had verbally told the story. Lo and behold none of them were put off by the big reveal, in fact, the two who had been less than luke warm originally were glowing with their praise.


I pondered this for a few moments and realized I had attempted to condense my well structured dark forms into a two minute verbal summary. Clearly, darkness needs some time to build. I needed those thousands of words to lure my readers out onto the dangerously thin ice and then and only then to reveal the sinister shadows beneath them. 


Lesson learned, I ain't tellin' nobody no stories no more; at least not ones that are going to take hundreds of thousands of words to deliver all the darkness and shadows.

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Upon the Occasion of Finding Something

Why is something always in the last place you look?

I have (had) been looking for an item for over a month. About ten minutes ago I found it! I reached into a small travel bag which should have contained only paraphenalia of a certain genre, which is precisely why I had not inspected that container in detail before. I stuck in my hand way down to the bottom and pulled out my passport. Really? Thirty days of randomly focused searching and that's where it was? 

You see today I had become semi-desperate. I missed an appointment at the DMV last month because I couldn't locate all the necessary documents to prove that I was me. I need the California Seniors ID card for another endeavor. I don't have an original social security card, neither have I a birth certificate nor a live birth document. Clearly I shall never be president.

But wait you say - don't you have a "safe place" for such documents? Well of course I do! Unfortunately, no one put the passport there. When I searched the "important document" box this morning (for the third time) the passport still wasn't there. Imagine that. Apparently three times is not a charm.

Last night I emptied the final two boxes I had hauled down from the Sebastopol storage locker, you remember Sebastopol, I live there in my friend's hut back in the early months of 2009. Twas then I began my undomiciled period and therefore rented a small closet to dump my stuff in. Those few boxes were my best and last hope for finding the passport.

I was wrong. The elusive document was here all along. The logic behind placing it in that bag escapes me, just a Duh! moment I guess. During the search I did find my 1981 passport (Antarctica) and my 1996 passport (Bali); no they were not in the same place. Also found drivers licenses expiring in 1979 (Pinckney, MI.), in 1992 (Hermosa Beach); in 2005 (San Francisco); in 2006 (Ann Arbor) and a picture of Amy & me with a lion cub at the MGM (circa 2008).

So passport found. Two boxes of sorted & resorted stuff to be discarded or recycled and one more blog post about nothing in particular. Now where did I put that grenade pin?

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Upon Not Having an Accent

I don't have an accent, which is unusual because common thinking is that everyone has an accent. Linguists differ on just who does and does not have an accent but their estimates are all very high (96%+) on just how many of us do have one. I do not. I learned this from someone who would know.

In 1968 I was a student in Germany. My professor there was a wonderful gentleman named Guenther Spaltmann. He was a native german, an accomplished artist and an truly gifted linguist. He had taught himself over a dozen languages; he was an interpreter at the peace negotiations after World War II, where each speech had to be translated live into English, German, French, Russian and Italian.

On our first day of german language class, Herr Doktor had us each introduce ourselves in german. 

"Guten Morgen, Ich bin Tim Lavalli."

Dr. Spaltmann would then tell us where we were born or at least where we lived during our language acquisition years. When I spoke, he said: "You were probably raised west of Detroit but not in a close-in suburb or in eastern Iowa just over the Illinois state line." Apparently those are the two areas of the U.S. that have a complete absence of accent. What was called flat accent. 

One might think this is a good quality for public speaking or commercial voice work, but in fact the absence of accent makes one's voice a bit monotonous (as in monotone). You need some inflection and rhythm. When I began teaching in L.A. in the 70s, I added a kind of a cadence to my speech pattern to shake off the monotone. I never really mastered an accent or a dialect but the irregular up and down changes in my voice kept the class awake, most of the time.

For an overwhelmingly cool map of dialects in the US 

with clickable pronunciation guides - look here.

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Upon Being Trained by a Cat

I apologize if this story is a repeat. There comes a point, apparently somewhere around five hundred blog posts, where you just can't remember all the tales you've told. I don't think I have written this one up before but if I have - well enjoy again.

This was back in the early 70s, I was sharing my place in Michigan with a couple of roommates, two dogs and three cats. My favorite was Sam, a big black cat who slept with me every night.

On one particular night I was unable to locate the land of dreams. I was awake and apparently I was going to stay awake. Sam, on the other hand, settled down by my left hand got a good dose of ear rubs and was sound asleep in minutes. I laid there for an hour, then two... somewhere in the middle of the night I was drifting a bit, not asleep yet. Sam woke up, stood up, stretched then walked across my chest and laid back down with his head in my right hand and I reflexively started petting him.

At that moment I realized he did this every night, maybe more than once. He had me trained, the paw impressions on my chest made my sleeping conscious aware of him without waking me up and when he put his head in my hand I would subconsciously scratch him until he fell back to sleep.

Trained by a cat while I was asleep. And they say dogs are smart.

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