An Introduction, and A Moustache Hair

July 28, 2024 by Harvey

In today’s Journal

* Introduction
* A Moustache Hair Delivered This Post
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Introduction

I have no way of knowing whether you’ve noticed, but sometimes events conspire and line up just right.

Turns out I finished a novel on Friday, and then my bride (she prefers to remain anonymous, so we’ll call her “Mona”) returned home on yesterday after a week or so away visiting with her sisters in California. Hence this post on Sunday.

One sister flew out here from Indiana. We’ll call her “Dory.” She visited with us for a few days before she and my wife left for California to see the other sister (whom we will call “Leisa”) et al so they could reminisce, visit a beach, chase down something called “hunks,” etc. They had intended to fly, but they decided to drive.

Of course, any entry into California should count as international travel since California’s a whole other ballgame played on a very odd field. And I understand passports were required.

Not to get all political (and I really don’t care), the governor there reently issued an executive order that would force citizens who are currently “experiencing homelessness” to move along.

To his credit, he doesn’t care where they go as long as they don’t stop within the boundaries of California.

Meanwhile, he welcomes with open arms any “undocumented voters” (who are undocumented in the first place because they are in his country i-l-l-e-g-a-l-l-y) with open arms. At least for them, passports are NOT required. Sigh.

But I digress. Focus, me.

To avoid the confusion ensuing from the recent computer meltdown at various major airlines, the sisters, while they were here, canceled their flights to California As I reported above, they opted to drive instead. (My understanding is that although passports were required, wearing flowers in their hair was optional.)

So as I said at the top, they returned yesterday, the day after I finished the novel.

I marked the dual occasion by doing a little laundry, cleaning the house a bit, and going to the grocery (yes, believe it or not, I can do those things almost as well as I can fill a space with letters and words and stuff.)

As a result, I didn’t write anything except the bit of fluff that follows. So here’s something completely different:

A Moustache Hair Delivered This Post

Trust me, there are few things worse than a moustache hair slipping away from morning muster and finding its way from your upper lip into your mouth. It’s only minimally less annoying than a small bug flying into your nose.

For a moment, every other thought and action in your life pales in importance as you try to find and extricate that hair.

Your goal is to locate the hair and work it out to a place where you can pinch it and look at it. (You always have to look at it, as if to verify that such a small, seemingingly insignificant strand could cause such trouble for absolutely no good reason.)

Then you wipe it off on the leg of your jeans or the belly of your t-shirt, if you’re considerably more fastidious than I, on a tissue. Whatever.

But before you get to that point, you experience unbridled frustration when the tip of your tongue, willing and talented as you believe it to be, is unable to locate the object and move it forward so you can get ‘hold of it.

The frustration only increases when the salivary glands (a fancy-schmancy term for Spit Makers) leap into the fray, flooding your mouth with spittle, but: not always in the vicinity of the intruder.

Simultaneously, seemingly of its own accord, the tongue rejoins the search, wading through the whitecapping waves of spittle washing through your mouth. Meanwhile your brain encourages the spittle to continue in the hope that one tiny little bubble might attach to the hair and wash it forward.

Failing all of that, the sinuses (Glop Makers) awaken from their slumber. They assume (wrongly, they really are not all that intelligent) they’re under attack, and open the flood gates to release a flow of mucus (snot, but isn’t mucus a nice word?), which they are certain will expel the intruder.

That almost never works.

Finally the lungs (Bellows)—basically the command center for all things to do with oxygen, or as the common person calls it, “air”—leap into the fray. You cough and hack, causing the poor, frightened little hair to jostle about and cling even more tightly to wherever it’s attached.

And God help you if it’s clinging to your soft palate. That only makes all of the other considerations above even worse. It might even invoke the gag reflex, which is a nice way to express the condition that results in hocking up a loogie.

But in this particular case, finally, finally, an alarm sounded on my phone, reminding me to take my morning pills. Fortunately I keep them close.

I retrieved the pills, cupped them in one hand, and plopped them into my mouth. Then, to wash them down, I took a quick swallow of cold coffee.

Whereupon one pill, on its way to my throat—exactly like Captain Jean Luc’s tractor beam—snagged the moustache hair and dragged it into the void, awash in a wave of coffee, spittle, snot and whatever the lungs pitched in.

Now, I believe in Fate and Things Happening for a Reason, a kind of quasi-predestination. Especially, perhaps, the predestination of an errant moustache hair.

So I can only assume that whatever infirmity struck me long ago did so specifically so that the pill prescribed to treat that infirmity would be prescribed in the first place to fulfill a particular predestination.

Because—who knew?—that particular pill, which no doubt has just the right microscopic grappling hook on one edge, is also adept at snagging errant moustache hairs.

Understand, without that pill, I might never have removed that moustache hair from my mouth and into my throat yesterday morning. Imagine the mood I’d be in then.

Well, you probably can’t. I like things in my life to be a certain way, and moustache hairs remaining in my moustache are high up on my list.

But to the point of this minor diatribe— You never know what might happen.

And you can never foretell all the preliminary catalysts and resulting solutions for a given event as your life unfolds.

But this blog is supposed to be about writing, isn’t it? So let me add, just as You Never Know What Might Happen, neither do your characters.

So believe in yourself and try writing into the dark. You won’t regret it.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

Branding… Part 16

Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week “Marital Miscommunication” Do you write stories in which characters are married? Check this out.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 1140

Writing of

Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXXX

Fiction for July…………………….….… 39407
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 468400
Fiction since October 1………………… 732050
Nonfiction for July……………………… 33240
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 244120
2024 consumable words………………… 673113

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 11
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 93
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 241
Short story collections…………………… 29

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies, and they will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

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