About Me

Hey, All,

So I've discovered that I need a place to identify myself and my various webpages. That being the case...here we go:

I am Michael Jay Tucker.

My Amazon Author's Page: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KI3I6E

My Vimeo (video) Page: https://vimeo.com/mjt1957

My Blog: http://explosive-cargo.blogspot.com/

My Behance Page: https://www.behance.net/mtucker57564d

And more is to come :-)

Grand-Parentization

So far we have been surprisingly comfortable in Georgetown and in the new house. Though, the move, and the house, have required us to confront some things, and that has not always been particularly pleasant. For example, we are finally forced to do the serious downsizing that is at the heart of...for lack of a better term...grandparent-ization.

You see, this house is quite a bit smaller than the ones we’ve had before. Don’t get me wrong. It is very nice, but it is cozy. Where, for instance, we had four bedrooms, a living room, a den, and a sunroom in Albuquerque, now we have three bedrooms and a living room, but no den and no sunroom. Zillow puts our square footage in the new house at 1570, where-as the ABQ house had 2379 square feet.

This has made us rethink what we own and what we really want to keep. We have already divested ourselves of a good many pieces of furniture. Now we have to figure out what to do with our paintings, pictures, prints, and, particularly, our books.

That’s been tough, and it will get tougher, but the really difficult thing is in reconsidering who we are and what we need. Today we were unpacking the rest of our kitchenware -- plates, dishes, coffee cups, etc. And that brought us face to face with the fact that, well, we are no longer in need of the twenty or so wine glasses that we’ve had for years. Four will do quite nicely, even if we have company. The same is true for coffee cups. I have a small collection of them dating from back when I was a journalist and was always getting mugs from trade shows. But, again, why do I need them? Four cups is more than enough, particularly since I merrily wash the dishes in our brand new (and incredibly quiet) GE dishwasher every night.

Of course, it is easy enough for me to take those extra coffee cups and glasses and what have you, rewrap them  in the same paper the movers used to ship them here, put them back in a box, and take them into the garage...where they will remain until (if) we have an occasion to actually use them again. But the point is that things have charged. We are no longer at a place in our lives when we are likely to have large gatherings for reasons ranging from the personal to the professional. We will have “grand-parently” gatherings of smaller groups, or, if they are large, then they will probably be someplace other than here.

This is not a sad thing. But it is a marker. We have left one stage of our lives and gone to another. And transition, no matter how benign, is unsettling…

Not a Dish Washer, but you get the point.

EB and Me

Martha and I have the habit of reading aloud in the morning. We meet on the couch (in front of the fire on cold days), have coffee, silently share the funnies in the paper, then proceed to some book or another that we’ve picked for the moment, and I read to her for maybe ten to fifteen minutes.

For a long time, it was P.G. Wodehouse. We must have gone through all the Bertie and Jeeves short stories by now. We’re not as fond of his other stuff, like the Blandings Castle tales or Psmith. So, mostly we stick to Bertie and Jeeves. Though, recently, since we’ve sort of run out of the short stories, so we’ve moved back to E.B. White, another of our favorites.

Right now, we’re deep into One Man’s Meat, his collection of essays about life on “a Maine coast salt water farm.” It is, of course, astonishing stuff, and I’m convinced that White is one of the greatest writers in the English language.

There is, however, a downside to reading him, at least if you’re a writer, and one who aims at writing short, personal essays, as I do. To wit, first and foremost, it is depressing to realize you’ll never be that good. Ever. No matter how hard you try or how long you struggle. It’s like being a reasonably gifted athlete, proud of your standings and muscle and lung power on the track, only to have Jim Thorp or some other superhuman lope on past you without so much as breaking a sweat. Disheartening, you see.

But there is another problem here which, I think, is more subtle but just as dangerous. Because he is so good, you find yourself trying to write like him, rather than like yourself. And you can’t do a personal essay in someone else’s voice.

In fact, I was looking back at my own last entries in this blog, the ones on individuality. They aren’t terrible, but they aren’t my best, either. In fact, there’s a distressing note of pomposity in them.

And I can’t help but think that’s because of good old E.B. Not that he is pompous. Anything but! However, when I’m unconsciously trying to write like him, I fail …and lacking his poetry, I get something else. I get pretension. I sound like a freshman writer looking for someplace, any place, to stick in that six syllable word he learned last Tuesday.

Which, of course, brings up the question of how to deal with it. I’m not sure. I’m certainly not going to stop reading him. So that’s not an option. And because he does influence you on a subconscious level, it is hard to guard against his influence. You don’t even know you’re imitating him (however badly) until you’ve done it.

So, there’s the thing: how do you avoid being contaminated by genius?

Maybe the answer is the question. That is, maybe the benefit is the struggle itself. The exercise for the reader (or rather the writer) is to acknowledge what is happening, re-read the entry, and edit like a bandit. Steal what is good, yes, but also, more importantly, pare away what is not you. And by this hard discipline, strengthen one’s self.

Or to put it all another way…to quote another clever bastard…to thine own self be true.

Even if, particularly if, you’re not quite sure who that is.