T.E.A. Time at DJ House

Have a poem? Are you working on a story, novel, or a best practice as teacher? It’s T.E.A. Time at DJ House, the first Sunday each month, 4-6 pm. Share your works, get feedback and appreciation from Taichung Educators & Authors; bilingual, too. Post your creation or lesson plan on our Facebook group page beforehand, share and critique with others. Let your creativity seep through.

喜歡英文寫詩創作嗎？你們是正在著手寫文章，小說或是想多練習英文寫作的老師們嗎？每個月的第一個星期日下午4-6點，歡迎來好食分享你們的創作靈感，也歡迎喜歡寫作的人來這跟大家分享與指導大家。中英都可，也可以先把你們的文章或課程大綱先公佈在我們臉書群組喔，歡迎大家ㄧ同來來交流。

Stop the press: half of self-published authors earn less than $500

ps://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/24/self-published-author-earnings?CMP=share_btn_fb

March 2015

March 1, 2015

I didn’t ride the bicycle today, on dentist’s orders, but I did go against his recommendation and had a can of beer. I finished reading Anatomy of a Rose up the river yesterday and wrote a rare poem; I haven’t written too many poems since Han River Poems was published. I also haven’t written much towards Smoke No Fire recently; indeed, I have been raiding episodes from it for It Won’t Work. Reestablishing a friendship with Maureen, if it happens, brings up an awkward situation; her character is an antagonist. The same is true of Tony, but there is little chance of his becoming my friend again or reading my fiction in the semi-autobiographical novel. Maureen, however, might want to read it. 

3-10-17

Some of the creative writing I did in 1979 in San Francisco will be added to 

It Won’t Work in chapter four, “San Francisco Fairy Tale.” The ‘House Crew’ thread will be about Emerson’s work experience. It follows from his Hole in the Wall experience with the passport forgers, as yet unwritten. Only five pages of chapter four have been written. The ‘House Crew’ thread is fifteen pages long!

3-13-17

 "The Work Crew" thread of It Won't Work is thirty-six years old but it fits in well with the novel to illustrate the San Francisco experience for Emerson Davinsky. That and the Hole in the Wall Chinese passport forgers and the bankrupt magical hippie notion of Gail, the misplaced militarism of the gay community are all short-circuits in the revolution and further evidence why It Won't Work although Emerson's life itself does have the "Progressive Movement" it needs to carry him to realization and the novel to conclusion. 

3-14-17

  There are another twenty pages in four manuscripts of text I wrote thirty-six years ago in San Francisco that I can incorporate into the novel, It Won't Work. I incorporated twelve pages called "The Work Crew" to the manuscript. I think it is really reflective of Emerson's education about the value of his labor and bosses. There are another three manuscripts of about forty pages that can be the basis of an independent story or, perhaps, be added to Smoke No Fire. There is one weird manuscript that, anticipating Cats Journey to Taiwan, is told from a cat's point of view! I would not alter the plots of my current work to use this old material, but if the semi-autobiographical text fits in, why not use it? 

3-21-17

 I took a week off from creative writing after a flurry of activity the week before, mostly adapting thirty-six year old manuscripts from San Francisco for It Won't Work. I would complete the chapter "San Francisco Fairy Tale" with the irrelevant gay activism Emerson found there, dysfunctional Americans, leading Emerson to the portal of Chinese culture and wisdom, through Taiwan. Two guiding quotes; first from Chak Chi-Tat: "Americans are like locusts; they fly in droves, eat everything in sight, and fly away." The second quote is from Emerson's mom when he returned to New York to say goodbye: "Crying at the airport, she hugged Emerson saying, "Please don't come home with a Chinese wife." 

3-23-15

    I wrote five pages of text directly into the It Won't Work manuscript last evening. I combined the Fingers take-over, the Disneyland derelict, street lamp shoot-out, and the strung-out chick rape into one thread. I want to add to that the passport forgers, domestic downstairs violence, Sunset triad, secret service flight trail, too. It is amazing how much happened in San Francisco in less than two years of the forty-year span of the novel; I could almost write a separate novel about San Francisco alone. I will remove the Gail thread and return it to Smoke No Fire as it has little to push the plot along. When Emerson goes back to study Mandarin at San Francisco State and spends the last year in San Francisco with Chak Chi-tat preparing for Taiwan, Asian culture comes to the rescue again and helps puts Emerson's life in order. If each chapter is around twenty-five pages long, "San Francisco Fairy Tale" is almost complete. I want to make it as 'Alice in Wonderland' as it actually was. 

3-27-15

I am on the verge of ‘rounding off’ one complete chapter in It Won’t Work; “San Francisco Fairy Tale.” It was a pivotal period for Emerson Davinsky that almost derailed his ambitions to do something for the union which included socialist Chinese markings.

The chapter “Training in Taiwan” will explain his detour from China to Taiwan which complicated his ambition with an obstructive wife. In the novel, the couple has no children over their twenty years of piss; I’m saving the children for another novel, one day, concerning the protagonist’s family life. Suffice it to say Xiao-Jiao merely obstructs, not destroys him. She represents the chicken-shit cowards created by the KMT white terror. She dies in an earthquake in 1999 and sets Emerson free.

3-29-15

     Since I added an element of homosexual comment to coincide with the Harvey Milk riots, the gay scene in San Francisco, and Emerson's proletarian heterosexual monogamy, I pinched a thread from Smoke No Fire again (the Arthur proposition) to inform the plot of It Won't Work. In the apartment on Ocean Avenue rented by Bill, the skittish Vietnam vet in cold sweat during the blackout riots of 1977, Mark Cohen, the self-centered law student who shunned Emerson in San Francisco, Arthur completes the group. I may add the haiku reading with James in the Botanic Garden and t'ai chi with Prof. Wade to show Emerson's Asian leanings and emphasize his emotional connection to China through Taiwan. 

     After lunch, I sat down and watched the "Weather Underground" documentary I borrowed from the Taichung library. I realized I had to inform the plot of It Won't Work, circa 1972, to explain the path Emerson took to unionism and not terrorism. One would wonder why he didn't become a SDS Weatherman himself or even a Yippie. But he also didn't become a gay activist, drug-abuser, or religious dropout; I may have to pinch the Hare Krishna Alan thread from Smoke No Fire, too! 

3-31-15 7:02 am Tues. (1)

     I read the 1001 Books to Read before You Die digest on the toilet almost every day. I've only read a small percentage of the books listed; I've never been a big reader. In my 'hands-on' life, I always appreciated going out to play, hang out, smoke weed, play in a band, listen to concerts or music more than a novel. I have written more poetry than I have read and can remember the words to none of them. I stopped writing prose when I left San Francisco in 1979 and only took it up again, haltingly, in Brooklyn when Leona and I lived there. I have written more prose since January 2013 than I have in all my life, a total of fifteen short stories a novel up to page 230 and a novella stuck at 60 pages. When I see authors in the 1001 Books digest who have written thousands of pages in dozens of novels, I am impressed. For example, Anthony Burgess, the man who wrote Clockwork Orange, wrote five novels in two years! Not that I am not slogging through It Won't Work; to write it every day would feel like a task; like work. I would rather take my time and enjoy doing it. However, there is a bit of urgency; I am, after all, sixty years old. I don't know how much time I have left to write all that is in my soul to get out on paper. I'll just let it flow. It is not urgent. If I am to write nothing that will become commercially successful, it is not the end of the world. I tell myself that all it takes is one successful work and the public will eat up everything else I've written. I am putting all I've got into It Won't Work; Life's Progressive Movement. Maybe Burgess had that motivation after Clockwork. One writer wrote four incomplete novels before his fifth was accepted for publishing and became a success. You have to write what you want. At some point, after I finish It Won't Work, I will shop it around and maybe even find an agent to help me find a buyer. 

Making Facts Jive

      The characters in AWM have been given rules that they must adhere to:

l  No permanent metempsychosis without an excepting body. (ex. Earl gives back Friedrich)

l  If the body gives up living (suicide, depression, etc.) then it can be “squatted” (ex. Tuane is squatted by Leon)

l  Old bodies disintegrate upon transference into the new without “mind shares.” (ex. Rosa Luxemburg after entering the Lieutenant, the Lieutenant after entering Hitler.)

l  Telepathy possible between shared minds only in common time. (ex. Leon and Tcakwaina)

l  Distance is not a factor in common time telepathy. (ibid)

l  No future time travelling.

l  Licking a dusted finger equals one day of time travel.

l  The life expectancy of transmigrated minds remains from the original mind.

I am having kachina Tcakwaina dig up a time rock buried under the fire alter in a

Kiva so he can bring it with him when he has a rendezvous with Leon and his three traveling partners. There is 0.166666667 ounces in one teaspoon. At 1.9999992 ounces a year, 433 years (from 1925 to 1492 means) 865.99 ounces 54.124 pounds, and that is for one time traveler; four would require 216.49 pounds of dust. Tcakwaina’s 25 lb. Blue Bird sack of time dust won’t be enough. Even if Mary and Joseph joined him, each would need to carry 72 lbs.! I have to triple the original equation; three months for one can, one teaspoon to .6666 oz a year, 288 ounces (18 lbs.) for 433 years, but it would still only be enough for one time traveler. Make it one teaspoon a year and it is 72 ounces (4.5 lbs) and there would be enough time dust (288oz =18 lbs) for Tcakwaina to carry back for the five of them to travel. 400 ounces is 25 lbs. It would take 72.16 ounces per person (4.51 lbs.) 22.55 lbs for 5 travelers if one teaspoon equals one year of travel, but their travels would have to stop in 1492; they couldn’t go back much further in time unless they could return to the source and mine more. Once

Tcakwaina completes the circle transmigrating into his doppelganger Estevanico in 1527, there would be no other connection with the source in Craters of the Moon.  

      While I am busy making facts jive in my sci-fi novel, other writers have taken great liberties with the facts, for example, I found this:

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade references the "Cross of Coronado". According to the film, this gold cross, discovered in a Utah cave system, was given to Coronado by Hernán Cortés in 1521. Such an event never happened because Coronado would have been 11 or 12 years old in 1521 and still living in Spain. In addition, when Indy captures the cross from robbers aboard a ship off the coast of Portugal, the ship can be seen to be named 'The Coronado'.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

How Rosa Luxemburg Gets into Adolph Hitler

3-1-17     

I wrote a page for the novel about how Rosa Luxemburg is met by Leon, Gail, Earl, and Peg’s surrogates in a café in Berlin between Nov.8, 1918, when she was released from prison, and Jan. 15, 1919 when she was captured and murdered. Before she dies, she may transmigrate into Otto Runge, a soldier. Before she was shot in the head, she had grabbed hold of the bloody rifle barrel that Otto held. He knocked her to the ground with his rifle butt after Rifle Division of the Cavalry Guards of the Freikorps (Garde-Kavallerie-Schützendivision) or Commander Captain Waldemar Pabst, with Lieutenant Horst von Pflugk-Harttung  who questioned and tortured her. I have to decide which of the creeps would most likely meet Hitler and shake hands with to jump into after the Beer Hall Putsch in Nov. 9, 1923 when he was put into prison for nine months. One of the three Freikorps, probably Captain Pabst, visits Hitler and transmigrates into him to re-write Mein Kampf, and exits before Hitler commits suicide.  

February 2015

2-11-15

I rode the bike for the first time in a week yesterday after our trip to Cambodia, Taoyuan, and downtown Taichung. I read on, half a chapter, in One Hundred Years of Solitude and stopped; the book is as crazy as Alice in Wonderland. I also wrote a poem, a rare occurrence since I finished Han River Poems. I have pondered the point-of-view and tense in It Won’t Work and have decided to keep it in the third-person past. My fiction writing has all been towards that manuscript; I haven’t expanded Smoke No Fire in a few months but I have decided to keep the two works separate after considering combining them. I still haven’t moved forward on Cats Journey to Taiwan though I did some research for sidebars on cat traveling tips.

      One writing project I promoted was taIWWan blog. I mentioned it in response to a Taiwan News in English, a blog by fellow Taichung ex-pat, Courtney Donovan Smith, posting about the Sunflower fools who were indicted yesterday. I don’t bother commenting on meaningless bourgeois political news; only Taiwan labor news that affects workers here. My article about the “Stinking Fish” in Taiwan politics was about that; the dumb fuck-offs who shot their youthful wads are in deep shit for their naivety. The government will not help workers and a living wage cannot be gotten from the top-down; the dufuses who aren’t interested in organizing themselves into labor unions are wasting their breath and the ex-pat schmuck know-it-alls who write about politics help no one but themselves. I just report labor news here in taIWWan.

2-13-15 

      I copied the paragraph in the last journal entry about the 119 fools in the so-called Sunflower Movement protests, meaningless protests that got nowhere and helped no one except the police who could fine-tune their reactions to the next useless student demonstration. 

      I just added the last paragraph, too, to the taIWWan blog and Facebook post. No one will read it. No one will care. I may as well be jerking myself off.  My actual writings, not only in my head, are as real to anyone as my internal dialogue. Almost no one notices, anyway, even though I want to make a dent in reality. For now, I am entertaining myself. Maybe one day someone will notice and take heed. 

2-15-15

  I asked the I Ching if I should combine Smoke No Fire with It Won't Work and I was advised to stop thinking so much; do nothing but meditate, it said. I wrote three pages in a new thread with the sub-plot of Tony DeFibrillato; that is a new name I'm working on giving his character, thinking of a defibrillator. I want to compare him with Jerry Rubin who left the movement to become a stock broker ultimately being run over by a car on Wall Street. Though Emerson stays true to his revolutionary convictions, his high school friend capitulated to become a police officer and detective. Maybe I should call him Tony DeFibrillato

     The weather has been beautiful the past few days. I am sitting on the patio while writing this. I have resumed riding up the Han River after our return from Cambodia and extra nights in Taoyuan and downtown Taichung. I am bringing one book with me to read again when, for a few weeks, I had started bringing two and even three; my attention was getting dilated. One book is enough to read. 

     There have been over fifty hits on the opinion piece in the few days since I wrote "Sacrificial Sunflower Fools" in taIWWan and posted to English Taiwan News blog. There have even been about seven people who commented including Michael Turton who called my piece "high comedy." Everyone who commented is not ready to volunteer to help organize workers into unions.

      One clown who commented on the piece mistook me for a "Pan Blue" blogger until Turton put him straight. One guy insulted the Wobblies and used fear of violence to condemn labor organizing. Another turkey said unions are good but the Sunflower protesters are, too. Of the fifty plus hits, not more than twenty went back to the "Stinking Kettle of Fish" opinion piece I referred to which named some in the DPP responsible for co-opting the movement. I don't plan to respond to any comments. No one wrote to me directly. Two people liked the post including the author of the blog.

2-19-15

   I wrote a few more pages towards It Won't Work on the Tony thread, to be placed somewhere in the chapter "Burning Photos." In the manuscript, Emerson feels the backlash of Reganism in America and KMT neo-liberalism after martial law is lifted in Taiwan. He also ends his relationship with his abusive wife in 1989, just as I did, but he doesn't meet a "Leona" and he doesn't have children; he has open relationships with sister workers in the IWW and a few more dumb Taiwanese women. I am still thinking of taking parts from Smoke No Fire, the parts about the women Johnny Livewire had relationships with, and put them in It Won't Work. I want to make a "woman sandwich" with the vast no-fun and sexlessness of his married years 1979-1989 in between. I can even throw in the affair with Maureen as an eye-opener when he returns for his Bubby's funeral. Right now, there's not enough sexiness in It Won't Work and it won't work as a popular novel without it. 

     I've been thinking of adding a "Writer's Journal" to the in-progress on-line It Won't Work blog by taking journal entries such as the one above and consolidated them. Readers could get an insider’s look at the creation of a novel and what goes on in the mind of a novelist. Ha-ha! I'm even thinking of charging for the privilege on my website. Ha-ha-ha! I would add a "1" to the blog name and only give access after the buyer pays his fee. Right now, the blogs on It Won't Work and Smoke No Fire are not in the list at the back of Forgotten People of Taiwan and Han River Poems, nor have I promoted my website Readings and Ridings where it is displayed. The charge would be $5-8 or 200-300NT.  

2-21-15 

     My website, Readings and Ridings, is looking good. It is better than having a radio station in my head, though not many more people can see it out there. The fiction, poetry, and blogs I have written are real but, like my imaginary radio station, for my pleasure in the alone of my time; one must write for oneself.  If I had a friend to party with, or if I had a full-time job, my time would be bloated or stolen. 

      There are now nine pages of hand-written text on the 'Tony thread' for It Won't Work that I have to elaborate on and transcribe into the novel. Tony is a perfect example of the person who flakes away from progressive ideals; who gives up and becomes part of the problem. It's his kind, along with the obstructionist do-gooders within the movement that have helped the ruling class kill off progressive ideals (like environmentalism) and workers' power. Emerson Davinsky stays true to lofty goals but keeps his individualism.

      I wrote a few more pages on the “Tony Thread” in It Won’t Work and embellished and transcribed four pages into the manuscript late this afternoon while Leona was out with her Tainan friend.

2-22-15

    I lifted another scene from Smoke No Fire and placed it in It Won't Work; the scene about Johnny (now Emerson) renting an apartment near Brooklyn College. Instead of Johnny travelling to college by bus from Borough Park to rent an apartment, Emerson takes the IRT from his Mom's apartment where they live in Gramercy Park.  Emerson studies at Brooklyn College for the Mandarin classes, I Ching, and t'ai chi lessons of Prof. Wade. He doesn't go to Kingsborough or get involved with music but he "borrows" Johnny Shortwave's girlfriends. I could leave Smoke No Fire intact for now. It keeps its music and drugs. Emerson only smokes some pot and drinks beer; he doesn't get carried away like Johnny. I think I will lift Johnny's high school and early college job at the delicatessen, too, but I have to change the location. He can work at a supermarket in Gramercy Park and transfer to one in Flatbush near Brooklyn College keeping his union membership. He meets a lot of women at the deli counter. In San Francisco he will be an off-the-books part-time house painter and work in the Hole in the Wall hot dog stand before going on welfare, just like Mr. Temple did, but he won't get involved with Cloud House or poetry. With the scenes I could lift, It Won't Work, already 190 pages, can be bolstered to 240 or more, with still more scenes to write. My first novel, when printed, will be well over 300 pages. 

     I can't wait to get to my second novel, my first science fiction historical novel, with time travel back to take care of the conquistadors and imperialists before they cause any damage in the New World, Asia, Middle East, and Africa! I can have a team of Toxic Avengers setting the world right before Armageddon, leaving the indigenous people alone to develop society collectively and respect nature.

2-23-15 

     I crossed the "200 page" threshold in It Won't Work with more borrowings from Smoke No Fire to come in addition to more political shenanigans encroaching on Emerson's endeavors. 

2-24-15

I spent a good four hours editing the It Won’t Work manuscript and updating it on the blog. Only readers who pay $5 on my website (and friends who request it) can read it. As with Smoke No Fire, it’s not even listed in the back of Han River Poems or Forgotten People of Taiwan; only Cats Journey to Taiwan and, ironically, the two published titles themselves, can be read, for free, if one buys the books. I’m not fooling myself; no one will be interested in reading my manuscripts besides me; I even removed the link for free viewing from my website. No one will pay $5 for the privilege of reading my novel under construction, or even when it is completed, but I am having fun setting up the company like it really matters. The infrastructure is there, and functional; $5 will, through Pay Pal, be deposited into out TD Bank account. Ha-ha! When I am ready, I may try to interest a publisher in buying the rights. 

 2-26-15  

        Facebook has spit my taIWWan page back to me after making it a business/organization account a few months ago and severing my ties to the 775 people who liked me. TaIWWan is now linked to my DavidtempleFDR Facebook page where I can access all the likes personally again. I also was asked if I wanted to tie in a website to my Facebook pages and I did add www.readingsandridfings.jimdo.com. I have many Facebook pages, some I never use. Here's the list:

1. johnnyshortwave@hotmail.com

2. davidtempleFDR@hotmail.com

    a. taIWWan

    b. Union Community

    c. Education Emancipation Organization

3. indydaiwan@yahoo.com

     That is 6 Facebook pages I have in addition to 14 blogs and 2 novels under construction! If I didn't have a life outside the seat in front of a computer, I could keep busy all day being a 'forwarder' (as Arlen calls himself) or smart-ass commentator.

2-27-15

The taIWWan posting of three pages from George Kerr's Formosa Betrayed about the incident that started the massacre called 228 has garnished 41 views so far; the 228 holiday is tomorrow. I put it on the blog and on Taiwan News in English Facebook as well as my own Facebook pages. It might yet reach the 56 views for the "Sunflower Fools" post I gave similar boost. 

Publishers Hiring Book Readers to Flag Sensitivity

http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-publishers-hiring-book-readers-to-flag-sensitivity-20170215-story.html

Ethics of Metempsychosis and Time-Travel

2-17-17 

      I wrote five more pages towards the chapter “Taking Care of Hitler” in A Western Metempsychosis. In it, the four time-travelers are at a beer hall in Germany (I have to decide what city) and they are speaking (in English or German?) about their plans from within the bodies of their German hosts; their hosts keep their life skills and connections, but the time- travelers have taken over their concerns and motivations and added to their intelligence.

     However. if their acquired trans-migratory intelligence isn’t as developed as their own, their own intelligence trumps their takers'. For example, in the case of Leon transmigrating into Tuane, both men were of the same intelligence; Leon had nothing to add to Tuane but ambition and misogyny. Before Leon entered Tuane, Tuane was a hen-pecked wimp; he turned into a belligerent male chauvinist. But since Leon wasn’t any better in school subjects than Tuane, he had nothing to back up Tuane’s new ambition which is why Tuane had to lie about his religious commitments to the Mormon Elder and fabricate his education credentials to get a dean’s position at the college in Taiwan. His only self-education was reading the daily newspaper. Leon, who also rejected education, couldn’t augment Tuane in that way. Tuane succumbed to his shortcomings, couldn’t keep up the charade, and finally contemplated suicide, or was it Leon within whose ambition was thwarted that drove Tuane back to Craters of the Moon? Tuane on his own wouldn’t even have the guts to take his own life.

It was Leon who wanted out of Tuane, but where was Leon to go? I will have to change the plot by making Leon return to the cave, sip more met fluid, and grab a park ranger who goes to investigate. Leon cannot just pop out of Tuane and materialize from nothing; his body long gone he needs a new body to continue living outside of Tuane. Maybe he can ‘jump’ into a visitor to his cave; I have to decide. I like the premise that the spirit can only exit at the host’s darkest hour, or on the verge of death.

Willpower from without will encourage the four German hosts to ingest the time dust and follow the plan of the time-traveling back to pre-Nazi Germany, guests within their minds, but as in the case of Leon, Earl, Peg, and Gail who entered the Germans in Arizona , the four will have to leave their place and time, never to return. They, too, will go down as missing to their neighbors, family, friends, colleagues, and employers. They can keep up contact with their contemporaries only while living in the same time period, as Leon could contact Earl, when deja-vu inspired him, as when he wrote to learn of his succumbing to cancer from Peg, but in another time before their own time, it would be lunatic to do so as no pre-existing person would recognize him. 

There must be a devastating event for all four German hosts to succumb to if the time-traveling heroes hope to re-migrate when their purpose is completed; those are my rules. The prospect of death or the ‘darkest hour’ is the only way out, unless the hosts willingly become the vehicles, as Tuane was for fifteen years, at the start of the novel. 

The only occurrence of such a 'disaster' would be a public accident where some survive and others not. For example, I could put my characters on the Hindenburg or Titanic, send them back to America, and let history take its course. Just before the fatal moment, the time-travelers would ingest met dust, grab a suitable survivor, and make it out alive to complete their mission. Their hosts could then even survive without them; the shock of thinking they will die is sufficient for proto-transmigration. 

Ethically, I wouldn’t want to ‘kill’ the hosts after they had helped the heroes by unwittingly donating their bodies, leaving their own time periods. If any German character-host has cognitive dissonance, such as through nightmares or sleepless depression, I have to let him or her go.

My plot rules preclude carrying any non-organic material out of its time frame. The ‘time’ and ‘met’ dust passes through, though, because it is organic and bears Leon’s touch, just as his clothes. Paper books could ‘theoretically’ be transported through time, but every millimeter of every page must bear the DNA of the time-traveler; not a likely prospect. Only a page, such as a map, in extreme circumstance, might possibly be transported. These are the rules that I, as writer, must be consistent about.

     Any and all time travel and transmigration is limited to the supply of ‘time’ and ‘met’ dust Leon has synthesized from the pool in Craters of the Moon and taken with him. Though the pools of magic liquid may be there historically, how would a traveler from 1492 travel from Europe to Idaho? Leon’s last reasonable chance to replenish his stock would be when he returns from Europe in the 1920’s; then, at least they could take a steam engine train out West before heading by ship to San Salvador from Miami or Key West. 

‘Body snatching’ transition to mental only

2-16-17

In the sci-fi novel, the transition from the host body to the original corporal being is problematic. Leon enters Tuane and shrivels up on the roadside, but when Tuane returns to the spot of his metempsychosis at Craters of the Moon, whose body does Leon transition into if his original body is defunct? As it is written now, his ‘ghost’ leaves Tuane’s body and materializes in the seat next to Tuane in the pick-up truck. His mind has aged and so has his body fifteen years after initial transmigration; when he returns to his older brother, he looks and feels like his brother’s father. Perhaps I can adapt the ‘body snatching’ transition to mental only since the original body disintegrates upon exiting it; that way, the character still has time to live limited to his/her mental age, no matter what the age of the body entered may be. For example, if 41 year old Leon enters 34 year-old Hitler in 1923, Hitler’s mental age would become 41. This would create a new problem since the spirit (soul) has been called ageless; how could it age? How could it die? If 21 year-old Peg enter 47 year-old Rosa Luxemburg in 1918 does Rosa’s brain become 21 or remain 47? Of course, it is my fantasy novel to do with what I wish, but I at least must be consistent if not scientifically accurate; in matters of the soul, there is no accuracy, anyway. Only the flesh has an observable outcome. The brain is flesh but it is not the brain transmigrating; only the thoughts, knowledge, and sentiments.

      In any event, I am considering having my team of four time-travelers go back to 1918 once they arrive in Germany and influence the chain of events after WW I that resulted in the holocaust. If the spirit of Luxemburg can guide Hitler, not only will the holocaust be averted but Germany will have its socialist revolution inspiring Europe with Russia, make Stalin obsolete, and with China, defeat the fascist tendency of the United States, perhaps even spreading socialism to the American shores and around the world which will have been spared European Colonialism and annihilation of its indigenous by the next jump back in time to neutralize Christopher Columbus. African and Native American culture would flourish and a respect for nature, organic socialism, would prevail by the time Europeans can reach foreign shores. How far back could my time travelers go to protect the Golden Age of Islamic culture from the Genghis Khan’s Hordes and Pope Urban II’s Crusades? Could idolatry become cultural, not religious and monotheism prevail with no need for a first or second coming of Christ?