Dreams of Paintings and Painting

A very long night with only scattered periods of sleep. Seemed warm and busy in my mind. Don't know what that was about. Maybe it was just warm last night. Maybe my mind was wound up and had no place to go. I spent a lot of time awake and thinking. Not the best way to spend one's night.

At one point I spent time thinking of how I would rewrite my characters in the story without a name. In my thoughts, I would simply sit down and write, taking the best of what I had and building from that. It would almost be easier to start from scratch but then I risk writing a new story. Ooooh, wouldn't want that now, would I? No reason not to, actually. It would do my mind good to start a new story and incorporate the right kind of characters from the start with the new one.

What could the story be about? A story that begins with a guy standing in front of a dead body. He didn't do it, or did he? Maybe he can't remember. Maybe he simply doesn't want the hassle of reporting it. But it looks familiar.

Don't be ridiculous. He simply stumbled onto the body. He's on his way to ... somewhere. This has upset him and he can't remember where he was going. He looks around, it's dark out. he's on a sidewalk, there are no houses near him. He's so upset that he's breathing fast. He's wheezing. His chest feels tight when he breathes. His lungs burn. He reaches into his right front pants pocket and pulls out an inhaler. That's right, he's asthmatic and this has upset him so much that it's triggered an asthma attack.

It's an OK start but I'm not sure it's the kind of story that I want to write. It's another of those first person stories that I usually write and unless I have a plot that includes interesting twists.

What if the protagonist is the murdered man? His soul enters the murderer at the time of his death and now he kind of half-inhabits the body of the man who murdered him. Who is he ultimately? Maybe he's the brother of the murderer, twin brother? Is that too confusing? It could be. After a few twists the reader loses track of when to be surprised.

At the very least, I should write a little in the noir style. I like doing it and it keeps me in practice. For the practice, I should write a short three-act piece in the noir style. That sounds like fun. I need to think up a simple story in three acts and then couch the style.

In the streets of Kansas City back in the early 1950's, what did I see there. I saw the guys selling papers on the corners. The guys without legs, on those rolling platforms. Always looking up at people. They were out in the cold, dressed in heavy clothes. They had really thick, worn leather pads on their knees and a kind of mittens on their hands.

I tried to find some pictures of the KC streets from the 50's and there were a few. A bunch of an Eisenhower parade through the streets of KCMO. That would have been the right time period but there weren't many of the plain streets during the day. The kind I was looking for.

I have a lot of memories of going with my mom to Kansas City and hitting a bunch of stores in a row. She would go down there ostensibly on a parts errand for my dad, but she would have a list of stores she wanted to visit while we were there. It was a very dirty city, both sides of the river. The Kansas side had a lot fewer buildings and they were smaller. She could really stretch a dollar though. Back then gas was cheap so she'd drive a long way to save a little money.

More later,