Do we live Multiple Life Stories at once?

This post is a day late because I've been driving. I left eastern Arizona just before noon Wednesday. Approximately 48 hours later, I'm in Ohio. There are many reasons I like to drive long distance with naps in the car - less traffic after midnight, wonderful sunrises, and an amazing moonrise Wednesday night. And it's uninterrupted think time. (Did I mention this is a solo trip?)

So I'm going to do something foolish here - put out a resolution for the new year publicly. I want to learn about fractal theory this year, enough to understand the possibilities. I read something about two things being in the same place at once, and it makes me wonder if we'll eventually learn we really do live multiple life stories at once. What would that do with regret?

There's definitely some kind of time warp that makes people and events from the past seem close as we age.. and science fiction does have a way of predicting the future. Hold me to it.

Let's blame covid

The end of 2018, I sold my home and moved in with my son in Needles, CA. The plan was to help him with his fixer for a year or so while I decided where to live next. His siblings with children both live in areas I can't afford. I had a minor foot surgery scheduled for the end of January 2020. Once that healed, I was going to find my own home again!

Of course it didn't happen that way. Instead of house hunting, I was shopping online and wearing my painter's mask when I had to go to the grocery store. I watched more television in 2020 than I have at any other time in my life, binge-watching series I'd heard of but had never seen and calling it research for screenwriting. Right. A lot of it was simple inertia. But I wasn't a complete slug. I kept working on my novels and editing.

I finished up 2020 by publishing Peg's Story: Detours and Running Away: Maggie's Story. Peg's the mom in my first novel, Running Away, and readers had asked for her story. The character took over at the bus station and shocked me by bringing trafficking and other issues I hadn't anticipated into her story, so it took forever to write. Maggie's Story is a mildly revised version of Running Away - primarily updating quotes from Peg's journal to match the new book.

In March 2021, I published Tough Times, which is Michael Dolan McCarthy's story lightly revised, re-titled, and given a fresh cover. I can't believe I never posted here about these books! I've done a wee bit of promotion and sales are happening, but I really need to do better. I have entered the books in some contests and have submitted several short stories to publications. No great results yet, but a lot of it's still out there. I'm continuing to write and submit. I've also done some editing this year.

One good thing about COVID - Capital Film Arts Alliance in Sacramento went online with their screenwriter and other meetings. I got to rejoin and participate from eight hours away! That got me working on my scripts, too. I prepped and submitted a feature-length script of Tough Times and three shorts to the Austin Writers Conference and Film Festival. They had over 14,000 entries for a handful of awards. No, I didn't win. I did attend the conference in October, which was exhausting and exhilarating all at once.

Other bits about 2021:

I spent about ten weeks on the road - one to the burn area in Northern California and two cross-country trips - going to a reunion, visiting family, looking at real estate, and going to the conference in Austin.

I've spent a lot of time on cars and insurance. On June 9th I made the wrong left turn and a truck killed my Kia Rio. No injuries, but I was due to leave on the first big trip, so I bought my son's 2020 Mitsubishi Mirage. On June 30, I was driving on a dark road in Wisconsin when a really big deer tried to fly over the hood. While he smashed into the windshield, his forward momentum carried him on across the car instead of his landing in my lap, so I wasn’t hurt. However, that was the end of that car, too. Not my normal June.

I finished the trip in my first automatic - a 2010 Ford Escape. Still getting used to it; still searching real estate; still writing and editing while I figure out the design of my future.

Tiger!

So, I finally made it to India. The tour was pricier than my usual mode of travel (a moment of insanity at the time of booking), with hotels that were more posh than I required, but there were definite perks. The small group ended up being five of us - two couples and me. We got lucky in that personalities meshed well.

We had one primary tour guide throughout and he treated us as guests rather than tourists. We started in Delhi, went to Agra (Taj Mahal), then to Ranthambore National Park, Jaipur, then back to Delhi to fly home. There's SO much to tell, but I'm also catching up on work, so for today let's talk about Noor, the tiger.

We went out into the park, which has limited access, in open jeeps. I figured IF we got lucky enough to see a tiger, it would be fleeting and in the distance. There were three of us in our jeep with the driver and a naturalist who told us about the birds and animals we were seeing. Well into the park, the driver suddenly shouted and started driving like a maniac down the track which was basically a rough logging-type trail. The naturalist turned to us and kept saying "Tiger" - and there were three or four jeeps ahead. I was still expecting to see a tiger at a distance, probably running from the commotion.

Instead, the tiger stalked down the trail toward us, not the least frightened. Knowing how much damage an angry house cat can do, a chill passed through my gut considering how much damage this tiger could do in a matter of moments.

And she was definitely annoyed by us.

She sprayed urine at the jeep with our tour guide and the other couple - yes, definitely annoyed. These pics may be mine or Lina's (the other lady in our jeep) or maybe from our tour guide, Chanchal Srivastava.

The local drivers and naturalists were all stoked by this encounter as well. The monsoon season had just ended, so between tall grass and abundant water, they didn't really expect to spot a tiger, let alone have this experience. They said March is a better month to spot them because they'll go to the few places they can find water to cool off.

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