The Ten-By-Ten Page

Went digging through some old files.


NEVER throw away those scraps of paper you scribble on.


I found a folder full of hand-written notes on the back of restaurant menus, notepads, spiral notebook pages, a chunk of corrugated cardboard.  Some things printed off a very old computer.  Some things done on my typewriter.


Lots of it was early Cathartes Aura stuff.  Much before I even decided upon a turkey vulture narrator. Some featured a vulture with a much more malevolent attitude than the one that made it into my books.  The narrator was anxiously waiting for victims to fall and sometimes helping them fail.


Also I dug up two early characters: Harald and Sal.  They are a comic yet vicious duo, joking along foolishly until they find someone who has something they want.  Then they are swift and violent.


I stumbled upon a crazy project I'd begun and never finished called "Ship of Fools" involving a bus, not a ship, full of lunatic characters on a lunatic ride and a captain (driver) who never spoke, but could twist the lug-nuts from the wheels with his bare hands.


Encountered a frustrated series of poems titled "Fuck Money" with a ten syllable scheme that was an early ancestor of my favorite 10x10 form.


Some of this stuff I've mentioned was sitting in my drawer in perfect 10x10 and I've put some on the page.  A stack of it is currently sitting at my right and I'll type it in soon.


May need another page for the really random stuff.


Ten-By-Ten Page