inventor's journey

It began with a brother. The oldest of eight children, Kenny was in love with baseball and spent hours in the yard practicing pitches to a board with an outlined strike zone. It was his idea to name the sixth child Vernon, after his favorite pitcher, Vernon Law. 

Carma loved her brothers. As a little girl, she watched Kenny throw the ball, fetch it, throw it, fetch it. When he wasn't outside pitching, he was in his room with the door closed and his favorite music playing loudly, because his hearing had been reduced by a high fever he had as an infant. Kenny loved The Beach Boys and The Carpenters. Their songs always bring back memories of him. 

She has many fond memories of her big brother Kenny. He was tall, thin and blond with blue-green eyes. He was shy and softspoken, intelligent, and he smiled at her often. He was kind and gentle. 

When Carma was eleven, Kenny was nineteen, and that is when he lost control of his mind. That is when Carma learned the meaning of the word schizophrenia and insanity. Her brother would spend the rest of his adult life in and out of hospitals, medicated much of the time. During his lucid periods, they would write letters to each other. He wrote poetry and short stories. So did she, and they shared them quietly and happily through the mail.

Kenny vanished in 1981. He had been living contentedly on a houseboat in Honolulu for two years, without hallucinations or paranoia and without Thorazine, which he loathed.  A tropical storm swept that away. He did not disappear in the storm, but was so devastated when all of his writings and belongings sunk into the harbor, that he left, and did not communicate with Carma or his mother, not even his best friend Mike knew where he went. For two years there was no word about his whereabouts, and the family feared he had died and they would never know. 

This is how the inventor's journey began. 

It is not about her, or him, or even a planet spoken into 4D existence by Zenyan children playing the jazzy imagination game. 

It is about the process. The creative process and how to create a book or two or three, starting with a scribbled paragraph after a brother's death. 

Read Carma's post on how the first paragraph of Saardu sprang to life. 

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