on track like a tic-tac

Two thousand words per day. That’s what I’ve got left on my novel. I can do it, I know I can. I had my doubts until yesterday. But now I know I can do 5K in a day, I’m hoping to do it again, and finish up a bit early. I’ll be driving six hours per day both tomorrow and Sunday, so it’d be nice to finish early.

I even spent about half an hour yesterday (the same day I did 5K!) to write an outline for the next few sections. I don’t quite think they’ll bring me to 50K, but it’ll be close. There is a big climax in there, but I’m not sure it’s “the climax”, if you know what I mean. I explained this to Nate this afternoon, and he said “oh great, it’s going to be one of those novels where I’m thinking they don’t have anything left to wrap up, but there’s still 50 pages left.” I don�t think it’s going to be quite that drastic (you’ll know there’s still some shit left to happen yet), but I do hope things calm down a bit after I get through this part. Actually, what am I saying?!? This is action and adventure, baby. Things are gonna stay NOT-CALM right up to the end. (No, I don’t know what I’m talking about either. Excuse me please, I’m tired.)

Vacation time always flies by, of course. I’ve barely felt like I have time to write in the novel, and yet I’m supposed to be taking things easy right now.

I saw a sneak preview of The Last Samurai tonight, and it was FUCKING AWESOME. I know it doesn’t come out for a week or so, but when it does, your ass better be in the theater. I found myself comparing it to crouching tiger hidden dragon afterward–I thought it was THAT good. (no flying kicks or anything though… this one went in more for the realism.) The comparison is purely emotional though… the movies really had nothing more to do with each other than kick-ass fight scenes, and intense drama.

In the car ride home, I wanted to think a lot about the notion of honor, and especially as it applies to my life. (I didn’t really have time though, so here’s some thinking-in-blog.) I strive for complete honesty (knowing that I fail in certain aspects of my life–notably my work environment, where honesty is not a very respected commodity), and I think it is as much for honor as it is for anything else that I insist on my honesty. It is for my honor, I should say.

But I went to dictionary.com just now, and I realize that the word itself is as much fractured as the concept I am trying to describe. The American Heritage dictionary definitions don’t even mention self-respect. In the definitions it gives that are closest to what I’m talking about, honor is dependent on someone else! Webster’s seems to have it closer to the way I’m thinking about it–an internal notion of rightness that is dependent on notions of self-respect and self worth. Your honor is the value you place on your own life and your own opinions and actions.

How does this antiquated concept fit in with the notion of the postmodern self that I hold in such high regard? If your values and opinions are constantly fluid, how can you find honor in there too? I think post-modernity (as it applies to notions of self) assumes a subjective “correctness” in any given situation… and the notion of honor assumes an absolute correctness. Or maybe not… maybe it is only absolute as far as the individual is concerned. Yes, that is better… As long as I do what I assume to be the correct thing in any given situation, my honor is retained.

I was just trying to figure out what word means a word with multiple definitions. I know there is a word out there that means this… the only way I could think to look for it was google. Then I thought, I’m sure I could just search the definitions on dictionary.com… but no! You can’t even search definitions (as far as I can tell) at all!