4/19/2006
Been driving all night
My hands are wet on the wheel--
A voice in my head.
P.S. The new cards are in! Very nice set--Tomas y Teresita; he's looking tired and cranky, and she is looking like the boss. Make your requests. Also, I leave on Friday for Book Touristicus Maximus. Cinderella will be joining me in Austin. See you out there--will try to blog at ya from hotels. L
The Wastelander's Notebook, Vol. 4: Traintime
My hands are wet on the wheel--
A voice in my head.
P.S. The new cards are in! Very nice set--Tomas y Teresita; he's looking tired and cranky, and she is looking like the boss. Make your requests. Also, I leave on Friday for Book Touristicus Maximus. Cinderella will be joining me in Austin. See you out there--will try to blog at ya from hotels. L
4/14/2006
So I went down to Truman State U in Missouri on the Southwestern Chief. How can you not like a train called that! Met a lot of great people, hung out with my notorious old pal Mark Spitzer and his rock and roll wifey, Robin. Sold many books. Visited with Rush Limbaugh's relatives. And, on the way back, proving once again that life is richer than you'd expect, I rode the train with a group of Kazakh musicians! My new pal Artyom Romanov, the Jim Morrison of Khazakstan! His lovely pal, the pianist Lena, wanted to stay in the beautiful USA. "Are you married?" she asked. The train snack bar guy offered to marry her so she could stay. I love trains. So, I was feeling arty and alive on the way down and I did some writing sketches--and here they are.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Holy Week Train Time....
Train station.
Hot clouds.
Prairie wind.
Going to La Plata.
Or
as they say it--
La Play-Tah.
Or
La Plate-Ah.
Smooth soft clicks
almost silent
behind buildings
out
pond
after
pond
after
pond.
#
Suburban train yards
beyond the last road
I know--
creek
between rails and
railyard
alive
with boxes
bottles
oil cans.
#
Wrecking yard.
Cars laid on top layer--
hoods wide open to the sun.
Iron alligators.
#
300 school buses
graze beside
scattered trailers
like orange
aurochs.
#
Cop has a picnic
beside a river.
#
East side: piles
of industrial rust/machines.
West side: 1,000
acres of farms,
ground still
in gray slumber.
Two boys on Stingray bikes
in wedges of dust
race the train.
#
One tiny Christmas tree
grows
beside a huge power tower,
touching.
#
Guys in nylon workout pants
go by to the club car
like this: vweep
vweep vweep.
#
Riding the horn
through every small town
intersection.
Thirteen streets
in a row:
only one
minivan.
Mom inside,
watching.
#
All over Illinois--
forsythia
gone insane!
#
Dead ditches:
streams of dirt
irrigate fields of dust.
#
One tractor
raising clouds of dust
like smoke from a freighter
is the only lonesome
traffic jam in
100
miles.
#
Shock. Close my eyes
on an empty field.
Open my eyes
on a giant warehouse.
Magic.
#
Mendota, Illinois
train station in a rail museum.
For the moments
we're stopped, we become
another display.
#
Sleeping steam locomotive
will our horn
wake you?
#
How
the
hell
did
they
get
two
Mexicans
in
Mendota
?
#
Pretty woman two rows back
eats potato chips
so loud the whole car
is listening.
First cows of the day--
they eat grass, and she
provides the soundtrack.
Karuncha krinch, karunchee krunk.
#
Gary Numan on the iPod.
Here in my train
I feel safest of all.
#
Haichoochoo: A Railway of Seeing.
#
22 vending machines
in a dirt lot. I'd like
to see the tractor
that harvests them.
#
10 mile road
straight as light
right there throwing sparks
a single truck.
#
Wrecked Corvette
beside a barn
somehow looks
embarrassed.
#
Now she's eating a sandwich, but Black
Sabbath is drowning out her mandibles.
#
Trains sneak behind
and look up the skirts
of every town.
#
That farmer
in that tractor
been plowing
for 12 hours--
what
is he dreaming?
#
For miles now
the only thing driving
that road is sunlight.
#
Empty foundations
and old snaggletrees
around them: dreams
bulldozed--voices
lost in the grass.
#
Giant inflated rabbit!
#
Horse
actually
stops eating
watches
the train.
#
Who put that picnic table there?
#
We slow, we crawl. No bird
in the sky. Setting sun
picks out every blade
of grass and lends it
glory.
#
Long curve.
The end
sees the beginning.
Train rides
connected to its
shadow.
#
5 women
go to the lounge car,
each of them 20
years older than the one before:
they look
like time-lapse
photography.
#
Perfect prairie degradation:
a black bog winds through a junkyard
where dead trees are scattered
among wrecked trailers.
I want to write
that book.
#
Remembering how my mother
loved bare trees.
Wondering what trees
she's seeing where she is now.
#
The last 3 tractors
have been stopped in fields
& the drivers slack
or slumped, arms
hanging.
Everybody's
dead.
#
The face
reflected in the window glass,
50 years old. The heart
looking out through it
is 7.
#
The Mississippi. Turbulent and ancient. Makes me smile.
Like the Rockies. My old friends.
The river and the peaks:
America.
#
Refinery across the big pond
looks like a vast oil tanker
somehow sailed across the farmland.
Like a devil ship
in some troubled dream.
#
Trough 1,000,000 trees
setting sun sees itself
in the swamp.
#
Toilet paper
in the trees
like egrets.
#
In the hills of Iowa.
Long pale dirt roads cut through the woods.
They go straight to the shadows in my dreams.
I live back there.
I have lit a fire.
I have a rocking chair.
I still use a typewriter there.
The door is never locked.
Come find me.
#
A long plume of smoke
rises from the exact spot on the horizon
where the sun has set.
All the world's
aflame.
Teresita Alert
___________________________________________________________________________________
Holy Week Train Time....
Train station.
Hot clouds.
Prairie wind.
Going to La Plata.
Or
as they say it--
La Play-Tah.
Or
La Plate-Ah.
Smooth soft clicks
almost silent
behind buildings
out
pond
after
pond
after
pond.
#
Suburban train yards
beyond the last road
I know--
creek
between rails and
railyard
alive
with boxes
bottles
oil cans.
#
Wrecking yard.
Cars laid on top layer--
hoods wide open to the sun.
Iron alligators.
#
300 school buses
graze beside
scattered trailers
like orange
aurochs.
#
Cop has a picnic
beside a river.
#
East side: piles
of industrial rust/machines.
West side: 1,000
acres of farms,
ground still
in gray slumber.
Two boys on Stingray bikes
in wedges of dust
race the train.
#
One tiny Christmas tree
grows
beside a huge power tower,
touching.
#
Guys in nylon workout pants
go by to the club car
like this: vweep
vweep vweep.
#
Riding the horn
through every small town
intersection.
Thirteen streets
in a row:
only one
minivan.
Mom inside,
watching.
#
All over Illinois--
forsythia
gone insane!
#
Dead ditches:
streams of dirt
irrigate fields of dust.
#
One tractor
raising clouds of dust
like smoke from a freighter
is the only lonesome
traffic jam in
100
miles.
#
Shock. Close my eyes
on an empty field.
Open my eyes
on a giant warehouse.
Magic.
#
Mendota, Illinois
train station in a rail museum.
For the moments
we're stopped, we become
another display.
#
Sleeping steam locomotive
will our horn
wake you?
#
How
the
hell
did
they
get
two
Mexicans
in
Mendota
?
#
Pretty woman two rows back
eats potato chips
so loud the whole car
is listening.
First cows of the day--
they eat grass, and she
provides the soundtrack.
Karuncha krinch, karunchee krunk.
#
Gary Numan on the iPod.
Here in my train
I feel safest of all.
#
Haichoochoo: A Railway of Seeing.
#
22 vending machines
in a dirt lot. I'd like
to see the tractor
that harvests them.
#
10 mile road
straight as light
right there throwing sparks
a single truck.
#
Wrecked Corvette
beside a barn
somehow looks
embarrassed.
#
Now she's eating a sandwich, but Black
Sabbath is drowning out her mandibles.
#
Trains sneak behind
and look up the skirts
of every town.
#
That farmer
in that tractor
been plowing
for 12 hours--
what
is he dreaming?
#
For miles now
the only thing driving
that road is sunlight.
#
Empty foundations
and old snaggletrees
around them: dreams
bulldozed--voices
lost in the grass.
#
Giant inflated rabbit!
#
Horse
actually
stops eating
watches
the train.
#
Who put that picnic table there?
#
We slow, we crawl. No bird
in the sky. Setting sun
picks out every blade
of grass and lends it
glory.
#
Long curve.
The end
sees the beginning.
Train rides
connected to its
shadow.
#
5 women
go to the lounge car,
each of them 20
years older than the one before:
they look
like time-lapse
photography.
#
Perfect prairie degradation:
a black bog winds through a junkyard
where dead trees are scattered
among wrecked trailers.
I want to write
that book.
#
Remembering how my mother
loved bare trees.
Wondering what trees
she's seeing where she is now.
#
The last 3 tractors
have been stopped in fields
& the drivers slack
or slumped, arms
hanging.
Everybody's
dead.
#
The face
reflected in the window glass,
50 years old. The heart
looking out through it
is 7.
#
The Mississippi. Turbulent and ancient. Makes me smile.
Like the Rockies. My old friends.
The river and the peaks:
America.
#
Refinery across the big pond
looks like a vast oil tanker
somehow sailed across the farmland.
Like a devil ship
in some troubled dream.
#
Trough 1,000,000 trees
setting sun sees itself
in the swamp.
#
Toilet paper
in the trees
like egrets.
#
In the hills of Iowa.
Long pale dirt roads cut through the woods.
They go straight to the shadows in my dreams.
I live back there.
I have lit a fire.
I have a rocking chair.
I still use a typewriter there.
The door is never locked.
Come find me.
#
A long plume of smoke
rises from the exact spot on the horizon
where the sun has set.
All the world's
aflame.
4/12/2006
I'm leaving for Missouri, so I don't have a lot of time to chat. But you Teresita fans might want to know that there is a new post-card coming. In honor of the paperback, Cinderella has designed a new post-card (yeah, baby, we're still sending them out--six this week). Cuz Dave Duty, of the Gabriela Cantua kids, opened his archives and lent us a great picture of Teresita and that love-god Tomas, together. Tomas is looking a liitle tired...and a little cranky. So, if you ask for one, we'll send it to you. Make sure to tell us which you want--series 1 (the autographed Teresita picture, or series 2 (dad and daughter). As soon as series 1 runs out, then the new one will be our standard card. Hope you enjoy them! (Almost train-time. The tour is kicking off in earnest now--see you in Las Cruces, Albuquerque, Duke U, Richmond, Austin....check the schedule for all dates.) Can't wait to see you. Luis
Police Raid Nabs Turkey--Hundreds Flee
4/09/2006
One of the wild turkeys stopped traffic on Chicago St yesterday, and a concerted strike force of Naperville Police laid siege to the bird. Police cars screamed to the corner, and bemused officers took their lives in their hands and chased the savage gobbler. One copper was seen to be carrying some kind of lasso. The apprehended turkey's accomplices, however, fled to safe- houses all along Millcreek Lane. They seem to be unperturbed by their partner's trip to the Big House, the Ol' Stony Lonesome, the Graybar Motel. They are currently digging vast trenches in Luis Urrea's garden. Neighbors have reason to believe that the new, blood-curdling Hunter S. Thompson shrieks heard on the street are the two idiot birds yelling at each other when they get on opposite sides of a house. Now that the fattening birds have taken to sleeping on people's front porches, the neighborhood FBI agent might have to set up a sniper team. Politicians are expected to announce the turkeys are illegal immigrants and need to be deported to the golf course to save our borders. News at eleven.
The Man With X-Ray Eyes!
4/08/2006
My eyes! My eyyyyyyes!
This is a little blog about prayer and small miracles. Many readers--and rightly so--don't give a damn about miracles. I recommend you go to one of my other postings about nature or writing or my neighborhood wild turkeys. (Those big fat suckers have taken to sleeping on people's porches now--you look up and see them squatting at front doors as if they're out distributing Jehovah's Wintess magazines.) But you Hummingbird's Daughter fans will appreciate this small tale as a further example of Teresita's (and Huila's) attempts to make us see the sacred in the daily mud and muddle.
I have bad eyes. Bad. When I did the missionary-type work written about in Across the Wire and By the Lake of Sleeping Children, I wore old, almost preshistoric, hard contacts. I got 'em when I was a college student, and the U system helped me through the health center. But they were way out of date, and I was too poor to replace them or get new glasses. They were non-permeable, too. So they were like bad shoes on tender feet. And we'd be out on the road for long hours--so long I'd wear the lenses 22 hours on some days. My eyes were killing me. Or I was killing my eyes. As soon as I could, I'd pop the lenses out, and my eyes were so sore I'd rub them like a fiend. Eye surgeons all over America are saying NO! right about now. Well, that dire combination deformed my corneas and made them wobbly and unstable. I found out later, when I escaped to Harvard in '82.
Years later I got the sugar! The Type 2, like every other Mexican in the world. My eyes started to bleed inside, and the retina swelled up (or swoll up as my cowpoke pals out West say). My vision went way out of whack, and I had to go in for ghastly eye tortures and laser cauterizations and have been pretty sure for the last five years that I am going blind. Or at least facing eyeball surgery.
Now, if you know my writing at all, you know how ironic it is that a writer so obsessed with seeing (the act of looking, watching, paying attention is one of the central pillars of my writing/theology--right after TRUST), that eye-writer is losing his sight. You might have noticed in my 2,187 appearances over the last couple of tours that I sometimes have trouble seeing the page to read to you. That's why.
You have already figured out, knowing me, that this li'l story is also about Trust. Ahem.
So I was confessing to Mike Poage, my pastor-poet-pal down there in Wichita, that I was revving up for a return to the eye clinic, certain that my eyes have rotted further, afraid they might be bleeding again. Dreading the cornea operations I have been told I'll need to see again. I prayed, as we all do--(insert wheedling and panicky voice here) God, I need your help!
I have to explain to you that this is in direct violation of my new rules for prayer. You see, I was one of those Spiritual Giants who collapsed and begged for all kinds of crap--when I was in trouble, need, a bad mood, in greed, in lust, wanted to get a job, get a book published. Thinking about it makes me sick. I was like those idiots praying for a Superbowl win in the name of Jay-sus!!! Amen and amen-ah!!!! No, no, no--my own soul was telling me this had nothing to do with Trust. How can you be a heroic wayfarer in this world begging for a constant bail-out? This is not the medicine-way, certainly.
So I had to teach myself this Trust bidness, starting with God. First, of course, you have to trust that there is a God. I aint preachin at ya, my homies. I'm just saying, you have to trust that part first. Then you have to trust that God (or Goddess--I'm not excluding my Wiccan friends here) is not only listening, but interactive. You get the picture. So I start to trust God, abandoning all my requests and whining and simply Showing Up for Duty. Yes, I prayed the deadly Thy Will Be Done prayers. And that's it. Flinching. Sure God was going to lay the smack-down on me like a WWE heavyweight at Wrestlemania.
What happened? Well, I started this new process of Trust right before The Devil's Highway came out. You can chart the results right here for yourself.
Again: no preaching. This is a story, not a sermon. This is what happened to me.
So I confessed to Poage and felt foolish because I had said I Need Your Help in my prayer. Even though I knew, almost as if from outside myself, that I did not need anything at all. What was happening was that I wanted help. But how can you say, God--I want it, and I want it now!
If you're a parent, you know how your six year old "needs" an Easy Bake Oven as badly as anything has ever been needed by mankind. Get me a Barbie Fairytopia, stat! But I had to be honest and say to God (the universe? the cosmos? Spirit? myself? I'm open to interpretations), I want help. Take it or leave it, help me if You see fit.
Guess what. Eyes are better. In fact, eyes got better by themselves. Eyes better enough, in fact, that I will get a fresh perscription today and be seeing almost perfectly. Imagine me almost falling out of the chair when, after all the tests, the eye surgeon told me: "Your eyesight is pretty good, actually." You mean, you mean, I'm not going blind all of a sudden? You mean I ONLY NEED NEW GLASSES? I can probably get inmto new contacts soon and have even better vision. No surgery. The bleeding has not come back. The retinal swelling has vanished. The wobbly corneas are calm.
I can see, I can see, I can see.
You better believe I don't care if gasoline will be $3 a gallon this summer, I am DRIVING MY ASS OFF so I can look at everything! I am going to gobble America through my eyes! I am going to suck up the aspens and the trucks, the coyotes and the cedars, the snow pack, the geysers, the freeways, the Stuckeys, Devil's Tower, marmots, elk, cement dinosaurs, Wall Drug, little tiny creeks, crows, buffalos.
I'll be looking for you. In Trust.
Trust is the homeground of Joy.
Joy is the gateway of Grace.
Grace is the vector of Awe.
Awe's harvest is miracles.
Dig it, Jack--I never lie to you.
Mr. X
Let's Chat for a Minute
This is a little blog about prayer and small miracles. Many readers--and rightly so--don't give a damn about miracles. I recommend you go to one of my other postings about nature or writing or my neighborhood wild turkeys. (Those big fat suckers have taken to sleeping on people's porches now--you look up and see them squatting at front doors as if they're out distributing Jehovah's Wintess magazines.) But you Hummingbird's Daughter fans will appreciate this small tale as a further example of Teresita's (and Huila's) attempts to make us see the sacred in the daily mud and muddle.
I have bad eyes. Bad. When I did the missionary-type work written about in Across the Wire and By the Lake of Sleeping Children, I wore old, almost preshistoric, hard contacts. I got 'em when I was a college student, and the U system helped me through the health center. But they were way out of date, and I was too poor to replace them or get new glasses. They were non-permeable, too. So they were like bad shoes on tender feet. And we'd be out on the road for long hours--so long I'd wear the lenses 22 hours on some days. My eyes were killing me. Or I was killing my eyes. As soon as I could, I'd pop the lenses out, and my eyes were so sore I'd rub them like a fiend. Eye surgeons all over America are saying NO! right about now. Well, that dire combination deformed my corneas and made them wobbly and unstable. I found out later, when I escaped to Harvard in '82.
Years later I got the sugar! The Type 2, like every other Mexican in the world. My eyes started to bleed inside, and the retina swelled up (or swoll up as my cowpoke pals out West say). My vision went way out of whack, and I had to go in for ghastly eye tortures and laser cauterizations and have been pretty sure for the last five years that I am going blind. Or at least facing eyeball surgery.
Now, if you know my writing at all, you know how ironic it is that a writer so obsessed with seeing (the act of looking, watching, paying attention is one of the central pillars of my writing/theology--right after TRUST), that eye-writer is losing his sight. You might have noticed in my 2,187 appearances over the last couple of tours that I sometimes have trouble seeing the page to read to you. That's why.
You have already figured out, knowing me, that this li'l story is also about Trust. Ahem.
So I was confessing to Mike Poage, my pastor-poet-pal down there in Wichita, that I was revving up for a return to the eye clinic, certain that my eyes have rotted further, afraid they might be bleeding again. Dreading the cornea operations I have been told I'll need to see again. I prayed, as we all do--(insert wheedling and panicky voice here) God, I need your help!
I have to explain to you that this is in direct violation of my new rules for prayer. You see, I was one of those Spiritual Giants who collapsed and begged for all kinds of crap--when I was in trouble, need, a bad mood, in greed, in lust, wanted to get a job, get a book published. Thinking about it makes me sick. I was like those idiots praying for a Superbowl win in the name of Jay-sus!!! Amen and amen-ah!!!! No, no, no--my own soul was telling me this had nothing to do with Trust. How can you be a heroic wayfarer in this world begging for a constant bail-out? This is not the medicine-way, certainly.
So I had to teach myself this Trust bidness, starting with God. First, of course, you have to trust that there is a God. I aint preachin at ya, my homies. I'm just saying, you have to trust that part first. Then you have to trust that God (or Goddess--I'm not excluding my Wiccan friends here) is not only listening, but interactive. You get the picture. So I start to trust God, abandoning all my requests and whining and simply Showing Up for Duty. Yes, I prayed the deadly Thy Will Be Done prayers. And that's it. Flinching. Sure God was going to lay the smack-down on me like a WWE heavyweight at Wrestlemania.
What happened? Well, I started this new process of Trust right before The Devil's Highway came out. You can chart the results right here for yourself.
Again: no preaching. This is a story, not a sermon. This is what happened to me.
So I confessed to Poage and felt foolish because I had said I Need Your Help in my prayer. Even though I knew, almost as if from outside myself, that I did not need anything at all. What was happening was that I wanted help. But how can you say, God--I want it, and I want it now!
If you're a parent, you know how your six year old "needs" an Easy Bake Oven as badly as anything has ever been needed by mankind. Get me a Barbie Fairytopia, stat! But I had to be honest and say to God (the universe? the cosmos? Spirit? myself? I'm open to interpretations), I want help. Take it or leave it, help me if You see fit.
Guess what. Eyes are better. In fact, eyes got better by themselves. Eyes better enough, in fact, that I will get a fresh perscription today and be seeing almost perfectly. Imagine me almost falling out of the chair when, after all the tests, the eye surgeon told me: "Your eyesight is pretty good, actually." You mean, you mean, I'm not going blind all of a sudden? You mean I ONLY NEED NEW GLASSES? I can probably get inmto new contacts soon and have even better vision. No surgery. The bleeding has not come back. The retinal swelling has vanished. The wobbly corneas are calm.
I can see, I can see, I can see.
You better believe I don't care if gasoline will be $3 a gallon this summer, I am DRIVING MY ASS OFF so I can look at everything! I am going to gobble America through my eyes! I am going to suck up the aspens and the trucks, the coyotes and the cedars, the snow pack, the geysers, the freeways, the Stuckeys, Devil's Tower, marmots, elk, cement dinosaurs, Wall Drug, little tiny creeks, crows, buffalos.
I'll be looking for you. In Trust.
Trust is the homeground of Joy.
Joy is the gateway of Grace.
Grace is the vector of Awe.
Awe's harvest is miracles.
Dig it, Jack--I never lie to you.
Mr. X
4/04/2006
I usually try to make this blog a literary destination--like a peek into the notebooks and the history, new poems, stuff like that. However, I'd like to float an idea or two your way. Let's chat. Got your coffee? Good.
To begin, my killer treadmill got here this morning. One of God's gifts lately is that I can afford to save myself from going to the gym, which I hate, and bringing gym quality equipment home. Which I did! So the dog and cat went in the basement and stared at me with a "what the heck are you doing?" look as I pounded away. Hey! Three miles before work! All right, maybe I did 2 1/2 miles. OK, OK--it was 2 1/4 miles, but it was still before work! Come on, give me a break.
Two things are on my mind.
One: I am going to beloved Fishtrap in Oregon this summer. The best writers' retreat anywhere. If you want to write and hang out with deer, mountains, rivers, pine trees, blue jays and Pacific Northwest ranchers, poets, novelists, loggers, cowgirls, bear hunters, haiku masters, zen monks, hikers, birders, potters, folk singers, goths, dreamers...this is the place for you. You'll have to sign up fast, though--space is limited. Check out their website and you'll see how cool it is. I tend to teach there about every two years. I often threaten to move there and live in peace forever. It's that good.
But I have been thinking about launching an e-workshop through this website. What do you think about that? Your own personal Fishtrap, no matter where you are--if you're a writer or simply a fan. I can easily, and free of charge, put up some useful stuff now--like a list of recommended books, thoughts on writing, things like that. But I have this other thought nudging me, and I don't know if it's insane or not. I don't know if anyone would do it, or, if they want to do it, how I'd orchestrate it. But if enough of you do want it, I'll be in Seattle soon hanging with Michelle, our secret website guru. She is the shamaness of the cyber ritual. I think we can design this.
So here's the idea: what if we create a workshop/retreat for you? What if you PayPal or something like that, a reasonable rate. And you get things like: 1) a daily meditaion on writing/useful or intriguing quote via e-mail, for a year; 2) a monthly packet of writing promts/exercises; 3) the occasional writing essay or piece of writing about writing from me; 4) some kind of message board, members site where you could post work and have it workshopped in community (password protected so only members go there); 5) new works (like the occasional chapter of Hummingbird II); 6) and regular message sessions (live) or even group phone-ins where we could check in with each other and/or chat? Is this an idea that would interest anybody? E-mail me, or post a response on the blog. I'd really like to know.
Writing (and reading) are lonesome. Is it worth the effort to make a portable sanctuary for the writing soul? Is it too much work on my end? Feedback, please.
The second thing relates to the Hummingbird.
As you probably know, Teresita makes her paperback debut this week. I'm starting the tour at Anderson's in Naperville. Wed night (the 5th). I'm starting the day with a ,ong interview with Kasey Kowars for his radio show. The following week I'm going to Missouri--and then we're off and running.
One of the reasons I wrote the book was to bring Teresita back to the world. I didn't want her to be forgotten. But, you know, when you work with mystical types long enough, you get mystical. I was already a freaky li'l spiritual type anyway. But I surely feel that she is alive somewhere, and she is aware of us.
Wouldn't it be amazing to open a website called Messages For Teresita? A place where people can send her an e-mail. A request for prayer, or a message, or a confession? And we agree to have some serious folks pray for those requests. Make the site anonymous. But let people know they can talk to her--because I suspect she is listening. And even if it's only us, we will honor them. Confess and get it off your chest.
I think it's crazy.
But I also think, as an experiment, and a kind of spiritual/art project, it might be astounding. Can you imagine what things you might read there?
What do you think?
Let me know.
Yrs 4ever,
L
Dirk Says I Wore A Cape
To begin, my killer treadmill got here this morning. One of God's gifts lately is that I can afford to save myself from going to the gym, which I hate, and bringing gym quality equipment home. Which I did! So the dog and cat went in the basement and stared at me with a "what the heck are you doing?" look as I pounded away. Hey! Three miles before work! All right, maybe I did 2 1/2 miles. OK, OK--it was 2 1/4 miles, but it was still before work! Come on, give me a break.
Two things are on my mind.
One: I am going to beloved Fishtrap in Oregon this summer. The best writers' retreat anywhere. If you want to write and hang out with deer, mountains, rivers, pine trees, blue jays and Pacific Northwest ranchers, poets, novelists, loggers, cowgirls, bear hunters, haiku masters, zen monks, hikers, birders, potters, folk singers, goths, dreamers...this is the place for you. You'll have to sign up fast, though--space is limited. Check out their website and you'll see how cool it is. I tend to teach there about every two years. I often threaten to move there and live in peace forever. It's that good.
But I have been thinking about launching an e-workshop through this website. What do you think about that? Your own personal Fishtrap, no matter where you are--if you're a writer or simply a fan. I can easily, and free of charge, put up some useful stuff now--like a list of recommended books, thoughts on writing, things like that. But I have this other thought nudging me, and I don't know if it's insane or not. I don't know if anyone would do it, or, if they want to do it, how I'd orchestrate it. But if enough of you do want it, I'll be in Seattle soon hanging with Michelle, our secret website guru. She is the shamaness of the cyber ritual. I think we can design this.
So here's the idea: what if we create a workshop/retreat for you? What if you PayPal or something like that, a reasonable rate. And you get things like: 1) a daily meditaion on writing/useful or intriguing quote via e-mail, for a year; 2) a monthly packet of writing promts/exercises; 3) the occasional writing essay or piece of writing about writing from me; 4) some kind of message board, members site where you could post work and have it workshopped in community (password protected so only members go there); 5) new works (like the occasional chapter of Hummingbird II); 6) and regular message sessions (live) or even group phone-ins where we could check in with each other and/or chat? Is this an idea that would interest anybody? E-mail me, or post a response on the blog. I'd really like to know.
Writing (and reading) are lonesome. Is it worth the effort to make a portable sanctuary for the writing soul? Is it too much work on my end? Feedback, please.
The second thing relates to the Hummingbird.
As you probably know, Teresita makes her paperback debut this week. I'm starting the tour at Anderson's in Naperville. Wed night (the 5th). I'm starting the day with a ,ong interview with Kasey Kowars for his radio show. The following week I'm going to Missouri--and then we're off and running.
One of the reasons I wrote the book was to bring Teresita back to the world. I didn't want her to be forgotten. But, you know, when you work with mystical types long enough, you get mystical. I was already a freaky li'l spiritual type anyway. But I surely feel that she is alive somewhere, and she is aware of us.
Wouldn't it be amazing to open a website called Messages For Teresita? A place where people can send her an e-mail. A request for prayer, or a message, or a confession? And we agree to have some serious folks pray for those requests. Make the site anonymous. But let people know they can talk to her--because I suspect she is listening. And even if it's only us, we will honor them. Confess and get it off your chest.
I think it's crazy.
But I also think, as an experiment, and a kind of spiritual/art project, it might be astounding. Can you imagine what things you might read there?
What do you think?
Let me know.
Yrs 4ever,
L
4/02/2006
My ol' pal Dirk Harmon (he has a couple of books out there and a website--check him out) sent me an email and reminded me that I wore a black cape to do mad artistic acitivities in high school. I thought, You are so full of crap, Dirk! You friggin' liar! He was remembering my insane plot to become a published writer. Well, I wanted to be a cartoonist, too. And a Salvador Dali. And a Bob Dylan/ Leonard Cohen/ Jim Morrison/ Neil Young/ David Bowie/ Donovan/ John Lennon/ Alice Cooper. And a poet. And a novelist. And an actor. So I was jealous of our comrade Bagu--who was then and is now some sort of cartooning savant--our own damn R. Crumb. And Bagu had done this book about pillbugs. I WAS SO JEALOUS I could spit. So my friends in the delinquent dope fiend greasy hair and off campus smoking world--I was in the hair gang, no doubt, but not the pot and ciggies and petty crime auto mechanic world--were in the offset printing class. Of course. Also my glam friend JoJo. He was so Mott and T Rex! Anyway, the boys pirated the machinery in our high school after hours and made the plates and ran the presses. We made this book with scrap paper and stolen staples. And the mad dogs and dopers did weird things like get the plates backwatds or upside-down, but this struck me as surreal and revolutionary, so I dug it.
Dirk remembers me in that cape sneaking around the print shop--if a guy in a cape could be thought to be sneaking. And it suddenly hit me--I did have a cape! I had forgotten. And I no doubt wore it to the illegal printing sessions because it would have had the cracked panache I believed was my birthright. (I wore doctor and dentist shirts; I painted my shoes; I organized clown assaults on classes and sometimes crawled in and out the window of my English teacher's homeroom in whiteface; and I took off my pants on stage in the big auditorium). No ridiculous behavior was beyond me. So I probably did put on a cape! To print my first book! Sorry, Dirk!
It was a fever for art. Maybe fame. Probably, now that I have a six year old daughter exactly like I was, attention. Yeah, I wanted your attention. Just like that Pretenders song. "Give it to me! 'Cause I'm/ Gonna make you see/ There's nobody else here/ Quite like me. I'm special! So special...." We were all special.
I was in an army of artists and dancers, actors and pranksters. We were all going to be famous. We were all going to be rich and escape the working class. We were all going to change the world. It's funny, but most of us didn't. I don't think I was supposed to...not like I did when I was 16 and 18. I think I was too stupid to turn away. I missed the signals telling me it would be saner to quit. Now I threaten to quit all the time. I threaten to vanish back into my sacred Rockies and plant apple trees. But, you know...probably not.
Here's to my friends and all their dreams. I watch the turkeys in the yard, and I watch the paperbark peel off the birch tree--I could write you poems on those sheets like an Indian ghost--and I think about all my companions. I don't know where you are today. I don't know who you are. If you're well. But I think about you. I keep writing you yearbook entries, hoping we'll see each other in the hall.
Remember what Zep said: "I can't quit you, baby...."
XXX, L
Dirk remembers me in that cape sneaking around the print shop--if a guy in a cape could be thought to be sneaking. And it suddenly hit me--I did have a cape! I had forgotten. And I no doubt wore it to the illegal printing sessions because it would have had the cracked panache I believed was my birthright. (I wore doctor and dentist shirts; I painted my shoes; I organized clown assaults on classes and sometimes crawled in and out the window of my English teacher's homeroom in whiteface; and I took off my pants on stage in the big auditorium). No ridiculous behavior was beyond me. So I probably did put on a cape! To print my first book! Sorry, Dirk!
It was a fever for art. Maybe fame. Probably, now that I have a six year old daughter exactly like I was, attention. Yeah, I wanted your attention. Just like that Pretenders song. "Give it to me! 'Cause I'm/ Gonna make you see/ There's nobody else here/ Quite like me. I'm special! So special...." We were all special.
I was in an army of artists and dancers, actors and pranksters. We were all going to be famous. We were all going to be rich and escape the working class. We were all going to change the world. It's funny, but most of us didn't. I don't think I was supposed to...not like I did when I was 16 and 18. I think I was too stupid to turn away. I missed the signals telling me it would be saner to quit. Now I threaten to quit all the time. I threaten to vanish back into my sacred Rockies and plant apple trees. But, you know...probably not.
Here's to my friends and all their dreams. I watch the turkeys in the yard, and I watch the paperbark peel off the birch tree--I could write you poems on those sheets like an Indian ghost--and I think about all my companions. I don't know where you are today. I don't know who you are. If you're well. But I think about you. I keep writing you yearbook entries, hoping we'll see each other in the hall.
Remember what Zep said: "I can't quit you, baby...."
XXX, L
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