Post Father's Day Writing & A Meditation
6/18/2007
Frankie, Grace, Clarke, Prudence, Cheryl, Janna, Cousin Dave, White Eagle, Poage, Juan Sanchez, Maria, Cinder, Olivas, Red Charlie, Bonn-Dawg, Esteban, Swedish Samurai, enemies, friends, fans, Constant Readers, et al:

I am pouring sweat. It's 90 degrees out here, and humid. Squadrons of shrieking cicadas fly around the treetops looking for love. The dogs are passed out on the floor, sticking to the wood like pancakes. And I am like Elmer Fudd, muttering "kill the wabbits, kill the wabbits."

My famous Mother's Day garden I planted for Cinderella was decimated by Mongol rabbits while we were floating around with the fish and singing our lungs out in Sunny Liston's tropical cab on St. Thomas. 1/3 of the garden completely gone--to the dirt. Much of the rest nibbled and mutilated. Like the delphinium--three feet tall and blooming, but without a single leaf on the whole stalk! It looks like some weird Q-Tip. So Cindy, Eric, Megan and the family terrorist, Chayo, did the perfect Father's Day thing, which was to sneak out and buy about a million dollars' worth of new plants for me to remake the garden. As Macho Man Randy Savage used to say before he wrestled: Oohhh YEEEAAAAHHHH!!!

Is sweat holy? I think sweat is holy. Here's a goofy bit of holiness I figured out in high school. One of those revelations that hit a boy's mind and somehow help form the Wen-Fu of his writing forever. I was holding hands with Becky. I was always, or at least every chance I got, holding hands with Becky. And our hands became moist in the California heat. And I was deeply astounded to realize that something of her, and something of me, mixed and made something of us. Whoa, dude. I was freaked out. I wrote a poem about it in my ever-present notebook. It probably seems silly to adults, but it was a ray from heaven to me at fifteen or sixteen.

Miracles are small, man. That's why we miss them so often.

A really good writing book for you who are interested in the Wen-Fu/haikai way of writing I reach for is Wabi Sabi Simple by Richard R. Powell. The cover says: "Create beauty. Value Imperfection. Live deeply." You don't want to write like me, and you really don't want to live like me. But you would get some joy out of this book, and who knows--maybe some poems.

Today's writing thought, from Don DeLillo:

"I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read. It comes from all the things that are in the air. At some point, you begin to write sentences and paragraphs that don't sound like other writers'."

More DeLillo tomorrow.
L


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