2/17/2008
Sunday: rain falls and freezes on piles of snow. One giant three-toed turkey track outside the door, rabbit and possum tracks and what is that--a fox? Our phantom coyote running through?
Immigration Monday will be created by Grace this week, of Clarke and Grace fame. And that's it. I have said all I can say about that subject. I'm taking the blog back for poems and writing and nature and spirit. If I have anything to say of any value, anything NEW after 100,000 words about immigration, I'll post it here. Rarely.
To the anonymous poet who asked such good questions about my poem "Valentine"in the comments section--yes. Indeed. Mystic. That's me.
All true love poems are also poems to God. Indwelling fire illuminating the beloved. Perhaps the beloved is a pathway to the divine? And I do read Rumi. Love Rumi.
Eros is mishandled (no pun intended) because the erotic is also sacred, but we forget.
If you read any part of Hummingbird's Daughter, you'll see the mystical bent is the hook where I'm hung.
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By the way, "RobertP." He writes me sometimes about obscure rock bands I ought to hear. Yes. My inner teen prays to the God of Rock that it's THE Robert P. Hammer of the gods...Valhalla I am coming....
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Leaving tomorrow for Boise. They say we'll have a crowd of 700 there. Those of you who have been on the journey know it started with about five in bookstores and 15 at readings. I did one reading in SF that had exactly two old men in the audience. One was homeless, one was asleep. In LA, I had two folks in the seats, and when the bookstore announced it was me, they got up and left. At Ol' Miss nobody came at all, and my hosts took me out to lunch instead. I will always remember the manager of Midnight Special in Santa Monica telling me, when nobody showed up: "The other managers in the store get writers people want to see. I always get writers like you!" Ha! How can you not laugh?
(All right, at the time, you don't laugh. It was a bad week on a bad tour. I had the flu. I'd lost all my plane tickets. My publicity staff had abandoned me for Dan Quayle's tour. But, at least, there was this: after the deadly Santa Monica non-event, I fevered my way back to the Beverly Hills Hilton in a cab, and Gloria Estefan ran into me charging out of the elevator with a dress over her arm. Bam! She was very small. I was not.)
I don't like to leave home. But I don't like my home being here. This is one of the universe's little tricks to keep me working. If I ever stumble into Rancho Urrea (Cabora Norte?), where there is a barn to write in, a garden to pee in, some trees to talk to, a pond for turtles, a pig or two, hummingbirds, and really big mountains out the window, I might never tour again. Why do it? I have way too much to talk to the elk, beavers, magpies, marmots and wolves about. Don't even start with the buffalo and pronghorns. Bears" Bigfoot? Fuggeddaboutit. Me and Cinderella, as the Wallflowers song says, Got it all together. It would be us, under quilts, watching the TiVo!
Start a press of my own so I can publish unknown writers. And my own obscure crap like Wastelanders (see blog posts) and cartoons. Go solar. Get off the grid. Eat apples.
I'm afraid I'll turn into one of those strange fellows in overalls and wild hair.
But I'll probably do writing retreats out in the barn. Plenty of tea and coffee. You're invited.
4ever Alive, L
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Immigration Monday will be created by Grace this week, of Clarke and Grace fame. And that's it. I have said all I can say about that subject. I'm taking the blog back for poems and writing and nature and spirit. If I have anything to say of any value, anything NEW after 100,000 words about immigration, I'll post it here. Rarely.
To the anonymous poet who asked such good questions about my poem "Valentine"in the comments section--yes. Indeed. Mystic. That's me.
All true love poems are also poems to God. Indwelling fire illuminating the beloved. Perhaps the beloved is a pathway to the divine? And I do read Rumi. Love Rumi.
Eros is mishandled (no pun intended) because the erotic is also sacred, but we forget.
If you read any part of Hummingbird's Daughter, you'll see the mystical bent is the hook where I'm hung.
#
By the way, "RobertP." He writes me sometimes about obscure rock bands I ought to hear. Yes. My inner teen prays to the God of Rock that it's THE Robert P. Hammer of the gods...Valhalla I am coming....
#
Leaving tomorrow for Boise. They say we'll have a crowd of 700 there. Those of you who have been on the journey know it started with about five in bookstores and 15 at readings. I did one reading in SF that had exactly two old men in the audience. One was homeless, one was asleep. In LA, I had two folks in the seats, and when the bookstore announced it was me, they got up and left. At Ol' Miss nobody came at all, and my hosts took me out to lunch instead. I will always remember the manager of Midnight Special in Santa Monica telling me, when nobody showed up: "The other managers in the store get writers people want to see. I always get writers like you!" Ha! How can you not laugh?
(All right, at the time, you don't laugh. It was a bad week on a bad tour. I had the flu. I'd lost all my plane tickets. My publicity staff had abandoned me for Dan Quayle's tour. But, at least, there was this: after the deadly Santa Monica non-event, I fevered my way back to the Beverly Hills Hilton in a cab, and Gloria Estefan ran into me charging out of the elevator with a dress over her arm. Bam! She was very small. I was not.)
I don't like to leave home. But I don't like my home being here. This is one of the universe's little tricks to keep me working. If I ever stumble into Rancho Urrea (Cabora Norte?), where there is a barn to write in, a garden to pee in, some trees to talk to, a pond for turtles, a pig or two, hummingbirds, and really big mountains out the window, I might never tour again. Why do it? I have way too much to talk to the elk, beavers, magpies, marmots and wolves about. Don't even start with the buffalo and pronghorns. Bears" Bigfoot? Fuggeddaboutit. Me and Cinderella, as the Wallflowers song says, Got it all together. It would be us, under quilts, watching the TiVo!
Start a press of my own so I can publish unknown writers. And my own obscure crap like Wastelanders (see blog posts) and cartoons. Go solar. Get off the grid. Eat apples.
I'm afraid I'll turn into one of those strange fellows in overalls and wild hair.
But I'll probably do writing retreats out in the barn. Plenty of tea and coffee. You're invited.
4ever Alive, L
# posted by Luis @ 2:45 PM 
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