Keeping it together, to dream happy

Good feelings drift out there, under the waves, along those long country roads, in the soothing tones of friends voices. Harvesting growth and simple joys I listen to the spin of tires, songs of birds and crickets, sounds of the woods at night. The pains of mind and body make their endless circuit around me, coming and going, and looming large then small in comparison. Sleep blesses me with happy dreams sometimes, challenges me with stressful nightmares others. I just went from The Grapes of Wrath into Tobacco Road. The book's not as funny as the movie, but it helps the time pass in an oddly uplifting way.

Been seeing my kids three times/week for awhile now. I would like to spend vastly more time than that ~10-hours or less with them, but it appears that for awhile I will see them even less. Life passes both quickly and slowly, but our visits end too soon. I see that they will join me ever again as long as I maintain my health and wits and life energy. That means working, excercising, sleeping, meditating, and eating with as much vim as I can muster. All those things are precious, and help me remain present for the next time with my darlings, not just my kids but all the wonderful people in my circle of love.

Tidbits, Trains, and Cycling

"I'm ain't nothing but a dirty dog, a briny hound, a dirty dog." --Jimmie Revard's Oklahoma Playboys

Cycling loves me so much that reciprocating comes preternatural. Had a way sweet ride along the Richmond shoreline Saturday - Point Isabelle to Ferry Point then back through the tunnel by Point Richmond, through what the wife & I used to call "Illegal Activities Land", back to Point Isabelle. To top it off our wonderfully unhurried trio threw in some impromptu adventure mountain biking to attend a King Cake party at the Albany Landfill, where I of course got Frog (the saviour) in my slice of cake, and so will be hosting a party this Friday in Oakland (buzz me for details, or comment on this post). Little sore, super stoked, "like a couple of kids, flipping our lids".

Been wondering what gets us through the nights not fun. Each of us with our own set of tools - meditation, liquor, television, books with yellowed pages, hot baths, the wild wonders of ancient and modern medicine, + a wide variety of excercise routines. More to the point is what might get me through this dark & stormy now. Sleep, bicycling, better things. No Selping! (not Sleeping + Not Helping)

My favorite part in André Gide's "The Counterfeiters" was when they dared each other to lie between the tracks as a train passed over. Then that one guy (my hero) did it. He passed out from fear as the train passed over him, then woke up feeling transformed, not to mention with an awful ringing in his ears. I'm a firm believer in donning one's stunner shades, ear plugs, helmet, gloves, and going dumb. Push your luck!

"I'm going down to the railroad, lay my head on the track. When that train come along I'm going to jerk it back." --from Dirty Hangover Blues by W. Lee O'Daniel & His Hillbilly Boys. That line cracks me up every time. As Homer Simpson so astutely put it: "I thought I had an appetite for destruction but all I wanted was a club sandwich."

Dying for Laughs

When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? by George Carlin

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Page 100 has a wonderful description of Uncle D'Artagnan, who apparently like to wear a tassel from the end of his member, so right away I liked the book. Upon closer examination, however, Mr. Carlin seemed to run thin on ideas, with an awful lot of repetition. The good parts were hilarious, but I can't honestly say I read all the book, even though George was one of my favorite comedians. I have vinyl of George Carlin that's more listenable than this book, but as a fan I still enjoyed it overall.


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Bradbury in the late 1970s

Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mr. Bradbury's words do not shine as cleverly as they seem to in his earlier collections, but there are some very worthwhile stories included. Also, he handles topics outside his usual forte, like gay couples coming out to their families, and Hemingway's pet parrot. What made it all smiles for me though was the very scary story titled The October Game - super scary, wicked scary, like I like them, and isn't that really what it's all about?



"By the sound of the children you knew the calendar day. By their screams you knew what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the year." --from The October Game


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Can't Forget That I Can't Remember What

The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers by Daniel L. Schacter

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well, it turns out to be mostly common sense, but not quite all of it. I am enough of a nerd to love knowing about the how and why of my sometimes spotty, sometimes very vivid memory. My grandmother's battle with Alzheimer's made it more interesting also. The author tended to ramble on a bit, so the book doesn't exactly read itself, but I would still recommend it if you have a tolerance for psychology.


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Not To Be Confused With Heartburn

Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man by Sam Keen

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
Keen writes way too preachy, and although he dug up a few clever quotes, the book disappointed me to the point that I could not finish it. That surprised me because it came highly recommended and the title sounded quite promising. The title thing was big for me due to my extended romance with the concept of having a fire in one's belly. One bright San Francisco morning warped by a twenty-something hangover my friends & I came across a raspy wino sitting on a steep street outside a liquor store that happened to be in a fair to middling mood. We gave him some dough for booze and he explained to us about the fire in the belly. The grizzled little man had a way of yelling "fire, fire in your belly", with a very strong accent on the fire part, that my friends & I would take turns bellowing to each other when we were drunk for the next ten years. You see, said the wizened wino, "a 40-oz malt liquor in the morning won't give you that fire, you need wine, or perhaps whiskey, to give that wondrous burn we call the fire in the belly." We roared with laughter, overstanding, and devil-may-care alcoholic bonding before setting off to chase that flickering flame across ten-thousand twilights, and again tomorrow. Cannot count the times I have cried for that fire, done violence for it, gone hungry, pushed my body to collapse, and still I would swear by it's unassailable greatness without hesitation. Keen does not this concept justice, in my admittedly arrogant & condescending opinion.






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Death By Work

John Henry, the Steel-Driving Man by Corinne J. Naden

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not many children's stories tell about a guy that works himself to death, but this one is different. There is, of course, more to it than that, but sure enough, at the end the big loot dies with with a hammer in his hand, and his baby in the other. I remember reading a different version of the story as a child, which I recall as having had better art than this version. Loved how John Henry kicked that steam engine's sorry ass, but then somewhat dreaded the pain & mystery of his death that I always knew was coming (after the first shocking time reading it, that is). Our cat Henry is named after him. John Henry was bad ass, and I still race cars, scooters, and motorcycles on my bicycle in the spirit of such. I totally kick their ass off the line, even the muscle car guys sweating the light turning green, and it hasn't killed me yet.


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Flirting With The Snow Queen

The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
"Old memories mean nothing to me" --Hazel Dickens



This book stimulated shadowy memories of a teacher reading all or part of this book during classroom storytime, or maybe it was just a similar story. Whatever the case, at various points I sensed myself sitting on the floor of my pale yellow 1st grade classroom in the Petaluma hills, the blinds drawn to dim the room, feeling the resonance of the woman's enthusiastic voice, think it my have been Mrs. Geotzinger with her dark hair, during a string of cloudy & rainy days in 1976.



It took a number of tries to get my son & daughter interested, but once we got going with a real book mark & all it was on. I enjoyed it quite, as did the wee ones. The thing that got me the best turned out to be the cold, illustrated with snow & ice & wind & bare feet with forgotten jackets. Hans wrote a cut above for this one, in my opinion, seemed to take more than his typical degree of care with the sentence composition, with very balanced and complementary themes - men & women, heat & cold, animals & humans, kindness & cruelty, heaven & hell, reality & illusion, old age & youth, all the deep topics to which humans perpetually return. A part of my soul dwells in the Snow Queen's palace evermore, in a vast hall of ice & pain, layered illusions entwined intimately with razor shard frosted edges of eternal death. One could think of it as how I might remodel A Clean Well Lighted Place For Books.



At the end Hans goes uberChristian on us, but I forgive him this, chalking it up to the time & place in which the dear boy dreamed up his darling little masterpiece.


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Nobody Knows

"I was not capable of discussing this with anyone because I felt, though I could not explain why, that my reasons might be valid only to me" -- excerpt from Living to Tell the Tale, written by my flirtatious Columbian gold, my oh-so dear, getting-on-in-his-years Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Master of Macondo

The world's been getting bold, messing with me, taunting me, warning me sharp. Love this dangerous Autumn, gently blind warmth breezes invoking romantic embraces of perilous cliffs I've barely met. Tea will be my last companion, so I pay attention to her, tend the moods of her spirits, inhale as deep as can be that timeless love.

Three Stigmata meet Fourth Musketeer

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
ha ha ha ha ha, this crap runs deep, but it's fabulous. Perhaps because I read forearmed with the insights found in Carrère's biography of Mr. Dick, perhaps because I taste the undeniable truth in my sharpened steel teeth, regardless of how or why, this book spoke bleeding volumes to me. I know what you're thinking - always comes back to the drugs. At least I'm consistent. You see, there are some that believe that Jesus was part of a sect that grew psychedelic mushrooms in caves near the Dead Sea, and that the whole holy sacrament thing is about chowing down on some serious boomers, opening z-mind, getting in touch with the real deal Holyfield reality the human consciousness typically avoids so as to keep things complicated for fledgling beings, so they don't all flip out and stop going to work. Chew a little Can-D and melt that ego, to love humanity, like everybody coming at once, or dying at once, tempered by agape, not for the weak, but it'll open your luxury robotic video eye-slits right on up, plus it feels terrific.


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A Crack in the Edge of the World

A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 by Simon Winchester

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
My knowledge as a Professional Geologist registered in the deliciously golden state of California not withstanding, this was a fun read for me, if you don't count the lengthy and detailed appendices. Winchester has great talent for breaking complicated stuff down, but not in a concise way. The science of the book was not the main attraction for me. Rather, the excerpts of writings from the time, and the anecdotes about famous people were what evoked the most time-travelly feelings in me, and those feelings are what I hope to experience while reading a historical novel like this.



The astutely concluded connections to the rest of the world that the 1906 earthquake has were fun too, but take me back to Ansel Adams on the actual morning of the quake. That was my favorite part.


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