the angora lake letters of rabbi niemann

my friends give much better advice than i do. read: 'my sister from the black lagoon' by laurie fox, 'foolsgold' by susan wooldridge, 'gentle vengeance' by charles lebaron, and 'a little book of forgiveness' by d. patrick miller. that said, i have tried my hand at the trade (many times). an example is the summer i worked at angora lookout and wrote to my friends, changing their names and my own. here's an example:

July 10, 198_

Dear Skeezix,

Hurry is the hidden enemy. I'm never safe from anxiety. When I begin bumping into things, watch out. I'm as likely to run you down as say good morning.

How is it I accomplish so much sometimes, not skipping a heartbeat, and other times do nothing, panting all the way? It must have to do with organizing my time, options for breakdowns.

My car broke down yesterday, as I was returning to the lake. I drove thirty miles in second gear. A simple, one-hour repair turned into a three-hour ordeal. Wondering, waiting, worrying, I banged into a railway barrier and bloodied my head. That finally slowed me down. I sat and meditated by a river. I watched two kids learning to kayak. I watched a young woman come home from work. She bent over a man stretched out on a backyard couch. She massaged his temples gently. I felt lonely.

Somehow, when we do the essential first, what is close to our heart, whether it be work, play, or love, we accomplish a lot, we do what we need most, and the rest is simply extra.

No wonder we need to sit by a river, let it wash our cares away. If love comes first, don't substitute bowling, or the rigors of the office. Seek out love, and be satisfied.

Love,

Neimann

read the rest at www.pbase.com/wwp/rabbi
poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems
pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp

greek salad days

it's so strange to go back and look at all the stuff i've written. much of it seems like doggerel and preaching! on the other hand once in a while i'd escape into things much more fun, like the only novel i've written, "Visible", based on my eight months on a greek island in the sixties. i combined myself and other characters, so don't take this as strictly autobiographical!

5.

"You're very inexperienced," said Minaret.
She was leaning on her elbow, looking down at him. He had just opened his eyes. Sunlight streamed in a window. It was brutal. It was morning. "You really are," she said.

His mouth tasted like ashes.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"What?"

"How old?"

"Old as Methusala."

"No," she laughed. "Not so young. Twenty-two, or three, I think."

"Twenty-three," he said, remembering.

"Amazing! Twenty-three, and never been bred."

"I have been...briefly."

"God, I'll bet it was brief! Minaret's bare breasts quivered before his eyes. Two pink pears tipped by tiny, grey-blue nipples. She must be cold, he thought. "Tell me something about yourself," said Minaret, stroking the hair on his chest.

How had this happened? He'd gotten drunk and gone to bed with a woman. He'd done something spontaneous, something human. It gave him a headache. "What about some coffee," he said.

"Oh, you poor boy." Minaret leaned down, kissed him on the chest. "You're getting brown."

Yes, his body less like a white slug every day. "Coffee?"

"Alright, alright." Minaret bounced out of bed. She threw on a robe, and disappeared from the room. A minute later, P. heard pans rattling and Minaret singing:

Barely, barley,
Whip it all up fairly.
Jennie's got a blue nose,
Judy ate a cankered rose.
Barley, barley,
Whip it all up fairly.

How had it happened? Astrology...Mozart... She was going to show him something. I guess, he thought, she's shown me.

there's the raciest part in the story! however, i think the rest is fun. www.pbase.com/wwp/greece you're welcome to read for free.
pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp
poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems
enjoy.

trial and error

when young, i dreamed about a beautiful, dark-haired witch with black eyes, who, everytime she kissed me, sapped my strength. i'm still living in that land, and this is one of my favorite collection of poems.

LUCK

The fool falls on his feet,
that's for sure, and the wise
man breaks his bones, that's
how it happens. For example,
a fool and a wise man decided
to go on the road. They bought
a cart. The wise man wanted
to put the horse before the cart.
"No," said the fool, "that way he'll
get tired, and besides, he might
fall in a hole." So they put the
horse behind the cart and began
their journey by going backwards.
They were halfway around the world
when the wise man said, "This
is getting me nowhere, I'm,
going home," and he set out
to follow their tracks back. Now
what he didn't know was the
Devil disguised as a huge worm
had eaten a hole in the road
somewhere between here and China,
so he fell in the hole and broke
his neck. The fool went ahead,
singing songs and having a good
time. He came home yesterday,
and I'm marrying him tomorrow.
Marry somebody lucky, I say,
and you'll never go hungry.
The Devil can't second-guess a fool.

read the rest of them at www.pbase.com/wwp/fairytales
more poems: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/poems
pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp

escape

yes, leaving town is one of the best ways to escape chores! in 1992 i spent four months in europe, two of them with my travel partner, berta gardner www.pbase.com/wwp/berta (the picture from mexico on another of our trips)

here's a few notes i wrote after coming home.

3. Whatever makes the present everything makes us live: an accident, love, travel.

4. Because everything is strange when we travel, we look with children's eyes, hence renewal.

5. It's strange that what makes us comfortable also makes us miserable.

12. It's a fine line between feeling alien and feeling refreshed.

15. He searches the world for intimate spaces. The grand did nothing to comfort him.

17. All our lives it's a battle between buying a house and taking a trip.

19. We search and search for the place that feels like a mother to us.

20. Only when he knew the whole world would he feel safe at home.

32. In becoming spiritual we often desire to escape life.

33. More often we are in love with the idea of liberty than liberty itself.

47. We take ourselves seriously until confronted by the inevitable.

54. Just the motion itself, the rocking of the boat, the clicking of the wheels, it was enough. He'd returned to his mother's womb.

60. The only freedom is the love of change.

74. Travel grants us the freedom of ignorance. In a new culture we don't catch the subtle signals telling us what to do.

79. Why do I always end up having a cultural experience when all I want to really do is lie on the beach?

89. After being bewildered by people it's a relief to turn to books.

95. He ruined his body, but had a good time doing it.

108. Hidden from the world he could be what he wanted. As long as he could live without an audience he was free.

144. It's not that we don't know what we want. It's that we fear what we want.

160. When he took his past back from her he, at first, felt empty, for she had confirmed his existence, even as she seemed to steal it.

169. The child reaches for a glittering object. This is the history of humanity.

176. They loaded up the trucks. As Lenny Bruce said, when he died his precious possessions had become junk.

201. Too often we mistake changing the world for changing ourselves.

231. Love or coffee, take your pick. One or the other will give you inspiration.

if these have made you curious, you can browse the whole collection www.pbase.com/wwp/zen

pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp

poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems

thanks for listening!

messiah

alas, sometimes the best of us can't resist the temptation to save the world. take the story of poor murphy.

THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTIONARY

Let's go back to the beginning. Way back. Before the bloody battles and terrible insights. Before the flag filled with bullet-holes and the demise of Murphy's machine.

It all began in an industrial town in the middle of the country. Work went on as usual. Black smoke poured into the sky. A hundred thousand hands punched a hundred thousand clocks. Steam-drills pounded in the mineshafts. Automobiles creaked down assembly-lines. Two old ladies walked along Main Street, looking for the perfect mushroom. And Murphy, in a blond wig, sat under a hairdryer, reading Karl Marx.

Murphy had had a hard day.

He had ridden into town on his high-level chopper. Stopped at a diner. Ordered ham and eggs. Had even reached for the relish - when he was recognized by the waitress. Luckily, he had finished his coffee when the police walked in.

Being a man of action, Murphy ran into the Men's Room. Locked the door. Climbed out through the skylight, grabbing some woman's clothes hanging on a line. He leaped onto the street, was on his chopper and gone before the police could get their pistols smoking.

Murphy felt oppressed. As the girl worked his nails over and added a bit of polish, he read the words, "Bikers unite, you've nothing to lose but your chains."

The woman sitting next to Murphy coughed nervously.

"Young woman," she asked, "why do you wear black boots?"

you can read the whole sad tale at: www.pbase.com/wwp/murphy

pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp

poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems

unfortunately, even the best of us sometimes feel we were destined to save the world. take the story of poor murphy:

THE MAKING OF A REVOLUTIONARY

Let's go back to the beginning. Way back. Before the bloOdy battles and terrible insights. Before the flag filled with bullet-holes and the demise of Murphy's machine.

It all began in an industrial town in the middle of the country. Work went on as usual. Black smoke poured into the sky. A hundred thousand hands punched a hundred thousand clocks. Steam-drills pounded in the mineshafts. Automobiles creaked down assembly-lines. Two old ladies walked along Main Street looking for the perfect mushroom. And Murphy, in a blond wig, sat under a hairdryer, reading Karl Marx.

Murphy had had a hard day.

He had ridden into town on his high-level chopper. Stopped at a diner. Ordered ham and eggs. Had even reached for the relish - when he was recognized by the waitress. Luckily, he had finished his coffee when the police walked in.

Being a man of action, Murphy ran into the Men's Room. Locked the door. Climbed out through the skylight, grabbing some woman's clothes hanging on a line. He leaped into the street, was on his chopper and gone before the police could get their pistols smoking.

Murphy felt oppressed. As the girl worked his nails over and added a bit of polish, he read the words, "Bikers unite, you've nothing to lose but your chains."

The woman sitting next to Murphy coughed nervously.

"Young woman," she asked, "why do you wear black boots?"

you can read the whole sad tale at www.pbase.com/wwp/murphy

poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems

pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp

throwing stones

since i've spent most of my life living in glass houses on the top of mountains, my view's definitely skewed. here's a page from my diary created in the 90's.

THE EIGHTEENTH DAY

Nothing's right this morning. I've a crick in my neck. Even a pain-killer pill doesn't help. Hanging blankets to block the sun, I sprain my finger. I cry, "How will I support myself if I'm disabled" I shout, "Mama! Mama!" That's what happens when you make the organization your parent. Thirty-five years of paychecks have transformed me into a dependent, emotional cripple. I overhear an ad for my hometown radio-station, and I'm homesick for life in the Sacramento Valley.

Thunderheads loom in the southern part of the forest from Rainmaker Lake to Priam's Valley. Dry-lightning strikes outside the rain-shadow at Scott Summit. Flies tap at the window. Two red-tailed hawks circle in an updraft, mounting higher. Dispatch sends the recon-plane to canyons the lookouts cannot see.

Isabella Nigrido, my erstwhile psychic, maintained I'd been a Tibetan monk meditating on mountain-tops in a past life. Even today when a head lama succumbs, the remaining proselytes travel the land, peering into each newborn baby's eyes to discover the body into which the master has been reborn. As the chose tyke occupies the throne, does he feel like a fake, five thousand disciples falling to their knees, or does he feel ancient tears form in his eyes? I expect a bevy of anchorites to trudge up the road. Now, that would be an act of destiny, myself the head of monastery in the Himalayas! The question is: is that a job I would want?

Once at a youth hostel on the Island of Skye in the sixties, a fellow said, after I'd tendered a long-winded philosophical monologue, "Oh, no, not a child guru!" (I must have been all of twenty-five.) And concluding a class with Josephine Miles at Berkeley where I'd read a couple of poems, a professor's wife said, "You should publish a book." "Good God," I thought, 'you don't do that until you're past fifty." Now I'm fifty-nine, less capable, less knowledgable, than at nineteen. When I step up to the podium, I feel shallow, an imposter, ill-prepared. I've insights but no philosophy.

Silenced by my father as I squirmed in the front pew and disrupted his sermon, I've always gotten in trouble for talking - chastised in school as I played the class clown, easily embarrassed when overruled by a teacher. I prize my intellect above my heart, yet if someone thinks too much of me, I despise them. How can they be so wrong? Don't they see through me?

When Isabella explained I'm reluctant to accept a postion of authority, a scientist who once blew up Atlantis, I thought, "Whether actual or a metaphor, I find it only too true. Let those with thicker skins assume the savior role." So much for being the next Dali Lama!

have no fear, this manuscript "Cloud Watcher, a firelookout's book of days" remains unpublished.

Pictures: www.pbase.com/wwp
Poems: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems