catching the wave (beatnik #2)

I coulddaa been a contender... how those words of marlon brando echo down the years. It sure takes a lot of luck as well as balls and tenacity.

Yesterday, I perused malcolm gladwell’s outliers. He shows how your circumstances to a large extent determine your success. For example, the creators of the personal computer, jobs and gates born within a year or two of each other. How the stars lined up for them and their fellow geeks. Gates had computer opportunities almost no one else of high school age had. Jobs, I forget how it all worked for him, though the right partnerships certainly played a part. Had either been born three years later or earlier, they would have missed the wave.

Eureka! I almost shouted in the barnes & noble café, ‘I HAVE AN OUT.’ See, I wandered north beach, mike’s place and city lights books in san francisco in 1957 at seventeen. Attended a big beat reading. Alas, I lacked three to five years of making the scene. Yes, a young ginzberg came to my college lit class and read new parts of kaddish. But I failed to touch the hem of his levis. Others demonstrated at city hall against the suppression of howl. I didn’t let out a peep, let alone a scream.

Damn, that wasn’t only tsunami slightly ahead or behind me. In paris during 1956 with my family at 16 I lacked the maturity to hang out with existentialists, drink booze and get laid. Later in the sixties I did meet an absurdist, the playwright author adamov in a café. With the smoke oozing out between his decayed teeth, he seemed ancient. Once again, 1940 did not do well by me. Of course, I didn’t get killed in ww2, korea, or vietnam, so I guess I should be thankful.

And what about the theater scene in new york, aka the late sixties? Too old, too old, too old. Later my play grandma did get performed in the balcony of a west-side church. 1979, a grandmother, a church, that tells the whole tale. Another monsoon gone by a few years before me.

At san francisco state I studied shakespeare’s contemporaries. What a star-studded group! Right-aged willie stood on his surfboard and soared to the top of the mountain. And the blues singer, robert johnson. Sure he came late in the Mississippi delta but not too late, died unknown, his recordings a synthesis or everything around him. Later, the rolling stones eulogized him. He rose to be the god of rock and roll.

There we have it. Timing is all, said shakespeare and my mother. Now I can really say, I coulddaa been….


here's grandma: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/grandma2

maybe impatience saved me, after all

yes, i've always considered it a curse. and if i'm asked, 'what would you change in your life?', i'd say, 'i wish i had savored each moment more.' then one morning this week, i reconsidered. would i have done so much, been through so much, if i had been satisfied, suffering myself and fools lightly?

henry moore the sculptor wrote: The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.

hmm, the description fits, now what have i been doing? like the photographer william eggleston i like to make things. true, as soon as i've created an item, after the flush of satisfaction is over - and i almost always finish what i start - i suddenly can't stand it, am ashamed of it. is this because i've revealed myself? or is it that i haven't immediately achieved fame and fortune, the love of the masses i've always desired?

so i put whatever it is away: a play, a poem, a photograph, a song. often i never show it to anyone else or i post it on the web and let it disappear into internet heaven, not allowing any comments to shake me out of my solitude. (don't get into arguments in cyberspace. the anonymous become vicious.) and i may not see this particular piece for years.

recently i read the photographer george tice's remark: i like to go down into the basement and look at my photographs. i take great pleasure in them. that's a far cry from virginia woolf who shuddered everytime she passed a shelf of her books! and i thought, tice has it. i'm often astounded by the romances and travels i've had, the poems i've written, the movie i made. where did that come from? how did i do it?

and the only answer i have is: i've been divinely discontented. hopefully i can continue to enjoy the product and not walk into the river like virginia. it's a fine line between being unsettled and being undone.

here are a few humble truths: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/unified

"If you have compassion, you don't need religion."

that's my favorite quote from the dali lama. ah, easily said, but how the hell do you develop it if you don't have it from birth? for example, my caring quotient about zero. i really get irritated when street-people ask me for money. i feel like they're preying on my conscience. and if they're young with dogs, i can barely resist saying, 'get a job.' on the other hand, if they're playing music, even badly, they're at least making an attempt and i'll drop a quarter in the guitar case.

actually, i envy and admire those who naturally have a feeling for others. my friend and supervisor who died last summer, randy beck, had it. that's why as he lay in a coma friends threw a fund-raising feast and $23,000 dollars accumulated in the cup. six hundred people showed up at his graveside, and this in a very small town.

mostly i've been very lucky that way. the forest service attracts a lot of fine people. oh, i have had a couple of micro-managing, self-centered bosses. survival under them proved very difficult, and talk about having no compassion... luckily, with help from others, i managed to stay on the job i love. and i do remember randy's father told him, 'there are two kinds of people, those who give and those who take."

i'm not sure bitter experiences help. maybe they make us resentful. oh, i did have a flash of compassion after my prostate operation. i felt for everyone i passed who seemed aging, fragile, and unhealthy. that may have lasted for a day or two. now it seems like a mirage. i guess if you've never have a really loving, generous person in your life, genes alone won't give it to you.

ironically, both my parents - one a minister and one a social-worker - made a lot of sacrifices to 'do good.' alas, my mother controlled us thru sarcasm and my father did mostly his work. we did have lots of travelling adventures, and they kept us clothed while they borrowed money to do so. despite moving thirty times before getting out of high-school, i and two of my siblings had a secure if troubled childhood. my poor adopted sister, cricket, unfortunately had to witness their cheating on each other, her beloved adopted father dying during the divorce at fifty-three. no wonder she screamed when she heard the news.

dear dali lama, i agree with you. alas, most of us need church to shame us into giving.

sincerity may be the biggest sin

or, as someone said, "if you can fake it, you've got it made." moliere's tartuffe a case in point.

aren't we always playing a role, and isn't naturalness just another one? here's an aphorism from la rochefoucauld: "Most young people think they are being natural when really they are really just ill-mannered and crude." of course, i've never been guilty of this. well, maybe never.

i do rather regret not having an established role in life. i've never been a father (as far as i know), never a breadwinner, always the best man and never the groom. and career! that's a joke. nobody ever became famous for looking out the window. or even well-paid. life's flown by on a butterfly's wings. and the grasshopper will never be ready for winter. said some anonymous elder, "You'll understand later that one keeps on forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave." i can vouch for that.

actually, i think of myself as an entertainer. true, my performances have been haphazard and fitful. once i gave the closing prayer at my father's church. i hadn't practiced and mumbled something, terribly embarrassed. and best man at a friend's wedding, i didn't realize i'd have to give a speech. what a godawful moment. it pays to practice.

and that's what i'm saying, we can't get by in life by always telling the truth. yes, at the wedding i could have said, 'this is doomed' which is was, but i couldn't bear to rain on someone else's parade. a role played artfully well can be a delight. check out stand-up comedy by judy carter. one could do worse than get thru this existence as a comic.

one last quote from teacher/playwright/director luis valdez: "play any role you want, only don't identify with it. pick it up and drop it as needed."

just created a disguising website. i invite you to check it out: http://www.wix.com/firelookout/smokysun

the principles of chemical determinism

"or things even shakespeare didn't know."

at 18 i maintained to a friend our loves and hates, desires and disappointments, all due to the substances running around in our bodies. little did i know, this a major intuitive insight. had i followed up i might be shaking the hand of the king of sweden and accepting the nobel prize.

for better or worse, it has worked out otherwise and i've had more fun. yet research these days keeps re-confirming what i sensed way back then. of course, this shouldn't seem like much of a mystery. i know alcohol can turn me into a schmo, satisfied with his life. caffeine winds me up, then wears me down. all of of us know these experiences inside out.

and much is the talk about endorphins induced by ridiculously high rates of exercise. and as scrouge said, 'our bad dreams come from an undigested bit of potato.' still, i don't think the truth of all this has sunk in. we attribute passion to anything but testosterone and estrogen cause they go by the innocent-sounding name of hormones. this keep us from realizing hormones on the level with heroine and lsd, and much longer lasting.

i've begun reading the female brain by louanne brizendine. where was this book when i needed it at 18? not that i would have read or understood it, but somewhere along the way it would have crossed my path. in a family psychology class i wrote a paper maintaining men and women fundamentally the same, fool that i was. what i meant was both could do anything in the field of life. however, as for the physical insides, i didn't perceive the incredible differences in development, reactions to emotion, and so on, caused by differing hormonal injections.

louanne's just come out with the male brain, and i have it on order. we're much more at the mercy of chemicals than we ever knew. no wonder stress changes the composition of our chemistry for the worse, and meditation reverses the effects for the better. no, i don't expect teenagers to run out and buy these tomes. but at one point or other, they contain things all of us need to know.

new pics: www.pbase.com/wwp/site8 and www.pbase.com/wwp/pawns

so wired even my dreams wouldn't go to sleep

this is something i'd totally forgotten. whenever i dream of playing music i get incredibly energized. damn, doesn't every guy want to be a rock star? and for one reason: the adulation, the screams, and sighs of women.

when i lived on a greek island in the 60's a friend david helton wrote a novel called king jude. the hero had six fingers on one hand and could play a helluva guitar. and the favors he gained from the fair sex, they made the hair (among other things) of any real man stand on end .

in the early seventies all the young lookouts on my forest gathered once a week to roast corn and play music. i wrote songs. even took a few singing lessons. we drove two or three hours each way for this. one evening i ate some innocent looking cookies. on the way home the road began to wobble. i pulled up by a stream and slept it off.

alas, those convivial days ended. those twenty-something folks grew up, got married, had children, abandoned the hours alone on a mountain. with the ice-cream socials gone (we made our own) i lost my enthusiasm for music. and anytime i've come close to it since, it's presence has created such a fever in me i've had to back off.

okay, cutting to the chase, last nite my body felt full of electric wires. and all this cause i've gotten bored with photographing. what could i do? on an early morning walk through downtown i realized the one art i'd never fully followed up was music. why not give it another try? i couldn't wait for the local music store to open.

i wandered through this strange, long abandoned country populated by guitars and ukuleles. one electric-guitar caught my eye. damned heavy, but cut-away it rested easy on my lap. i felt like bob dylan thumbing his nose at the acoustic crowd. i drifted to a blue luna dolphin ukulele (i gotta tell you, all these instruments made in china like everything else we buy) beautiful to the touch, the sound could be amplified. i thought about it. sailed back to the les paul knock-off.

home, i thought what the hell, i'll look on ebay. before i knew it i'd bought the paul machine for less than half what they asked at the store. then i purchased a roland micro amplifier. by the time i retired i'd included the magix music maker 16 premium software to the musical hoard. boy, i thought, i do like to spend money.

the upshot, i couldn't sleep. and all day today i kinda swaggered, like i'd already topped bruce springsteen. the wonders consumer therapy will do. youtube here i come.

all that said, i have posted more pictures based on our construction site:

www.pbase.com/wwp/site5

and time in the prison library: www.pbase.com/wwp/ls

"Women are the reason men do everything."

i never quite thought of it that way. alan s. miller and satoshi kanazawa, evolutionary psychologists, assert this bold statement as the basis for why beautiful people have more daughters. men in all societies compete vigorously for access to sex.

wow, older men more likely to murder young wives. guess i could see that one coming. pretty hard to keep them away from the young bucks (or at least the jealously makes total sense). i've learned my lesson. no more cute young things.

now, that's partly a lie. i love to look. that's how i've gotten to survive as a bachelor all these years. my present hero the czech photographer miroslav tichy. this guy snapped the women of his town in celebration of them, though he then stamped all over the printed photographs. google his images. quick glances make every woman beautiful.

of course, though my mother long dead, i'm still trying to impress her. she maintained i was born to do great things. i mean, she actually said it. unfortunately, she despaired at my choice of girl friends and the desire to hang out it strange wildernesses far from the deeds of real men. see the photos i've just posted and you'll see what i mean. a walk in the woods:

www.pbase.com/wwp/ghost

yes, damn it, my whole life dedicated to impressing the female of the species. i can't deny it, looking at all the poems beginning they danced all night on the m.s. dixie and i want to worship you, but i'm having a tough time. these odes to romance rolled along for forty years!

www.pbase.com/wwp/aphrodite

alan and satoshi make remarkable strides with their mantra. for example, what makes bill gates and steve jobs like the usual suspects (criminals)? they use their genius when young to get into either a pair of panties or a bank safe. growing older and less interested in hot wires and flashy nightclubs, both members of the piratical class taper off, committing less larceny and changing their grand children's diapers more.

and if this statement true, it certainly explains why women ultimately rule the roost. and here's more examples of our roost being renovated:

www.pbase.com/wwp/site7