Friends

There was a buddy in Bloomington that was supposed to get his Phd. before I had written three books. I haven't talked to him in forty years. I hope he did get it. I've written three, but have only published one. There was a couple we both knew then- the husband was working towards his Masters in Medieval French (of all things) and my buddy and I both fooled around with his wife- not so good to do if you are friends with someone. I split. My buddy ran away with said wife but she went back to her husband eventually.

There was a guy I knew in High School that I let off the hook by telling him I was a liar (he hated liars, and told me he could no longer trust me) but I lied. -The real truth was that his girl friend and I hated each other.

There was a guy in New Orleans, but I outgrew being used so I cut him off (after 20 years).

There was a TV writer out here in LA that I had imagined myself growing old with and sitting out on the Palisades in Santa Monica in folding chairs as old men, but at one point it became apparent to me that he did not consider me an equal.

People come and go from your life for a variety of reasons. These days I'm trying to hold on to people, but god, how some of them are growing old and crusty.

Are friends really just a matter of convenience?

For me Facebook is turning into those Christmas Cards you get every year from people you will probably never see again. What does it mean to have 450 friends? It nice to see how people turned out, I suppose. The kids that used it first aren't too interested to see how others turned out, they are busy trying to get their lives going.

Happy new year if you ever knew me at all

Wanta come on a journey with me?

I can't find a picture of what I dreamed last night. It was a sort of  Iron Man Mask, but it was the real person's face turned into a shell. Hard to explain. Bill was a buyer for USC for 30-40 years. He worked for me about a year or so. He bought the things nobody cared about- frogs for biology, dental x-ray film- there is this gray area where you can buy x-ray film from Hong Kong for nothing. Anyway, I have in my imagination, Bill, widowed, in love with a food service cashier that he will never have because he has Parkinson's (just like ole Pres Sample) and his body doesn't work any more. Anyway, he's angry. I want to find hell and heaven in this. I don't know yet if the anger is hell or heaven. I want to find heaven and hell.

This is a new novel, if you don't know me. I have whole scenes in my head already. I find I can't work any other way. I'll try to put up an outline and you can tell me if it makes any god sense. Its gonna be a Flaubert Novel about the USC farming out of the janitors and food service workers. I did my thing down there for about 5 years. Now they will have to pay. Let's see how much I can stir up.

No pictures tonight. Sorry/

The Wonderful Huntington Library

The very nice lady at the Huntington Library just emailed me back today to let me know that I don't have to worry about including three letters and a reproduction of a drawing and a poem from a fourth letter that are in their collections of unpublished manuscripts, in my new novel. I discovered late in the game that they had a collection of letters that Joe Strong and his wife wrote to their friend Charlie Stoddard from Samoa about the time that my novel takes place. (The novel is Joe's diary from the period) Charlie's claim to fame:

In 1864 he visited the South Sea Islands and from there wrote his Idyls — letters which he sent to a friend who had them published in book form. "They are," as William Dean Howells said, "the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that were ever written about the life of that summer ocean." He made four other trips to the South Sea Islands, and gave his impressions in Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes and The Island of Tranquil Delights. - from Wikipedia. He beat Gauguin and John La Farge and R L Stevenson and London out there.

Anyhow, he kept Joe's letters and Joe's wife, Belle's. Great stuff, as I've mentioned earlier.

Joe was certainly worth the journey. The letters only confirmed what I guess I knew all along - that I knew the man and was a kindred soul. How does one find one's friend in a life that ended 53 years before you were born?

I've also written the University of Delaware: they have the photograph collection of George Handy Bates which has a couple of shots of Fa'apio and one of her father, the lady I've fictionalized as Joe's lover. I was led there by a biographer of Joe's who hasn't finished his biography. The guy will hunt me down and shoot me for my gross inaccuracies. Ah well, as a friend of mine says: "It's only a novel."

Elephants and Banjos

Just finished the last book I had picked up on my journey to East Africa. Published in '91, its a dismal reporting of the state of the wildlife left on the continent. Its really a collection of long articles he wrote from the late 70s to the late 80s. I'm assuming the preservation efforts are struggling even more now. According to this, the elephant and rhino populations have been decimated. Most of the governments and police were corrupt, the local societies he encountered were threadbare and ravaged and mistreated by their own governments. We again spend a good portion of the book at the end flying over the jungle and savanna landscapes. This book gives you a real sense of how dangerous flying in small planes there can be. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to Bela Fleck's "Throw Down Your Heart" which is his latest CD where he covered the same areas that Matthiessen did, but covered it last year looking for the roots of the banjo and playing with a great cross section of African musicians. There is a documentary on Pay-Per-View on Time Warner of his trip, its probably available through other cable sources. I guess I want to find out more about the current preservation efforts there now. Fleck's music is certainly more cheering.

http://www.throwdownyourheart.com/

Home

Christmas Eve and your thoughts turn to home and memories of childhood and freezing your rear end off trying to deliver newspapers in this shhhh.. I just spent my afternoon practicing my banjo out on my back deck in the sunshine with the birds singing along and the growl of my neighbor's hedger. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to every one. Life can be good.

The Night Before Christmas

Every Christmas eve, we read the poem. The kids are 21 and 16, but we still do it. Another few Christmases and we may not be together at this time of year. I suppose she and I will read it to the dog. Anyhow, click on the title of this post to take yourself to a wonderful collection of old books and their illustrations.

I'm a sucker for the illustrated.

One of the best Christmas presents I ever received was a nice leather bound copy of "A Chronicle of Friendships 1873-1900" by Will H. Low, 1908 with photos and art by its author. Great read, he was a painter and illustrator and friends with Robert Louis Stevenson and John Singer Sargent and of course the Gilders (see my website) An all around happy guy.

                                              Will as painted by himself.

Christmas And Home

Its Christmas time and I've put in my last day in the office (and what a frustrating day it was, indeed) until the 4th of January. Left an hour early. I was sure I would blow up at someone if I stayed. People are idiots and people who work are bigger idiots. The real question of our existence should be: Why is it that the older a person gets, the greater the desire to be the resident expert in charge of one's own little yard? God forbid I say 'Aw, come on.' to someone. Anyhow, the kids are home, and the kids' friends appear magically. We have the three amigos in my house- really the three caballeros. My son and his two buddies that went briefly to high school together and were in the metal band together. And still hook up. I like these guys. I remember hanging out and drinking and being goofy with a couple of guys in New Orleans and we were writers and we were (twenty something) and the world was a great place to be and we had futures. 'The difference between then and now, was that we believed' to paraphrase Nancy Griffith. God forbid I grow old with the rest of you. I'll never be the expert of my little garden. I'm going to be playing my banjo on Venice Beach Boardwalk. Come visit me. I'll be the guy that's 6'7" with the long ponytail.