Chapter One (again)

"Remember those stories I told you? I turned them into a novel. It almost killed me, but after we talked, I finally finished the thing. I had a publisher ready to hand over ten thousand dollars and a bunch of free copies, and I was like, after all that work, I’m going to sign away my baby for a few thousand bucks? It’s true what they say about completing a book, it really is like giving birth, and you really do think on it like a parent does a child. Ironically or not, when I finished, I remember feeling like, I'm never doing something stupid like that again! Seriously, writing a novel can kill you. You know, a literary novel, one that tries to take the past and combine it with what’s on the horizon, with what’s possible, and make life relevant; the attempt of the artist to give meaning to us little monkeys who are sometimes very soft and furry inside and other times as deadly as all the teeth and claws that have ever torn something apart. Anyone says writing a novel is not the most difficult thing to do doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Anyone ever tells you they’re working on a novel, be kind to them. And if you do ever write one, guess what? Even though it will have been the hardest thing you ever do? It might go unnoticed. Not too long ago humanity was on the cusp between real books and e-books. I finished mine somewhere in there. What was funny in my case though is, remember how I told you about when I was in my twenties and how I used to sell those automotive booklets door to door? Well, I found out I could sell copies of the novel out on the street. In fact, I drove from Santa Barbara to Montauk, New York and back one summer on a tour. I did a really good job in producing it, got lucky with a nice cover, and the woman who did the interior design was a perfectionist. It was a true book art, a book that’s art. Plus I told people it had California surf culture and rock and roll and Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin were in it, all that. Anyway, I don’t want to get ahead of myself because there’s a lot I want to tell you since all that other stuff. For instance, I finally met my real dad, my biological father, the rodeo cowboy, the one I hadn’t seen since I was four. Also, all the stuff with the muse, the actress, that story didn’t end where it left off either. I just couldn’t get it out of my heart that she and I were meant to be together and I ended up going to see her in her plays after that last time. Also, I ran into Goddess Lady again."

Oh, you didn't know?

That in Arroyo Seco, New Mexico, the little hamlet overlooking Taos, the valley, and set at the foot of the Sangre de Christo Mountains, that every afternoon, after a brilliant, sunny day, scents in breezes to alter the mind, there is a storm of lightning and rain. It takes place over a couple of hours, a play of darkness and light bouncing off thunderheads near and far. You can be leaning against a door jam looking out onto the horizon and see triple-flash lightning bolts before taking on a boom of thunder that knocks an eating utensil off its plate.

Poem

(untitled)

If every second has a beginning
and an ending,
that means all existence
is but a whole bunch of beginnings
and a whole bunch of endings
happening all at once.

If every kiss has a beginning
and an ending,
that means all love
is but a bunch of beginnings and endings
all at once.

If every idea has a beginning and ending,
that means you and me
are here for a reason.