If you would care to hear Thomas Merton speaking at
length on the proper use of towels, God's Will vs. Fate, etc.,
click here:
Thomas Merton speaking
...and if you would like to hear Flannery O'Connor
reading her entire story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find,"
click here:
Flannery O'Connor reading
I was happily surprised how hardy & blue-collar Thomas Merton sounds.
Flannery I expected to hear a stronger accent from what
folks had written, and the more I listened the clearer she got for me.
1. Go into trance.
2. Don't think about the Oxford comma.
3. Stop biting your fingernails.
4. Make a writer's face.
5. Imagine that your character is smarter than you.
6. Accept the weather.
7. Chew your doubts like bitter vitamins.
8. If you are writing a serious book, be funny once per page.
8a. If you are writing a funny book, be serious three times per page.
Check back often for more urgent tips.
What if Roberto or Coral drove by and saw us? I couldn’t
remember but Maria must have asked for the meeting. I
couldn’t see her face for the sun. I tilted into the shade.
She looked troubled, thoughtful, as if about to confide
in me about her miserable marriage. Maybe she was
planning a book on her life and needed my editing
expertise. We would have coffee, I’d avail her of my
relationship wisdom, and we’d go our separate ways before
romantic tragedy ensued.
The waiter ignored us. Because we were mixed? Maria pulled
a book out of her purse and placed it on the table. I had to
read the title upside-down: The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Her
crossed hands looked so pale against the red tablecloth,
her skin transparent in the blaring sun. The veins and
muscles and bones of her hands made me look away. Why
wasn’t she saying anything? She stared at me with unblinking
eyes, very like her daughter Frida. I was too self-conscious
to swallow. I felt underwater.
"Flynn, why are you here?" A trick question. When she
touched the back of my hand I got a jolt and a blue spark
shot in the air.
"Would you stop the tears?" she said.
I touched my face to see if I was crying.
She shook her head. Her black hair, longer than I remembered,
swayed in the sunshine. "The project," she said.
"You're asking me to stop my tears project?"
She made a big fake pouty face and laughed.
"What’s wrong with you?" I said.
She continued to laugh behind her hand.
"Stop it!" I said. "You’re betraying everything you stand for!"
She took her hand away, blurted "What do I stand for!"
then covered her mouth again.
The light around our table blazed.
"Niceness!" I said.
I doubted this even was Maria. I closed my eyes. The whole
meeting was a trap. I opened my eyes. Morning was everywhere.
Mindful eyed me from the top of the dresser. The tears notes
lay scattered on Coral’s side of the bed. I put a hand on them
to steady myself.
Weird Red Room science fiction essay blog contest thingum
Scroll half-way down, click on
"Where Would I Be If My Father Hadn't Died?"
Allen Ginsberg's writing non-tips
More like wisdoms, child-like enlightenments, perceptual switches, etc.
from what dark background it emerged,
why he wrote it, nor
what place it has in his personal development.
But sometimes it does happen
that he gets a faint notion of these things,
when favorable circumstances
bring some usually hidden motives to the surface."
--Theodore Reik, Listening with the Third Ear.
than were written in all of history up to 2003. -Official Statistic.
Bad sax saying I love you.
And everything leading up to that.
Song of foreplay.
The crowd listening in the bedroom.
Listening on the bed.
Jonah trying to get it into his head.
Donation box at the door.
Roberto protesting.
You making money off my dead wife.
Frida saying back I love you I love you Mommy.
Who tries to get up there to see if there's a sax.
To see who's playing.
Pealing, screeching, howling, weeping.
The crowd realizes what they've heard.
The child has told them.
Communication through the realms.
Don't close down.
Don't take it personal.
Take your part.
Find your part.
The choir of listeners.
The Spanish saxophone.
No dress, naked, invisible.
Take yourself so seriously.
The ghost settled in the rose.
If you're not having fun you're being had.
Weep.
Grieve.
They do not understand.
I asked him what it would be like
if all his shortcomings were removed.
I was thinking "free".
He said "free".
My life has never been so busy
nor so still.
Saxophone breaking over the hills.
Breaking through the ceiling.
How can a ghost play a saxophone?
How can anybody play a saxophone?
How can a ghost do anything?
How can a ghost?
Communication across realms is impossible.
That is why there are instruments of distraction.
Parables, saxophones, bloems.
So that The Exchange can happen underground
where no one is looking.
What is that for?
Donations.
Donations for a ghost?
Expenses.
I want to see a list of expenses.
So you shall.
I want to see a list of donations.
In due time.
I want my cut.
That may be a problem.
Anguish! says the saxophone.
Hear me!
Believe me!
Anguish!
Wandering lonesome!
Listen!
Understand!
Redemption!
Redemption!
Now she can go.
Now he can finish.
Now she can lay down her saxophone.
Now he can lean back and clean his glasses.
She wanted to do more than have babies and sweep.
He wanted to do more than drink and curse the world.
They have met.
They were lost.
It is raining liberty dimes.
The sidewalk sings.
The crowd comes out.
Somebody is whistling.
Somebody is weeding the slope,
pulling all the roots clean out.
Nobody has a name now.
Their eyes ache, shy with morning light.
They are children stretching.
One of the problems with burning bridges in such a public way,
with millions cheering you on, and you playing their rebel hero,
is that it's going to be that much harder to get to the place
where you accept that you need help & get it.
I was no choirboy when I was drinking and drugging, I hurt
myself & everybody around me, but I did what I did & said what
I said in obscurity. Nobody but my dwindling few friends
knew or cared. Nobody was cheering on my self-destruction,
and I wasn't playing the role of hero to millions of people
for my entertaining rebelliousness (AKA, insane & destructive
behavior.)
But Charlie has glorified himself to such an extreme point that
I can't imagine what it would take for him to admit he needs
help, short of some disaster. I believe he's technically
physically sober and clean, but obviously he's high on hubris
& obsessive grandiosity & some post-drug chemical phenomenon.
The gap between where he is and where he needs to be to get
help is enormous now.
The tension of that gap is going to lead him to start drinking
& using again. He has already said he might have a glass of
wine or champagne, because that's what we do to "celebrate."
That will be the beginning of the next run, and the next run
could be his last.
Making it worse is that if he does have a thought now & then
about how long he is going to be able to keep these high-wire
shenanigans up, about needing to ask for help, he's going to
think, Hey, I can't let my millions of followers down, I can't
admit that I need help, that I'm losing my mind, hurting bad,
etc. So, he's going to have to get further out before he hits
a place where he doesn't care what his cheering fans think,
where he needs to do whatever he needs to do to get his sanity
restored.
Plus, of course, as he says, he tried rehab and AA many times
before, and they "didn't work." They are for "normal people."
How difficult is it going to be to admit, in this one area of
alcohol/drugs at least, that he is normal, after all, and
needs help, like most of us discover sooner or later.
Obviously, he is special. I'm special, too. We're all special.
But alcoholics and addicts are decidedly not special in one
critical regard: we can't use alcohol or drugs without eventually
being overwhelmed by terrible consequences that take us to the
brink of madness or beyond, or prison, or early death. Whatever
I think of Charlie or any other alcoholic or addict personally,
there is a deeper connection that transcends everything else,
a brotherhood & sisterhood that wishes and prays that each of
us chooses to live, as human beings, not as God or gods, and
that we get on & stay on the path of healing & sweet sobriety
together, and I wish & pray that for Charlie, too.
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