"I hate it! I wouldn’t represent awful trash like that if it was the only book in the solar system! Next!” -Anka Siv

A small backwards village in the Northern Woods
region, Hillbottom hosted the first and only
Hillbottom Great American Novella Retreat/Conference
some years back. It was the first and only because
the lady and gentleman couple who put it on,
Anton and Anka Siv, were arrested and sent back
to Norway for defrauding I and 11 other would-be
writers out of our money and two weeks of our lives,
plus several typewriters that we never got back
and I suspect were put into a car-grinder at a junk
yard that relatives of the Sivs operated down the
street from the conference hall.

If I wasn’t so embarrassed I wouldn’t even be able
to report this account, which I have never before
because of the confidentiality agreement I had
to sign to get my pants back, but I don’t care
anymore and have to express myself come hell nor high water.

THE PRICING PART:

The whole package was $1000. Cash only, no checks or
credit cards. There were cheaper packages that included
sleeping in the woods, outdoors latrine, food stamps, etc.,
but I’d saved up for a long time and went for the whole fish.

According to the brochure with pictures of dreamy
people swimming in a lake and drinking martinis by
moonlight that I found under my windshield, that $1000 covered
“two weeks of writing bliss with luxurious suites and loving
kid-glove critiques of your writing to take you to the next
higher level of writing skills and extraordinary vision and
voice, all in one stop. Don’t put off no longer the gift of
self-love and advancement in writing success and riches that
only the Hillbottom Great American Novella Retreat/Conference
can deliver. Personal attention to everything you can think
of related to both writing and having a good, fun and
wonderful time in the woods with other like-minded writers
of your personal creative type. Come with a raw box of "crud,"
leave with a finished polished novella, a top-flight agent
that only the best-sellers hope to get, all courtesy of Anton
and Anka Siv, international duo of reknown and friends to
the stars of the glorious world of unmeasured writing success,
fame and big fat contracts that will make your friends blush,
your family spit out their fake teeth, and other writers choke
with envy. Don’t wait, call today!"

As it would turn out that was just a little bit misleading
because supper and utilities turned out to be extra.

WHY NOVELLA INSTEAD OF NOVEL?:

"It’s easier to write in two weeks," is all Anka and Anton
would mysteriously say. "The novella is the novel of the future,
and the future is now."

THE WRITING PART:

That part was actually pretty good. They locked us in the
basement with a sack of stale crullers and a vat of coffee
that was so bitter it about ate this guy Omar’s hairpiece
that fell in before he could fish it out with a cruller.
The good part is they only let us out after we turned in
10,000 words a day. And like Anka used to say as she was
running her fingernails through my hair, "It’s all about
the writing, isn't it, sonny boy."

AGENT PITCH PART:

This was set up with curtained booths and you sat there
until the "agent" pops in and you give your pitch.

It wasn’t long before I figured out that the supposive
"agents" was none other than Anka and Anton Siv who kept
changing disguises.

All they did was have different wigs and coats and glasses.
One time all Anka changed was to have a patch on her eye.
Finally I got the nerve to speak up. "You’re the same gal
that been in the other booths. All you done there now is
put that pirate patch on. In fact, I think you’re Anka Siv
herself."

"How dare you!" she says in a high fake voice. "You’ll never
get a agent with that kind of nasty attitude! Pitch!"

"What’d you call me?"

"I said ‘Pitch!’"

"Oh. OK, there’s this guy and he has a horse, see--"

"I hate it! I wouldn’t represent awful trash like that
if it was the only book in the solar system! Next!"

And she disappeared behind the curtain. I never did get a
agent out of it.

ROOMING:

They stacked us in triple-bunk-beds in one room the
size of a laundry room. It fact, it was the laundry
room. Half of them authors snored so bad you’d think they
never slept before in their life. It was like a rusty sawmill.
I was so tired the next day I demanded a room of my own.
“You’ll never become a author with a piss-poor attitude
like that,” says Anka, tossing me a pair of earplugs
made out of damp wine cork.

THE WORKSHOP EXPERIENCE PART:

This was quite fun even if a bit chaotic and pointless
overall. We basically sat in a circle and took turns
reading a couple sentences until Anton hollers,
"Stop! You’re killing me! OK, what does everybody
think about that particular load of drivel!"

At first nobody would say anything. Anton’s face crinkles
up and he sobs sort of homicidally without making any
noise, and Anka starts walking around behind us in sequin
flip flops and terry cloth sweat pants, cracking her knuckles
and hissing writing sayings under her breath like
"If I see one more misplaced comma, somebody ain't going home,"
and "So this is what we get for trying to help a pack of drooling
near-do-wells write the great American novella."

Finally one gal named Herma says, "Ahem, well, I liked the part
where the man looks out his window and sees that old horse outside."

"Oh, you did, did you?" says Anton. "You liked that, eh? Well,
well. How elucidating. That’s just terrific."

"Well, that’s all that happened so far," Herma says. "That’s all
you let him read."

"Oh, I did, did I? Have you ever heard of a little thing we like
to call 'subtext’? Have you heard of that, Herma? Somehow I bet not.
Anybody else have more Herma-type elucidating comments?"

Nobody was even breathing by then so Anka broke out a jug
of some kind of fermented fig juice and made us drink it
and before long everybody begun clamoring to holler things
they didn’t like about everything until some brawl broke out
and I woke up under the bushes outside with writing sayings
written on my body in magic marker such as" "GOAL! MOTIVATION!
CONFLICT!" and "SHOE DON’T TELL!" and "INSPIRATION IS 90%
PERSPIRATION AND UH OH WAIT A MINUTE NEVER MIND!"

Suffice to say that while we learned a lot of lessons
from the Sivs and their retreat/conference, none of those
lessons had anything to do with writing, except for
the word "HELP!" that we wrote in tar on the roof of
the conference hall in case a plane flew over when
the Sivs locked us up there when we ran out of money for
supper and utilities. They finally let us down although
we had to paint their dock to get supper that night.

Nevertheless, it was a pleasant experience all in all,
and I look forward to many more different retreats and
conferences in the future where I will surely meet many
more writers, authors, and other professional literary types,
including agents, publishers, best-sellers, interesting
celebrities, and etc., because I love the writing life and
about everything about it and I just don’t think I can ever
get enough.

"If freedom isn't about something bigger than freedom,

then freedom is just ... entertainment."

--Sean Penn, The Crossing Guard

I don't think I've ever thought about that before.

How could I have never thought about something
so important and obvious before?

I must have thought about it in other terms.

The quote above, from the film The Crossing Guard,
written by Sean Penn, was spoken by a man who had just
gotten out of prison, after six years, for killing
a child with his car. He was drunk. Not when he said
it, but when he was driving.

So he knew about freedom, or had thought a lot
about it. And now he had it, or had something like
it, that he hadn't had for six years.

But he was still imprisoned by his guilt, by the
memory of what he had done, the young life he had
taken. He was unforgiven, by himself, by the father
of the little girl he killed.

He wasn't saying he didn't have freedom. He was
saying what was he going to do with it, where was
he going to take it. What good was it, when in his
freedom he was incapable, or unwilling, to use his
freedom to choose to live.

Where and what was the thing that was "bigger" than
freedom that freedom was about?

The father of the girl he killed had said he was going
to return to kill the man, the ex-convict, in three days.

So he had 3 days to decide what it was that was bigger
than freedom that freedom was about, that would save
freedom from being ... entertainment.

3 days, after six years of prison.

I know that being sober is the freedom to choose, which
I didn't have when I was drinking, when I was slave to
drinking.

Of course what I first think about is God, when I think
about what the thing is that is bigger than freedom, that
will save freedom from being entertainment, which is merely
the freedom to choose between most of the little things we choose
between and among every day and night--entertainment.

The man who killed the girl was drunk when he hit her
with his car. "I just felt a bump." Now he almost
welcomes the father coming to kill him. It will
be deliverance, true freedom, freedom from himself.

The little dying girl talks to the man who killed her.
"She was talking to me. She was apologizing to me.
She was apologizing for not having looked both ways."

I hate to tell you this. I hate to tell myself this.
It's not about God. It's about loving the other guy.
You can't love the other guy if you hate yourself. You
can't love the other guy, or yourself, if you're waiting
for them to change, for you to change. God doesn't wait.
God is not waiting. I'm the only one who's waiting.
You're the only one who's waiting. It's not going to
happen one little step at a time. Or it will happen,
one little step at a time, up to a point. And then
it requires the freedom to leap into that something
bigger than freedom. And it comes in a hundred forms
per day.

If I said it any plainer than that it would be taking
away your freedom, my freedom.

You're free to believe me or not.

How Much Is a Porchlight On a Cold Country Road at Night?

"The $8.8-billion Webb Space Telescope
promises to provide a glimpse
at the first light in the universe."

Best Song at Grammys -- Willie Nelson's Chipotle commercial.

Willie's Song/video

Coldplay's haunting classic "The Scientist" is performed by country music legend Willie Nelson for the soundtrack of the short film entitled "Back to the Start." The film, by film-maker Johnny Kelly, depicts the life of a farmer as he slowly turns his family farm into an industrial animal factory before seeing the errors of his ways and opting for a more sustainable future. Both the film and the soundtrack were commissioned by Chipotle to emphasize the importance of developing a sustainable food system.

"I won't jump."

From a friend's email:

"What is poignant is that this morning
I had read an article in the October 13
edition of the New Yorker titled "Jumpers."
It is about suicides off the Golden Gate.
Anyway, toward the end of the article
the S.F. coroner is quoted about a 1963 suicide
off the bridge. The guy was 31 or 37.
He lived in this sparse little room
and left a note which said,
"I’ll walk to the bridge
and if just some one person smiles,
I won’t jump."

Darkness Rose from the Night Like a Gown

One side of the torn card read “OOF”
& the other had crude letters
in an alphabet I didn't know, gouged
with a fingernail or coin.

In the perfect silence of outer space
a washing machine sang
& I was comforted.

The cry of a billion keyboards
fell back to earth.

Feel at peace with being
vulnerable.

I'm writing this in a rowboat.

Beware: the thing you love most
in a person because it is also in you
may mean to them the very opposite
of what it means to you.

One item we'll never see in an obituary:
"Successful mystic."

It is what it isn't.

Exhaustion came over me like a calling.

Fog & moon & Dexter Gordon
moving.

The brain part that processes anxiety
kicks in
in the presence of the ghost,
forcing reason to immediately make sense
& restore order.

Love is more belief than belief.

Why do they call those things silverfish
& why do they live in old books?
Why not call old books water?

Love is for when I'm no good
at love.

Your dark faith, bundled up,
scarf trailing, comfortable with mystery,
sailing through the night.

I love to play
but I hate games.

Can gentleness be fierce?
It can but requires
a new definition. New definitions
cure anything.

Remnants of my dream lay around,
the cut hat, the smoking bridge.

This morning a pale city hawk swept
over the garden, the rush
on my neck like a ghost passing.

(Silence is (humility because
there's no argument in) silence.)

I concede that humility is a virtue
but I am too proud to accept anybody
else's definition of it.

The ghost an alligator in the ceiling,
thrashing, a woman's voice
in the stethoscope, chills like a healing
from my ears to my toes.

Humility is freedom from what others
think, from what I think, from proof
& evidence & justification, from the
definition of humility.

Those girls have thousands of years
of many-armed goddess charmers
wiggling in their blood.

Contempt is cozy, addictive, violent.

The memory of a good book is better
than the book. The memory of a great
book is perfect.

Yes world I'll buy it all but 1st must
go to my room for my cc & won't climb
out the window with my brains into
the woods promise swear.

One day we discovered we had grown
into mountains together. Our laughter
surprised us like thunder & distance
& respect.

"What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words!

His real life is led in his head
and is known to none but himself.

All day long, and every day,
the mill of his brain is grinding,
and his thoughts (which are but the
mute articulation of his feelings)
are his history.

His acts and his words
are merely the visible thin crust of his world,
with its scattered
snow summits and its vacant wastes of water,
and they are so trifling a part of his bulk!

The mass of him is hidden--
it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil,
and never rest, night nor day.

These are his life, and they are not written,
and cannot be written.

Every day would make a whole book of 80,000 words
three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of a man--
the biography of the man himself cannot be written."

--Mark Twain, Autobiography

This is strangely reassuring to me.
I've long suspected it.
So simple & plain, so obvious.
We are told only our actions count,
everybody says it--
thoughts & words are but thoughts & words,
and only actions matter!

But here is a very different take
on who & what we are
& it rings true as a field of bells.

What do you do with all those thoughts,
how to shape them, guide them, quiet them,
use them, not let them drive you
over the falls?

Write, meditate, listen, pray.

No wonder all this electronic crap
has come along
to take your mind off your own mind!

Thank you, Mark! Thank you, Sam!
Strangely reassuring, comforting,
mysteriously verifying.

I'm taking much better care of today

than I took of yesterday.

Hello.

How are you?
I hope you are fine.
Or if you are suffering,
I hope there is a way
for you to ease that suffering
or have it eased, or forget about it
for a minute or two.

It seems to be a very difficult world
sometimes these days but maybe
it's just me but I don't think so.

Is there any way to sit in the sun
for a few minutes? Is there any way
to tinker in the garden a little, yours
or somebody else's if you don't have one?
Is there any way to get a little writing in?
Just relaxed, wise, true kind of writing,
or gentle, open, you-sized, straightforward.
A few effortless lines, thoughts, observations.

I called a friend yesterday and I'm
going to see if I can call another one
today. Usually I think I don't have
anything to say but then we start talking
and it's fine, a lot better than I expected.
easier and laughing and I come out of it
happy that I did it. But it's still hard
to do, to start doing. Why is it so difficult
to start doing something that is good
for me and somebody around me?

I went to an art show of a man, a friend
who is very ill. I know him from sobriety.
There were many people there and he was
surrounded so I didn't get a chance to
talk to him much. I bought a painting
of his called "Study of Eve." It's holy
or I get a feeling of holiness looking
at it. It's small, 9" by 12", sandy desert
background, thin blue frame, tall green
and red partly-formed figures embracing
in the center, delicate pale violet
and orange circle behind them in a scene
natural and simple and raw and mystical.
You keep looking at it and feel good even
if you don't know what it is or what it is
supposed to be, or what it might mean.

"Today I entertain a thought I once scorned--

--that others may know me
better than I know myself."

-Ishii Ougourou