I published this collection in 2020, the novella Oasis Tales of the Conjuror being the only futuristic fiction I’ve ever published, and The Golden Light the only existential war story I’ve ever written. Also included in the collection is my most successful performance piece, the Depression-era fable Of Water and Melons, along with two delightful stories set in California circa 1976: When Is It Done? and Clumsy Booby.
For the audio book I performed piano improvisations to conclude each of the chapters composing Oasis Tales and to enhance the other stories in the collection. Several of these improvisations will appear on my upcoming music album Much Too Beautiful, soon to be released.
The e-book editions of Oasis Tales of the Conjuror and other stories are available for just 2.99 from Apple, Amazon, and Kobo, and the paperback is widely available, too.
Instead of war, we can spend a fraction of our current military budget every year and have comfortable, spacious, high-speed trains connecting every city in America and we can all ride for free.
Instead of war, we can spend a fraction of our current military budget every year and have excellent free healthcare, including dental, for every person in America from the moment we’re born until the moment we die.
Instead of war, we can spend a fraction of our current military budget every year and have free education from preschool through graduate school for everyone in America, and have fabulous music and art programs in every school.
Instead of war, we can spend a fraction of our current military budget every year and create enough energy with solar and wind power so we need never again be dependent on oil for our energy needs.
Instead of war, we can spend a fraction of our current military budget every year and clean up all our waterways, restore our wetlands, preserve millions of acres of wilderness, and live in harmony with nature.
Instead of war, we can spend a fraction of our current military budget every year and do whatever we need to do to reverse global warming.
I’m baking a big pan of granola as I’m writing this post. I made granola way back in the early 1970s in order to qualify as a Real Hippy, but I didn’t get serious about making granola again until five years ago when our friend Abigail took me through her process of making granola, which I have since modified to fit my improvisational tendencies.
So today I was in Corners buying ingredients to make granola and I ran into a man I know in the bulk foods aisle and he asked me what I was up to and I said I was buying the fixings for granola.
He slapped his thigh and said, “Dang. I used to make granola. Loved it. Don’t know why I stopped. I gotta get back into it.”
I encouraged him to do so and then brought my basket to the checkout counter where the checker started ringing up my bags of nuts and seeds.
“You making granola?” he asked. I said I was.
He smacked his forehead and said, “Man. I used to make granola all the time. I have this great recipe. Don’t know why I stopped. There’s nothing to it. I’m gonna get back into it.”
Coming out of Corners I ran into a guy named Guy. He saw my heavily laden baskets and said, “Looks like you’ll be eating well this week.”
I said I was making granola and he stomped his foot and said, “Shoot. I used to make granola all the time. So good. Don’t know why I stopped. I’m gonna start again. Nothing like homemade granola with fresh-picked berries.”
Moral: Sometimes we just need a little reminder to find the path again.
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This week we had five minus tides during daylight hours and the weather was fine, so we got down to the beach multiple times to get our feet in the cold water and groove with the beauty.
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When one is an aficionado of low tides at our ever-changing town beach, one sees many of the same people who are also aficionados of low tides, and many of these people have dogs, most of those dogs friendly. When I first moved here twenty years ago, the town beach was officially a No Dogs Off Leash beach. Over time, as the state parks budget declined and enforcement of the dog rules lapsed, and then with the breakdown of everything during the pandemic, the beach became a Many Dogs Off Leash beach, and remains so.
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This year’s beach configuration features a huge sandbar accessible by crossing Big River, which is wide and deep this time of the year so one must swim or paddle on a surfboard to get across to the sand bar. By May or June we will be able to wade across the river and get up on the sand bar and walk to where the breakers reach the shore.
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Canadian Geese winter over here in Mendocino and I got a picture of a handsome specimen bathing on the other side of the river near the mouth.
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The unseen spirits use the sand as a canvas to leave messages for those capable of interpreting their symbology. This sand message says Big change is afoot. Don’t be afraid, be excited.
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Seen from above this piece of driftwood enticed us to go down the steep stairs to Portuguese Beach where we discovered the piece of driftwood was actually…
the hand of God gesturing toward the east where the world is born anew each morning.
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I saw this grebe at the mouth of Big River swimming slowly upstream. An hour later I saw him a half-mile further upstream paddling along having, I intuited, a wonderful time.
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Sometimes the river resembles the pelt of an ocelot.
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These pretty blooms grace our orchard every spring, emerging simultaneously with the plum blossoms and shortly before the apple blossoms burst forth.
I’ve been deeply sad and worried about the war being waged against Iran by our government and the government of Israel, and sad and worried about Iran fighting back and doing great harm to others as they defend themselves. I am sad and worried about the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people by the Israelis. And I am sad and angry that our government is a war machine and an enemy of the environment, an enemy of the survival of our species.
As a result of my sadness and worry, I haven’t been sleeping very well. As many of you know, sleep deprivation is no fun, unhealthy, and makes us prone to accidents, not to mention extreme crankiness. Lack of sleep amplifies my sorrow and worry, and life ceases to be enjoyable.
All Buddhist teachers echo the Buddha and suggest the cause of my suffering is my attachment to the situations I’m sad about. The way to lessen my suffering is to realize I don’t need to be attached to situations I am not directly involved in. I can feel compassion for those who are suffering without joining them in the depths of their suffering. Indeed, I can help, in a metaphysical way, by doing things that bring me joy and joy to others.
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When I was twenty-one I traveled to Mexico and Central America with a marine biologist and his family. I was fluent in Spanish at the time and was the main spokesperson and translator for our little traveling troupe. This was in 1970 when gringos were a rarity in most of Mexico and Central America.
One day in a remote part of southern Mexico, we found ourselves in a small village where the crops had failed and many of the villagers were starving. We didn’t know this when we drove into the village in our converted milk delivery truck. The men of the village came to greet us thinking we might be bringing them food in response to their calls to the government for help.
When I understood the situation after speaking to one of the men, and I sensed these people were so desperate they were likely to attack our truck and take what food we had and possibly do us harm, I made the decision to leave immediately, which turned out to be a good decision as we were pursued out of the village by an angry mob intent on detaining us.
Two hours later we were in a large town where no one was starving and we had a nice meal in a café. When I mentioned to our charming cook and waitress what we’d encountered in the village just two hours away, they both grew solemn and said, “Yes. It is bad there. Many of those people have already gone elsewhere to find work and food.”
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In some of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short stories, a person living in a village where disease and hunger are rampant leaves the village and walks to a neighboring valley where the farmers are flourishing and have so much food they are happy to share.
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Sorrow and joy are inextricably bound and inform each other. My goal in the days ahead is to curtail my worry while informing the sorrow of the world with as much joy as I can. I believe if I pursue this goal with an open heart I will sleep better.
When I heard the news about America and Israel attacking Iran I was too upset to stay in the house so I went for a walk. I remembered the first anti-war march I went on in 1963 when I was fourteen. My father and I and a few thousand people marched on Market Street in San Francisco to protest American military involvement in Vietnam, what would become known as The Vietnam War.
Most people in America hadn’t heard about the war in Vietnam in 1963 and several times during the march someone among the people watching from the sidewalk would call out to the marchers, “Where’s Vietnam?”
That war ended twelve years later in 1975 after taking the lives of millions of Vietnamese people and the lives of tens of thousands of Americans, mostly young men. Over 600,000 American men moved to Canada to avoid going to that war.
For two days after this latest war got started by our terrible president and his terrible minions, I went to Peter Temple’s studio and worked on an album of songs with Peter Temple and Sarah Larkin and Sarah Ryan. The Sarahs are both marvelous singers and harmonizers, and Peter is a wizard of a sound engineer. We had a good time and did not talk about the war, though several times during the recording sessions I thought about the war and the innocent people suffering and dying for no good reason.
Peter has two cats who like being in the studio with him.
Saw my first big bumblebee of the spring in our garden a few days ago. Bees give me hope.
Soon we should be seeing baby quail born of beautiful mother quail.
Our prune plum just sent forth her first blossoms. Some years our prune plum tree produces lots of plums, some years not so many. We will hope for great blooming and pollination and fruiting. And we will hope for a speedy end to the bombing and needless killing.
For our first seven years here in the redwoods of Mendocino I stubbornly tried to grow things in the actual ground and failed bitterly. I would prepare the ground for planting vegetables by digging out all the redwood roots in a sunny locale, adding compost and aged manure, and then growing one iteration of cool-weather quick-germinating vegetables before the bed became a solid mass of redwood roots again within just a few months.
Eventually I moved my strangled lemon trees from the ground into tubs and they have since flourished, and a few years ago I moved the struggling Daphne plants our friend Deb gave us into a large ceramic pot and they are big and healthy now, though they have yet to flower. I apologize to the lemon trees and Daphne every day for my unwillingness to accept the truth for all those frustrating years.
We’ve had lots of rain of late, hurray, and every blade of grass is adorned with jewels.
One of our Buddha statues holds a smaller Buddha statue, and seeing this parent-child relationship always makes me happy, perhaps because I identify with the smaller statue and feel held in the embrace of a Buddha consciousness much larger than my own ego-bound mind.
Our Ganesh, remover of obstacles and patron of the arts, is gray from months of rain and lack of direct sunlight. Much of Ganesh’s gray coating will burn off in the warmer sunnier days fast approaching. I have tried washing Ganesh with soap and a scrub brush during the winter, an endeavor as futile as trying to grow vegetables and lemon trees and Daphne in ground clogged with redwood roots.
Today there was a minus tide, and since this was the first sunny day in over a week, and feeling jaunty, I drove down to Big River Beach and walked as far as the sand stretched to the north. Felt wonderful to walk barefoot on the sand after weeks of confining my feet to socks and shoes.
One of several enormous driftwood logs reminded me of Pinocchio had he been a sea monster.
There were etchings in the sand, messages from the universe reminding me that everything is in flux always, and everything means something, though most of what everything means is unfathomable.
The sky was full of various kinds and colors of clouds. I imagined this was an audition, a heavenly cattle call for a juicy role as the clouds in an upcoming sky show drama, and clouds from all walks of cloud life had come to hang in the sky over Mendocino Bay hoping to be among the chosen. I just happened to be walking by, saw what was going on, and took a picture or two.
We’ve been having lots of rain this week, much needed, and the potholes on our street are now little muddy pools. I write to the Mendocino County Department of Transportation a couple times a year and send pictures of our street that badly needs to be paved anew, but in fifteen years we have only managed to get someone to come out once and do a little patching that lasted but a few months. Oh well. I guess they’re using our property taxes for other things.
This is the blowhole on the headlands just to the west of Portuguese Beach. The big storm swells rolling into that cave have been making some spectacular water explosions. Endlessly fun to watch.
Marcia cooked a feast for her birthday, which conveniently falls on Valentine’s Day so I rarely forget her birthday. Phew. She made baked beets and carrots to go with a scrumptious chicken tagine. I helped chop things and stir things and eat things.
I take lots of pictures of dogs because dogs abound in Mendocino. One sunny hour between rain storms recently a beautiful cat who hangs out at a yoga studio in the village posed for me, and later that day a cat came to flirt with me on my walk in the neighborhood.
Speaking of dogs, our friends Doug and Roxana who live in Withee, Wisconsin gave a copy of my new book The Dog Who Wanted A Personto the town library and there we are. If you haven’t read the book yet or listened to the audio book you’re missing some really big fun. Trust me. By the way, breaking news: the audio edition is now available from Apple for just 5 bucks! (as well as being available from Audible.)
And speaking of great books, I’m in the middle of narrating the audio version of my book Oasis Tales of the Conjuror and other stories at Peter Temple’s studio. What an intriguing collection of stories! I’ll let you know when the audio version comes out.
This morning it hailed like mad for the third day in a row, and shortly after the hail stopped, the sun came out.
On my way down from the post office to see the raucous ocean, I came upon this cool-looking truck and thought, “The person who created this vehicle has thought long and hard about what you need to go truck adventuring.”
Moments later I stood on the cliff overlooking Mendocino Bay and snapped some pictures that might have been painted by Maxfield Parrish. What an amazing world this is.
So last night I heard from my friend Jamie Roberts that he was going to be airing my story Cyrano De Nerderac on his show Radiogram on our local community radio station KZYX in a couple hours.
At the appointed hour I listened to the very funny story for the first time since I recorded the tale in 2007, nearly twenty years ago. I laughed and laughed and laughed and cried at the end. What a great story!
I made that recording to go with several other stories on an album entitled I Remember Youthat was one of my first collaborations with my wife Marcia Sloane. I read stories and she played cello interludes between the stories. We sent out hundreds of copies of the CD to Spoken Word shows on radio stations all over America and no one, except Jamie, ever played any of the stories. Oh well.
Twenty years is a long time ago. However, I wroteCyrano De Nerderac almost fifty years ago and published it in either Seventeen magazine or Young Miss. My memory fails me in this regard and I no longer have a copy of whichever magazine my agent sold the story to. I do remember I was paid 500 dollars for the story, which fifty years ago was some nice coin, as we used to say.
Before I succeeded in publishing a novel, I sold short stories to Cosmopolitan, Gallery, Seventeen, and Young Miss through the efforts of my first and most excellent literary agent Dorothy Pittman who took me on as her client in 1973 after reading an early novel of mine entitled Suicide Notes From My Friends and a collection of short stories entitled What Shall the Monster Sing and other stories.
The first story she sold for me was entitled Willow about a female boxer. She sold the story to Cosmopolitan in 1975 for a thousand dollars, a dizzying sum for a hippy living in a garage in Eugene, Oregon. And over the next eight years she sold several more stories of mine to Cosmopolitan (for two thousand each!) as well as three or four stories to Seventeen, and a couple to Young Miss.
In 1977 she sold my novel Inside Moves to Doubleday and the subsequent paperback sale and movie sale launched my career as a successful writer, which career was essentially over a decade later for reasons I will not bore you with.
When we moved into this house on these two acres fourteen years ago there were so many deer in the neighborhood one of the very first things we did was have a sturdy deer fence put in around one of our two acres so we could grow fruit and vegetables and roses. We left the other acre open to the deer and enjoyed the daily visits of several does and their offspring. In the fall, bucks would arrive to impregnate those does they could catch up with.
Our neighbor across the street fed the deer. He put out large quantities of feed (cob) for them every day and as a result he had a resident herd of eight to fifteen deer, depending on the survival rate of the fawns born that year. In drought years, the mountain lions would severely cull the herd and few fawns survived the summer. This herd of deer foraged for miles around here to supplement the food our neighbor fed them.
I think it fair to say our neighbor loved the deer he fed, though every year he traveled to Montana or Idaho for a month to hunt deer and elk, and he always killed a deer or two every year. Yet he never harmed the deer who hung around his house, and for generations depended on his feeding them for a large part of their daily food intake.
A few years ago our neighbor died and no one continued feeding the neighborhood deer. Within a couple months of our neighbor’s death, most of the herd had scattered and we only had three does and their progeny visiting our property. This year only a single doe and her two yearling offspring come by every few days to browse the acre of our property accessible to them.
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Today I’m going to plant potatoes in two of our orchard tubs. Our little deer-fenced orchard gets the most sun of any place on our property that is mostly surrounded by big redwoods. Had I known we’d have such a long run of sunny days this winter, I would have planted potatoes a couple weeks ago. With luck, we should be harvesting some nice spuds in April when I’ll be planting the annual crop of lettuce, chard, peas, beets (for the greens mainly), carrots, arugula; and in May a zucchini plant or two.
Growing potatoes is fun and easy, and digging up potatoes always reminds me of hunting for Easter eggs when I was a kid.
And soon I’ll be recording songs and music for a new album, always an exciting adventure for me.
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Here is an excerpt from an essay by Philip Whalen speaking about where his poems come from:
“Some poems arrive as dreams. Others begin from memories. Some start out in the middle of a conversation I’m involved in or words that I overhear other people speaking. An imagination of the life of some historical person may occur to me: I may suddenly suppose I understand what it felt like to be Johannes Brahms on a particular morning of his life. A landscape, a cat, a relative, a friend, a letter (or the act of answering a letter), walking, the unexpected receipt of a new poetry magazine full of work by new young writers, the arrival of a new book of poems by a friend or somebody I don’t know personally; re-reading Shakespeare or reading Emily Dickinson on the streetcar and suddenly moved to tears; shopping for vegetables, making love, looking at pictures, taking dope, sitting still and looking at whatever is happening in front of me, getting a haircut, being afraid of everybody and everything, hating everybody, playing music, going to parties, visiting relatives, riding in trains, buses, taxis, steamboats, riding horses, getting drunk, dancing, praying, practicing meditation, singing, rolling on the floor, losing my temper, looking for agates, arguing, washing sox, teaching, sweeping the floor, operating this typewriter right now (bought in Berkeley 12 years ago and wrote ten books on it) while the cicadas and taxis all sing in ravening hot Japanese summer 1967…all this is how to write, all this is where poems are to be found. Writing them is a delight.”
The term livingry was coined by Buckminster Fuller. I first came across the word while reading Bucky’s final great work Critical Path, a book that literally changed my life. I read the book in 1984, the year after Fuller died. When I finished reading the book I felt both discombobulated and inspired, my previous notions of reality and history blown to smithereens.
So I carefully read the first two-thirds of the book again, taking copious notes, and by the end of that weeks-long study I felt I understood the factual content and the metaphysical content of Critical Path. And I decided to follow Fuller’s dictates in terms of how to live my life as a human being devoted to the survival of our beloved spaceship earth.
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At the conclusion of Critical Path, Buckminster Fuller said humanity is at a crucial moment in our evolution, a moment that will decide the fate of the planet and our species. We have come to the moment when the forces of livingry are on the verge of being overwhelmed by the forces of weaponry. If that happens, then Universe’s collaboration with humans will be over. Fuller believed Universe very much wants us to choose livingry over weaponry and create a thriving egalitarian and ecologically regenerative society, though he was not optimistic we would collectively make that choice.
Now as we watch in horror as a regime of criminals and thugs continues to demolish our government and terrorize our citizenry and the other nations of the world, I cannot help but see these ignorant amoral people as the forces of weaponry. And I cannot help but see the non-violent protestors against this tyranny as the forces of livingry.
What is livingry? Non-violence, generosity, compassion, equality, kindness, inventiveness, non-polluting regenerative energy sources and forms of transportation. (Bucky was adamant that nuclear power was not a solution to anything and that the nearest safe nuclear power plant to earth should remain our sun 93 million miles away.)
Weaponry is violence, greed, cruelty, ignorance, racism, misogyny, bombs, missiles, armies of killers, dishonesty, criminality, and a collective dependency on fossil fuels.
May we never forget those who have died and suffered for the cause of livingry, and may we, collectively, overcome the terrible forces of weaponry.
