Reminders of a very special introduction I had while living in Upstate New York. We’re still in touch all these years later.
Tag: Friendships
Where did all those classmates go?
There are holes in the listings posted in the website. Individuals, perhaps, who want no contact, though their location is known. Perhaps others who have been ostracized, after prison or scandal. Others just fallen through the cracks.
I see, too, others have been added. Girls who left to have secret babies. Boys who maybe got their GEDs or returned to the fold through marriage. I’m glad to see them included.
In the meantime, I prepare a message. The one that says my location can be known, even if I’m not attending this year’s reunion. Even now, it’s a long road from here to there, and back again.
~*~
How curious, coming across that note a few decades after I wrote it.
I’ve reconnected with a few via social media.
But many holes still remain. Frankly, I don’t know what I’d say to them if they did show up. We have gone in quite different directions, after all.
Suicides along my trail
I’m reflecting on the list – a best friend ever, a lover who was more passionate about me than I was of her, a woman I dated once and then backed off, the leading anthrax researcher who stayed with us for a weekend or week, the PhD naturalist from my high school (and brother of my first real girlfriend), even my ex- fiancée’s scarred wrists. Add to that the LSD physicist attending our Quaker Meeting or the French-Canadian Catholic up the road in Gonic, and the list of suicides along my life pathway has more examples than I would have expected even without getting into the many people I’ve known along the way but who vanished after.
It’s a dark side that’s usually overlooked but probably more common than anyone admits.
More and more my curiosity involves the question of life itself rather than matters after death.
I’m taking one mystery at a time, as it happens.
Last chance!
If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get back in shape – or even simply to get more physically fit, period – the characters in my novel Yoga Bootcamp will stand by you as inspiration. Or, as I’ve been confessing of late, as a reminder of what 50 years of neglect can do to you. (Some of the easiest hatha yoga moves are beyond my ability these days, and that’s before getting to my sense of balance. I don’t think I’ll get around to writing that story, though.)
Yoga Bootcamp tells of a back-to-the-earth funky farm not far from the Big Apple and covers a day in the life of its founder and followers as they seek to ride a natural high without tripping over themselves. As they discover, yoga is about much more than just standing on your head.
The humorous and insightful ebook is one of five I’m offering to you FREE as part of Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends tomorrow.
As they say, Act soon!
Get your copy now, in the platform of your choice, and then celebrate.
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
The doors on this train are about to close
The clock’s winding down on my offer of a free ride on my novel, Subway Visions. Who knows when, if ever, you’ll have another opportunity on such a deal.
The surrealistic story presents an adventurous ride in its flashes through underground culture. Some of it even erupts into verbal graffiti.
It’s one of five novels I’m making to you for free during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends just a few hours from now on January First. Remember, the ebook comes in the digital platform of your choice.
Step aboard promptly, then, before the door closes. There are good reasons I see these mass transit rails as an urban amusement park. Check out the ebook and you’ll discover why.
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
Back to the last big Turning Point
The four years covered in my novel Daffodil Uprising brought about tremendous change in the nation and around the globe. In the light of recent events, a fresh overview of the period may provide some essential perspective on current events. For some readers, it may even be a stroll down a Memory Lane of an activists’ protest march. Maybe you remember or maybe you’ve just heard of it as ancient history. In my story, the Revolution of Peace & Love unfolds at the crossroads of the America, where it never got the attention it deserves.
This week, you can still get the ebook for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale, which ends January First.
Act now, before the deal ends, and you’ll have Daffodil Uprising to read in the digital platform of your choice for as long as you like.
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
You don’t have to stand on your head for this bliss
Some folks actually came to the ashram for their holiday breaks, and now through these pages, you can, too – for free. If you think this means getting away from it all, though, you’re in for a surprise. The real intent is to pare away to essential truths of life and the universe.
The answers, surprisingly, are often more down-to-earth than any mystical platitudes you were expecting.
In my novel Yoga Bootcamp, chaos and humor are essential components of their spiritual quests. The guru is better known as Elvis or Big Pumpkin than by the long Sanskrit formal name he officially goes by. As for tradition? Theirs is essentially American maverick, centered in the hills not far from Gotham.
This may even come as a refreshing turn after all of the frantic ho-ho-ho rushing this time of year.
The ebook is one of five novels I’m making available to you for free during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. Think of it as my Christmas present to you. It’s available in the digital platform of your choosing.
You may even want a stick of incense when you sit down to read it.
Hari Om Tat Sat and all of that, then. Namaste!
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
Pick up your free copy now
Celebrity writer Tom Wolfe lamented that nobody had written the big hippie novel, something akin to the Great American Novel, but he was wrong. I’ve said so in some previous postings here.
For my part, let me invite you to Daffodil, Indiana, as its tranquil – some might even say dopy – campus goes radical. No outside agitators are needed in the face of the ongoing repression. The Revolution of Peace & Love is its own calling.
Daffodil Uprising is one of five novels I’m making available to you for FREE during Smashword’s annual end-of-the-year sale. The ebook is available to you in the platform of your choice.
Think of this as my Christmas present to you. Or, as we used to say, If it feels good, do it!
For details, go to the book at Smashwords.com.
Finally, the goddess Kali
I awaken to a horrible surprise, the feminine face of death.
Well, at least in the dream.
I’VE BEEN DIGNOSED WITH a terminal illness. Suppose what or who was on my mind was the retirement or “brand-value” issues. Somehow Ohio was in this or related sequences as someone was trying to reconnect with me or seduce me … while I kept moving on to my own lover and eventual wife and projects.
I’ll label this part Disturbing.
Along with a dirge
Touring a Roman Catholic church that’s known for its graves, the ones inside around the sanctuary and in chambers off to the side and, presumably, in the basement. The ceiling is relatively low and the dominant color a light yellow. Feels something like a Mount Auburn Cemetery and may have been surrounded by the like.
Noticing a man who’s obviously perplexed (he may have even been in clerical garb, I now sense), I approach and offer my help. He has a map that may simply have some directions, but he’s looking for such-and-such Avenue. Together we circle the inside of the building and come upon a stone wall that’s been painted black and both agree that’s where we should have found his destination. We’re both baffled.
We then join a small group in a chapel or, considering the slanted floor, lecture hall auditorium where a nun’s doing an end-of-tour kind of Q&A session. She keeps overlooking any questions hands up from either me or the man; I’m three rows back and in the center, he’s at the back about four rows behind me. Finally, I shout out my question about the black wall. “It’s the Williams family,” she answers, as if everyone should know they owned the property long before the church was erected.
We scatter to make way for some kind of ecumenical program in the sanctuary that evening.
Our Greek Orthodox priest is already there, sitting on the floor, his back to the wall, with his family.
Jnana's Red Barn 