Dog here.   Or Canis Lupus Familiaris for those able to pronounce a few syllables from the language of lovers.

I really loved doing an interview with Rolando Garcia on his blog.  That was a lot of fun!  Rolando treated me like the equal that I am, even though I had to ride in the family car over rather than in a stretch limousine as I had requested.  Almost called PETA on that one, but, you know, it's hard to make these paws dial a cell phone.  Rolando had a nice cushion set up which allowed me to be at eye-level with the distinguished and mustachioed gentleman of letters, and he had a nice blend of coffee to drink and a few pastries to eat.  I don't get pastries much at home, in the name of some health kick I am supposed to appreciate.   It doesn't make sense to me, especially as we share cigars and beer, despite said health concern.  At any rate, Author Ullom/Jotter (I wish the guy would settle on one name, since he pushes one name on me relentlessly) was gracious enough to let me have my say without interruption. 

After the interview, Jotter and I sat on the back deck of our house, smoking a Montecristo cigar, a Dominican slow-burning affair with a lot of flavor, and we poured a nice Belgian Ale.  

"You were certainly confident in your answers." Jotter observed to me, idly holding the cigar in his right hand and watching the smoke curl up.

"When you have the intellect of a 12-year old Dachshund brain as I do, there's no reason not to be," I replied.

Nodding, Jotter looked at me.  "You never mentioned before your love of Groucho Marx."

"How can anyone not love the guy? You know my favorite quote?"  I asked Jotter, who shook his head.  "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my
pajamas I'll never know."  We chuckled at that, with me flashing my pearly whites in that winsome way that has gotten me, well, zero dates.  I continued, "I've often thought of letting my pajamas accidentally stay on the deck overnight, to see if that pesky squirrel or padfoot rabbit will put them on so I can take some action and use the joke with the other dogs."

Jotter reminded me that I don't have pajamas.  What a killjoy.  I am going to set up a pajama fund to rectify this terrible situation.  In the meantime, be sure to enjoy the interview at http://phantomimic.weebly.com/2/post/2013/02/interview-with-dog.html

When today's youth grow up to be 40 or 50 years old, and hear a song from their youth, what will the memories triggered by the song be? 

Very often when I hear a song today from my youth, I can clearly remember an activity or person associated with that song.  They are usually fun activities, fond memories.  I was lucky growing up.  There was no war that would draft me.  My area was not ravaged by crime, although race relations were sometimes iffy.   At the time of my growing up there were extracurricular activities, but Little League baseball stayed local.  There were no travelling teams.  You could go out for after school sports, or play in band, but it wasn't a thing that took up your weekends for half the year or more.   I also had a job at the local library but it was limited.

As a youth, I had time to dream.  I had time to ride my bike to the park and find guys to play frisbee with.  I had time to walk to friend's houses and put on a recently discovered group, and we would lean back, and listen to the whole album together.  We had to make up our rules for the interactions and activities we were in.   A pickup game at the park was officiated by ourselves.  New games with better rules were always tried out.  We always had music going, in a car stereo, a home stereo, or in our heads.

In talking with a friend about her teenager, who is involved in a lot of activities and seems to not have time to 'unplug', I thought of some of the youth I saw come through the scout troop my boys were involved in.  These kids would go to school, go to some sports or drama practice, come to scouts, and then go home to do homework.  They had no downtime, much less time to sit and eat a meal.  (They sometimes came to scouts with a fast food meal in hand.)  Co-workers have children who are always away on weekends on some organized event.  They will no doubt be successful people with many skills and fond memories of activities. 

I wonder, however, whether kids today get time to dream.  Whether they get time to sit back with new music and enter a new world, or read a book and enter a new world.  What creatively will come from these kids so driven, but so regulated and organized by some group?  To top it off, I wonder if when they hear a song from their youth, years from now, they will remember riding a bus to some event, or will they recall laying in the sun in a park, or driving a car around the lighthouse drive at night, dreaming and talking of different, better worlds? 

(Note:  I do realize that not all kids have the LUXURY of either dreaming or of being in organized activities.  That would be another discussion altogether.)

It falls
in lasting lace curtains,
silent sleep to afflict us,
cast against us, white sleet
in our squinting eyes.

It falls,
a dark winter sky disgorging
cover for brooding elders
watching our slow-motion progress
on the plains below,
their breath the ice of forgotten Northern witch-realms,
their touch leaving white fingerprints
on our moods.

It falls
to cover what we cannot see,
the Walker in the Wind,
face cast down against stinging ice drops,
our own thoughts wrapped in his
downcast snowblind eyes
shut tight for the cold,
bare footprints quickly erased by a swirl,
by deliberate wind
in the winter landscape of our cruelty.

It falls.
In the end, the peace of a thousand fallen Princes
mailed chests
rusted shut.
Victory forgotten but for the play
of a young hooded child, tentative red mittens
 in the white depth of it all.

It falls
as a beautiful cleansing,
a virgin white
on the sexless arms of sleeping trees, 
a frozen baptism
if we but become
the Walker, ourselves.

It falls
so we no longer do,
so in a month or two
the sun can rise.

There have been some famous writing communities.  For fantasy lovers, The Inklings was an important group that featured JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and others.  They traded manuscripts, often in college settings or sometimes in pubs, they read aloud and offered suggestions and support.  Would we have seen some of the books without this group?  The Once and Future King, The Screwtape Letters, and others...they may have seen the light of day, but certainly the books became better for the experience the community provided.

Likewise, the Black Mountain poets got a boost from meeting and trading ideas, both at the school and then in continuing relationships afterwards.  The great experiments in poetry and leaps into new forms were certainly boosted by this group being a community.  To read the correspondence of this group is sometimes to learn how to write.  Charles Olson's Projective Verse would become a bit of a manifesto for this group and others.

Today some of us have different communities.  Sometimes manuscripts are traded, suggestions made, certainly encouragement is offered.  Around the internet today, writers have found each other and continue to help each other.  Without such a community such as I found a couple years ago, I would not have proceeded as far as I have, which is to date but one small book.  It was the encouragement and examples of others that helped me, however, to this small achievement, which, as any procrastinating and independent author would know, is the largest achievement we c