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

     What is writing?  What is in it?  What is the spirit of the thing?  Sometimes it is fun.  An escape that we need.  Sometimes it is serious, an exploration of an issue that we must face.  The genius of the best writing is when it is both.
     Denise Levertov talks of the poets in the Northwest, who write with a dimension that takes in not just "the appearance of phenomena, but the presence of spirit WITHIN the phenomena."  ("Some Affinities of Content", 1991)  To give an example of this, she quotes a poem by Sam Hamill, Black Marth Eclogue.  Part of this poem, about a heron, I will quote here:
       "He stands in the black marsh
        more monument than bird, a wizened prophet
        returned from a vanished mythology.
        He watches the hearts of things."
     This is such an outstanding poem, and displays perfectly the spirit of the bird, as well as the bird itself - an ephemeral meaning behind eye and feather - without interposing the viewer.  The scene has a spiritualism all of its own, a proto-spiritualism.  The heron, a large bird, is presented as a prophet of old, and all sorts of imagery and meaning is brought to bear.  With that meaning, confronting a prophet of the past, we move in our minds.  We get an escape from the city life we face, an escape from the stresses of honking cars, work deadlines, and bills due, into a scene of peace, of myth, of something older and wiser than us.  Through that, we can inject our issues.  That issue may strike each of us differently.  The art has drawn us in.  For some it could be, "Where should we be?  What should we be seeking?"
     An example not from nature, but still of this phenomenon and the spirit within, is in a poem by Barbara Alfaro, The Rocking Chair, from First Kiss (2012).   Here, the literal spirit of a boy is present, but it's the deeper spirit of loss, of hanging on, that moves this.  The opening is quoted here:
       "In the nursery the ghost of a boy stands
        on a rocking chair, holding its back.
        A miniature prisoner of wood,
        he is looking through its slats."
     We look through the slats of such good poems and writing, and find our own spirits, our own issues, and our escapes.  We may or may not have suffered the loss of a child,  but all of us have lost, and hung on.   Who has not been a miniature prisoner at some point in their lives?  Or looked through our own slats?  Hopefully, we read and write ourselves to go on, to be better, to find the spirit of an event, a place, a bird, or a rocking chair not yet thrown away.  Then, we find the spirit of a thing, and perhaps, maybe, of ourselves.


    

I have attention deficit disorder when it comes to reading and writing. What to choose?  There is so much to choose from!  So many new things to grab.  How does today's amateur writer/lazy reader, choose where to spend their time?  

There are so many new books from new friends in the online writing community.   Collections of stories, memoirs, novels, poems.  Wonderful jewels, just becoming polished.  There are new books from old established authors who have been favorites for years.  “I didn't know he was  still writing!”  Then there are new finds when one goes to the (few remaining) book stores. I can go in with a $25 gift card, absolutely and resolutely sure that this time I will come out with a  couple paperbacks or one hardcover, and not go over the amount clearly stated on the gift card, but, well, an armload of “finds” later always proves me wrong.   In my defense, when I didn't grab, pay, and walk away with them in the past, I would never remember or find that very promising book later.  It would be lost to me.  So now I grab them.  (I know, writing them in a list could work, but it's not nearly as fun.)

Then there are journals, articles, etc. that are fun to read.  There are also poems and short stories online from authors just sticking their toes in the community for the first time, people I would like to encourage.  

Finally there are the old friends, the favorite books that sometimes are pulled onto your lap for a re-reading.  In this fond ritual one calls forth not only the details of the book, the love of certain characters, the thrill of the best passage, but also the time and place of the time your first read the book.  Do we not all have a book that is associated, perhaps, with a first girlfriend or boyfriend, or a time at a cabin next to a lake, or some other time of our life? 

For example, as a gangly teenager, there is Beneath The Wheel, from Hermann Hesse, that captured that feeling that the world was not always kind.  Or reading the poetry of Robert Duncan sometimes reminds me of the freedom I had as a young adult, able to pick up and go to a city within driving distance on a moment's notice to hear an author and search for new treasures at an obscure big city used book store.  Another book for me that holds that special place is Lord of the Rings, because my wife, whom I had just married, made me read it.  We had picked up a used copy at a used bookstore in San Diego where we had just moved.  It was a dusty, somewhat but not completely organized shop, and that made the reading all the better because we felt like we lucked into finding the last copy of the book that this store had.  So re-reading that book brings back memories of adventuring as a young married couple in San Diego, not only adventuring in Middle Earth.

Then there is the time I should spend on my own, reading about writing, and actually writing.   There is simply too much that we can do, and not enough time, what with jobs and other intrusions of the world.

So how does an aspiring author, someone who treasures the online friends made, and someone who loves to slip into a couple hours reading a favorite established author once the sun has slipped away, how does one balance and choose?  I would stay and figure it out, but one of the books I have picked up a couple weeks ago is calling...