Here goes the road through the Amish country. Corn’s getting high. The one below is much closer to home – walking distance. It’s the south side of the Hollow Hills, using my home as ground zero, looking down towards the Catskills. That is, if you flew in between these two little summits and kept going the Catskills is where you would end up before too long. I’m in a river valley here.

 

 

But just look at that, will’ya? I could live in those trees.

 

 

I’d just love to get rid of that power line, except the folks down the road might be a little pissed off when their TV goes out, not to mention their deep-freeze full of meat. I was just thinking about this fellow I know whose specialty is removing power lines from barn pictures in – oh – some fancy schmancy version of Photoshop. I guess I was thinking of him because I took this picture. Funny, that.

 

The other day a fawn with spots walked over to where I was sitting out in the sun, Colin Dexter novel in hand, and actually craned its neck and flared its nostrils to give me a good old sniff. Momma deer was standing not far away, watching the whole thing in that disconcerting doll’s eye way of theirs. Or, doe’s eye way. I could feel the fawn’s breath on my arm. I was talking to it, of course, nice and quiet. The sound of my voice attracts wildlife, and puts most people into a restful slumber.

 

I need people, by the way. I like people. I need people like Elizabeth. A few of my oldest customers cancelled since I returned from camping, and I then learned they had contacted Elizabeth to try to convince her to work for them without me. Of course she told them where to get off. I don’t believe she was very polite. But I couldn’t give her any work today because my caterer friend has taken a dislike for her and insisted I leave her be. Given the choice – and, apparently that is what I have been given – well… I could use more people like Elizabeth in my life and fewer people like my caterer friend. That’s rather an easy decision.

 

I’m attracted to guilelessness. I’m attracted to people who don’t understand irony. I’m attracted to people who simply give and don’t expect to be rejected. One might say I am attracted to people who are the opposite of myself.

 

Speaking of which, I heard from my rich communist friend this morning. No - we really are good friends. I’ve written about her before, and I really should give her a name. Hmm… her name is Clover. Yes, that’s it. Last year at this time I was trying to teach the dear daffy creature to drive. I’m quite glad she has apparently given up on that. And now she is returned, and freshly married. She is quite disappointed in Senator Obama, in whom she had invested much hope. In fact, I think that’s why she called – to tell me that. I sympathized with her, having a somewhat lackluster candidate myself.

 

I told her that Obama may well be able to ride the remnants of his tidal wave into office in November. Time will tell. But, whether it happens before or after that point, his hubris will be his downfall. She agreed, and when Clover and I can agree on something other than favorite ice cream flavor it’s time to play the Mega-Gazillions.

 

I’ve never played the Lottery – well, once accidentally. That’s a story, but not for today.

 

Anyhooo, I’m a George W. Bush fan, and I’ll tell you why: He is guileless and he doesn’t understand irony. Well now, it may be more precise to say he hasn’t any taste for it. I don’t say now that I have never been critical of him. I have had much cause to criticize him, but that’s beside the point. I criticize my own sons more than any stranger, (I hope in such a way as to give them guidance and encouragement.) But no – Bush understands the statement, “It’s none of my business what other people think of me,” and he believes it, and he acts as if he believes it. That is a concept which, when it is properly understood, will open up a whole new world of opportunity for anybody who embraces it.

 

People don’t seem to like him, but our enemies are terrified of him. So I don’t suppose it means jack squat whether people like him or not.

 

Do the right thing, not the wrong thing, to the best of your ability, and pray. If you do that then it is truly none of your business what other people think of you. If you don’t do that, the chances are you’ll always be looking over your shoulder, and you’ll always have to walk in the shadows so that you may duck into them whenever necessary. If you do everything to please others, although your superhero name may be Flexi-Man, you will find that you are not really super, and not really a hero, and not really a man.

 

I have a few other pictures – just more countryside. This is Hinder Hollow, two views.

 

 

I would like to have some visitors. I think I may have a party. I’ve never done that before. Well, back in January or February I had a few people over, but I wasn’t really the organizer of that event. When I think of all the things I’ve delegated to women over the years… well, a social life is one of them. That’s a sad state of affairs, isn’t it? But I’d like to have a house which is full of life – other than my own, magnificent though it may be.

 

Oh, I have to go pick up a check. I should do that now, before it gets dark.

 

 

Two girls walk by together. One is having a conversation with her own hand – I must assume a tiny cell phone being held in it.

 

When you walk together with someone you should walk together. Damned disrespectful I think.

 

A telephone changes your location; it brings you someplace else. No, not your physical location. So what? A telephone transports the part of you that thinks – your thoughts – to some other place.

 

I think many people must think of themselves only in terms of their bodies, and think of themselves as existing within the confines of their bodies. But our thoughts control our bodies by remote control. Eyes are cameras, ears are microphones, brains are processors.

 

Well, I see it this way, but I also see myphets. Feel free to reject anything I may say if you cannot reconcile it with what you know to be true, but keep the door open a crack for me.

 

What’s a body? Among other things, a body is a point of view. Our point of view when looking at the world comes to us courtesy our bodies, and I suppose if our bodies are quite small it’s a big world and if our bodies are quite tall it’s a small one.

 

Sister Mary Tabernacle Door taught me that bodies are no more than inert matter until God breathes the breath of life into them, and it is that breath of life – sometimes referred to as the unifying principle – which animates the body. There would be no need for a body to be created without the unifying principle, so for that and a multitude of other reasons, we know the breath of God occurs at conception. Also, a woman who is pregnant – if she is allowed to go full term – has never once in history given birth to puppies.

 

Speaking of puppies, mine is ready. Unfortunately, I am not ready for it. I can’t have a dog where I am living – and, even if I could, it is disagreeable to my way of thinking to keep a dog captive within the confines of a village apartment. One might as well have a goldfish. Ah me…

 

Well, of course the plan was that I should be living by now in a house of my own on 22 acres about 16 miles south of here. That place is still open, by the way. The Real Estate agent who was trying to hustle me by saying there was another offer was – ah – lying. Duh. So – no more agents for me, particularly not females. I’m at a disadvantage with them. If the house is still available in September my offer will be lower, and I will only make it if that atrocious harpy is under control. And by that I mean no where near me.

 

Well, other owners have been lined up for the puppies in the meanwhile. It’s not like they won’t go. I’ll have to give this litter a miss. Elizabeth tells me she’ll have another one in a couple of years. Hmm…

 

I remember my first dinner with The Lady. Her cell phone rang. She withdrew it from her bag and turned it off. Then she returned it to her bag, beamed her radiant smile at me across the table, and said, “There. Let’s talk.”

 

I dated a whole bunch of girls back at that time, I think all the available ones whose age was within law and reason anyway, and a few whom it turned out were not. The Lady was the only one who turned off her damned phone. But I was in love with her already. I don’t suppose it would have mattered.

 

But you know what? – And I explained this to her a year or so later, after she’d figured out what she wanted to do with me and our friendship had developed. She said, “I wish I could fall in love with you. Maybe I can make myself. Why not?”

 

I said: Because you like steel and glass and I like wood and stone; because you like Vegas and I like Madrid; because you need a million shoes and I go barefoot; because you go shopping and I go camping; because everything you love I despise and everything I love you don’t understand. Because I love you, and you can’t understand that either. Because you can’t make yourself fall in love. No one can.

 

Because of The Squabbler.

The ice is clear. The ice is cold. I’m so glad. Warm ice isn’t as good.

 

Black Lodge Hill is almost invisible in mid-Summer. This morning, while I was listening to the frog sonata, I couldn’t see it at all. I had my eyes closed.

 

 

Well, Elizabeth had a very good time at her concert. A few of you will be happy to know. She crowd surfed. She lost her top, (having to make a choice between it and her cell phone/ camera, apparently), and she was apparently groped quite a lot – mainly by other women.

 

The Talking Heads: “Girls want to be with the girls.

                                   And the boys say, ‘What do you mean?’”

 

Don Dixon: “All of the girls like to dance,

                      But only some of the boys do…”

 

Somewhere in the midst of all that there must have been music playing, but I didn’t hear about that from her this morning. I don’t think she has any idea who the bands were. Probably a lot of these new power-ballad-only weeping boy bands. She took lots of pictures.

 

Of course, definitions of “a good time” vary, depending on who you talk to.

 

I’m glad I didn’t go. I don’t like crowds. Back in the day when I was attending concerts of that sort we didn’t crowd surf; we were much too stoned to move. Flashing was not unheard-of, but groping just wasn’t done – not unless someone wanted to be knifed. There was no “mosh” pit. It was a bit different, not a whole lot.

 

But in those days too, because I was married into the biz, I was usually on the stage or backstage. I guess I wouldn’t have known what was going on, except what I could see. You can’t see much.

 

I saw Diz at My Father’s Place in Roslyn. Salt Peanuts – Salt Peanuts. That was in the 80’s. We had a table with a candle in the middle. A cocktail waitress came by every now and then to extract more money from us. That’s my idea of a show.

 

Adrian Belew and The Bears opened for David Bowie at the last arena concert I ever attended. I can’t be sure of the year. We were out in the seats for that one. We left about half way through Bowie’s first set. Well, we had to catch a flight to London in the morning and Bowie’s show was a pretty standard Greatest Hits affair. “And then I wrote…” Adrian was cool. Adrian is always cool.

 

A few years I ago I saw The Blasters in the grubby little city to the south. My son and I were in an audience of about 15 people. No fooling – I think the number of people with the band equaled the number of people who came to the show. But there we were – five feet away from Phil Alvin and his sweat-soaked bowling shirt. We would have been closer, but a Phil announced just before they struck the first chord, “You might wanna stand back. This band is unnecessarily loud.” That was a Greatest Hits show too – what else could it be? But who cares? It’s The Blasters. Love ‘em.

 

Anyhoooooooo…

 

A quiet evening. I’m feeling much better, too. I was ruminatin’ a little too much over the weekend. There’s no talking to me when I’m ruminatin.’ What was I ruminatin’ about? Oh, business. Business business business. Boring old business. Nothing important. I was just in a snit. Can you imagine me - in a snit? I know it’s hard.

 

Oh, by the way, I was over at a friend’s place and I got to see “Member of the Wedding” on TCM. I’d never seen it before. It was something. A few weeks ago I posted a YouTube video excerpt from the film, and Biggie T. identified it for me. Carson McCullers wrote the play about a 12 year-old girl goin’ buggy because her big brother’s getting married. Julie Harris (then 27) played the girl. It was an exhausting tour de force sort of performance. Ethel Waters, who was Beulah on TV at about that time (1952), was amazing in this very stagy, extremely well-written melodrama. Brandon De Wilde, noted child actor of the time, played the little boy who dies. Fred Zinnemann directed. Seeing this film is a life-enriching experience. I was blown away by it.

 

That’s the thing: if it enriches your life watch it, go see it, do it, listen to it. If it doesn’t enrich your life it’s less than nothing. It just doesn’t exist.

 

So I said, “How come I never got groped?”

 

“You never got groped? Get outta here.”

 

“No, I never got groped.”

 

“Dude, everybody was gettin’ groped.”

 

“I’m telling you I never got groped, and I never did no groping.”

 

“You shoulda come. You’d a got groped, and you’d a done some groping.”

 

“Why, were there many blind people there?”

 

“You’re impossible!”

 

“Yup.”

 

 

 

 

I was just telling the girl at the corner convenience about how I met Elizabeth. She asked. I share a coffee card with the inestimable White Tornado, which is the nickname I gave Elizabeth for the purpose of this blog. Of course, Elizabeth isn’t her real name either, but so what?

 

The girl at the corner convenience was very amused by my recounting of running into Elizabeth – at that time the vaguest of acquaintances – down in the grubby little city to the south, and how she, in a tiny black spaghetti string dress, invited me to smell her while assuming a position I had thought was only possible for a collectible figurine, because she wanted me to appreciate the fragrance of her favorite scent – patchouli mixed with amber – and how the voice in my head was urging me to kiss her so forcefully that I was on the verge of passing out. It is the same voice that sometimes urges me to shout “Tierra del Fuego!” while I’m at church. Or “Thumbtack toadstools!” Or some such thing.

 

But I managed not to kiss her, just as I manage (usually) not to act impulsively on those other occasions.

 

Although I sorely needed help getting to all the customers I had begun to acquire mostly by word-of-mouth and with little effort, I delayed calling Elizabeth for about a month after meeting her that day in the grubby little city. And why? – Because I had thought it were better to avoid the temptation that might come from working closely with such a pretty girl. As it happens, however, she has become a full partner (rather than mere helper), and I trust her completely to represent us to the world. The whole thing has worked out quite nicely, and as for temptation, I’ve somehow managed not to fall into it.

 

Why did I think I might? Well, it’s because of Emily. Who on earth is Emily?

 

Before I came on-line and started writing the White Lodge, before my mother died, I worked several jobs with a helper who was recommended to me by a friend, and she was Emily. A blonde bombshell with a raspy cigarette-smoking voice, not my “type” necessarily – not like the slender, elf-like Amazing Monkey Girl – but who cares? She was a girl. Emily was with me for a very short time, but she made me lunch every day and insisted I eat it. She asked me to sing while we were working together because she thought I had a lovely voice, and she said I could sing to her until… whenever. Our conversations were rather deep and involved, part of that involvement having to do with the constant meeting of our hands. Emily was very enthusiastic about growing my business – our business it may very well have been.

 

Suddenly - and well, it wasn’t that sudden but it disappointed me terribly – she moved away, leaving me high and dry. By the way, how can you be high and dry at the same time?

 

I’m really sick of hearing from people that I need a girlfriend. But now, this is interesting: When my Dad was last here he said, “Everybody needs somebody to love,” and by that he also meant “Everybody has somebody to love.” I had to think about that. I had to ask myself “Whom do I love?” because there must be somebody. The role such a person plays in my life may not be as I wish, but there is one. A psychologist would call such a person my “significant other.” The term has been misused to mean merely a romantic partner to whom one is not married, nothing more than a euphemism for extramarital sexual relationships, but of course that isn’t what it really means. Everybody has a significant other in the sense of the precise non-pop-cultural definition. A person’s significant other may not even be aware that he or she is playing that role – but there it is.

 

I happen to know, or at least suspect, that I am the significant other for several women. They are older than I am by at least a decade and my relationship with them is Platonic – another famous misappropriation.

 

My significant other is Elizabeth – obviously. If she knew that it would probably “creep her out,” the explanation of what that term actually means being… well, maybe I should give her more credit. She may well know it already.

 

But, all of this is to say I finally understand – or think I understand – the religious life. And by that I mean a vocation to become a priest, nun, brother, and so on. It is something that has devilled me all my life, that strange yearning that has made me suspect many times that I have lived in abject denial of my true calling. When a person’s significant other is Jesus, and can only be Jesus, then that person should probably be a religious. Mine is not. Nor has He ever been. That means I should probably not be a religious. My calling is not to be a priest or brother, and it would seem it was not to be married either, but it is something. And it is something other than what I’m currently doing.

 

So much is made of celibacy in the religious life. When the goofy grape culture looks at the religious life that’s all they see. They can’t get past that. I’ve lived for over a decade in a chaste and celibate way, and surely if I can do it without having taken any vows to do so then others who have taken such vows most certainly can. It seems the least challenging thing about it, not the most. But of course, it’s not something I’ve been trying to do. One can’t brag on being chaste when he has been offered no opportunity to do otherwise and is simply disinterested in creating such opportunity. Silly, really. Sex doesn’t move me. I have been accommodating in past years, but I found its pleasure to be too fleeting and of no lasting value. It’s a beautiful idea in a world of even more beautiful ideas.

 

So – crossroads always. I am perpetually at crossroads. Perhaps it’s my calling to be a traffic light. I don’t know. But discontent is constant, and it shall become unwholesome if I cannot discern its goal. Discontent isn’t a bad thing, by the way. That’s another silly notion of the pop culture – poop culture – that would have us swallow a million anti-depressants before we listen to the voice of God speaking through our discontent. The purpose of discontent is to motivate.

 

I guess that’s all I have today. There isn’t a conclusion. I hate that. Don’t you just hate that? It’s like a melody with no resolve. Nobody likes to be left hanging.

 

John Dickson Carr shares his enjoyment of Shakespeare in this 1943 Suspense! program, challenging his producer to come up with actors who are purported to be able to do an English accent. Carr was such an Anglophile, and spent so much of his time in Britain, that many of his readers (and listeners) thought he was British.

Well, I’m reading a Colin Dexter novel at the moment, and last week while camping I polished off an Anne Perry. In fact, the latter was so engrossing in its final pages that I wandered off into the woods, book in hand, to finish it when I heard the camp begin to stir in the morning, nearly tripping over a root. Britain is the center of the world of murder mysteries, and I’m a voracious murder mystery reader.

 

Britain smells like diesel fumes and Irish Spring deodorant soap, by the way. It’s like taking a shower behind a bus.

 

I’ve visited Oxford, the city of Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse stories, and knew the place after a fashion before ever setting eyes on it. In those days I could still drink cut glass tumblers full of Glenfiddich – or thought I could. I can taste it to this very day as if I’ve only just now had a dram. Actually, I’m drinking coffee at the moment, but it doesn’t seem to interfere. If I say the word Glenfiddich I taste Glenfiddich. They have such a pretty distillery…

 

 

Why I was able to identify so much with Dexter’s middle-aged Glenfiddich-drinking protagonist when I was in my twenties I don’t know. I think it was because he drank hard, loved Opera, drove a Jag, and it was perfectly OK for him to do those things because he was unmarried, lonely, and rather lucky when it came to solving crimes. Of course he had some skill, but luck plays a large part in most of his stories. I know I was lonely and definitely wanted to be unmarried. I think I must have looked forward to being able to get away with drinking for so long. I wanted a life like his. But the funny thing is I never once even remotely considered solving crimes or becoming a police officer. It just don’t give me the shivers, you know?

 

So there it was: the familiar (drinking scotch) mixed with the exotic (solving crimes) to pique my interest. I can easily see in my own way how a writer can fall head-over-heels in love with Britain as did John Dickson Carr.

 

Although she is not a writer, (or wasn’t, last I knew), my wife was also an Anglophile. I understand – that is, I was informed quite recently – that she now resides in England. I’m really very happy for her. I can’t remember the woman’s face. We were together for eight years and try as I may I cannot bring to mind her image. And I don’t have a single photograph. Isn’t that odd?

 

But I’m not an Anglophile. I just like to read.

 

Oh my Lord, she has a Facebook. There she is. I never once thought to look her up before. She did something or other on a Doctor Who season three episode, apparently. This is one crazy machine, this computer thingy – isn’t it? Oh but it’s an ancient picture. This one must be from before we even met. There’s another one where she’s posing with a Dalek. Gee, maybe she married him – that’d be a step up. No, I’m not posting it. Let’s give a girl some privacy.

 

I’ll post this one instead, and we’ll all close our eyes and pretend this is my wife. Yes, if we all wish really, really hard, Tinker Bell will wake up and come back to life.

 

 

Heavens, this post is much more entertaining than the Suspense! program. And now it must end – too soon. Adieu mes amis, adieu.