Remember, Be Here Now, by Ram Dass

Even on the increasingly rare occasions that Timothy Leary’s LSD-popularizing antics are really discussed, the man known then as Richard Alpert appears as little more than a sidekick—Robin, to Leary’s Dark Knight—and his book, Be Here Now, a mere punch line to a forgotten 60s joke. But in the decades since, with Leary’s needle stuck at ‘groovy’ right up until his relatively early death, Alpert’s fully disclosed spiritual struggles, his open record of extreme growth and change, and of course his transformation into America’s own guru, Ram Dass, have left him, perhaps, the greater figure. By any reckoning, he is a scarred and worthy chronicler of a numinous time, and an interesting living experiment that still unfolds.

I had the good fortune to be handed Be Here Now in the midst of one of my very first acid trips, when I was still convinced that there was meaning beneath all the fireworks. I puzzled over it quite happily for hours, imprinted on it, and it has affected my subsequent spiritual life as surely as childhood religious instruction; and like childhood religious instruction, the influence has not always been positive and shaped me by my resistance at least as much as by my acquiescence. For example I, for far too many years, accorded Hindu-flavored spirituality far more respect than I now feel it deserves.

It is a concise classic of drug writing, a genre that deserves more respect than it gets

Be Here Now is actually three books in one. The introduction is Alpert’s tale of the years with Leary, his travels in India, and the encounters with the fabulous guru, Neem Karoli Baba, that remade Alpert as Ram Dass. It is a concise classic of drug writing, a genre that deserves more respect than it gets. The middle, longest, section is a hand lettered and illuminated attempt to convey, experientially, certain verities of the psychedelic experience. It is strange, strangely powerful, and I am not able to capture it in a net of mere words—take strong hallucinogens (or, if you prefer, entheogens) and read it for yourself. And finally, the book concludes with an adequate primer of the aforementioned Hindu-flavored spirituality—meditation, yoga, veganism, etc.—the efficacy of which is demonstrated by the easy competence with which India governs herself and cares for her people. Am I too cynical? Very well, paw through this section yourself and carry away the bits you find shiny… that’s certainly what I did, and I can’t say I regret it.

Separately, none of these parts is indispensable, but like the disparate, ridiculous books of the Bible (have you ever read the Book of Jonah?) when gathered together (along with an excellent bibliography) they amount to scripture. And, like scripture, they can remake your world to the extent you let them.

Alpert/Dass is, it must be said, a substantial spiritual fuck up, but I will always love him for this book, and for the way he once compared the way he figuratively fell on his face over and over to a man making his way to a holy city by means of continual prostrations—it was too apt a description of my own life to ever forget.

Promethea, by Alan Moore

Alan Moore is a literary titan whose medium happens to be comic books: deal with it. The fact is, Moore is positively Joycean in the way he packs layers of meaning into words and, unlike Joyce—or Pynchon, or Wallace—he has the whole playground of image to play with as well.

The substantial success Moore attained with his scripts for Watchmen, From Hell, V for Vendetta, and other titles—and the substantial disappointments he suffered as those graphic masterpieces were translated to the screen—both allowed him and drove him to focus on more insular, idiosyncratic work… one can almost hear him muttering, ‘make a movie of this you effing bastards,’ as he completed his pornographic masterwork Lost Girls, or the swirl of Cabala, sex magick, metaphysics, and superhero mythology comprising the work I extol here, Promethea.

Available in five volumes that collect the original comics, the spine of Promethea is conventional for the costumed vigilante genre: a young lady, Sophia Bangs (pay attention to those names, reader) finds herself blessed/cursed with the ability to transform herself into the curvaceous superheroine Promethea, who is able to fly, shoot beams of force from her caduceus, and so forth. In coming to terms with her new powers, she meets and beats assorted villains, and ushers in the end of the world.

Wait; what was that last part? End of the world? It’s hardly a spoiler to tell you so—from early on in Book One it’s clear that Promethea’s world faces the end of history.

But not by nuclear annihilation, as in Watchmen, but by Armageddon, Kali Yuga, Ragnarök, or some other name drawn from the end time theologies so often found in human spiritual systems. In her quest to understand her role as Destroyer, Sophie/Promethea thoroughly explores the Western esoteric tradition.

In his personal life, Moore is an accomplished ceremonial magickian and here, like Philip Pullman in His Dark Materials, he uses an exciting, bawdy, page-turning tale to sugarcoat serious philosophical instruction. The attentive reader will come away from Promethea with a useful grounding in tarot, cabala and the tree of life, Crowleyan ritual, and will even get an intriguing and accurate glimpse of Goetic demonology.

More importantly, by reading this book and letting it’s glorious graphics seduce you, you will imbibe a certain mindset and realize at gut level that what we are pleased to call reality is merely an insubstantial scrim imperfectly concealing the actual nature of existence. And as Sophie—and her entire world—are forced to acknowledge, confronting an unveiled all-that-is is both terrifying… and thrilling.

Travels, by Michael Crichton

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but the fact is, I like Michael Crichton’s novels and have read most of them. And of course, I’m not alone in that—Crichton’s books have sold 150 million copies worldwide. But relatively few have read Travels, which makes sense because it’s pretty much the opposite of a ‘Crichton book’. It’s short not long, it’s a memoir not thriller fiction, and it’s written in a graceful, unaffected voice, not the thudding, heart-pounding! thriller prose that Crichton mastered long before writers like Dan Brown or David Baldacci began to hammer readers over the head with it. I think he missed his audience with this one; Travels is not for the average thriller reader.

As you might guess from the title, Crichton is here writing a travel memoir but, crucially, he includes inner journeys as well. Beginning with his experiences as a 6’9” medical student who put himself through medical school writing potboilers—and the The Andromeda Strain—and continuing with multiple world trips, and his experiences meditating, directing movies, learning to see auras, tripping intensely, bending spoons, diving with sharks, etc. etc. His clear exposition of the events experienced and of his own mental state while they unfolded is what makes Travels remarkable. Also, his motivation for writing Travels is unimpeachable; he certainly didn’t need the money, and must have known that this book wouldn’t make him much anyway. Nor would it exactly burnish his reputation… the questing, skeptical-but-believing Michael Crichton on display in Travels is not the Michael Crichton he would want Hollywood agents to negotiate with.

So ultimately, Travels is immensely credible. Crichton tells me that he learned to bend spoons one evening, and I believe him. He tells me that a weekend workshop gave him the gift of seeing auras, and I start looking for such a workshop to attend myself…

And thus is reality undermined.

His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman

Just to get it out of the way, yes, these are Young Adult novels. And they’re based on Milton’s Paradise Lost… or so I’m told. But so what?—we must take wisdom where we find it, and in the three books of His Dark Materials—The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass—Pullman is not only wise, but brave, taking on, as he does, conventional religious thinking in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Most reviews of His Dark Materials focus on daemons, the animal-guised, familiar-like soul analogues that Pullman brilliantly fishes up from exceedingly deep archetypal waters and, yes, daemons are cool but for my money even more attention should be paid to his frankly anti-church agenda; read at the cusp of adolescence, these books will effectively immunize against excessive religiosity. I read them when I was struggling with my own religious addictions—I’m a recovering fundamentalist—and they were the kick in the ass I needed to actually change.

None of this would matter if Pullman was preachy or didactic, but fortunately—and unlike myself—he is neither. Instead, he couches his serious life lessons in a compulsively readable coming-of-age tale, set against a backdrop of witches, armored bears, dirigibles, and passages between worlds. As you are pulled from page to page, you will also be reordering your views on spiritual expression… so read with care.

My Life With the Spirits, by Lon Milo Duquette

Though I have cast spells, performed sex magick rituals, and worshipped my patron goddess Ostara under a full moon at Summer Solstice, the fact is I am a dilettante, not a practicing magickian. But even an armchair magickian must read astonishing quantities of written material, for surely it is the wordiest of hobbies, with tome after tome devoted to the arcana of divination, cabala, Crowleyan ritual, chaos magick, Enochian scrying, and so forth and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. And in all this vast, mostly fascinating, swamp of literature there is one writer, Lon Milo Duquette, who stands apart because he sees himself with without illusion, and because he writes with exceptional clarity, self-deprecation, and humor.

His Chicken Qabalah is a useful and lucid explication of how and why a non-Jew might explore Cabala for spiritual purposes, Angels, Demons & Gods of the New Millennium is a perfectly acceptable primer for those interested in Western ceremonial magick, and should you decide to flirt with high strangeness and engage the Beast directly, you can have no better Virgil than Duquette in his books, Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot, The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema, and Aleister Crowley’s Illustrated Goetia: Sexual Evocation.

But before you read any of these (and even if you have no intention to read these, or any, books on magick) read My Life With The Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician. Like three other books on this list, it is a memoir of alternative spirituality. Conventionally autobiographical, My Life With The Spirits follows Duquette from early childhood through delightfully rock-and-roll-and-magick infused hippie years, and into an adulthood as a sober and respected bishop of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Like all my favorite people, Duquette has a zest for direct experience and he exuberantly dives into yoga, communal life, magickal ritual, and whatever else captures his interest. And he writes up his experiences with the brio and humility that I associate with truth telling. His tales of Goetic evocation, for example, are masterpieces of immersion journalism: accurate, frightening, and funny.

Duquette’s writings undermine my grasp on conventional reality because they have the ring of truth. Based on my own (relatively trivial) magickal experimentation and his clear reporting, I am forced to accept that demons (and angels) are real and can act on our plane, that Enochian calls effectively summon visions of another world, and that a dead kitten can, under the influence of the right prana master, be restored to life.

Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of Duquette’s oeuvre is his attitude of, if you will, ‘dogmatic agnosticism’. He doesn’t insist that you believe him, doesn’t attempt to convert, and freely concedes that everything unusual that he experiences may well be ‘all in his head’. “But,” he continues (a little dogmatically), “you have no idea how big your head is!”

Living With Joy, by Sanaya Roman

I didn’t set out to become a fan of channeled material, and I can’t tell you how I came across Living with Joy: Keys to Personal Power and Spiritual Transformation, but in the six or so years that have passed since I abandoned fundamentalist Christianity no genre of literature has affected me more profoundly. Seth, I confess, is too intellectual for me, but Abraham and sometimes Kryon move me profoundly. And though he has a relatively small following—bad PR?—the entity who styles himself Oren, channeled by Sanaya Roman, has gradually and completely upended my world view, and Living with Joy is my bedside scripture.

There may be more to this world view than I am able to express, or I may be distorting it—I’ve been forced to admit in recent years that I am able to grasp only a small fraction of the data presented to me—but here is some of what I have gleaned:

• The all-that-is actively engages with individuals, reshaping itself to conform to an individual’s basic beliefs and expectations about reality. The all-that-is is like a nervous new lover, eager to conform to the beloved’s illusions.

• Our basic beliefs and expectations about reality are entirely within our control. Which is to say, the suite of beliefs we use to order and understand the all-that-is are choices, not understandings or deductions or inevitabilities. Likewise, we are free to expect whatever we like. Note: this is not to say that we control the all-that-is. It is more as if the all-that-is is an agreeable maestro, presenting itself in a way that is consonant with the observer’s disposition. But even so, certain verities persist, which is why day-to-day reality does not shift instantly to accommodate our fancies, as in a lucid dream.

• This being the case, it makes sense to deliberately choose our beliefs and shape our expectations so that we gradually create the most enjoyable life possible. We can also, incidentally, change our pasts by deliberately reinterpreting our memories.

• There are myriad techniques that accomplish this restructuring: prayer, spells, visualizations, drugs, ritual, are just a few effective examples. Different entities tend to focus on different techniques.

• You can start now.

By dipping into Living with Joy regularly, my thinking has gradually taken on this world view. I now pay attention to the tenor of my thoughts, state my goals in positive language, assume responsibility for my circumstances, etc., etc. And consequently, reality is now different for me. Delightful synchronicities abound, I live in freedom, experience joy, and no longer feel that I am a victim in a hostile environment. My fundamental belief about the way the world works is that the all-that-is is a wish granting machine, and that it dances with me every day.

Cosmic Trigger, Robert Anton Wilson

I didn’t realize until compiling this list that I have read a lot of spiritual memoirs, and have been largely remade in their image. None have affected me more profoundly than Robert Anton Wilson’s (PBUH) Cosmic Trigger I : Final Secret of the Illuminati, the essential first volume of his three volume autobiography.

For me it has always been books, not teachers, that appeared when I was ready, and Cosmic Trigger showed up when I first decided in my heart—where it mattered—that I could no longer abide the fundamentalist Christian cult I had faithfully espoused for the first 17 years of my adult life. I knew others who had left what I was then pleased to call, “The Truth.” Some were always sad or bitter, some fairly groveled in their efforts to reinstate themselves, some gave themselves over to unattractive dissipation, and at least one—a smart fellow, like me—was dead of suicide. I didn’t know of any, at the time, who had made a success of their heresy and infidelity, none who had attained the happy, creative heathenism that I so craved.

Cosmic Trigger broke me open like a thunderbolt, like the divine bolt of lightning that is seen in the tarot’s Tower card, redefining an individual existence. It was Wilson’s contention that we all live in “reality tunnels,” self-manufactured existences made up of our beliefs, hopes, and fears about the way things ‘really’ are. Had he said only this, it would have been enough, for just the phrase and his explication gave me a way to understand and work with the morbid eschatology I had lived within for so long.

But Wilson went further, describing his experiments with “rapid brain change.” In his efforts to overcome a “normal” Catholic upbringing (and parenthetically, I have always found it fascinating that so many interesting writers have Catholic school in their past—might the need to assert themselves early against an ancient propaganda set them on the road to literature?) Wilson deliberately made use of the brutal shocks to consciousness available via psychedelic drugs, taboo violation, ceremonial (especially Crowleyan) magick, the books of James Joyce, Sufi exercises, and the like. And by writing constantly and surrounding himself with a good wife and good friends, he managed to integrate the inrush of change that resulted and ended up—at least by his own estimation—a happier and saner man.

I copied him. I ingested LSD and psilocybin and salvia divinorum and lots of pot, I donned ceremonial garb and performed pagan rites, and I attended Sufi dances. And I found my own way, as well; since the cult to which I had formerly been faithful especially reviled tobacco and tarot, I bought myself some fine cigars and learned to smoke them while laying out a Celtic cross, and since I had so repetitiously heard that the Boss of all-that-is hates extramarital sex I made sure to have some ASAP. And I’ve done other things, too, meditations and visualizations, group sex and odd sex, sought out strange places and strange companions, and through it all I wrote constantly and surrounded myself with good friends… the wives came and went. And of course I had the guidance of Wilson himself, via his many books, and I have to say that at the end of it all I am—by my own estimation—a happier and saner man.

Cosmic Trigger is, of course, more than an extreme self help program. Wilson’s thoughts on personas, for example, are revelatory and his insights into the writer’s life remain a guide for me. Most of all, he tells his tales of an interesting life and philosophy in the whiskey-warmed, unpretentious voice of an ideal barstool companion.

Buy it, read it, live it. You have nothing to lose but all your illusions.

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About two years ago I recorded an interview with writer and extreme traveler (and personal friend) Craig Childs that focused on his recently released book, The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild. The interview first played on KVNF in Colorado, and was subsequently picked up and played on PRX. I was very happy with the way it came out, and if you like you can listen to it here.

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Do I banish? Do I invoke? Do I evoke spirits? Yes

For those who don’t recognize the name, Lon Milo Duquette is among the most visible and eminent modern ceremonial magicians. He’s an authority on Aleister Crowley and his magical systems, a high ranking member of the Ordo Templi Orientis, and a prolific and exceptionally talented author who has published some of the very best and most accessible modern expositions of ancient magical systems such as Enochian and Goetic magick. His writing is marked by grace, humility, and humor, and authority based on extensive research and experience. That he is a member of the Illuminati seems obvious, though he has yet to admit as much in public.

The interview below contains a scoop—the subject and proposed name of Lon’s next book. Enjoy.

• What’s a typical day like for one of the world’s most visible magicians? Do you have a daily magickal practice?

Since I left my 9 to 5 job to become a full-time Lon back in 2003 there hasn’t been a typical day. One thing hasn’t changed, however, and that’s my daily preoccupation with affecting the magical miracle of keeping a roof over our heads and the medical insurance paid.

I travel a lot giving workshops, lectures all over the country and world. I am probably most magically disciplined when I’m on the road. I take full meditative advantage of the hours of unbroken silence as I stand in airport security lines and sit quietly at the gate area. My hotel room becomes my hermit’s cell, where the meager equipment necessary to maintain my life and comfort is neatly bundled into one bag.

Do I banish? Do I invoke? Do I evoke spirits? Yes. Even on the road I do these things, But after decades of performing pentagram and hexagram rituals, Star Rubies, Star Sapphires, etc. my personal banishings, invocations, and evocations have taken on extremely personal dimensions and might not (indeed, SHOULD not) be recognizable or understood by others.

At home a typical day starts between 3:00 and 3:30 AM. Before I get out of bed I do a general ‘getting-off-on-the-right-foot-personal banishing/invocation’ that would take me all day to describe …so I won’t. I then grab a cold bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator and shut myself in my office and start writing. I’m usually working on the next book, but I also have two or three other smaller projects –usually introductions or forewords to other people’s books, or lecture/workshop material that need attention. I’ll work on two or three chapters at the same time. I’ve found that when I get burned out on one train of thought I need only change the subject to feel completely refreshed and energized.

I try to write until around 8:00 AM. By then Constance has been up for awhile and brings me a cup of tea. I continue pecking on the book, but I also start checking my email and getting myself enmeshed in the objective reality of the day. I’ll take a walk around the neighborhood or the nearby parks before coming home to breakfast on the backyard patio. Constance has our tiny backyard garden teeming with flowers (and a few squash, green beans and tomatoes). The roses are insane! So are the humming birds.

We say ‘will’ (a Thelemic affirmation) before all our meals. We also try to recite ‘Resh’ in the morning, noon, sunset, and before retiring.

I stay in the office for most of the day. I get some serious work done, but I have to confess I spend far too much time farting around with my email….LIKE I’M DOING NOW! and working on scheduling my talks, etc. I have my guitar on a stand right behind my chair and I play it to unwind. I probably now play my guitar 2-3 hours a day… more when I have a gig that evening.

I try to catch a nap in the afternoon. Then I get up and take another walk before dinner (or, on nights I have a singing gig, a little snack). I try to get to bed around 11:00PM. Then the whole thing starts over again. Aren’t you sorry you asked?

• Is it reasonable to consider magick done to elevate or refine the self as being different from magick done to ‘get things’—that is, to get a better job, or a place to live, or a creative opportunity? If so, how do you strike a balance between the two?

“Elevating and refining the self” is the reason you do magick “to get things done”.

• Should have asked this first, probably, but: do you prefer ‘magick’ or ‘magic’?

I don’t care anymore. I use “Magick” when the audience as an understanding and appreciation of term, and “Magic” when the audience is so green that the “k” would be just one more bit of confusion, i.e., I title one book “The Magick of Aleister Crowley” and other, “The Key to Solomon’s Key – Secrets of Magic and Masonry”. I don’t however use the word “Magickal.” I don’t know why. It just bugs me.

• In My Life With The Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician you discuss delightful adventures with the Goetia and with Enochian magick; what have been your ongoing experiences with these branches of magick?

Glad you asked! I’ll write a lot more on both those subjects in my new book (should be out in 2010). It’s called (if the publisher allows) “Low Magick”. Until then, I’ll have to ask you to wait.

• How important a figure has Aleister Crowley been in your life?

Very important.

• I noticed you were on the faculty of Maybe Logic Academy: what do you teach, and were you close to Robert Anton Wilson?

I knew Bob, but I can’t honestly say we were real close. Our lodge presented him with our ‘annual’ Illuminati Award. Every year for a few years running the organizers of Pantheacon booked us to share the same hotel room. That was a kick.

So far I’ve taught four classes at Maybe Logic Academy – two each of “Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot” and “Initiation – The Western Magical Tradition”. I’m about to give new class on “Enochian Vision Magick.” Stay tuned!

• If an intelligent young person, interested in magick, asked you for three books to read, what would you suggest?

I have to be shameless and suggest three pairs of books:

Crowley’s Magick: Book 4, Liber Aba and my The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema.

Crowley’s The Book of Thoth and my Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot.

[Belief Systems & Other BS note: You'll also want the Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck discussed in the above two volumes]

Crowley’s The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis Regis) and my The Key to Solomon’s Key: Secrets of Magic and Masonry.

• Thank you very much.

You’re welcome.

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Once upon a time I was vice-president of the Blue Sage Center for the Arts in Paonia, Colorado and one of my duties was to organize the annual lecture series. I normally liked the chore, but sometimes I had bad chemistry with the proposed speaker and because I am a petty, small-minded man I would then drag my heels on every little task, promote the event ineffectively, kvetch endlessly, and generally make an ass of myself. Even so, I always attended the lectures and on one occasion, listening to the introductory comments from a speaker who had particularly grated on me, I was astonished to hear him relating an essay… that I had written. The piece is titled Confessions of a Heavy Thinker, and is posted below.

So I basically sat and fumed for the duration of the talk, and then accosted the speaker immediately after he concluded. His response was simple and disarming: ‘Oh, did you write that? I found it on the internet.’ Even more discomforting was the prompt exclamation of someone listening in: ‘You wrote that? Somebody emailed it to me a couple of weeks ago!’

Have you Christians no shame?

Subsequent googling confirmed my fears: apparently I had had 15 minutes of internet fame and hadn’t even been aware of it. I wrote the piece in 1989, and it first appeared, under a pseudonym, in the June 1st New Times, an alternative paper (quite a good one) in San Luis Obispo County, California—in fact, it was my first publication of note. It appeared another three times in New Times—under my name, these times—because the owner/editor, Steve Moss, liked it and it was his paper, and it also appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, under my name. Somewhere along the way Confessions of a Heavy Thinker leapt to the internet, apparently shorn of any attribution to me… that or it was stolen. At any rate, it appears on several hundred sites, always without my name attached, and occasionally claimed as the fruit of another’s authorial loins. Here are some examples:

Curtis Dahlgren doesn’t claim to be the author of my work, but he does copy it shamelessly, and twists it—by substituting a few words—to slam liberals. Well, it was written by a liberal; suck on that, Curt. And yes, please remit to me any monies received for copying my work.

The ‘author’ of Confessions of a Quackbuster, a shitty abandoned blog, copies my work, appears to take credit for it, and adds a graceless, incoherent addendum that twists it to his purposes. I’m sounding a little angry, aren’t I?

One A. James Dehayes uses my piece in a newsletter, and says he heard Steve Brown read it on Key Life Network, a Christian radio producer. Fie on you, Key Life! Have you Christians no shame?

Another Christian, Bryan Patterson, who publishes a column in Australian newspapers, published my piece as his writing. Dick.

Oh, and some guy named Gene Stone published it on Huffington Post. At least he didn’t change it, or take credit for it.

My feelings are of course complicated. On the one hand, I am an author and of course I want the credit which properly belongs to me and of course I despise those who plagiarized and adapted my writing without permission. Especially the ‘faithworks’ guy. Chumps. And, pathetically, I want every bit of Google love and every single link generated to somehow be directed, now, to me. But on the other hand, I’m rather proud that it did so well on its own, as one is rather proud of the hitherto unknown illegitimate child who turns out to have become a doctor. At any rate, I here claim Confessions of a Heavy Thinker as my own original creation and call out my plagiarists as, well… I guess calling them plagiarists is bad enough. If they are decent, they will apologize for their heinous sin, withdraw their copies of my work, provide a link to its appearance on my blog, and remit any compensation received to me. Thanks for reading my hissy fit.

cheers,
Angus

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Coming up, thoughts on my imminent immortality.

while smoking thin cigarettes and sipping absinthe, of course

I have a couple of books out, 100 percent of my income is from writing, I’ve given readings to large audiences, I’ve written and produced a weekly radio show, I’ve published hundreds of articles in dozens of magazines and journals, I’ve published—and been paid for—a porn story, and of course I produce this blog.

In short, I’m a writer.

But even with all that validation, I find it hard to say I’m a writer, and when I first met the Diva it wasn’t anything in the above litany that convinced her I’m actually a writer, though I surely told her all of it—including my porn pseudonym—in a spasm of first date disclosure madness. No, what convinces her, and what convinces me day by day, is the simple act of reaching in my pocket and pulling out a pen and a notebook.

This I believe: it is the Moleskine notebook and Pilot G2 .07 black pen in my pocket that make me a writer.

I first began the practice of carrying a notebook everywhere when living in California’s Central Coast, at roughly the same time that I began publishing satire in New Times, an alternative weekly based in San Luis Obispo. My first notebooks were the little memo pads with spiral bindings, and they were okay (if a little dorky) when carried in a shirt pocket with a pen clipped beside. They were terrible, though, in a pants pocket: the covers degraded, the pages curled and tore, and the spiral binding was uncomfortable. Still, they’re cheap and I filled dozens with briefly noted ideas, poems, and snatches of prose.

When I began to write commercially I felt the need to signal greater seriousness and acquired the first of several blank Moleskine notebooks, the 5.5”x3.5” versions with 192 pages. A little pricey, but mostly great, as the larger page size allowed larger thoughts, and I occasionally wrote whole essays and articles in bars and coffee shops—while smoking thin cigarettes and sipping absinthe, of course. They can be crammed in a pants pocket, but they’re thick, create a noticeable bulge, and the quip, ‘Is that a notebook in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?’ is only (slightly) funny the first couple of times you hear it.

For a time after moving to San Francisco I foreswore pocket notebooks and favored instead the larger Moleskines, blank, carried in a black man bag that, I am tediously and constantly informed, looks dorky… and incidentally, am I the only one who hears ‘man bag’ and thinks ‘scrotum’? (I am? Then never mind.) The bag and larger notebook combo was not bad, as having access to those large, lovely, creamy pages (so like the skin of a Rubens nude) encouraged not only longer works, but also sketches, mind maps, rubbings, and other ephemera that will amuse my future biographers. And yet, I had to grant that the dork factor was high, even for a writer, and carrying a bag everywhere required a level of commitment that I prefer to reserve for relationships with, you know, humans. Far too often I would find myself with no bag and no notebook and thus, far too often I was no writer at all but merely an impostor who talked a good game. ‘All blog and no pen,’ as they (don’t) say (yet).

I’ve stuck with G2’s through all my notebook iterations. They’re cheap, long lasting and smooth writing, and when I forget to click them closed before returning them to my pockets, the stains they leave are a pleasant blue black that goes well with absinthe smears.

Now I’m back to using pocket Moleskines, but the version of my amanuensis currently favored is the thinner, lined, more flexible version. The paper is nice, the affect on my silhouette is minimal, and the ruled lines gently prod me to write rather than indulge my poseur sketching habit. Best of all, they’re always with me. This essay, in fact, was written in one, whilst sitting in Gateway Croissants, at Golden Gate and Larkin in San Francisco.

Should you wish to be a writer, to feel yourself a writer, you could do worse than acquiring, and filling, dozens and dozens of pocket notebooks.

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I wrote a talk that spoke to the conventionally religious and to godless heathens, and I have to say it went extremely well. To keep people guessing, I wore a black velvet jacket that looked gay, but not too gay, and an all white priest’s shirt with collar that looked holy, but not too holy. I started with ‘Dearly Beloved’ because I couldn’t resist, I kept the talk short and sweet—about eight minutes plus vows and ring exchange, I made sure it was personal, and I put in some laughs. And after it was over, plenty of people from both camps made sure to shake my hand and tell me it was one of the best wedding talks they’d ever heard—it really turned out to be a lovely wedding and reception (I was also the bartender!) and if you’re in a similar situation, you could do worse. Feel free to copy, sample, or remix as needed, and don’t feel obligated to credit me… although if you do use this somehow, I’d love to hear about it.

faced with the enduring enigma of love, we can only be grateful that it happens to us now and then

Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today to bear witness to a most sacred event, the joining of two souls in holy matrimony. And even though marriage is quite a common thing in one sense—so common that many folks undergo the ordeal several times—it remains mysterious, so inexplicable and strange that we humans tell ourselves a variety of stories in our efforts to understand it. In the view of many, marriage is an arrangement received directly from God, instituted almost simultaneously with the very creation of humans: a man shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. And in the view of some others, the pair bonding of two hairless primates is an evolutionary strategy that improves the odds for survival of offspring.

It’s interesting that both of these ‘explanations’ of marriage point to something holy. For those who accept conventional religious views, marriage is a divine gift, a state with many blessings and rights and privileges, a way for two people to stand together in a difficult world and support each other. For godless heathens, marriage is a triumph of awareness, an attempt by our species to direct our own evolution and find enlightened ways to manage reproduction and sexual energy.

And both these views highlight the difficulties that face any married couple. The religious point out that we live in a fallen world, and that worldly temptations and our own sinful flesh work against the family arrangement. Marriage is seen as a virtuous struggle and the reward for fidelity is a clean conscience before our Maker. Alternately, marriage is seen as an attempt to sublimate the impulses of our long evolutionary past. Rather than sin, we struggle against the desire to mate indiscriminately, or to express anger uncontrollably, and we fight against that awful demon, jealousy.

And that’s just two possible views. In a crowd this size, there may be dozens of differing views of marriage, and there may even be husbands and wives who tell different stories about their own relationship and what it means. Very different people are gathered and yet, here we all are; we’re all happy to be here. Happy and honored, happy and hopeful, happy and in agreement that what we’re here to witness is something special, something amazing, something sacred.

So why would these two delightful kids embark on such a mysterious journey, so fraught with peril? Well, they love each other, don’t they? They’ve been working at it for several years, their love has blossomed and grown strong, and now they want to commemorate that love, acknowledge it to their friends and family, and they want the state to endorse and license their union, so that they never have to testify against each other in court. And love is an even stranger thing than marriage. The Bible, for example, has almost nothing to say about romantic love, evolutionary theorists have a hard time explaining it, neurologists are trying to come up with a chemical basis for the weird feelings that go along with love, but the fact is, love, like faith, is hard to define and hard to make happen; maybe we say we ‘fall’ in love because it always seems like an accident, something that happens to us while we’re making other plans. And yet, love is the engine of all human achievement. As Max Ehrmann wrote in Desiderata, ‘never be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.’ Faced with the enduring enigma of love, we can only be grateful that it happens to us now and then, and we can delight when we’re invited, as now, to share in the love that others are celebrating.

So, who are the people who stand before you now, so patiently enduring this talk and this whole wedding extravaganza? It’s a curious feature of weddings that about half of you know Carl pretty well, and the other half of you know Kelly pretty well, but relatively few of you know both of them well. So here’s a little biographical sketch of both celebrants:

[Here I related some biographical details of Carl’s life, concluding at the moment just before he met Kelly.]

[And here I related some biographical details of Kelly’s somewhat more ambitious life, which I emphasized with a sidelong look at Carl that got a few laughs, concluding at the moment just before she met Carl.]

So Carl literally bumped into Kelly and what do you know there was a spark, and that was the beginning of the rest of their lives. [Here I gave details of how Carl and Kelly ended up in Paonia, got a shout out from the local mountain biking crew, and generally worked in some local flavor for the benefit of out-of-towners.]

So, that’s your married couple. Max? (Max was a youngster that brought up the rings… during the event, I got flustered and kind of forgot about Max, but Kelly got me back on track.]

[Kelly and Carl wrote and here delivered their own vows to each other—they both did a very nice job, which was to be expected as they have about four degrees between them—I used that fact to put a little pressure on them prior to delivery.]

Carl, you may now kiss the bride. [Totally patriarchal, of course, but who hasn’t wanted to say, “You may now kiss the bride,” at least once in their lives?]

[And because, in Colorado, you’re not actually married until the marriage license is signed we here had one of the groomsmen present a pen and the license, and I turned around and offered my back as a desk]

[And then I presented the married couple, and a great shout was heard throughout the land. And yea verily, there was great rejoicing and they did party throughout the night.]

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A luminous purple gas hissed out of the spout

A frustrated man walked along the seashore. He had just seen a movie about young rock stars and more than ever he wished he could play the guitar. It was something he had wanted to do for his whole life, but early on he realized that he had no talent. Whenever he tried to learn, his clumsiness and lack of ability balked him. If he had just possessed talent he would have made rapid progress and by now he would be a fine player, a hero in some band. Now he was too old…

Lost in his thoughts, he kicked at some debris on the beach. One object—an old metal teapot?—rolled for several feet and then came to a stop perched upright on its base. A luminous purple gas hissed out of the spout. The man thought to run, but before he could turn himself around he was surrounded by purple haze so thick that he could not even tell which direction he might run to be rid of it. Then, with a soft pop, the haze condensed, solidified, into a large swarthy being dressed in a soft yellow vest that hung open over a broad chest, rich purple trousers, golden slippers with upturned toes, and a turban adorned with a large purple jewel. In short, a genie. He seemed to be sneering.

“One wish, master.”
“I thought it was three.”
“Journalists!” said the genie, and spat.

The man thought. Money was no problem, his health was fair, wife and children acceptable… really, there was only one thing he wanted.

“Give me talent, genie. Immense musical talent.”
The genie rolled his eyes. “Very well, master, you have immense musical talent.” Then he smirked and started to fade.
“Wait! Why are you laughing?”
“Well, it’s rather amusing,” said the genie, and his voice now seemed far away, “you already had talent. And you’ll still have to practice…”

Then he was gone, and the teapot was full of nothing but wind.

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]]> http://www.otherbs.com/2009/03/03/the-genie/feed/ 4 http://www.otherbs.com/2009/03/01/me-u-i/ http://www.otherbs.com/2009/03/01/me-u-i/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:57:38 +0000 Angus http://www.otherbs.com/?p=294

It covered my entire buttock region, as Day-glo-colored as a baboon’s…

Though Nicholson Baker is not exactly obscure—his novel Vox may have been the world’s most famous book for a couple of days during the Lewinsky scandal—his book U and I: A True Story qualifies: out of print in hardcover (and teetering in paperback), sent forth virtually stillborn by its publisher (Random House), not widely reviewed, now hard to find, and with a sales trajectory not merely dropped, but thrown down a well, U and I must have seemed a ghastly mistake, at least to those trying to make money off it. Yet I say you should read it. I believe it to be Baker’s best work.

Baker, early in his career, was seized with the idea that he should write about Updike while he was still alive, while “people could still conceivably sneer at him” and, under the influence of this seizure, pitched the idea to an Atlantic editor and when it was accepted felt very much like a dog who has unexpectedly caught a car: now what?

Twitching and squirming (and precisely recording each twitch and squirm) Baker made the brilliant (if lazily self-serving) decision to prepare by not rereading any of Updike’s books—not even to verify quotes! He half-seriously dubbed this technique “deprived recall analysis”, reasoning that what he really wants to write about is Updike’s influence on him as a writer, and he is unpleasantly honest enough to admit that said influence boils down to a stew of misremembered phrases, covetous admiration, and jealousy. However, acknowledging the need to quote accurately in this litigious age, Baker does review the quotes he’s cited, after he has finished the essay. The resulting comments, presented throughout in brackets, are an amusing and occasionally profound gloss on the text, a crackpot Talmudic commentary. “What is wrong with me?” he wails, after correcting one particularly appalling misquote.

What results from this is a personal essay on steroids, sort of an unauthorized autobiography. Not incidentally, it may also be the best intercranial view of the writing process yet published… but see also John Jerome’s The Writing Trade: A Year in the Life, if you like this sort of thing.

There are two things I love about Baker’s writing: his “Bakeresque precision” (Updike’s phrase!) and his ability to obsessively capture the streams-of-thought/motivation/memory that pass through him. No one has ever done this better, and Baker has never done it better than he has in U and I. It is fascinating, funny, and almost scary to read, for example, “I was of course very hurt that out of all the youngish writers living in the Boston area, Updike had chosen Tim O’Brien and not me as his golfing partner. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t written a book that had won a National Book Award, hadn’t written a book of any kind, and didn’t know how to golf: still, I felt strongly that Updike should have asked me and not Tim O’Brien,” and I find myself writhing a bit reading Baker’s moral dilemmas when he writes—for three pages—about the flip flops of intent he experiences when trying to write a simple letter of condolence after the death of Donald Barthelme; he wants to be sincere, but he also wants to be quotable. Who else has so minutely described the base motivations that gust through all of us, even when we are trying to do the right thing?

A caveat: U and I is not comfortable reading, and if you have the feeling after a dozen or so pages that it’s not for you, you’re probably right. Baker is self absorbed—”On the first of November I wrote at length about my ingrown toenail. But it just wasn’t enough.”—and his subject matter can be repulsive, as when he discusses his psoriatic symptoms (“It covered my entire buttock region, as Day-glo-colored as a baboon’s… I had bloody skin under my fingernails from compulsive scratching that I cleaned out as I read…) and his envy of Updike’s more advanced case (“I put off the trip to the dermatologist that I knew was imminent, though, because I wanted to see whether my disease had it in itself to be worse, more consuming, than Updike’s disease… ” [italics mine]); psoriasis, in fact, is a major theme of this odd book. But even if you find yourself repulsed, consider sticking it out. At 179 lean pages, U and I will convince you of two things: that you are not the only one who obsesses unhealthily about minutiae, and that you are very likely better off in this regard than Nicholson Baker.