Jacquie Phelan's Weblog

Marin Wombats apres ride book group: Snoop & Bike Monkey

“Fractalesque”  morning. Behavioral branchings-off, according to some inner algorithm.  Perhaps over an entire life the pattern will emerge?

Someone help me make sense of my pattern!

If I want a book published, I must not move on to something else until it’s finished (advice from the great John Pedersen). As in: begin the day TYPING.

But all the lovely distractions beckon….Sit down with  the intent to enter  a certain writing contest. Type for maybe five minutes, and wander into yard to churn the compost, a calming activity. Sorry, and emotion regulator.   Later discover I’d severed the root of our luxurious volunteer acorn squash…it’s deader than dead, all crispy & sad… Vegecide, unpremeditated.  Damn, I ‘m glad we never had a child...
Had fractally breakfast (between peeks at email, a twelve-foot dash to the computer, then back to slurp tea before its temperature falls too far).

(Ed: Your readers CARE ABOUT THIS?

Me: Shut up. This reassures them that they’re not alone)

Begin a pair of thank-you notes to Paul and Al who came to accidental party that erupted yesterday–supposedly a micro tribute to our 33 year old ‘fledgling’ (pretend offspring) Josh Thayer. The idea was serve tea at 3:33 on the nose on his birthday.  Dream on!

Read more of Sam Gosling’s Snoop, a tome  Charlie and I are actually stealing from one another to grab another chapter. My secret weapon: hiding in the bathroom, where angels fear to tread.

Reader, I DO  resort to  questionable tactics when the stakes are high.

Then change course 180 degrees,  and WRITE Dr. Gosling!   HeyI don’t all  writers want feedback?  Let  him k now I get the subtle jokes.   Oh, wait… maybe he thinks his humor is blatant! Being English in the USA means  having to clobber the reader upside the head.  According to a certain critic,  Americans are generally incapable of subtlety.

Anyhow, Snoop points out that we humans are creatures of habit, and that our daily routines rarely vary (even when we escape to Eden Burrow?). Well  he’s right. I dwell on computer perhaps overlong, making myself ‘clear’ to others. But not in a way that moves “Fabulous Me” forward (my autoless biography)…or “One Lump or Two” (a year with the WOMBATS).

Hmmmm. Lean back…. ponder this…remember I owe a couple of thank you notes…

Behind my messy desk is an angle-of-repose bookshelf. Any time I touch something, something else shifts. This time a little chapbook fell when I dug out an envelope.

“Small Printing 1975″…a small compendium by the British Printing Society which displays the varied talents of its members.  What’s cool about small presses is how ALL OVER THE MAP they are… and this, before the World Wide Web. Imagine the focus required to set type (correctly) …hmm… (spend ten minutes perusing, and discover…THE BUILDERS.  A version of an unforgettable song that has haunted me for 25 years… the Heptones song “Book of Rules”.  A quick search shows someone named R. L. Sharp wrote it in the thirties…and even the Grateful Dead were mesmerized by it..

It’s so short, so pithy, so true.  And what will I make with my tool kit?  A door or a barricade?

The Builders/a page from Small Print/Brit. Printing Society

~ by jacquiephelan on September 7, 2008.

Posted in first-degree vegecide, food, heinous name dropping, Jacquie Phelan
Tags: "sam gosling"