Ban Microsoft!

A temporary message while I scramble...

Microsoft oh-so-generously sent me some sort of upgrade the other day, which I attempted to stall off because I was in a hurry to read emails before departing the house. But the damned intrusion failed to go away and, ever since, my computer sits in some sort of screwed-up mode unable to proceed. The upgrade won't install, the error code seems unfixable since I lack the tool it wants, and I can't get to any of my subprograms, frozen out by the error code. I can override to shut down, but when I boot up again, the whole scenario repeats again, just as in that movie Groundhog Day. Trapped in a time glitch, or a Microsoft niche maybe!

So I type (yeah, yeah, I'm supposed to say key or whatever) this from my wife's laptop, can't add pictures of course, and must wait till I can settle in for a long and irate session with some Microsoft tech helper answering from his/her distant corner of the world.

I'm too old to appreciate the qualities of computers. Bring back my Underwood!

*******
Two days later. I am back on my own computet, following a painful 90 minutes on the phone with a Microsoft techie, a nice guy named Amul (spelling may be wrong) speaking from somewhere in Ingleshtan. He kept suggesting ways to solve the impasse, the machine kept ignoring him and me, and after six such failures he/i resorted to some surprising trickery to erase my Groundhog's Day glitch. Commanding the computer as "Administrator" (which evidently means "God" to a chip entity), he took my recalcitrant machine back in time to a day previous to the beginnings of the problem--et voila! stubborn download gone!

I guess time travel may be possible too.

The O'Day Conspiracy

Writing recently about my brief foray into deejaying (radio, that is, not hip-hop) reminded me about the odd experiences I had with a disc jockey named Pat O'Day, probably the all-time best-known jock from this part of the country. (The photo is not of O'Day, but rather Sam Phillips, who was sort of Pat's role model.) O'Day was variously a deejay, a concert promoter, an m.c., a busy entrepreneur, a station manager, and god knows what else, most of those careers overlapping and continuing on for decades--in fact, at 75 or 80 he's still on television doing ads for Schick Shadel!

Here's how I came to know Pat... When I moved on from the University of Washington's Alumnus Magazine to the original Seattle Magazine (circa 1965-1973), I quickly became the local-color writer on staff, impressionistically covering archeological digs, Olympic Peninsula logging, the Black Power movement in Seattle, the then-new Seattle Repertory Theater, and so on. I tended to write multiple smaller descriptive scenes that, combined together, gave a bigger overview.

Anyway, Pat O'Day was THE major force in radio and rock music concerts at the time, and the editors decided to profile him. Pat's ego was healthy enough that he was quite willing to welcome me and a photographer into his life. I interviewed him a few times and visited his station--the regional powerhouse KJR--as well as a concert or two he was promoting (got to meet the guys in Buffalo Springfield at one); I hung out at his home in Bellevue, and so on. Then I wrote up the story.

Now, Seattle Magazine was known then as a wise-ass, full-of-attitude, gadfly-on-the-rump monthly journal, always willing to pry into things and take a sarcastic stand whenever possible. I locked horns with the editors often, as those carpetbagger East Coast snobs rearranged or rewrote my copy to give it an edge, sometimes rather mean-spirited. For example, I profiled an old-time police chief up in Darrington in the Cascade foothills who claimed to have been on the posse that hunted down Bonnie and Clyde; he had lots of other good stories too. And I added plenty of local color and scenic history; the town had been founded by loggers and others from North Carolina, and was still a hotbed of Tarheel culture in a strange and distant place--with tobacco-chewing workers, bluegrass music, Southern food and manners, etc.

Well, I told the chief's story sympathetically, but the editors turned it into a sarcastic piece mocking dumb rednecks. When it ran, we (meaning I) got nasty letters and angry phonecalls, and the old guy lost his job for innocently helping to make a mockery of Darrington. And when I turned in the O'Day story, the churls went to work again, playing up Pat's nouveau riche suburban lifestyle, his motel-like house furnishings, the big-hair look of his wife, his own obvious toupee, and so on. When the article appeared, well, he definitely wasn't happy with me. (In point of fact, I only lasted a little over a year on staff at the magazine; just couldn't stand the editorial policies and general rewrite interference.)

So we parted ways, both and all of us. Several years went by. I was busy with Rainier and other TV and radio ads, working often with a company called Kaye-Smith Productions (the owners being actor-comedian Danny Kaye and businessman Lester Smith). And in the course of things, KJR and other stations Pat was connected with were acquired by the Kaye-Smith parent organization.

Out of the blue one morning I got a call from O'Day, who wanted to talk to me about a writing project; I had continued to write scripts and such, freelancing apart from my regular job (the next blog chapter will discuss that), and someone at Kaye-Smith had recommended me. So I went to see Pat.

This was the post-Watergate era, when many strange figures connected with Nixon and his minions had made it into dubious history. (Which reminds me that I interviewed John Erlichman for an article before he ever went on to D.C. and disaster.) And O'Day wanted me to write what's called a "treatment," meaning a pared-down script with plot and scenes but without most dialogue and camera shots spelled out, expanding his conspiracy idea. Can't remember whether it was E. Howard Hunt or Gordon Liddy, but one of those creeps was married to a woman who died in a mysterious plane crash; and there was some speculation that she had been killed to keep her husband from telling all.

That was the extent of it. Pat wanted me to turn this broad suspicion into the script for a feature film. I wasn't too excited by the thing, to tell the truth, but he was willing to pay me $2500 for my time, so I went at it. Dreamed up minor characters, twists and turns in the behind-the-scenes action, showed how and why the wife died, etc. Typed it up clean, about 25 pages of stripped-down story, and turned it over to O'Day, who intended to use his Kaye-Smith and other show-biz connections to get a production going; I'd even get to write the shooting script maybe (wasn't holding my breath). He seemed pleased, told me to submit a bill, which I did.

A month went by; no check. I invoiced him again. Another month; still no money. I phoned a few times as a third month went by, couldn't even get him on the phone of course. Finally I asked a lawyer friend to send him a threatening letter... and was then paid within about a week!

I don't know if O'Day was making me sweat for the long-ago article, or merely being a typical, slow-to-pay producer hustler, but the $2500 check actually arrived at just the right time. I used it as the small down payment due on the house my first wife and I were trying to buy. Sold that house a decade later for big bucks, and I certainly owed some of our good fortune to my prickly dealings with one famous deejay!

The conspiracy movie was never made, of course.

The True Love

Sandie and I recently celebrated our twentieth anniversary (the years go by, don't they). She craves wooden boats and sailing, and I'm sure she wishes we had the money, and she the time, to own and enjoy a sailboat. Doesn't seem too likely these days. Instead, sort of compensating, we live on an island and she commutes to her job by ferry (while I cruise the computer).

I'd love to buy her a sailing sloop or yacht or whatever, but all I've managed to give her (with a bow to The Philadelphia Story and later great musical version High Society) is this poor substitute...

Yar

Her lines are graceful.
A full stern tapering for'ards
to a shapely bow,
roomy below, with a nicely
fitted galley, and her deck
all of teak, she's comfortable.

Where others pitch and yaw,
with her deep draw she
maintains an even keel;
and when we luff, she responds,
quick to my right rudder.

Any time she's had too much
of port, become sluggish
in her motion, we raise anchor
and take to the ocean ways.
She's in her element then,
breasting the open sea;

and when she sails past,
bold as her polished brass,
tacking into the wind
as is her wont, the other boats
might just as well heave to!

All dressed out in her
full rigging, mainsail rounding,
spinnaker bellying out, oh my
but she is yar... and lady enough
to melt the cold heart
of this old jack tar.

Broadcasting the Blues

I was listening to the radio the other evening, Western Washington's hugely popular Jazz station KPLU (broadcast to the world via the Internet), which has all-Blues programs every Saturday and Sunday, 6 p.m. till midnight, hosted by a genial and very knowledgeable guy named John Kessler. One of John's program features is the "Blues Time Machine," in which he presents some great early Blues number followed by remakes made over the decades since. That time listeners heard Sleepy John Estes' "Someday Baby" from 1935 and then versions by Muddy Waters (1955), The Allman Brothers (1975 or so), and the more recent North Mississippi All Stars, but all four performances with something distinctive to offer.

A terrific idea, I think, well executed that night. (Some attempts aren't quite so perfect, when the remakes are too much of a letdown.) And it brought to mind my own brief career as a nighttime deejay. Back in the Sixties--it may be hard to imagine this now--the airwaves were dominated by AM stations, mostly rock 'n roll and Pop, hosted by loud local jocks doing way too many ads interspersed with repetitive Top 40 music selections. FM stations tended to be for Classical or Easy Listening fans only. But then a few brave FM stations in the Bay Area and elsewhere began programming their own freeform versions of (just a-borning) Rock Music, political commentary, hippie goofing, and whatever else.

Seattle's fledgling was KOL-FM, which had a handful of deejays creating their own radio personae each day and night. One regular was Pat McDonald, these days still a familiar Rock critic on the local and national newspaper scene. Another was a slightly off-center Philosophy professor from the University of Washington named John Chambless, who came across sometimes as a hippie guru a bit like Timothy Leary.

Anyway, Chambless was due his sabbatical year's leave from teaching (this was about 1968-69) and was bound out into the world somewhere, and I believe it was Pat who suggested me as a temporary replacement. Chambless' station slot was Sunday night from 6 p.m. until 2 a.m., an eight-hour on-air shift. I had no idea what that meant really...

The manager approved, and the engineers showed me the mechanical ropes--and then I was launched, much like someone tossed into the water to learn to swim! I was free to play anything that seemed relevant to the burgeoning youth culture (I was still a part-time member then), to talk at will and do whatever it took to fill the eight hours of air time. Oh, it was a heady thing at first, as I got to select fine current music, album music, cut after cut, weaving the sounds into mini-suites, sort of, jarring the listeners with something loud after a quiet number, cleverly connecting disparate cuts that echoed each other textually, and so on.

I was having a great time... except that every time, my on-air energy started to flag after about four hours, and by 1 a.m. I was hopeless. I belatedly realized that eight hours is a hellish long time to be on the air trying to be interesting, even just trying to maintain one's voice. I soon resorted to tricks to get through--playing whole album sides of the Beatles or Steve Miller or whoever, turning those mini-suites into longer and longer stretches when I'd say nothing, letting the music do all the talking whether the tunes fit together or not.

And I played my one ace in the hole. Like John Kessler I was a Blues fan big-time, and I knew a lot from reading everything I could lay my hands on. This was the period when the whole Blues reissue-album phenomenon was just getting rolling, and I could practically buy, and did, every record that appeared. Son House and Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt were in the studios again after decades of no attention, and younger figures were getting their chance to record whole albums too, Junior Wells, Magic Sam, and other Chicago guys (including Buddy, of course), and the Southern cats on Nashville's Excello and elsewhere.

I began featuring a couple of hours of Blues music, maybe 10 p.m. till midnight every week, which the audience seemed to dig; at least, most of the phone calls that came in were positive. So I got creative (or cocky maybe). A white musicologist and writer from England named Paul Oliver had published two or three books on the Blues, the themes and history, that is, and I latched onto one of them, The Story of the Blues, and began reading whole sections and chapters on the air, interspersing his prose with the musical examples he quoted or cited, and related stuff that I could find. (Somehow reading aloud was less of a strain on my voice than doing aimless chatter.) And, also like Kessler, I played modern British Blues groups like the Cream and the Stones and Led Zeppelin who were doing their own versions of older tunes, usually without giving credit to the artists they were stealing from. I made sure those connections were properly acknowledged.

And what of KOL's audience? Well, I got almost no calls at first, aside from the odd whiner saying, "Hey, man, what's all this old shit. Play some Hendrix!" (It was clear some goofs didn't have a clue where Jimi's own deeper roots lay.) But then gradually I developed a small following, with people tuning in every week to hear the latest chapter from Oliver's book, and then phone me to comment on the music I'd added--Frank Stokes, Leroy Carr, Memphis Minnie, Big Bill, Blind Lemon, Blind Willie McTell, et wonderful al, working on towards the post-War Chicago Blues.

I was on a roll. I felt great--"Educator at Work" was the badge I wore mentally--entertaining the listeners and giving them some major Black/White racial history too. But then the real educator, Professor Chambless, decided to come back early from leave and reclaim his radio slot. After only seven or eight months I was out--kept on the KOL roster as a fill-in, but almost never called.

And so ended, ingloriously, my one brief close encounter with the world of radio. There were some who complained to KOL about the loss of the Blues I'd been featuring, but all the bosses did then was start programming more of it themselves, not to mention lots of Hendrix and Mayall and Cream.

About then too I decided I'd read and listened and learned so much about the Blues past that I could attempt a screenplay about Robert Johnson... But that's another story.

(Which can be read at my blog posts for June 12 and June 15 last year.)

Portuguese Spring

On this first day of Spring, 2008, a day early or not, I offer a brief note to acknowledge better times and dryer weather ahead...

On our big around-the-world adventure 20-plus years ago, Sandie and I (and various of our kids) spent the winter of 1986-87 holed up in the south of Portugal, in the region known as the Algarve--incredibly scenic pitted rocky cliffs, lovely beaches with working fishing villages nearby, Mediterranean-style white stucco buildings, too many Brit tourists, and so much more.

Last year, on May 28, but deriving from that most excellent Portuguese sojourn, I posted a lengthy, largely historical poem about Cabo de Sao Vicente (Cape St.Vincent), thought of as "The End of the World" back in seafaring times. Here's a much shorter lyric about the unheralded, early arrival of Spring, 1987...

Early February in the Algarve

The sea mints coins of silver light;
Blossoms salve each prickly branch;
Skittish clouds shy and collide:
Spring has taken Centianes.

Scent of almonds, fizz of bees.
Green bands stripe each clay-pot hill.
The sky regains its blue-tile glaze,
And every clover bed plumps full.

Donkeys haul bright produce bins.
Small boats trawl for cod and sole.
Tourists flee their white-snow dens,
Searching for some fado soul.

The heart in hiding stirs at last,
Sidles out in shadowed sun,
Darts back inside its leaden chest.
Six more weeks? ...but Winter's gone.

Feng Mac, Anyone?

It's a slow news day as I write this--if you don't count Spitzer resigning and the car bombs in Iraq--so why not talk fast food?

NPR yesterday morning told the odd and silly story of a Los Angeles-area McDonald's which has been laid out and constructed and interior designed according to the precepts of Feng Shui--directional positioning, curved surfaces everywhere, spaces for the wind gods to blow through maybe. (Sounds more like Oi Vey to me.) Okay, it's located in a predominantly Chinese-clientele part of the L.A. sprawl, but still... Big Macs? Cokes? Ronald McDonald?

It's one thing for Mickey D's and the Cola Kingdom to head greedily to Beijing, but quite another for an ancient culture to be shoehorned kicking and screaming into the Home of the Golden Arches. Why not a golden-domed McAchmed mosque? (Because the Moslem population would be insulted?) Or free handouts from the Torah with every burger purchased? (Jewish good-humor goes only so far?) I guess Buddhists and Confucianists, being generally peaceful and inscrutable and such, are considered less likely to object, more willing to... what, adapt? ignore?

The bigger mystery is: why not go the whole distance and alter your McDonald's menu to match? Evidently the franchise owner has no intention to offer bowls of rice or Chinese provincial delicacies beyond the "meals" and salads already on display. Heck, the guy's clearly missing a bet. We have a fast food local here on Vashon Island that offers Thai specialty dishes right next to burgers named for the high school team and certain island characters!

Us young-oldtimers have already lived through the transformation of McDonald's, Taco Time, and such from grab-a-meal joints to family-friendly sitdown eateries offering a lower-priced alternative to "real" restaurants. (Of course, many of them now purvey Starbuck's or some rival designer coffee brand... oops.) I'm actually old enough to have frequented one of the first McDonald's that Ray Kroc built outside of California, back around 1961 in Evanston, Illinois, where every weekend us college boys would trek the mile or so to that golden-arched stand-up (lean-on counters outdoors, as I recall), where we could get two cheeseburgers, fries, and a milk for just under a dollar. And the sign back then read: "Over 10,000 Sold."

The pretentions of food sellers and food eaters know no bounds. Buy local, eat organic only, consume nothing you have't raised yourself, monitor your carbon footprint during both the growing and the transporting, maybe eat nothing that bears offspring (not much left to chew on then)--I reckon those are all admirable attitudes. It's just the matter of belief vs. money available. And you will certainly find sellers willing to cater (yes) to your demands; it's all about niche marketing these days, right? The "Slow Food" movement, and obscure fruits, and vegetables grown according to Feng Shui maybe, as the answer to mega-farms and dangerous Chinese imports and fast food by any other name.

And now NPR today states that some consortium in Brazil is buying up all of America's slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants and cattle ranches. Should we carnivores be concerned? Just because we import Argentinian beef doesn't mean we welcome "carcassbaggers"! Is Congress going to save the American hamburger from its global-economy fate? (The anti-Latin-immigrants faction is already gearing up, I bet.)

Wealthy "foodies" want bottles of wine costing thousands of dollars to brag about? Well, that means there'll be some crooks willing to sell them leftover dregs or cheaper vintages at sky-high prices--does the concept "new wine in old bottles" sound familiar?

And my wife tells me some bigname local chefs are touting fruit-flavored carbonated drinks (kumquat, rhubarb, pomegranate, and lavender are a few of the flavors) as alternatives to wine. Oh really? A vintage 2008 persimmon punch swirling around in your goblet? I wonder what sort of "legs" it has. Carbonation goes so well with the chef's latest recipes, no doubt.

Certain well-known sayings spring to mind: "There's a sucker born every minute..." "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American populace..." (make that consumer). Or my own favorite, the sign in P.T. Barnum's freakshow tent herding the gawkers onward (and perfectly apropos at this penultimate moment), "This Way to the Egress..."

So Few Books, So Much Time

I've never written or published a book, though I've been featured briefly or mentioned casually in several--which relates slightly to the "witness" title this blog bears.

I think basically I'm too stubborn or willful to submit to the necessary work regimen, or just unable to stay focussed long enough, to write a novel or memoir or even a book of related essays; lengths ranging from brief lyric poem on up to feature screenplay seem to be my attention-span limits. Still, other people have deemed bits of my work worthy of preserving--poems appearing first in so-called little magazines, for example, and then a couple of them picked up for obscure anthologies later.

A different example: back in the late Sixties-early Seventies I wrote maybe two dozen short pieces for Rolling Stone; and three of my record reviews were then reprinted in the first book collection devoted to such--brief but deathless paragraphs praising releases by Clifton Chenier (I was proud to introduce his Zydeco accordion music to the world of rock), the Everly Brothers, and... who? Can't remember the subject of the third. (All of the pieces I wrote do also appear in the early bound volumes of Rolling Stone, but that doesn't count since there was no selection process involved.)

Another article I wrote back then, this time for Ramparts Magazine, critiqued what I saw as the phoney revolutionary attitude of Jefferson Airplane, examining the band's Volunteers album in particular, issued while the group was also doing jeans commercials! Many years later this piece was picked up for offprint use in the syllabus of a counter-culture course taught at a college in Germany, and then quoted too in a recent biography of the band, Jeff Tamarkin's Got a Revolution. I guess Internet access served as the key.

On the other hand, my long interview with Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman (offered complete, for the first time, in five early chapters of I Witness) has been quoted in a couple of Parsons biographies (one book also used a photo I own of Gram and me, seen below-right on this home page), but because both The Helix and L.A. Free Press underground newspapers long ago neglected to credit me as author, any quotations appeared anonymously (as it were).

Also basically anonymous were my writing and editing efforts for three other books: the notorious mid-Sixties Course Critique of professors and classes at the University of Washington (loads of fun to compile and write, laced with ridiculous puns throughout); the 30th anniversary history of Seattle Center and the renowned 1962 Seattle World's Fair that launched it (Meet Me at the Center by Don Duncan); and a thick Seattle Art Museum catalog for a major exhibition of (pre-Green Movement) giant "Earth Works." The author, some hopeless academic, hated my attempt to enable reader comprehension!

No thanks there, of course, but I did receive brief mentions, merited or otherwise, in two books focussed on Elvis Presley: Greil Marcus's Mystery Train (a later reprint offers after-the-fact acknowledgment for a story he used that I'd told him years earlier) and Peter Guralnick's great two-volume definitive biography of Elvis, for which I had helped line up a couple of interviews with Northwest promoters or reporters. (But you'd have to look deep in the lengthy Who's Who of people thanked to find my name.)

The experiences I had at the Stones' Altamont Festival turned up later in another guy's book too. Record producer and folksinger Sandy Paton, best known for his excellent Folk-Legacy label, published a collection of short prose pieces back in the mid-Seventies (I've forgotten the title and don't find it referenced anywhere) and in the one on Altamont he namechecks me and the battles, Hell's Angels vs. stoned fans, I witnessed with horror that day; Marty Balin of the Airplane, for one, was knocked out by them.

More personal: over the years I've fantasized that someone somewhere would discover my circulating screenplay on Mississippi Bluesman Robert Johnson, titled Hellhound on My Trail (written back around 1968-70; see blog chapters of June 12 and June 15, 2007), and offer to publish it, but only the last 20 or 30 pages have ever seen print. I've come to accept the unlikeliness of that ever happening now and have learned instead to look with special fondness on the final two books I want to mention.

Among the best English Lit courses I took in grad school, at the University of Washington in 1965, was one titled something like "The English Popular Ballad" (meaning the post-medieval Child Ballads, more or less), taught by Dr. David C. Fowler. The major assignment in his course was to select a folk song well-known in England or America that the ballad hunters had missed--to research it through history, try to find the ultimate source for it, analyze its structure and content, and finally make the case for its inclusion in the somewhat ex-clusive ballad books. I chose the Scots folk song usually titled something like "Lang a-Growin'," or "The Trees They Do Grow High," made famous by Ewan MacColl, Joan Baez and others; did all the research, sending for manuscript copies from overseas libraries, reading microfiche and old songbooks, listening to all the recordings available, etc., with no Internet back then to make things easier; then wrote my paper--which convinced Fowler so completely that his own subsequent book, A Literary History of the Popular Ballad, cited my research and thanked me for establishing the song as worthy of serious academic study.

That remains the highwater mark of grad school for me (even though I only learned of my inclusion in Fowler's book several years later). I may only be a footnote, but by God, I'm proud of it!

From a Scots ballad to the Nottingham cityscape... as we finally head south to England and the novel titled Living Proof, from the great "Charlie Resnick" series of police procedurals by prizewinning mystery writer John Harvey. Back when I still had a real-location bookstore, the annual BoucherCon gathering of mystery writers and fans came to Seattle, in 1994 or so; as a mystery bookseller I naturally had to "buy" a dealer-room table at the convention.

One evening there was an auction staged to raise funds for the widow of author Robert Bloch (best known for Psycho), whose medical bills and recent death had left his family in financial straits. Towards the end of this worthy event, Harvey as one of the guest authors offered to auction the rights for some fan to appear as a character in his next book. This novel idea (excuse the pun) seemed to leave the room confused, convention-goers looking around at each other wondering whether it would be "cool" to spend one's money so (let's call it) egotistically.

Let me just say that Harvey's generous offer soon became a regular fundraising occurrence at such conventions, and other authors immediately afterwards that same night made similar offers successfully. But this first time out was met with silence. Finally, just to get the bidding started, I raised my hand for the seventy-five dollars or whatever it was... and no one else bid! So suddenly there I was, about to assume some unlikely role in an upcoming mystery. Harvey and I talked a bit; I assured him I didn't care what he wrote, and that he really didn't have to use my name at all. But we corresponded more over the next few months, and finally he sent me a proof of the page and role I'd come to fill...

I'm quite happy to state that on page 137 of the hardback of Living Proof, any curious reader can find one "Ed Leimbacher" and his Seattle store MisterE Books given a comical, slightly venal, but recognizably booksellerish walk-on part (several paragraphs actually) at a fictional book fair in Nottingham. And further deponent sayeth not.

Gee, ain't it grand to be famous for, maybe, 15 seconds?

Chiang Mai (2)

((More journal entries from Thailand 1986.))

June 9

Yesterday I walked to a wat open to visitors on Sunday only, to view its 4th Century crystal Buddha and 6th Century B.C. golden Buddha from India (closer in its appearance to Hindu statuary than to Thai Buddhism). I also said goodbye to acquaintance Patrick, heading home to Seattle and kindly transporting my package of gifts and goods accumulated over the months.

Meanwhile, today's bus to the ancient ruined city of Sukhothai took too many dusty, sweaty hours over partially paved roads. New Sukhothai, several kilometers farther on, is like Nothingsville: a dozen grubby streets, a few hotels and restaurants. I'm hoveled in with the usual array of paperless toilet, cold shower, and swarming insects of some unknown sort. Just overnight, however--tomorrow I explore the ruins of old Sukhothai, which are magnificent and haunting, giant monuments in stone. Then a night bus back to Bangkok.

Speaking of BKK (as it's known in airport-acronym lingo) reminds me of some observations regarding Thai place names. The Thai alphabet has no connection with Latin/Western lettering, and looks something like this: SZSZSFSXSZ ((originally I hand-drew a row of varied squiggles mimicking the Thai letters; imagine individual strands of spaghetti dropped in twists and curls)), which is "Sukhothai." Unless a white farang learns to read Thai, or is lucky enough the find the approximate one-in-every-seven, street- or restaurant-sign that transcribes its information to Latin script too, s/he will wander around in a daze. But even then the Western version may be confusing; for example, the word for "welcome" or "hello" is variously spelled Sawasdee, Sawatdi, Sawadee, and so on, and I have seen "district" on signs as amphoe, amphur, and umper!

Also, seeing the Western form won't necessarily prepare one for the Thai sounds. Kamphaeng Phaet and Chao Phra are pronounced something like "Camping Pet" and "Ciao, Bra." Picture the Thai spelling for some sounds I swear I've heard spoken: "Bankrupt," "Podunk," "Punch 'n' Judy," even "What's up, Doc"! And the words Bangkok and Phuket have nothing to do with what an oversexed tourist might fantasize; the latter is a beach resort pronounced "Poo-ket" and the former merely a one-word summary of the city's 40-word, royal-language official name--something on the order of "Eternal Heavenly Abode of Bliss Where the Royal Personage Dwells in Halls of...," etc. (Actually, come to think of it, Bangkok is a place where soldiers and travelers in search of earthly bliss and cheap thrills do still congregate, in the infamous rowdy sex-trade area called "Soy Cowboy.")

I have also neglected the hilltribes of Northern Thailand--Meo, Liso, Karen, Akha, Yao, and others who live in the rugged, mountainous strip stretching from Burma into Laos, the dangerous "Golden Triangle" of drug-trafficking renown. Sanguine, some would say foolish, travelers to the north often head out on three- and four-day treks, riding elephants, fording rivers, smoking opium with village headmen, battling vermin. These isolated, not-always-friendly areas offer other thrills too; just last week, two Aussies were set upon by bandits shooting guns, with one tourist wounded slightly. (I chose to save the $150-$300 cost, and my own skin.) The government attempts to control the bandits, stop the flow of drugs, relocate certain tribes, boost tourism in the region, and encourage the sale of tribal crafts and clothing.

So Chiang Mai is full of these fascinating people and their colorful goods, as well as large string-puppets, opium weights ((see photo above)), and bright lacquerware smuggled in from Burma. I browsed the night market a few evenings, finally bought an old Meo shirt and a new bag from another tribe (I forget to ask which). The village folk come wearing their hand-embroidered, multi-layered, many-trinketed costumes, and last night I saw the most striking yet: a very tall young Karen woman, quite attractive in looks and tribal garb, but also wearing a floral headband/tiara thing, silk stockings, and high heels! She caused heads to turn everywhere she went.

Prices, by the way, can be ridiculously cheap. Some tourists go to Chiang Mai just to ship home hundreds of dollars worth of quilts, coats, leggings, hats, silver jewelry, and so on. And then turn a handsome profit back home...

June 10

The bugs and I had a restless night. Up before dawn as usual, I set out on the community bus at 7:30 for the bumpy, 20-minute ride back to old Sukhothai; and there I rented a bicycle to tour its three-kilometer-square grid, filled with broken wats and ruined royal or religious buildings, many of them not yet excavated--a sort of low-lying Machu Picchu. Some random impressions, then, jotted down under a raging sun:

From this capital city, early kings ruled until the 15th Century when Northern Thailand was partially sacked by Burmese invaders. Since then, earthquakes and weather and age have destroyed much of the rest. Yet here today a Buddhist monk, orange robe lowered to his waist, wrestles a power mower around in foot-high grass...

One large complex, Wat Phra Phai Luang, is almost totally razed: shattered Buddhas, tumbled stupas and chedis, broken columns, crumbling walls of brick and sandstone. And in the midst of this destruction, ponds and moats full of floating lotus plants, white or purple blossoms stretching up from their green pads toward the sun; and one perfectly preserved dark Buddha, tranquil and unflappable--like the lizard poised atop a nearby chedi...

In contrast, the beautiful, well-restored Wat Mahathat, with nearly 200 chedis of varied shapes and sizes, two magnificent Standing Buddhas several meters tall, a half-dozen others seated in the lotus position, and all of them lovingly sculpted. Peace in the midst of strife, in a splendid moat setting with the everpresent lotus blossoms...

Smells of stagnant water, fresh-mown grass, new-dropped cowdung. And nearby, the "Palace of the Gods in the Field," completely obliterated, covered by grass and bushes, inhabited only by the cows...

Finally, Sukhothai's heart, Wat Sri Chum--four high walls, open above, enclosing a single giant, lotus-position Buddha, 11.5 meters across the lap, maybe 18 meters high. Once carved from some light-colored stone, portions of it have now gone green from moss, or gold from the thin sheets of gilt leaf attached by worshippers. Oddly, this particular blessed image, a favorite of photographers, has his eyes open and a quite mischievous grin on his face...

After a visit to Sukhothai, it's impossible not to think of Ozymandias: "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

((And now here's the poem that tried to capture my stay in Chiang Mai and the North.))

Freeing the Birds

After the dizzying bus-ride
15 kilometers up and up
both sides of the corkscrew road
to the top of Mt. Doi Suthep,
we emerge through swirling clouds
as giddy as spring birds:

the view falls away for miles,
down tipsy forests and rows
of fields, to Chiang Mai’s walls
and the fleet cloud shadows
scudding toward us. Even the trees
give back glory! So we seize

the day, this day of praise
for the faithful here gathered
in scores, climbing the stairs—
all of us—herded skyward
by tile-encrusted dragons
300 steps to the heavens…

or at least another station
on the Middle Way, this one
most holy, attended with passion,
because it houses a tiny bone,
sacred relic of Gautama.
Ascending takes more stamina

than I have; heart thudding,
I’m out of breath and belief,
grabbing at straws: a sweating
fence-straddler quick to quaff
one Coke in earthly recompense.
The loudspeaker amplifies chants.

Busy monks pour concrete.
Worshippers place lit candles
at the myriad Buddhas’ feet.
Women with flower bundles
kneel by men burning incense;
bowing, both groups advance

to an elderly monk, face scarred,
who sprinkles them with water,
then re-lights his stub cigar.
This benevolent holy father
puffs contentedly, eyeing us,
his jostling ranks of the pious.

Temple bells marked “Don’t Shake”
persuade some Thai believers
to strike with fist and stick
till the wat echoes their labors,
a great clangor of rejoicing.
I slip my shoes off, placing

them in amongst the multitudes
already converted, to step inside
where a hundred glittering Buddhas
smile... so many they hide
the alter, draped with gold-leaf,
rippling in a scented breeze.

One sheet fallen to the ground
I try to place back whole;
it crumbles, sticking to my hand,
gilt clinging to me piecemeal...
A father and son at cliff’s edge
hold a cage full of finches,

sold below on the mountainside.
Coaxed, the boy shakes them free
with his arms spread out wide,
a tiny Francis of Assisi
crowing with delight as each bird
leaps into the diamond void,

the clouded ladder to heaven,
vanishing into that blue eye,
all pecking and filching forgiven.
I pay five baht to buy
a new tile for the temple roof,
touch the hand-worn bas-relief

of Erawan, the three-headed
sacred elephant, for luck,
then reclaim my shoes for good.
I pocket a soapstone relic
for no clear reason, and depart,
unenlightened but lighter of heart.

Rose of the North (1)

((Chiang Mai area in the North of Thailand, 1986.))

June 2

I whiled away the rest of yesterday avoiding the extreme heat, reading in the shade, planning excursions, finally venturing out as cooler evening came on. Had a glass of wine in a bar run by a Thai woman just back from two years of social work in Nicaragua. She dislikes the Sandanistas now, says the revolution has gone sour. (Some of her comments remind me of Jean Genet's play The Balcony, where the whorehouse revolutionaries become beasts and dictators themselves, once in power.)

A fruit smoothie slurped in a Euro-tourist cafe later let me observe other Thai women putting the make on Western travellers. No one approached me--not that I was looking for company, but one does feel somehow slighted... Actually the women of Chiang Mai are renowned throughout Thailand (and pictured in books and airline adverts all over the world) as the most beautiful in this graceful kingdom and any husband's most-prized "possession." And they are striking in appearance: paler skinned than the southern Thai, and presenting a more knowing, even arrogant, look on their lovely features. Yet not offensive; just confident of their special privilege.

Today I walked a few miles visiting various local wats. Given that each of them must have support buildings, stupas, chedi pagodas housing holy ashes, glass/porcelain/gold decorations, Thai serpents, and sometimes Chinese lion-like watch-dogs, somehow each still manages to look distinct. Ditto the Buddha images. While there are a dozen favored poses, each face has its own breadth and taper, or glint in the eyes, or set of the mouth--even when you examine a dozen Buddhas of the same pose side by side. All are serene, but some seem to smirk, others to leer; some have eyes open, others downcast or closed. But nearly all of the statues have a rather demure, sensuous, almost hermaphroditic shape. Except for the Starving Buddha/bones image, all are soft and fleshy, exhibiting graceful, rather feminine gestures. What does this signify?

I took most pleasure, however, in talking for an hour with a cheerful young monk anxious to practice his halting English. Pranong (pronounced Ba-non) comes from the northeast, near the Laotian border--where the armed clashes and shelling of refugee camps go on regularly. When Pranong learned that I'm a "writer," he scurried off to get the journal he's been keeping, in English, of his stay at this Chiang Mai wat. (I noticed several references to the city's good-looking women, the young sly boots!)

June 3

The weather brought hot sun in and out of clouds until 5 p.m. Now it's thundering and threatening to storm again. But I did get out on a rental bicycle this morning, pedalling 'roundabout some 25 kilometers of countryside. The core of Chiang Mai is a square-walled city, though without the towers and crenellations of European or Moorish castles. There are gates through each wall and a broad, quite beautiful moat/park around it (on three sides only, I think); and the confident, friendly air of the people confirms the area's reputation as a haven of education and cultured wealth. Many successful Thais maintain "summer" homes up in this region (the city's name or nickname in Thai meaning "Rose of the North"), where they come to escape the heat and oppressive urban confusion of Bangkok.

Once out the North Gate, however, and past the surrounding commercial-residential strip, I found farms galore, a couple of golf courses, little food-and-drink stalls along the roads, even a major Thai Army installation. Asked a few soldiers, in fact, where to find what I had actually ridden out to see: two stoneware factories making what's called "Thai Celadon," a pottery style and process imported from China about 1100 years ago, and used to produce lovely cracked-glaze pots and plates ever since. Had a tour, some cold water, and bought a small plate for $2, then rumbled back toward the city, sweating like a hog in the sweltering heat. The monsoon season is clearly upon us.

More wats en route, a fiery-hot lunch at a vegetarian restaurant, then home to collapse.

June 5

I purposely set yesterday and today aside for writing postcards, letters, and recalcitrant poems. But in take-a-break strolls I managed to find a small antique "Sukhothai" bowl (the Thai Celadon style of a hundred years ago), a collection of Hemingway stories, and a superior Indian restaurant in a spacious, sculptured garden setting. Otherwise I sat under the swirling fans of the Galare's ((guest-house I was staying in)) breezeway-styled dining area, conversing with the Thai help, some Canadian women, and Patrick, a microbiologist from Seattle ((further proof of the world's shrinking)). The two of us will stroll to the city's night market this evening, where I intend to learn by observing Patrick; here for a year, he's become an old hand at shopping and bartering...

June 7

The monsoons have arrived in full force with drenching storms these last two days. I ventured out early yesterday, however, on a bustling tour to outlying areas, me the only taker and my substitute guide speaking no English! But we got on--up many kilometers of climbing mountain road, to one of the King's alternate palaces, a seasonal retreat no doubt, where I saw shady gardens, long sweeping views of the surrounding plains, and posh marble buildings visitors are not admitted into. Then higher up, to the venerable monastery of Wat Doi Suthep, where a 300-step ascent leads to the mountainside-perched platform, which houses one of the Buddha's holy bones. Many worshippers, a few Western gawkers, but only one man and his son doing the traditional freeing of caged birds for good fortune, blessings on the person, and so on. ((This visit I expanded on in a poem which will appear next time.))

Back down the mountain and around Chiang Mai's perimeter to opposite-side craft villages: Baw Sang, where I saw the making of famed regional painted parasols (shipped a pair of them home), and Sam Kamphaeng, where I admired silkworms in various stages of larvae and labors, along with raw silk, weavers and sewers at work, and numerous bolts of colorful silk--even broke down and spent $60 on enough from one bolt to have a suit made someday... ((and I did too, the suit I got married in nearly two years later.))

A fixed price, unlike night-market shopping. There, you mingle with hundreds, locals and hilltribesmen, hunger-inducing food stalls and aggressive vendors (want a phoney "LaCoste" shirt for a buck?), shops upstairs, downstairs, and sprawling along several blocks and side-streets, teeming and raucous but, in Chiang Mai anyway, impeccably clean. And, as in other markets elsewhere, except for those like Patrick who speak the local lingo, the bartering proceeds by headshakes and hand signals, raised eyebrows and expressive shrugs, pigeon English mixed with scrambled Thai. Only a foolish farang tourist pays the asked-for price; the mutually enjoyed game is to "talk" the amount down by a third or more--a lot of work, of course, for something that already costs only a few dollars, but the proper course nonetheless.

Had trouble sleeping last night, woke today with the blind spots in vision that presage one of my rare migraine headaches, and soon got a doozy that left me sick and groaning near the guest-house telephone, awaiting a callback from Sandie... Then spent the rest of the day flat on my back, listening to the rain and feeling sorry for myself, racking my pain-wracked brain-pan for some solution to the anguish my travels are causing among my various loved ones. None of them really understands why I persist in this, my stubborn solitary sojourn in the world. Hell, I don't really know why myself; only that I must go on...

This Gift Reversed

Now that I'm a wise old...er man of 65, all this looking back almost begins to make sense. One does need to take stock now and then, and writing an autobiography slightly disguised as a pop culture blog seems a more palatable (and possible) solution for my somewhat short attention span.

I do much prefer making new discoveries, hearing new music, reading new books, visiting new (as well as much-missed) places foreign and domestic. I've just returned from a whirlwind visit to Vancouver, Canada, occasioned by the amazing invitation of my pal, animator Marv Newland (introduced in blog chapter Newland of Animation, dated 8/20/07), to come use his spare ticket to experience sax giant Ornette Coleman--who in the event did so much more than simply blow Free Jazz. His three-bass band was crisp and tight, and funky when necessary, leaving the quintet's frail but phenomenal frontman to blow his heart out, from a Bach visitation to wild new stuff to the beautiful encore of Lonely Woman!

Anyway, the past is always with us, late and soon, getting and spending, sometimes allowing us to lay waste to our very future, whether personal or species wide. And here's one view of what's past...

In His Dream


He is me, yet he can watch me act.

Things move backward, but matter-of-fact:
Older, then younger, he un-ages;

His marriage removes its bandages,
Revealing faces lovelier once.

He gives away accumulations;
The less he has, the more he is him-

Self, the man he dreams I was in time.
He turns the book’s pages left to right,

But this gift, reversed, of second sight
Leads him briefly into misery,

Discovering his story, when re-
Viewed, as choices made in ignorance,

Lived on the pulses, lacking science.
Yet he is happier, freed of “I,”

All that case-hardened identity—
Circumscribed possibilities reeled

Back up the line, present loss re-called.
Younger than this now, he lives his days

Forgetting who he finally is.

Garuda Birds and Flowing Fire (2)

((Back to Bali and 1986.))

May 18

Night. Rick and I have just returned from a long, hot, and harrowing day spent driving much of the island with three young women, our neighbors from across the garden. (Pleasant enough, I suppose, but truly spoiled daughters of the upper middle-class: too much money, leisure, and "social" drugs.) We repeated whole chunks of the Besakih tour, but this time the mountain was enveloped in clouds: peak hidden, views conscribed, the experience less magical.

But I did get to watch old women and tiny girls piling heavy rocks atop their heads and then balancing these up the slopes for repairs to a part of the temple. And I spent a good half hour talking with some gamelan players and temple guards; though the complex stays empty, the area around it serves as a kind of community-hall gathering place for area villagers.

Later we prowled among ornery bearded monkeys worshipped in a nutmeg forest: tumbledown ruins, creeper vines, nutmeg seeds scattered. Rick and one of the women got nipped trying to cuddle up with the little beggars; I used a stick and kept them honest. Had more trouble, in fact, with a persistent guy at the parking area who wanted my shirt in exchange for a keris knife with a carved-wood handle.

Then we drove back down to the southern coast, to a much-favored temple beside the sea, to watch the Bali sunset come on; scores of curious schoolchildren and older believers were in attendance too, but the clouds never parted.

(Earlier on, we had passed a village where a Hindu cremation ceremony was about to begin. We saw the flower-bedecked procession route, the waiting platform, and the happy family and friends, but didn't stay for the burning--which I think we'd have been welcome to attend. Worth observing someday, I guess, but a bit ghoulish just to sit there as curiosity seekers. At any rate, Bali is still buzzing with talk of the festive cremation day a few weeks back: some regional prince, a venerated, almost holy ruler, died at last, and 500 of his followers, people already dead and buried, that is, were dug up and burned along with the prince. There were flowers and funeral pyres, parades and pyromaniacs, all over the island!)

The "harrowing" part of the trip came after dark, driving back to Kuta. It was my shift in the four-wheel-drive rental, and I quickly discovered that the headlamps didn't work at all! So there we were with no car lights, no streetlights along the way, the moon obscured by clouds, and 45 kilometers of pitted road to navigate. With five pairs of eyes staring and five different voices shouting warnings, I sped along, weaving in and out among the nearly invisible pedestrians and bicyclists, pounding on the horn--which beeped only intermittently--perspiring frantically, riding the brakes but also trying to keep our speed at about 35 m.p.h. so we could get the car back before the agency's closing time and thus avoid paying a whole second-day's rental fee.

I hit branches, spun the tires in rocks off the side of the road, and drove down a one-way street the wrong way at the end, but we made it. Drenched, gibbering like one of those damned monkeys, I got the car part-way into a cramped slot and then the engine killed. "Fuck it," I said, and walked away.

I haven't spoken to any of the others since. Whatever else happened, I've just been finishing my South of Bali poem, riding on the adrenalin, burning out...


Sunset at Kuta Beach

The sky breathes red and gold, a Balinese dragon
consuming the dregs of the sun.
To the west, Java seethes with volcanic change;
each night, chaos remains.
But at Kuta, the last Australian surfer drags
his board past the beach flags,
the multitudinous native masseuses and stubborn
sun-worshippers who yearn
for a few more hours of fragrant oil. Baked
bodies are rewrapped, naked
caramel breasts tucked reluctantly in sarongs.
The South of Bali belongs
these days to tourists and jet-setters, a president
whose posh, rent-out residence
goes for more per night than one Indonesian
can make in four seasons
of farming, and locals who've become most adept
at chivvying rupiahs kept
loose in these travellers' well-padded pockets.
Kuta's sky late at sunset
cools into shapes of garuda birds and flowing fire,
as sun-drugged desire
reawakens to evenings of more fleshly pleasures,
and lager-Fostering tours
of the flash, Aussie-catering watering holes.
The sky's glowing coals
are scattered thin, dyeing through twilight's batik
into indigo and black.
The evening kecak dance, staged for paying
customers only, rings
out in percussive rhythm and chanted monkey cries.
That trance may be a lie,
but part-way up Mt. Agung, where lava still rumbles,
above the Mother Temple--
the island's beating heart--a scimitar of moon
has hung by a thread since noon.
And now it falls. But no one bothers to notice,
neither hedonist nor Balinese.

((It occurs to me now that my chastising and moralizing tone, and the imagery chosen, isn't all that far removed from the words of our terrorist enemies today... But it's only a poem, folks, really.))

Back to Bali (1)

((Lately at times I've been transcribing sections from my 1986 around-the-world travel journal. Today some impressions and experiences from Bali, Indonesia's beautiful Hindu island, sadly the site of terrorist bombings, the last few years, in places I visited safely and happily back then.))

May 15

Clusters of swaying palmtrees, bush-covered volcanic hills, step-terrace rice paddies rising up and up, as many as 30 levels. Hindu temples by the thousands, in every village and field, one of them standing beside a power pole in a shimmering paddy. Surfers at Kuta Beach vainly flailing at low waves. Beach bungalows ranged around lush tropical gardens. Balinese vendors swarming like sandflies, clinging tenaciously to the near-naked sun-worshippers; thus my first Balinese words: Tarima kasih--approximately, "Buzz off, I don't need anything!"

Woke to the cheering sound of roosters and dawn birds, tea and toast on the porch of the small bungalow Rick ((Swiss traveler I had met on the long busride from Jakarta)) and I are sharing for about $3.50 each per night. His German guide to Indonesia recommended this place among the hundreds along this southern wedge of the island; and the room is adequate, with ceiling fan and flush toilet, on a nice garden near the white-sand beach.

Which is where I am now, fighting off the vendors, watching the surfers, trying not to stare at the bare-breasted non-natives. At least I feel clean and relaxed again. Nothing like the ocean to rinse away your cares and woes...

May 16

Sunshine flickering among the hibiscus flowers, booming surf and rhythmic gamelan music pulsing in the distance. It was beach bum-around time, though I did wander the Kuta-Legian commercial strip, miles long, boutiques and bars, cafes and cassette shops, where I suppressed my gadget-dislike long enough to spend $35 on a paperback-sized deck and a stack of tapes, pirated duplicates of Springsteen, Dire Straits, Tina Turner, and others selling for about a dollar.

More impressions: tiny shrines can be found outside each home or store; these are filled each day with floral bouquets and little leaf-boxes of food bits--gifts to the gods. And the little boxes show up on sidewalks and tidelands too, wherever the Balinese congregate. Also, a silly example of hedonism at the beach: most women, and some men as well, pay to lie on their towels or mats and be massaged, fed food or drink, even have their hair braided and beaded. This looks like a scene from some Roman Empire decadence flick like Caligula or Fellini's Satyricon. Harmless diversion, or insult to Balinese pride? Anything to make a few rupiahs, i guess.

Tomorrow I take a grand tour up to Bali's most holy temple, Besakih...

May 18

The journey proved too tiring to transcribe any notes last night, but here's the jist of the day:

Heading out on the small bus-van, we could immediately see the contrast between Kuta's crap-consumer congestion (it's Australia's equivalent of Hawaii, after all) and the palm-drenched plush spaciousness of expensive hotels and their park-like surroundings, in the area called Samur. There we picked up so many wealthier tourists that the van skipped a promised barong dance exhibition in order to fritter away two hours in craft-specialty villages, where we could learn about, and buy samples of: silver-smithing in Celuk, waist-sash weaving (for temple wear) in Batuan, and cloth weaving in Gianyar. The pressure to buy irritated me, but the Gianyar factory with its hundred-some women spinning wheels and old wooden looms was quite a sight.

Next came Klungkung where a no-longer-used royal enclosure and hall of justice offered fantastical ceiling paintings depicting both marital bliss and evildoers scourged by demons! (The souvenir sellers tugging at us so tenaciously seemed the demons secular cousins.) And the horror motif continued at the next stop, a reeking, truly disgusting, sacred cave of bats, with a filth-encrusted temple in the foreyard. Mondo Cane stuff.

After a tourist-ripoff lunch that cost me a whole day's meal money, we drove on into hills and then up a winding mountain road to reach Besakih, Bali's "Mother Temple," used only once a year, in April, for a full day of processions and ceremonies. Although only Hindus were allowed inside into the separate areas for Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma worship, we pagans could circle the walls, climbing higher and higher, viewing gold decorations, stone stupas (sort of free-standing steeples), wooden platforms awaiting cremations, and Besakih's extraordinary setting. Halfway up the island's most imposing volcano, Mt. Agung--which last erupted in 1963 on the actual ceremony day, killing thousands but doing no damage to the temple!--Besakih looks straight up to to the top of the mountain, to the full moon lingering above it today. One turns back to discover a vista of most of south Bali--hills, paddies, and fields stretching all the way to the beaches and the sea.

I was haunted by the experience all the way back to Kuta and during the night. It's clearly what triggered the poem I'm working on today...

((More from exotic Bali, and the completed poem, next chapter.))

Grad School Days (2)

((I turned 65 yesterday, which is the main reason I've been thinking so much about the old days of school and otherwise. So please forgive the ego stuff--I'll be better soon, honest!))

The first thing a newly graduated male, 18 or older, had to think about in 1964 was military service. Vietnam was starting to heat up, bodies were being called up... There really was a draft back then, and within a couple of years, as some may remember, it became a huge issue--vocal resistance, draftcard burnings, young men fleeing to Canada or using their parents' clout to get exempted somehow (hmmm, sounds like a President or two I've heard about).

I didn't have much to worry about, actually. I had gotten married as a Senior, and my then-wife was pregnant, so I had that solid bit of protection. And if I moved straight on into grad school, that too would serve as a shield of sorts. I had already signed up to continue on at the UW and had proved myself sufficiently as a serious Senior that I received another scholarship and a part-time Teaching Assistant job. (I worked at Safeway stores too. Yeah, those were the days: a 32-hours-a-week job as grocery clerk, a teaching schedule to fulfill, graduate English classes to wrestle into submission, creative writing that drove me to pen and paper, and a fledgling marriage and pregnant wife to worry about.)

What I really hadn't settled for sure, and this drifted in and out of our lives for a few years, was what career I wanted. Working on a Master's Degree, I was in line to become a college professor and publishing poet, but I quickly learned that academia was--sadly? luckily?--not for me. I disliked the over-zealous, competitive grad students, I found many professors arrogant and mean-spirited and boring, I still got A's but foolishly resented the drudgery of lengthy footnoted papers and such. But, really, it was down to me. Back at Northwestern, I had joined and then quickly dropped out of ROTC; and the same stubborn resistance to order-taking I'd felt then seemed to influence my attitude toward academia. I could do the work and often beat out other grads for honors, but I didn't want the results, or the pressure, or... I don't know.

So I was casting about for what to do next. Safeway store clerk didn't seem the answer. A side note for a moment. One of the customers where I worked as stocker and cashier was an ex-wife of country singer Tex Ritter; she would come in from time to time with their preteen daughter. She looked at me one evening and said, deadpan, "There is no safe way," then walked out. (I've split the store name in her sentence, because I believe that's how she meant the layered pun, with which I belatedly agreed.)

Here's where one's snap, or even considered, decisions can affect a lifetime... I'd have a Master's in Lit by summer 1966, trained to do only one sort of thing, teach Lit or write. So I applied for various teaching jobs, and was offered positions at regional community colleges, even at Pacific Lutheran University (where I would be a sort of guest poet teaching creative writing), but turned them all down--in the case of PLU because I didn't want any religious stuff hanging over my head. (Would I have found things that onerous, really? I was desperate for excuses.)

I applied to New York University's famous film school (one of very few existing back in those distant days) and was offered a slot but no scholarship money. Then-wife and I had already agreed that she would be an at-home Mom, so I would have had to work full-time in NYC as well as go to school. (I was too unsure of costs and my stamina and resolve--basically chicken. Another opportunity wasted.)

I applied to a university in the Sussex area of England where I would supposedly continue on towards a Doctorate in English Lit, imagining that the slightly exotic locale might inspire me onwards--was welcomed too, but passed on the opportunity again, still convinced that the money problems couldn't be overcome. (No Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen environments on our horizon.)

Clearly, I just wasn't brave enough to tackle the challenges each opportunity offered.

Finally, lazily, desultorily, I settled for becoming a writer-editor for the University Relations Office at the UW, initially preparing press releases and alumni news for the campus Alumnus Magazine. And I did all right at the small stuff, and soon was writing full-length magazine pieces, and then I moved on to Seattle Magazine, where... but I've already covered that experience in an earlier posting. (See chapter titled A Whale of a Tale, from May 27 last year.)

The point is this: I finally, for better or worse, was off on a full-time writing career--which would carry me into film work, and then advertising and production, in and out of poetry and plays, and eventually around the world and back again, to become a semi-retired bookseller.

But I coulda been a contender. I had my chance at academia, and campus literary lion, and New York magazine stardom, and successful Hollywood screenwriter on strike, and who-knows-what-all might have been... but passed on them all.

Rightly or wrongly, here I sit, blogging. School days do part-shape one's life.

School Days (1)

"Good old golden rule days..."--what does that mean anyway? Nuns rapping your knuckles with a ruler? Schoolyard bullies stealing your lunch money? Some sort of Athenian democracy of equals working usefully together? Hard to see how anyone's school experience fits some fine Golden Rule.

And I write as one who pretty much had it easy. We changed schools often (Air Force family), but I knew how to keep quiet among my peers and keep my head down, focussed on homework or tests. I had a quick intelligence, evidently, and a good memory, so doing the work was never a problem. I always made straight A's, only had a couple of fights, played sports with minor success by hustling harder than my skills allowed for, survived a couple of unrequited crushes, etc.

But my lasting school memories are limited, really. I remember my Third/Fourth grade teacher encouraged me to start creative writing. (My first stories were about a Chinese boy so inept with chopsticks he had to invent the fork, and a dumb science fiction parody of television's Dragnet I called "Pla-net"!) And I remember walking home one day through fields where I found a fire starting to spread and, rather than running off to get help, I just brashly beat it out with my quickly-ruined, Davy Crockett fringed leather jacket. That small moment of feeling heroic may have been the highlight of my gradeschool days.

But we kept moving on, so I got to experience the preteen dating mores and general racial attitudes of Montgomery, Alabama, 1955-56, making for a difficult Seventh grade year (see the blog chapter called Two Kings). And then we shipped out to Izmir, Turkey--where my grades were so solid and the school so small that the teachers decided to skip me from Eighth into Ninth instead. I went from being somewhat older for Eighth to being younger than most of the other students. But aside from another fight or two, things and I adapted.

The most interesting events were hints of hard drugs circa 1957--at least one senior, an aspiring Jazz drummer, was toying with marijuana and maybe even heroin--and having to play Turkish highschool teams in soccer and basketball. A local "highschool" guy might mean a 35-year-old, a huge and definitely hardened worker or mechanic, even ex-Army maybe. Us American kids routinely got our shins and asses kicked!

When we moved to Tacoma for my Junior and Senior years, I managed to sidle back into the structure; played intermural sports, held minor student government and/or dance committee jobs, and kept getting good grades. In fact, by the end of school, because Clover Park HS offered some college-level courses worth extra credit, I managed to graduate with a 4.02 grade point. But for some reason, I have blanked out on graduation itself; I think I was number one in the graduating class of 1200 seniors, but I don't remember delivering any valedictorian speech, nor indeed the big event itself...

I'd played the plan-for-college game, so I was accepted to a few spots across the country (even tried for the recently-opened Air Force Academy; didn't make it), but picked Northwestern, in Evanston right by Chicago, because my parents were off to another duty tour elsewhere, and I had relatives nearby in Illinois, in case of any problems. Between a healthy scholarship, family support, student loans, and part-time jobs ranging from kitchen clean-up at a popular campus hangout to an excellent assistant slot with Northwestern's offical events impresario (I got to read/press-clip the New York Times every day and be a "gopher" at all the campus drama and musical events), I managed to last there for the first two, very expensive years (1960-1962).

Then I transferred west to the considerably cheaper University of Washington. At Northwestern I had started with the idea of majoring in Mathematics and Computers (Fortran machine-language and punchcards were the order of business in those days), but quickly found the programming boring and the math daunting. So then I was a general Liberal Arts guy, sort of toying with Languages and Linguistics, until I reached the UW and had to get serious. First it was Political Science with a Latin American focus (I was imagining a career in the diplomatic service), but the gathering storm against America's interference around the world--Guatemala, Chile, the beginnings of Vietnam--coupled with my own lefty-populist ideals, convinced me I couldn't blithely support my government as an embassy worker somewhere.

Also, one rotten PoliSci professor gave me the only C I got in six years of college (B's a couple of times), because I didn't do the extra-credit scrapbook we had been told would NOT count against us, but would instead only boost our grades; well, I had B's at worst on tests, including the final, but wound up with that damned C grade. I was too foolishly proud to do more than squawk to the T.A., but it cost me in the long run, because my final college grade point was one tiny percentage away from Summa cum Laude, and a B would have put me in. (On the other hand, aside from pride, I really never did put much stock in grades or I.Q. numbers; so I got A's, was 139 or something, did great on College Boards--did any of it make me a better man or someone better able to cope with the changes/problems in life? I don't think so.)

So I switched to a major in Spanish for a couple of quarters, for no good reason except the courses I had taken, until I realized I really didn't want to teach Spanish somewhere--which was the only job I could imagine in my naive, anti-entrepreneurial way... "Go into business? Never." Suddenly I was facing the Senior year with no plan or major. The only thing I could think to do was fall back on what I had always enjoyed doing, reading and writing. I shifted straight into English Literature, took solid English courses for the next four quarters, and graduated with a B.A. in Lit in August of 1964.

"Now what?" I thought.

((The answer comes next time.))

A Local Habitation

"A picture is worth a thousand words"; a typical cliche with much truth beneath the gloss. As one who has made his living as a writer, I have to agree that the attempt to describe something accurately--rather than partially evoking it, let's say--is a tricky business; what empirical details are needed? can the words actually match the image? how much needs to be said (written, that is)? a thousand words, really?

What I have always valued is the idea that "less is more," fewer but right words, and one's individual imagination, believing that our internal images are stronger than the actual visualization. I cherish the listening experience, for example, be that music, information on the radio, or people conversing, whether to me or to someone else--eavesdropping, yes. Yet I do love movies, and seeing the world, and a beautiful face or body. (This blog is called "I Witness" for a reason. It's not only eyes doing the witnessing.)

And so we come back to pictures, whether great art or simple snapshot photography. From early master Jacques Henri Lartigue to Life Magazine's David Douglas Duncan, from the many W.P.A. photogs to, yes, Ansel Adams and Diane Arbus, from Robert Capa to Henri Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz and scores more, I have found pleasure and fascination in, mostly, black-and-white photography.

Yet I am a word man. Only rarely do I ever place my own hand on a camera, depending instead on powers of observation and memory and description to do the job. During that 19-month trip around the world, for example, I took no camera, vowing instead to recount the experiences in a journal and poems instead. Well, you win some, you lose some, and some get rained out... as another cliche puts it. Much of the journal bogs down in insignificant details, not to mention the occasional banalities. And the poems? Well, just be glad I'm posting--slowly, please note--only a dozen or so drawn from those two years of travel.

Like most poets, a verbal test I have enjoyed occasionally is the attempt to render some striking painting or photograph in words. English poet Charles Tomlinson is one master at that (he was a painter as well), and W.H. Auden and Elizabeth Bishop were others who succeeded. This posting today presents a pair of my own attempts linked to favorite photos by Kertesz (begging the question slightly, I am showing his photos too).

Kertesz loved unexpected perceptions: architectural details, patterns found, people in odd moments, often viewed from skewed angles (from a hotal room looking out and down was a favorite). His photos are art; my poems are mere pastiche, but possibly amusing. See how many of my words it takes to "give to airy nothing/ A local habitation and a name..."

Kertesz: Two Photos

I. “Disappearing Act”

See where the partial man ascends to nowhere,
Bare legs and baggy shorts cut off in mid-air
By massive beams, broad horizontal stripes.
Vertical bar-like wires, supporting steps
Dangling in space, enclose him in a prison,
Sentenced to higher climbs. Whatever season
He’s risen in, the background verge shows scrub
And sand, tideland and piers beyond, a drab
Seaside community in haze; he could be
In Queensland, the Camargue, or close to Kitty
Hawk. That it’s “New York, 1955”
Seems apt, a site no harder to believe
Than this image magique, with printed contrast
So bright the air and house above are one vast
Field of off-white, with lines precisely squared:
Magritte reworked by Mondrian. But where
His head should be, a block of mirror, window,
Or trick exposure renders man a Hindu
Fakir vanishing up his rope of stairs
To graphic truth: in time, one disappears.


II. “Rainy Day”

“Tokyo, 1968”: umbrellas,
from above, across
a gray curve of street as mirror-dull as
a river embossed
by flooding; twelve well-suited businessmen
on parade, in rain,
herded, hurrying, reflecting but un-
thinking--a dozen
open brollies obviously no more
au courant than one,
here in the land of the rising water.
Oblivious, thus,
to the yen for P.T. Barnum’s patter,
these damp gentlemen
yet follow a bright-painted, quite non-Zen-
sical white arrow:
“This way to, not Progress, but the Egress.”

Martin Luther King

Honoring today's celebration of Martin Luther King and all that he and the other Civil Rights heroes stood for, I commend to your attention my early blog postings dated 5/18/07 (Two Kings) and 6/23/07 (A Road the Dust Blows Over). I'd rather offer musical riffs than political posturing.

Venus Reborn

Feeling the pressure of new year necessities, so today I've decided to return to the saga of Down Under, 1986 (see two previous entries)...

When I got back to Sydney from the West of Australia, my love and soon-to-be-fiancee Sandie arrived for a two-week reunion as we sought to determine whether we were a couple that could survive lengthy separations (yes, we were) and whether we could travel together (we could and did, with Sandie rejoining me in Europe a few months later, for another lucky 13 months of adventures).

But first we experienced some other parts of Australia. We explored Sydney's galleries and nightlife, for example, flew into the Outback to climb Ayers Rock, and dodged the bats flitting nightly about the town of Cairns--where I bought a brilliant and brilliantly colored t-shirt showing a sort-of swinging bachelor wombat lazing in a hammock, with pen and postcard in hand, and caption reading, "Weather is here. Wish you were beautiful!"

Prior to Cairns, heading northward on the continent's Eastern coast, we had some lovely and solitary days on the beaches of Queensland. The following poem dates from that time, as we enjoyed both weather and our beautiful, reunited selves...

Botticellian Song

Languidly my lady goes,
Accepting what the sea
Bestows, froth of waves
Lapping at her heels, surf
Slapping at the rocks beyond.

The ocean is the bond
Between us here, forgiving
All that we bring each other
For cleansing. Lithe still,
She leans looking down:

The sucking sand absorbs
Each splash of tidal wash,
Reflects her peering face
And the flash of naked
Limbs scissoring across

Liquid space—a treasure
Of radiance, and grace
Beyond measuring. She bends,
Hesitating, where the foam
Ends, her hand reaching

Down to mirrored hand
To pluck a scallop shell
Tossed to sand by the roil
And ruck of tumbling water.
O Aphrodite’s daughter,

Child of sea and earth,
I see you rise holding
Out your prize to me,
Birth of Venus reversed.
In your eyes I see myself

Revised: handsomer: a lad
Of golden summer again—
The magic of this beach
After squalling rains
Linking us now, each

To the other, and removing
Age’s stains, here where
The land’s reach falters
And drains, as a woman
Alters, spent after loving.

Blasted Outback

((Returning on the Indian-Pacific train, heading back from Perth (this time to dip south for visits to Melbourne and Adelaide), we again had to cross the Nullarbor Plain, again much of it during the night. On the first trip, the train had stopped at a waterhole/non-town named Cook for 40 minutes, but the train cars had been locked tight, so I couldn't get out to view the stars and Halley's Comet. On the return, when we stopped in Cook the second time, I found a door unlocked, so I climbed down and headed away from the lights to look skyward.

I walked out a couple of hundred yards and stared up at the heavens... After several silent minutes I decided I wanted binoculars; I was about to go back for them when I heard... the train already pulling away! Panic-stricken I ran over to and along the moving train, pounding on locked doors and car sides, convinced I was about to be abandoned in the wasteland Outback, just another fool tourist caught short...

The rest of my bonehead experience and what I made of it can be read in the following poem. The Nullarbor piece I had started and put away suddenly had a reason to exist and a, sort of, resolution.))

Nullarbor Plain Song

All day we drive deeper, wheel-shafts
muscling the Outback’s Long Straight
of steel-rail track. Granite disappears,
and red-ochre dirt gives way,
till west of the road north to Alice,
the Indian-Pacific skims limestone
dust like ash: decayed salt-flats
of a Cretaceous seabed upraised.

The annihilated fastness grows
no trees—five hundred miles
of Nullarbor desolation. Yet life
holds hard here, living parched:
scrub grasses grip scorched ground;
salt-bush, myall, and mulga breed
hordes of insects, that lizards may feed
on this sun’s anvil; and predator hawks

hunt gallah and shrike, hammering
day down into night… Past midnight.
Roused by the train’s rude couplings,
I come awake at some battered
watering station—no town, a rough
cluster of tin roofs; most buildings
deserted, but a few housing mates,
Bruces and Sheilas coupled or un-.

The train cools down, waiting. I walk out,
restless, away from the work-lights,
to gaze up at myriad flickerings,
the patterned grid of translucent dark:
unknown creatures, strange constellations;
aboriginals Dreaming their ancestral trails
through nightmares of whitefella creation…
Kangaroos made radioactive. Goannas

that glow in the dark. Wombats mutated
by decades-old bomb-tests… No moon
and no sound. Yet night’s unseen motion.
And somewhere overhead, flashing
fire and ice, Halley’s veiled face. In this
cold, burning universe, where is the omen?
where the heaven-breaking response?
What sense can track the comet

through all its hard foretellings,
or prepare us for some radiant dawn,
past the terror wastes of Maralinga,
in a world of Nullarbor Plains?
Where lies the way out or back…?
No answer. Nothing. I am unused,
the still clapper in this silent,
arching bell of cosmic blackout…

Yet, almost imperceptibly, a faint form
stirs on the horizon of consciousness:
possible… immanent… shimmering…
Shattered by hissing, by the sudden
clack-clack of steel wheels slipping;
and I am panic-running, chasing
the stuttering sleepers, their doors
locked, train rolling faster and

faster, last car passing, going,
and I’m collapsing by the track,
but… a crewman’s hand grabs me—
boosted up and in, adrenalin
jumping, synapses overloaded,
rocketing with the car… as all
the lights go out: rail system
shutdown; braking, to, a… halt.

Perspiring here in starless black,
stalled in Australia’s blasted Outback
on a gone-dead train to nowhere,
now and for the rest of my journey
through these ashes, as terrified
as any ancestor who looked
to the heavens, transfixed
by mystery—and was answered.

Train Time

((The sad demise of American railroads and current sorry state of AmTrak versus some embarrassingly excellent trains still zipping and chugging their way around the world... well, that's a topic on my mind as the year 2008 begins. Everyone complains about airport delays, but friends of mine had passenger train screwups and stuck-on-the-track delays this past year lasting eight and thirteen hours.

True, I've ridden some hellbound trains (more loco than motive) in Southeastern Europe and Burma, but I can also remember wonderful trips I experienced in decades past--across the Midwest, around New York State, from Chicago to Seattle several times, up and down the West Coast, and so on. These days I wouldn't ride a U.S. long-distance train even if someone else was paying. But line me up with a Eurail Pass, and I am yours for life (or at least the month); what a brilliant way to zip back and forth across the Continent! And that's pretty much a separate matter from the bullet-trains operating with great success in Japan and France. Where would Britain be without the Flying Scotsman and The Great Train Robbery? or France minus the Orient Express and that exciting WWII adventure film simply called The Train (definitely one of Burt Lancaster's best roles)?

Considering our own railroads' significant history--from construction of the Trans-Continental Railway to hobos riding the rods; from beautiful Art Deco travel posters to blues songs like "The Panama Limited" and "Love in Vain"; from the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, the City of New Orleans, and the Yellow Dog, to the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe; from North by Northwest and Once Upon a Time in the West to Strangers on a Train and Sunset Limited; from the sad trains transporting Lincoln's body (or the Kennedys more recently) to the victory expresses filled with happy politicos or football fans; from Singing Brakeman Jimmie Rodgers somewhere "Waiting for a Train" to the tragic heroics of John Henry and the engineer of Old No.9; from Gravy Trains and Midnight Specials and certain others "bound for glory," to the "A" Train and "The Golden Rocket" and Elvis riding his "Mystery Train"... well, almost anyone over 30 could list page after page of train lore.

Anyway, I wanted to celebrate trains past and present this time. They used to, and maybe some still do, take you to faraway places and strange folks. There's a famous and remarkable railway that rolls straight across the Outback of Australia, from Sydney to Perth. It's a train I was glad to board; and here's the relevant section from my 1986 around-the-world journal, with most details likely still similar today.))

******
April 6

The steel wheels are rolling, and the steel rails humming, as the famed "Indian-Pacific" hurtles west. I decided I had to see Perth--and this train--even though it means a three-day trip across the full width of the continent. And even though I'm sharing this roomette with a young virologist from Edmonton, Alberta, who seems a combination of nerd and know-it-all. (He probably dislikes my grumpy taciternity too.)

Spent the morning and early p.m. wandering Sydney's main museum and rambling expanse of park. I learned about the Aboriginals, peculiar flora and fauna Down Under (dangerous spiders, for example), the continent's geological history. Most fun was a film and exhibit on the dubious duck-billed platypus, which I hope to coax into a poem sometime.

So far we've chugged up and over the Blue Mountains, which feature 3000-foot peaks, winding valleys, sharp escarpments, and lots of bush, with the population of Aussies getting scarcer by the mile.

April 7

Dawn. My lands, what we are seeing: burning sky, a lake of dead trees, sheep and cattle stations in flat scrub-growth stretching for miles, a flock of flamingo-like birds in flight (some kind of heron maybe), a herd of kangaroos bouncing away from the onrushing train, and a pack of panicky, bobbing emus. The other early risers around me are burning off camera film at a fierce rate.

Later... We stopped for an hour at Broken Hill, a major mining town (silver, zinc and lead) on the border between Aussie states New South Wales and South Australia. I trudged around in the surprisingly chilly air, admired some interesting turn-of-the-century architecture, little else.

Then on across mostly wasteland, with even the animals tucked away somewhere else. And this was the easy part--the desolate Nullarbor Plain still lies ahead. Another late-afternoon stop gave us a quick taste of Port Pirie, a slightly sleazy seaport a few notches up the southern coast from Adelaide. Otherwise, on and on, into the night. No lights or sign of what's out there, but we'll hit the Nullarbor about 3:30 this morning.

April 8

In the heat of mid-day the Nullarbor seems little more than a dreadful desert plateau--not sand, but rock scrabble, with minimal bits of grass, a few 'roos and emus (seen early morning only), and nothing else. Certainly no trees; thus its Latin-derived name. The plain features one stretch of perfectly straight train-track 478 kilometers long!

Anyway, you look out, see nothing but dusty white plain--no land features; a patch of moisture mirage perhaps. Go 20 kilometers on, look again: exactly the same. Perversely beautiful.

I started a poem during the night. Brief stops and side-shuntlings kept waking me up, so then I tried to sneak outside in mid-Outback to see Halley's Comet. But every door was locked tight. Frustrated, I picked up the pen again.

Later... Ten hours after rolling into the Nullarbor, we finally begin to see taller vegetation and then a few trees again. Some huge hawks, birds called gallahs, scrawny cattle, scrawnier weather-hardened Aussies. Braked to a stop about 6 p.m., in Kalgoorlie, in the gold mining region of Western Australia. With a couple of hours to wait, I walked out "downtown" with my meal-mates, a mother and her two children, bound home to Perth from Melbourne.

But only three kinds of places were open: pubs catering to locals and passers-through; the single still-in-operation gold mine, which runs organized tours timed for this train break; and Kalgoorlie's infamous Egan Street, which offers still-functioning bordellos--quasi-legal, or at least ignored by the authorities. Unfortunately (or do I mean fortunately?) not in walking distance.

I've shelved the Nullarbor poem for now--too gloomy. More useful might be a belated description of some of the characters I've been "training" with: roomie Hans and his sister Marguerite, he thin and with a silly gigolo mustache, she stout and aggressive, both of them staking out the club car, holding forth for hours on end. Another peculiar pair, Arthur and his Mum, are too amazing to ignore--hirsute and stout, a bit bandicoot-like; him shy and lonely and awkward, her whining after him, again and again, "Arthur, Arthur..." More charming, but in a gruff way, are "Athos," "Porthos," and "Aramis," our three Kiwi musketeers, country boys heading for farm jobs near Perth: one skinny, one rock-like, one rotund, and all three spending endless hours guzzling beer and telling incomprehensible jokes.

The Aussie capacity for drink has been well-documented, but in person it is truly, shall we say, staggering. Red-faced men, tiny old ladies, young hellraisers, rowdy "sheilas," all with can after can pyramiding up around them--Foster's and Swan, Emu Export and "XXXX," and "Another round here, mate. No worries!" The train toilets, which flush directly onto the tracks, have left a rather wet trail across the, er, wastes.

April 9 and after

Continuing yesterday's brew-haha, I neglected to mention the outlandish number of pubs and pub-hotels, t-shirts extolling beer-swilling, and even best-selling books that picture drunken Aussies partying, puking, and passing out.

I had a sampling of all those cultural wonders as I wandered the streets of Perth today. A happier city than Sydney, I think--smaller but still quite international in its ethnic mix, its shops and restaurants and arts on display. Located on the edge of the Indian Ocean, Perth is actually closer to Singapore than to many of the cities in Oz... full of stately homes, well-tended parks, burgeoning skyscrapers, lovely suburbs arrayed around the sprawling Swan River Estuary, white-sand beaches leading up and down the coast, sparkling sunshine and bustling energy. Its lively spirit derives from strong regional growth, booming oil fields, the America's Cup Challenge going on at nearby Fremantle, and the land's western vantage looking out on a watery frontier. I could live here for sure: the size is still manageable, the folks' outlook confident.

Everything here feels charged up, like Chicago in the days when Sandburg called it "City of Big Shoulders"--a buzzing, brawling, beautiful chunk of urban excitement. The bus driver yesterday could be both cynical and nostalgic for the old days, the Western Australia of farms and towns he grew up in. But to a newcomer, Perth feels like the future.

This is the edge--the edge of a huge continent, of a wide-open ocean, and of a dangerous blade called Progress. Sydney with its sprawl and Metro trains and busy ferry system runs like a well-oiled machine, a New York not yet out of control, while Perth still struggles, experiments, makes mistakes. But is going for it!

((The train trip back across Australia delivered a strange, one could even say mystical, post-midnight moment, which I'll regale you with next time.))