ROSEMARY CLOONEY AND MY BEATNIK YOUTH

"Hey, there, you with the stars in your eyes...." Ah, Rosemary Clooney and my youth! My age is showing. All I can say is that I'm happily writing again. Busy on rewrite of a novel I now call The Reprogramming of Frank Singletary.

My poems have appeared in Adelaide. I think I already reported that. Still waiting for poem in Zero Dark Thirty. Covid-19 may be delaying getting that literary magazine out. They haven't notified me.

I am quite happy to be writing again. Fulfills me to no end. The other night, I was reading a short story by Hemingway, "Banal Story". It inspired me to start one just like it, only set in our times. However, I was tired, it was late, and I couldn't get very far along. By next morning, the feeling that inspired the story was gone. So. There it sits in a computer file, a couple of inspired paragraphs that may never see the darkness inside a closed literary magazine.

BEATNIKING IT ON THE ROAD

I'm still alive. You'd think I'd stay home and write my head off, but staying home feels like prison. No more coffee shops to write in. Have been getting out on the road and driving, listening to jazz, making videos. But, hit or miss, I have polished off two more short stories that I began months ago but set aside when they weren't going anywhere. So I'm happy enough, waiting for my poem to appear in Zero Dark Thirty.

Have weird feeling from time to time before I set out each day to drive or get a soy chai that no one is outside anymore, but, there they are at the Starbucks for "grab and go" service only. The Vancouver Mall is closed currently for at least two weeks. Some small businesses are really getting hurt. The potential for this Covid-19 is awful, but if too many people feel as I do—not very scared at all—then they'll be doing risky business for seniors like myself. What is only a cold for a young dancer in a bar is death for a guy at the supermarket. 

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