BEATNICK BREATHING THE WAFTING AIRS OF SUCCESS

Wouldn't it be nice?

Nothing is more mysterious than our emotional apparatus. Mine included. I've been experiencing continuous days of happiness, sometimes punctuated with ecstatic joy. I'm not spending thousands of dollars on stuff I don't need, not flying off to exotic vacations on Caribbean islands. It's not the manic phase of a bipolar swing. Maybe it's the screenwriting course I'm enjoying extravagantly. Maybe it's the increasing number of readers of this blog. Maybe it's the recognition and publication of my poem Legacy in WA129 [Sage Hill Press] and the concurrent invitation by Poet Laureate Tod Marshal to join him and Clark County Poet Laureate Chris Luna and his wife Toni Luna for a joint reading sponsored by the Washougal Library two weeks back. Very good to be included among them. Perhaps it's Tod's warm appreciation of other of my poems as well. Part of my joy has to be the steady sunshine of my wife's love for me that warms and nourishes me, and the love I feel for her that opposes the constant goads of ego that we all experience. I'm blossoming like a petunia in the corner of a rarely visited garden of the literary arts. Maybe it's Portland itself. Whatever it is, I'm standing at the window of World Cup Coffee at the corner of 18th and Glisan in Portland on a powerfully sunlit day and feeling as successful and rewarded as if I'd just won the Nobel Prize for literature. Can something be awaiting my lifelong efforts? Feels like it, but, then, the emotional apparatus of the human species is mysterious as hell. Isn't it? And as far as I can see, no actual gold laden Spanish galleon rides the horizon.

BEATNIK MEETS SELF IN SUNTAN

Today 92 people checked into The Silent Boomer. Have no idea why, but the number of people following this blog has leaped in the last week or so. Thank you to anyone looking in to see how I'm progressing toward my sole bucket list item. Still patiently awaiting the official contract about that poem of mine. Writing progress is as boring a report as I can give—I rewrote Chapter 7 this early afternoon while a steady rain fell on Vancouver Washington across the river from the Portland International Film Festival. Heavenly PIFF XL has gotten in the way of my rewriting task. I'm joyously crossing the Columbia River almost daily to catch a show. Saw the second best film so far last night at Cinema 21—Suntan. Found myself many times during the film, back in my falling apart days in the 1960s and early 70s. A late start after a four year term in US Navy made me an "older dude" as a teaching assistant at Southern Illinois University, drinking heavily and too much attracted to far too many women too young for me. Of course, I didn't go half so far as Kostis does in Suntan, but I felt what he felt more than once back in those bedeviled days. Worse...I was married.

Last night before the film, after eating at Dick's on 21st, I took a dreamy rainy walk eastward from 21st Avenue toward the heart of Portland, found a little coffee shop on 18th, World Cup Coffee. Sat in the rainy night across the street from the International Hostel building, reading E.O. Wilson's brilliant book, The Meaning of Human Existence and dreaming about all those things an aging man thinks about who has not exactly stormed the citadel of fame and fortune as a writer. I tried to start a poem and laughed at myself. Those poetic days are through, I thought, then found myself starting another Up Your Ass prostate cancer poem last night about the bloody pee I splashed into the bowl two nights ago. I mean bloody pee. Scared the living daylights out of me. But such events often result from irradiation of the prostate. E.O. Wilson makes me want to live to be 150 and see what wonders lie ahead. A delicious night last night, all in all.