City of Legends

And it is a question, as visitors to my Amomancer blog clearly see that I am not currently writing to a single central inspiration of the female persuasion.  The fire is there, the focus is not.

Huerta the other day sent me a frowning emoticon, , when I expressed that I need to find a new major muse.  The fact she frowned tells me that there is much ignorance, even amongst my closest circle, as to what a muse is to me.

God, or rather, Goddess.  Simply put.  But with an explanation.

Not to replace the one true God, but to give me a focus as a writer, which is, perhaps more than man or human or liberal Democrat who has been married and divorced twice, my most evident self-definition. 

The furnace of my passions burns as hot as ever just as the core of the Earth itself is a molten mass of radioactive isotopes and stone.  But without a path for release, what you (and I, and the world) get are small volcanic outpourings, just enough to keep me from being torn apart.  They are impressive in and of themselves, but they are not Krakoa.  And I, personally, am a big fan of Krakoa-sized eruptions (see Psyche, Panther, Brigit, The Goldenheart, Aubergine and even the Leopard).

I am, by my very nature, a monogamist.  I believe in, I celebrate, I enjoy having one person that I can revolve around, like the Sun for my planet to orbit.  I find no shame in that, in basking in a radiant glow that warms and nurtures me.  Without it, my "planet" dies a slow death.  Not just from the lack of heat, but also the tidal forces that pull and stretch, toss and catch me as I spin through a remarkable universe.  Those forces rip me up inside and keep the heat burning, the magma churning and I, myself, learning what is good and beautiful and foul and fair and truth and illusion.  These are the reasons I get out of bed in the morning, these are the reasons to lay down beside someone else at night.

And I have to admit, I miss it.  I’m not looking for a fling, but an Olympian thing.  Someone strong enough to push back when I am half-mad (I never fully get to the whole mad).  Someone who isn’t going to bullshit me about their status and the realities of their world just because they want a taste of the ambrosia that gets flung around like cheap beer at a Steelers game. 

I’m not perfect, God knows.  I can, and have, put up with a lot from people who seemed to get in the door a little too easily with the password "I love you" and then started trashing the place.  I hate playing bouncer in my own heart and soul.  Hate it.  Someone who I can write about their beauty and virtues without having to lie to myself, that when I go back and read the works they inspired, I don’t have to ask "what was I drinking?"

The muse is a sacred thing to me.  It allows me to be who I am.  Without artifice, the vessel of my craft and spirit.  I have made myself Ronin, by choice, and the voice I hear when I speak is diminished as I strive to learn enough about myself and the nature of life that I speak no more blasphemies of the gods of love.

I’m not looking for sympathy.  I don’t need it or even deserve it.  I have been very fortunate in this life to have seen glimpses of beauty and passion and talent of the magnitudes I have seen.  There are those who would say I am being greedy in asking for one more, perhaps one final, run of the Chariot of Apollo across the sky.  If this is greedy of me, then I am greedy, and selfish.

But not dishonest or disloyal to my faith in love, to my unnamed Goddess.  I would rather die for a single, simple truth, than live for a lie. 

Aside from trying to squeeze in a viewing of District 9 and making sure I do not miss True Blood Sunday night, and with a tip of the hat to Nancy (the first one, Psyche, the Electric Lady, etc, etc) as two days ago was her birthday, two days from now is mine (we used to have a joint celebration on the 14th to split the difference), I am looking at a brutal weekend.

And loving it.

I have to finish final engineering on blister, the virtual CD I am uploading on my birthday…got my final contributor’s files yesterday.  Gonna be fun.  The cats have gone into hiding.

Still editing the new book.  Anastacia, my old, dear friend, got in touch with me and is feeling a bit down in the dumps and wants to hang out this weekend.  I have no less than three proposal efforts I am working on, aside from some quality program audits in the next week to prep for…

Yeah, it’s going to be crazy.  And I love it.

Okay, time for our semi-annual ritual of rumour control. 

Very simple. 

I am not currently engaged, about to get engaged, secretly married to or anything else.  I am still ronin and that’s the current battle plan.

There are women I enjoy the company of, but I’ve learned a valuable lesson:  Even the best intentioned people don’t always know what they want.  That includes me, and the vast majority of women I have known in this life (I extrapolate that most fit the mold).

Yes, I have good friends and those who inspire me.  My most excellent friend Jazz (whom you may also know as nightblooming or Huerta), from whose playful work with the English language I take the word in the title you scratched your head at.  We have known each other for almost a decade, and she has even been the cover of one of my CDs.  We’ve flirted, and I have even used her as a muse in absentia of a primary one being in my life.  And make no mistake, I do find her adorable, and intriguing, she’s a very terrific woman (and tall, she’s sort of a Hispanic version of Brigit).  If the mothership returned tonight and said I could only take one with me, she’d probably be the first number I call…she just probably wouldn’t answer, being out in a mosh pit somewhere.  I’m not kidding.  She’s an accomplished rock bassist and writes some seriously demented poetry. 

There’s Liza, whose photography sometimes shows up here, on williamfdevault.com and the Amomancer blog.  Charming, brilliant, talented and sexy as only a Brazilian fireball can be.  The realities of geography and the chronography makes it extremely unlikely that I will ever fill a role in her life other than a counseling uncle, but I do adore her.  Much the same for Mariya, again a long-distance flirtation with many poetic works sparked by her fearless artistic photography.  But, last time I checked, she had a boyfriend and contrary to the mythology, if a woman tells me (not if the man tells me, as people don’t own people) that she is in a relationship, she is off limits.

For now I am left to my adorisimz (the word Jazz coined for our style of mock fighting with compliments), my memories and several decades of genetically ordained indestructibility.  By the time Shelley was my age he had been decomposing for almost three decades.  Urgh.

Besides, who knows what will be coming at me from an unexpected quarter (gratuitous book plug).  My first serious relationship came out of a chance meeting at an airport that ended with me falling down an escalator.  My first wife, I met while I was engaged to another (the one I fell down the escalator over).  My second wife, I met on an airplane and was dating only women at the time.  And these aren’t the weirdest cases.  I accept the fact that the thunderbolt chooses its own time and place to strike.  I just grit my teeth and hope I don’t disintegrate in the firestorm.

My phone could literally ring right now with a new opportunity or someone of my past yearnings, re-entering the orbit of my life.  When the jolt comes, expect me to seize on with both hands, my toes, teeth and eyelashes, and to write of what it does to me, for good or for ill.  I will welcome such an adventure with open arms and seek to carry it with me the remainder of my days, being faithful and monogamous, and maybe taking my time to give her a book cover.  I’ve put 4-1/2 women on book covers (the Panther, the Leopard, nightblooming, the Goldenheart and Aubergine (looking around) I don’t see any of them hanging around.  Jazz suggests, rather snarkily, that maybe I attract women who are seeking immortality, but not the immortalizer.  Hrm.

So to recap:  Not involved with anyone right now.  The poetic works you are seeing springing anew are being inspired my memories and speculations and the occasional sense of awe at the writings or artwork of someone I feel resonance with.  In the last few years there’s been a few near-misses, and one resounding long-distance collision (is that even possible?), but right now, in my soul of souls, I am in solitude, romantically, and it is not a bad place to be.   I am learning to accept and respect the role of the ronin, the integrity of who I am.

It is uncomplicated. No illusions, no doubts, no trust issues.  I used to get up at ridiculous hours of the morning or stay up half the night to be a human alarm clock or comfort food to the passion du jour.  Now I am more self-contained, more self-aware.  I have found some answers I did not think were knowable.  I have written things I would have not been able to a decade ago.

I have not lost faith in love, in romance, in faith itself.  Don’t worry about me.  I’m just getting started.

An older poem of mine, back before there was air and sunshine and opposable thumbs, was entitled across the stars and lovelost.  It was about the hollow feeling I had after my breakup with Psyche.  It was stark, ragged, jagged and brutal.  And cathartic.

Those were simpler times, the world seemed much less complicated to me, then…and it was.

Now, having made it through five years of elective celibacy (okay, not completely elective, I would have ended it for one right person…but the fates have a sense of humour that even I can laugh about when the wounds begin to heal) I find myself no less fascinated by love and romance and the urge to merge.  I had thought these years would purge me of that surge of adrenaline and testosterone I get when I see or hear or imagine or smell a woman (not taste or feel, mind you, that would be going over a line…).  They haven’t.

My powers of intellect and emotion seem undiminished.  My writing seems as on point, if not more so, than ever.  But I find myself strangely becalmed.  Jazz, the other day, told me that I could and can do anything I want, have anything I want in this life (she went further than that, but let’s keep this sane) and she wondered why I was allowing myself to dwell in the grey.

I told her it is because of the nature of this beast.  Whether by nature or nurture, I need the seed, the inspiration, the muse, to kindle and sustain the fire.  To write the arcane equations that will trigger the mad reaction that will spark the conflagration that becomes the immolation in which I dwell in my purest, surest form.  There are some, as we speak, dancing at the edge of the circle of light the fire I dimly shed at this time sustains, but none have stepped into the light and declared themselves.  As couer rage is a requisite in a lover, I can not go and drag one into the light, they must step of their own accord.

And thus I wait.  Perhaps until the next moment, or next day, or next year or even unto the next life (where there is one who has sworn she’ll be waiting for me, but she had a problem with keeping her word in this life…not counting on it).

Until then, I am once again across the stars, looking for something dimly lit in the soundless vacuum of the space between dreams.

Not possible.

To move beyond memory, one must forget who they are, where they have been and what they have experienced. A persistent vegetative state might make it so, but that’s not a status I have devoutly wished for in this life.

Today is August 14th. It is a crossroads date (someone with my sense of time and history has man) as it is the anniversary of one or more events, that cross paths in my understanding of the world I live in. My birthday is August 16th, Psyche’s is August 12th. For the five years we were together, we tended to celebrate on the 14th as a compromise date.

There are other things that have occurred on Thursdays, on the 14th of a month, even on August 14th, and in my morning contemplations it is remarkable to remember some of them and close circles and utter words to keep promises (I may be slow, often, as I forget or am distracted or given rationale to forget, but I generally get around to those oaths I have made) that I have made, in good faith, altered only by the external forces I have no control over.

In that context, you may want to check out a new poem I posted this morning on Amomancer entitled the mantra of severing, which is about keeping promises, even ancient ones, when they are recalled. There will be those who believe they know of what I speak, but to imagine that, in my entire life, I have only walked one road with one companion to one end and made one promise…that would be a very blissful life, and chaos still calls.

I once wrote that "memory is the curse of those who care". It leads us to a terrible and an arrogant place, where we think the world sees with our eyes and feels with our hearts, and knows us. When I was a child I used to blow my mind by trying to contemplate infinity, but one day I hit upon something more incredible to contemplate: There are billions of people on this planet, most (if not all) of them leading lives as experientially, intellectually and emotionally complex as our own. That many thoughts, that many emotions, that many dreams, and God knows them all, and I can never even know for sure my own heart.

We never move beyond memory. At best, we acknowledge the sprained ankle of life and adjust to the limping.

Blow out the candles, my electric lady.

Think I have forgotten? You inspired so many of my most revered works:

• My Electric Lady
• Monument
• Sons of Soft Sin
• the sorrow of past errors
• tread softly
• I should have been immortal
• Nevermore My Steel
• the lingering haste
• theocricide at Mach 10e6
• last night
• and many, many more…

You were perhaps more my midwife than my lover, the one who pulled me out, smacked me on the behind and set me on the path. There is no doubt but that much of what I am, for good or bad, as a writer, as a poet, as a man, came from you. You opened my eyes, taught me many things I still cling to, fed my intellect, my soul and my spirit, and taught me my first lessons of love and artistic conflict. If in the sphere of Venus I learned war, you were the advance scout and the general who sent me.

I can still name the time and date of our first kiss, our first touch, of the last time we spoke and when I heard of your mother’s death. I know you will hear of this because I know you have people, if not you yourself, who visit this site from time to time.

Happy Birthday. I hope you are well, strong and happy. You are missed and celebrated. I always told you, be first, last or best at anything you value. You are immortal.

I think this is the first time this has ever happened to me. A song is wedge in my head, playing soundtrack to the hours I am spending here, at the computer, editing some technical documents and writing a proposal for a client. Hairy-scary proposal, too. You don’t want to know which branch of the US Armed Forces it is for or what they do with our services if we win.

But back to the song. Wow. It is one of my own. One of the ones off of my CDs. I can’t recall it happening to me before. But the taste, which is the musical version of the taste of remembrance, is doing its thing in my brain, and I am enjoying it. I am rediscovering me.

Not a bad thing, I think. I am happy.

The poem, itself, is something of a miracle. Clearly an Abstra work (one written about not a single person, but an abstraction) I still called upon specific memories of specific women at different moments as I wrote it and later recorded it. The slow, malevolent and mournful guitar was my vision.

I conjoured the Leopard, the Selke, Brigit and Psyche to fuel the work.

I’m going to answer a question I have gently side-stepped in many interviews over the years, taking the polite and diplomatic route, treating my works like the children they are to me, showing no favouritism.

I am often asked what is my best, most memorable, more important work.

That’s a tough question for a poet with my catalog to respond to, as I can give reasons for a hundred to be considered each, in their own season and reason, the one most important work. But I decided to ask myself the question. What poem has had the most impact on your life?

That’s an easy question to answer. It is an older work, often obscured by the popularity to its generational sibling "Monument", "I should have been immortal" and "The Unicorns".

It is "My Electric Lady". As with most births, there was nothing outwardly auspicious about it. I hammered it out on Psyche’s typewriter in her study on South High Street in Morgantown, West Virginia, when I was 18 and did not yet understand where the spirit, the muse, the creative force came from.

It flowed in one draft, no editing, no clever assimilation of random nodes into a single entity. The "Electric Lady" of the title was Psyche, my first real love and perhaps the one that will haunt me all my days. The source of the image: She had a shirt, deep blue, with the tracing of a light blue Japanese lady with a parasol on the front. We had nicknamed the shirt the "Electric Lady" shirt, as it looked like the woman was glowing with neon-blue energies.

One evening, as Psyche (her real name was and is Nancy, but it is simpler to keep the totem-muse consistent) was studying, I sat down at the typewriter, as I would often do, and tapped out a poem.

At the time I could not tell you where it came from. It seemed to tell a story, but a story I did not think I was writing. It was perhaps the first work I can recall that came without conscious action on my part, from the preconscious.

When I was through, she and I read it and she became very upset. It foretold a parting of the ways, where I would have to choose between her and my place as a poet. It seemed ludicrous and terrible to comprehend.

Four years later she told me I would have to give up poetry to keep her. And the poem was fulfilled. Whether she was consciously or preconsciously fulfilling the prophecy, or whether my preconscious knew, just knew, that someday the choice would be given to me, I knew the choice was not a choice at all.

And a few weeks later, as I visited her at Central Missouri State University, where she had already met the man who would eventually take my place in her life, a man of undivided loyalties, the final lines came to pass.

My Electric Lady

dance for me, my electric lady.
sing a song that gently soothes my soul.
tomorrow I must leave your world again, my love…
as I strive to reach this endless journey’s goal.

I once gave up my poor and mortal birthright,
so that I might touch the sky and see true things.
my love, I’m not so sure I would have started,
if I could have seen the pain this voyage brings.

once again, my electric lady,
touch me and bring forth my too-rare smile.
for the moment I am just another mortal-
and a little love will last me quite a while.

if we had only met before the present,
and what is gone had made me what I am,
a love would be that all who live might envy-
but I cannot come back this way again.

for the final time, my electric lady…
give me all that I may take within my vow.
tomorrow is my child and a gift to the stars-
and the night is just my brother here and now.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

This work, both in the manner of its writing, and the breaking apart of my person to be what I believe I was supposed to be, by nature or nurture, truly was the most important work.

Without the tapping into the preconscious, 95-99% of my later works would have never come to pass.

Without the pain of that parting, which still is like a knife in my soul, I would have never grown out and beyond my shell of experience and there would have never been a Valkyrie, a Leopard, a Panther, Brigit, a Southern Siren, a Mad Gypsy, Nightblooming, The Wisp, Arachne, a Goldenheart (who was, in part, an echo for a return to the moments before that poem entered the world).

I would have been, perhaps, happy and loving and loved. But I would not be who I am today. I would have never fathered the three wonderful children I now know. I would’ve never found my home in Venice, or friends of the brilliance and joy I have had.

Perhaps I would have been a greater writer, or perhaps at least a better person, but I know of no one with a richer legacy of poetry and I am content that I have thrown myself on my fair share of spiritual hand grenades long the path, trying to help others (perhaps even out a sense of unworthiness I am trying to transcend, rooted in my loss of Psyche).

In any case, there’s my answer. There’s the poem. Next question?

The NEMICORN comes into the world, long live the NEMICORN.

Here is the final track list for my new CD, NEMICORN, available starting this Friday, November 3, either through the City of Legends Bookstore, or through the publisher (lulu.com) or you can hope to snag one at any of my public events. Ten bucks, 17 works, that’s a pretty good deal.

I’d like to thank two sets of people. First, those whose inputs were so crucial to my making the final few tracks decisions, Matt Hinton, Daleen Berry, Alan MacDonald, Aberjhani, E.J. and Pam Fries.

The second group is perhaps even more essential: People whose inspiration, directly or indirectly, lead to the works contained: Nancy, Peri, Nordette, Carole, Mary, Jennifer, Sarah, Ann, H. R. Giger, Kristina, Crystal, Jan, Jade, Brigit and Karla. I pray long and joyful lives for you all.

Here’s the final list of tracks (followed by duration of final version)

Damascus 3 (1:09)
The Nosferatu’s Quandry (2:37)
Right Set of Lips (2:12)
Falling and Fallen Angels (2:59)
Brisant Revelations (3:10)
Joining the Machine (2:42)
Texture of Your Tongue (2:40)
The Faerie (Strange but Beautiful) (3:15)
Theocricide (5:02)
Thunder Out of Valhalla (3:28)
Pink Jade - Soft as Dawn (2:16)
Love Gods (Multivox) (3:58)
Thetis (3:06)
Wild and Defiled, Along the Way (4:04)
Darfur (Jesus Wept) (3:55)
Once Again, The Nemicorn (4:08)
A Passion, Unrelenting (3:00)

Total running time, just a hair under 54 minutes.

There it is. Thanks to all. Now to finish up THE NAKED READS. So many projects, I shall never reach my nunc dimittis.

Well, on April 22nd, I have to put up or shut up. Not the first time, not the last, I am sure.

It’s just a reading, actually a book signing, not my most important, but it is likely to get attention on several fronts.

Commercially, Barnes and Noble will be taking my temperature to see how well the small stack of books they provide sells. Best result, they sell out during my first hour. Worst result, nothing moves, nothing sells, and I bite a passer-by.

Okay, the latter is unlikely. But I think back to some of my more notable fulcrumed appearances. Here’s my five most memorable, in no particular order.

The Southern Poets Reading Tour (I), The Fairhope Arts Center, Fairhope, Alabama, Summer of 1997. Loki was right, I’d been flat all weekend, and I was supposed to be the big dog. So, I drop my reading list, put on my shades and did a set only of poems I could recite from the heart. As they were almost all about my relationship with Psyche, I cried through the read, then left the building. Ann followed and had to bring me back into the room, where poet after poet who followed me was changing reading lists and doing their most intimate works. It became a massive, public, catharsis session. I wrote my poem "Breathe" in one of the Leopard Cycles, about the incident.

The AOL Writers Club Party, The Algonquin Hotel, New York City, September of 1995. Having helped plan and execute this intimate gathering of poets and authors, when I was called upon to read to a room of peers, I chose works from the first six "Panther Cycles" (that’s all there were back then). It’s the only public reading I ever did with the Panther herself in the room, and the stress of being conscious of her presence in a room where, theoretically, no one knew about "us" yet, was intense.

A Catholic Girls’ High School in California, April, 2003. Just months before abandoning my beloved Golden State, I was invited to speak at this school. I called the place Kevin Smith’s Greatest Nightmare (or his wet dream). Several hundred well-groomed, upper middle class Catholic high school girls, all in their uniforms, most with attitude. I was actually intimidated. Yeah, I know, that’s funny. I recall particularly, not so much darkly, the one girl in the front row whose blouse was probably unbuttoned one more button than permitted, who seemed to be trying to channel Sharon Stone in ‘Basic Instinct’ with a smirk as she slouched in her seat, her knees apart, through most of the read. If I was but twenty years younger and willing to do jail time, I might have thought more about her. As it was, I had a good audience, and I got to see how well my material played to a young, estrogen-laced audience, which has always supposed to be a key demographic for the "Romantic Poet of the Internet".

The coffeehouse at Drummond Chapel United Methodist Church, Morgantown, West Virginia, sometime in 1974. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was my first "real" reading. After enduring a couple of rounds of polite applause from an audience that obviously was not listening to what I was reading, I gave them a tongue lashing for their hypocrisy. Thus was a reputation born.

The sports bar reading, Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, late 1978. My friend Dave Demeter, whose band was playing that night, set me up to be the act between musical sets. It takes a certain amount of confidence to be reading my poetry between musical sets in a place where most of the people are half into their third beer, watching a hockey game. It toughened me. I got applause, sold a few books, and fulfilled my quest to stop reading in poetry venues. Plus, it was the first place I ever performed "TRIUMPH". I don’t recall the exact name of the bar, alas.

So, aside from a few "private" readings, these are the ones that really stand out to me. If I had to pick a sixth, it would be the reading at The Blue Moose in Morgantown, during my 2002 tour. I sold a ton of books that night and met some guy named Dan McTaggart, plus it was the first time in decades that I had done a public reading in West Virginia.

When Odyssey’s men were to pass by the island of the Sirens, he had wax poured in all their ears so they could not hear the song they sung what drew sailors to their deaths. But, curious man he was, he first had them strap him to the mast, with instructions that, until they were out of sight of the island, no matter how fiercely he struggled or gestured, they should not unlash him.

He knew what was coming and set impediments, or at least warnings and wards, in his path.

The next week is going to be pretty stressful on me, so I want to get in my licks now, before the stresses malform me for a brief season. Don’t worry, no matter how freakish my attitudes will be over the next eight or nine days, I will be fine…if my flesh endures so shall my spirit, which was always made of still sterner stuff than my bulletproof form.

Tomorrow is August 12. Big deal you say? Not for me. For a half decade my soul was merged and made strong by my union with Nancy, whom I have called Psyche and the Electric Lady in my works. August 12 is her birthday. There is only one more sacred day on my emotional calendar than that, November 1. And she and I know the import of that day. Tomorrow will be a day of sorrows and celebration. Last I heard she was well and happy. I hope this year finds her thus as well.

August 14 was the day we used to celebrate together, as it is the midpoint between her birthday and mine. Romantic, no? It made sense to us as it signified that we were no longer two people, but one joined destiny. That will also be rough for me.

August 16th draws nigh. Elvis died on that day. But, more importantly for future generations, that is my birthday (yes, I know I share it with Madonna, Frank Gifford and some former daytime hostess…woo-woo…). I turn the big 5-0 this year (me, Mel Gibson, Billy Bob Thornton, Kevin Costner and Bruce Willis are all in a twelve month span, from what I understand…I’d like to have Gibson’s money, Willis’ physique, Thornton’s ex wife, and Costner’s…er…well, we can’t have it all…). This will be the first in many a year since I have been in a relationship, even last year I had Ann making (I am sure under the table) assurances that the separation would be over soon (usually followed by a reque$t of some sort or other), and she called on my birthday. I don’t expect that from her this year. And last year I did not hear from my daughter (this was the first real sign that she had grown mute to my existence). We shall see if either of them steps up this year. If not, Matthew 10:14 comes to mind.

Then comes the 17th, speaking of that Bible verse, and I am to speak as part of "Arts Week" in Morgantown. I would rather face a room full of strangers than a crowd where there are friends and family looking at me. The one exception was the assembly at St. Mary’s School in Salinas. Having a few hundred beautiful, well-groomed, uniformed Catholic schoolgirls file in to listen to you is something of a Kevin Smith nightmare (or wet dream, or both). It marked the only occasion in my life an audience has ever intimidated me. Of course, woman have always been my Achilles heel, I guess we know what I was held by when dipped in the River Styx. Ouch.

I may be going to see the boys on the 18th. That is always stressful to me. And, with my new work schedule, it is complicated to do.

And then, on the 19th, I am one of the guests for "Malt on the Mon"…one of the first local tests of my celebrityhood. If this was LA or New York, no problem, I know the crowd I’d get and their timber…this is different. But it’s cool, I probably need a cold shower for my ego, the new book is just too magnificent…for the first time in my existence I am producing packaged material as good as I know I can…of course, my psych profile tells me now I have to step up and not just hit home runs, but screaming line drives that decapitate the pitcher on their way up and out of the stadium, leaving a flaming trail agaianst the gloaming skies.

Excelsior.

Now, you know some of the stresses I am facing (that combined with having a daytime gig at Teletech where I make a salary about 1/5th what I am used to making, but I am surrounded everyday by dozens of charming, intelligent and beautiful women, so there’s that)…so please, if next week I miss a deadline, or babble, or type in all caps one entry, excuse my humanity. I have come to accept that fact that in some ways, humanness is not something most of my readers expect from me.

I am often reminded of Deborah Atherton’s statement, upon meting me, after having know me online for a while, that she was "expecting Charlton Heston, but got John Lennon"…to this day it remains one of the sweetest compliments I have ever received, on so many levels. By the way, check out the information on her opera about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (the young woman who wed Percy Bysshe Shelley and wrote "Frankenstein") at this link The Mary Shelley Opera. You’ll find it remarkable, as the woman who co-wrote it is.

I digress. As always. I have a book to go work on. You, get on with your life or go viisit my website and drop me a line about a work or two, I always like comments…and, if you have a sister…