They sleep a lot. Then they run and play a lot. Works for people, too.
4th of July where'd you come from? Last I looked it was, oh, April or something. I was putting up temporary fencing for two tiny aussie pups, and yesterday I took it all down, rolled up the wire and put it in the barn. I have a t-post puller thank god, as they were pounded in deep. I'm just a fencing fool. Today I pledged allegiance to a neglected lawn, and mowed the front area. It's a big sucker. I'll do the back maybe friday. The pups love the lawn and the front pasture.
The new bookmarks are here! The new bookmarks are here! I'm living and coping with adult onset optimism so it doesn't take much to get me all abuzz. Good thing, too. Too many people are out to rid the world of natural highs just by being pissed off all the time. Life is short I think they will find, probably at the too late mark and then they'll only have time to say "wha...?"
What a voice. It could be a bass saxophone.
By the way, talk about laid back and cool, David Basse, KC's jazz legend, has such a resonant everyday speaking voice I asked him to say a word or two about a couple of books on the new bookmark. Then I sent the mp3's to a podcast I frequent. Give a listen--it would be enjoyable to hear David read a to-do list. (These are short, :30's)
Got to thinking while on the mower today (there I go, thinking again) how I used to welcome summer as a kid. No more teacher's dirty looks. The heavy pneumatic doors of Horace Mann School with their glass and chickenwire prison windows closed behind me and the free world of summer hove into view. A kid's mind regards three months of summer freedom pretty much as a lifetime, an infinite vista. "The endless laboratory experiment of being alive," as Scott Bradfield put it in a recent book review.
Joe, Joe, ease off. But what a summer!
I didn't know what I'd do out there, I just knew it would be fun and no one would grade me on it. Multiple choice took on fresh meaning. One such summer I was introduced to McCarthyism. Commies were everywhere. I was enthralled. Maybe some of my grandmother's neighbors were communists. Or spies. The rabid senator made that case on black and white TV. I had just gotten a little printing press with rubber type and I put out the first fake newspaper. I wrote libelous things about neighbors, then hawked the paper on the street. Few takers at a nickel apiece. If only I'd known about the magic "An anonymous source said..." plausibility ploy.
This summer I'm doing what I can to not finish a novel and the internet is helping immensely; I'm even reading my Tommy Hilfiger emails and thinking of answering them. I'm resisting the thousand words a day groove, but I'll get back into it. Why not? All the other books are making me so rich, (an anonymous source alleges) why would I not finish another one to put into the grinder? I read somewhere there are 600,000 to a million books published each year in the U.S. alone. About half are self-published. Mine aren't, so far. Maybe they should be. On average these million books sell 250 copies a year. But like I said, that old optimism works for me.
Happy summer! g