Daffy Yum, Cowgirls, Page 178
Jun 26, 2007
Review of Wild Ducks Flying Backward
Posted by Dale
Cassandra Riddle has written a review of Wild Ducks for the
Purdue Student Paper. Very nice job.
I like her name combo. Casandra + Riddle.
Faux Tom on Myspace
Posted by Dale
A fan started a myspace, er, space for Tom Robbins. He clearly states that it's not really Tom Robbins but a lot of people are having fun with. Then again wouldn't it be like Tom to make a fan site and claims it's not really him? But it's not.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=98984212
New on the Aftrlife
Posted by Dale
I've added a third introduction to the webpage. Each of the three is randomly generated whenever you visit. With the rotating images, text and quotes you should get a different experience each time you visit the site.
http://www.aftrlife.com
Jun 25, 2007
Like-minded blog
Posted by Dale
I've added a new blog to the blogroll. It's Facilitating Paradox by aftrlifer, David.
Good stuff.
Jun 22, 2007
Cowgirls, Page 172--Voluntary Craziness
"There are two kinds of crazy people..."
Tom's compassion, understanding and acceptance of people who choose to live outside the box is a golden thread running through all of his books. He has a way of not only making quirks tolerable, but preferable to the gray, lemming-like drugery of "normalicy." The effect is twofold--first it educates the "normal" ones, gives them a new way of seeing. and next, it provides great comfort and encouragement to those of us who choose not to fall in line and stay quietly inside our pretty pigeon holes.
This is one of those pages.
"There are two kinds of crazy people...[t]hose whose primitive instincts, sexual and agressive, have been misdirected, blunted, confused or shattered at an early age by environmental and/or biological factors beyond their control. Not many of these people can...regain that balance we call 'sanity.'...But there are other people who choose to be crazy in order to cope with what they regard as a crazy world. They have adopted craziness as a lifestyle...the only way you can get them to give up their craziness is to convince them that the world is actually sane...I have found such a conviction almost impossible to support."
Jun 21, 2007
Live Blogging the Zeitgeist
Actually I'm just liveblogging a juggling show at the public library. I just happened to be here trying out the free wifi when they set up the intro for a summer reading program with David Cousins. He did Kung Fu juggling of clubs. Unfortunately my low battery indicater just went on so I'll be deadblogging in a couple of minutes.
Read More......
Jun 20, 2007
Robbinsesque Scholarship
I ran across an interesting book title on Amazon.
An Eliadean Interpretation of Frank G. Speck's Account of the Cherokee Booger Dance (Native American Studies, 14) by William D. Powers (Hardcover - Oct 2003)
I don't know what it's about, but I'll bet Tom has read it.
Jun 18, 2007
Tom's work habits
"I once heard Tom Robbins say, when his book tour took him to Denver’s Tattered Cover bookstore, that he shows up at the page faithfully every morning at the same time so that the Muse would know where to find him;"
http://www.burnzpost.com/2007/06/17/the-guinea-pig-report-becoming-a-writer-waking-to-write/
Good article on writing habits at Burnz Post.
Jun 16, 2007
Page 166, Cowgirls--The Page That Says It All
(Bantam Edition, 2003) This is the page--the blank page--the page that says it all. The between-the-lines page. The page where clouds burst and secrets spill, and deepest mysteries are revealed.
This is the page of infinite possibilities and alternate universes; the page where clockwork dreams come true.
This page offers without reserve the answers to the really big questions. Secrets of the universe open before you; they are as luminous as swirling stars above the Rubber Rose.
This page is the ultimate temptation. The sultry seductress, the red-hot lover. Quivering, you offer your stolid resistance, but it's no good. Give in to its persistant wiles.
This is the page where outside the lines is all there is. Get out your colors and go wild.
This is the page where Dale's Desert Tortoise snuggles up with The Chink and together they hold court. No question goes unanswered, no fantasy unfulfilled.
Jelly Bean Bonanza and Tom Robbins stretch this page taught between them, offering it to you as a gift. Climb on! They'll toss you higher than that rain cloud, laughing all the while from the sheer joy of it all.
This is the page where Whoopers flourish and dance between every line.
This is the page where everything begins, hesitant and shy; the first step.
Read More......
Jun 13, 2007
Daffy Yum Page 163
Sissy meets The Chink! He looked like "the little man with the big answers." And he took her to the clockworks. God I loved the clockworks when I first read about it. It was so much like the way life marks time. It made me decide that I was a Zen Taoist--someone who loved the flow but with a few surprises thrown in--the mellowness of meaning and the flashes of enlightenment.
I once had a desert tortoise and I'd let it roam free while I was working in the garden. And no matter how much I tried to keep my eye on him, he found some way to burrow under something and hide. Then I'd spend twenty minutes looking for him. I even wrote a haiku about that turtle:
Now you see him
Now you see him
Now you see him
Now you don't.
The Chink was as steady and as elusive at that tortoise (which happened to have a wild hair or two.)
Jun 7, 2007
Cowgirls, Page 157--The Whoopers!
We've reached the page where Tom finds the words to describe the Whoopers. If you've read the post excerpting DB's description of this precise moment, (see Crane Research) when Tom joined him in Japan to research the Tancho cranes , (who most closely resemble Whoopers) you can imagine the two young friends huddled beneath a tarp in the center of the reserve, peering through a hole cut in the tarp to observe the gigantic birds flying low above them. Tom absorbed the essence of the moment and in time, transformed it into the magic of this very page, page 157
A symbol of longevity, Tanchos have long been called the Thousand Year Cranes in Japan . People living in the village near the reserve began feeding the Tancho cranes generations ago in order to help them through a particularly hard and early winter that arrived before their usual migration. Remarkably, the cranes chose to stay at that spot through subsequent winters as well. To this very day, villagers continue to feed the Tanchos throughout the winters and have created an official reserve to protect them. These Tancho cranes are the only flock in the world choosing to remain in one place rather than migrate.
My question is--where do the villagers get all those peyote buttons? :~)
