Dharma Yum

A Light Touch

2012-01-10T09:28:00.000-08:00

Last week, I discussed the editing (or not) of Another Roadside Attraction. I shared that with Tom, inviting him to chime in if he'd like. And chime he did. Quite passionately.

The Doubleday editor who handled Another Roadside Attraction was a young woman named Dorothy Pittman. Originally, a woman named Claudia something or other had been assigned to ARA, but she soon left to open a toy store in New Jersey with her husband.

In any case, only female hands touched my manuscript -- and they touched it lightly, indeed: so lightly, in fact, that it might be accurate to say that the book was virtually unedited. A few misspelled words, a couple of lapses in grammar, that was it.

Any man who claims to have edited the book is a fraud and a liar, and I'd tell him so to his face.
Tom Robbins

An apt beginning.

Tales of the Wiley Peyote

2012-01-01T18:14:00.000-08:00

In an interview back in the 70's, the editor of Tom Robbins' first novel, Another Roadside Attraction, seemed to claim that he had convinced the young author to remove scads of wordplay and gobs of writing pyrotechnics that didn't "work" in the novel. The thought was intriguing and disturbing.

Later Tom informed me that wasn't true. Nothing was removed and the novel retained his vision of it.

I felt ambivalent about it. First, it was good that he hadn't been forced to change his work. On the other hand, the idea of a lost stash of Robbins wordplay was an enticing thought.

Book Review: Anarcho Grow by T.A.Sedlack

2010-03-21T18:49:00.000-07:00

Strange doings in Costa Rica. The novel opens with an American man named Ben who isn't who he says he is, doing something he's not supposed to be doing but we don't know what exactly. That is a mystery that is slowly revealed.

It's not a traditional mystery although its main character acts mysteriously for most of the novel. It's not a whodunit, so much as a what the heck are they doing or why are they doing it? Ben's motives are idealistic and he is a combination of innocence and guile. Like Plucky Purcell, he's not a criminal, he's an outlaw. For a good cause. Drugs are involved but not in the way you might think. This novel has a new take on pot smuggling.

I've been to Costa Rica and Sedlak's descriptions of people and place ring true and vivid. He circles the meaning of "Pura Vida" throughout the book, but I couldn't define it for you even now. Maybe that's the point.

I found I became a little unstuck in time because some chapters were from 2001 and some from 2006 and I had trouble following the shifts. The 2001 chapters were about when it all started-- the plan and the romance-- and the 2006 sections were "now".

The tension of the events is wound tight by the gradual closing in of CIA agents on the protagonist. It's a story of a man who came back one too many times to the scene of the "crime". Sedlak's novel has a heartbreakingly hopeful ending.

I enjoyed this very original story.

Leslie W. LePere designed the vibrant cover of Anarcho Grow. Aftrlifers will know him from the Tom Robbins novels he has illustrated.

Anarcho Grow by T. A. Sedlak, published by This Press Kills Fascists Publshing, 2010.

A Gathering of Crete'ns.

2010-03-03T09:55:00.000-08:00

Tom Robbins is going to Crete. No he's not going to intervene in the Greek financial crisis, he's going to Crete, Nebraska.

Legendary Novelist Tom Robbins To Lecture at Doane
Legendary American novelist Tom Robbins will speak and sign copies of his works, especially his latest novel, B Is for Beer, a children's book for adults and an adult book for children, Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. in Heckman Auditorium on the Doane College campus in Crete.
(1014 Boswell Avenue Crete, NE 68333)

His talk, this year's lecture in the Lucille Cobb Lecture Series sponsored by the English department, is entitled "An Evening with Tom Robbins." It is free and open to the public.

More at Legendary Novelist Tom Robbins To Lecture at Doane

I hope one of the attendees will write us to share their impressions of the evening with The Aftrlife. aftrlife@gmail.com

Anarcho Grow author on tour

2010-02-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

T. A. Sedlak, an Aftrlifer, is out talking about his new novel in LA next week at Hemp Con Marijuana Show Los Angeles February 19-21.

Here are some future appearances:

39th Annual Anne Arbor Hash Bash April 3

AWP Conference in Denver April 7-10

Seattle Hemp Fest August 20-22

Portland Hemp Stalk September 11-12

Boston Freedom Rally September 25 (if they can move it from the 18th for Yom Kippur)

NORML National Conference September (Dates to be announced)

I'll be reviewing the novel soon. It's a suspenseful story of a unique "revolution."
Dale

Tom's Grassroots Efforts

2009-11-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 19, 2009
12:47 PM

CONTACT: Marijuana Policy Project
Mike Meno, MPP assistant director of communications
202-905-2030 or mmeno@mpp.org

Marijuana Policy Project’s 15th Anniversary Gala to Celebrate ‘15 States in 15 Years’
Celebrity guests and other prominent figures will help celebrate MPP’s remarkable passage of improved marijuana laws in 15 states in 15 years
WASHINGTON - November 19 - The Marijuana Policy Project, America's largest marijuana policy reform organization, will look back on 15 productive years of improving marijuana laws at a January 13 gala that will feature guest speakers such as talk show host Montel Williams. The star-studded host committee includes Melissa Etheridge, Tom Robbins, Bill Maher, Ben Taylor, Steve Buscemi, Susan Sarandon, Lewis Black, Nicole Atkins, Margaret Cho, Mark Leno, Hal Sparks, Ani DiFranco, Garry Trudeau, and Medeski, Martin and Wood, along with many other prominent supporters.

When MPP was founded in 1995, medical marijuana was illegal in all 50 states. Since then, 13 states have passed medical marijuana laws, with Michigan becoming the 13th state in November 2008, when Michigan voters passed MPP's ballot initiative by a 63% to 37% margin. By the end of 2010, MPP is hopeful that medical marijuana will be legal in 15 states (with passage in New York and New Jersey).

At the same time, marijuana possession is now decriminalized in 13 states, with Massachusetts becoming the 13th state in November 2008, when Massachusetts voters passed MPP's ballot initiative by a 65% to 35% margin. In 2010, MPP is hopeful that marijuana will be decriminalized in 15 states (with Rhode Island and Vermont becoming the 14th and 15th states).

WHAT: The Marijuana Policy Project's 15th Anniversary Celebration

WHEN: January 13, 2010. Press Availability from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m.

Reception from 6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Dinner from 7:30 to 11:00 p.m

WHERE: Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, 400 New Jersey Avenue, NW, 20001

Tickets cost $250 each, or $2,000 for a table.

###
With more than 26,000 members and 100,000 e-mail subscribers nationwide, the Marijuana Policy Project is the largest marijuana policy reform organization in the United States. MPP believes that the best way to minimize the harm associated with marijuana is to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. For more information, please visit http://MarijuanaPolicy.org.

Daffy Yum: Indigone

2009-09-12T15:11:00.000-07:00

Well we've finished reading Jitterbug Perfume--one page per day, about the same pace that Tom wrote it. Aptly it ended right after 9/11 because it is a story of hope and peace and love.

Tomorrow, Sept 13, 2009, we'll start Skinny Legs and All.

Spoiler Alert- Daffy Yum- Jitterbug Perfume page 317

2009-08-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

Big happenings in today's page. Alobar is going to dematerialize. They all are apportioned their shares of the profit for K23 perfume. All is forgiven.

In one of the little coincidences which I've grown accustomed to with Robbins, i just yesterday learned the French word, blague. And today Tom mentions that all this happens on the rue Quelle Blague. The word means 'joke' and the phrase means 'fiddlesticks'. :-)

Your Opinion of B is for Beer?

2009-08-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

Aubrey Winkler, the Literature columnist for the San Diego Examiner newspaper has written a column about B is for Beer. She invites readers to give their opinion about Tom's latest book. I rated it wonderful. Her past columns are interesting as well.

Do Redheads Feel More Pain?

2009-08-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

The New York times reports that "A growing body of research shows that people with red hair need larger doses of anesthesia and often are resistant to local pain blockers like Novocaine." They're sensitive, but perhaps they'd not like to stay that way. "Researchers believe redheads are more sensitive to pain because of a mutation in a gene that affects hair color." I guess the doctors don't read Tom Robbins, else they'd know that red-heads are from alien seed.

Googled Tom

2009-07-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

Beer Notes

2009-06-23T22:04:00.001-07:00

Moontroll captured a recent Tom Robbins appearance on video

2009-05-31T21:12:00.000-07:00

Moontroll writes:

Tom Robbins live on stage at Boundary Bay Brewery in Bellingham:
http://vimeo.com/4738924

It is over 45 minutes long, so get yerself comfortable before firing this baby
up. Includes the interview I was lucky to conduct with Tom after his reading.
But it does not, at Tom's insistence, including the actual "B is for Beer"
reading -- he wants to keep that special to the live readings. Still, I think
y'all will appreciate this -- leave a comment if you do!

Tom Robbins Incognito at http://magcloud.com/browse/Issue/14846

Tom and Alexis in the Wind

2009-05-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

Mike shared a delightful story with the aftrlife mailing list:

A close friend of mine drives a bus for the community transit in the Skagit. His
route takes him by Tom's place. One particular windy afternoon, or as he puts
it, "Must have been blowin' 50 60 miles per hour. The trees were bending over
and the leaves swirled about everywhere but on the ground. There was Tom and his wife. Running around with rakes, laughing so loud I could hear them on the bus."
Just a little story I thought everyone would like."

Mike

If you want to be a part of the conversation just go over to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aftrlife/ and Join the Yahoo Group.

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 31, Daffy Yum

2009-05-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 31, May 5 – 11

Page 223-ish

"Reality is subjective, and there's an unenlightened tendency in this culture to regard something as 'important' only if 'tis sober and severe. Sure and still you're right about your Cheerful Dumb, only they're not so much happy as lobotomized. But your Gloomy Smart are just as ridiculous. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don't think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin' on himself and start payin' attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form o' self-indulgence. "

I read recently that popular opinion has it that Wiggs Dannyboy was fashioned after Terence McKenna. I had always assumed Dannyboy was based on Timothy Leary, after reading lines like..."left his native Dublin to teach at Harvard, where he experimented with mind-altering chemicals beyond the call of academic duty...." and "Since it was hardly in the best national interest to relieve citizens of their violence, greed, fear, or repression, the government acted to silence Dr. Dannyboy by arresting him on a phony marijuana charge and checking him into the steel hotel. Escaped, only to be nabbed two years later...and imprisoned again." I know it needn't be an either/or situation, but surely there is some Tim in with Terence.

Gem

JITTERBUG PERFUME, Week 30, Apr. 26 – May 4

2009-05-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

Page 208(ish)

"Did a man's wives all blend into a single entity after their deaths? Would he blend with Navin the Ropemaker if and when he died? Was it wife soup and husband soup on the Other Side? Or was it simply soup?"

Oooh, I hope it's not husband soup...the three I've had would make one bizarre concoction!"

Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play--more than piety, more than charity or vigilance--was what allowed human beings to transcend evil."

More fun for everyone!

"Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route."

Blessed Be the Individual!

Gem

Sand Grains Gallery

2009-04-18T16:33:00.000-07:00

Sand Grains Gallery: "Sand grains under the microscope microscopic sand photography art photo microscopy artwork"

William Blake had it right. There is infinity, at least an infinity of beauty, in grains of sand. They're as unique as snowflakes. Visit this site and be amazed.

The Blakes often read poetry to each naked in the garden. Explaining that they didn't bathe much, she offered the explanation that, "Mr. Blake don't dirt." If dirt is as beautiful under a microscope as sand is then perhaps he should have.

Dale

Week 21, Jitterbug Perfume, Daffy Yum

2009-03-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 21, Mar. 9 – Mar. 16

Page 160

"Our little couple, however, our Alobar and Kudra, remained intact and indigestible, like the hard octopus beaks that sicken the stomachs of whales, causing them to vomit the ambergris that bonds the bouquet in great perfumes. Like octopus beaks, our couple. Or maraschino cherries."

Hilarious sentences, alive with alliteration! I must plunk the radioactive red orbs into drinks several times a shift, and I would rather coat my fingers in the slippery slime of a bleu cheese stuffed olive than paint my fingers with the devilish dye of the red #4 variety! Anybody know if the report of those four maraschino cherries found in Lenin's colon is based on fact? TR wouldn't embellish, would he?

Erleichda,

Gem

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 22, Daffy Yum

2009-03-09T20:43:00.000-07:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 21, Mar. 1 – Mar. 8

Page 152

"But what if," asked Kudra, shooting Alobar a meaningful glance, "but what if we decided now to choose life?" "Then choose it," said Pan. Again, Kudra and Alobar exchanged glances. "But would not that anger the gods?" Kudra asked. "Ha ha ha!" The laughter burst out of Pan like the barking of some obscene dog. "Anger the gods? The gods, those that art still around, wouldst congratulate thee for finally catching on." "You mean...?" "I mean that gods do not limit men, men limit men." I felt compelled to type out those lines. I read in a biography that Hunter Thompson would type over entire books of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, to get the feel of typing good writing. It does feel wonderful. Gem

[Note I couldn’t find the exact page with this quote, so went by the Daffy Yum page/date of the email. MW]

***************************************************************

True-dat.... .."gods do not limit men, men limit men"

Michael McMahan

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 20, Daffy Yum

2009-02-24T08:11:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 20, Feb. 16 – Feb 22

Page 137

"It was encouraging that he would mention a contemporary female, for Pan had begun to live in his memories, an unhealthy symptom in anyone, suggesting as it does that life has peaked. Every daydream that involves the past sports in its hatband a ticket to the grave." Ouch, this hurts a bit. I'm not as old as Pan (having turned 53 years young last October), but old enough to find myself telling the 20-somethings at the restaurant where I work (I wouldn't call myself a genius waitress, but I am a waitress with a Master's degree!) stories from my younger, crazier days. TR's words are a good reminder to stay in the NOW and enjoy creating new stories! Gem

***************************************************************
If it's never too late to have a happy childhood, let's get started regenerating our 20-somethings.
Dale
_______________________________________________________________

Page 138

Renga ding dingThe mortals grow suspiciousYou can live foreverBut not in one place.Kudra and Alobar flee Constantinople. This sort of reminds me of Tom's idea for a tv show about Helen Keller as a detective. Tagline: She's blind, dumb and mute, but she can smell a rat from a mile away.Tom 1Google 0I'm pretty good with Google but I couldn't track down a reference to Basil II breaking cedar boxes over his head. Anybody else know where that anecdote comes from?Bits like Basil II are rabbit holes hidden in Tom's fiction. You can explore them into equally, shall we say, byzantine story tunnels. http://www.nationma ster.com/ encyclopedia/ Image:Basil- II.jpgDale
****************************************************************\

"They are always in good humor and health...They bathe together. They smile too much...They are often at the act of love..." so obviously they are "Agents of the Evil One"!Alobar and Kudra obviously need this new "depressant drug" (Sorry, don't know how to post a link, but copy and paste works!)http://www.theonion .com/content/ video/fda_ approves_ depressant_ drug_forGem
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Thanks for the hilarious link, Gem. And in reality which Onion often mirrors "A depressant drug reportedly taken by such dignitaries as the Princess of Wales, Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles and Donald Trump has been found to cause social upheaval in a colony of laboratory rats. Scientists investigating how the popular drug affects mood and behavior in humans found that it causes subordinate rats to rise up and challenge the authority of the dominant "top rat.""Sounds like some good old chemical-induced outlawism, Robbins style.
Dale
________________________________________________________________

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 18, Daffy Yum

2009-02-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 18, Feb. 2 – Feb 8

Page 120

......."the perfect taco" Metaphor? Yes...no.... both?

Weality
_______________________________________________________________

Page 123

.......would a whale mask be suitable to me.......?

"Actually, there are two kinds of people in this world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better" SLWW

Weality
________________________________________________________________

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 17, Daffy Yum

2009-02-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 17, Jan. 26 – Feb. 1

Page 114

This is the first sentence of my thoughts about page 114. This is the second sentence. This is the third sentence which tries to really express my ideas about page 114 but fails. Finally this sentence succeeds in expressing the thought that Priscilla takes a spill on her bicycle whilechecking out the Last Laugh Foundation where i assume Alobar will soon show and another connection is made with New Orleans and her parfumier Stepmom. This sentence sighs with relief. This is the next to last sentence. This is the last sentence. Nope. Now.

Dale
****************************************************************

Well said, Dale! I am excited to be pulling in to New Orleans...knowing that however many of us are reading JP at present, that many consciousnesses will be reveling in pan-sensory descriptions of that still recovering city, we'll be grooving with the denizens, all that focused, positive energy has got to help in some small way to revivifying New Orleans! May it be so!

Gem
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Page 115

I really liked the opening of this page, "When we accept small wonders we qualify ourselves to imagine great wonders."But I have to admit that I hate dialect in a novel. I especially find a white southern writer doing black dialect to be icky no matter how good the intentions. "Mouf" for "mouth" and "libber" for "liver" just sounds bad to me. Am I missing something?Creating studio apartments out of your own secretions sounds interesting though. I'd tell you how to do it but it's "TOP SECRETE".

Dale
****************************************************************
Ha! Dale, your secrete slays me!

I understand your distaste for ethnic dialect in general; however, it does go a long way in making a character come alive--regardless of ethnicity of either the writer or the character. When I read dialect spoken by rich white hipster techno speak geeks (regardless of the writer), a vivid picture comes to mind. Or worse--the dialect of corporate lawyers, whose inflated nonsense lingo is spoken to identify and separate themselves not by ethnicity, but by class. That said, when we read dialect spoken by a character in a novel, it helps them come alive. You can hear V'lu speak and the aural image of her is completely different than if she spoke without the dialect, e.g.: "I eat liver with you, made from goose livers, but I won't eat any slime." TR in no way allows her to be condescended or demeaned, and in fact, the reader identifies more with V'lu than Madame Duvalier. (At least I do--especially when it comes to eating slime. ) Iguess my point is, that I see written dialect as an identifier and expression of the character's personal and cultural style. It is a credit to the author who does not cringe or succumb to flatlining the language into one "correct" way of speaking. (I'm not saying one word about "shrooms," because I know that if a character said "shrooms" TR would tell it like it is. I just know it.)

Mary
****************************************************************

It emphasizes the two extremes of V'lu...and that she's laying it on real thick so her true intellect and sophistication is guarded by her cloak of the general public's underestimation of her...gives her plenty of wiggle room to fly under the radar...

Messy Kat
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You make some good points, Mary as usual. I personally find thick dialect to be distracting. A few words to suggest the dialect is sufficient for me. This particular dialect makes V'lu seem simple-minded to me, which may be Tom's purpose as messy kat suggests.(Is Tom putting us on, by having V'lu put us on?) Southerners are usually kinda sensitive to people "doing" Southern accents anyway. Anyway as hot as V'lu sounds from Tom's descriptions I wouldn't be attracted to her because of the way she talks. Oral non-sex I guess. Now I will "Shut my mouf." :-)

Dale
****************************************************************

Ah, that's interesting. I have totally forgotten the details of this novel. I keep expecting them to rush back into my brain at any moment but they don't. I expect the details to get back, messykat. It makes it like I'm reading it for the first time (now I know how Ronald Reagan felt on entering the bedroom with Nancy each evening). I'll watch for V'lu's secrete agent personality to emerge.

Dale
****************************************************************

Hey Dale....for me, the dialect draws a distinct picture, one I wouldn't necessarily have without dat moufpiece.....i mean, she could have had a bloody Br-ish accent...but no, our gal was Southern...and she musthave smelled good too, to pass the Bunny’s nose.Remember...."Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time."

Michael
________________________________________________________________

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 16, Daffy Yum

2009-01-26T20:58:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 16, Jan. 19– Jan. 25

Page 106

This page really expresses the "stone remains, water goes" line. Even water stays if it freezes or gets stagnant. It shows how desire trumps detachment as well. Alobar and Kudra become fierce invalids as they fight the blizzard to get to the Bandaloop and safety. Alobar's desire for life in general and Kudra's in particular inspires him to heroic action to save her.I can understand that. When desire gets ahold of me, its pain and pleasure are irresistible, much like a passionate beauty with very long fingernails.Alobar laughs as his ridiculous life passes before him. What kind of laugh would you laugh at your life? Mine would be rueful and amused I think. How about you?

Dale
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Mine would contain 2/3 what was I thinking?? and 1/3 yippee! finally found the right track, with a dusting of cinnamon on top.

Gem
****************************************************************
My laugh would probably be somewhat hysterical and, whilst not exactly bitter, there would certainly be tears.

Deena
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I think my laugh would be exactly like the laugh Jim Carrey gave as Andy Kaufman at the end of Man on the Moon. Kind of an "Aw, shit--the joke was on ME!" I haven't participated in Daffy Yum yet. I might try to catch up with you all.

pk (popartmonkey)
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It would vary from a snort of acknowledgment that something amusing had occurred to uproarious in reaction to the sheer genius of it all. If graphed in terms of volume over time, it would appear to be a sinc function convoluted with your average everyday transcandenent function.

BoB - whoohoo, math! (Bob Nesheim)
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:-) There must always be tears--an integral part of the endarkenment.

Dale
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LOL (my current laughter at life) BoB. Science in spite of it all.

Dale
_______________________________________________________________

Page 107

I think Tom sort of uses Kudra to fuss at himself. He quotes her interior monologue that Alobar is always prattling about the meaning of things--which is a pretty shorthand way of describing what Tom's novels do, but that I never find tiresome.The Bandaloop have flown the coop. The caves are bare, but Alo-Kud take it all with Taoist calm. Sweep floor. Make love.

Dale
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Page 108

So does anyone know what TV movie Tom is talking about at the beginning of the Seattle section? The Transcosmic Pigout?

I guess Tom Robbins has written so much and about so many things that synchronicity is inevitable. I'm always running into things that remind me of his novels in some way. I'm reading Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints, a book of bio-essays by Joan Acocella. The first artist is Lucia Joyce, the troubled daughter of the author of Finnegan’s Wake. Not only is Finnegan’s Wake a big deal in Fierce Invalids, there is a bonus little Robbinsesque vignette of Lucia, the slightly mad daughter, dancing silently in the background while Joyce worked on Finnegan’s. One biographer cast her as a co-writer of the book, saying that her dancing was his inspiration.

And, of course, the fabric of the ordinary world always crinkles in interesting ways. Weird graffiti has been much with me recently. On a sidewalk, I encountered a reminder of Magritte the painter who under an illustration of a smoking pipe wrote the words, (in French) "This is not a pipe." I ran across a word painted on the sidewalk that said, "Image".

Marijuana leaves are popular for engraving in wet cement around here. And on one wall someone had written, "I am a pussyboy." WTF, I asked myself. Does that mean he is like Switters and knows 100 words for vagina? Or is he like Larry Diamond who describes sexual organs with culinary names like "Pussy Fricassee"? Or is it a pre-op transgender who hasn't quite made up his/her mind? (Who knew that the efforts of Feminists to de-genderize the language would come in so handy for talking about third-sexers.) The world is strange once your brain gets Robbinsized. (Or Robbins sized.)

And that's not even mentioning the smells, odors, scents and bouquets.

Dale
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Who-boy...that’s some "bouncy" world over there, Dale if I had to guess at a title for that movie...it might be a re-make of "The Blob" by Monte Python.

"Perfume...the smell of creation"

Michael

2009-01-26T19:20:00.000-08:00

The AFTRLife (an acronym for alt.fan.tom-robbins) is a website -- consider it an hom(ep)age -- dedicated to Tom Robbins, the cosmic/comic American author. Tom's nine books embrace a Crazy Wisdom worldview and are written in a complex metaphorical style that is grounded in transcendent nitty-gritty reality. As Tom has pointed out; his novels have plot but don't depend on plot. All in all (is there any other way?) his novels are a real good read.

Come on in and play on the mood swings, do a dervish on the tilt-a-whirl and practice Zen acrobatics on the monkey bars. All suggestions for links or info to include are welcome, and, of course, credit will be given where credit is due. Enjoy!

Dale Kirby, editor. Mary Witter, assistant editor.[Credits & Props]

Snail mail to Tom Robbins, PO Box 338, LaConner, WA 98257

B Is for Beer came out April 21, 2009. It is described as ""hallucinogenic hymn to beer, children, and the cosmic mysteries that sustain us all." Details here. Here's a preview from when it was called Gracie Goes to Schooner School.

You are unique, because you are visitor number
You're nothing like visitor number 9992 or even visitor number 23. (Even if you were visitor 9992 or 23, if you know what I mean.)
You're just...well... special!

"Always remember, you're
unique. Just like everyone else. "--Unk.

Dharma YumThe Weblog of the Aftrlife

Week 15, Jitterbug Perfume, Daffy Yum

2009-01-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 15, Jan. 12– Jan. 18

Page 99

Curious reader seeks confirmation from whisker-growing types re: the following. "It is said that when a man is anticipating sexual activity, his whiskers grow at an accelerated rate."Querent will check own moustache in future for corresponding condition among females.- Carol

****************************************************************

Mary, that is so interesting, because the first Tom Robbins book I read was also given to me by a stranger. It was 1979, and I was working in New York City, commuting by bus to my home in New Jersey. One day, I was sitting on the bus on the way home, reading one of Castaneda's Don Juan books, when I heard a deep, soft voice beside me say "Do you believe in Don Juan?" The next morning, the attractive, bearded stranger handed me a copy of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (which I still have). On the inside cover, he had written "Here's a book that's a friend of mine --having enjoyed the few moments that now have brought forth pen and rhyme...Hoping that you'll enjoy this tale of a cowgirl and her thumbs and the prospects they entail...don' t wear sneakers, if you won't dance a polka... After that morning, my commuting companion was no longer a stranger, and neither was Tom Robbins. Back to Jitterbug Perfume, I was taken by the paragraph starting with "Kudra had awakened him from a long sleep." Ending with "If the earth needs night as well as day wouldn't it follow that the soul requires endarkenment to balance enlightenment? " What a fascinating observation! I agree that there are times we must root around in the muck if we want to enjoy a beautiful lotus.

Gemcaccetta
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Page 102

Yes, this 'kizz', as you call it is unknown in the west. A rather odd sensation, but one I would not object to repeating. I have an open mind."You need only open your mouth not your mind, she thought. But she said, "Then why do you spurn me?"This is one of several instances to follow where TR shows us in italics what the character is thinking, before telling us what the character actually says. This is so true and so funny...like in Woody Allen's Annie Hall, when he and Diane Keaton are on the balcony, having one conversation while subtitles show us what they're really thinking. Humans can be so silly.Gem
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Page 104

I loved hearing Kudra's internal dialogue too, Gem, especially the tone of it in reaction to this very macho man. It reminded me a little of Amanda's attitude toward Marx Marvelous-- loving but amused.As Gauguiin wrote at the end of his life, "I wish I had been born a pig. Only man can be ridiculous." I'm assuming he wasn't talking about male chauvinist pigs. On page 104, Robbins talks about the effect of the kizz on Alobar's "unpracticed Western lips". I remember a girl talked about a guy who wasn't a skilled kisser as "he dove at my face with his lips." But I think she taught him better as Kudra is doing for Alobar. Kizz me baby!Dale, silly human

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Page 105
Kudra is inspired by Alobar's stories. Alobar is inspired to pursue her by her vagina dialogues. Kinda sexist in a way, but realistic in a way that only fantasy can portray.I believe it was ARA and Jitterbug Perfume that cured me of any monastic desires. They did teach me a lot about the important difference between detachment and indifference.I liked Ken Keyes' (of Handbook of Higher Consciousness fame) idea that it helps if one reframes "needs" as "preferences" It helps a little with detachment and, I think, the skillful attainment of desires.
Dale
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Yes! "I always remember that I have everything I need to enjoy my here and now--unless I am letting my consciousness be dominated by demands and expectations based on the dead past or imagined future."-Ken Keyes. The 12 Pathways never go out of style! As Kudra says, "To eliminate the agitation and disappointment of desire, we need but awaken to the fact that we have everything we want and need right now." Great minds think alike!
Gem

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Good quotation juxtaposition, Gem! Ah, the 12 pathways. I once had them memorized and repeated them often like some long-assed mantra. Lot of wisdom in those, I think. Are you a Living Love student?There's a good page on the pathways at http://mindprod. com/livinglove/ methods/pathways .htmlKeyes also wrote a book called Enjoy Your Life in Spite of it All. I wonder if he and Robbins influenced each other.Dale
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Thanks for the link, Dale! I read Handbook to Higher Consciousness in the late 70's, and the 12 Pathways have been part of my life ever since. The Conscious Person's Guide to Relationships also continues to be invaluable. Although I never took any courses per se, I definitely adopted the Living Love way into my life. It certainly sounds like Robbins was influenced by Keyes work, doesn't it?
Gem
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Pssst...B is for Beer! Spread the word!

2009-01-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

From the very begiinning, Tom Robbins's books have been promoted by readers' word of mouth and passed from hand to hand, even as mainstream literary pundits and critics sniffed and snipped. We the readers changed all that and knew Tom Robbins is not only a creator of happenings--he IS a happening! Readers recognized treasure when they saw it and passed it on. I recieved my own first dog-eared copy of his first book, Another Roadside Attraction from a bearded and bandana'd stranger in Seattle's Blue Moon Tavern over 35 years ago. My life has never been the same, and I know I'm not alone. His books are published, read and loved around the globe in many languages.

This is an opportunity for readers to put into action our gratitude for the delicious delights and profound crazy wisdom Tom Robbins has given us over the years. Let's plaster every nook and cranny, blog to high heaven and spread the word as a gesture of homage to this most esteemed author and his latest romp. If you'd like to join in this grassroots joyride, contact Ecco publishing (who also published Charles Bukowski and Leonard Cohen—a rich tradition) at ecco@harpercollins.com for stickers, greeting cards and coasters to help spread the word, Tom Robbins style. Take pictures, too. We'll post your pictures of creative stickering (they're removable) on the aftrlife and on the flickr group All Things Tom Robbins. ~MW

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 14, Daffy Yum

2009-01-12T11:54:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 14, Jan. 5 – Jan. 11

Page 92

Bandaloop doctors are in the house, er, in the caves. Alobar tells Kudra of his first meeting with them and his trial by rudeness. Although they heard him without their ears, they did provide him with some roasting ears.

So I’m assuming Alobar is referring to Pan as the god he met, but who is the shaman he is talking about having met?

New words:

WantwitWant" wit`\, n. One destitute of wit or sense; a blockhead; a fool.

Jackanapes: an impertinent, presumptuous person, esp. a young man; whippersnapper.

No wisdom for these folks.

Dale
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Pssst..we met the shaman of Alfreic 'round pg. 40....he hosted Alobar’s flight from becoming the King of the Bean with some perspective-altering mushroom tea and some magic:)

Michael
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Thanks Michael. How soon I forget!

I've always wanted to be King of the Beanies w/propeller.

Dale
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Greetings, one and all! After many years living a life sans digital technology, I have recently surrendered, and jumped into this crazy new world like a bird who has found a lovely birdbath. Splash!! So tickled to have found this group. My 20-year-old paperback copy of Jitterbug Perfume is looking mighty tattered...I have read everything Robbins has published, and JP perfume more times than any of them. (Fierce Invalids comes in second.)

Anyhoo, I'd love to join the Daffy Yum, although my paging is ahead of the groups. But I'm in the general area. Something fun for me to find was pink parentheses around these lines, made by a 20-year-younger me...

"If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire."

The older me reads that and thinks, hmm, the real suffering comes from being taken out of the moment, having the attention drawn away from being mindful of what is, now. Can one desire wisely without thinking of the future? I have all I desire in this moment--and when the tickle comes for that late night snack, presto! it will appear!

gemcaccetta
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Jitterbug Perfume, Week 13, Daffy Yum

2009-01-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

Page 85

These pages are synchronicity- izing nicely with my other reading, The Soul's Code by James Hillman. Kudra's yearning to transcend (read escape) her societally ordained fate (a pretty shitty one in most religious societies) leads to one of Tom's greatest quotes:

"You may protest that it is too much to ask of an uneducated fifteen-year- old girl that she defy her family, her society, her weighty cultural and religious heritage in order to pursue a dream she doesn't really understand. Of course, it is asking too much. The price of self-destiny is never cheap and in certain situations, it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable which must be thought." Robbins

And she does gradually develop her escape routes. This is why when multi-culturalism accommodates too much to repressive religious and cultural practices it angers me, because the very idea of freedom is an escape route for many repressed women and to dangle Western values in front of young people and then tell them they have to obey their religion is a cruel thing. It's like "Welcome to the west, you still have to get your clit scraped off with a rusty tool, you still have to be stoned to death for getting raped, your father and brothers can still murder you for not marrying whom they say. But enjoy freedom!" I really hate repressive religions and societies and their enablers.

Ranting aside, Kudra is following her nose to her destiny. And god love the Kama Sutra.

Some relevant quotes from the Preface of The Soul's Code:

"In the final analysis we count for something only because of the essential we embody and if we do not embody that, life is wasted," Carl Jung

"One always learns one's mystery at the price of one's innocence." Robertson Davies

"There is neither beginning or ending to the imagination, but it delights in its own seasons reversing the usual order at will." William Carlos Williams

"Adolescents sense a secret, unique greatness in themselves that seeks expression. They gesture toward the heart when trying to express any of this, a significant clue to the whole affair." Joseph Chilton Pearce

Dale
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Page 91

Reluctantly, he dropped the satin coconut." What an evocative term. It gives me new appreciation for Hawaiian hula girls and the meat inside their rough coconuts. "So round, so firm, so fully packed," oh wait that's a cigarette commercial.

Dale
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Page 93

Booties. Bootes. It seems to be a theme today. First, we find Alobar's fumbling attempt at the seduction of Kudra on page 93 of Jitterbug Perfume. Booty's on his mind, Kudra's not so sure, though things are heating up and... sparks ignite.

Maybe...maybe tonight?

The stars are aligned, and celestial Bootes are poised for action. Tonight the Quadranids meteor shower pays a visit to constellation Bootes.

Typically, 40 or so bright, blue and fast (25.5 miles per second!) meteors will radiate from the constellation Bootes, some blazing more than halfway across the sky. A small percentage of them leave persistent dust trains. This shower usually has a very sharp peak, usually lasting only about an hour. ( http://www.theskyscrapers.org/meteors/ )

Here's where to look from the northern hemisphere (for those down under, check your local skymaps):

Locate the Big Dipper and follow the handle to Bootes. The Big Dipper is always visible if you live in the northern latitudes. It is to the north and looks like a giant ladle, with a handle and a bowl. Follow the handle in an arcing curve until you come to the first bright star. This is the key component of Bootes, Arcturus. [Latin for Alobar?]

Gaze at Arcturus. This is the fourth brightest star of the night sky and is just 36 light years away from Earth. Arcturus means “bear watcher,” which is a reference to Ursa Major and Minor. There is no star visible from Earth north of the celestial equator that is brighter. Twenty-five times larger in size than our own sun, Arcturus is located at what would be the waist of Bootes.

Look up from Arcturus and see the shape of a kite. If Bootes were being named today, it would surely be called “the kite.” A large diamond-shaped assembly of stars forms the upper torso and head of Bootes and is easily identified. Below Arcturus are the legs of Bootes: much dimmer stars that make the herdsman appear bowlegged.

Watch for the meteor shower in Bootes that occurs each year. The Quadranids seem to be coming out of the upper part of Bootes every December into January. This meteor shower is always worth a look as there can be dozens of meteors each hour. Bootes will be visible in winter, just not in the same spot you saw it in the spring. In the early morning hours, you will be able to find it using the Big Dipper, and then watch for the meteors. The best time for you to observe this meteor shower is during the nights of January 3rd and 4th, as these dates always have had the peak meteors per hour. http://www.answerbag.com/articles/How-to-Find-and-Identify-the-Constellation-Bootes/ae04781f-2aa6-086d-ad0c-6466b2dff60d

If you see the Quadranids tonight, remember to tip your hat to our hero, Alobar. That man sure knows how to impress a girl.

Love and celestial blessings of the universe~

Mary
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Jitterbug Perfume, Week 12

2008-12-30T16:08:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 12, Dec. 22 – Dec. 28

Page 83

“It was then that she realized that it was the odor of the incense that had intrigued her all along, only now the smells filled in the fantasies that heretofore had been mere outlines, smeary contours scrawled in ghost chalk. “ Oh, the musky-dusky delight, the sensuous evocations of the olfactory wafts emanating from Kudra’s incense. Sticks of sandalwood send their smoky scent curling across the page. Can you smell it? This page sends a delicious jolt of literary mind meld. I’m in the midst of an Anaïs Nin saturation fest.—making way through the seven published volumes of her diaries, “Henry and June”—the movie and the book (her account of years shared with Henry Miller and his wife June), and “A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953.” Of all the astonishing women who have graced TR’s writings, Kudra and Anaïs are surly kindred spirits, their immortal souls rising and falling, frolicking, gamboling, laughing together as bubbles in that great primordial soup where everyone goes, be they born of imagination or mortal woman or sprouted from seed. Here, on page 83, Kudra, like Anaïs, discovers the life juice, the essence of Experience. Anaïs’s books carry the scent of sandalwood incense, invoking the spirit of Kudra, and here’s a golden drop of purest santalum album for beautiful Kudra on page 83.

Mary
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Great quote, Mary. I have to admit that as much as I love this novel, my sensory preferences are for the natural, not the concocted. I don't really like anything but the mildest and faintest of perfumes. Incense gives me a headache. :-)Hey Mary, I heard a rumor that Tom and Anais got it on in '72. Pass it on! :-)

Dale
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"Wow! Jesus! No wonder there are two dots over the i!" --Tom Robbins, Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Mary
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Ah, Dale...it's understandable that you would agree with Bonanza Jellybean's own preference--eau du natural. Chemical additives and concoctions comprising the vast majority of commercial scents--incense and perfumes--are enough to curl anyone's nose hairs. But, my dear, have you had occasion to sniff a sandalwood bead or nugget, or pure sandalwood oil--true sandalwood, not the imposters? Rich, powdery, earthy wood scent, never flowery or fruity? The tree must be at least 80 years old to yield it's treasure. (Sadly, the trees are now endangered with over exploitation; true sandalwood is rare--and expensive--these days.) There is an old occult shop here, tucked away deep inside the shadowy halls of the Pike Place Market. Subtle and discrete, it would be easy for a casual visitor to pass it by unnoticed, yet it is a personal touchstone for me, a thread running through many years. The tiny shop is dim inside and filled with all manner of exotic ancient mystery and treasure, from tiny brass opium weights, tools, stones, herbs and materials to attract and guide psychic powers, and primitive containers to grind and mix the potions, to hundreds (maybe thousands) of vials of pure essential oils and incense stacked on old wooden racks, darkened by the years and polished to a deep patina by the magic they hold. No doubt a discreet patron of the arts could obtain eye of newt and lizard's blood, too. Faint refrains of a busking wild Gypsy violin echo through the labyrinth of narrow hallways through the door of the tiny shop, mingling with theexotic, earthy scents and mystery. I visited there yesterday, consulting with the (verrrrry kindly, master of the tantric arts) proprietor, explaining that purity, or near purity, is essential for this literary intent--to submerge fully into the world of Kudra and Alobar, Anais and Henry...to fill all senses to the brim and dive in. He did not disappoint. Even as I write, tendrils of sandalwood waft across the page. This, then, is the literary cocktail I'll be tossing back come New Years Eve--six parts Tom Robbins, four parts Anais Nin, and just a splash of absinthe--for auld lang syne.

Bottoms up!

Mary
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Mary -I've lived in Seattle 2 1/2 years and frequent Pike's Market... what is thisstore that I must have missed there?

Sharon
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Could it be that Mary is describing Tensing Momo? It isn't hard to find, but it's a treasure of a shop. Many wonderful, magical things have I purchased there, and many more will be mine in the future. The casual tourist will wander in and out in the space of minutes, but the shop begs to be explored. Take your time, look behind and below and around corners. It's worth your time, in my humble opinion. I'd also recommend the alternative book store (see if you can find the poster that says FUCK AUTHORITY - it's there but not easy to find), Cafe Paloma, and Three Sisters Bakery. Pike Place sometimes is criticized for being a tourist trap, but if you visit it early in the morning or late in the afternoon on a rainy day, you'll find that the magic is still definitely there. TR Content: The old market, worn half away by dampness and fingerprints, sweat drops and shoe heels, pigeon claws and vegetable crates, soiled by butcher seepage, sequined with salmon scales, smelling of roses, raw prawns, and urine, blessedly freed for the winter from the demanding entertain-me-for-nothing! gawkings of out-of-town tourists, the market bustled now with fishmongers and Vietnamese farmers, florists and runaways, flunkies and junkies, coffee brewers and balloon benders, office workers and shopgirls and winos of all races; with pensioners, predators, panhandlers, and prostitutes, and (to complete the p's) political polemists, punks potters, puppeteers, poets, and policemen; with musicians, jugglers, fire-eaters (dry days only), tyro magicians, and lingering loafers such as he (Switters) seemed to be. Pike Place is utterly captured by Tom's lovely prose.

Ever yours,
The Troll
Jeff in Seattle
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Oh, my dear. You've captured the Market--and Tom's words beautifully. In the late 60s and early 70s, it was under the godawful developers' gun, the greedy gleam in their eyes saw only multi-million-dollar property. We organized and fought, raised money through selling name tiles that now cover the floor. (For an account of the fight, see historylink.com and enter Pike Place Market in the search box.) No mere tourist trap, the Market belongs to The People; we are willing to share with seekers who care to find. It is the heart and soul of Seattle. Footsteps of travellers and mystics, musicians and dancers, sea captains, fishermen, artists and farmers, many long gone, make up it's patina'd soul. Tom and Darrell Bob Houston frequented the hallowed halls and deliciously seedy bars nearby. If you listen very carefully, you can hear the whispers of adventurers both tragic and joyful echoing through the halls. Mystery abounds there. It is a mystery that inspires. Here is an excerpt, written by an enlightened soul, illuminating what might have been (source discretely omitted to protect the innocent):

...suddenly a paper airplane might descend through the air for me to catch. Would a message be scrawled upon it? Or would there be enigmatic symbols painted provocatively on the wings with glitter nail polish? How would I decipher them? Perhaps I'd dash into the fish stalls and find an ancient Turkish grandmother who, although she'd understand perfectly what was inscribed, would refuse to translate... a look of shock (and perhaps secret glee) on her wizened face...

Now, that's magic.

Mary
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Jitterbug Perfume, Week 11, Daffy Yum

2008-12-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 11, Dec. 15 – Dec. 21

Page 72

Wahoo! Kudra has arrived. Our international woman of mystery shows up at the lamasery dressed as a boy. Best quote: "At night in the dark we become our shadows." I think we are always becoming our shadow selves in whatever degree we illuminate our darknesses.I was walking yesterday and came upon a purple bulb with a green stalk lying in the middle of the rain-splattered sidewalk. It looked like a beet. Probably was a flower bulb. But I decided it was a beet and felt blessed by a little synchronicity. If it weren't for self-delusion, lusion would elude me entirely.

Dale
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“If it weren't for self-delusion, lusion would elude me entirely."Good one, Dale!T.R. content; "When a person accepts a broader definition of reality, a broader net is cast upon the waters of fortune." SLAA

Michael
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Best Quote:If it weren't for self-delusion, lusion would elude me entirely.Thanks Dale, I love this!

Gabrielle
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Many, many years ago a stranger approached me on a beach on a Greek Island. We were both naked. Apropos of nothing, he asked me if I'd ever read Jitterbug Perfume. Surprised, I told him that I had and I loved it. We chatted a little about it, then he said that he had approached me because I really reminded him of Kudra.I have never ever been so flattered in my entire life, before or since.Of course, these days, the comparison is way less obvious, being a mere ageing mortal and not a drop of Kudra's perfume in sight....(Thanks for the tips though Julie - will give them both a smell...or start distilling!)

Deena
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Page 74—The Blank Page

Hey, Gabrielle thanks. (And thanks to Michael too.)I have to apologize for skipping to the Kudra arrival page. There were blank pages and i got the numbering wrong. That will happen in two more days i guess. Saw a good Jung quote, "Until we make our unconscious conscious it will direct our lives and we will call it fate."

Dale
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So Robbins has a blank page at 74. I wonder what he meant by that? :-)Ode to the Blank PageChorusThe End

Dale
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Maybe the empties are for our interactive entertainment. Intermission. A place where we can get out our crayons and fill in the blanks before the show resumes.

Mary
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Hey Mary and Gabrielle. Blank minds think alike. Which is to say--very creatively. While I was just sitting there non-thinking it was a Zen moment youse (proper plural of you) came up with wonderful possibilities. I also suspect that those blank pages might be when Robbins decided to skip out and play volleyball. : -)

Dale
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On consideration of the blank page:An item of all possibility- --the blank page could become:*a pause to culminate the moment after the last read word [Will you linger over the blank page, letting its infinite possibilities wash over you or, like a greedy piglet searching for something to suck, whisk pat the blank page hungering for more words to read?]*jottings from someone that turn into a poem or novel in the future*a canvas for the artist's interpretation of what was just read
*a blotter to catch a tearso many possibilities a blank pageor maybe that's all it isjust a blank page

Gabrielle
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What a beautiful and inspiring post, Gabrielle. Can you imagine happening upon a Robbins book left by a stranger in some unexpected place...you begin to read, believing as you do in "meant to be," searching for the cryptic message, the word, then discovering a sketch, a drawing or a poem written on a blank page, seemingly just for you? What a gift that would be. Not merely a random act of kindness, but of mystery and delight as well.

Mary
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I haven't made use of the blank pages within the book, but I have a (mostly frowned-upon) tendency to use the blank end pages for notes: writing down the words I encounter and need to look up (fewer of those as I get older), notable quotes from the author (and upon which page they could be Found again when needed), little doodles and sketches. Only if the book is mine, though- don't worry! Actually, I haven't done that in a very long time. I miss it.

Chrome Toaster
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Page 76

Ok so NOW, Kudra has arrived. (Hey she looks like Deena!)Alobar suffers what will become famous on Seinfeld as "shrinkage".Was Alobar's attempt to get Kudra to eat a beet, a variation on the apple-eating incident in Christian mythology? Or was it a pomegranate?If we were to cast Alobar, Kudra, Priscilla, V'Lu, Marcel or Pan in a Shakespeare play what parts would they play. I wonder what Alobar was doing all that time between when he met Pan and then started working in a llamasery? Were those his missing years?If you made a jukebox out of beets would it be a mangel-wurlizter? I have totally forgotten the plot of this book. I’m excited to be rereading it.
Dale
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Page 77

Burn baby burn--even if you don't want to.I find it significant that the most violent scene I've read by Tom Robbins is a description of a religious ceremony (and we read it on a Sunday, a Sunday, a Sunday, and that makes it the best) in which a woman is burned to death on her husband's funeral pyre. I guess a lot of women immolate themselves metaphorically in funereal marriages, or at least look at their husbands and do a slow burn. But actual murder in the name of religion still lives with us today. Honor killings and maimings plague many of the worlds' women. Some women haven't come a long way baby at all--and mostly thanks to men and the religions they keep.And that's the Sunday sermon.As Fark says, "Can't we all just hit a bong?"

Dale
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Amen and thank you, sir. You are an enlightened one. For added ambiance to page 77, may I suggest Leonard Cohen's "Joan of Arc"? "It was deep into his fiery heartHe took the dust of Joan of Arc,And then she clearly understoodIf he was fire, oh then she must be wood.I saw her wince, I saw her cry,I saw the glory in her eye.Myself I long for love and light,But must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?" Here's a YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94f2exI6yF4 Happy Solstice, one and all--the end of the long dark, both metaphorical and actual.

Mary
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Well spoken Dale...I just finished reading, "God is Not Great", a very disturbing book.....but, should be read by everyone. Thanks for the Sunday sermon....JimYou're nobody until somebody bites you........"The glass that is half empty coexists with the glass that is half full."

Lordchesterfield [James Reed]
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At risk of adding fuel to the pyre...A fabulous book I once read about various aspects of feminine Indian culture, both past and present, is called, "May You Be the Mother of One Hundred Sons". One of the chapters describes in detail the practice as well as the religious and economic justifications behindHindu sati ritual -- the Hindu custom of burning a man's living wife on the funeral pyre along with him following his death. A horrific custom -- particularly to us Westerners, I know, (especially when one learns how sati ritual has been justified down through the ages in Hindu cultures for religious and economicreasons). But, this amazing book also goes on to describe the astonishing evolution of women in Indian society.Isn't it fascinating to consider how so many cultures that have been so horrifically repressive to women have also spawned some of the strongest feminist leaders (e.g., Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, etc.) the world has known? Part of this phenomenon can, no doubt, be attributed to strong cultural traditions/tendencies for these cultures to pass down leadership to familial heirs -- particularly when martyrdom has squelched the fathers, husbands, and brothers of the female leaders who have subsequently come to power afterwords. But, I also believe that, in general, women (and men for that matter) who are strong and brave enough to rise above horrific repression cannot be stopped from greatness. It's like trying to stop a rocket ship in mid orbit once the fuel has been lit.Kinda like those of us women who have climbed, fallen, crawled, fallen again, crawled again, fallen again, and then climbed again on our way out of abusive relationships. Those of us women who have then gone on to not only liberate ourselves but also to help other repressed womenfind their way out of similar chains. Once enchained, some of those chains may never leave us, but neither does our desire or ability to break them and continue soaring. Some of us have even been lucky enough and strong enough and wise enough to trust without fear again. To create a healthier, freer love that enriches both parties. To learn how to create loving partnerships with men who will work with us to create a lasting harmony that is free from repression. These days, I prefer to hum, "C'mon baby light my fire and c'mon baby let me light yours" in my current (and hopefully last) partnership with a man. I am extremely lucky to have found a partner who shares this kind of exchange with me (and in so many important ways). But, it took heating up my internal fire to a high enough and steady enough level to hang on to my connection to myself so that I won't let a man (or my own fears and apprehensions) enchain me again. So that I can honor myself, him, and our relationship enough to not allow repression to enter into the equation. And to be wise and giving enough and respectful enough of his needs and strengths and weaknesses to keep myself from enchaining him as well. It also took finding a man who iswise enough, giving enough, respectful enough, experienced enough, kind enough, and who hates repression and conflict with me enough because of his love and respect for me to make strong efforts at working with me to maintain and build a lasting and deep and hilariousharmony between us. Yes, it took a lot of luck to get here. But it also took a lot of trial and tribulation to get here too. (Don't even get me started about my frightful ups and downs with all those online datingexperiences, all those self-help books and shrinks, self-imposed loneliness, and flat-out disappointments!) But, one thing I'm sure of: All this was necessary for me, at least, to get here. Sometimes, it seems, that others are just lucky and don't have to go through all of the trial, tribulation, and difficulty to find relational harmony that I did. Why this us so, I can't tell you. Karma? Maybe. Maybe in another incarnation I was Hindu and escaped sati by inviting my identical twin sister to my house on the day my husband died, drugging her, and jumping out the window and fleeing toher house just as my husband's brothers came knocking at my door to drag me away to the funeral pyre. Maybe the unjust difficulties I endured in my past marriage, and the fact that I had to leave my lovely home and children with them hating me for a while until they grew up enough to love me again were the price I had to pay for a past unjust and unthinkable sin in another lifetime. Sometimes I think that all the pain I went through must have been justified by such a crime. What else could possibly make sense?Tom Robbins has helped me a lot in my journeys and still does. His wisdom and humor about the give and take of healthy personal relationships. His wisdom and humor about rising above misfortune and handicap. His wisdom and humor about rising above repression. His wisdom and humor about the importance of becoming happy and wise by experiencing and becoming comfortable with the "romance of solitude". His wisdom and humor about finding joy in spite of everything. His wisdom and humor about the importance (and necessity) of leaving loveless, repressive relationships behind and believing that you deserve better and that you will find it. His wisdom and humor about the paralyzing effects and silliness and futility of feeling sorry foroneself. His wisdom and humor about taking RISKS in the face of CHANGE. His books, I believe, can change the course of one's life, but I also believe his books they can change a person's karma as well. I believe they have given me sound, helpful, and loving guidance in changing mine. Plus, more than a little crazy wisdom to boot.

May your karma be merry and bright,
Journey
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Shorter Journey: Empowerment in spite of everything? :-)More empower to you.I guess enlightenment requires the right match or perhaps a spark.

Dale
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I'm sorry, Journey, I didn't realize how ambiguous my remark "Shorter Journey;" was. The "shorter" part is one of those internetisms that means a summary is to follow. And then mixed with Journey/journey it indeed looked like I was suggesting a "shorter journey", but I was just summarizing what you wrote as "Empowerment in spite of everything" not suggesting that a shorter journey was available. Ah, words, what're you gonna do with 'em!

Dale
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Journey, thank you for sharing your very insightful thoughts and your experiences with us, the kind of things you have shares and the enlightenment resulting from it will resonate with many I am sure. I also think you are so right that it's about finding balance, that when you get out of one relationship that was overbalanced on the oppression with one partner, that you then don't do that in turn to someone else who has a very different personality.I believe we are here to learn and be shaped by our experiences, which is what karma is all about, and the way we do that is through our relationships with other people. What you've been through and the choice you had to make has surely earned you bucket loads of karma points.TR has wisdom that percolates throughout all of those experiences, he touches on those truths, his insights are so valuable on so many things and I think that's why so many of us just have such a deep affinity for his writing and such a deep admiration for him.Like the love is the ultimate outlaw quote - I once tried to share that with my ex-husband. He absolutely hated it. To him, it expressed much of what was wrong with our relationship. It did to me too, but obviously from the other perspective.I am stating the obvious here but I think TR's biggest messages are that we are here to go through stuff, and so go through stuff we will - but it's how we deal with it that makes all the difference - ARA's philosophy of dancing in the rain or allowing yourself and your light to be doused by it. So to look for the joy in everything.

Julie xox
****************************************************************

No shorter journey for me I'm afraid, Dale. I'm very convinced that ashorter journey just wasn't in the cards for me for a lot of reasonstoo numerous and private for me to mention. I'm just so very thankfulthe stormy parts didn't go on any longer for me than they did!My formula for keeping the light burning?:The right match, a spark, a determination and wizened skills neededkeep the light alive in spite of stormy weather, and an absence ofill-fated hurricanes to be sure. TR content: "Lighten up!" of course.

Journey
****************************************************************
No worries or apologies needed, Dale. What a sweet man you are in somany ways! I was not upset by your comment at all. Just felt a need toclarify with a bit more precision to enhance understanding. Plus yourwords challenged me to add a few insights of my own to youralready-astute punster-vations. But, I must admit that youroften-astonishing punster-isms often leave me searching for and thengrinning about your double meanings. You sometimes remind me of myfather who had such a hilarious, wise, and wonderful gift fordouble-speech. I can relate to your frustrations about the ambiguity of words. As along-time technical communicator who strives to "write short" in mywork with every word I craft, I am so often accused of using "too muchdetail" in my writing. So, I often find myself damned if I use toomuch detail and damned if I don't. (Like how do you leave out detailsfor people controlling the electronics for a nuclear submarine while"keeping things short"?) We are so pushed toward brevity in ourfast-paced, e-mail-information- bombarded world, aren't we? It's ashame in many ways I think. Just consider the glorious detail andgorgeous script that people used to compose with pen and quill whensending letters to each other in days gone by. And then they'd tiethem to the leg of a carrier pigeon and send them on their way. Allthat miraculousness and romanticism seems next to lost with respect toletter writing today.How much we learn from each other (let alone TR) on this amazing listof yours, sir! For example, take TR's quote near the bottom of Pg. 264:"The moon is the original mirror. The first to refuse to distort CHOICE."How many knights have been moved by the moon's reflection to travellong distances to reunite with their ladies?How many generals have been moved by the moon's reflection to stop wars?How many kings and queens have been moved by the moon's reflection tohelp the poor?I wonder.

Journey
****************************************************************

Bon Journey, I'm glad we are clear (as the moon) about the length of journeys. I never like to miss understanding. But you always give good answer, even if the question is questionable. You always show up with belles lettres on. I agree with you that this is a fine wine of a list.

Dale, who is sweet in some ways, but not always. :-)
****************************************************************
Well, Dale, you can bet that it wouldn't have gotten done in sevendays if TR had had anything to do with it. He'd be incessantlysketching and re-sketching things out on those little, lined kiddiepads of paper of his, agonizing over every detail of every molecule ofeverything -- trying to get it all absolutely perfect. We'd STILL bewaiting for Africa, Greenland, and Ohio to be designed (well, maybenot Ohio). Not to mention good wines, Belgian chocolates, and orgasms.
No, Dale, I get too impatient just waiting for TR to come out with newbooks. I can't even BEGIN to imagine waiting for him to design theuniverse.

As my dear, ol' Tennessee-born grandpa used to say, "I'd be older thanthe back of God's head by the time that happened!"

Journey

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 10, Daffy Yum

2008-12-15T10:49:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 10, Dec. 7 – Dec. 14

Page 63

Dale wrote:

I love when Tom turns a phrase. On this page, "poorer of some hopes, but freer of some illusions" gave me a shiver. When he's "on". He can make a phrase tell you your own life story. Guess that's why I’m a fan. What did y'all like about this page?

Dale

****************************************************************

Oh...this is great. Two birds (one in the hand, one in the bush) with one stone. First, the band--the Translucent Cherub Sperms or possibly the Midnight Blue Syrups. (P. 63, JP).

Dale, you ask what we like about page 63. The entire first full paragraph sets my whiskers to vibrating. TR describes the scentsation (heh) when Madam Devalier maneuvers "her midget submarine of a nose along dockside of the concentration crock...washing her in star waters...." TR's descriptive powers fly high and at full throttle in this paragraph.

Also, two catlings have come to live with me in the past week. (I know...cats. ) Upon entering for the first time, the sleek, black panther went directly to my desk and laid down on my JP reading copy, thereby earning the name Kudra. (Obviously a cat with exquisite literary taste.) She has not taken heed of any other tome, but apparently wanted to mark JP as her own--I came home today to find that half the pages have tiny pinpricks in the upper right hand corner from her tiny needle fangs. Thankfully, she did not actually tear pages or render words unreadable. All of this is to ask any linguistic cat people among you (I'm not really one yet) if you've notice that Vlu's speech sounds eerily like Early American lol- cat speak ( e.g.: "Ah not talking 'bout no sleep...Ah be talking 'bout vegables...vegables flying in through dee winda and landing on mah bed."). Was TR the forefather of lol-cat speak? =^..^=

****************************************************************
Christa Rose wrote:

"Bingo Pajama smell nice"

****************************************************************
Denise wrote:

The description of Papa's fat method has always stuck with me. I hadn't ever considered that the fragrance had to be extracted from its organic source, or how one could go about doing that.

That and the midget submarine of a nose...

Denise

****************************************************************
Dale wrote:

I like to get everyone's reactions to the reading. Sometimes things are pointed out to me that I didn't notice or isolate in their beauty. like this smell nice quote or even the midnight blue syrups paragraph really. Then i look back and slap myself upside the head for obtuseness. :-)
thanks y'all
Dale

________________________________________________________________

Page 64

Dale wrote:

After reading Tom talking about "the lewd breath of Louisiana,” I saw this report:
A new report called America’s Health Rankings considered factors such as binge drinking, immunization rates, pollution, and disease to determine the healthiest and unhealthiest states in America. The winners: Vermont, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Utah. The bottom five included Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, and —in dead last—Louisiana.

Dale

****************************************************************

Page 65

Dale wrote:

Does anyone remember who was leaving the beets in Paris, Seattle and New Orleans?

Dale

****************************************************************
Jeanne wrote:

I thought it was Pan

Jeanne

****************************************************************

Chrome Toaster wrote:

Pretty sure you're right, Jeanne, because there was a cloying aroma in the hallway when Priscilla found her beet. By that time, though, wasn't Pan pretty much invisible. (Was this a trick question?)

****************************************************************

Deena wrote:

I thought it was Bingo Pajama...? The 'cloying aroma' being his jasmine?

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 8, Daffy Yum

2008-11-30T20:25:00.000-08:00

Week 8, Nov. 23–29

Page 50

Deena wrote:

Ahh, I love Pan's entrance (pun totally intentional) . Ok, if it were a film, who in the big round world would play Pan?

****************************************************************
Dale wrote:

I gotta go with Robert Downey Jr as Pan. What do you think of Kiefer Sutherland as the troubled Alobar?

Dale

****************************************************************
Michael wrote:

hey Deena...we've bounced this around in the past.....and i'll maintain...Jack Nicholson as Pan
Long Live de Moon!!!

Michael

****************************************************************
Mary wrote:

How could we not go with Johnny Depp? His impish good looks, playful panache, nimble hooves...feet... and lusty satyr style just cries out--Pan! Can you see him in the deepest, most serene forest, lounging against a boulder covered by a thick carpet of moss near a tumbling stream where water nymphs play, fern fronds brushing his withers in time to the haunting notes that wafting from his pipes?

****************************************************************
Julie H wrote:

I also thought of Robert Downey Junior - still think I'd give the manic edge to either Robin or Jack though.

Johnny Depp could probably do something Pandemically Cool too, who knows what kind of persona he would come up with?

Otherwise someone a little less known.

I guess Kiefer could do Alobar if you made him dark, but to me Alobar is very dark and brooding. He needs to look Turkish or Greek...

Julie

****************************************************************
Julie H wrote:

I can't really think of any young contenders for Pan - but I guess he is ancient so it's okay, although he can't look too old. But I reckon either of these guys could Jitterbug it:

Jack Nicholson
Robin Williams

Those are my nominations so far.

Julie

****************************************************************
Gabrielle Elliot wrote:

Omar Sharif...Clint Eastwood...Sean Connery...depends on the accent you're casting, since Pan's a Greek, Omar's best placed since he speaks the proper lingo.

****************************************************************
Bob Nesheim wrote:

I nominate Sean Connery to play the role of Alobar. For his younger
days use Daniel Craig.

BoB

smoked up a bag of LSD tranquilizer.

****************************************************************
James Keenan wrote:

Connery was the one I thought of the first time read the book years ago.

****************************************************************
Audrey Farber wrote:

Ahh, I love Pan's entrance (pun totally intentional) . Ok, if it were a film, who in the big round world would play Pan?

How’s about Samuel L. Jackson?

****************************************************************
Chrome Toaster wrote:

For some reason I've always pictured Pan looking like a young Mickey Rourke.. Or Benicio Del Toro. Johnny Depp is almost too pretty. (Although he "uglies up" really nicely- like Captain Jack)

Jack Nicholsen would only work (for me) if it was Jack Nicholsen circa One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

****************************************************************

Hearing and Looking

2008-11-15T13:23:00.000-08:00

What I'm listening to: The Santa Ana winds are blasting and I've cracked my window just enough for the wind to play it like Satchmo on a strange trumpet. The variety of sounds is fascinating from howling to whistling to shaking the windows.

Here's some self-referential art I found:

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 5

2008-11-09T23:25:00.000-08:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 5

Note: There were no Daffy Yum comments this week, presumably due to great joy and celebrations throughout the land for the election of Barak Obama as our President. A collective sigh of relief coupled with immense hope blankets the world. ~MW

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 4, Daffy Yum

2008-11-02T15:26:00.000-08:00

"Beets, resembling the hearts of gnomes, were piled in the storage cellars."

JITTERBUG PERFUME
Week 4

Page 24

Michael wrote:

"....but I am seized with the desire to be something more. Something whose echo can drown out the rattle of death.
......This man before you is part of the community, the race, and the species, yet is somehow separate from them....
..I cannot tolerate the passive obliteration of all that I am to myself...... These limbs, this trunk, the heart that drums, they urge me, against all my training, to prevail over submission to the
collective destiny"
i apologize i'm a day late(pg.24). ...but this just stirs something... .DEEEEEEEEEEEP. Can you feel it?

Michael

***********************************************************************
Fwhague wrote:

Not to worry, Michael.

One thing we have finally discerned is that information cannot disappear from our universe. After many years, even Hawking admitted he was wrong in thinking that it could. So, forget obliteration. And, the stomach butterflies prior to a transition are nothing more than music (what the hell is that?) perceived in utero.

Our guy TR is quite the wordsmith, though, isn't he?

Frank
_______________________________________________________________________

Page 26

Weality wrote:

"I think that I am seeking something... ...What I seek never was, not on land or sea"
go Alobar!
...."the king set upon his harem like a starving rat let loose in a peach barrel."
go Alobar!
_______________________________________________________________________

Page 27

Mary wrote:

“Days grew shorter. The citadel was hidden by morning fogs. Beets, resembling the hearts of gnomes, were piled in the storage cellars. Ducks lined up to buy their tickets to southern swamps. Mead was jugged. Blades and leathers oiled. Wolves made clouds when they sang at night. Maybe that was where the fogs came from. Everywhere there were sounds of husks cracking, virgins dancing, the rush of bees on last-minute shopping sprees, the roar of altars ablaze with some sacrifice.”

Walking through Seattle’s foggy October streets tonight, I breathe the songs of wolves.

Mary
_______________________________________________________________________

Page 28

Weality wrote:

"Dotted with cow pies and large stones. The stones had been arranged geometrically in patterns that were supposed to mean something to the gods. Presumably, the cow pies had fallen at random, although then, as now, the division between what is random in nature and what is
purposeful is extremely difficult to determine" pg 28 JP could it be that ~existence could be rearranged~ by a change of perspective or a simple 'eye game'? who's to say, that given their various herbal diet,cows aren't laying their monuments in a varied geometry pleasing to the gods as well?
wahooooooo

***********************************************************************
Jeanne Moore wrote:

Nature as a paradox, both random and purposeful.. . I really love this book.

Jeanne

Week 3, Jitterbug Perfume, Daffy Yum

2008-10-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

Page 14-16

Weality wrote:

My JP pages 14-16 are blank......silence.......kinda reminds me of "a mirror,so faithful and yet so unexpected, is the reflection it can throw back at men that they will go to almost any length to avoid seeing themselves in it, and if its duplicating surface is temporarily wiped clean of modern life's ubiquitous hubbub, they will hasten to fog it over with such desperate personal noise devices as polite conversation, humming, whistling, imaginary dialogue, schizophrenic babble, or, should it come to that, the clandestine
cannonry of their own farting".........pg 234 of FIHFHC :)
_____________________________________________________________________________

Page 17

Carolfly wrote:

"In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling over edges."

True or not, it makes me wonder what misconceptions currently guide our dreams.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Page 18

Riddleydeena wrote:

Wren, Frol, Alobar, Noog (V'lu, Bingo Pajama, Kudra)...it’s a name banquet! Wish I'd had six children (instead of none) to name. Once, at a book signing in London, I asked TR where the name Kudra came from. He said she had simply turned up for the audition :-)

Beet-juice stained Deena

***************************************************************************
Dale wrote:

:-) Love it, Deena! Magic animism. Even his imaginary characters are alive. He must have one helluva casting couch.

You know I always figured Kudra was an Indian goddess or something, but I guess not. Does anyone know if it has mythic meaning (beyond Jitterbug Perfume, of course.)?

Dale

___________________________________________________________________________

Page 20

Weality wrote:

"Himself? Self? What did that mean?" AHHH....does Mr. Robbins get anymore direct and existential than that? Have we past this way and addressed this most burning question?
I loves that Jitterbug Perfume.......

Dale Wrote:

Can I has me some Jitterbug Perfume? I laughed at the "Self" remark too. And have often wondered what that is.
Dale

****************************************************************************
Jeanne Moore wrote

Well...I wonder if anyone at all in Alobar's present time ever pondered the true meaning of 'self', that sometimes elusive being that lives beneath our own skin.

Jeanne

****************************************************************************
Micchaelmcmaham wrote:

".I wonder if anyone at all in Alobar's present time ever pondered"... ....certainly the communal, pod, group, collective conscience was stronger than today,
still, the individual has probably always wondered ...'why me?'....especially in those 'negatives'. ..why did the bear eat my Mom?...why did our neighbors take our corn?
Why’d that coconut fall on my head?
_____________________________________________________________________________

Page 21

"Even in his agitated mood, he could admire this walking flower of intelligent pink, this industry of honey and brine." Ahhhhhhh.... he makes me feel so good about being female.

Jeanne

****************************************************************************
Michaelmcmaham wrote:

....this industry of honey and brine.

All praise to her in whom such a broad spectrum of flavors exist, a land where there's no lack of biodiversity!!

*****************************************************************************

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 2, Daffy Yum

2008-10-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

JITTERBUG PERFUME
WEEK 2

Jitterbug Perfume, Page 8

carolfly@yahoo.com" carolfly@yahoo.com wrote:

“She plopped down her pumpkin patch, her Spanish ballroom, her pagan idol of a body on a lime velvet loveseat." - JP p.8

Oh, I cannot get over this description. Got me wondering how I might describe other people or myself.

Since I'm feeling skinny today I'll go with:
She set down her Tootsie Pop, her psych ward, her toy soldier of a body...

Man, this writing thing is even harder than it looks. Anybody want to share?

- Carol
******************************************************************************
Lynn Cantrell wrote:

what? and who are you?

carolfly@yahoo.com" carolfly@yahoo.com wrote:

Wait a minute... I thought that was my question...
******************************************************************************
Deena B. Omar wrote:

I love the character intros, imagery and general vibe in this bit, but above all it's the lime velvet love seat, that gets me every time...
Deena
******************************************************************************
carolfly@yahoo.com" carolfly@yahoo.com wrote:

It's funny -- I hadn't seen your post when I sent mine. We seem to like two halves of the same image. I like the butt, you like the couch!

- Carol

Deena B. Omar wrote:

a satisfying symmetry there in our likes, Carol...the butt and the couch; sounds like two more characters in another TR story...

Deena
*****************************************************************************

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 1, Daffy Yum

2008-10-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

Jitterbug Perfume, Day 1, Page 1, 10/6/08

Mangel-wurzel! I just noticed in this ode to the beet a mention of a "ceramic asshole" which reminded me of the Japanese doctor in Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. Can you imagine the kickass non-fiction Robbins could write?
Dale

If Robbins had a dinner party, I suspect that the conversation Robbins had with the veggies as he cooked in the kitchen would be as scintillating as the conversation in the parlor with the guests.
Dale
*************************************************************************************

MaryW witt8199@yahoo.com wrote:

Today, B is for Beet.

Kick-ass, indeed! We need only read his non-fiction magazine pieces, especially those included in Wild Ducks Flying Backward, for a taste of what an entire non-fiction book from Mr. Robbins would be. The man does have a way with facts--do you remember the exact rectal temperature of a hummingbird (104.9)? It's one fact I'll never forget. We can only imagine how grades would soar if he wrote textbooks. I mean, consider the excitement stirred up (and out) in an assignment from a culinary textbook for aspiring chefs. Especially the chapter on beets.

TR has a way of making the forgettable memorable and not merely memorable, but...well, vivid.

By the way, I came across a great 2001 interview, Fierce Individualist in a Wet Climate, by Robert Sheer and Joseph Roberts, taken before the Prophets Conference of Scientists, Healers, Poets and Mystics in Victoria, BC. If you haven't already seen it, it's well worth a read: http://www.p45. net/boards/ archive/index. php/t-15378. html

With beeting heart, I remain~
Mary
*************************************************************************************
Iris I wrote:

Mary,
That was a great article! Which other author would use "philosophical mastication" in a sentence?
Iris
*************************************************************************************
Zach Solomon seriouspolitics@gmail.com wrote:

Oh the puns! The puns!

My my, what pun!
*************************************************************************************
Dale Kirby da5e@yahoo.com wrote:

:-) Tom's logorrhea is a case of the puns. I'm glad he doesn't have a potty mouth.
Dale
*************************************************************************************
"michael mcmahan" wrote:

....not so sure 'bout that......one of my favorite 'potty phrases' comes from Switters...
as he described a South American river....."It was the color of cigar tobacco, it smelled like the butt of a cheap cheroot, and every now and then an actual cigar-like entity would break the oily sheen of its surface to glide among the citrus rinds, plastic cartons, and Inca cola cans that dotted the waters. These small torpedoes were, of course, were neither waterlogged double coronas jettisoned by a listing Cuban freighter
nor a species of blind Amazonian trout but, rather, a sampling of the ocherous projectiles fired into the river night and day from the fundaments of Pucallpa.
'A regular turd de force’, muttered Switters....."
*************************************************************************************
"carolfly" wrote:

Today's Special
Well, isn't it just? I happened back on this group recently, and am
delighted to have company in re-reading one of my favorite books. It
seems to require reading at this pace for me to have ever noticed
that, well,
Today's Special.
Thanks, guys.
- Carol
*************************************************************************************
Dale Kirby da5e@yahoo.com wrote:

Welcome back, Carol. Tom writes with a slow hand and an easy touch.
Dale
*************************************************************************************
MaryW witt8199@yahoo.com wrote:

If you close your eyes, you can almost hear him warbling sweet refrains as he slices, dices and chops. Perhaps a sweet refrain of Your Beeting Heart? Every Beet of My Heart? Love is Just a Heartbeet Away. Nervous Heartbeet?

Mary
*************************************************************************************
"julie h" julieh312@yahoo.com wrote:

I think it's more likely a rousing chorus of '...and the beet goes on.'
Without going back and looking, I can't remember now which paperback edition you thought most people would be reading from and which country was likely to have what. I am in South Africa and my copy of Jitterbug is very old. I can't remember if I bought it new or second hand or if someone lent it to me (!) but it's a Bantam Rack-size edition 1985.
Will be interesting to see if there are differences. And so we are into the tale that begins with the beet and shall end up, we hope, being both devilishly entertaining and enlightening. Whatever it is, it's a risk I am happy to be taking with you all.
Julie
xoxo
*************************************************************************************
Dale Kirby da5e@yahoo.com wrote:

Hi Julie,
It would be interesting to see if there differences in the South African edition of Jitterbug Perfume. We can be on the same page without being on the same page.
Dale
*************************************************************************************
Jitterbug Perfume, Page 2, 10/7/08

Hi Julie. Ha! The Beet Goes On is perfect. Maybe one of the tech-savvy afterlifers can do a soundtrack for Jitterbug Perfume for our reading pleasure. :~)
I like the idea that we're reading from different editions and across time zones. Blurring pages and fogging time fits perfectly with Jitterbug Perfume. No hard edges or rigid rules, just flowing from one page to the next, blending lines and ideas, creating little points of afTRlife light here and there across the globe. We'll create our own kind of beet-scented space-time warp, sprinkling Robbins's pollen dust across the universe.
Mary
*************************************************************************************
Jitterbug Perfume, Page 3, 10/8/08

Dale Kirby da5e@yahoo.com wrote:

So we meet Priscilla, one of Tom's genius waitresses. Doesn't she show up in another of his novels? Maybe Skinny Legs? This page reminds me that everything in a Tom Robbins novel is alive. And it's brought alive by brilliant metaphor. "Every toilet bowl gurgled like an Italian tenor with a mouthful of Lavoris..."And every sense is engaged.

Dale
*************************************************************************************
Jitterbug Perfume, Page 4, 10/9/08

MaryW witt8199@yahoo.com wrote:

Poor Priscilla. Oh, de agony of de feet as she watches rollaway inflation silver- streak across the tattered floor. It's a mad dash and things are looking grim(ey) for our weary waitress wincing at the memory of an intimate incident with Rikki in the washroom.
Who among us cannot relate? :~)
Mary
*************************************************************************************
Jitterbug Perfume, Page 7, 10/12/08

MaryW witt8199@yahoo.com wrote:

Oh, those New Orleans hurricane drops, pirouetting petals and Jamaican jasmine boof. What a heady scent wafts from the burbling brew. This is the city where morning comes gliding in the arms of the sun, not dragged in by the too-eager hands of the clock.

Mary
************************************************************************************
"Deena Omar" deena.omar@tower.ac.uk wrote:

I love the character intros, imagery and general vibe in this bit, but above all it's the lime velvet love seat that gets me every time...
Deena

Deena B Omar

The Debate

2008-10-09T17:40:00.000-07:00

by Michael

Watching the debate last nite, I’m not sure that Salome’s third veil didn’t drop for me……

“She understood suddenly, and for no particular reason of which she was aware, that it was futile to work for political solutions to humanity's problems because humanity's problems were not political. Political problems did exist, all right, but they were entirely secondary. The primary problems were solved the political problems would have to be solved over and over and over again. The phrase, "vicious circle" was coined to describe the ephemeral effectiveness of almost all political activity.

For ethical, political activism was seductive because it seemed to offer the possibility that one could improve society, make things better, without going through the personal ordeal of rearranging one’s perceptions and transforming one's self. For the unconscionable, political reactivism was seductive because it seemed to protect one's holdings and legitimize one's greed. But both sides were gazing through a kerchief of illusion.

The monkey wrench in the progressive machinery of primate evolution was the propensity of the primate band to take its political leaders - it s dominant males = too seriously. Of benefit tot he band only when it was actively threatened by predators, the dominant male (or political boss) was almost wholly self-serving and was naturally dedicated not to liberation but to control. Behind his chest-banging and fang display, he was largely a joke and could be kept in his place (his place being that of a necessary evil) by disrespect and laughter. If, for example, when Hitler stood up to rant in the beer halls of Munich, the good drinkers had taken him more lightly, had they , instead of buying his act, snickered and hooted and pelted him with sausage skins, the Holocaust might have been avoided.

Of course, as long as there were willing followers, there would be exploitive leaders. And there would be willing followers until humanity reached that philosophical plateau where it recognized that its great mission in life had nothing to do with any struggle between classes, races, nations, or ideologies, but was, rather, a personal quest to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain. On that quest, politics was simply a road block of stentorian baboons.” SLAA

Daffy Yum Comment Thread

2008-10-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

Please attach all Jitterbug Perfume comments to this post?

Thanks.
Dale

What is Daffy Yum?

2008-10-05T13:59:00.000-07:00

There's a Jewish tradition (I'm no scholar so I might be getting it
all wrong) called Daf Yomi (sounds like a TR term) in which a person
studies one page of the Talmud each day for 7.5 years.

I'm reading one page of Tom Robbins' work chronologically each day for the 8 or 9 years that it will take to go through the one's he has written and the ones he will hopefully write during that time. I wouldn't say I'm studying them, but reading them mindfully with an open heart.

I call this ritual Daffy Yum.

I'll comment here or on the list whenever something strikes me. Anyone
want to join me?

Culture Wars

2008-10-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

Not plucky, lucky. The new Rolling Stone has a profile of John McCain that makes him sound a lot like Plucky Purcell without the humor, morality and sense of honor.

Quickies. "The number of `fleeting' penises we expect to see on broadcast television is zero." a right-wing television watchdog group said, after an accidental flash happened on a reality show.

Daffy Yum - Day 0

2008-10-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

An AftrWord on Still Life with Woodpecker:

Tom asks the immortal question: How do you make love stay? I think I've finally figured it out. The answer is:

Don't make love do all the work.

Tom's concept of Joy in spite of everything is great, but in love, we should use Jeff the Troll's formulation "because of everything". Love because of everything. We shouldn't require our partners to love us in spite of ourselves. We should do all we can to protect love from avoidable stresses. It can handle the problems that arise from outside, but it can't always survive the stresses that result from (Tom's other big concept) CHOICE. Choose to love with the way you live. Then maybe love will stay.

Daffy Yum - Famous Last Words

2008-10-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

Today we're reading the last page of Still Life with Woodpecker. The famous line "It's never too late to have a happy childhood" caps a reading experience that has penetrated the language and thoughts of millions. That's probably his most often ripped-off line. Google it and you'll find dozens of writers claiming it or at least not attributing it properly.

Tomorrow is a day of rest for sore eyes after the grueling one page per day marathon we've been through. Then Monday October 6,2008 we'll be starting Jitterbug Perfume or as I've seen it called, Panaroma.

TR's Jitterbug Perfume and DB Houston's King of the Midnight Blue, goes down easy with Tecate, Salt & Lemon

2008-08-06T19:22:00.001-07:00

TR's Jitterbug Perfume and DB Houston's King of the Midnight Blue, goes down easy with Tecate, Salt & Lemon, originally uploaded by MaryWit.

These things most bring to mind the long and deep friendship of Tom Robbins and Darrell Bob Houston. They always looked forward to again sharing Tecate, salt and lemons when they hadn't seen each other for awhile. When TR drove his little VW bug straight through to LA to bring DB back to Seattle during a particutlarly hard time in DB's life, TR appeared unannounced at DB's desk at the LA Times holding a sunflower as big as DB's head.

Tom Robbins Day

2008-07-22T20:17:00.001-07:00

International Tom Robbins Day, originally uploaded by MaryWit.

Around the world, people called in well to honor the esteemed and irrepressableTom Robbins in celebration his birthday.

Just another old hippy

2008-05-12T18:11:00.001-07:00

I was looking at the new 42 cent stamp today and I realized that George Washington would fit right in on Malibu Beach. He's just another old hippy with a greying pony-tail.

Daffy Yum, P. 131, SLWW

2008-05-11T14:51:00.001-07:00

Lusty Lady, Chronicals of Nudia, originally uploaded by MaryWit.

As Ellen-Cheri made her rain-soaked way down Seattle's First Avenue, passing bars and pawnshops, she surely passed the Lusty Lady, long said to be woman-owned. The marquis changes often, and always with Robbinsesque style, wit and flair. It's always a little goosepimply to stand with a camera pointed at the establishment, so my pictures are often taken on the run. ;~)

Playing The Race Car

2008-05-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

I was riding my motorized beer cooler around the NASCAR infield the other day and I thought, since God uses natural disasters to nudge our gay brothers and sisters toward righteousness, they should schedule gay pride marches at mega-churches throughout the country and pray for guidance. Let God cancel the marches for them in His own clever way and they don't have to make the trip.

Cowgirls, the Play

2008-05-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

Book-It Repertory Theatre's new-season lineup
"Book-It Repertory Theatre's new-season lineup
Seattle Times Wed, 30 Apr 2008 0:25 AM PDT
'Even Cowgirls Get the Blues,' the best-seller by Western Washington-based writer Tom Robbins, will get the Book-It Repertory Theatre treatment..."

Zach Solomon's Thesis on Art

2008-05-06T16:42:00.001-07:00

*What is Art and Does It Have a Purpose?*

The question, "What is art?" is at once confounding, thought-provoking, and quite challenging. For certain, art is ubiquitous. It can be profoundly appealing, sensually, spiritually, and intellectually provocative or simply innocuous. Art can be so beautiful and powerful that it move an observer to tears or render one stunned with silence and awe. It can contain all of these qualities at once in the dynamic interplay of thought, emotion and technique. It is for this reason that the word "art" is seemingly impossible to define. Its infinite facets place it among some of the great mysteries of life. But what is *it*? The Encyclopedia Britannica Dictionary defines "art" as such:

"The conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects."

This definition offers no insight as to the quiddity of art. Rather, it explains how one may produce it. This illustrates the problem philosophers and connoisseurs alike have faced in trying to define "art." In this paper I will examine two articles written on the subject: *What is Art?* by Leo Tolstoy and *What is Art, and if We Know What Art is, What is Politics?* by Tom Robbins. After explaining each author's views on the definition and purpose of art I will attempt to show that art is ultimately indefinable, that it paradoxically is fairly easy to discern what is or is not art and that art and aesthetics in general serve no practical purpose on their fundamental level.

Leo Tolstoy, in *What is Art?*, claims that the essence of art is the conveyance of emotion – from the artist to the observer. "Art," he explains, "is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feeling he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them." By this Tolstoy means that art is anything hand-made that expresses the feelings and emotions felt by the artist at the time of the piece's conception and/or production. Furthermore, Tolstoy expounds on his definition by describing the activity of art: "To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling – this is the experience of art." Tolstoy is saying that in order for a piece to be considered art it must communicate the artist's feelings and emotions at the time of the piece's conception and/or production. Therefore a piece is not a *fait accompli* as art until it is perceived by an observer and then ultimately when the observer shares an empathic bond between him/herself and the artist. This is how, Tolstoy explains, it is possible to discern what is or is not art: if the observer of a piece is moved emotionally in the way that was intended by the artist or that is consistent with the artist's emotion then the work may be considered art. If no connection is made then the piece is not art. By this logic, it is fundamentally impossible for most art to introduce us to new ideas, perspectives or phenomena because there is a vast amount of art in which the emotions of the artist are either cryptic or absent altogether. Additionally, his definition leaves out the situations in which an observer of a particular piece of art reacts emotionally in a way that is not consistent with the artist's feelings. Does this mean that the piece is not art if the observer's emotional reaction is different from the artist's emotional reaction? Tolstoy's definition is an extremely limiting one.

Tolstoy additionally theorizes that art in fact does have a purpose, which is to exchange emotions between the artist and the observer. Rather than citing this entirely real phenomenon as merely a byproduct of a piece of art, Tolstoy claims that it is the central, if only, purpose of art. He states, "Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications." Tolstoy goes on to explain how to differentiate good and bad art. One does this by evaluating how effective a particular piece of art is in conveying the emotions of the artist to the onlooker. The stronger the emotional bond, the better the art.

Tom Robbins, in *What is Art, and if We Know What Art is, What is Politics?*, refutes Tolstoy's theory that in order for a piece to be art it must invoke in the observer "a feeling one has *once * (italics mine) experienced" by saying, "…while we are in art's thrall, we're lifted out of mundane contest and granted a temporary visa to a less ordinary dimension, where our existential burden is momentarily lifted and we surf a wave of pure perceptual pleasure." Robbins is stating that art need not invoke within the onlooker a feeling or stimulus previously felt or felt by the artist; rather, good art can transmit ideas, places, perspectives, and even feelings to the observer that he/she has never seen or experienced before. In other words, there is no prerequisite for art. This idea places the defining factor of what makes art *art* in the hands of the artist rather than in the emotional core of the observer.

To answer the initial question of "What is art?", Robbins claims that art is ultimately indefinable and purposeless yet we nevertheless have the capacity to identify what constitutes art. Art, Robbins says, is "a vehicle for the transportation of perceptual (i.e. aesthetic) values." This, he says, is the primary purpose of art – "to evaluate the external phenomena registered by our eyes and ears." He further states, "When the composition that delights, thrills, captivates or challenges our sensory receptors has been created for that very purpose, we call it *art*." This means that when a piece is created with its primary purpose being that it stimulates the onlooker's senses (whether it is the artist or the observer) it becomes art. Contrary to Tolstoy, the transmittance of emotions between the artist and the observer is a byproduct of art, rather than the central purpose of art. Although an emotional reaction may enhance the experience of the observer, according to Robbins, that is a result secondary to the appearance of the piece.

Furthermore, Robbins explains, the conveyance of some form of message or ideal as the primary purpose of a piece renders the piece something other than art. The primary purpose of art must be to be purposeless – to serve no practical purpose other than to excite one's sensory perception. "At the heart of any genuine aesthetic response are sensations that have no rational application, material or psychological, yet somehow manage to enrich our lives." If the primary purpose of a piece is something other than that then it is no longer art. However, a piece which expresses a message or has a point can still be art: "This is not to say that a work of art can't convey other, additional values, values with intellectual and/or emotional heft. However, if it's really art, then those values will play a secondary role…we may praise a piece for its cultural insights, for the progressive statement it makes…but to honor it as 'art' when its aesthetic impact is not its dominant feature is to fall into a philistine trap of shoddy semantics and false emphasis." This means that the central focus of a particular piece of art must be the uselessness of its aesthetics but that if the artist conveys a message or allows the piece to have a point then it must be extrapolated from the immediate visual.

According to Robbins, it has been determined that art is ultimately indefinable and entirely purposeless in a pragmatic sense. However, art manages to improve our lives while having no useful application. This is a remarkable feat. Rather paradoxically, Robbins thinks that the apparent superfluity of art is precisely what makes it essential: "The most useful thing about art is its uselessness….there's a place in our all too pragmatic world for the impractical and the nonessential, and art occupies that place…; occupies it with such authority and with such inspirational if quixotic results that we find ourselves in the contradictory position of having to concede that the non-essential can be very essential, indeed, if for no other reason than that an environment reduced to essentials is a subhuman environment in which only drones will thrive." Robbins' point is that if everything that humans do must have a point then we would live in a very limiting world. Art is the champion of purposeless pleasure; a heroine of romanticism and impracticality. There is an immense spectrum of what our intuition tells us is art and I strongly disagree with the notion that art * must* communicate a message to or invoke a feeling in the observer. An artist knows when he/she has created a work of art when it is completed, not when it is received by observers.

In conclusion, Leo Tolstoy's assertion that art is anything that conveys the artist's emotions to the observer is unconvincing because art is a human production that is evaluated at least at first by sensory perception rather than emotional empathy. In addition, Tolstoy is incorrect when he theorizes that the purpose of art is to convey the artist's feelings. By saying this he is taking aesthetic merit out of the picture altogether – art is no longer about the qualities of its aesthetics but about how effectively the piece communicates the artist's feelings. This is an overly limiting way of appreciating art. It closes one's mind off to new experiences and ideas because, according to Tolstoy, one must have a very particularistic reaction to a work of art – any reaction that does not mirror the artist's reaction is not permitted. Contrary to Tolstoy's point of view, there are innumerable pieces of artwork which do not reveal the artist's emotions, or may not contain the artist's emotions at all. Art has no purpose. As Robbins eloquently states, "Art revitalizes precisely because it *has* no purpose except to engage our senses. The emancipating jounce of inspired uselessness."

Disparately Seeking Robbins

2008-05-04T08:12:00.001-07:00

Between Amazon and Google Books you can search inside almost all of Robbins' novels. You usually just get quotes and snippets, but with Amazon (if you're a member) you can read several pages around your search results.
Another Roadside Attraction - Google Book Search
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas - Google Book Search
Still Life with Woodpecker - Google Book Search
Jitterbug Perfume - Google Book Search
Skinny Legs and All - Google Book Search
Search: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas: Tom Robbins: Books
Search Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: Tom Robbins: Books
Search: Jitterbug Perfume: Tom Robbins: Books
Search: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
The Jewelry of Ken Cory: Play Disguised - Google Book Search
Search: Tom Robbins: A Critical Companion (Critical Companion...

Dale

Passwords to Grow By

2008-04-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

I ran across a good idea the other day. Use passwords to remind you of things or learn things. Like having a password 'IAM@PEACE". Typing that several times a week sure can't hurt your peace of mind. How would this idea apply to Tom Robbins writing? What kinds of passwords would remind you of your favorite Robbins ideas or quotes?

Maybe just funny ones like ombudugeki or erleichda. Maybe acronyms JISOE for Joy in spite of everything. Or BeUrGuru. Or ZeeWurl.

Seems like this approach would add a few more bubbles to the bubble bath for your heart.

Got any other ideas?

Original article

Dale

Dr. Tom's Rainy Day(s) Miracle Cure (SLWW, p. 71)

2008-03-12T20:38:00.001-07:00

Page 71 of Still Life With Woodpecker holds another essential bit of wisdom to pull out of your rainy day(s) survival kit. Mr. Robbins teaches us how to not only tolerate the rain--but to savor it, dive headfirst into it, jump into (not over) the puddles with both feet and splash around.

Tip: fill your emergency rain survival kit with TR rain quotes such as this one found on page 71:

Actually the rain has many uses. It prevents the blood and the sea from becoming too salty. It administers knock out drops to unruly violets. It manufactures the ladder that neon climbs to the moon. A seeker can go into the Great Northwest rain and bring back the Name he needs.

When you feel yourself starting to go mad with cabin fever after the first few hours/days/weeks/months of rain, remain calm and reach into your survival kit, take out a liberal handful of TR quotes and start reading. Don't stop until you realize that you're hoping that the delightful, soft, wet, sexy rain will never stop.

That's when you know that Dr. Tom's Miracle Cure has come through again. It's powerful stuff and never fails.

Let it rain.

~ PEACE ~
Nonconform Freely

AFTRLIFE Official Self-Epitaph Document

2008-03-12T15:58:00.001-07:00

The following is the true list of afTRlife epitaphs, carefully chosen with consideration by and for us and documented herein for posterity at the behest of Our Leader B. D. Dale, and in the name of our Esteemed Master Thomas Robbins as of March 12, 2008.

May we live long and prosper in the afTRlife!

__________________________________________________

Author Epitaph

joybeloo "All you need is love!"

(Joy Borazjani) "Books just want to be free!"

marxmarvelous "Hold my beer and watch this"

pervrtdmnk "I'm trying"

(jdouble)

sandyeggowaffle "That was a long, strange trip!"

dentonboyo "Illegitimi non carborundum"

(Brent Smith)

bbmrchn "The deposed haole prince of Makapu'u"

(Bob Marchioni)

quaabird "We're all god, in different disguises"

julie h

(Julie H) "No regrets. Pass the chocolate."

lordchesterfield "Does this mean no more Scotch?"

(James Reed) "I'm not dead yet. OH, Wait!"

justin_meigs "Right, time for another dream."

cheddaronya "Come on down, join the party"

(Laura Farrelly)

Dale "Okay. Don't got peach pie? Gimme apple."

MaryW "I'm ba a a a ack"

"It was all about pink tights."

audreyfarber "More red wine, less diet soda."

(Audrey Farber)

itsmine "Less work, more play, eh?"

(Susan Griffin)

larvalmouse "Better the flawed angel than the perfect devil"

"Duirt me leat go raibh me breoite"

(Translation provided by Edwin A. Scribner)

Chris Conn "Will get there eventually"

Journey "What about the Big Moan Theory?"

weality "Tippin the scales, toward feather light."

(Michael McMahan)

mcj717 "Neither the judge, jury, nor executioner..."

jmmcakes2006

(Jeanne Moore) "I tried to make it fun."

Christa Rose "Peace, love and rock and roll."

fwhague "Damn the torpedoes!!! ........ No! Wait!"

Lennell "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."

"I am here with no regrets."

Zach Solomon "Woah, what the hell just happened?"

Kyle O'Connor "Keep on Keeping on."

yobeemer2175 "Are you going to eat that?"

Robbins was wrong (sorta kinda) by Dale

2008-02-03T11:45:00.000-08:00

Reading page 33 of Still Life with Woodpecker today, the woodpecker grinned, unlike Jesus who wept. He's gotten to Hawaii without being caught (back in the good old pre-9/11 airport security days.) This page and the book in general talks of pending momentous happenings in the last quarter of the century. But much more momentous things have happened the first quarter of this century. Bad things like 9/11 and Bush's exploitation of the fear that evoked. And hopefully good in that a glass ceiling of the Presidency will be shattered either by a female or a black male this November. There might be hope for the republic after all.

I'm betting that Still Life would not have found a publisher during the Bush presidency. Stay controversial, Tom.

Still Life With Woodpecker, P. 2 (or x)

2008-01-03T18:49:00.001-08:00

This page is the one in which Mr. Robbins injects 10ccs of Anais Nin (green label) into a ripe lime and sucks. Then he and the Remmington SL3 begin...

Some of us have been fortunate enough to see Him sucking on limes at bookreadings and lectures. Now we know why.

~ PEACE ~
Nonconform Freely

Blogger LIkes StillLife

2008-01-03T13:08:00.000-08:00

by Dale

Stop by over there and leave a comment and tell him the aftrlife sent you. :-)

By Calum
Still Life with Woodpecker is my introduction to Tom Robbins, but I was into it from the first page. Robbins’ writing is a twisted amalgam of many of my favourite authors; he’s kind of like an optimistic Kurt Vonnegut crossed with ...

http://smallvictories.wordpress.com

Bluer Than Indigo, Mr. Robbins, and Darrell Bob Houston

2007-12-28T08:40:00.001-08:00

I just happened to read Wikipedia's entry for Jitterbug Perfume a few minutes ago and feel like I've been struck by lightening. I'm stunned by the irony of the following (most) profound statement appearing in a section called "Trivia" (!?) at the end of the article. Here it is:

"In the somewhat esoteric final lines of the book, note this: "And then you'll be blue. Bluer than indigo." This is based on an old Chinese proverb by Xun Zi: blue dye is made from indigo colored grass, yet the blue dye's color is much deeper than the color of its origin. In other words, the pupil can exceed the master."

I mean...did you know that?

One can't help but wonder if our beloved Mr. Robbins had this in mind as he wrote the words of love and dedication to his brother/friend Darrell Bob Houston, who died in 1984-- the same year that Jitterbug Perfume was published. The fact that Darrell Bob was an astonishing gonzo journalist and diamond-bright author in his own right adds even more profundity to the pupil/master -- bluer than indigo statement. It fits so perfectly.

Wishing all of you an astonishing day~

Mary

~ PEACE ~
Nonconform Freely

Steve Gillard on the Mystery

2007-12-26T10:06:00.000-08:00

Steve has a very interesting series of posts about treating each moment as a gift over at The Gravity Vortex. He argues that everything from cleaning out the garage to existential ecstasy is a gift. Fun reading.

--Dale

Cowgirls, Page 325--Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T14:34:00.001-08:00

Today is the page wherein Jelly explains that it's not just the Whoopers who are "drugged" by the peyote laced fishmeal they ingest, we are all "drugged" by what goes into our bodies.

"You mean...?"

"Peyote!" said Debbie and Jelly together.

"Then that professor was right. They are drugged."

"Aw, come off it, Sissy," said Jelly. "What do you mean, 'drugged'? Every living thing is a chemical composition and anything that is added to it changes that composition. When you eat a cheeseburger or a three muskateers bar, it changes your body chemistry. The kind of food you eat, the kind of air you breathe, can change your mental state. Does that mean you're drugged? Drugged is a stupid word."

So, to all of you astonishing afTRlifers, if you're planning to run afowl of the law (any law), today is the day to do it, while you're stuffed full of that turkey/tofurkey.

Happy Thanksgiving. YOU are the turkeys I'm most thankful for. :~)

Love, love and more love~

Mary

~ PEACE ~
Nonconform Freely

Be a better sports nut! Let your teams follow you with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now.

Schnooner School

2007-10-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dale

Tom has finished writing his latest book. Here's a preview: Gracie Goes to Schooner School. It's now in the hands of the editors. We'll keep you informed of the progress.

An Interview with Charles L. Heald

2007-10-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

An Interview with Charles L. Heald,
Cover Artist for Another Roadside Attraction.

My son recently gave me a signed first edition of Another Roadside Attraction for my birthday. I had seen the cover art of the jacket of that edition once before in the early 1970's and it had stuck with me, almost hauntingly. Now that I own the book and the art, I decided to find out about the artist. Thus I have came to Larry Heald's website and found haunting images aplenty. What a wonderful collection! I wanted to know more about this artist and his connection with the work of Tom Robbins and he kindly consented to the following email interview. --Dale Kirby

Was there something about the Northwest that drew you as an artist to move out there for your education?

Yes. That would be my brother, Paul. I was going to a small college, with a very small art department, back in Michigan, working summers in Yellowstone. I'd noticed that the further west I traveled, the better I liked it. The people, like the landscape, opened up and let me in, and I followed Horace Greely's suggestion. Paul was in Seattle starting his grad work at UW, and spoke of it's beauty. I hopped a train in Livingston, Montana, and got to Seattle in time for fall quarter, 1960.

When did you get to know or know about Tom Robbins? Was it as an art
critic or a novelist?

I think it was around 1962. Paul had a show of his paintings at one of the handful of galleries that existed in Seattle at the time, and Tom, the new critic in town, had written a rather unflattering review of his work. Paul figured Tom had missed the point, and invited him over to his place for dinner. They became good friends and Tom was then introduced to a bunch of young artists, including myself, and, being the open creative person he is, became one of the gang. As I remember it, the tone of his reviews changed from rather harsh (but clever) slam dunks that would keep people from even going to the gallery to more in depth observations that enticed the public to go have a look for themselves.

Skagit Valley seems to be a magnet for artists from Morris Graves onward. Was there an art movement in Skagit Valley when you lived there?

There certainly were a bunch of artists around, and they were all active, but there was no activity as a cohesive group. The show at the Seattle Art Museum in 1974, was perhaps the first time we looked at ourselves as a group, but even then, we were just a bunch of artists and urban escapees living in the same beautiful area.

Who were some of the people in the Skagit Valley artists group?

Guy Anderson was the patriarch, a legend in his time. None of us flocked around him as some sort of guru, however. We just loved him, and he loved us. He was old enough to be the grandfather of most of us, and yet he had a youthful spirit no one could resist. A lifetime of creativity does that to a person it seems. Larry Beck and his wife, Gertrude Pacific, lived and worked in the Conway Bank. Clayton James was in LaConner, Paul Havas was on Fir Island along with Art Jorgenson, Rick Dekker up in Blanchard, Richard Gilkey and R. Allen Jensen down in Stanwood, Charlie Krafft and Robert Sund out at Fishtown. Max Benjamin and Phil McCracken lived out on the islands, so we didn't see much of them. There were a few others, but these were the folks I associated with most.

How did you come to do the cover art for Another Roadside Attraction?

Tom wrote me a letter while he was living in South Bend, WA and I was living in Inverness, CA, telling me he was writing a novel and asking if, providing he could find a publisher, I'd be interested in doing illustrations. When the publisher was found, it became the dust jacket. That was in 1969.

Did you read the book before you did the art?

No. I had no idea what the book was about, just the elements Tom mentioned. However I did know Tom, which was quite enough, and knowing a book can't be judged by its cover, I didn't worry about it. Tom wrote and told me to include the following: A Weenie Man (whatever that is) pointing a cane at a young gypsy-type woman holding the mummified body of Christ in a carnival tent, with a Skagit type landscape and including butterflies and mushrooms. Of course I had no idea what the book was about with those directions, but I could tell I was going to like it. Had I read the book first, and been given a "free hand", there's no telling what it would have looked like!

Was there a human model for the picture of Amanda?

No. However looking at it now, it does resemble my first wife a bit.

Have you had much contact with TR since you left the Skagit Valley? Have you followed his work and/or he followed yours?

I usually get up to Seattle and the Skagit once or twice a year, to deliver paintings, and visit my brother and other artist friends, including Tom, when he's not gallivanting about the globe doing research on his next novel. I've read all Tom's books and occasionally catch other stuff in periodicals. I doubt that he's seen much of my work for the last several years, due to its relative unavailability. Most of it is right here in my storeroom.

What are your influences--both artistically and philosophically--in your art?

I get asked this, or a variation of, this question from time to time and it always throws me for a loop. I should have a standardized answer prepared for convenience, but I'm generally not willing to think about it to the extent it would take to come up with anything worth passing along. To the question as you put it, I'd say: other artists, past and present, and philosophers, past and present, which includes everyone I know. Throw in the mysteries of the universe, the marvels of this planet we live on, the miracle of nature and life, and the baffling behavior of the human critter.

Your paintings are natural and supranatural at the same time. What are your theories on painting?

I really can't think of any. I just love to paint and then to see what happens. In a sense, I guess you might say I create my own reality, which in view of the confusing answer to the last question, makes a certain amount of sense.

I found the section fascinating where you showed pictures you had done some time before, and how they changed as you reworked them. Do you do a lot of "revising" as you work?

Right from the very beginning, I'm revising. Nothing is ever finished. At some point I quit, but that never means that a few days, weeks or years later I won't completely repaint the thing. Sometimes I start with a preconception, but never have I ended up with that concept. Often the paintings have nothing to do with the original idea. Something like life itself, perhaps.

One of your paintings in particular stirred my soul. It was the one of the mountain cabin with the crescent moon in the window. What was the inspiration for that image?

"Unfinished Painting VII" is the seventh of a sub series that's been going for quite awhile. In fact the first was done in 1971 and was included in the Skagit Valley Artists show at the Seattle Art Museum in 1974. And in fact it's now in their collection, unless they tossed it out. The idea of the whole series is a play on the title "Unfinished Painting" that art historians stick on paintings they find in the studios of dead artists, and which appear to have never been resolved. As I recall, they all contain a bucket of spilled paint and the suggestion that an accident has occured while the painter is transforming an interior-exterior space with a new sky color. I think there are some others on the site, if you can find them.

Have you illustrated any other books or done other cover art?

Only my own book which is entitled, "Homestead Fire Prevention and Supression", a book on fighting wildfires. Not exactly an artistic endeavor. However I did three album covers for some musician friends, The Youngbloods. "Elephant Mountain", "High on a Ridgetop", and "Country Home".

What's your favorite work of yours?

I have some favorites from every period over the last 40 years of painting. Some of them were of the genre in which I was working, but often they were the ones that were instrumental in breaking me free from it. It's been suggested that the current series based on the Pacific Coast are my best ever. I like that idea. That's how it should be.

Any last thoughts?

These questions have stirred up all sorts of memories. The sixties and early seventies were a sweet time for artists, writers, musicians and other creative folk. Things went sour for many, but the spirit lives on in some. We obviously didn't change the world, although we thought we were at the time. It appeared as if we had something to look forward to. Like all things these days (worthwhile and otherwise), it became commercialized, popularized, commonplace and reduced to its dollar value. To the prez who says, "It's the economy, stupid", I'd like to say, "It's the stupid economy!", and besides that, buster! @#%^&*, etc.

:-) Thanks so much, Larry.

- Sent Using Google Toolbar

2007-10-05T17:08:00.000-07:00

TOM ROBBINS: My life and work.

Forget cyberspace. The Northwest's master of Zen-punk prose spends his time exploring mythospace. And here, with a new novel hitting stores this week, he speaks out about what he sees, how he works, who he loves, and what really, really matters in the end.

Roger Downey

published: May 03, 2000

Rick Dahms

JUST ABOUT THIS TIME of year 24 years ago, I drove my still nearly new VW Superbeetle up to La Conner for a chat with Tom Robbins about a book he'd just written: his second novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Last week I hit the road for La Conner again, to talk with Robbins (in the same room of the same house I visited in 1976) on the occasion of his seventh and latest, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, published this week. Tom and I both arrived in Seattle back in the mid-'60s; then I knew him as The Seattle Times' jazz-bo of a visual arts critic, as the host of KRAB-FM's every-Sunday-evening s�ce of underground rock, as an amiable magus prone to donning Fantasia-style wizard gear to preside over drug-sodden street celebrations of the alternative lifestyle. Somehow it fit that the guy I knew would have written a cult bestseller (Another Roadside Attraction) in his spare time, but another novel? Ol' Tom a Novelist, a Fictioneer, a Molder of Significant Form? I couldn't get used to the idea. A quarter-century and five more books later, I still can't. Fortunately, Robbins hasn't either. Fierce Invalids―episodes from the life of an accident-prone CIA op with a taste for mind-expanding drugs, Finnegan's Wake, and legally untouchable girl-flesh―no more resembles a rule-made contemporary fiction than its six elder siblings did, but it's vintage Robbins in the rich layering of its literary lasagna: plot, preachments, precepts, and prophecy all bubbling merrily together. We hereby celebrate Robbins' Lucky Number Seven with some thoughts on life and art in the Great Northwest composed by the master on the occasion of receiving the Golden Bumbershoot award, plus some extemporaneous observations of life, love, lust, and literature that haven't found their way into the canonical works―yet.

On life

Privacy is essential to me. I'm on the cusp between Cancer and Leo, so I'm actually torn between retiring to the hermit's cave and wanting the spotlight on center stage. But it's very difficult to tap into the eternal sources if you're cavorting in public. Whom the Gods would destroy they first make popular. Being in the spotlight inflates the ego, and I concur wholeheartedly with Joseph Campbell that Hell is a large, stiff ego.

For the first few years after my first two books appeared, I hadn't given many interviews or allowed my picture to be circulated, a lot of people believe that I was a woman. I guess it was my well-developed anima. But mystique is a magnet, and every summer I used to get college students from all over the United States beating a path to my door. Once I started doing readings and book tours that stopped happening: You maintain your privacy by going public. It sort of directs the fire away from who you really are. Like the guy in the old cowboy movie: He would put his hat up on a stick and all the bad guys would shoot at the hat while he snuck around and came at 'em from behind.

On literature

My approach to writing is intuitive, not analytical, which is one of the things that makes it hard to talk about. Because I'm not a formula writer, every time I start a book it's beginning all over again. I don't know how to write a novel, I couldn't tell you how to write a novel, it's a new adventure every time I begin one, and I like it that way. I rarely have even the vaguest sense of plot when I begin a book, what I usually begin with is about three―things, three themes, concepts, ideas, that are completely unrelated. Well, everything is related, but I'm not aware of the relationships, the connections are not present in my mind. And then I hold auditions in the teatro cognito and a character or two will show up, frequently a woman, and I will put that character in a scene, and it's like putting that character in a little boat and pushing it out into the water, and then I literally follow that character out of that scene and into the next, one scene begetting the next.

My books, for all their surface looseness, are actually very, very tight, and they're full of cross-references, and the themes are complex, so to be able to write that way with any degree of artistry and to make these disparate elements come together so smoothly that they appear seamless, that the reader would believe they were there from the beginning, requires not only that I write very, very slowly but maintain an enormous degree of focus and concentration; you have to be able to hold many, many different things in your mind at once, because once you get beyond 50 pages, you can't go back every day and read what you've already written. It takes intense concentration to do that, at the end of my writ-ing day, and my writing days have been get-ting shorter and shorter; you feel like you've been wrestling in radioactive quicksand with Xena the Warrior Princess and her five fat uncles.

I haven't voluntarily read a review of one of my books since 1977, though I've had a couple stuck in my face. But in a New York Times review of the one before last, the writer said something like, "Robbins needs to make up his mind between whether he wants to be funny or serious." And I remember thinking, 'I'll make my mind up when God makes up his.' How can you read the newspapers every day or watch TV news and not see that the world is simultaneously most tragically serious and ridiculously funny? If I have learned anything in my life, it is that there is no wisdom without playfulness. All that the truly wise teachers I have met have in common is a kind of childlike playfulness that seems to go hand in hand with enlightenment.

I want to edify as I entertain―Cancer is the teacher sign―but I don't want to be pedantic or heavy-handed about it. I write fiction rather than essays because it's just ever so much more fun. You're in the same business that God is in, plus you can get away with linguistic gymnastics a lot easier in fiction. But there is a particular breed of fiction reviewer I call plot junkies, people who only review plots, and these are the ones who are likely to describe my work as "zany," a word which, along with "whimsical," I have increasingly come to despise.

The trouble is, that average reviewer in America is totally unfamiliar with both the main sources for my writing, which are, first, my interest in Asian systems of liberation, and second, Greek mythology. I don't mean retelling Greek myths like Updike and others, but going back and drawing from the same well of the collective unconscious. Reviewers also describe my work as "cartoonish," which I take as a compliment, because I love cartooning, and cartooning is very Greek. The creators of the Greek myths worked like cartoonists, painting in big bold strokes without a lot of physical or psychological detail. There's frequent and often kinky sex. Supernatural and fantastic events are presented as if they were ordinary everyday experience. Animals and inanimate objects are often as important as the human figures, and used in symbolic ways. So I'm much more interested in mythospace than cyberspace. As I think I say somewhere in this book, "Man has always defined himself through narration." Trouble is, now corporations tell our stories for us. And the message of the corporate story is always the same: To be special you must conform, to be valid you must consume.

On love

Our sensual energy is the most powerful energy we possess, which is why it's so baffling that every religious system in modern history has suppressed the sensual. Only in Hindu tantra did they have the wisdom and courage to employ sensuality and harness it for spiritual purposes. Sex and drugs, that's where it's always been. Rocket fuel to blast off into enlightenment.

I only really understood that I'm different from a lot of other men when I started paying a little attention to golf. I got interested because so many men I knew were playing it: artists, not corporate types. I couldn't understand the attraction. For me, golf is basketball for men who can't jump and chess for men who can't think. But I think I've got to the bottom of it. Most men secretly hate women and love golf. I, on the other hand. . . .

Until 13 years ago I was a serial monogamist. I had this history of three-year relationships and two-year flings. I don't consider them failures; I may have pissed some people off, but as a matter of fact I am still friends with most of my former girlfriends. But getting to know a strange woman intimately is such a thrill that I've wanted to experience it over and over again. I love the idea of the mail-order bride, though I've never got that far. To bring a strange woman into your home and become totally intimate with her. . . .

On marriage

About 14 years ago I had been unattached for some time and was quite happy that way. But one day I performed a wedding ceremony for someone from Microsoft, and weddings always make me lusty, so after the service I started looking around for talent, and I saw a cute little blonde who seemed to be unattached, and there was no food at the reception, only cake, so I went up to the little blonde and asked her to dinner. So some while later she called me at home and said, "I'm coming through La Conner on my way to the San Juans, and since you bought me dinner, I'd like to return the favor." So she came, and she brought Alexa, who is tall and dark, with her.

So we all went out to dinner, and I found myself sitting between light and dark, which is where we all are, isn't it, and I kept feeling more attracted to the dark. So when they were saying goodbye after dinner, which I ended up paying for, by the way, the blonde gave me a little kiss and went out the door to the car. So as Alexa was about to go out the door herself, she leaned over and gave me a little kiss too, and there was this shudder of electricity. We sort of looked at each other a moment and then she kissed me again. And then she left too.

I didn't pursue it. Ten or 12 days later, getting toward Christmas, I got a little package in the mail: from Alexa, just a note, thanks for dinner, and a key chain with one of those glitter-filled magic wands attached, and a key painted with purple nail polish. And a Seattle phone number.

Well, what's a guy to do? I called her. She was in the tub. Great, warm telephone voice. "Thanks for the note. What's the key?" "The key to your heart," she said. Oh. Well, want to get together some time? Sure, how about Saturday? We agreed she'd come up to visit me because I was still feeling much too independent and cocky to go down there. But there must have been something going on with me because when I called the Black Swan to book a table I asked the proprietor to order in a bottle of Roederer Cristal, so I can't claim to have been entirely oblivious.

Next morning over a truck-stop breakfast of biscuits and gravy and long-neck Buds she mentioned that she'd been psychic since adolescence and that she made her living reading the Tarot. So I said, "You should read the cards for me sometime," and she looked at me with these green wolf eyes and said, "I already did." And I said, Oh reaaally, what did they say? And she said, "Well, essentially, they said you were going to lose your heart." And I, still cocky, said, "To whom?" And she just looked at me and shook her head, like "You Kartoffelkopf, you just don't get it, do you?" And I didn't. But I soon did. January 17. We'll have been together 13 years and three months on Monday.

On his readers

I love my readers, they seem to me to be nimble-minded and fun. This always hasn't been true, it certainly wasn't in the '80s, but my audience these days is probably 80 percent kids in their teens and 20s: the generation we've been told were not going to read, the hackers and the slackers. And I think they're great, I love hanging out with them; the kids are all right.

Ten books everybody should read because they're not remotely enlightened until they do

Understanding Media by Marshall MacLuhan
The Archaic Revival by Terence McKenna
The Tao of Physics by Frijdof Capra
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
The Masks of God by Joseph Campbell
On Glory Roads by Eleanor Munro
The Banquet Years by Roger Shattuck
The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets compiled by Barbara G. Walker
News of the Universe by Robert Bly
The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

Six things I'm glad I wrote

I never go back and read my books; I'm saving that for my golden years. But I retain a strong affection for:
*the passage in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues building up to the first description of Sissy Hankshaw's enormous thumbs
*the opening gambit in Jitterbug Perfume: "The beet is the most intense of vegetables. . . ."
*the bed mite passage from Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

In the new book I'm fond of:
*the riff on Jahweh and Lucifer settling out of court
*the place on page 272 about making a morning social call without showering: "He'd awakened too late to bathe properly, and Cupid's briny chlorines clung to him like clamskin britches."
*page 314's metaphors in celebration of the hymen

Five men of wisdom and power who set an example for us all

*Alan Watts, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century in his own right, not merely as an interpreter of Eastern systems of liberation. Like very few philosophers, he actually lived his philosophy.
*Morris Graves
*Oscar Wilde, for his example and his writing both. He had an intense social conscience, he was generous to everyone, accurately observant of his time, enlightened in many areas as well as wonderfully witty. He was a great man who happened to fall in love with a jerk.
*Friedrich Nietzsche
*Allan Ginsburg. Somebody was talking about visiting a Third World village and seeing the children suffering from undernourishment and disease, and he said, I just wanted to go up to those children and hug them. And the person he was talking to said, If you'd been Ginsburg you would have.

Seven albums I'd want with me if I was marooned on a desert island

*Dylan: Blonde on Blonde, probably, or Blood on the Tracks
*The opera choruses of Verdi, 'specially the lament of the Hebrew slaves from Nabucco
*Laurie Anderson's Big Science
*The Threepenny Opera (1959 original cast with Lotte Lenya)
*Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man
*The Beatles' Greatest Hits, if there is such an album; I would choose the one with "All My Loving" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand," because I am convinced that time will prove they are right up there with the best of Schubert.
*Perez Prado's Havana 3 AM, so if I were stuck on the island alone I could dance by myself

Read Tom Robbin's Here in Geoduck Junction.

The Paradox of God

2007-09-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

I started Tom Robbins’ last novel yesterday, Villa Incognito. (You might say I’m doing the Alpha-Omega thing: going from his first to his last...) Within the first five pages I found a wonderful description of the paradoxical nature of God:

Before moving on, however, we must address the probability that the perceptive reader will have noticed in our narration an apparent and perhaps troubling inconsistency. Unless the author is simply too careless and sloppy to be trusted, why does he sometimes write “Tanuki” (singular, individual, a capitalized proper noun) and at other times, even in the same paragraph, write “tanukis” (plural, generic, an uncapitalized common noun)? The explanation is simple. This badgerish creature, like God, is both one and many.

Both. In the same instant. Like God.

As anybody who knows anything about the Unknowable well knows, “God” and “gods” are interchangeable. The exclusivistic patriarchal Jehovah/Allah freaks are not incorrect when they insist that there is but one Supreme Being and that “he” is immutable and absolute. However, neither are the wide-eyed inclusive pagans and primitives wrong when they recognize gods of fire alongside gods of rivers; honor a moon goddess, a crocodile spirit, and deities who reside in, among countless other places, tree trunks, rain clouds, peyote buttons, and neon lighting (especially the flashing whites and the greens).

Thus, if the reader is wise enough not to try to impose human limitations or narrow notions of uniformity on the Divine Principle, is nimble-minded enough to realize that he or she can be (perhaps should be!) simultaneously monotheistic and pantheistic, then he or she will have scant problem in accepting the paradoxical essence of our small friend, Tanuki of the tanukis.

Nice. Hindus have a phrase for this: Achintya Bheda Abheda Tattva. The Truth (tattva) is simultaneously and inconceivably (achintya) one and yet different (bheda abheda). It was in support and in the pursuit of this philosophy/theology of mystery that I named my blog, Facilitating Paradox.

Recent long Interview with Tom

2007-08-17T22:55:00.001-07:00

Posted by Dale

Steve Gillard has sent me a link to a long interview with Tom at Bankrate.com.

http://tinyurl.com/2gfynt

Welcome a new blog team member

2007-08-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

Please welcome David Soliday as the new Dharma Yum blogteam member. David has his own blog at Facilitating Paradox. http://facilitatingparadox.com/b2e/index.php/a

Educated and yet still wise, David's posts have shined on the AFTRLife Discussion List http://groups.yahoo.com/aftrlife/ and we are happy to have him contribute here.

Dale

If you could have extra features...

2007-08-03T13:00:00.001-07:00

If you could request another novel to flesh out some part of one of Tom's novels, which would it be? I'd like to see more about Outlaw College, Amandas future and Thor, Sissy and her kids, the Cowgirls, or Villa Incognito twice as long. What would y'all like to see?

Dale

Meet author Tom Robbins and support sensible marijuana policy!

2007-07-30T16:34:00.001-07:00

Marijuana Policy Project Alert: Mass. July 25, 2007

Meet author Tom Robbins and support sensible marijuana policy!
Bestselling author Tom Robbins, who has penned such classics as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy (CSMP) invite you to attend a VIP reception hosted by Woody Kaplan and Wendy Kaminer at their beautiful home overlooking the Charles River in Boston's Back Bay. This event will raise much-needed funds for the signature drive to place a binding marijuana decriminalization initiative on the November 2008 state ballot.
Find out more about this event and purchase tickets here.
The signature drive, which must begin on September 19 and end on November 21, will cost approximately $350,000. If we can raise the money for the signature drive this summer and fall, CSMP will be able to concentrate the next stage of fundraising on money for voter outreach and educational TV and radio ads. The initiative would change Massachusetts state law so that personal possession of a small amount of marijuana would be a civil fine instead of a criminal sanction and would be the first-ever statewide ballot initiative to remove all criminal penalties for the possession of marijuana.
Who: Woody Kaplan, Wendy Kaminer, and special guest author Tom Robbins will be joined by MPP's Rob Kampia and CSMP's campaign manager Whitney A. Taylor
What: VIP reception to support the Committee for Sensible Marijuana Policy
Where: 2 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
When: Friday, September 14, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $250 in advance or $350 at the door.
Purchase tickets here.
Please join us for this VIP reception and learn about how CSMP intends to pass the first statewide ballot initiative to decriminalize marijuana anywhere in the country!
For questions about ticketing, please call CSMP campaign manager Whitney A. Taylor at (617) 901-7765. Help fund MPP's projects
MPP hopes that each of the 100,000 subscribers on our national e-mail list will make at least one financial donation to MPP's work in 2007. Please click here to donate now.
MPP will be able to tackle all of the projects in its 2007 strategic plan if you and other allies are generous enough to fund our work.
Popular Links:
MPP's home page
FAQ
State-by-state medical marijuana laws
MPP news releases
2006 strategic plan
Download hand-outs
About the Marijuana Policy Project
MedicalMarijuanaProCon.org

Page 203 of Cowgirls

2007-07-23T12:38:00.001-07:00

Posted by Dale

Most cultures have said it -- perhaps with the exception of Attila the Hun’s people—and it doesn’t take cosmic wisdom to realize that if we treated people the way we would like to be treated (this is in general and doesn’t apply to our impulse to get pleasured by every hottie that comes along) then the world would be a pretty good place. Robbins reminds me of the potential we as humans have to live such beautiful lives and instead we so often get mired in all the base emotions. As Robbins writes, “mankind [is] a royal fuck-up”. With that understood how can we live the best lives we can imagine?

Happy Birthday "Tom Robbins" from the blogosphere.

2007-07-22T21:14:00.001-07:00

Google Blogs Alert for: "Tom Robbins"

On this day in History, July 22
By geri
And today is the birthday of Tom Robbins, the American author and master of the sentence, -- who wrote two of my favorite novels, Jitterbug Perfume (1984) and Still Life With Woodpecker (1980) -- born in 1936.
Good News Network - http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org

Reader's Almanac: 7/22
By bpeschel@earthlink.net(bpeschel@earthlink.net)
Tom Robbins, who was born today in 1936 LINKS OF THE DAY RETURN TO LAOS: From Detectives Beyond Borders, a review of a novel set in Southeast Asia with the evocative title "The Coroner's Lunch." Why authors deliberately choose bland ...
Bill Peschel - http://www.planetpeschel.com/index

Interversity: The Saturday Knights
By pmmasterson(mpardaiolo)
Barfly: I like reading Tom Robbins, Chuck Palahniuk, Hunter S. Thompson et al. I definitely get motivated off that stuff. Caddyshack, Big Lebowski are a couple movies I can't burn out on. Tilson: Wild life ... wild people ... wild ...
Audiversity - http://audiversity.com/

Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins
Acceptable: Worn cover, creasing to a few leaves. $3.25.
Lorem Ipsum Books New Arrivals - http://www.loremipsumbooks.com

On this day in history- Jul 22
By looking4good(looking4good)
1936 - Tom Robbins was born. American author. 1937 - New Deal: The United States Senate votes down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to add more justices to the Supreme Court of the United States. ...
Nothingandall - http://nothingandall.blogspot.com/

The Duty of Superior Men and Women, Cowgirls, p. 201

2007-07-21T14:22:00.001-07:00

Posted by: Monkey Wrench Mary
In times of widespread chaos and confusion, it has been the duty of more advanced human beings--artists, scientists, clowns and philosophers--to create order. In times such as ours, however, when there is too much order, too much management, too much programming and control, it becomes the duty of superior men and women to fling their favorite monkey wrenches into the machinery. To relieve the repression of the human spirit, they must sow doubt and disruption. ~The Chink~

Well now, has there ever been a more concentrated soup of superior minds and monkey wrenches than right here on the afTRlife? I mean, who else can loose a flock of red-headed woodpeckers (in all their forms), tribes of Clockwork shamen, troups of tightrope walking arialists, battalions of baboons and cans o' beans, conch shells and dirty socks?

In celebration of the Birth of Our Tom, perhaps tomorrow would be an appropriate day to launch our Monkey Wrench Revolution. The time to get out our most creative arsenal of pranks, hijinx, capers and monkey wrenches and fling them with all our might, in tandem and with great joy, into the machinery.

I've recently learned (news sometimes travels slowly to the northwest wilds) that people in Japan (or was it Hong Kong?) take the day of Buddha's birth off from work. I propose that we all call in well on Monday to allow for recovery from tomorrow's celebration of Tom's birthday. It's the least we can do.

With bowed head and raised fist, I cry~
Revolution, Sisters and Brothers!

~ PEACE ~
Nonconform Freely

Nothing Worth Dying For; Cowgirls, Page 197

2007-07-17T21:47:00.001-07:00

Posted by Mary

Here it is, then. Right here on page 19, at the end of the third full paragraph, spoken by the Chink (Himself):

"There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for."

These simple and elegant words should be carved in stone above every capitol building, every temple, every courthouse around the world. They should be scrawled in every alleyway, tattoo'd in every parlor and embedded in every backstreet dream. They should be shouted from mountaintops, whispered sweetly in little ears, tapped out in morse code and rapped hip-hop style in song. And certainly they should be inscribed on every coin.

They say it's your birthday.

2007-07-15T03:50:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dale
Happy Birthday Tom! July 22 is the magical day.
Snail mail to PO Box 338, LaConner, WA 98257
Email to aftrlife@gmail.com (send voice or video files if you like
Phone it in to (805) 754-2441

In Honor of National Kissing Day

2007-07-06T19:39:00.001-07:00

by MaryW

Today, July 6, is National Kissing Day (at least here up over). To commerate this tingling bliss that "calls the nymphs and satyrs back to life," let's turn to page 99 in Wild Ducks Flying Backward. As you read, dear afTRlifers, let the words form in a soft, North Carolina drawl and kissing becomes a hot honeyed bourbon...kisssin'. Ready? Here we go:

Kissing is our greatest invention. On the list of great inventions, it ranks higher than the Termos bottle and the Airstream trailer. Higher, even, than room service, possibly because the msain reason room service was created was so that people could stay in bed and kiss without going hungry.

...Kissing molded the face into a brand new shape, the pucker shape, and then, like some renegade scientist grafting plops of sea urchin onto halves of ripe pink plumns, it found a way to fuse the puckers, to meld them and animate them, so that one pucker rubbing against another generates heat, moisture, and a luminous neuro-mmuscular friction...

...The best kisses...are those between lovers, because those are the consequential ones, the risky ones, the transformative ones, the ones that call the nymphs and satyrs back to life, the many-layered kisses that we dive into as into a fairy-tale frog pond or the murky gene pool of our origins...

No other flesh like lip flesh! No meat like mouth meat! The musical clink of tooth against tooth! The wonderful curiosity of tongues!

A toe-tingling, lip-smacking happy kisssin' day to you all!

MaryW

Fourth of July

2007-07-04T13:13:00.001-07:00

by MaryW

Today is the Fourth of July; America's birthday. Putting aside for now my personal feelings regarding the arrogance and brutality surrounding the birth of this nation, tonight might be an appropriate time to recall Tom's thoughts as expressed in a Seattle Weekly interview in 2003:

Quite probably the worst thing about the inevitable and totally unjustifiable war with Iraq is that there's no chance the U.S. might lose it. America is a young country, and intellectually, emotionally, and physically, it has been exhibiting all the characteristics of an adolescent bully, a pubescent punk who's too big for his britches and too strong for his age. Someday, perhaps, we may grow out of our mindless, pimple-faced arrogance, but in the meantime, it might do us a ton of good to have our butts kicked. Unfortunately, like most of the targets we pick on, Iraq is much too weak to give us the thrashing our continuously overbearing behavior deserves, while Saddam is even less deserving of victory than Bush.
~ Seattle Weekly, March 5, 2003 ~

What's to be done with this violent child? Fratboy counselors advise that violent behavior stems from low self esteem; but could it be that our own bully boy suffers from too much self esteem?

How to deal with this bully that is us? True, it might do us good to get our butts kicked, teach us a lesson...but isn't there another way? A time-out?

What if...what if each of us in this country assumed parental responsibilties for our out of control child. What if... all of us together took a clue from Mr. Robbins--neutralized hatred with love, tears with laughter, violence with play, brutality with gentleness, theivery with generousity, horror with joy. What if...we taught this child that is us--to write an epic poem, one that would take a hundred years (or two) to set down in rhyme; that the power of idyllic metaphor is so vivid it can become our reality. What if... we sat this unruly child down in a roomful of fingerpaints and let him paint his way out of the corner, taught him to share his milk and cookies and play niclely with others.

Tom said in another interview (can't remember the cite just now) that "there are some things worth fighting for, few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for." Good to remember and a vital lesson to teach our children.

Especially the bullies.

Have a wonderful Fourth of July. Celebrate your independance--nonconform freely.

Daffy Yum, Cowgirls, Page 178

2007-06-28T21:57:00.001-07:00

Bonanza Jellybean is the finest letter writer I know. Just listen to this:

Riding the range in the spring sunshine I see my shadow against the grass and I swear that shadow extends far beyond this place. This prairie. This world. It's like my life is sparkling in every direction, through all of space and all of time. You of all people understand.

I love you.

Bonanza Jellybean

No matter what our circumstance or station in life, we've all been blessed with just such moments, usually when we least expect them. In fact, that is precisely when they are most likely to appear. The moment our expectations and desires fall away we enter a sparkling state of grace that transcends space and time.

That Bonanza Jellybean sure got it right.

Love and a coyote moon to you all~

MaryW

Review of Wild Ducks Flying Backward

2007-06-26T14:49:00.001-07:00

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

2007-06-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

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

Like-minded blog

2007-06-25T16:56:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dale

I've added a new blog to the blogroll. It's Facilitating Paradox by aftrlifer, David.

Good stuff.

Cowgirls, Page 172--Voluntary Craziness

2007-06-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

"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."

Live Blogging the Zeitgeist

2007-06-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Robbinsesque Scholarship

2007-06-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

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.

Tom's work habits

2007-06-18T18:02:00.000-07:00

"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.

Page 166, Cowgirls--The Page That Says It All

2007-06-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

(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.

Daffy Yum Page 163

2007-06-13T19:03:00.000-07:00

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.)

Cowgirls, Page 157--The Whoopers!

2007-06-07T20:55:00.000-07:00

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? :~)

Sunflowers

2007-05-26T10:21:00.000-07:00

After Tom's 1970 visit to Japan, ostensibly to research the tancho cranes which most closely resembled the whoopers featured in Cowgirls, but most importantly to visit his brother/friend Darrell Bob Houston who was there on a year-long Alicia Patterson fellowship, Darrell Bob went to work for the LA Times and Tom returned to La Connor. During his time on the LA Times' national desk, Darrell Bob worked earnestly on his book, "King of the Midnight Blue," a fictionalized account of skyjacker DB Cooper, based on the gleaming persona of Neal Cassady.

Darrell Bob and Tom kept in close touch through letters between LA and La Connor. Darrell Bob shared both his euphoric joys and successes and heart-wrenching disappointments with Tom. Finally, in 1973, the latter began to pile up--immense and unforeseen events, both personal and professional, and even the strong, irrepressible Darrell Bob began to bow toward despondency. One day, Darrell Bob looked up from his desk at the LA Times to see none other than his friend Tom Robbins standing there, without a word, holding a sunflower "as big as a Volkswagen." The last they were seen from the vantage of the LA Times, Tom and Darrell Bob were headed north--to home. Is it a coincidence that on page 145 of Cowgirls, Tom describes just such a sunflower? "Giant sunflowers, like junkie scarecrows on the nod, dozed in one spot with their dry heads drooped upon their breastbones."

Cowgirls, Page 145

2007-05-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

Sissy distinguishes the horse-loving set from the cowgirls. To the former, admittedly or not, the magnificent steeds are merely "thousand-pound organic vibrators," sophisticated masturbating machines. They are given by parents to their little blossoming girls as a diversion from the temptations of boys, and some of those girls never quite outgrow their passion for a good equine romp.

That, however, is not the cowgirl way.

Further along--

"Their lives extended another day, flies buzzed everything within their range, monotonously eulogizing themselves, like the patriots who persist in praising the glory of a culture long after it is decadent and doomed."

Cowgirls, Page 133

2007-05-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

"Politics are for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it."

Oh, that gopi/Krishna/Chink wisdom...

Shhhh...wait. Listen.
Is that a flute?

I must be going...

Ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee)

Belly Up--or Down?

2007-05-06T13:54:00.000-07:00

At the Kushiro tancho reserve in eastern Hokkaido, Mr. Takahashi, dedicated caretaker, explains that as a rule, the cranes mate for life. If one crane of a mated pair dies, the survivor will protect the corpse for a long period. If the corpse is belly side up, the survivor will "remarry" as if it recognizes the death, but if the corpse is belly side down, the survivor will not remarry. (worldhop.com

A new aftrlifer in town

2007-03-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

All decked out in Frog Pajamas and ready to party, Noah Thomas, son of aftrlifer elzbelita, is looking good. And there ain't no half about that sleep.

P. Diddy vs Tanuki

2007-03-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

In a news item quoted by litbrit at Shakespeare's Sister raccoon dogs aka Tanukis are being used for fur on clothing illegally. P. Diddy's line of clothing had "dog" fur on its collars as unadvertised. Major clothing stores are being cited as selling many lines of clothing with the dead dog skin as an accessory.

On a happier note, Wikipedia says,

A common schoolyard song in Japan (the tune of which can be heard in the arcade game Ponpoko and a variation of which is sung in the Studio Ghibli film Pom Poko) makes explicit reference to the tanuki's anatomy:

Tan Tan Tanuki no kintama wa,
Kaze mo nai no ni,
Bura bura
(Roughly translated, this means "Tan-tan-tanuki's testicles, there isn't even any wind but still go swing-swing-swing".[1] A more precise translation would be "tan tan tanuki's balls, even when there's no wind, go swing-swing" [citation needed]. It then proceeds to continue for several verses, with many regional variations. It is sung to the melody of an American Baptist hymn called Shall We Gather At The River?.[2])

A hymn to Tanuki's big balls.

Daffy Yum--Page 60

2007-03-03T20:23:00.000-08:00

Ah...La Lune...

There is magic afoot tonight...the full moon outside the window shining down upon page 60 where it also shines upon the girls at the Rubber Rose Ranch. This is the true harmonic conversion. And what is the sincronomious harmony we hear so clearly on this moonlit night? It is the ethereal and haunting refrain

Cheese...

Cheese...

Cheese...

:~)

Blog Talk

2007-03-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

give me one reason to be beautifulBy shadowmeursault(shadowmeursault) --both from Tom Robbins' Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates Giants Orbiting. still-shot from Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask. * 'we' refers to me and the mouse in my pocket. the mouse in my pocket, by the by, fully endorses and agrees with ...
Without Mercy or Malice - http://shadowmeursault.livejournal.com/

Relaxing in Robertson’s rock poolsBy Cat He hoped we were enjoying our VD (Valentine’s Day) and we talked literature (he actually had pretty great taste in books - Tom Robbins, Paulo Coelho), travel, spirituality, youth work (he teaches art to “disadvantaged black South ...Traveling Cat - http://www.travelingcat.com

Rache gets EU nod to export biltongRache gets EU nod to export biltong By Tom Robbins Cape Town - ... to start exhibiting the product at food trade fairs in London and Germany from next ...EU Politics Today: EU South Africa... - http://eupolitics.einnews.com/news/eu-south-africa-trade

Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom RobbinsBy pagepassage(pagepassage) "Inessential insanities are a brittle amalgamation of ambition, aggression, and pre-adolescent anxiety--garbage that should have been dumped long ago. Essential insanities are those impulses one instinctively senses are virtuous and
Page Passage - http://community.livejournal.com/pagepassage/

'ne mozaigi lan?'*By Erinc Salor(Erinc Salor) (For a taste, I recommend Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume) This is a reason, I suspect, to love Brussels. Maybe not as much as London, but still, the subway is shabby an dirty enough to be worthy of a real city and one can still eat one ...

Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, because it has stuff like "Elmer, the Greek god of glue" and "playing octogenarian mermaid". 5. One book that made you cry. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. They were buckets, I tell you. The Daily Inquibbler - http://inquibbler.livejournal.com

Book meme (and okay, my last post today :p)By Fil of the Future(Fil of the Future) Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, because it has stuff like "Elmer, the Greek god of glue" and "playing octogenarian mermaid". 5. One book that made you cry. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. They were buckets, I tell you. ...The Daily Inquibbler - http://inquibbler.livejournal.com/

chromemagpie @ 2007-03-01T21:35:00By chromemagpie(chromemagpie) 2. jPod - Douglas Coupland 1. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues - Tom Robbins This was another gifted book from my (now former) Little Boss. The entire thing is handwritten, with drawing and sketch throughout. Cool book.Ooooh! Shiny! - http://chromemagpie.livejournal.com/

Still life with Woodpecker by Tom RobbinsWriting on inside cover or fly. Worn cover. Spine creased. $3.00.

Before Christmas I was talking to a friend about what I was ...By themusk\n\nI realized the Bible was much more like a Tom Robbins novel than I ever imagined. In fact, Thomas Pynchon couldn’t be more abstract and strange than Revelations. I’m always open to any possibility or idea, but the more I seek in any ...
Lorem Ipsum Books New Arrivals - http://www.loremipsumbooks.com

Before Christmas I was talking to a friend about what I was ...By themusk I realized the Bible was much more like a Tom Robbins novel than I ever imagined. In fact, Thomas Pynchon couldn’t be more abstract and strange than Revelations. I’m always open to any possibility or idea, but the more I seek in any ...Spent Elemental Ratios - http://themusk.wordpress.com

Rain gone down

2007-03-01T16:33:00.000-08:00

My ISP is down today temporarily. That's why you can't get into the Aftrlife website. Thanks for trying though.

Have you seen your 23 today?

2007-02-26T07:53:00.000-08:00

No I don't mean the new movie with Jim Carrey although I am looking forward to seeing that. I'm talking about the number 23, the real star of that movie. Tom Robbins believes as William Burroughs believed that 23 is a special number that shows up in syncronistic ways in our day to day activities. Tom has said that he doesn't get out of bed in the morning until he hears the number 23 on the radio.

The latest example of 23 that I've seen is the story of the sorority that kicked out all it's overweight, ethnic or socially awkward girls. They had 23 girls before they started their jihad against the unseemly. They ended up with 12 skinny white girls, 6 of whom quit in protest at the culling. They plan to use these "attractive" girls to rebuild the sorority into the image of their warped sense of what a sorority should be.

Stuffed full of Robbins

2007-02-21T20:08:00.000-08:00

A new toystore builds bears and quotes Woodpecker.

A new location of the stuffed-animal toystore Build-a-Bear recently opened in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Large lettering on the wall greets customers as they enter, and it reads: "It's never too late to have a happy childhood." My daughter "got" the quote and liked it. I'm pleased she's only 9 but has already gotten a little dose of Robbins. (Forgive me if I keep Switters away from her a little bit longer...)

Daffy Yum - Day 40

2007-02-11T07:16:00.000-08:00

I love this quote, "Maybe sound travels further in time than in space."

Dharma Yum

A Light Touch

Tales of the Wiley Peyote

Book Review: Anarcho Grow by T.A.Sedlack

A Gathering of Crete'ns.

Anarcho Grow author on tour

Tom's Grassroots Efforts

Daffy Yum: Indigone

Spoiler Alert- Daffy Yum- Jitterbug Perfume page 317

Your Opinion of B is for Beer?

Do Redheads Feel More Pain?

Googled Tom

Beer Notes

Moontroll captured a recent Tom Robbins appearance on video

Tom and Alexis in the Wind

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 31, Daffy Yum

JITTERBUG PERFUME, Week 30, Apr. 26 – May 4

Sand Grains Gallery

Week 21, Jitterbug Perfume, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 22, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 20, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 18, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 17, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 16, Daffy Yum

Week 15, Jitterbug Perfume, Daffy Yum

Pssst...B is for Beer! Spread the word!

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 14, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 13, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 12

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 11, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 10, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 8, Daffy Yum

Hearing and Looking

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 5

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 4, Daffy Yum

Week 3, Jitterbug Perfume, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 2, Daffy Yum

Jitterbug Perfume, Week 1, Daffy Yum

The Debate

Daffy Yum Comment Thread

What is Daffy Yum?

Culture Wars

Daffy Yum - Day 0

Daffy Yum - Famous Last Words

TR's Jitterbug Perfume and DB Houston's King of the Midnight Blue, goes down easy with Tecate, Salt & Lemon

Tom Robbins Day

Just another old hippy

Daffy Yum, P. 131, SLWW

Playing The Race Car

Cowgirls, the Play

Zach Solomon's Thesis on Art

Disparately Seeking Robbins

Passwords to Grow By

Dr. Tom's Rainy Day(s) Miracle Cure (SLWW, p. 71)

AFTRLIFE Official Self-Epitaph Document

Robbins was wrong (sorta kinda) by Dale

Still Life With Woodpecker, P. 2 (or x)

Blogger LIkes StillLife

Bluer Than Indigo, Mr. Robbins, and Darrell Bob Houston

Steve Gillard on the Mystery

Cowgirls, Page 325--Happy Thanksgiving!

Schnooner School

An Interview with Charles L. Heald

- Sent Using Google Toolbar

TOM ROBBINS: My life and work.

Forget cyberspace. The Northwest's master of Zen-punk prose spends his time exploring mythospace. And here, with a new novel hitting stores this week, he speaks out about what he sees, how he works, who he loves, and what really, really matters in the end.

Roger Downey

published: May 03, 2000

Rick Dahms

The Paradox of God

Recent long Interview with Tom

Welcome a new blog team member

If you could have extra features...

Meet author Tom Robbins and support sensible marijuana policy!

Page 203 of Cowgirls

Happy Birthday "Tom Robbins" from the blogosphere.

The Duty of Superior Men and Women, Cowgirls, p. 201

Nothing Worth Dying For; Cowgirls, Page 197

They say it's your birthday.

In Honor of National Kissing Day