· MY UNCLE TERWILLIGER ON THE ART OF EATING A POPOVER My uncle
ordered popovers from the restaurant's bill of fare. And, when they were
served, he regarded them with a penetrating stare...Then he spoke great Words
of Wisdom as he sat there on that chair: "To eat these things," said
my uncle, "you must exercise great care. You may swallow down what's
solid...BUT...you must spit out the air!" And...as you partake of the
world's bill of fare, that's darned good advice to follow. Do alot of spitting
out the hot air. And be careful what you swallow. Theodor Geisel (Dr. Suess)
"Epic Poem" from Lake Forest College commencement address 1977
· "I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the
one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know
who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap
hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of
the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and
I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about
fifteen strange seconds." Jack Kerouac ~ On The Road
· Chapter 111a ~ Poetry is nothing more than an
intensification or illumination of common objects and everyday events until
they shine with their singular nature, until we can experence their power,
until we can follow their steps in the dance, until we can discern what parts
they play in the Great Order of Love. How is this done? By fucking around with
syntax. [Definitions are limiting. Limitations are deadening. To limit oneself
is a kind of suicide. To limit another is a kind of murder. To limit poetry is
a Hiroshima of the human spirit. DANGER: RADIATION. Unauthorized personnel not
allowed on the premises of Chapter 111a.] ~ Tom Robbins "Even Cowgirls Get
The Blues"
· COWGIRL INTERLUDE (BONANZA JELLYBEAN) She is lying on the
family sofa in flannel pajamas. There is Kansas City mud on the tips and heels
of her boots, boots that have yet to savor real manure. Fourteen, she knows she
ought to remove her boots, yet she refuses. A Maverick rerun is on TV; she is
eating beef jerky, occasionally slurping. On her upper stomach, where her
pajama top has ridden up, is a small deep scar. She tells everyone, including
her school nurse, that it was made by a silver bullet. Whatever the origin of
the extra hole in her belly, there are unmistakable signs of gunfire in the
woodwork by the closet door. It was there that she once shot up one half on an
old pair of sneakers. "Self-defense," she pleaded, when her parents
complained. "It was a outlaw tennis shoe. "Billy the Ked." ~Tom
Robbins "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues"
· THE KOOL-AID WINO When I was a child I had a friend who
became a Kool-Aid wino as the result of a rupture. He was a member of a very
large and poor German family. All the older children in the family had to work
in the fields during the summer, picking beans for two-and-one-half cents a
pound to keep the family going. Everyone worked except my friend who couldn't
because he was ruptured. There was no money for an operation. There wasn't even
enough money to buy him a truss. So he stayed home and became a Kool-Aid wino.
One morning in August I went over to his house. He was still in bed. He looked
up at me from underneath a tattered revolution of old blankets. He had never
slept under a sheet in his life. "Did you bring the nickel you
promised?" he asked. "Yeah," I said. "It's here in my
pocket." "Good." He hopped out of bed and he was already
dressed. He had told me once that he never took off his clothes when he went to
bed. "Why bother?" he had said. "You're only going to get up,
anyway. Be prepared for it. You're not fooling anyone by taking your clothes
off when you go to bed." He went into the kitchen, stepping around the
littlest children, whose wet diapers were in various stages of anarchy. He made
his breakfast: a slice of homemade bread covered with Karo syrup and peanut
butter. "Let's go," he said. We left the house with him still eating
the sandwich. The store was three blocks away, on the other side of a field
covered with heavy yellow grass. There were many pheasants in the field. Fat
with summer they barely flew away when we came up to them. "Hello,"
said the grocer. He was bald with a red birthmark on his head. The birthmark
looked just like an old car parked on his head. He automatically reached for a
package of grape Kool-Aid and put it on the counter. "Five cents."
"He's got it," my friend said. I reached into my pocket and gave the
nickel to the grocer. He nodded and the old red car wobbled back and forth on
the road as if the driver were having an epileptic seizure. We left. My friend
led the way across the field. One of the pheasants didn't even bother to fly.
He ran across the field in front of us like a feathered pig. When we got back
to my friend's house the ceremony began. To him the making of Kool-Aid was a
romance and a ceremony. It had to be performed in an exact manner and with
dignity. First he got a gallon jar and we went around to the side of the house
where the water spigot thrust itself out of the ground like the finger of a
saint, surrounded by a mud puddle. He opened the Kool-Aid and dumped it into
the jar. Putting the jar under the spigot, he turned the water on. The water
spit, splashed and guzzled out of the spigot. He was careful to see that the
jar did not overflow and the precious Kool-Aid spill out onto the ground. When
the jar was full he turned the water off with a sudden but delicate motion like
a famous brain surgeon removing a disordered portion of the imagination. Then
he screwed the lid tightly onto the top of the jar and gave it a good shake.
The first part of the ceremony was over. Like the inspired priest of an exotic
cult, he had performed the first part of the ceremony well. His mother came
around the side of the house and said in a voice filled with sand and string,
"When are you going to do the dishes? . . . Huh?" "Soon,"
he said. "Well, you better," she said. When she left, it was as if
she had never been there at all. The second part of the ceremony began with him
carrying the jar very carefully to an abandoned chicken house in the back.
"The dishes can wait," he said to me. Bertrand Russell could not have
stated it better. He opened the chicken house door and we went in. The place
was littered with half-rotten comic books. The were like fruit under a tree. In
the corner was an old mattress and beside the mattress were four quart jars. He
took the gallon jar over to them, and filled them carefully not spilling a
drop. He screwed their caps on tightly and was now ready for a day's drinking.
You're supposed to make only two quarts of Kool-Aid from a package, but he
always made a gallon, so his Kool-Aid was a mere shadow of its desired potency.
And you're supposed to add a cup of sugar to every package of Kool-Aid, but he
never put any sugar in his Kool-Aid because there wasn't any sugar to put in
it. He created his onw Kool-Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by
it. ~ Richarad Brautigan "Trout Fishing in America"
· KNOCK ON WOOD (PART TWO) One spring afternoon as a child in
the strange town of Portland, I walked down to a different street corner, and
saw a row of old houses, huddled together like seals on a rock. Then there was
a long field that came sloping down off a hill. The field was covered with green
grass and bushes. On top of the hill there was a grove of tall, dark trees. At
a distance I saw a waterfall come pouring down off the hill. It was long and
white and I could almost feel its cold spray. There must be a creek there, I
thought, and it probably has trout in it. Trout. At last an opportunity to go
trout fishing, to catch my first trout, to behold Pittsburgh. It was growing
dark. I didn't have time to go and look at the creek. I walked home past the
glass whiskers of the houses, reflecting the downward rushing waterfalls of
night, would get up early and eat my breakfast and go. I had heard that it was
better to go trout fishing early in the morning. The trout were better for it.
They had something extra in the morning. I went home to prepare for trout
fishing in America. I didn't have any fishing tackle, so I had to fall back on
corny fishing tackle. Like a joke. Why did the chicken cross the road? I bent a
pin and tied it onto a piece of white string. And slept. The next morning I got
up early and ate my breakfast. I took a slice of white bread to use for bait. I
planned on making doughballs from the soft center of the bread and putting them
on my vaudevillean hook. I left the place and walked down the different street
corner. How beautiful the field looked and the creek that came pouring down in
a waterfall off the hill. But as I got closer to the creek I could see that
something was wrong. The creek did not act right. There was a strangeness to
it. There was a thing about its motion that was wrong. Finally I got closed
enough to see what the trouble was. The waterfall was just a flight of white
wooden stairs leading up to a house in the trees. I stood there for a long
time, looking up and looking down, following the stairs with my eyes, having trouble
believing. Then I knocked on my creek and heard the sound of wood. I ended up
by being my own trout and eating the slice of bread myself. The Reply of Trout
Fishing in America: There was nothing I could do. I couldn't change a flight of
stairs into a creek. The boy walked back to where he came from. The same thing
once happened to me. I remember mistaking an old woman for a trout stream in
Vermont, and I had to beg her pardon. "Excuse me," I said. "I
thought you were a trout stream." "I'm not," she said. ~Richard
Brautigan "Trout Fishing in America"
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