...St. Jude, Patron of Lost Causes, Assuage Me...

O apostoli Judae Thaddeum verus Jesu et Mariae frater , saluto vos in honorem et laudem Dei et sanctorum. Laudo et gratias ago Deo pro omnibus quae retribuit tibi , et ab Apostolis , et per vos Ecclesiae. In humilitate oro ut pro me apud Deum, misericordia inspexerunt me . Oh , noli despicere animam meam, oratio pauperis ; speravi non confundar in aeternum ! Vobis datum est Deus hominem ad iuvandas maxime desperatorum . O, in adiutorium meum intende : ut misericordiam Dei laudem . Tota vita, et non erit, tibi erit gratum esse , nisi fidelis clientis a vobis in cælum. Amen .

...with head deep in revision...Book Lover Retreat in the meantime...

Digging deep into Filipino Cookbook on the last leg of a third revision, getting it ready for the editor, then book cover.  In the meantime, I'll post a Book Lover's Retreat of sorts.  A cornucopia of resources.  Laudant illa, sed ista legunt - "Some writing is praised, but others are read."

Hand lettered literary artby Christina Lembo of Franny & FrankyDesigns

LITERARY CULTURE:
http://literature.alltop.com/
http://www.theguardian.com/books
http://www.reddit.com/r/literature/
http://www.themillions.com/
http://recommendedreading.tumblr.com/
http://lareviewofbooks.org/
http://www.theawl.com/
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/
http://www.baltimorebookfestival.com/
https://litreactor.com/
http://www.scribnermagazine.com/

LITERARY THINGS
https://www.etsy.com/market/book_lover_gift
http://www.uncommongoods.com/occasions?gclid=CKik3eKNosQCFYc8aQod7kEA-A
http://www.buzzfeed.com/alannaokun/insanely-clever-gifts-for-book-lovers#.ddvxZGKwJ

LITERARY SELLERS
http://www.hudsonbooksellers.com/best-of-2014
http://www.abebooks.com/books/Bookstores/
http://www.bookweb.org/
http://www.hamiltonbook.com/

Tara Hills, Anaheim, Brookhurst and Crescent Ave

     One of the first largesse apartment complexes in north-west Anaheim is called Tara Hills.  Brookhurst Junior High is diagonally located from a gas station that had been there for as long as I can remember.  All the other buildings on the east side of Brookhurst grew over the years.  Next to the gas station, there was a large dirt lot.  The neighborhood kids and I would pull our off-road bikes out to the poorly designed track.  It was a lack of vision on everyone's part, although I blamed the older kids, the one with any strength, for not doing more.  There was one jumping hill.  The rest was a winding dirt track.  After it rained there were puddles that would last for days.  It was a mess and mud would fling up our backs if we rode it.

     In the brown angular complex, with plateau upon plateau of steps and stairwells and courtyards, there was a day care.  These were the days before 'pre-school' (right behind the Rental Office).  There was no learning here.  Shit, even kindergarten, what little exposure I had to it (I was skipped to 1st), was barely enough to be called learning.  The pre-school was loosely structured.  (Apparently it has changed into a Montessori since.)  We were fenced in high gates, surrounded by the tallest complex structures.  Sunlight came in, but there was barely any nature in our small court.  Cities often fail at the natural touch.

     There was a playground with play sand that was infinitely moist.  It was hard packed because of it.  It didn't drain.  If you hit it the wrong way, it was as bad as hitting the meandering sidewalks that flowed around the grounds.  The kids wandered around it aimlessly.  There was simply not a lot to do.  The sand was wet and stinky.  The playground equipment was wet and not fun.  We felt like Clarence did in Richard III.  Our reprieve was outdoors, but only somewhat.  Children's faces were a blur, the earliest memories do that.  We see the macro.

     ...
     Famously remembered after a weekend, we found a hole in the middle of play sand.  I walked around it.  It had to have been three feet down.  We all speculated why it came to be.  More than likely it was to be the base for some new set.  I walked around the hole, dying to jump in.  I walked away, the the periphery of the fences and turned back.  The dark shadow circle feet from me, calling to me.   There was magic in there, surely.  I walked back, but didn't leap.  The hole was daunting enough because of the play monitor.  I lay on the side and looked down.  It would prove difficult to get out.

     There was a blur next to me.  One of the larger boys had the same idea, although he didn't have the same measure of reserve.  He jumped right in.  I flew back from the edge and smiled.  He went in.

Seconds went by and I did not see him.  He found the magic portal to another place.  He was riding rainbows on roller skates, eating Fun Dip on the way to the candy slash pizza parlor.  The grey sky cast over all of this.

     Then, out of the hole came an arm, straight up to the sky, then landing in front of me.  Then the other arm.  The top of his dark blond hair barely crested the edge.  "Get me out," he said, "Get me out."  Then as I saw his fingers claw at the wet play sand, not able to get traction to move out, he barely made it out, "Ants."

     By the time I stood up to help, he was kicking and screaming.  I looked down into the hole and he was covered in ants.  Black ants.  Ants that bite.  I can see them, wrapping their mandibles into his cheek.  I tried to help him, but he weighed twice as me.  The monitor saw us and jumped to my side and we pulled him out.  He was crying by now.  "Crap," said the 20 year old monitor as they brushed away the ants.  I didn't see the boy for a week.
     ...
     I didn't like to take naps.  They pulled out this awfully uncomfortable leatherette blue mat.  We laid them out and was in awe at the kids that actually went for it.  I took a nap once, and even then it was for no more than five minutes.  Boring.

     "Just be quiet," the indoor monitor would say.  She was an old woman and not many of the lighter shade of skin went for a brown Filipino kid.  I made squirmy motions on the mat, but tried to stay quiet.  There was no sheet to get comfy with.  It was damn hot on the mat.

     One day, as everyone slept, I turned toward the door that led to the playground.  I saw a new girl walking with her father toward the office.  She had a white blouse and a blue skirt with straps.  She had black Buster Browns and white socks.  And, one of the few times in my life, I was seeing an albino.

     She was pretty.  She had to wear dark glasses, so I never saw her eyes.  She had white curly hair that fluffed above her head.  She looked like Annie.

     Her father held her as they came to the office.  I can see on his face that the decision was already made.  He didn't like what he saw.  I had no idea of the propriety of the day, but he saw something he didn't like.  I took offense, but not exactly sure why.  There was a dissonance from what he saw and what I saw.  What I saw was fine.  What did he see?

     I tried to get her eye line, but, with the glasses, I had no idea where she was looking.  The father spoke with the indoor monitor for some time.  I just stared, laying still.  The father spoke conditionally, the monitor was growing tired of it and her answers became increasingly curt.

     They walked off and I never saw her again.  I learned of disdain.  I recognize it quickly today.

A Light in the Attic CD (Barnes & Noble)

A CD for 4.99, a simple CD:

A madman repeats his rhymes that he'd

Brought 'cross the maddening seas

By voice wrecked alike by cigarettes and weed

And alcohol and screams of singing off keys

And pounding the guitar strings just like a disease(d ape)

Strumming and smoking and wheezing reprise

Whilst drawing the finery of chardonnay (grape)

'Won't somebody stop him?' in the simplest plea

The man's clearly high on that simple CD.

"Somebody Has To" ~ A Light in the Attic ~ Shel Silverstein

Read the book, luckily at Brookhurst Junior High, where it was not banned.  Read it one weekend and fell in love in that span. Years later whilst listening to the Doctor (Demento), fell across a discourse on weed ('though I don't touch the stuff), and found the delightful in that long-running screed.

...the romance of Atrani, upon the Amalfi Coast...a place I've never been...

"Good night, sleep tight
Feels as if I could swim across the ocean

Atrani Grotto

My film star
Playing the lead in my nightly stop motion" - Hooverphonic, Amalfi

Purely in my dreams the other night, as the furthest south I've been in Italy was Rome, I wandered the rock hewn grottoes of the Amalfi Coast.  Why did my mind, in its deepest recesses, bring me here?

There was mystery in the shadows.  The bend and way of the thin streets found myself alone one second and among a throng of other wanderers the next.  She would be ahead of me, then next to me, matter-of-fact, not by play.  There was history here, in these walls.  The sun was bright and dry when I found it, it had to have been summer because the shadows were not cool in those caves.

I searched for what was dreamed.  The words Amalfi came to mind, as they are the foundation of many stories, even recent pop novels.  However, I needed to search further.  This wasn't some glib wandering, but a precise moment, and it gnaws at me.

Atrani, Night

As I searched along the Amalfi Coast of south-western Italy on a map, I came across Positano.  The hew and shape of the rock was close, but Positano is distinctive and apart of what I saw.  The concentric layered city is hard to mistake for any other place.

Then, I found Atrani.  There's what was in the recesses of my mind.  I've chalked such coincidence to the collective unconscious of Carl Jung.  I've never heard of Atrani before, but it is surely a source of fascination now.

It is ancient.  Ruins have dated back to the 1st century, of Roman design.  After raids by barbarians and saracen, Atrani would rebuild several centuries later and can be traced by the Church at 596 AD.

Church of San Salvatore de Birecto

Atrani was a seat of power in the burgeoning Duchy of Amalfi.  It was the ruling class that would reside here,  There ceremonial power was contained in the Church of San Salvatore de Birecto (founded in 940).  The quaint, secluded and somewhat secure town flourished thereafter.

[The doors of the Church were fashioned in Constantinople in 1087.  No doubt, if they are anything like the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence, they will be ornate.]

The region is best known for its fish and seafood, its cheeses, and tomatoes.  As it was the source of power over generations, many sweets were founded here, like the o'bocconotto, a sweet pastry that has a casing and filled with a quince, innovative of the time for being able to be eaten in a single bite.  There is my favored drink, limoncello, a lemon liquer derived in the southern area.

The pasta would taste of sea air, again, there are tomatoes, there is citrus.  The bounty of the sea, where harvest are brought in on nightly expeditions in lampare (fishing boats).

There is an obvious beauty here.  There is the air of intrigue.  But why dream it late into Thursday night?  What was to be found?  All I know is that it set my mind swimming all day Friday and I could think of little else.  And, today, I try to solve that mystery...perhaps the Great Mind is bringing me closer to the realization geographically.  There are still mysteries to be solved.  There are the blessed count of endless questions.  I know how I feel about that; some things are better left unanswered, it is only for us to enjoy.

And to you that I may have confused or frustrated in this matter, I can only offer my sincerity and honesty.  Knowing only that it happened, and I struggled to keep it locked away, as so many things that I should.  I will try much harder...you deserve much better than the ravings of a fool.

I'll not lead you by the hand

I'll fight what's forced of my will

I'll not take you to the places that suit me best.

I hope to lead you by the heart, and only if it is where

It wants to be.

Love seeks to make the best of two: unobstructed, unencumbered, unforced.

Acknowledged at the end of a dream, where an unheard whisper followed you

Across the parapets of an undiscovered country, 'My want is yours.'

It matters not we are where

The grass wind-swept in Bavaria

The unsleeping neighborhoods of Tokyo

The sun's light in Atrani, reflected on your raven hair

That would be the adventure

A hand willingly in mine

The gentle play of being one.

...Leonard Nimoy, Writer and Photographer...(1931-2015)...

I did not grow up as a Trekker (or Trekkie, depending on the era or the preferred parlance), but I knew of Star Trek by the Filmation series.  I would not get interested, really, until the films came out and my friends patiently turned me on to the series.  I find, today, the superior nature and true science fiction, especially compared against the space opera of Star Wars.

I fell across I am not Spock by Leonard Nimoy in seventh grade.  For some reason it had made its way to the Brookhurst Junior High Library.  I volunteered my time in putting books away, so I was familiar with every shelf.  Spock happened to be near the south-west corner of the rectangular building, about four shelves from the corner, two shelves from the top.  Colored me intrigued, which was a color I was often back then, and I read it.

[Remember, pre-Internet, there was a time of the 'word of mouth'.  Spock was one of those controversial books, only surprising if you weren't around in the 70s.  There was heated discussions on Nimoy's gall in writing such a book.  No kidding and why my intrigue.]

Having little context of Spock or Nimoy, other than knowing the latter played the former, it was a confounding read.  Come to find later my confusion was not ill-placed: the title was meant to be provocative, not by Nimoy, but by the publishers.  It wasn't even really about Spock, more about Nimoy.  So, um, there it was.

What was more interesting, when revisiting the late actor's books and photography, he had a writer's mind.  Having watched In Search Of... with a fanatical mind of a prepubescent child, his fascinating narration bespoke of someone who had a scientific curiosity, if not some desire for the supernatural.

He wrote poetry.  He was fascinated in the female form.  He craved mythology.  A provocative culmination of these, is his 2002 Shekhina.  It is the visual representation of the God of Moses and Elijah as woman.  Powerful and passionate - these are women as deity and divinity.

He would pen two autobiographies and seven books of poetry.  He wrote three screenplays, including 1981's Vincent and Star Trek IV and Trek VI.

And for the artistry, poems, recitations, my personal feeling is we never truly got the intellect behind Spock.  I've always felt that Nimoy perhaps felt that he couldn't live up to the gravitas of the character and only passively skirted at the fringes of intellect, never delving in and coming back from that journey.