A Writer's Legacy

“This moment, the first instant he saw Olivia, would be burned into his memory forever. He knew that no matter what course his life might follow, the memory of his first sight of her would be something he would always cherish. She was dressed in a simple blue dress decorated with small yellow wild flowers. A lace collar surrounded her lovely slender neck. Her long black hair was tied modestly in the back, held in place by a matching blue ribbon. Her body was long and graceful. "She's perfect," Jon thought. He had never seen a woman who was so utterly perfect. She looked at Jon for a long moment before smiling. He was dumbstruck. He couldn't say anything. Her dark eyes held his. Her smile radiated like the sun emerging from a cloud. It overwhelmed him.”

                                                 From my novel, “A Matter of Time”

 Would you mind if I got serious with you? There’s something I want to write about. It’s something I swore I wouldn’t do. It’s deep and personal. You may want to stop reading this now. Check in next week when I’ll be in a more positive frame of mind. I might even crack a couple of jokes. But not now. Not at 10:15 PM on a warm July night in 2014.

It begins with my thoughts of my great-grandfather, Luis deTeves.  He was born in the city of Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel, Azores in 1851. I know almost nothing about this man. I know he immigrated to Hawaii in the 1880s. I’ve seen a photograph of him taken later in life; a lean, older man who looks like he’s spent a hard life working under a harsh sun. He was working for his family. He was working for me, a great-grandson born well after his death.

I was watching Antique Roadshow. People were showing off valuable items handed down from generation to generation. I have nothing from my great-grandfather and for good reason. He didn’t have anything. I only have a couple of things from my own father, so my own great-grandchildren will be in the same position. Nothing from me, the late dear great-grandpa David Teves.

Except for my writing.

I have cancer. As a matter of fact I’ve had two different cancers in the last year. The first one, kidney cancer, was successfully extracted from my body. The second cancer, we’ll this one is different. It’s a tough bastard called Multiple Myeloma, a blood cancer that can be treated but has no cure.

So it goes.

I used to dream of becoming a successful writer. In my mind’s eye I thought that someday I might be able to enjoy a few things in life that such a career might offer. I know now that realistically, it’s not going to happen. I have been thinking of the road ahead of me. I look at a rock that I keep on top of my writing desk, knowing that it will be around for hundreds of years, heck maybe thousands of years. after I’m gone. And like my great-grandfather Luis, I will be nothing but a faded photograph in someone’s family album.

But I do have a chance at a modest immortality through my books. I have a feeling that they will be handed down at least a couple of generations before they are forgotten. And on the Internet, they have a chance to last for as long as Amazon.com is in business.

I wrote an entry for this blog called “Who will get my records when I’m gone?” or something like that. At the time I was thinking (while slightly drunk on a fine Dillian Zinfandel) that it was my ticket to immortality. Someday I’d have a great-grandchild who will find the records in a forgotten nook in his parent’s basement and wonder, “Who the heck was this guy?”

My books are an even better chance at living for a couple of hundred years. And if my future progeny read them, they might catch a glimpse of what I was like, my soul if you believe in such things. And that’s all I really want. A chance that I will be remembered and appreciated not for the things I won’t be able to leave them, but what is in my heart.

So I will write. I will finish my four book "Land of Dreams" series in a year or so, and if I feel up to it there’s a grand ghost story lurking inside me.

 And that makes me feel good. But dang I was hoping to be able to buy a decent car.

 David

The Day the World Disappeard

            Powerful hands griped mine. They were like my father's hard, calloused hands but in miniature. He was bare-chested and was dressed in a brightly colored malo tied around his waist. A lei of koa leaves rested on his head. His hair and beard were so black it was as if the night had fallen from the sky. 

            He let go of my hands and grunted. "Iki kaikamahine almost drown," he said gesturing at me and then the river. 
            I blinked my eyes, expecting that the apparition before me would disappear. I looked at Kenji. His eyes were closed. Was he dead? Then the apparition spoke again.
            "The Menehune are an ancient race," he said. "We once ruled all the islands of the Great Sea, but it is here we make our final home. We watch over the land and its people. We are proud and possess powerful magic and can do many wonderful things—but we cannot bring your mother back to you."
            "My mother?"
            "Shush, little one, for I must go." He smiled at me and laughed. He did not sound like a dog. He sounded like a babbling brook meandering through a quiet meadow.
            "Life is filled with both joy and sorrow," he said. "It is up to you to choose which will rule.  Your mother is gone, the Great Father has taken her, but someday you will see her again."

From “A Menehune Tale”, a story from my upcoming book, “unexpected pleasures”

One day. when I was eleven, everyone in the world disappeared for twenty minutes….

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1961. I had just left the Bal Theater on East 14^th Street in San Leandro, fresh from a day spent at the Kiddie Matinee—ten cartoons, two movies, usually American International “monster movies”, as we liked to call them. I was alone. I began my walk home under a bright August sun, my eyes still adjusting from the luxurious darkness that had enfolded me since 11:00 that morning.

It was a breezy day as I headed up 148^th Avenue using the shadows of the long theater building to walk in the shade for as long as I could. When I reached the next corner, I crossed Bancroft Avenue and turned right, approaching the myriad of residential streets that would eventually lead me to my home on Lark. At Coral Avenue I made a left, and that was when it all began.

I didn’t notice it at first. I was just walking alone down a deserted street passing 1950's vintage parked cars and freshly mowed lawns. I remember wind chimes tinkling in the breeze from a front porch. It felt lonely on that street. I liked that feeling; I was a weird kid. I let the emotion caress me as I walked. It didn’t hit me until I reached Tower Street that there was no one around. Not one person or a moving car on the street or even a stray cat.

It was just a quiet day, I remember thinking. A very quiet day. Halsey Ave was a long street. When I reached it, my eyes scanned up and down searching for proof that the people living there were alive. But I didn’t see anyone. Not a soul. Where were they? Were they huddled in their homes watching "Wideworld of Sports on television? Had they all gone downtown to the summer sale at JC Penny’s? Where were the kids who always roamed the streets riding their bikes or playing catch?

A chill went through me. Surely there would be people on Lark Street. It was always busy on Lark. It ran parallel to East 14^th Street and people routinely used it as a shortcut. My mom was always complaining about the speeding cars that zipped past our home. Surely I would find someone there. I hurried to the corner and turned right. My house was nearly at the end of the long block, just three houses in from an even busier street, 150^th Avenue. But Lark and the avenue at its end was empty of life.

I got very, very scared. And my walk turned into a full out run as I headed towards the safety of my house. My mom would surely be home. Maybe even my two sisters. Dad was working. That run was a blur. I kept expecting a car to pass me. As I rushed passed the houses of my childhood friends, I hoped to see at least one of them playing in the yard or looking out their front windows, but there was no one. No one!

I stopped in front of my house and stared vacantly at 150^th Avenue. Surely a car would pass heading up to Foothill Boulevard. The seconds that passed seemed like minutes of complete and utter isolation. Finally I cried out and rushed into the safety of my house, my heart pounding wildly in my chest.

“Mom! Mom!” I called out. “Susan? Carol?”

No one was home.

What had happened? What would I do? I had had nightmares in my young life. Martians invading my street. Sometimes I dreamt of a giant Jesus appearing in the sky, ending the world in a terrible Second Coming. But I hadn’t bargained for being alone in an empty world. What would I do? What would happen to me? Who would cook my dinner? I was rooted to the floor, gasping for air in my living room when I heard the back door open.

“David? Is that you?”, my mother asked as she closed the door.

And the world was given back to me.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

I awake in the darkness the same way each night. For a moment I do not know where I am, who I am, what I am. For that brief span of time--no longer than a single, sorrowful second--I am as I once was: normal, mortal. The faces of my once beloved flash across my eyes like the silver lightening on the plains of my homeland, left behind so long, long ago The faces dance like ghosts, splintered fragments of warmth gone cold. I wish, I do not wish, they could be with me now.

And then, just as my nostrils fill with the sweet smells of life, it is gone. It is crimson time, once again. My pale hand pushes up, filled with lingering anguish and throws back the black, lacquered wood. The lid slides open, and in the dim hiding place I smell raw earth and hear the sounds of the others stirring from their graveyard sleep.

Crimson time. It fills my eyes with the vision of blood and washes away the last reminders of my former humanity. It fills my senses with the hidden lust of the night, the lust for eternal life.

I now stand with the others, communicating without words, acknowledging the need that can never be satisfied and never stopped by the sweet offer of death. And as the last grip of protection the sun offers the world slowly fades away, into the night we fly....

            "Crimson Time", a very short bonus story from my upcoming short story collection “unexpected pleasures”.

So as you can see from my previous posts, as a child I had a rich fantasy life. I didn’t write stories, I lived stories. There are many more examples of this—my childhood was filled with them—but I won’t bore you with more examples. Suffices to say that the imagination was there, I just never took idea to pencil.

 Where do story ideas come from? This is a question civilians like to ask writers. How do you think this crap up? Well believe it or not with a little practice thinking this crap up is a relatively easy thing to do. For me it starts with an image. It might be something I see in the course of my day. It might be from a song. It might be from the fears that are always lurking within me. It might come from nowhere.

Years ago, I wrote a series of short stories. I wrote these stories while I was writing my first novel, A Matter of Time. It was a time of great discovery. My abilities were coming to fruition and the ideas came like an open flood gate. They came one after another like glorious storms invading my mind.

Some ideas are slow in coming. For example, I’m writing a four volume series, The Land of Dreams. The first idea came to me maybe ten years ago as a single image: a young woman with flowing golden/red hair riding a bicycle around a translucent wall. At the time I had no idea what was on the other side of that wall, but eventually it came to me, a scene from the fourth novel. It percolated in my subconscious for years, and when the time was right, I started to write it down.

Sometimes something very odd happens. A complete story comes out of nowhere and is downloaded into your mind. It’s a very odd and somewhat frightening experience. It would leave me nauseous and unsteady for hours. My novella, Payday, from my upcoming collection, unexpected pleasures, was such an experience. Twenty thousand words appeared in my mind, a whole and complete story. All I had to do was right it down. It came out smoothly and without hesitation, and the experience still haunts me today.

I write because I have to. Once an idea comes to my mind, it will not go away until I bring it to life. If I don’t do it, the story will just sit there rattling around my brain, demanding attention.

Writing is a lonely life. If I played the guitar and sang, all I would have to do is play in front of people to get the instant feedback all artists crave. Writing is all internal. You have no idea what people will think of your efforts until it’s read by someone, and if you don’t sell many books that internal itch to be recognized is never really fulfilled.

So what’s the solution? You write for yourself. You write for the pleasure and the blissful release of endorphins when things are going well. You write because it’s the only thing that makes you feel mentally whole. It’s a wonderful/horrible thing.

The Third Law Of Motion.

Harker took me to a room that was devoid of everything except for a wooden stool. On top of it sat a slender vase. In it was a delicate, yellow rosebud.

            “What’s this?” I asked.
            “It’s your target,” Harker replied.
            “This isn’t much of a target.”
            “On the contrary. It’s a huge target.”
            “Why do you say that?”
            “Because the rose is not your enemy. You have nothing against it, and it has nothing against you. So that makes it very important to the mission ahead.”
            My first instinct was to defer to him. He was older. He was my father. His knowledge of the world was vast and true, but this didn’t feel right. Did he really know the full extent of my powers? My eyes returned to the rosebud.
            “So I gather that you want me to destroy it,” I said.
            “On the contrary, Lady Abby. I want you to open it.”
            “Open it? What would that prove?”
            “In order to fully control the power within you, you must not only be able to conquer your enemies, you must be able to control the most subtle things in life. So go ahead, Lady Abby. Open it.”
            “How? How do I open it?”
            “Anyway you wish to. Heart will help you.”
            I had almost forgotten about Heart. She sat loyally by my side waiting to do my bidding. Could this blade of destruction really help me manipulate the beautiful flower in front of me?
            “Draw Heart from her scabbard,” Harker instructed. “Hold her in front of you. Point her at the rose. Then say to yourself: Wish. Dream. Want.”
            I drew Heart. She sat comfortably in my hand. It all seemed a little silly, but I did as he instructed. I pointed her at the rose, closed my eyes and concentrated.           
            “Wish. Dream. Want,” I said.
            “Do not close your eyes,” he said. “You must face the delicate and the deadly equally. Do not say the words out loud. Let them flow from in your mind. Think of this as a battle, Lady Abby. Think of this as a battle with beauty.”
            I raised Heart and aimed her at the flower. I tried to set my mind to purpose.
            “Wish,” I said to myself. “Dream. Want.”
            Nothing happened.
            I looked over to Harker. He nodded slightly and said, “Again.”
            “Wish. Dream. Want.” The words rattled in my mind. Nothing.
            “Tell Heart what you want. She will do your bidding if you are worthy.”
            Worthy? Was I worthy? I thought the words again. This time I focused them on Heart. Not all of Heart just her tip, the business end of this experiment.
            Nothing.
            “Again,” Harker said.
            I did as instructed. Wish. Dream. Want…. Heart began to glow. Rolling colors of the rainbow ran through her over and over and over again. Then the tip turned golden. It seemed to…
            …Shimmer….
            My eyes went to the rose. It was swaying back and forth as if caught in a breeze.
            “Control yourself,” Harker cautioned. “Open the flower. Do not destroy it.”
            It was already too late. Harker’s words had hardly left his lips when the rosebud burst apart with a loud “poof”. To this day I still remember the hurt. I had killed a great beauty. It was a metaphor for my life.
            Trig came from my left. He plucked the stem from the vase and replaced it with another bud. This one was pink.
            “Again,” Harker said.
            I pointed the sword. I repeated the words. Heart began to flow with colors. Her tip glowed golden. The flower evaporated before my eyes. I was filled with anger and sorrow. How would I ever do it?
            “Calm yourself,” Harker said. “Anger and frustration will not help you. It will only cause more havoc, and it will not help you in a time of crisis. We have plenty of flowers, Lady Abby. They grow wild in the Territory as you will soon see. Think of these few as sacrifices for the greater good. Calm yourself. Focus on the task.”
            We went through a dozen. Two dozen. Maybe more. Each time I would destroy a bud, Trig would appear with another. I wasn’t manipulating the flowers; I was executing them. How it saddened me. But I heeded Harker’s advice and forced myself to focus even though my head was beginning to ache and my arm tired from the strain. Then, nearly two hours into my training, something amazing happened.
            This rosebud was once again a yellow one. It was as if my task had gone a full circle. I focused. Heart reacted, but this time a slender slit of light emanated from her tip and slid to the rose. At first I was certain this was the end of it. The beam of light seemed like death, but that’s not what happened. The only word I could think of was that it tickled the rose. Tickled is not right, but I lack the ability to describe the interaction between myself, Heart and the rose properly. It began to slowly rock back and forth. For a moment I was certain it would gain speed until it flew apart, but that’s not what occurred.
            It opened.
            Graceful, radiant petals reached out to me then spread their wings. The beauty humbled me. Heart fell away from my hand and floated beside me. I couldn’t move; the rose had me in its grip.
            “So there you have it, Lady Abby, The Lady of the Rose,” Harker said with a wide smile. “The power to destroy, the power to bring forth the beautiful. It’s in your hand, in your mind. The ability to save Haven is within you.”

An edited scene from my novel, “The Lady of The Rose”

I woke up this morning thinking of Newton’s Third Law of Motion. It goes something like this: “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” I didn’t learn this law from a science teacher; I learned it from a black and white sci-fi movie one Saturday morning at the Bal Theater “Kiddie Matinee”.

Like most “monster movies” of the fifties, a giant bug tearing up a metropolis was usually caused by mankind’s obsession with blowing things up. In most cases it was linked to atomic bombs which at the time were being liberally tested out in the Nevada desert and the deep recesses of the Soviet Union. Atomic bombs, it seems, caused ordinary animals to mutate, or in the case of the aforementioned movie, caused part of Antarctica to melt exposing a terrible demon that had been safely encased in ice for millions of years. At the time, it made perfect sense to me, but I would not fear. The great B actor John Agar would find a way to kill it by the movie's end.

I love Newton’s nifty little law. Though now quite as grand as “things in motion tend to stay in motion” which could warrant a blog post of its own, the third law explains precisely how life and the world works. A decade later my 60s self would call it Karma. The Bible says you “reap what you sow”. It’s all the same thing. If you do something, be prepared for the consequences.

As a writer, I have always kept this in mind when creating a story. The scene from “The Lady of the Rose” I’ve included above is a perfect example. To unfurl the power of beauty, a few rosebuds have to be sacrificed.

Or something like that.

The fact that Trish and I had two children and now three grandchildren is also an extension of that process. We put into motion a series of events that will go on and on for generations to come, even as we are part of the process from generations past. Everything in this world is linked together in a third law of motion sort of weird way. We are all just a series of reactions to events that go all the way back to the Big Bang.

What action caused me to get cancer not once but twice? Beats me. At least God or whomever is controlling the universe could have given me a cancer that I could sue someone for. Get a little cash to ease my suffering, but it hasn’t been my fate. I am left wondering who the f**k did I piss off? All I know is that my illness if further proof of the universe's cockeyed plan for all of us.

I’ve been day dreaming of a town in early evening, but darkness hasn’t quite taken hold. It’s raining. The welcoming lights are on in the stores that line the street. Cars are inching by, going with the grace of the Third Law toward their homes. There are a few people on the street under umbrellas. I watch aloofly from an invisible corner. The air is cool with a hint of ozone. Life is as it should be. Dinner is waiting. It goes on and on like a great wheel forever….

           

Carol

My sister, Carol, passed away on the eighteenth of August. It was not unexpected. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years ago, a vicious disease that carries an inevitable death sentence. Carol was five years older than me. She would have been seventy this Christmas. I don’t wish to dwell on her death, nor do I wish to recount all the details of her life. Like everyone else who comes into this world, it was filled with both joy and sorrow—good times and bad. Let’s keep that story secret shall we, hidden within the memories of those who knew and loved her. I want to speak to you of her spirit and what she meant to me.

There were four children in the Teves household; six people living in a small home with one bathroom in San Leandro. My brother, Danny, is the oldest child, ten years older than me. My sister Susan, eight years my senior, was three years older than Carol. I grew up with the disadvantage of being the baby of the family. There were things going on in my family that I was blissfully unaware of. By the time I became cognizant of our family dynamic, Carol was already into the double digits, a girl blossoming into a young woman….

Ten days before she died I went to see her. She was in bed and was deteriorating so rapidly it shook me to my core. I sat beside her, held her hand, now so fragile in mine, and wept. Carol and I had discussed the possibility of an afterlife. She didn’t think there was one; I wasn’t so sure. Through my tears I said to her, “Carol, if there's a place we go to when we die, I swear I will find you.”

Carol was uncommonly beautiful, a fact that was mostly lost on me as her little brother. She was, after all, my sister, and I didn’t see her as anything special. It wasn’t until years later when I saw a photo of her as a young woman that I had my “oh my God!” moment. Carol was, as we used to say back in the day, a fox. She had silky black hair and green eyes, the only member of our Portuguese family who didn’t have brown. Her green-eyed genes heralded back to the Azores, the islands of our ancestors. When you looked into them, you saw both beauty and a hint of the past.

My dad used to call her firecracker, a reference to her fiery personality. She had her opinions, and even as a little girl, she made her thoughts (and demands) quite clear. She was on occasion frustrating and hard to handle. I have fractured memories of verbal battles she conducted with our parents with regularity. She married her first husband, Ron Roach, and was out of the house when I was only fourteen, not enough years to be with her in the same home in my book. I used to have these crazy dreams that she left her husband and returned to me. But that never happened.

Of all my siblings, I was the closest to her. We had the same outlook on life, a complicated brew of irony, practicality and sarcasm. We both loved to read Stephen King novels and would talk endlessly about the latest one on the phone. The two of us always loved a good horror story. I will never read another one of his novels without thinking of her.

Carol was famous for her Christmas Eve celebrations. It was always at her home and was the closest thing we Teves’ had to family tradition. When she moved, the gatherings moved with her. I will always miss those winter evenings together that spanned so many years. The Teves and Roach families were together as one. Our children were young and life still had possibilities.

After Ron passed away, Carol was introduced to a man named Dave Victorino. Dave is a big guy, and the first time I met him I suspected he might be a gangster, but he was the furthest thing from that, our dear Dave. I had the surprise of my life when he asked me, the youngest brother, for my sister’s hand in marriage. I said yes, and he never gave me any reason to regret that answer. Their marriage was all too brief for two people so much in love. Dave cared for her with devotion and amazing grace until the very end….

Five days before Carol passed I went to see her again. This time I was prepared for the sight, and I did not weep. Instead I sat with her and talked for two solid hours about anything I could think of. Carol really couldn’t speak, but she could understand me. I once again told her we would try to meet again on the other side. Her eyes briefly opened and she said, “In Poipu”, the location of our home on Kauai, the island of our birth.…

When Carol was a little girl she couldn’t pronounce her name. Carol came out as Kakki. That became her nickname throughout her childhood and beyond. I remember calling her that when I was young. The beginning of her email address was KakkiCarol. So I leave this post with these words: I love you Kakki, Carol, my beloved sister, and I promise I will see you again.

Protector of the Language

Because school will soon let out for the summer break in a week, I have been preparing my Intention Statement. Haven demands that all its 1203 citizens be proficient in some skill brought to the colony from Earth by the original settlers. It is essential for our survival. Since I am the granddaughter of the mayor, I am expected to dream big. Maybe become a scientist, doctor, or some other core profession needed for Haven to prosper. Some have even suggested that I might be the mayor someday. This was stupid. I have no such ambitions. I told Grandfather that perhaps I’ll become a carpenter, a noble profession essential to the colony. He just looked at me, his glasses perched at the end of his nose, and said nothing. Guess I will not be a carpenter.

Anyway, Grandfather knows very well that my first love has always been words. That’s why he gave me this beautiful paper. In my Proper English classes, I have always received perfects. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll become a Protector of the Language and pass my knowledge of the English language to a younger generation.

I suppose I will marry someday. Every woman is expected to help seed Haven, whose population is stable but never seems to grow. (Maybe this is about to change. Mrs. Lester recently had triplets.) But that is a long time away after I have made my choices and the boys finally become men. I’m hoping that my trip to the Big Outside will help me decide which path my life will follow. Until then, I will prepare for my trip and dream of its possibilities.

                                                           From my novel, “The Lady of The Rose”

In my novel, “The Lady of The Rose”, my young protagonist, Abby Henry, says that someday when she gets older, she might become a “Protector of the language”. On her Earth Colony, the planet Zakura, somewhere in the faraway stars in a settlement called Haven, there are those whose duty is to keep the language pure. It seems to me we have no interest in doing this on Earth.

For a lot of years, I have marveled how weird politically correct expressions pop up now and again and how ridiculous they sound. It all started many years ago when they started calling garbage collectors “sanitation workers”. Then it moved on to calling a “chairman” a “chairperson” which is okay with me, but then they had to take it one step further calling the leader of a committee a “chair”. Whenever I hear that, I vision a nice comfortable wingback chair. How about you? 

The bottom line is there are certain segments of our society that love to twist the language into something they deem less hurtful to anyone that might possibly be offended by the truth. That’s why “illegal aliens” became “undocumented immigrants”. Now the sci-fi writer part of me does prefer that “aliens” be real aliens—like from outer space, I mean.

 Now I don’t want to get into politics—I don’t want to offend future book buyers—but let’s just say a lot of these people like to shop at Whole Foods Markets.

 These people never go to a class, they attend workshops. I always envision a lot of wood chips on the floor while they study modern literature. After the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco, all of a sudden the word “infrastructure” popped up to describe the rumbling highways and bridges in the earthquake zone. Then the word was broadened and used in various other ways to describe anything and anything that might need a little work. Using it to describe the political infrastructure is one of my favorites. They loved that word for a few years before, thank God, it began to fade.

 When the letter “e” started to be used to describe anything on the internet from email to ecommerce to esex, every freaking commercial on television used it over and over again. Then there’s the word “green” to describe anything that might possibly save energy. Green this, green that. Green leaf emblems in the back of cars. Thank God that’s over with.

My favorite expression of all time was when the Mayor of Detroit called community gardens a“multi-diversity empowerment zone.”

Speaking of which, the word “diversity” had a long successful run and made me think evil thoughts.

Then there’s the global warming vs. climate change switcheroo that depends on the time of the year and the weather to determine which expression is used. Make up your minds, for God sakes. Here’s an idea: every fall when we turn back the clocks for the winter and change the batteries in our smoke detectors, we call it climate change, and in the spring we call it global warming for the hot summer.

Right now the word the currant word of the moment is “sustainable”. If I hear that word used one more time I might go mad.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I was listening to a story on an all-news San Francisco radio station about people who have to get food from a food bank. Now don’t get me wrong, food banks are a necessary and noble thing in our society, but when they refer to those who use their services as “food insecure” I want to vomit.

I wait with anticipation for the next mangling of our language. Abby Henry dreams of being a protector of the language. I fear that here on Earth, it’s too late.

Flip Phone

“Laura Stewart's eyes fluttered open to see Charlie Adams' hand hanging limply from the side of the examination table. She was still huddled on the floor, one arm gripping the pipes below the sink as if they were a life preserver. For a second, she had no idea where she was or how she had gotten there. She looked at the hand with confusion. His index finger was extended, reminding her of that painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was at this moment, with Charlie's finger pointed delicately toward the tiled floor, that Laura remembered George Rayburn. He had disappeared, sucked into the mini-universe that had unfolded across Charlie's body.”

                        --From my novel, “The Secret of the Sky”

 

I own an old Razor3 flip phone. It’s about seven years old, has the original battery and refuses to die. I have a love/hate relationship with cellphones. My wife insists I have one. I drive down a lot of isolated country roads on the way to work and back. I also have some physical problems that make it necessary that I have one with me at all times. But other than that, I hate the suckers. A couple of years ago I thought I had lost it. My first emotion was one of relief, but then I found it the bottom of my backpack. Bummer.

Why would I feel this way about cellphones and electronics in general? I mean my writing obsession depends upon a computer and the Internet access. I’m using my computer now to write this spectacular piece of prose. Yet a part of me hates it.

I like to say I’m an analog guy in a digital world. Chevrolet says I should have something called a tablet. Oh, they love tablets, that General Motors. They harp on it continually in their training videos. They assume that all the Chevy salesmen out there want one or already have one. It’s one of the conceits that show how out of touch they are with the guys on the front line selling their iron.

 

But that’s another story.

This whole thing with Smart Phones bugs the crap out of me. I cringe when I see one. I was at the doctor’s office the other day. There were twelve people sitting in the waiting room, and seven of them were staring at their phones. Six of them were women. Can someone tell me what they hell are they looking at?

I suspect that my old Razor has lasted so because I don’t use it much. At one time I had 4000 unused minutes in my ATT&T account. I don’t like talking on the phone. I have a nephew that will confirm that. The battery always goes dead on me because I forget to charge it. It usually gives up the ghost when I’m driving down one of those country roads I mentioned earlier.

I miss party lines. (Look it up.)

This brings me back to my writing. Without a computer and a little help from Microsoft Word 2010, I would still be dreaming of red ’57 T-Birds stuffed in the corner of my backyard on Lark Street. The magic of a keyboard opened something up in me I didn’t know I had. To be honest, it gave me a reason to struggle on when times were at their roughest. It’s doing the same thing for me now. I am eternally grateful.

But I refuse to ever consider a Smart Phone. I don’t want to check my email, go on Facebook, surf the net and whatever the hell there else there is to do while waiting to see the doctor. That’s why God invented books and magazines. My good friend Scott McDonald bought me a Kindle, and I’ve never used it. Here I am hawking to anyone that will listen to buy my books, but I don’t participate in the process at all. As I said, I’m an analog guy in a digital world.

There’s something sick about that, isn’t there?

Keep Reading

There is more than meets they eye at the 4Corners Cafe. I encourage you, dare you to read my older posts. You may find something interesting there. Maybe even a story of sorts--or is it real? I have recently rearranged them in ascending order. Try it, if you dare.

David

God, the Universe and a '57 T-Bird

“Liz knelt and carefully picked it up. It was heavier than she expected. The edge of the glass had a delicate bevel that highlighted both the wood and the mirror itself.  She looked at her reflection and an older woman stared back. Not old, just older. Her youthful face, the face she had known for all these years, the one that carried the horror of pimples as a teenager and later beguiled Burt Smith was gone. In its place was another face, a face still pretty but one caught in the apex between youth and middle age. Fine creases were starting to appear on her forehead and around the corners of her mouth that no amount of Oil of Olay could banish for long.”

 From the story, Mirror, Mirror, from my upcoming story anthology “unexpected pleasures”.

  

As it happens my first experience with storytelling coincided with the discovery that the Universe was not what it seemed. I was eight, the youngest member of a loving but insulated Portuguese family from Hawaii living on the “Mainland” as it was called, a place so very far from home.

My uncle, Jim Teves, had a bright red 1957 Thunderbird. He was single then, and the world was his oyster, as they say. He’d come over to our house on Lark Street to visit us and park the beauty at the curb. The T-Bird mesmerized me. I remember standing on the sidewalk in front of it thinking it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Every curve and angle was perfect. How could something be so beautiful?

I wanted one.

That’s when I began my campaign for God to give me a miniature version of it. I would lay in my bed at night obsessing about it (and the actress, Sandra Dee, but that’s another story). I concocted a story about it. The government was experimenting with allowing a few select young people to be allowed to drive, and I was perfect for the project. I would have my red T-Bird. I would proudly drive it around the neighborhood, perhaps all the way to Assumption Church, were the pleated-skirt Catholic girls would greet me with love and kisses….

The plan was carefully laid. I instructed God to deliver the T-Bird to a bush at the very back corner of our expansive yard early Saturday morning. That way I’d have the entire day to enjoy it. There, next to creek where we played on lazy summer days, it would be waiting for me. So beautiful. So perfect.  So red.

I awoke that morning and announced to my parents the wonderful thing that was about to occur. I remember them laughing. I thought they might be mocking me, but I suppose now it was one of those “oh, how cute” laughs. Whatever it was, they didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation. God was going to fix me up.

I remember bounding out the back door and down the steps. It was one of those wonderful overcast Bay Area mornings; a chill in the air that made you feel so very alive. I ran toward the bush. The T-Bird wasn’t readily visible, but I imagined that God had carefully hit. But as I approached, there was a sinking feeling within me. The space between the bush and the fence was empty. Apparently God had screwed me, and I was devastated.

It was one of those “aha!” moments. A great revelation that I had no control over God, the Universe or anything else. It was at that fateful moment that I realized that life can be cruel, and as the Rolling Stones would later say, “You can’t always get what you want.” 

But I got a story about it; not written down but in my head. And over the weeks and months that followed I would lie in my bed and expand it to my own private underground subway system and a bowling alley that spit out packets of money every time I bowled a perfect game.

So God had given me something: a rich fantasy life that would stay with me throughout my childhood and into my adult years. And then, one day when I was thirty-eighty, I began to write them down.

Greetings from the 4 Corners Cafe 2.0

Starting next Wednesday, July 2, 2014, I will be starting a new addtion to this blog. It will be about my life as a writer.

I posted on my Facebook page that I would delete the old entries and start afresh. I now think I won't do that--writers don't like to delete things unless they don't work. When I looked back at those writings, I remembered what great fun I had writing them, and that's what writing is all about.

I am posting below what I wrote on my Facebook page--slightly modified. I hope you will stop by on Wednesday to see how deep I can put my foot into my mouth. I haven't even started yet, but I've already done it.

David Teves

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

First entry for my new writing blog that is not a blog as of yet. 

So I’ll start from the beginning then. A writer’s journey. My journey. Call it part biographical, part bullshit. I’m supposed to try to use this to promote my writing. To get you to help me get out of my day job and have a little peace in my life. But going in I gotta tell you that probably won’t happen, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself.

This is the way it will be. I’ll write one post once a week. I could write more, but it would keep me away from the real writing—if that’s what it is. I’ll post it let’s say on Wednesday mornings. Just before I go to my chemotherapy. There I said it. It needed to be said. It would be a lie to myself and to you if I didn’t. But that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. This is about writing, not cancer.

Next. I will go over the post one time before I publish. If I catch errors, that’s great. If I don’t, well that’s the way it’s gotta be. I obsess too much about the finer things in a sentence than to worry about it here.

Did I mention I’m a bullshitter? Keep that in mind. I’ll tell you something interesting. I didn’t discover I was a writer until I was in my late thirties. That’s a kick isn’t it? I spent a lifetime not quite fitting into things. I thought I was just emotionally flawed, but it turned out I was just—different.

Last. Despite of the heaviness of the last few sentences, I intend to keep things light for the most part. Fictions supposed to be fun, right? But still the same, I am going to try and seduce you into getting me out of the car business. That’s the price of admission.

It will start next Wednesday, July 2, 2014.

 
David

Starbucks

I hate Starbucks. I say this even though I go there about once a week during the winter to order a medium cup of coffee, just a little room for cream please. This hate/like relationship with the place has been going on for several years, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. Sad thing to say, isn’t it?

The reason for all the thinking is because I have wondered if my almost phobic dislike for the place has something to do not with Starbucks but with my deep-seated personality flaws in general. I tend to be an anti-social, semi-asshole some might say. For the most part I dislike most people—especially the pompous ones, and let’s face it, Starbucks is crawling with them. Every time you go into one there they are: guys hunched over laptops of iPhones, women with their shoes off, curled up comfortably in an over-stuffed chair having meaningful conversations with their friends.

Starbucks likes to go for the ambience of a hip coffee shop. Smooth jazz lulls you over the lousy overhead speakers. Over-priced CDs are available for those gullible enough to buy them. $17.95 for a CD? Hello, haven’t you people heard of Amazon.com? Expensive coffee makers, To-Go coffee cups that won’t fit in any car cup holder designed to date, all wrapped up in a politically correct, social responsibility, let’s start tweeting package. Now I ask you, who’s kidding who?

In their view, Starbucks is not just selling coffee and coffee accessories, they’re selling a lifestyle. They call it “The Starbucks Experience”. As for me I think any title with the word “Experience” in it should have “The Jimi Hendrix” in front of it. As a still slightly rebellious child of the 60’s, that oh so pretentious lifestyle comes off as obnoxious and fake.

In my opinion a real coffee shop (as opposed to a diner) is a place filled with cigarette smoke, rude waitresses, and guys in berets reading awful poetry while the listeners click their fingers in approval. In my book that is the definition of cool. Smelly, but cool.

When I go into Starbucks I get claustrophobic with the yuppie vibe of the place. I plan the trip carefully. With exact change in hand I will only go in if I don’t have to wait in a line. I place my order quickly a succinctly. No thanks, I don’t want a brownie or a scone. Just give me my damn coffee. Then, paper cup in hand, its one package of Equal, a little half and half and I’m out of there. I don’t want to spend any time wondering as I survey the crowd if I am, in fact, just like them.

I can hear you laughing. Why the hell do you go in there in the first place if you hate it so much? It’s pretty simple. Sometimes on a cold winter night when I have to drive thirty miles to get home, it’s great to get wired up, and believe me; Starbucks is great for getting wired. One properly ordered cup can make you feel like you’re on a South American holiday. At my age a hit of cocaine would probably kill me, so this is the second best thing.

One last thing before I end my rant. I went through a period when I was fixated on not using Starbuck’s names for the sizes on their coffees. I mean, what ever happened to a simple small, medium or large? How can a small cup of coffee be called a tall? What idiot thought that one up? So one evening I ordered a large cup of Joe to go. The “barista” (another word I hate), a blond, doe-eyed young lady with a butterfly tattoo on her neck, looked at me and said. “Sir, at Starbucks we say Venti”. I was so taken aback at the thought of using that word, I was temporarily frozen. Then, after a long few seconds, I turned around and left.

I guess I didn’t need to get wired that badly.

Tee-Shirt Mortality

The other day I figured out that I had enough tee-shirts to last me the rest of my life. This revelation came to me while sitting at the edge of my bed examining my beloved “The Sopranos” shirt with the mysterious hole at its bottom. Do I wear it, or should I contemplate retiring it? God knows I can afford to part with it. I have an entire drawer dedicated to my tees in addition to the dozen or so hiding at the top of my closet.

This was when it hit me. At age 60, tee-shirt wise, I had hit the tipping point. If I never acquired another one, I had more than enough to last until they ship me off to… To where? Ah, that is a good question.

On my days off I dig around for an appropriate tee to wear that day. My current favorite is a black one that says, “Still Pissed At Yoko” in white Beatlesque letters. It gets attention. More than one person has commented on it while standing in the checkout line the Super Wal-Mart.

There are many others, of course—way too many to list here: a Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” shirt that all true children of the 60’s should own. Then there’s the Beatle’s “Rubber Soul” shirt, my son-in-law, Tom, gave me. It’s a little tight, but it works. A “World’s Greatest Dad” shirt my daughter, Laura, gave me one Father’s Day. A few more honoring local events: the Rio Vista Bass Derby held most Octobers in the town I live, Hayward’s annual Ukulele Festival. A couple more from the now defunct Isleton Crawdad Festival.

Lots of shirts. Lots of shirts to remind me of minor events of my past; enough shirts to remind me of the transient nature of life.

When I was a young man, I never gave the tee-shirt collection slowly growing in my dresser a second thought. The stack of Corona beer shirts building up in my drawer (Are they somehow reproducing in there?) never crossed my mind. You just threw one on after a shower and went about your day: playing with the kids, mowing the lawn, watching television, drinking a beer. Little did I know that the tees were a symbol of my own mortality.

You can’t count white tee-shirts when you noodle on this equation. With no words or images emblazoned on their cotton surfaces, they are meaningless and transitory. But my two Yosemite Mountaineering Society “Go Climb A Rock” shirts are timeless. The shirts are an identical blue; one bought about five years ago, the other circa. 1971. I have used the latter several times as proof to a person younger than myself that “I have tee-shirts older than you.”

Go now to your closet or drawer where your tee-shirts await to let you know that quite a few of them will be around after you are gone. What do they say? What do they mean?

Something to contemplate as I sit in the 4 Corners Café of my mind, drinking a cup of hot Joe.

George of the Rain Forrest

Somewhere along the line the jungle was taken from me. The mysterious, dangerous territory of my youthful imagination, filled snakes, tigers and an infinite number of dangerous creatures and foliage was high-jacked, replaced by a tedious, castrated damp place called the rain forest.

Yawn.

In these boring, politically correct times it’s not polite to call a rain forest a jungle. No, no, no. A jungle is a dark forbidding place. A rain forest, on the other hand, is a place of gentle greenery and cute, precocious endangered animals, a perfect place for your next vegan picnic. When they talk about those bad people trying to carve out a little farmland in the Amazon, they are destroying the rain forest! It doesn’t sound right if they’re destroying the jungle because the term jungle sounds like it deserves to be cut down!

So Tarzan’s parents didn’t crash in a treacherous foreboding jungle filled with dangers at every turn. Their son became “Tarzan, King of the Rain Forest”. Don’t you like the way that rolls of your tongue? Either way he was raised by apes. And what about my good friend George, the monkey of my childhood musings? Can’t you hear the children singing, “George, George, George of the rain forest”?

Speaking of songs, you all remember that classic Creedence Clearwater song. Sing it with me now, “Better run through the rain forest, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah. . .”

I don’t care what anyone says; the crew of that PT boat in the movie “Apocalypse Now” wasn’t going up the Mekong River into the depths of a rain forest. That, my friends, was a damn jungle!

I wonder do they still have the jungle cruise ride at Disneyland? If they’ve changed it to the rain forest cruise I might have to slit my wrists.

I find it interesting how our language is being subdued all for the sake of political correctness. Garbage men became sanitation engineers. Housewives are now homemakers. I live on the west coast where it’s often foggy in the mornings and afternoons. I just discovered that it’s no longer called fog; it’s now the marine layer! The next thing you know, car salesmen will be referred as transportation consultants!

They’re making a pussy out of our colorful English language!

Never again can I sing a rousing chorus of the theme from “The Flintstones” at my local bar. The ending, “we’ll have a gay old time” might be misunderstood. Someone might beat the crap out of me and dump my body in a rain forest!

In the summer it’s not hot any more. No way. Its climate change. (Climate change has replaced the term global warming, because apparently the globe hasn’t gotten any hotter in the last ten years.) Instead of just getting some lemonade or a cold beer, and watching a ball game on the tube on a lazy summer afternoon, we’ve got to feel guilty that it’s a hundred degrees outside. We’re responsible! And how can you enjoy the game anyway when there are dead polar bears out there and it’s our fault? And moving them to the rain forest won’t help!

So I say we’ve got to take a stand on this stuff, and I’m here to put forth the proposition that we start with our beloved jungles. I don’t want to go on a safari (oops, I’m sorry, I meant to say “photo Safari”) in a rain forest. I want a jungle. And throw in a little quicksand while you’re at it.

Or is it now called liquid earth?

Rod Serling Changed The World

The 4 Corners Café has a jukebox that only plays Patsy Cline and Led Zeppelin. I asked Betty Jo the waitress about this. She was standing behind the counter appraising me like a bug. She doesn’t know how to take me. I don’t know how to take her. She’s a mystery. I suspect she is younger than me, but a lifetime of Pall Malls and Miller High Life’s have aged her beyond her years. Or at least that's what I think.

Betty Jo shrugged; a subtle upturning of the shoulders that said the question wasn’t worth answering. Then she went out back for a smoke. I gave up on the question. The jukeox like Betty Jo and the café itself remains a mystery to me, and as a result I suspect it will be to you.

At the time I was sitting at the ancient Formica counter eating a slice of cherry pie and drinking a cup of hot joe when it dawned on me that Rod Serling had changed the world. For those of you too young to remember, Rod was the creator of “The Twilight Zone” the early 60’s anthology series that introduced my generation to the possibility that reality as we knew it was not necessary what it seemed.

I swear I remember the night it premiered in October 1959. I was nine years old. My father and I watched it on our humble black-and-white in the little house on Lark Street. The story was about a man who found himself in an unfamiliar town all by himself. There were signs of life everywhere but not a soul to be seen. Panic ensued. In the end it turned out he was slowing going crazy in an isolation booth that was training astronauts to go to Mars.

Dad didn’t say much about it. Then again, dad was not a talkative guy. He just sat in his easy chair considering what he had just seen, rubbing his thumb over smooth surface of his silver Zippo cigarette lighter. I was quiet too, but inside I was trembling with excitement. What had I just seen? It sure as hell wasn’t “I Love Lucy” or “Wagon Train”. No sir, this show rocked!

I was already suspecting that something was up reality-wise. There were those bomb drills we were having every other week or so. “Duck and cover” it was called. Unseen by the students, George, the ancient school janitor, would bring out an old WWII hand-cranked siren. There was a painted metal v-mount for it, screwed into the wooden railing in the open hall between the rows of classrooms. Suddenly, in the middle of a math lesson, the siren would wail the call of impending death. The sound scared the crap out of me.

(Don’t look at the flash! the defense films we watched advised. If you’re out on your bike, throw it to the ground and yank your jacket over your head!)

The teacher would close the curtains and turn off the lights to heighten the paranoia effect while we scrambled under out desks. We were instructed to turn our faces to the floor with our foreheads resting on back of one hand while the other hand protected the back of our necks.

Somewhere around this time, “The Twilight Zone” came to my mind, and I began to suspect that this was all bullshit. Somewhere I had heard that a strategically aimed H-Bomb exploding in the nearby San Francisco Bay would vaporize us all instantly, “duck and cover” be damned. Our fourth grade teacher would have been better off handing out beers than feeding us the illusion we could escape a nuclear attack.

And Rod Serling confirmed it all, infiltrating my mind with the notion that the universe was a dangerous and mysterious place, and the mystery could spill into my life at any moment. There were space aliens who thought we were the ugly ones. There was a fourth dimension in the wall behind my bed that would grab me if I wasn’t careful. Somewhere down a train track there was a town called Willaoughby where life was simple and perfect. Yes, there were other worlds out there, independent from the humdrum reality of my post Eisenhower life. There were things out there that were wonderful, but there were also things out there that might bite me.

As the 60’s progressed, my generation was invaded by the Beatles not the Russians. Fueled by the lessons of “The Twilight Zone” and the naive notion that we could change the world, we went forward to rediscover life on our own. Rod Serling was the father of a revolution of sorts. And though things didn’t go as we planned, he helped open our minds to the endless possibilities of life.

Damn him.

The Religion Gene

Yesterday, a customer asked me what church I attended. I wasn’t amused with the question. He was an ornery old cuss, and he had just revealed that he was a Dodger fan, a state of being that is equal to discovering your wife’s a hooker in my opinion. I looked him square in the eye and said, “I wasn’t born with the religion gene.”

“You an atheist?” he persisted.

“No,” I replied, trying to avoid an argument.

Maybe there was something in the way I said it that made him drop the subject, except for a parting shot about me attending church and something about judgment day. I avoided the skirmish and managed to deliver the car. Whew!

The problem was that I was looking for a fight. You see I enjoy talking about God and religion as any Mormon missionary or door-to-door Seventh Day Adventist can attest. When they come preaching at me they discover a soul who as done a lot of thinking about his place in the universe and has some definite opinions of the subject.

I was born a Roman Catholic. That in itself speaks volumes about why I am religiously challenged. I remember the terror of being seven-years-old going into a darkened confessional to confess my sins to the personal representative of God. I remember making up sins because I couldn’t remember doing anything wrong!

The whole process terrorized me. I envisioned the soul as a cosmic petridish, the sins building up like bacteria. Confession cleaned the dish, but if you had the bad luck of being hit by a truck with a few swear words on there, off to Hell you go!

Being a nice Portuguese boy, I tried to live with the concept that God was just waiting for me to screw up so he could torture me for eternity. But at the age of fourteen it finally dawned on me that it was all a bunch of bullshit.

Over the years the concept of religion has always fascinated me. I developed a theory that God, or whatever controls the wheels of the universe, had very little to do with religion. I decided that the reason religious institutions exist is because of my theory of the religion gene.

In my opinion you are either born with a need for religion or not. It’s in you DNA. Sometimes the gene is buried deeply only to come out when a person decides its time to clean his act up in order to avoid an eternity of fire. People who are extremely religious have a need to have the mysteries of universe placed in a tidy, easy explainable box. They don’t want any mystery in their life, and no surprises at the end. They are not content that the cosmos (both literally and figuratively) is something far beyond human understanding. They want the sucker explained.

Religion by its very definition is the worshiping of concepts that can’t be proven. And since this lack of logic is in itself a dichotomy, they pass off the things that don’t make a lot of sense as faith. Faith is the “inconvenient truth”. It attempts to explain away the unexplainable. It makes the illogical logical. It allows hair-brain theories to take root, wars to occur in the name of God, and general mayhem to ensue.

So let me get this straight. God is a being who along with creating the universe enjoys a little torture on the side. In general he loves you, but if you should screw up he is perfectly okay with barbequing you for eternity.

I don’t think so.

Now let me say that I have nothing against a person needing religion. As Stephen Stills once said, “whatever gets you through the night”. If you need the mysteries of the universe explained to you in human terms in order to make you feel safe, that’s okay by me. Just don’t look at me cross-eyed if I test to your ideas.

I looked out the window of the church called the 4 Corners Cafe wondering why I waste my time thinking about things like this. And as my coffee cooled, I pondered the universe and my place in it.

Bob Dylan Fortune Cookies

Dear Bob,

I’ve been a fan of yours for most of my life. As a young teenager I was a folk music enthusiast, and I discovered you early. My formative years were spent listening to “Blowing In The Wind”, Times Are A-Changing”, “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” and dozens of others. I have a button from those times that says. "Relect Bob Dylan God". Love you man!

When you turned electric with “Bringing It All Back Home”, I became electric too. You turned me on to the infinite possibilities of rock and roll. That’s why when a spectacular idea for a business opportunity came up, I thought of you. Think of it Bob: Bob Dylan Fortune Cookies.

Don’t laugh; I’ve thought this through. There are enough quirky lyrics in your songs to last us for decades. Heck you may never have to go on tour again if things work out right. As for me, I can see a time when I’ll talk to my last flake on the used car lot. Won’t that be a great day!

Now let me paint a picture: The young couple has just had their full of Pork Chow Mien and reach for a fortune cookie. Instead of saying, “You will soon have business success”, it says, “The answer is blowing in the wind”. Now wouldn’t that be something?

The great thing about Bob Dylan Fortune Cookies is that as time goes on they will be more and more effective. As we baby boomers die off, less and less people will be aware of your songs and their impact on our generation. So when they open up a cookie and it says, “Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, don’t criticize what you can’t understand” it will sound as fresh as it did when you wrote it over forty years ago.

My favorite line of Bob Dylan Fortune Cookies will be called “The Subterranean Line”, after the classic song, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” That one song is chuck full of great fortune cookie lines. Here’s a few touching examples.

“Don’t want to be a bum, you better chew gum.”
“Get sick, get well, hang around the ink well.”
“You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.”
“The pump don’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handles.”

The possibilities are endless, I tell you!

The cookies could be used for special occasions. For example, a great “date” ice breaker fortune cookie: “Lay, lady lay, lay across my big brass bed.” For that college fraternity party: “Well I would not feel so all alone, everybody must get stoned”. For political campaigns we can mine the song “Masters of War” for several relevant nuggets

Bob, we’ve got a home run here. I’m so excited I could spit! With you and me partnering up on this project we will make history and a truckload of money. In no time at all we’ll be goin’ down Highway 61 like a rolling stone with the Memphis blues again!

Call me Bob. I’ll be waiting.

David

Sharp As A Tack

Note: I wrote this blog post a couple of years ago for my other blog, Confessions of a Car Man. (I have since deleted all non-car business posts from that blog.) I present it here for your enjoyment.


I’m rapidly approaching the time of my life when people will refer to me as “sharp as a tack”. This label is usually attached to an older person who has a full grasp of what’s going on around him. The term is meant as a compliment, but if you think about it, it’s a sad day when people have to compliment you on your ability to reason.

What brought this to my mind was a conversation with my mechanic friend, Tim Robbins. Tim, who shuns the moniker of technician, is also sharp as a tack, but he’s in his mid-thirties so this is a state of being that is still standard equipment. I find him a great foil for expressing my sometimes way-out-there musings.

On one particular hot August day I was ranting about my most recent health issue as being a preview of coming attractions of old age. The “David Teves Mortality Tour”, I dubbed it. I am currently issuing back stage passes for my fans. “Access All Areas” they say. With this pass you have complete freedom to roam about back stage and hang out with the band so to speak.

Along with heart, hypertension, diabetes, and general state of ennui, life has been sending a yearly health bomb as if to remind me that my days are numbered. A year or so ago I developed a condition called, “Bell’s Palsy”. This delightful disorder causes half your face to become paralyzed, your arm to hurt like hell and a speech impediment also from hell. The whole package screams “Igor” to friends and family and those ups that were forced to face me on the lot.

Luckily, this is not a life-threatening disability. Oh it takes about a year to clear up, but eventually most of it goes away. The only residual effects are one dry eye and a nostril that likes to twitch for no apparent reason. All and all not the most delightful of experiences.

My most recent adventure into reminders of my mortality is a condition known as “Labyrinthitis”. This disorder is a virus that attacks your inner ear. It cannot be treated. Like Bells Palsy it will go away on its own in time. It came on me suddenly the morning after my granddaughter, Brooke, was born. I woke up in a hotel room in Jackson, California with the room spinning to the right like a top. (I wonder if I were in Australia would the room spin to the left?) Suddenly I was four years old spinning myself into a dizzy, a child’s first attempt at getting high.

I spent the next week, ironically a vacation week, barely able to walk. Over the last month, the symptoms have receded sometimes making a return engagement at the end of my workweek. Like the palsy this will pass, but I wonder if it will leave any long-lasting reminders of its visit.

I’m talking about this not to bitch. Well, I guess I am bitching. I won’t go into the depressing details of what goes around in my mind when visited by these maladies, but it does make me wonder what the hell is next.

The scary part is that when in the clutches of dizziness, I am no longer as sharp as a tack. Write a blog entry? Hell, I’m lucky to be able to watch an episode of “Ice Road Truckers”. I forget what I’m saying, names of people I love and have a hard time putting a few words together in a logical sequence.

I suppose you know where I’m going with this: Alzheimer’s disease. I once knew a man, now passed on to that great used car lot in the sky, who liked to say, “Having Alzheimer’s isn’t too bad. You get to meet new friends every day!” I have no idea if that’s in my future. There isn’t shit I can do about it if it is. I suppose writing will help me keep the brain cells circulating for a few more years, but I’ve been clearly given the idea that the end of the demo ride is in sight.

Guess I’d better try to lay away a few people while I still have the time.