The Only Book On Sarah Palin

Hanna came and went. We didn't even lose power here. I went to bed last night expecting to get up this morning and find it gone, and by lunch today the Sun was shining. I got six inches of rain. Some parts of the state got flooded. Others, not so much. Here's hoping the other hurricanes out in the Atlantic find some other place to go.

Going to my daughter's wedding seemed to take some life out of me. The timing of it was terrible. At least for me. Health-wise. The problems I thought were temporary are not temporary, and the biggest problem of that ordeal is that it's NOT life-threatening. I don't know what the official outlook for this disease is, but I got the feeling from this last bout that it could get worse and worse, and you still wouldn't die, and then it would get worse and worse until you just go insane from the unrelenting pain.

I was under the influence of the prescribed drug Prednisone during the entire time we were on the trip to Seattle, Washington. This drug is a serious anti-inflammation steroid. It stopped the extreme pain I was experiencing, but it was euphoric in a way that caught me off-guard. Sure, I was very happy to have the pain go away, but I was really, really happy for no reason I'd ever encountered before. There were times I was a human weeping machine. I would start crying uncontrollably for seemingly odd reasons. But, this was already going on before the doctor put me on these drugs.

The steroids seemed to intensify any emotional stream of consciousness that showed up either pro or con. Granted, I cried a lot because I was feeling highly emotional about the possibility of seeing my ex-wife and children after a rude parting of the ways, but I also found myself displaying a monstrous arrogance that was out and about before I could atone for it.

I'm not unfamiliar with the expression "bipolar". It used to be called something else. Manic-depressive? Both terms are so last century. So Freudian. The dark side personified. All fall down. All Fall Down. That was the title of Jamie Herlihy's Other Book. All Fall Down. Jamie fell down. Right after he blew his brains out. I should have known.

I should have known he would eventually kill himself. I didn't know he did kill himself for years after he did it. We had a strange relationship. He knew why I was a traveler. He knew I saw myself as a romantic vagabond on a religious quest. There were other things he didn't know, and if he had, he might have been intrusive and possibly crass about it. No angel he.

We met when he hired me to read his palm down in Key West. He was rolling in dough from MidNight Cowboy. He didn't wanna buy something from me that he wanted for himself. He wanted to buy for me what he already had for himself. Literally. He offered to pay my way to a famous writer's retreat up in the backwoods of Maine where I could meet with other writers to find a direction for my poetry and journal writing.

I didn't know how to simply say "Yes. I would like that. Thank you very much.", and have done with it. I was brought up on the axiom "It's better to give than receive." in a world where I was rewarded for being able to give my stuff away, but not take what was offered, even if from the heart.

I truly think that learning how to receive, and to take what is freely offered, was one of the reasons I deliberately went on the road as a homeless bum on and off for all those years. There really were times when I would have put myself in jeopardy if I had not taken what some people offered me, and right then too, in the immediacy of now!

What I found about Scorpios when I learned what I know about astrology is that they are usually either a snake-in-the-grass or a soaring eagle, but either way they gone test you to find your weak spots. Once they do that and they're satisfied they can defend themselves against the likes of you, they can be sagaciously pleasant company. Just don't start what you can't finish and you'll do fine.

I was tersely aware there were some drivers that stopped to pick me up hitch-hiking that were gonna push the envelop in a very dangerous way. Dangerous mostly to me. I was such a dumb kid that I didn't catch on to what they needed from me, as an excuse not to kill me, for a long time. I just wasn't born knowing they expected me to graciously provide them with an excuse not to kill me. Doesn't that seem counter-intuitive to you?

Never the less, I have commanded people who had guns pointed at me to stop doing that, and why, and they usually did, and then apologized for being inconsiderate. Go figure... eh? Just like I commanded the girls in this one room to strip off their clothes and have sex with all comers. I don't think they realized they didn't have to, and probably shouldn't have. Mobs instigated by rabble rousers usually hang the wrong victim. I was just reading about how this works last night in that book Blink I'm reading.

These people like guns and what other people's fear of guns will bring to the table. I was brought up around guns. That familiarity probably saved my life as much as anything in these situations. That, and truly believing that a scared human will hurt you in spite of themselves if you're not careful. Because they're scared, they just might hurt you if they suddenly realize their gun scares the shit of you, and the additional fear of you being a scared person might be enough to cause them to pull the trigger prematurely, just so you won't hurt them.

My brother just called to tell me about his friend out in the Seattle area. The one we went to see while we were out there, and had supper cooked by his warm-hearted and clever wife. He's the guy who owns Epicenter Publishing, and who along with his partner makes his living publishing books out of the Alaskan experience. Both he and his wife were born and raised in Alaska. He's the guy I wrote about who learned publishing by hanging out at the local newspaper since when he was a boy, and ending up the editor.

He mentioned in passing to us that he had high hopes for a new book he just published. It turned out to be the only book about Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin in existence. None of us could have possibly known McCain would choose her as a running mate that evening at his house two weeks ago. Kent is probably gonna be filthy rich very, very soon. It couldn't have happened to a sweeter, more thoughtful couple.