BUY FOR THE KINDLE READER:

NIGHT THOUGHTS

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AN ILLEGAL DAY IN THE HISTORY OF A SOUL

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The manuscripts are under $6.

THE SHORT, HAPPY HISTORY OF A WRITING LIFE by David Eide:

Democracy has its charms no doubt. It has its ludicrous aspects and often asserts itself as the living end of all things. In practice and theory democracy is only a becoming, always evolving, always transforming and never satisfied with the status quo.

So it's no wonder why one's work, one's precious writing, should not suffer the same sort of fate. And all things will reverse and topple into the grand sea of time. Good. Democracy is good. It permits light and says "go to the highest level and always push the envelope and always transform what is solid."

Yes.

My youth appears to me as a curious mistake or, at least, a series of stupidities. I was studious sometimes. I was thinking and making up stories no question. I had ambitions without a doubt.

The Berkeley years were far more intense and productive than it first appears. I was reading, writing, and thinking. And between those activities lived in a series of wombs; neighborhoods, jobs, friends and people I associated with and so on.

And there was constant attention on the "world situation"; the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era. That's when I picked up on the computer revolution, the possibility of digitizing texts, wireless and all of that stuff that convinces even the skeptical writer than we live in a magical poofland.

I just consumed it all as an imagination will and read a little bit about it. I also got interested in solar power and the question of resources; how they are transformed, the nature of scarcity, political issues surrounding them etc.

"He read a great deal, as though he knew the light was being put out." It was the post-60's in Berkeley and it wasn't pretty.

The Internet put me back into society, sometimes in very painful ways. It brought a lot of stress and disruption to my bucolic life. The last three or four years have been the most difficult because I had to do things for very little money and so became that archetypal American: the very frustrated dude.

The Net introduced me to a few dark pains and a few hits of adrenaline. It introduced me to business and many people I would never have had any relation with; as I said it put me back into the society in a big way. It wasn't without its pains and costs. Nope. Could not escape that.

What it did more than anything was re-initiate myself into thinking about the future, my own and generally as a member of the human race.

And it proved to me that a person can do much but can't do it all. That a person is so remarkable when given the freedom to be so. But he isn't an island. He isn't all of himself, total and complete.

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