THE SHORT, HAPPY HISTORY OF A WRITING LIFE :

Influences fly from me like angry ghosts. "You beats and old European novelists, consummate artists as you were; crazed philosophers, confessional poets, shrinks, and monks," I mutter as they all fly skyward after they had their way with me.

I was influenced by all things not permitted in the United States but in small college and university towns.

If they could contemplate in the depths of the 13th century why can't modern types do the same thing? It's a simple and frightening question.

And what people have denied in themselves; that was a painful influence for me.

The greatest influence is the fully human in stride through love, death, nature, hate, power, and beauty. It is a form not obligated to anything but its very best.

An indelible influence keeps the mind open in the face of skepticism, cynicism, hatred, ignorance and crowds of common ailments. Addiction, certainly that.

There is, then, the miserable voyage through the untrustworthy nature of human beings; passage, shock, horror, and then the telling move.

And when we pass through we must turn back and admit what has gotten us through. It is a commingling of the sacred and the profane.

Richness.

Light.

Happy resolutions!

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A TABLE OF CONTENTS

Madeleine was at the window looking out over the noon crowd that moved in and out of the street with the awkward, persistent desire to be somewhere they weren't.

As the bus approached the river, up the Sierra Nevada toward Tahoe, he knew it would cruise down the long highway through Sacramento and over the green bridge over the Sacramento River and on toward the Bay Area. He lit a cigarette. Then he pulled out the book he was reading. It was a popularization of psychological theories that put into practice on a daily basis would improve his smile, his regularity, and make him a god as well.

The world, centered in our reveries, leaps alive at the slightest suggestion of our freedom. We would bang away on the scabby shield that keeps us from the truth. Where are the guardians? It is nearly a chant we learn. Where are the guardians? Ah, they may be watching television!

The sky immense? Is there not another sky in another universe? We are made real by what connects us with distant skies of the common universe. Perhaps, one day, we roll into a valley unmarked by the species that destroys

Passion is the bitter thing life shows itself to be in dreams. So pessimism descends, dropping down into an unannounced corridor. A world of darkness; a wonderful darkness, a kind of layer of bedding between himself and the hot atmosphere in the light of day.

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