Venerable Readers, 9/94 PAUL11

I was looking through the old literary club letters and noticed that they are turning into quite a stack of correspondence. I wanted to put them together into some bound form -- maybe at the end of the year. Perhaps the original members could even write up a little forward, so that this club can find its way into its own historical niche. We'll see...

Book bound...I forgot to talk about a couple of books I had read before I sent off PAUL10. They were quickies: one by Jules Verne called Master of the World. I thought it had great imagination for the time it was written. The typical lunatic wants to take over the world, which he plans to do with his invention called the Terror. It is a multifunctional locomotion machine that can race along roadways, travel on water, dive beneath the waters like a submarine, and fly. The typical detective solves the case, blah, blah, blah. The interaction of the characters is a bit dry, but some of the concepts about air travel were way before their time. In 1907, when this book was published, there wasn't a locomotion machine that could go faster than 80 M.P.H. (THIS KNOWLEDGE PROVIDED BY THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY, i.e. UA Library help desk).

So, you can see how the soul ownership of a vehicle that could travel faster than anything known to man and that could escape to where no one could follow would make one think that they could rule the world. I have a fetish for reading books by the first men of science fiction such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. I want to say that I've read every publish word of theirs. Unless you are on a similar quest, I would not recommend Master Of The World, because there is just so much more modern reads out there to stimulate our minds, which in turn will be cast away generations from now for the same reasons, no doubt.

The other forgotten tome was Book of Vampires by Dudley Wright. I expected something less dry, but I got almost two hundred pages of poorly collected documentation on world superstitious beliefs pertaining to vampires and other blood-sucking creatures. Ninety percent of this book was quotes from people, writers, and clergymen that 'witnessed' vampires or the victims thereof. These accounts mostly came from literature dated around the Salem witch burning time. Go figure. I could hardly stay interested enough to find out if this whole book was a hoax or not. I guess it wasn't since the author is an acclaimed historian, according to the back cover, but who cares when he spends his life collecting disjointed, unusable data? N'est pas?

As I mentioned in PAUL10, I read Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. I was skeptical about how good it would be at first because the author has a tendency to reiterate his own 'lessons' over and over, but the story of his journey to reach a higher level of understanding escalates to a climatic, yet somewhat melodramatic, scene of his teacher dying and him reaching the forth level of consciousness at the end of the book. I didn't really get sympathetic to the main character until three fourths of the way through the book, but the wise sayings and lessons for the soul helped to make the entire read thought provoking. If you have read Way of the Peaceful Warrior then I recommend this one.

Dan's mentor in this book tries to teach Dan compassion, so tends to be more compassionate with him than Socrates was in the first book, who was trying to teach Dan discipline. Mama Chia takes Dan on physical and metaphysical journeys that show what it means to be a true peaceful warrior -- being strong enough to embrace a leper, being strong enough to help up a weak man, being strong enough to let someone pass on when it is their turn to leave this earth. That last one would probably be the hardest for me. I thought about it and I would have no problem helping the sick and dying -- I even see myself helping AIDS patients some day, but I would crumble if someone I loved died. I cried buckets towards the end of this book, probably because I felt Dan's pain most when he realized that his teacher was dead and would no longer be there to hold his hand through difficult lessons. I've said too much about the plot already...

One last thought on this book; the last quote that Mama Chia gives to Dan is "Francis Cardinal Spellman once said, 'Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on Man.'" I felt like one of you needed to hear that...

It is weird, but I've been lead to reading books lately that hurt the heart, yet strengthen the soul; books that teach me about my own necessary life lessons.

Two examples are Seize The Day by Saul Bellow and Japanese Death Poems 'Written by Zen monks and Haiku Poets on the Verge of Death'.

Bellows is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1976 - the first American to win the prize since John Steinbeck in 1962). In 1969 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Humboltz's Gift. So, obviously some people think his stuff is good. This one is just a bit too melodramatic for me. I don't recommend it.

But I'll mention some more about it so you can make your own assumptions. This man complains about his life throughout the whole book, but he won't get off his butt to do anything about it. He plays the stock market in hopes that it will rescue him from his financial problems. And even though he is in his fifties, he still asks his dad for money instead of getting a job. He lets men swindle him even when he's aware they're doing it. My opinion is that he's a spoiled bum, and he deserves everything he gets in this book. The only lesson the reader is blessed with seems to be knowing we're not as pathetic as this guy is and a few fortune-cookie-wisdoms the author slips in once in a while. For example, the character Wilhelm finally realizes, "A person can become tired of looking himself over and trying to fix himself up. You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half."

This particular line stood out to me. I have been feeling like I had been making poor choices about relationships and was about to do it again, but when I read this, I thought that it would be better to be patient and cautious now than pay for rash decisions later on. I thought that I could never make the same stupid mistakes that Wilhelm did, but many of his problems came from him trying to escape from a marriage he regretted getting in to. He had never really loved this person and now he was paying out almost his entire income to support her and their two children. I obviously would never have spawn, but I definitely don't need any more regrets about relationships. Very poignant for me, perhaps for you too...

On a higher plain is the Japanese Death Poems. They are good! I know some of you detest haikus, but you still might like the commentaries made on each poem. Here's one example, one marked "SAKYOKU, died on the fifth day of the second month, 1790 at the age of twenty-one.

How sad...

amidst the flowers of the spring equinox

a journey deathward.

Ara kanashi

hana no higan o

shide no tabi

"Sakyoko died on the day of the equinox (higan) of spring, a day on which the Japanese hold ceremonies in remembrance of their ancestors. Cherry trees begin to bloom at about this time of year."

It is similar for each person. A few commentaries are longer than others and they talk about certain words and their implied meanings. This book was along the same Zen line-of-thought as Sacred Journey. It made me think about our mortality (and immortality) in a new light. Each person in this 341-page book is immortalized by a haiku; a three-line poem -- 17 syllables... Perhaps this is another reason why some cultures honor their dead on certain holidays, so that they don't forget. A haiku is a very meaningful way to remember someone you love.

It reminded me that I shouldn't forget certain people. I've had relationships with people that until lately I have tried to forget and that's probably why I repeat the same disasters over and over of getting hooked up with dysfunctional people. So I took some time to remember people and make a shrine of sorts for each of them in my heart, so that when I felt bitter towards someone for no apparent reason. I'd remind myself that I should direct that hate or whatever towards the person that really made me feel that way in the first place, then I'd put those feelings in the appropriate shrine. It is sort of difficult to explain, but it has allowed me some true healing time in my life lately and I wanted to share that with you.

One last book for this letter. Karl Edward Wagner's Kane in NIGHT WINDS. I had read this before about seven years ago, but I kept remembering some great scenes from it every once in a while, so I picked it up again for my enjoyment. It isn't a short read at 286 pages, but it has short chapters for good bedtime reading. The book as a whole deals with stories from Kane's past, present and future in a really interesting and mystic way. Kane is a sorcerer and swordsman that goes on great adventures, dancing with Death in every scene. Part of the book seems to be an attempt at poetic story telling; other parts pacify the need for blood spilling by the warrior in us all.

I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed the Beowulf-esque language throughout the book; such as a sword named Wizard's Bane, and the "Demonlord's moon", etc. Kane seems to have many adventures similar to Beowulf with the addition of some sex thrown in to amuse contemporary readers, I'm sure.

Well, in signing off, I want to say Happy Birthday to those of you who had birthdays in September, especially my bestus buddy, Mike S.! Happy two-five!

I was happy to see LEIGH1 come my way recently too! Good letter! Write another talking about The Pioneers. I'd love to hear all about it.

And Mike R., you big goober. I bet you would love to talk about Stephen Donaldson's The Trilogy of Thomas Covenant, if nothing else, because you're a big fan of his, right? You'll have to write us before I tell you how I know you read these.

Remember, one letter about one book is better than no letter about no books...

I'm fifteen books away from my year goal of fifty-two. Can I he make it folks, stay tuned...

Honey and Peaches,

Pablo!

P.S. I love computers now, Mike.