Having a car. I just moved back to my parents' home 2 months ago, after graduating college. I'm pretty much broke, and I've been aware of it, and thankful for having awesome home-cooked meals and people I care about around, but after thinking a minute, yeah, I love having a car to drive, and this one is not mine. It's good to re-awaken the deeper gratitude that can drift off and get into a daydream of a more surface level appreciation.....and help me see more clearly that I need to get savin' for a car of my own!! (If I could get by w/o one I would, but Kansas is slow to implement much public transport... car will help me move to Oregon, which is calling me!)

Peace and Love Everywhere
Christopher

Hello friends,

Somehow I came across this lady's online journal entry with her personal account of the death of Bob Nash, "the last connection to the Beat Generation that flourished in Big Sur and the Carmel Valley after WWII." This lady, Susie Bright, and her friends carried Bob's body, craddled in sheets and tucked in with rosemary, up a hill from his residence to the road to meet the man from the mortuary. Here is a link to the article; the photos are incredible: http://susiebright.blogs.com/
And here is a poem:

Upon Meeting Bob Nash, 1964 by Ric Masten

one wonders
about an eccentric
content to live and work
in the claustrophobic confines
of a tiny camper shell
truckless
perched on flimsy redwood piers
and in terrain so enormous
distance is measured
in light years

the word
on Partington Ridge is vertical
horizontal
only on warm summer evenings
sprawled in the dry grass
mesmerized
by a towering uncloaked sky
hushed by the size of it all
this
while at my elbow
a monkish little guy
talks my leg off
piling the verbiage up
until there isn’t
nor will there ever be
a crock
large enough to contain it all

of course

the same thing can be said
about the human heart
and love
which gets us to the place
where Bob lets us see his art
pen and inks
so minimal and microscopic
they might be easily ignored
but in the right light
if you focus
the sparseness and simplicity
takes you aboard
until you find yourself
in league with molecules
closer to zero
than you have ever been before

lines as fine as these
can only be drawn
by someone who knows
precisely
how many angels can dance
on the head of a pin
and realizing this
one wonders

 

Peace and Love Everywhere,

 

Chris