A Fool or a Visionary

the new Dragon speak journal: October 14, 2009 (entry one)

The New Dragon Journal

unvarnished, stained by life

Chapter 1

    Testing systems should always be done in advance.  I say that on October 14, 2009 at age 53.  I wonder if my body was tested before it was born into this world.  I think "That is a complicated answer and the answer is, I don't know?"  My initial thought was wrong; the answer was simple enough.

    "I have not been writing the way I should be writing,"  a quote from a poem of mine recently published in Listen for Home, both versions.  I wonder if I can write a public blog.  I doubt it, because so much of my writing goes into reflections upon the actions and reactions of people.  Nevertheless, I will try because if I know my words may be read I consider them more carefully.

    How do you judge other people? Often, rather than negotiate with someone, I ask people to do what they think is fair and based upon what they do I obtain an understanding of how they will be to work with in the future.  Sometimes I'm disappointed but it tells me in advance about their understanding of me and their greed.  It is as simple as that.  Listen to the words but most of all I observe their actions.  They may justify their greed or they may not, but the test is unrelenting, and is based entirely upon their actions in determining what is fair.  Once done it cannot be undone.  

        Recently, I was sadly disappointed in two instances.  However, it saved me much bigger disappointments down the road.  It also influenced my thinking in whether to give more to these people or to keep searching for those people who think not of themselves solely but of others as well.

    Time is such a valuable commodity for me and for others.  Having Parkinson's disease makes this distinction this observation so clear to me.

    I have been writing.  I've been writing books: I am on my second children's book and I've published Listen For Home.

    However it seems as though when I'm not writing a journal, I do not consider myself to be writing, because writing a journal is a letter to myself that I may never read but I always know it exists.  Writing a journal is like taking a photograph; the act captures images both on paper and in the mind.  Or might I say electronically and in the mind. so this journal shall be written using Dragon speak the software program.  It allows me to speak to my computer and let the computer transcribe my words.  So if the thoughts are garbled blame me not the computer.  I say that to placate the computer whose name is Gandalf.  So this is a journal written by k.s. lewis and his computer Gandalf.

    I am not sure if anyone reads this blog or not.  I will assume that it is not read and I will write scandalous items publicly. it will give me satisfaction and no one will know!

   

   

HAPPINESS: A CHARLIE TRAVEL ADVENTURE STORY

Just published by k.s. lewis  Happiness: a Charlie Travel Adventure Story.  Click here to preview or purchase.

Listen For Home by k.s. lewis published

Listen for Home, the third published book of k.s. lewis includes a search for home through full color photography, prose, poetry, stories and a play. The book includes a July 2009 road trip to Webster County Nebraska, the area and people of which Willa Cather wrote and where the author was raised.

fully reviewable at http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/listen-for-home/7534255
It takes a bit of time to load due to the number of full color photos.

It can be purchased there by download for 12 dollars or a lot more if ordered (full color photos).

Shifting Sands Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Shifting Sands Part Two:  Is the world made of words?

            I wondered today if the world was made of words but I couldn’t see that image.   I thought of titling this chapter, “The World Is Made Of Words,” but realized that it is not.  Words are used to create drawings in the mind.  Good writers create vivid drawings in the mind.  Our minds are slate boards for artists to draw with words.  Quickly arranged, quickly erased, word created images by the source code of brilliant writers.  I have begun reading again.  Gandhi autobiography.  Kundera’s, “The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,” and Kurt Vonnegut’s Jailbird.   I want to reread Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude.

            Now everything seems to be italicized as I dictate with Dragon Speak.  Perhaps that is for a reason.  I just decided to rewrite Knights of the Nebraska Roundtable, my unpublished novel from my youth,  interlineating the youthful writing with writing from the present. A distraction arises.  The word, “Anixter” came up on my screen and I looked it up and it had no meaning except a global company for whom I could not get information without paying using a credit card.  I shall use it to represent global companies whose face is shrouded by the Wall Street Journal.

            I realize that I must read in order to write.  I’m writing source code for the human computer to turn into images in the mind.  I need to learn how to write that source code to trigger the human computer into creating images in the mind.  Perhaps the world is made of words, source code is language and perhaps this is an intricately programmed computer creating new artificial intelligence and I’m just part of it, just realizing that I am part of it.  Sometime ago earlier this year I rewrote the beginning of the book, unpublished book, Knights of the Nebraska Round Table. I kept the poem at the beginning, perhaps one of the very first poems I wrote that I still like.  This was the beginning of Shifting Sands.  Perhaps I will put this out there in the world and see what the reaction is to the writing.  Just curious.

 

The Journeys and Adventures of a Knight of the Nebraska Round Table

 

We gathered one evening under the stars,

Knights preparing for a quest,

Innocently, we drank a toast to the future,

And thus began our journeys

To the ends of the earth

-Sue Stellar

 

 

Once upon a time long time ago there was a boy who traveled south from the snow and cold of the land of Nebraska to a place called Las Cruces, New Mexico where snow was unheard of and the warmth of the Sun and the sands of the desert replaced the cold and snow.

Eventually he traveled back North again, but he was not the same person that left the farm to travel south.   He had seen people and land and mountains that had charmed him and awed him and had made him love the Southwest and the road.  He traveled back stopping along the way, making his way to the small towns of the Midwest wondering if he would be trapped there forever, never to travel again, like his parents uncles and cousins and neighbors.  He vowed not to let that happen.  Little did he know that there are many ways to get trapped in life, like an endless computer loop, but he did not know much of life, or, for that matter, computers, because this was long before the 21^st century.

On his way he visited the mother of a former girlfriend in Albuquerque who drank wine with him and spoke with him in the cool of an adobe house near the river, the Rio Grande River, on a back dirt road in the middle of the city.  He still remembers those times they drank wine by the fireplace in Albuquerque.  The boy who could throw the baseball very hard but who had not burned out his fire of competition in college went home to the farmlands of Nebraska to play baseball for a summer only to leave again and this time he moved his home to the mountains of Colorado.  He took with him a dream of what he had left.  He took with him his imagination which made the farmlands magical.  His imagination saw deeper into where he had been when he could see with his eyes while he was there.  So he went to Colorado and went to law school in Denver.  But his imagination imbued him with a magical memory of that summer of baseball, adventure and love in which he had become a Knight of the Nebraska Roundtable.

He thought of the people he left often because he did not take any friends with him.  No friends from Las Cruces, no friends from Nebraska, no lovers went with him, all that he had were his memories and his imagination.

Sentences he wrote on pages,  paragraphs of law he wrote in law school, yet he dreamed of writing a book about the characters he knew in Nebraska and so he did, but he didn’t know what that much later he would learn about rhythms of words, metaphors, similes and analogies.  But most of all he learned about life and the summer of baseball spun into context like a looping slow curve cutting the outside corner of the plate.

 

          January 9, 2009

“Life is different from different perspectives.”  We count on that statement as truth.   Age, wealth, health, experience, education,  location, even time of day changes perspective.  Turning a baseball in one’s hand shows differences in the seemingly symmetrically stitched object.  As a baseball pitcher I know.  A ball with some thick stitches makes for great movement on a pitch.

Tonight six of my plays will be performed at the Mercury Café.  I am one of the actors.   Ten years ago I was living in an “ostentatious” downtown loft, writing The Blue Vagabond and dating a girl in whose basement I now live.   Before I wrote about a homeless person, now I am almost homeless.

So I am writing these words, this view of the world, from the perspective of a basement, from the perspective of not having paid my rent in one month or is it two?  I almost titled this journal, “Embracing Change.”  We shall see.  This is a book about change and perspective.  It may not end up being a journal.  I still intend to write my “Unadorned Journal” but that could change.  Lol.

Contrasts and change and how that is viewed by others are topics I wish to examine in the crucible of my life day to day, from the past and in the future.  Here is where I find the courage to “jump off the cliff” and fly. 

 

           

 

Traveling with my camera

I hope to get pictures.  Traveling in my jeep with my camera and a notebook.

Chapter 25 of Words and Sentences, puzzle-making punctuated by the rain falling on the roof.

Chapter 25 of Words and Sentences

Puzzle-making punctuated by the rain falling on the roof.

 

Marathons, travels, thank you letters and Wednesdays at Crossroads at Five Points

 

Honesty.  It is 6 a.m. on Thursday July 9, 2009, and I have been watching TV since 5 a.m.  I watched stories about the world, economic stories, stories about India  There is an Indian reporter that has a program called Storyboard.  It is about creative people, marketing people and it makes me want to travel.  It is 6 a.m. and I have a letter due to a client at 9 a.m..

 A car next door starts.  I correct the language of my sentence.  I hear the sound of a plastic dumpster being rolled to the street for the garbage pickup.  6 a.m. I need to be working out.  I ate pieces of Swiss cheese for breakfast.  I want to have a girlfriend, maybe be married.  I want to wake up in bed together.  I'm lonely.  I want to be in love with a lover who has time to love.

     Lisa and I live in the same house, her upstairs, me downstairs.  She is my ex ex girlfriend and still my best friend. But best friends are not lovers.  Lisa and I ate a late dinner at Racines last night. Split a single order.  Did not have drinks, just water.

     I call it the new Racines although it has been in existence for several years.  The old Racines was across from my old loft.  I intend to go to Nebraska this weekend.  In fact I may look for a train ticket for Friday night.  I must get this stuff done today.  I may drive the Jeep back.  I think I want take off the top and drive back to Nebraska, braving the rain and hail.  It is time for a road trip.  I want to see home, my mom and dad, my sister and her family, the land in Nebraska.  And write and photograph the moments, the images.

 Honesty.  I want to be honest in my writing.  Marathons are satisfying only after you're done.  The training beforehand is good and conditioning accomplished is wonderful but the last half of a marathon race is painful.  Running a theater is like running a marathon, painful, yet ultimately satisfying.  One wonders if the constant running of a marathon is a good thing.  Yet, if I am as brilliant a writer as I would hope to be, which may only be in my own mind, I should be able to write myself out of this box.  Create revenue through writing, whether that writing is creative writing, fund raising or legal.  Now that is a self-challenge.

Last night we had an event for Wednesday at Crossroads.  There were two traveling poets: Dakota DarkHorse who was a poet traveling with his mother across the country.  Let me say that again.  He was young poet, just graduated from college, traveling with his mother across the country.  Her name is Rose.  His poetry was obsessed with 9/11 and George Bush but that is understandable.  What was most amazing about him was his journey with his mother to

North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Las Vegas, San Francisco, LA San Diego, Hollywood, New Mexico, Colorado and then headed towards home in New Haven Connecticut.  Traveling.  What a journey.  A journey that will create memories that will last his entire life.  And his mother will have different memories but equally precious.  I hope they have captured last night in their memory for then after he and his mother Rose return home, all of us shall live on in their molecular memory in New Haven, Connecticut

    After the poetry, Dino Delano told the story of traveling to Burma Cambodia and Thailand through his pictures and his poet’s insight.  That story resides in my mind.  The images resonate in my mind.  The lives of a simple happy people shown to us if only we stop and see.

 I tried some things last night.  Improvisation.  Getting people on the stage that otherwise would not be on the stage.  It is strange how the stage scares people and it is strange how other people simply accept it as if it is part of their lives. 

 Wednesday at Crossroads shall be a storytelling, interviews and a poetry time and, I shall be the host, the interviewer and coming in two weeks we shall have an interesting event, I'm not telling the secret of what is to come but it will be interesting.  Don't miss it.  An interviewee both controversial and enchanting. Sexy, a little scary, plus a singer, a band.  Some improvisation. A short film by a local filmmaker.  And always the philosophy of life.  A few hints in the days to come. July 22 at 8pm. 

 

Goodbye Michael

 

On ending day,

Find butterflies to ride to heaven.

Swooping, soaring, singing.

Escape weight of travail,

Broken cars and dreams,

Collected, dissected

Confetti flung to the winds,

Cottony seeds of troubles,

Gone.

Find butterflies to ride to heaven.

Float above thunderheads,

Cast lightning bolts for fun

Dance on a floor of storm clouds,

One more day to play,

In golden glow of afternoon rays.

 Copyright 2009 Kurt Lewis

Write fast 12:23 am July 8, 2009

Write fast, there is little time
 tired, needing sleep
yet I must write

write of what I saw
heard and felt in these wakened hours.  ]

write so i don't forget.

One phone call and the smile vanished

one phone call and joy turned to grief

one phone call and the statute cried

and said

what room are you in?
214?
Not a hotel
I discovered
from the sister listening too
Cancer incurable cancer incurable incurable cancer,
agony twisted her face in grief
 white teeth I saw no more
for I was leaving with my bags
write fast, there is little time
incurable cancer comes for us all,
death comes for us all,
wake in the morning
see the dawn
write down words
when they come to you
like hotcakes from heaven.
Today I write of yesterday
and tomorrow I will write of today
today becomes tomorrow
and I write of sorrow
And joy
words spin and twirl
flatten on the pan
write faster there is little time
as today becomes tomorrow
memories fade away

and morning turns to night

Kurt Lewis Copyright July 8, 2009

The Blues and Jazz of Tum Kepri and Friends: Coming Thursday July 2 at 9pm at Crossroads

A Previous visit to Crossroads by Tum Kepri: Playing Coulter's Birthday Bash

Jazz and Blues Thursday July 2 9pm at Crossroads

Starlit Poem

Starlit Poem

Traveling twixt and tween the barricades

of modern day life

requires a star to light

that midnight bridge over daily strife

Keeping course by unraveled twine

restrung on its rubber soul.

 When you and I dine

At an unexpected time,

We reap golden wheat

In harvest sunsets

and showers of grain

cool to the threshing feet.

Your untamed story boldly told

came in poetic words

painting the ice cold snow

Falling out of the sky

On a hundred degree day

Which was how we met

You were willing to bet

In a parallel life on a fourth of July

Ducking imaginary snowballs

Made of rhymes.

I tell the curious

we were midnight storm clouds

creating a blizzard of words aloud

obscuring summer sun

quenching it of fire.

Sitting on crates

 toasting our fate

Adding a fact,

 Changing a date,

back and forth until we equate

mind and time entertwined

wrapping our lives into a spinning ball

thrown at the wall

letting it bounce

any direction or deflection

transformed in our thoughts

strung together by words

unraveling in ink to mark the trail

with unerring perfection,

Bounding over bridges,

helping us play,

becoming a red balloon

 floating up rocky stairs

of dark blue mountains

till we both see the view

together,

gazing from atop

our gravity defiant sphere

created right here

ascending to the roof of the world

and beyond

to find yet another star

made of words meant

to light our way.

copyright Kurt Lewis 2009

from the "a fool or a visionary blog"