Each of her poems is an explosion of color crystalizing our moments of experience into fine jewels. Each section of Cashing Checks has its own identity with some poems having the gravity associated with poetry while others careen towards whimsy and an alluring sense of humor. The final section, Reflections (Upon Jim Morrison’s Return) resurrects Jim Morrison as a traveling companion (Martin-Bowen’s previous Crossing Kansas with Jim Morrison) exploring the world of the southwest through Greek mythology and Native American lore and the perspective of Jim Morrison.

Poetry is the fine art of literature each word should be painted thickly with meaning. I would think Jim Morrison would consider this “pure poetry”, yet it is different than his “ticking off the possibilities” while remaining true to his use of words that open the doors of possibilities within ourselves. Jim Morrison famously used psychedelics to expand his consciousness but here Martin-Bowen’s words are the psychedelic that lead us through the trip of experiencing life with Jim Morrison as our guide.

You don’t have to be a Doors fan or even a Jim Morrison fan, just someone willing to expand their horizons and see the world differently, if even for a little while.

Washington D.C., January 6, 2021, 6pm. The national guard swarmed over the grounds of the capitol. Flood lights lit the night, smoke or steam rising off them into the cold night air. The lights blanketed the pavilion of the capitol in a garish, phosphorescent light. The bodies of Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi still hung in the gallows the insurrectionists had erected. The violence was the flower of the seed Trump had planted. The guard now had the insurrectionists penned off to the side awaiting transport to the nearest jail or prison. They had served Trump’s purpose and he didn’t need them anymore, but he couldn’t leave them walking around to tell their story, they needed to “disappear.”

The hanging was the excuse Trump needed to declare a national emergency, federalized the national guard and sent them in to round up the insurrectionists. He went on TV and said there had been an attempt to overthrow the government and that he alone had saved American democracy. That future generations would venerate January sixth as the fourth of July had been, and he would be revered alongside Washington and Lincoln as the savior of America.

Arrest warrants had been issued for Joseph Biden, Kamala Harris and a long list of Democrats for trying to steal the election from Trump. To their surprise so were a lot of republicans, who were deemed disloyal or not loyal enough, too ambitious, or who knew too much by Trump. Names like Gosar, Greene, Boebert, Graham, McConnell, Cruz, Hawley, will sooner or later find themselves a prison cell. From now on what was a coup, what freedom was, what truth was, would all be defined by Trump, by fiat, by dictate. George Orwell’s ghost screaming from his grave.

The revolution had been televised but as of, yet no reaction has presented itself, no resistance encountered, no outrage perhaps it is milling about out in the darkness or viewers had simply changed the channel.

Editor’s Note: This is where the reporters notes end. We’ve heard but have been unable to confirm the reporter was taken into custody and he’s neither been seen or heard from since, nor have we been able to locate him with any official law enforcement agencies.

A phone booth stands alone, empty in the Los Angeles night, its dull plastic light an island, in the sea of neon fused darkness. A car pulls up to the curb and a lone figure gets out. The car pulls away, the figure walks to the phone booth closing the door behind him. The inside light pops on illuminating him, a silhouette in relief against the night. He takes a dime out of his black jeans, and picks up the receiver, he puts the dime in the coin slot, and listens as it clinks through the phone’s mechanism waiting for the dial tone and dials a number on the rotor and waits as the phone rang on the other end, a woman picks up.

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said, his voice a soft conspiratorial whisper, “we just got back into town tonight.” He listens as the woman asks something, then says, “yeah, we wasted him.”

Jim was walking down Sunset Boulevard. He’d been wearing the same clothes for the last couple of days, black jeans, t-shirt, boots, a dark welder’s jacket, because in January even Los Angeles is cold. His pants still had some remnants of desert sand in the creases and folds. He had other reminders of the desert as well, the cuts and bruises on his face.

It had only been six months since he’d come down off of Dennis Jacob’s roof, where he’d subsisted on acid, Nietzsche and the occasional can of beans. Under the summer sun he came face to face with himself and burned away a lot of old ideas about himself; and while the rest of the city slept, he took notes at a fantastic rock concert in his mind. He wrote down the songs he heard as fast as he could. He had met the spirit of music and it had changed him forever. No one, not even his friends, had understood that. They saw the physical changes. He was lithe, a mere waif, and they thought they saw the change in him, but they only saw the Jim they wanted to see, the Jim they expected.

A police cruiser drove past. One of the cops was looking at him. Suddenly it screeched to a halt and the cops jumped out.

“Are you Jim Morrison?”

“Yeah,” Jim said defiantly, “who wants to know?”

“We do wise guy. You’re under arrest.”

“What for, man?”

“Suspicion of murder.” The cops pushed him against the wall of the nearest building and patted him down before handcuffing and putting him in the back of the cruiser.

The cops hustled him through the police station and booking, then threw him into an interrogation room, his hands still cuffed in front of him. It was a typical interrogation room — bare white walls, sparse cheap furniture, a wooden table with an ashtray on it, a wooden chair on either side of the table. The room was lit by a single bare lightbulb shining right over the table, probably to have it shining in the eyes of the accused, ‘make ’em sweat, the third degree, the cops have seen too many cop shows,’ Jim thought. He pulled out a chair and sat against a wall, his eyes fixed on the closed door, waiting.

Finally, two plainclothes detectives came in. They looked like cop stereotypes to Jim, two variations on the same theme, crew-cut hair, baggy gray suit pants. One had a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow that looked slept in or a little grimy at the edges, a dark tie loosened at the neck. On the other the jacket and tie remained intact. Jim understood the game they were going to run on him and wondered which would play the good cop and which would play the bad cop.

“I’m officer Ellison and this is officer Hanson. We’re the investigating officers.” The suit-jacketed cop said. “Right now, we have you for assault of Rosalie Munoz, a minor.” Jim tilted his head at the cop, a quizzical look on his face. “The girl you kissed. But we don’t care about that, we have bigger fish to fry.”

“’Bigger fish to fry’. Did you really just say that?”

“Ok, punk, let’s cut out the shit! Do you know the whereabouts of one Phillip O’Leno?” Hanson asked, taking the lead. Now, Jim knew which cop was which.

“Um, not really.”

“He’s missing, we think he may have been killed.”

“What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”

“All your friends have said you’ve been going around telling a story about how you and one Felix Venable killed him.” The cop stared at Jim hoping the silence would intimidate him, make him uncomfortable. Jim returned the stare.

“Look son,” the other cop, Ellison said, “if you know anything tell us, at least so his father knows what happened.”

“Fuck his father.”
“How old are you?” Ellison asked.
“Twenty-two.”

“That’s a bad attitude son, one that’s not going to get you very far in life. Do you know his father is a prominent attorney?”

“And mine is a captain in the Navy, so what?”

“Where’d you get all those bruises from?”

“Some greasers didn’t like our long hair.”

“Serves you right,” Hanson said. “What about this Felix Venable?”

“What about him?”

“He’s quite a bit older than you.” The question hung in the air a moment.

“Yeah.” Jim said.

“Where’d you meet him?”

“Film school.”

“Film school?”

“He was a graduate student. What’re you trying to say?”

“Nothing, nothing at all,” Hanson said, with a greasy lasciviousness in his voice.

“Man, with a mind like yours I’d watch what I say. Your mask is slipping, and you’re showing your true self, and it ain’t too pretty from here.”

“If we ran your rap sheet, what do you think we’d find?”

“Just what you want to see, man.”

“Do you have a job?” Ellison asked in a softer tone, trying to break through the barriers Jim had up.

“No.”

“What do you do for a living son?” Jim thought a moment, considering the audience.

“Nothing you’d understand.”

“To tell you the truth, son, none of your friends that we’ve talked to believe you did it. Neither do I, you’re not the type.”

“What type is that?”

“College boy,” Hanson spat out, “but you’re not a hard case like your friend Venable. You’re acting tough but I bet you’re shaking in your boots, so just tell us where Phillip is, and you walk out of here.”

“What about the charges?”

“We really don’t care about you kissing some Mexican girl,” Hanson said with a look of mild distaste on his face. “All Phillip’s father wants to know is if his son is, ok?”

“Don’t know, man,” Jim said, then paused a moment, for effect. “What if we did kill him?”

“Did you?”

“Why don’t you just tell us what happened out in the desert son?”

Jim smiled, “what if life is nothing more than an act of remembering?” The cops looked at each other, perplexed by the question.

“What?” Hanson asked.

“What if we’re dead already and we’re just remembering this?” The two cops just looked at each other. “What if we’re just sitting around a campfire in eternity remembering life and telling each other our stories?”

“What’re you talking about son?”

“You know, like Sunset Boulevard, Citizen Kane, Carousel.” Again, the cops looked at each other.

“This isn’t a movie son, this is real.”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

Jim woke up in the backseat of Carol’s convertible which, he had charmed her into letting him borrow. He looked around; the rising sun was in his eyes.

“Where are we?” He asked.

“The desert,” Phil said, “look around, where do you think we are?”

Jim looked around at the highway surrounded by the scrub, cactus and Joshua trees of the desert. His mind flashed on images of dead Indians laying on the highway, blood on the asphalt.

“Oh shit, I’m back.” He said.

“Back? Where?”

“Here.”

“Here?” Felix asked.

“It looks like it, man.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Jim?” Phil asked, always trying to cut to the heart of a problem.

“When I was a kid, my family was moving to one of my father’s new assignments, and one morning, it was like, you know, the time between night and day.”

“We know when dawn is, asshole.” Felix said, sarcastically.

“Anyway, we drove up to an accident, a truckload of Indians had overturned. There was blood everywhere on the road, and I was really freaking out. I wanted to do something, but I couldn’t, I was just a kid, right? My father got out of the car but didn’t do anything. My mother told me it was a dream. I don’t know if she thought that would make it better or not, but it wavered in strange time between reality and dream since then. I may write a story about it.”

“Sounds like you already are.”

“Maybe one of the Indians was a shaman, and his soul jumped into mine.” Jim posited, an idea he liked, a part of the new mythology of himself. He grabbed the notebook next to him on the seat and started writing in it. Felix saw what he was doing and reached into the backseat and grabbed it.

“Morrison, you may have read a lot of philosophy, but you need a philosophy. All great writers have a philosophy.”

“What’re you going to write about anyway?” Phil asked.

Jim smiled mischievously, “how I lured two dumb motherfuckers into the desert and killed them.”

“Fuck you, Morrison! You may get Phil baby here, but I’ll take you out first.” Felix said, as he looked through the notebook, “Morrison, you’re such a pussy! A writer! You stack the deck, choose the circumstances and conditions of a story, so of course the outcome can be anything you want. If you want to be a real artist, you need to do something that is real. A film is real, it records reality, it shows you consciousness, what’s really going on.” Felix threw the notebook out of the car.

“Hey asshole!” Jim yelled, “that’s my notebook!”

“Morrison, you gotta learn to let go of the bullshit. Hell, even that rock band of yours has a better chance of doing something more real than with ‘stories.’”

Jim sat back in the seat. That’s not what most of his friends thought. Just the opposite, most of his friends thought The Doors were a lark. He thought back to a couple months before. It had been a cool night and he was meeting a couple friends at the UCLA botanical gardens. He walked through the labyrinth of sculpted bushes down the stone path to the grotto in the center, where he was supposed to meet Liz, Katie and Max. They were surrounded by cool green hedges, slick with evening dew, and they were trying to talk him out of being in the band.

“There’s too much competition, you’ll never make it,” Katie said.

“Your film career is going great.”

“You don’t want to be in a band with those guys Jim, they’re not going anywhere.” Max said, “Manczarek isn’t like you. He isn’t a poet, he’s a capitalist. He wants fame, money, power.”

“That’s funny,” Jim said. “That’s the irony of it, people have told Ray I’m flakey and unreliable.” Jim considered it a minor betrayal, it played like a Garden of Gethsemane scene in his mind.

“Hey man, let me drive. I’m bored back here.”

“No way, Morrison,” Felix said, “you drive like shit. Is there any beer left?”

“Yeah, it’s warm,” Jim grabbed a can, shook it, and tossed it to Felix. He opened it to a spray of foam, chugged it down and threw the can out of the car after Jim’s notebook, the desert claiming both. “Felix, you’re one strange cat,” Jim said. “Since you’re not going to let me drive, wake me when we get somewhere.” As he lay down in the backseat, he smiled to himself and wondered if either of them got his joke.

The car pulled up in front of a roadside bar. It was a sun bleached, weather-beaten wooden building with a porch running across the front. There were some motorcycles parked off to the side of the building.

“Wake up, Jim. We’re here!”

“Where?”

“Somewhere.” Felix said. They went inside.

Inside the bar, it wasn’t very big. It was cool, quiet and dark, despite the soft moaning of the jukebox. The bar ran the length of one wall. A little farther in and across from it was a pool table. Sitting at a table were five or six bikers with their girlfriends. All the guys were dressed in leather jackets, white t-shirts, jeans, biker boots, their hair slicked back into DA’s. The girls were all dressed in low cut flowery blouses, tight pants, their jackets hanging off their chairs. They all watched as the outsiders came in. Jim was the first to get to the bar.

“What can I get for you?” The bartender asked.

“Beer.”

“Beer?”

“Tres cerveza’s por favor,” Jim said, smiling broadly.

“Tequila with mine,” Felix said. ‘Always on the road to finding bliss or the end of the night,’ Jim thought.

“Excuse me,” Phil said timidly as the bartender put a beer in front of him, “can you help us?” The bartender stared at him blankly. “We, we’re looking for Senor Reyes.” At the mention of the name, the bikers stopped what they were doing, and exchanged looks. One, who Jim took to be the leader, swaggered over to them.

“You sick or something?” He asked menacingly.

“No, why?” Phil asked.

“I thought maybe you’re looking for a medicine man.”

“No, the shaman, a brujo.” The biker looked shocked.

“Where’d gringos like you learn words like that?”

Phil was getting more nervous now, but he was undeterred. “We heard he might have some peyote.”

“Peyote? Why don’t you just go to church?”

“Because we’re looking for a new way to find…”

“It’s old, very old.”

“We’re on a mission of discovery,” Jim chimed in smoothly, “looking for a new world.”

“A new world?” the biker said, “you mean a new world like when Europeans came here and killed our ancestors, stole our culture and then tried to kill it? Is that what you mean?”
“No, it’s like space, but instead of going outwards we want to go inward.”

“I thought it was just up and out for you Anglos?”

“The farther I go in, the further I reach out, man.” Jim said.

“That’s a luxury for us, we only have what was left to us. Now you’re coming back for that? They’re our beliefs man. You college boys are tourists, slumming, wanting to see what you’ve read about, but you can leave any time you want. We can’t. You’re just gringos looking to get high.”

“No, no, no,” Phil said.

“You may not think you’re stealing something…”

“We want to learn those beliefs, to see if it’s a way for us.”

“Javier, why don’t you just tell them where the old man lives?” one of the other bikers said. “He won’t see them anyway.”

“Sure,” the biker said, relenting. “He lives on the outside of town, by a crossroads, the house with all the snakes.”

“What does that mean?” Phil asked.

“You’ll see,” the biker said, as he walked back to the table.

“Cool,” Jim said.

Jim, Phil and Felix turned to their beers, Jim looked around taking in the surroundings, trying to memorize everything about the place. He caught the eye of one of the girls. Her blouse was low-cut and there was the undulation of skin across the top of her breasts as she insinuated her way up to the bar. She sidled up next to Jim under the pretense of getting a drink.

“You buy me a drink?” She asked.

“Sure! What do you want?”

“For right now,” she said, hesitating, “a beer.”

The bikers started to notice Jim flirting with the girl and were getting agitated. The talking amongst themselves grew louder. Phil was the first to notice and leaned over to Jim, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Jim.”

“Why not? We’re here to have some fun and maybe a few other things that start with f-u.”

“Well, for one,” Phil said, “you almost got us busted in L.A. when you jumped out of the car and kissed that chick.”

“Aww, leave him alone,” Felix said, “he’s just havin’ a good time.”

“Your egging him on isn’t helping any!” Phil snapped.

“Awww, Phil,” Jim said with mock innocence, “she was a beautiful angel of womanhood, and I just thought I’d break the ice.”

“That’s beside the point, Jim. All those guys over there are getting upset.

Jim looked over at them, and roared, “well, fuck them!” The bikers all stopped talking and were glaring at them. Javier, the leader of the gang, walked over to Jim.

“You like my girlfriend, gringo?”

“Who says she’s yours?”
“I do.”

“We’ll see who she leaves with.”

“You like girls?”

“Hey man, why don’t you fuck off!” Felix yelled. The biker ignored him.

“I thought with your long hair maybe you’re a maricón.” He looked at Jim to see if he was scared. “You know what a maricón is gringo?”

“Why? You want to fuck me?” Jim said.

“More like fuck you up.” The biker punched Jim. Felix jumped up and blindsided the biker, and then there was an explosion of sound as chairs crashed to the floor and the bikers jumped on Jim, Felix, and Phil. The bartender started yelling, “get them out of here! You’re not going to break up my bar!” The group scuffled punches were thrown on both sides. They spilled out onto the wooden porch, and the bikers threw Jim, Felix, and Phil into the desert dust and dirt in front of the bar. The three jumped into the car, tires spinning out a cloud of dust and rock in their wake as the bikers headed back into the bar.

The car pulled up in front of a small shack that seemed to rise out of the desert. It seemed a part of the desert. There was no delineating line between desert and property, no trimmed lawns or neat gardens — just scrub brush, crucifixion bushes and cactus. The shack was made out of sun-bleached wooden planks and a tin roof salvaged from the surrounding desert. A rough fence lined the front. Three pikes stood on either side of the shack’s doorway, each with a rattlesnake’s head mounted on it, mouths open, fangs bared.

“This must be the place,” Phil said.

“How do you know?”

“How many houses are guarded by rattlesnake heads?”

“I hope we can score enough to take back to L.A.” Jim said.

“Jim, are you going to take this seriously?” Phil asked. “We’re here to find the shaman, to experience the mystical, not to get fucked up.” Jim and Felix exchanged knowing looks.

The door to the shack opened and an old man came out. He was darkly complected, his features seemed more Indian than Spaniard. His clothes looked homemade and well worn, and he had an air of serene wisdom about him. His age was hard to tell. His skin looked like soft leather, as though he’d been weathered and preserved by the desert. He could have been anywhere between fifty and a hundred years old.

Phil and Felix walked up to the Indian while Jim, acting chastened ambled behind. “Are you Senor Reyes?” Phil asked.

“I am.” The shaman said, speaking softly.

“The shaman?”

“There are some who call me that, but they’re all Indian.”

“We were told that you’re the man to see who we could get peyote from.”

“Look,” Felix said, “we just came here to score some peyote. We’ll pay you for it and split.”

“If that’s all you’re looking for, it’s best for you to leave. If you take peyote without knowing how to prepare it or yourselves, all you’re going to do is make yourselves sick and wake up with a headache.” Jim finally made it to the group. The shaman saw him and there was a slight jolt to his consciousness.

“Are you an Indian?” He asked Jim.

“No.”

“Hmm, strange.”

“What is?”

“My soul recognized yours.” The shaman considered for a moment, then asked, “why do you want peyote?”

“To connect with the spiritual,” Phil said.

Jim was thoughtful. There was a calculus to consider, he didn’t want to expose himself. Phil would understand, but Felix would think him naïve and mock him. “I want to live a life without regret.” Jim said.

“You think that is possible?” The shaman asked. “For every choice you make you may later mourn what you’ve lost or suffer what you’ve gained. You may regret this moment. Your life could change by tomorrow. Is that what you’re really looking for? Is that what you’ve come all this way for?”

Jim didn’t know what to say. Ever since he could remember he knew what answers a teacher was looking for, which buttons to push to impress them. “What is the real reason you’re here?” Jim was still numb, “then go,” the shaman said.

“No!” Jim burst out. “There’s more. I met a spirit.”

“Maybe more than one?” The shaman said.

“It’s something inside that changed me that I haven’t been able to find again. I met the spirit of music.”

“That is rare, it’s like being visited by a god. Not many can handle it.”

“What about you?” The shaman asked, turning to Felix.

“What bullshit! Can’t you see this guy is running a game on you?” Felix said to Phil and Jim.

The shaman said, “you’ve been separated from the meaning and purpose of what you’re undertaking. Your religions understood this a long time ago. You can’t expect knowledge to be given to you.”

“Why not? That’s what school is, what books are for, imparting knowledge.”

“Knowledge is power. You’re too used to it being given to you. Knowledge isn’t free, there’s always a cost. You have to earn it or risk it turning against you. It can destroy you.”

Felix was mad, his face flushed, “fine!” He spat out. “I’ll be in the car until you boys are done playing and we can get some peyote from a real shaman!” Felix stalked back to the car.

“Peyote isn’t something to be taken lightly. It’s only for the most serious minded. So far, you’ve only read about peyote in books, but the forces you’re seeking out is a dragon’s tail, and if you grab it, it’s dangerous and can cost you in spirit and self. The ritual keeps you connected to its purpose and protects you.”

“I can assure you,” Phil said in sincerest voice, “we’re only serious minded about this, we’re searches in the truest sense.”

“What will happen when we take the peyote?” Jim asked.

“It will change the way you see the world. It will change you.”

“How?” Phil asked.

“Each of you differently. What you fear is out there, but you will also find the greatest joy.”

“And afterwards?” Jim asked.

“You will awake on dawn’s highway,” the shaman said, pointing to the road, “and you will have true knowledge and power.”

“What’s at the end of this dawn’s highway?”

“No one knows what’s at the end of the highway — death, madness or bliss. If you don’t take this seriously, it will consume you.” Jim looked enthralled, eager for the adventure, while Phil looked hesitant, not sure if this was a trip he really wanted to go on.

“What do we need to do?”

“Wait.” The shaman said.

“Wait?”

“Must activity have meaning? Others are coming, they will be here for the ceremony. Now I have to go prepare myself.” The shaman went into the house; there was no invitation to follow. Jim and Phil, not knowing what else to do with themselves wandered around before finding refuge sitting in the shadow of the shaman’s house close to the porch.

A couple of hours later a truck pulled up in front of the house. Jim knew things would start happening now, and what happened would be important. He watched, making mental note of everything. The truck looked ancient, from the forties or fifties, but he couldn’t be sure. Every part of it was caked in dust and rust, and it was stripped down of every spare part except for those needed to keep the engine running and the truck usable. The cab was stuffed with three old people. Unlike the shaman, they looked prematurely aged, like they’d had hard lives eking out a living from the desert. A couple of them had hand drums. The shaman came out of the house to greet them.

The elders retired into the shaman’s house. In the bed of the truck were a bunch of younger people who jumped out as soon as it stopped. There were a couple of teenagers, between thirteen and fifteen. Jim wondered if it was their fate he was seeing in the faces of their elders. There were a few people in their twenties also. Jim recognized one of them, it was Javier, the biker leader they’d run into at the roadside bar earlier. He’d lost his leather jacket and was now wearing a blue worker’s shirt, but still wearing jeans and biker boots. He saw Jim and made his way over to the shaman who was still on the porch. Jim was apprehensive, he walked over to them.

“Senor Reyes,” the biker said. Gone was the roar and arrogance of earlier.

“Yes?”

“Are they staying?” He asked, motioning to Jim and Phil.

“Yes.”

“They’re tourists, here to steal our traditions or mock them.”

“Is that so?” The shaman looked over the bruises on the side of the biker’s face and the injuries on Jim’s face. “I have asked them, and they have answered well. They’re of the earth, differently than you or me, but connected still.” The shaman looked at them both. “do not think I don’t know what goes on in the world.” Jim noticed that the shaman’s voice, though still soft and even was chastising them. His voice didn’t raise even an octave. He didn’t sound angry but there was power in his words. The shaman went back into the house.

One of the younger boys had put on a ceremonial necklace and leggings. He’d found a long stick somewhere and he drew a circle in the hard sand about three or four feet in diameter, and then drew a cross in the middle dividing it into quarters. The Indians then scattered into the surrounding desert. Before Jim or Phil could figure out what they were doing, they started returning with pieces of wood, branches and scrub and stacked it for a fire. Jim noticed that they had stacked the wood at the eastern point of the circle, being careful not to break the circle’s boundary. Jim and Phil joined the search. About half an hour later the pile was deemed big enough. Then everyone found places in the shade of what seemed a cool spot and waited — waiting for what, Jim still didn’t know.

As the sun lowered itself in the western horizon, a vaporous moon appeared over the desert not yet fully revealing itself in the coming night sky. A signal must have happened that Jim hadn’t noticed because, without any words spoken, the fire was lit. Everyone gathered in a semi-circle between the fire and the drawn circle. The three elders came out of the house along with the shaman, who was dressed the same except that now he wore a necklace of feathers and shell. At the bottom hung a rattlesnake’s head. He walked towards the fire. One of the elders came up to Jim and Phil and motioned for them to come with him. He guided them to the front of the fire and motioned for them to sit.

There were already three others sitting at the fire, including the biker. The elders started drumming, slowly, the sound of a heartbeat. Soft rhythmic chanting began, creating a sound all its own, an insect sound like it was something that should have always been there. It built up until Jim could feel the resonance of the sound in his chest. One of the teenagers came around the front of the circle holding a clay jar out towards Phil, who was first in the line. He looked at the shaman questioningly, the shaman shook his head affirmatively, making a motion with his hand encouraging Phil to reach in. He pulled out a peyote button. Jim followed suit, and the shaman said, “chew slowly.” They each raised the buttons to their mouths and started chewing the bitter plant. The boy walked down the row offering the peyote to the other supplicants. The boy then appeared with another jar, which he again held out to Phil. There seemed to be a liquid in it, he could feel it sloshing around as he took the jar, “what is this?”

The shaman shot him a sharp look. “Drink but do not swallow. Rinse your mouth and spit it out and ask no more questions.” Phil did as he was told. Jim drank without question. It was Mezcal. The ritual was repeated six times. Then the shaman started dancing around the circle, one foot tentatively put forward, and pulled back, never breaking the barrier of the drawn circle. As he danced the beat increased. Jim thought the shaman looked younger, as if he was revitalized by the dance.

Suddenly there was a swirl of color, electric, it felt as if a door had been opened. Stars were falling from his long hair, silvery beams shot from his fingertips. Jim looked to the sky. It was dark, the moon full and bright, holding dominion over the desert. The music throbbed in his head. Motion started breaking up into the flickers of the fire’s light. Images flashed across his consciousness, animal sounds. A crow’s wing, Indians lying dead on a highway, his mother’s voice softly saying, “it was just a dream, Jimmy, it was just a dream,” as it turned to song. The music pushed against his chest, from the inside. It wasn’t the drumming anymore. It seemed familiar, like he’d heard it before. He looked around and saw, clearer than he had ever before. The scene was bent, curved, as if he was looking through some other lens. The music pulsed through him like a storm, and there was a sea of people, swaying like grass in the wind at his command. He’d discovered power, or maybe a new science, or perhaps a very old one. It was the spirit of music. Then it moved, slightly, then moved away from him more quickly, getting smaller with distance until he could see it as a whole. It was a smoky, gray, it had some weird stippling, almost a tactile appearance, then it undulated, it was alive! It moved away from him, he could see the scene was a facet on the scale of a rattlesnake, as the snake moved away from him, he could see every scale had a scene from his life, past, present and future. The farther it moved away from him the harder it was to discern those scenes until the snake had disappeared. The music pulsated through his body, it was scintillating, a scream came ripping through the atmosphere and he realized it was from him, but he wasn’t afraid, it was a part of him, it was him. Out of the darkness he saw a silvery spiderweb then nothing, he felt the prickling of fear at the edge of his consciousness, then some silvery nails pushed down out of the darkness and he knew he was in a coffin, he told himself not to be afraid if he let the fear in it would become a bad trip.

He awoke to the rising sun prying open his eyes. He was cold, confused, unsure of where he was. He looked around and saw he was in front of the shaman’s house. He tried to stand up, but he was weak. Everything came back to him — the night before, the trip, it had been more than a trip, more than random images thrown together by a subconscious struggling to find context out of the chaos of a drugged mind. It seemed more of a journey — it had coherence, meaning. In that moment he realized he was alive he was on the edge of life and death. Either was within his grasp. It was real, maybe all too real. He was living in the moment. The shaman was sitting on a rock poking the smoldering embers of the fire with a stick. Felix was sitting nearby; Phil was sitting next to the shaman and they were talking quietly.

“And you were there, and you,” Jim said.

“Welcome back to Kansas, Dorothy,” Felix said.

“Where is everyone?”

“They’re all gone,” the shaman said.

“Already?”

“They’re Indians, they’re used to it.” Jim made a move to get up.

“Don’t try to get up,” Phil advised, “you’re probably a little weak.” Jim let out a little laugh, scoffing at the idea, he tried to stand, but his legs were awkward and unsteady, like a newborn deer trying to walk for the first time. He sat back down on the ground.

Felix laughed at the effort. “You should have seen Phil baby trying to stand.”

“You need to eat,” the shaman said. “I’ve prepared breakfast for you.” He pointed to a large platter covered with a cloth and a jug that was between them. Jim pulled the cloth off. On the plate were dried meat and tortillas. The jug was filled with water. “You need something elemental to rebuild your strength, meat, bread, water. Eat and drink slowly and soon enough you’ll be strong enough to fight again.”

“What happened?”

“You tripped your asses off.” Felix said, laughing.

“Oh, shit.” Jim said,

“You traveled dawn’s highway, you had your journey through joy and the dark night of the soul. Now the world is new, it was born anew with the dawn. You discovered power, you must be careful, and you must be prepared.”

“For what?”

“For the moment when life breaks your heart.”

“No chick can ever do that to me.”

“No, it’s not something so trivial, it’s deeper and you must recognize it for what it is in the moment. And you must be ready, or you will succumb. Within a destiny lies fate.”

“I heard a song.”

“You must remember the song, if only for yourself. You forget at your own peril.”

“What does it mean?” Jim asked.

“We find the lessons in life we want to.”

“And there it is,” Felix said, “the vague mystical statement of the fraud.” The shaman smiled benignly.

“Was that what it was like for you Phil?” Jim asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” the shaman said. “If you tell each other what you saw, it wouldn’t have the same meaning to the others as it did to you.”

“I’m going to Sonora to meet a friend of Senor Reyes’” Phil said.

“Yeah!” Jim said, “let’s go to Sonora then all the way down to Mexico City, find some hookers, do the whole Kerouac ‘On the Road’ trip!”

“No, Jim, you still don’t get it. It’s just not kicks and adventure. Didn’t this mean anything more to you?”

“Man, I’m just looking to have a good time, for the experience, to inscribe them on our consciousness, so when I die, I’ll have something to remember.”

“Is every experience equal? One experience is as good as another?” Phil looked at Jim and Felix, “don’t you see? This is a revelation, the moment when physics becomes metaphysics.”

“But you’re still looking for something with a set of rules,” Jim said, “imposed by a tradition. You may want something new, but you want the safety of rules. I’ve spent too many years locked up. I’ve already served a life sentence, now all I’m interested in is freedom.”

“What about all those aphorisms you’re always spouting from Nietzsche and Rimbaud? Aren’t those your rules?”

“I’m beyond that, man. You have to be more Dionysian in your thinking, you have to immerse yourself in the madness, in the unconscious. Nietzsche and Rimbaud are just sign posts in the wilderness — they tell me I’m on the right trail.”

“Jim, you seek chaos wherever you go.”

“The universe is chaotic. It’s the mind that imposes order.”

“Philosophy without wisdom Jim, that’s more of Felix’s getting fucked up, and not Rimbaud’s rational disorganization of the senses. That’s the choice you’re going to have make sooner or later getting fucked up — or real searching.”

“Fuck you, Phil!” Felix said, he headed back to the car, “c’mon Morrison, let’s go. He’ll probably end up dead in the desert anyway.”

“I have a philosophy. That’s a lot more than a lot of people have, and I’m willing to live it until the end. Can you say the same?” In that moment Phil saw the difference between Jim and himself. He saw the fork in the road, the paths that he and Jim diverged from here, moving farther apart until they would only be able to see each from afar.

“’Excess leads to the palace of wisdom, huh Jim? What have you learned?” Phil turned and headed to the shaman’s house.

In Jim’s movie mind, he saw the final scene of this modern western, of the new sensuous wild west for a turned-on generation that wasn’t afraid to see everything differently, in disconnected images with the mind choosing the order, creating its own context. The car raced across the desert floor, the asphalt fleeing behind them, in front of them the mountains in the far-off distance, the car racing after the setting sun, chasing the ever-receding horizon.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

“Is that the god’s honest truth as to what happened?” Hanson asked.

“Hmmm,” Jim said, cocking his head to the right, a smile on his face. “There’s a truth in there.”

“Listen you little prick!” Hanson said, jumping out of his chair. At that moment Ellison walked back into the interrogation room, leaving the door open.

“Mr. Morrison,” he said, “you’re free to go.”

“Why?”

“The charges have been dropped. Phillip has returned home, mystery solved.” Jim got up and was as far as the door. “Mr. Morrison,” Ellison said behind him.

“Yeah?”

“Stay out of trouble son I don’t want to see you back here again.”

“Right, dad.”

Jim walked out of the police station. He was downtown and had to walk all the way back to Sunset. He walked at his laconic but purposeful gait, taking in everything, remembering it. It was late afternoon. The few people on the street were straight — short hair, suits and not turned on. The tan and white buildings all seemed to recede into the landscape. As he moved away from the moment, it was the past. It didn’t make any sense to look backward, to remember. It would be a sorry nostalgia. The future was forward, in front of him.

On Sunset, it was a neon infused night which was never quite dark and hummed with the electricity of creation. He could feel it; the energy rippled across his skin like a soft breeze. He was ready to change the world. He had changed his. The street was swarming with people and he was a part of the Sunset night. He would spread his wings against the night, the stars would fall from his hair. He was a force of nature. With a wave of his hand, the storm was at his command. As he neared The Whisky, he could feel the music thumping through the walls, and the doors. He walked in and was swallowed by the music.

Dawn’s Hwy is part of the short story collection “The Lion Communique” which is available on Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or through your local bookstore.

The Roman Emperor Tiberius said of his nephew, Caligula, that he had reared “a viper for the Roman people…” and as detailed in Mary Trump’s new book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man it describes how Fred Trump created a viper for the American people in Donald Trump.

I expected Too Much and Never Enough to be a sensationalized account of a family, but I found it too be a cool accounting of her family’s history, she stood back from the personal and all the hurt the family had incurred on her and applied her background in psychiatry to her extended family. That is not to say she didn’t delve into family history, she illustrates that her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr. built from scratch a building empire that started with him building garages for his neighbors to a New York empire, that when her grandfather died, she later learned his fortune was nearly a billion dollars, while not missing that that empire was built through a lot of government contracts, FHA, and political connections (what she does seem to miss is that Fred Trump was a more or less a slumlord, and a famous one at that, Woody Guthrie penned the song Old Man Trump about him). It also illustrates that as much as Fred Trump Sr. was a self-made man, her uncle Donald Trump is not. Donald Trump is the product of Fred Trump’s money, and political connections, Fred Trump footed the bill for Donald in almost every way imaginable and was responsible for Donald’s early success such as the Commodore Hotel and Trump Tower.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a good portion of the book deals with the extended family’s relationship with Ms. Trump’s father, Fred Trump Jr. If there was ever a Trump that was treated “unfairly” it was Freddy Trump and by his own family. Fred Trump Jr. wanted nothing more than to be an airline pilot, a profession he seemed to have a passion and talent for. He was admitted into TWA’s flight school without any military training, and after he got his wings, he was deemed good enough for promotion to train pilots on the next generation of jets. The drawback, his father who considered being a pilot nothing more than a “bus driver in the sky”. In retaliation for this perceived betrayal of not wanting to carry on his legacy Fred Sr. berated and humiliated his son in front of the rest of the family who considered Fred Jr. fair game especially Donald who carried out his father’s terror campaign against his older brother and directly benefitted from Freddy’s demise, as eldest son and heir apparent.

There are a couple of loose ends that leave us hanging. One, were Mary and her brother reinstated to their father’s portion from her grandfather’s will? Did the Trump’s ever reinstate her nephew, who has congenital medical problems back onto the family’s medical plan? Maybe that doesn’t matter anymore because Too Much and Never Enough has made more since it’s publication than Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal has since its publication almost thirty-three years ago. Congratulations Mary! Anybody know how Don Jr’s self-published book is doing?

Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough is a must read if you want a view into the character or lack of in the present resident of the White House. We have first-hand witnessed his antics, excesses, abuses of power, and enmity towards the American people, his supposed constituents, Donald Trump is the American Caligula.

Arrival For Duty

For four years the republicans have been giving us dire warnings of the impending tyranny of President Barack Obama, even before he was elected. How did they know it was coming? Because the coming tyranny is being brought to us courtesy of conservative/republicans. With Presidential elections just about upon us, exactly what is the Republican vision? This election is becoming less about being one of the most important elections of this country’s history, and more for the soul of this nation.

To see an example of the future republicans, have in store for this nation, if they were to win the coming election, one should look no further than Michigan. When the new republican state legislature took over in 2011 they passed the “Emergency Managers Law,” which in effect states that if a city is deemed insolvent by the governor he appoints an emergency manager who has the power to fire duly elected city councils, and mayors, as well as selling off city assets, and can unilaterally alter or throw out collective bargaining agreements. No sooner was the law enacted than the Michigan governor declared emergencies for Benton Harbor and Detroit. In Benton Harbor the manager there immediately fired the mayor and city council. One avenue of dissent was available to the citizens of Benton Harbor and that was a small radio station and the citizens of Benton Harbor did voice their first amendment rights (the founding fathers made freedom of speech the first amendment for a reason) in opposition to the emergency manager. What happened? The emergency manager shut the radio station down and tried to sell it off. Does that all sound familiar to you? It should, its exactly the template dictators use when seizing power. Emergency powers are granted for the duration of the emergency with the promise that as soon as the emergency passes Democracy will return, but some-how it never does. The emergency never ends, and the same has occurred in Michigan. Not one of the cities that have received emergency managers has had control of their local government returned to them. The emergency manager law is in a state of limbo. To their credit, Michigan voters signed petitions to get the law up for a referendum vote in this coming November’s election. The Michigan Supreme Court has suspended the law pending the outcome of November’s election, but the Governor is trying to end run the court’s decision and is refusing to cede power back to the local governments.

Voter suppression. This is the highest visibility item in the republican arsenal. Under the auspices of republican banner in many states (especially swing states), republicans have enacted laws with the stated goal of eliminating voting fraud. Never mind that there isn’t a problem. Entire states, over the course of decades, have examples of voter fraud that is in the tenths of a percent. What these laws do is target groups that traditionally vote Democratic. They aim to disenfranchise minority groups, the poor, students, the elderly, and early voting by either imposing what amounts to a poll tax on registering to vote, or by making so many potential hoops to jump through so as to discourage potential voters altogether. If you’re looking for actual voter fraud, again, see the republican party. Michigan congressman Thaddeus McCotter was forced to resign recently because he and his staff were caught with fraudulently adding voter signatures to petitions to get him on the ballot for re-election. Another recent example of voter fraud was by Charlie White, the Indiana Secretary of State, the agency that is supposed to guarantee the integrity of elections, was found guilty of false registration, voting in a precinct he wasn’t eligible to vote in and submitting a false ballot. Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has a history of voting in Massachusetts elections he wasn’t eligible to vote in. I guess that means republicans know voter fraud because they are the face of voter fraud.

What does that leave for the future? Well, if republican rhetoric and behavior when in office is any indication, if republicans are given control of the future of this country they will enact restrictive gun laws with the purpose of limiting and confiscating firearms, after all they don’t want any “second amendment remedies” once their true face is exposed. I also believe republicans will bring jobs back to this country, but only after unions are broken, minimum wage and child labor laws are repealed, as well as deregulation of environmental and safety laws are assured. In short when the American worker is broken and it is cheaper to bring jobs back to America than paying the wages in third world countries, in short, when republicans have succeeded in making America a third world country.

Republicans have been very forthright in their plan for America, except they have been projecting these dire and Orwellian scenarios onto Democrats. However, when put they are put into actual practice, they are republican policies. When you go into the voting booth this November consider whether this may be the last time you’re afforded the chance to cast a vote in a free American election.

Note: This article was first published in Rant’s, Raves and Rock n’ Roll magazine, September 3, 2012, and aired on their internet radio show for discussion. Minor editorial changes have been made for clarity.

Kyv walked out of the wilderness into a bar, he was dirty, he imagined he looked like what had once been described as a cowboy. He was dressed in dusty denim pants, a roughhewn shirt, and dirty bandanna that hung loosely around his neck. He thought of himself as a hero from a book he remembered reading as a child. There were two people already in the bar, plus the barkeep. If you could call them people anymore, they were huge gelatinous creatures that seemed to move in slow motion which were more like peristaltic oozing’s in whatever direction they propelled themselves. You never really saw them move, they just seemed to “appear” in places. He was surprised they were out he would sometimes go for days without seeing other people. Occasionally, he would see them through an open window moving absently like the wind through a wheat field, or tai-chi dancers. If there is a truism of life, it is that we don’t trust a technology until we find a way to kill ourselves with it. Well we did, it wasn’t anything as fancy as meteor smashing into the planet, or a natural disaster, it wasn’t a bomb, it wasn’t a disease, it wasn’t a war, it wasn’t even a struggle, we just succumbed to it. We’ve entertained ourselves to death. Sometimes I feel like I’m the last person on the planet, but it’s not true, others are here, physically, but mentally they’re gone, you could say, I’m the last person really alive on a crowded planet.

History shows, television started it and VR finished it, we became spectators to our own lives. My parent’s generation were early casualties, at first TV was a novelty and you watched whenever and whatever you could because it was on, it was a special occasion, those electrons flying through the air and being collected and reassembles to our collective awe. When TV became commonplace, we sat in front of the TV for days at a time not really caring what was on, just absorbing it all. Then VR came along, virtual reality. Virtual reality started out as games, although it was promised that the educational values would outstrip other uses, but the temptation was too much for a society where entertainment is valued over education, we’ve become a planet of recreants. VR is horrendously simple too, you just need a pair of wrap around sunglasses with earphones that are implanted in the stem of the glasses and some strategically placed electrodes to stimulate sensation, and hooked into the web you can enter any reality you choose, from floating in outer space, to playing with sub-atomic particles, to making love to anyone or anything you could desire, all the old taboos have fallen by the wayside.

It’s amazing how fast technologies can come of age now. The last century started off as previous centuries had, the horse being the main mode of transportation, then the automobile came along, and now even the cars are extinct. It hasn’t been all that long since this society had crumbled, think back to the time when you grew up. Did PC’s exist? Had man walked on the moon? Or even been in space? Did you grow up with polio fears?

After the Y2K bug was discovered and we successfully navigated its dangers, people began to wonder if there were any other inherent lapses of logic or unforeseen dangers. The one element we forgot about, or perhaps took for granted, or didn’t anticipate was the user, man, and we and went wantonly into the land of unintended consequences, why did we do it? Because we could.

The patrons of the bar are hunched over their tables with their clear plastic masks pressed into the flesh surrounding their nose and mouths inhaling their gas of choice. If you weren’t careful you could pick up some heinous disease from the masks, but this place is for people on the way out anyway. It’s not one of the more ‘upscale’ places. Hell! Those don’t exist anymore. Most things and places have fallen into disuse and disrepair. Since humanity has retreated into their own personal skull sanctuaries nature has been quick to reclaim what was hers. Jungles and prairies have reclaimed what was once lawns, the house’s drafty and disintegrating, windows broken because of storms, the remnants of curtains billowing in the breeze, vines crawling up the walls slowing dismantling the construction, their owners no longer caring for ownership, ‘hell, they wouldn’t even realize you were there if you walked right in in front of them.’

This is my world, what your world has become, we started believing our own fantasies.

Jym smiled and thought to himself, ‘alone on a crowded planet, yeah, right!’ Jym adjusted his bulky body a bit to get comfortable, his eyes staring into the landscape inside the glasses like a blind man blessed with dreams in color. I don’t know how many are left on the outside and I don’t really care. Ever since VR I’ve been free, free to travel as far as my curiosity can carry me. It’s true that man is losing his physical tone but we’re not the gelatinous creatures described. Our social skills may be retarded from what they were, but those skills aren’t needed anymore.

It’s true two worlds exist simultaneously, but they are worlds apart. Perspective is everything, the inner vision is the one that counts. A common misconception is that we have curled up into our private sanctuaries and are divorced from reality. Nothing is further from the truth; man has been altering his central nervous system ever since he achieved consciousness. VR extends the central nervous system to the max, expands the mind, communication has never been better. Another truism is, that the further you go in, the farther you reach out. Well, we’ve reached all the way out, we don’t have to go anywhere to travel, we can go to other planets, other worlds, we can visit anywhere, anytime, we can communicate in images and pictures because sometimes words can hamper communication. We can visit anywhere, any time, we can now visit what was only available through the imagination, and that isn’t real.

The world has changed, the population has thinned down to an amount of people the planet can handle. While it is true that in the beginning there was violence, it’s because it was simultaneously the death pang of the old world, and the birth pangs of the new. It was an expected prelude in a step of evolution. The violence was because the leaders of the old world wanted to hold on to their power and they knew they had to have a world of have’s and have not’s, they tried to keep the technology and information for the upper strata of society because they knew those who had information had power. But now everyone has access to information, the peace that every had been looking for for centuries is here.

Work has become unnecessary, the factories of the world have stopped polluting, the skies are clearing, nature is rebounding, other species too, now have peace and are left alone. A soft communism has enveloped the world, not an ideology but a natural response, a natural impulse, people have realized the value in cooperating and providing for each other what was needed.

It’s not as static a world as you think, as others are born, more come in bringing different viewpoints and information, the world expands. People on the outside tend to think of this as a sterile and antiseptic world, but the world in here is more heightened, more real, your mind explore what it wants, where it wants, you learn, about the natural world, about the sciences, you explore your own mind and the minds of your fellow man, your horizons are limited only by your vision, how can something that brings so much pleasure be bad? Now we will transform the world in the image we want for it. Besides, when you get right down to it, what is real? Reality is just an agreed upon set of information. How many pixels in reality? Jym reached over and hit ‘delete’ on the Kyv program.

Authors Note: This is an old story about 22 years old, but with current events I started thinking back to my old story that had man secluded off into his own worlds. I looked into my old filing cabinet, I had been working on Two Worlds as part of my book of short stories “Stranger Souls,” but I had rejected it. Reading it twenty something years later I wonder why? It isn’t as bad as I remember it being. While it’s not an exact match for today’s events there are some interesting parallels. I did make some editorial changes in this version, moved some sentences and paragraphs around for clarity. I also added a few thoughts though again only for clarity of thought I didn’t add any predictions or guesses that would seem astoundingly prescient if they had been written twenty-two years ago.

Are You Safe?

On what would have been Ray Manzarek’s 81st birthday (2/12/20) I saw Break on Through: A Celebration of Ray Manzarek and discovered one of the best films about The Doors.

Break on Through is a mixture of interviews with surviving Doors members Robby Krieger, John Densmore and a Ben Fong-Torres interview with Manzarek, and live performances with such diverse musicians as Taylor Hawkins, John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X (Manzarek produced four of their albums), Warren Haynes, Stephen Perkins, representing groups like the Foo Fighters, The Stone Temple Pilots and Jane’s Addiction. There’s even appearances by Manzarek’s brother Jim Manczarek who was in The Doors predecessor group Rick and the Ravens, as well as Manzarek’s son Pablo. A lot of these groups have a history with Manzarek, and Krieger having played with them through the 2000’s. The majority of the performances were filmed at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles in 2013.

The interviews with Densmore and Krieger are some of the most candid interviews they’ve done in a while. Krieger and Densmore are lifelong friends having known each other since high school, first played together in the band The Psychedelic Rangers, and it was Densmore who brought Krieger into The Doors. The two found themselves on opposite sides when Densmore filed a lawsuit against Manzarek and Krieger over The Doors of the 21st century fiasco, there are a couple of moments they address the estrangement, and both are very poignantly honest about it.

The performance sections of the film are uniformly strong, with an exception or two (I’m loath to note which I felt were weak because in intervening internet conversations the group(s) I felt were weak were noted by others as being a stand out performance, so I don’t want to jaundice your viewing.) A standout performance everyone can agree on is Emily Armstrong of the group Dead Sara doing a cover of Back Door Man that would give Jim Morrison chills.

Break on Through: A Celebration of Ray Manzarek played in theaters for one night only, and at the theater I attended there were only about 15–20 others hopefully The Doors will soon release “Celebration” on DVD -Blu Ray.

Washington, D.C. — Yesterday, January 31, 2020, the United States Senate declined to hear witnesses in the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump, and immediately took a vote to acquit the president. The vote followed party lines 52- 48 to acquit the President, with Democrat Joe Manchin crossing the line to vote with Republicans.

After receiving the news that the charges had been dismissed, the President immediately took to the airwaves in a national address declaring that he had been vindicated by the senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives had led illegal hearings and impeachment proceedings. The President declared a national emergency and cancelled the forthcoming elections. He also ordered that House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Jerrold Nadler be arrested and tried for treason against the United States as quickly as possible. He also ordered, that during this national emergency habeas corpus as well as the right to bail have been suspended until further notice.

In a related matter, the F.B.I. confiscated the manuscript and all files of former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s book from publisher Simon and Schuster. Bolton was also taken into custody and placed under house arrest. Also arrested, former Ukrainian Ambassador Maria Yovanavich; Army Lieutenant Alexander Vindman; Ambassador Bill Taylor; EU ambassador Gordon Sondland; Fiona Hill; Lev Parnas, and others who cooperated and testified against the President in hearings in front of House impeachment committees. Former New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani has also been arrested.

The president declared that he would remain in office as long as the state of emergency existed. As of this writing there is no word if the military, the secret service, or local police agencies are backing the President’s orders.

In the argument of Nature vs. Nurture this article probably comes down on the side of nurture, because what do you think the result would be if you exposed a child to a world of books and art from a very early age? I’ve been reading about fifty-two out of my fifty-nine years before that my mother had been reading to me, the Brothers Grimm (not the sanitized Disney versions, but the real ones from a classic book series), I also had access to the library my grandmother left us. She died at age 85 in 1968 and was an inveterate reader and collector of books during her life and left us a lot of first editions of Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Conan-Doyle, Mark Twain, Hemingway, just about any author of the early 20th and late 19th century was in our basement nook, that I could be found reading those books, or on a summers days grabbing Mark Twain and reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, or even Innocents Abroad. Here are some of the books and writers that have influenced me.

Rasmus and the Vagabond — Let’s start at the beginning, the fall of 1968 I was in 5th grade and there was a book fair in our school. The length of the hallway was filled with tables of books I scoured those tables looking for the right book to spend my fifty cents on. I found it in Rasmus, a story of an orphan who runs away and falls in with a hobo and they go off seeking adventure and a family for Rasmus. I still have Rasmus. Looking back now I wonder if the plot set me up for something like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road?

Moby Dick — Yes, this was the full-size full-length Herman Melville novel. I read this in third grade neither the teachers nor the librarian believed that I could read and understand the novel. Each week that I had it checked out the librarian asked how much I read and before I could check it out for another week, she quizzed me on what I had read. This got me into an accelerated reading program the highlights of which were Greek and Norse mythology. The downside? Every Tuesday I had to be there by 7:30 AM for the class.

Ernest Hemingway — Not so much for his writing (at least at this point in my life) but for his reputation as a writer. When I was in third grade on day I noticed that a bunch of girls were all gathered around Ricki Lofgren’s desk and I went over to see what was going on and Ricki was drawing Peanuts characters, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and all the girls were “oohing and awwwing” over the drawings I decided then and there that I wanted to be an artist. The one problem with my being an artist is that I couldn’t draw, I took art classes, and drew but nothing satisfactory ever came of it, and to this day I’ve only drawn a couple of things that I’ve liked. When I was about 12 I heard that Ernest Hemingway was an artist, of course I knew of his reputation as a writer, but until then I had never heard of a writer being considered an artist, but I knew I could write it was at that moment I decided I would be a writer.

1984/A Separate Peace — This is maybe a case of the teacher and not the books themselves. I was in 7th grade these were unassigned books from a teacher, Dan Evans, who was ‘progressive’. He brought in things like The Moody Blues, we’d listen to the albums and discuss the lyrics and their meanings, he also brought in slides of famous paintings and ask why they were famous. Of course, we didn’t know but he would go through art critique and go through the reasons they were great pieces of art. He was popular with the students, didn’t stick to the curriculum and encouraged students to think on their own, naturally he was fired at the end of the year, but not before bringing critical thought and art to a bunch of 7th graders. Postscript: This is where I first heard what would later become known as “the Da’Vinci Code, it wasn’t an unknow theory, and kind of well known to art students at the time, just needed Dan Brown to make into a chase to make the theory known to the general public.

Henry David Thoreau — I was a strange kid, walking around at 12 and 13 reading A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, before most of my peers had even heard of Thoreau. I also read Thoreau’s poems, and Thoreau of course would take me to Emerson. It was in this period I was also reading Robert Frosts poems, as well as Walt Whitman and for some reason Dylan Thomas (I must have heard of him in some context).

Romeo and Juliet — The second instance of teachers influence, and it’s a weird one. Freshman English class in high school. I was new to the school, I didn’t know anyone, and I was very out of sorts and my only bright day in school were the English classes. The teacher was a Miss Homrighouse, she was 83 years old at the time and she fell asleep during classes, the very definition of an aged-out teacher. We were reading Romeo and Juliet and I guess I wasn’t getting it. One day after class she called me aside after class and went over the material pointing out that there was a lot of sex and violence in Shakespeare, thereafter I ‘got’ Shakespeare, I started doing better with the material. To this day I don’t understand what she saw in me to single me out to try and help with the material. She never favored me in class, I don’t remember her noticing me more than any other student, except for this one example.

The Teachings of Don Juan — No, not the fictional libertine, but Carlos Castaneda’s Yaqui Indian of “alternate realities”. My interest in this was because I was interested in “alternate realities” which at the core of these teachings is that there are other realities that can be perceived if we’re just able to alter the thinking patterns we’ve been locked into. Also, an unintended result of Castaneda’s books was as I read others in the series I noticed how Castaneda treated the origin story of how he met the main character, Don Juan, he was treated as a fictional character, I had seen other authors treat fictional protagonists in the same way. When the validity of Castaneda’s story was called into question as to whether it had been a true narrative didn’t bother me because I had noticed Castaneda’s use of fictional device’s, so I never considered the books to be anything except fiction.

Dangerous Visions — Edited by Harlan Ellison. It wasn’t the writing of any one story, but the introductory notes Ellison wrote about his relationship with the writer, the foibles he and/or the writer went through to get the story published, the process the writer went through to create the story. Those notes told the stories of where ideas came from, and to a writer in training they were great examples of how to create from within yourself, your experience, and how to translate those things into stories, even science fiction stories. Dangerous Visions set me off on a Harlan Ellison spree, soon I was reading Shatterday, Love Ain’t Nothin’ but Sex Misspelled, Gentleman Junkie, The Glass Teat, in short anything written by Ellison.

No One Here Gets Out Alive — Not because it’s a superbly written or even the definitive biography of Jim Morrison (that you will find in James Riordan’s Break On Through) but because it’s about a shy, bookish boy named Jim who wanted to be a poet. I saw my reflection in Jim Morrison and his life showed me a path to be a writer that I previously hadn’t seen before.

On the Road — In a famous author, I again saw a reflection. In his early years Kerouac was an athlete that was more interested in art and literature. On my first reading of On the Road I didn’t like it, it seemed old to me. I kept hearing laudatory things about Kerouac’s writing, and it had influenced other writers I liked. I found a biography of Kerouac and read it, and the thing that struck me was that On The Road only seemed old because I had grown up reading the writers that came after Kerouac, the writers that had been influenced by him and the reason his writing seemed old was because I had read writers who had adapted Kerouac’s techniques and that’s why they seemed old fashioned and unremarkable to me. Also, Kerouac’s spontaneous writing and sketching techniques appealed to me, as well as finding literary material in your own life.

Ulysses — In James Joyce I found that an author of fiction could be considered a poet. Joyce’s writing and rewriting his novels until it “sounded” right, I had never considered a book or a novel to be an auditory experience, but the more I thought about the more it made sense to me, that a novelist is trying to recreate life on the page, so even if the reader is unaware of the experience it needs to sound right, the rhythm of the words can poetically create images in the readers mind of the story he’s trying to communicate.

I don’t know how complete this is, in my life this list only takes me up to about age 20–21, and the notes about why each book and/or author influenced me could be a biography of me up until that time. Certainly, since then I’ve read more than up until those times, but maybe the writers I’ve read since then haven’t been as world changing as those on this list, after all the people included here influenced and directed the direction of my life.

I want to thank Jack Preston King for reminding me that I had this article at the back of my mind for a while.

I used to moderate a writer’s workshop and in the first session I told the attendees that they knew how to write and what to write because they’d been reading writers for years that have been their teachers. Here are the writers that influenced me, as well as how they influenced me.

Jack Kerouac — Kerouac developed what he called sketching, just like a fine artist creates quick studies in a carry-around notebook, so did Kerouac, creating short portraits of what he saw as he was walking along. It helps a writer break through to his subconscious, grabbing images, words, contexts and connotations (that may not have occurred to the writer in the first place) that form the picture the artist is trying to recreate. Kerouac believed the first word is always the best word, a philosophy I at first went along with, but, at least in my case in lead to some brilliant ideas and phrasings surrounded by more mundane writing. But I learned how to gather those jewels from the subconscious and string them along on the bead of the story.

James Joyce — With Joyce what started as an affectation became useful practice. I’d read that Joyce wrote and rewrote his paragraph’s until they sounded good. When I was writing my first novel Becoming Angel, I started rewriting paragraphs I had finished, sure that I already had it written the best I could, and the rewriting exercise would only confirm it. That idea quickly changed, as I rewrote the paragraph, the first couple of permutations didn’t change much, then on the third or fourth the paragraph was actually better than the original! It better said what I wanted to convey and made the point of the paragraph a more powerful statement.

Stephen King — King is like a jazz soloist; he finds interesting tangents and sub-plot in his writing and explores them to the fullest effect in the story. Probably, the best example of this I can cite is in 11/22/63, King’s hero Jake Epping goes back in time to stop the assassination of JFK. In the course of the story King finds every little nuance of Epping and fully explores its ramifications in the characters life as well as the story without any of it feeling like it’s filler or the information is unnecessary. I learned how to discover those moments in my writing, moments that would lead to some otherwise unknown facet of the character, moments that lead to more fully developed characters.

Ernest Hemingway — Is a tough one because in the almost 100 years since Hemingway first published The Sun Also Rises, he’s been held up to be the model of the Great American Writer. His exploits, in the name of experience, created the idea of what a writer should be, a romantic figure who indulges in wine, women and song. His influence on my writing is more an influence in my editing. When I was finishing up Becoming Angel I was working with an agent on its editing and I wanted a second opinion, as it were. I found a critical examination of The Sun Also Rises and read the anecdote on how F. Scott Fitzgerald helped Hemingway edit the book and his first suggestion was to cut the first third of the book which Hemingway promptly did seeing that Fitzgerald was right the first third which consisted of the history of the Robert Cohn character, all of which was unessential to the story. From that I learned how to be ruthless with my writing in its editing. Maybe this last influence should be F. Scott Fitzgerald.

What writers influenced you and how did their lessons affect your writing?