He said: I met him twice when I was a student in Connecticut. He was an imposing man with his beard and his glasses and his chanting and the way that people were attracted to his calmness and to his center. He waned peace, just like we all then wanted peace. He would come to some of the protests at the University and his presence would attract people to come to them as well. He would play a kind of squeeze box with his feet and sing along. He would remind people there to pick up trash before they left: to "do your kitchen yoga" as he called it. I was amazed that he would come all that way from the city to spend the time with young people. He was, after all, quite famous for various things. We all had read his poetry and was familiar with the fact that he had helped create a whole new kind of writing years before we were aware of him. I was always struck by the book about his mother, who was ill, who was committed to institutions and who died in one. I remember his telling of a letter that she sent to him in the last few days of her life, where she told him where she was going and where she would be and where he could find hope and the strength within him to carry on without her, because it was time for her to leave him. She told him that the key was in the window of their apartment in New York. The key was in the window, in the sunlight in the window and would always be there for him or anyone who needed it. That was her gift to him and also to me, whom she didn't even know existed."

Stumble It!

She said: "When I was a girl I used to dream about floating away. I would float out of my bedroom window and I'd rise to the heavens where the air was cool and clean. Sometimes I could look down and see my house and my school and everything just pass away as I floated up to the clouds. When I was a teenager, I dreamed that I could climb on a magic ladder. I guess I always wanted to be up above everything else. I don't know why. I was never a special child in any way and I never had any great plans for the future. I never wanted to be an astronaut or anything like that. I don't think that I'm special or odd. But, now that I'm a 70 year old, my dreams are more normal. Now, when I dream I dream that I am on firm ground because I know that a fall from a ladder or a fall from a cloud would be the end of me now. The best that I can do now is maybe climb on a stool and look over my fence. Sometimes the view is just as good as what you see from heaven. Most of the time, however, it's not."

Stumble It!

He said: "I dreamed that I had two lives that were completely different from each other, and yet were lived at the same time. In one life I was an elderly and frail man of letters who was being abused by the caretaker who was supposed to look after my health and my affairs. I lived in a large stone house in the countryside and had only an estranged daughter left to help with my affairs. In my other life, I lived in a large city and was young, just starting out in my life. I had many friends of both genders whose company I enjoyed. I was an artist living in a run down neighborhood where other artists and musicians also lived because of the inexpensive rental rates. Both of these different people were aware of their other half. For the old man, the young man is his future; for the young man the old man was his past."

Stumble It!

She said: "God created small things for their speed. If small things were to multiply and continue to show their beauty to us, they would have to be swift in order to survive. Which is not to say that large creatures are not beautiful in their way because they are. But, I think that small creatures such as some birds and butterflys and Dragon Flies and small fishes are closer to God than we are and that they are God's favorite creations. Sometimes we don't even notice them and I think that they try to keep their distance from us Humans and that is probably for the best, don't you think? Small creatures have a grace that we can admire. Small things in general, I think, are to be admired for their grace; like a small thought kept in memory, or a small wish for love, a small kiss that begins a day and a small breath that ends it; like a single flower and like the dew on grass and a smile that broadcasts to everyone your grace and God's perfection. It is, after all, the small things that matter the most."

Stumble It!

He said: "I don't know what the big deal is about memory. Why do I have to remember everything? Why is a good memory such a favored attribute? Remember what? Why do I have to remember death or pain or hate? What does it matter if I don't remember how old you are or what your late father's middle name was? Of what use is the names of everyone I went to 1st grade with now that I am nearing the ending of this life? Shouldn't I only recall what is of use to me? It is not an effort to remember your face and the number of times that I have kissed it. I have no problem remembering the way you smell after a bath, or the gentle way you touch me as I awaken, or the way you look when you talk about our lives together. I can remember every time we made love and I can remember the way a full moon lights up the night and the way that certain flowers smell and the taste of chocolate. Isn't that enough? I remember the day. I remember passion. I remember joy. I remember the look of freshly fallen snow. I remember the taste of fresh air in the Fall and I remember why I'm here. Everything is not important."

Stumble It!

She said: "Here's a good one: Why doesn't money grow on trees? Seems to me that they've got all kind of other things growing on trees; why not money. Talk about your "life sustaining crops"! There ain't anything more important to life on Earth than money. You can't live here if you don't have money. They're growing stuff to turn into gas for our cars; they're growing stuff to make medicines with; they're growing stuff to make other kinds of things, like paper, all over the place. How come no one has figured out how to grown money? Come on! It can't be that hard. To quote my Dad: "They can put a man on the moon, but they can't get trees that will grow money". It's a damn shame. That's what I think anyway."

Stumble It!

He said: "It just happened one day recently. I hadn't thought about grade school or High School for years and years. But then, I couldn't get it out of my mind. It just seemed important to try and find out what happened to the people who used to be my friends when I was young. What happened to them? Did they still live in the area? Would I recognize them if I saw them on the street? Were they successful? Happy? Would they still want to be my friend? I missed them somehow, 40 years later. God, we had such fun; raised hell some. One guy in particular, Ronnie, was a good friend. He taught me how to fish. His family was from South Carolina, I think, but they had moved up here right after he was born. We would wade through the creeks and catch frogs and set things on fire. He helped me build a tree fort where there was a calendar of naked ladies nailed to the wall. "No Girls Allowed". My family moved a few miles away and I slowly lost track of Ronnie. We were in different schools them. I saw him a few times, and then I was in High School and then College and that was it for the old friends. I can't really explain what this craving for going back in time means. I "googled" a few names, but, of course, found nothing but other people with the same names; not the guys I knew when I was 12 or 14 or 16. I guess I just wanted to connect again somehow; connect with something that was real and good and safe, and then disappeared forever."

Stumble It!

She said: "I just found out that "Mother Mama" is now famous, having been included in a book about the 60's and 70's and stuff. The book makes her out to be this really out of control kind of person and I don't remember things like that at all. "Mother Mama" was first and foremost a business person. Sure, she was larger than life. Lots of people were larger than like then. She was literally "larger than life" because she was such a big woman. She had to be over 200 pounds back then. But she worked her butt off moving "product" from Florida to California on a regular basis. She would make the trip in 3 days, driving that broken-down VW bus 24 hours a day! And they said that the young people then didn't have any "work ethic". That's just a bunch of B.S.! We worked hard, played hard and only slowed down when we fell down. I'm telling you "Mother Mama" was something else. Everybody on the West Coast knew her. She was a hard worker who got the job done. And when it was time to party, she would stay for a short bit and then would quietly be gone, because, after all, it was mostly about business. A person could party anytime. But work always came first for "Mama". You just don't find people like her anymore. Those days are done. But I still laugh every time I think of her and that crazy bus."

Stumble It!

He said: "Did you even know anyone who tried to catch a falling star? There aren't too many out there who have. Mostly, I would think, because it is so darn difficult to do. First of all, you have about 3 or 4 seconds before it is gone and you've missed your chance. Secondly, falling stars are much bigger than you think. They're huge! I know from personal experience because I have been trying to catch a falling star, well, almost my whole life. It's a petty big undertaking, but I think it would be worth all of the trouble and effort to catch one of those things. I would die a happy man, I'm telling you, if I could just rustle up one of those falling pieces of sky. They say that a falling star is really someone's soul coming back to Earth. I tend to doubt that. Why would someone in Heaven want to come back here to try it out again? It seems to me that one time would be enough. No, I think a Falling Star is an angel coming down to show us the way back to Heaven. That's what I think; that's why it would be so worth it to catch one before it disappeared. It would be worth it to find out how we could all get back home."

Stumble It!

She said: "There was another newspaper story this morning about someone who got hurt because they were hit by a car going down the road. They were hurt because this person was walking in the road texting. Now, how stupid is that? For real! Texting and not paying one solid bit of attention to where he was going. How important could this Text be? LOL! Important enough to die for? What a jerk. The way I see it is that this is like Natural Selection. Remember that from school? Its like all the stupid people are being weeded out of the gene pool, one by one. You got a Texter over here, a brain dead iPod Hip Hop child over there; people yacking on their phones while driving on the Beltway. It's amazing to me. They're texting and Twittering and being oblivious all over the place. I wish them the best, because, you know what?, a lot of them aren't going to be with us real long. WTF!"

Stumble It!

He said: "I always liked the 4th of July because of the fireworks. I like the drama that the fireworks gives the July Holiday. My mother, when I was a small boy, used to tell me that my favorite television cartoon characters were parachuting down to us while the fireworks. exploded all around us. Talk about making a dramatic entrance! It was like being shot out of a cannon or something and I believed her. I like the color of the fireworks and the loud sounds and the flash and the glitter of it all. It's a little like Mardi Gras, but not as X-rated and with more clothes on. One year a dear friend of ours came to visit and we took her to the fireworks on the the Mall in Washington, DC. This is the best fireworks in the land. No expense is spared for the DC display. What we didn't know until later is that our friend hated fireworks; she hated the noise and the smoke and the loud booms and the crowds and the whole thing, basically. But she allowed us to drag her downtown and at the end of the display of fire and bombs and of all the noise and bother, a burning piece of something or other floated down to where we were sitting and caught her blanket on fire. You can't get more dramatic then that. The other thing I like is what you can make out of the abstractions of Red, White, and Blue fireworks. They can become anything because it's all so abstract. This year, I swear, I saw a likeness of Dolly Parton and Tennessee Ernie Ford. I guess I'm in a Southern phase at the moment, but, really, whatever is just fine with me as long as it's fireworks!"

Stumble It!

She said: "I always had a hard time talking to boys. I think it was because I was a bit of a Tom Boy myself and I wanted so badly to be accepted by them, but I think I ended up scaring them off somehow. I liked being with the boys better than with the girls. The girls were mean to me and the boys just sort of ignored the fact that I was even there with them, watching them just standing around, doing not much of anything except looking at the girls and saying mean things about them and about each other too. The boys smoked and cussed and ran real fast and liked to break things like glass bottles and stuff. The girls always looked bored to me. They wanted to be with the boys, but didn't want to do the things that the boys liked doing, so that didn't work out too well for them. Me, I was in between most of my grade school days; neither here nor there. It's better for me now; now that I don't have to think so much about the boys."

Stumble It!