Tuesday, March 15, 2011

My Eulogy for Bob Dey

My life has been different from a lot of guys in that I tend to despise spectator sports and Car & Driver Magazine.  I don’t have a “man cave” and I don’t know if I can still use a ratcheting box wrench or a feeler gauge, and I don’t have any interesting scars.  Instead I read books a lot, find myself at art shows, attempt to hold heady philosophical conversations – and I have this really picky aesthetic sense of art and the world around me, and I was only recently challenged to look back and determine who my influences were during my “artistic formative years,” which I believe happen to most of us between ages 11 and 19. 
It may come as a surprise to most of you, but with only a few exceptions, everything for me somehow led back to Bob Dey.
For example, in the field of LITERATURE, I remember as a sixth or seventh grader, I had seen Bob reading a certain book series – so when I returned to school that following week, I found the same series in the school library and a whole new world of literature was opened to me.  Later, I discovered Bob was reading a certain Robert Pirsig book, and likewise I found and read that book, which has influenced me to this day.  And because of this reading, I found myself distancing myself from the crowd of surfer and swim team friends that I had in High School, and more sitting with the AP crowd and discussing the movies and books and artists that we had seen. In my adult life, I’ve been in a book club for years – and I currently read several books a month, and I can’t help but think that Bob was a chief influence on this aspect in my life and seeing out great, life-affirming literature.
Another example, in the field of MUSIC, I remember visiting Bob’s room and seeing him play his bass guitar with this huge performance amp.  With the smell of sandalwood in the air, I would look through Bob’s stack of exotic albums and observed all the intriguing music posters on his walls.  None of the bands I saw there represented the ones being played on AM radio, and this intrigued me.  I started buying mostly albums from bands I had never heard of, in an attempt to emulate Bob whom, by this time, I of course idolized.  To this day, I have the same mindset about music – taking the road less travelled when it comes to supporting unique and independent artists, and this way of thinking has never led me wrong.  I again have Bob Dey to thank for this.
Bob helped me to realize that listening wasn’t enough – that everyone needed to have a musical outlet too – and write their own original songs, as he did on the guitar and piano.  Seeing Bob with a guitar influenced me to buying my own secondhand guitar at age 14 – and then learning to play it – and then buying my first electric guitar and amp as well.  Again, Bob was an influencer for me with this.
In the field of STORYTELLING, most of the Dey-Wade clan will remember Bob’s clever aptitude with spinning a yarn – and specifically with “The Legend of Lagunita” – and his suite of “Ornos” Stories.  These stories, which Bob would relate, often at night, and often with a flashlight beam pointed straight up his face with a strange twisted scowl, would often unfold in a semi-disturbing almost H.P. Lovecraftian way – usually with a disturbing vocal presentation – only to resolve themselves in some suddenly deflated, filled-with-hot-air plot resolution.  It was Bob the trickster at play here, basically saying “Don’t be such Scaredy Cats, guys!  Sheesh!”   And, to this day, I find myself still gripped with poets and storytellers such as Spaulding Gray, Mike Birbiglia, and The Moth Podcast, for example, and when I look back, I think that again, Bob Dey served as inspiration for me to seek out artists like that.
In the area of SENSE OF HUMOR, I remember BOB THE TRICKSTER leading me through culverts and into twisting and turning dark sewer pipes where he would eventually stick roman candles up through holes in the manhole covers in the center of  Whittier Blvd while I would admire the genius of his awesome handywork, peeking out from a nearby drainage gutter, as cars honked and swerved around the plumages of fireworks.  And although this influenced me, it led to my own failed ensemble of performance artist trickery back in San Diego -- featuring fabric ghosts suspended across our street by strings of rubber bands . . . and shoes, pulled by invisible fishing line, walking themselves in front of cars.  Again, I tried, in my own way to emulate the artistic genius of Bob Dey yet again.  Though I caution you – don’t try this at home!
Bob found humor in the simple, by the way. Like the Anza Borrego camping trip where he asked me “How long can you stand it, Paul?” while he wrapped rubber bands one at a time on my nose, and then earlobes, and then tips of my ears until, whimpering, I could bear it no further.  I also remember the time he shoved a M-80 firecracker into the fleshy center of an overripe peach and told me to go over and stand on the lawn while he lit the fuse and threw it, with a baseball fieldsman’s precision, far over my head. 
“Look up, Paul,” he said.  “It’s going to look really neat,” he said, smiling, before the explosion and the masses of pulp rained down on my head.
In the field of PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE, Bob had his own interests and goals. It wasn’t necessarily a college degree or a slick job that he was after, but instead I remember going with him to the arcade to see him attempt to try to top his own pinball records, which invariably displayed at the top of most of the machines at the Friendly Hills Lanes Bowling Center.  And Bob’s technique inspired me, being a 12 year old who’s pinballs would all invariable shoot straight down through my flippers, sad sounds emitting from my machine. 
I’m sorry, Bob, that I wasted so many of your quarters.
Another example of Bob’s influence on me was in the field of ART.  I remember Bob teaching me how to draw with Pastels on a camping trip – to sketch first with charcoal on good paper, then pick coordinating colors, apply the colors, and then carefully smudge the pastel applications with my thumb.  His technique inspired me, and I remember returning home and asking for a set of pastels so that I could yet again emulate Bob. At home though, left to my own devices with the pastels, nothing seemed to work the same way. My dragons looked like mangy listless lizards . . .  and my castles looked foreclosed.  Without Bob’s gentle guidance, I was adrift. I later took oil-painting lessons, but I never could fully recreate the magic I felt about art as those days that I sat with Bob under the pines at the picnic table in our campsite with his charcoal and pastels . . . and good drawing paper.
In the field of PHILOSOPHY, I remember following Bob into the sagebrush for quite a ways across the Anza Borrego desert, our shoes crunching through the gravelly sand. The air was still cool in the morning . . . and I saw him sit on the ground and fold his legs and relax his arms and shut his eyes, quietly breathing.  I had not been exposed to any forms of philosophy outside our Church, and so the idea of meditation intrigued me.  I sat for a while, and tried to do the same – and I found it was very difficult to quiet my mind.  The epiphany for me was that I wasn’t necessarily in control of my own mind and the thoughts that entered into it.  Bob saw the value in this.  Something about watching Bob go through the process of exploring other philosophies inspired me to do the same.  I started reading books on world religions, and what I saw there made me realize that I wasn’t necessarily right and everybody else was wrong.  That maybe I didn’t know what the right path was, but the important thing was to be a SEEKER.  Bob seemed to me, during those years, to be a SEEKER.  I and believe that is how I became a SEEKER too.  I appreciate Bob Dey for inspiring in this area of my life a well. 
Coming from my own family with a fair amount of drama – I saw Bob as a sort of DIPLOMACIST.  Maybe I was seeing another side of Bob than other people saw, but the Bob that I observed at family gatherings wanted people to get along.  Bob loved to smile. Not a shy, closed-mouth smile – but a full-face broad, toothy smile that was instantly charming and mesmerizing to me.  He’d walk up, and say something sweet and gentle, and put his arm around my shoulder, and give my neck and shoulder a squeeze. And just stand there next to me, with the physical contact, like we were best buds, smiling out onto the world – as if we were posing for a photo when there was no camera present. 
The Bob that I observed wanted to make people feel good – and wanted us all to get along peacefully.  Bob calmed me.  Bob inspired me in this way. 
Many of you will remember BOB THE OUTDOORSMAN.  I remember seeing him in his flannel shirts, adept a pitching a tent, and tending a fire, and all things related to camping.  I remember looking at his strong arms, with the veins running along them and, being a pudgy athletically-challenged pre-teen, I remember thinking how strong he must be.  I remember Bob was so inspired by the majesty of the Sierras.  At the end of a weeklong camping trip along Bishop Creek in about 1973, while our parents were packing up the gear back at the campsites, we walked down and carved our names with penknives on an Aspen tree near the rushing creek. I asked Bob when we could go camping again.  He said “next summer, for sure” – and I remember being crestfallen to think that I would have to wait a whole year to go camping with Bob again. 
For, to me, one year seemed an eternity to be away from Bob Dey.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Prompt Tuesday #97 (Talk to Me)

Tell a story using only dialog. Instructions for this Prompt Tuesday found at:

http://sandiegomomma.com/2010/03/09/promptuesday-97-talk-to-me/#respond


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"Hello, sir. M-May I . . ."

"Yes, yes. Hello, there! Can you hang my umbrella somewhere . . . and tell me a bit more about this piece . . . back here?"

"On top of the . . ."

"No below. Inside it."

"The one here in the front of..."

"No, no. Behind it. The small . . . uh, how shall we say . . .? The small coffer."

"Coffer. I see no . . . Well, let me . . . let me unlock this . . . and . . . Okay. Here. Hmmm. I guess I didn't realize that my Uncle even had this in his store. Perhaps I should clean it first. Let me get a dustrag. You know this would fall under our everything-must-go sale, correct?"

"I'm aware of that, my dear . . . But I'm not concerned about the . . . Well, let me just take a look at it."

"All dusted. Here. You can probably guess this is not an imitation. Do you want me to look for the key, sir? My uncle has a keyring down here . . . somewhere . . ."

"Not to worry, my dear. I have the . . . I have no need to further examine it. I can see it is a piece of my property that I have been . . . well, . . . without possession for quite some time."

"Sir."

"Yes."

"Are you saying that . . ."

"I am proposing nothing of the sort, young lady. You are in no way implicated in . . . But I tarry. Name your price."

"Well, let's look on the bottom to see if . . ."

"No need to turn it topsy turvy, my dear. Under . . . under here. Fifteen pounds. Is that right. Fifteen?"

"Well my uncle . . . if that is what he wrote. Plus the discount of course, which would mean that . . . that . . . Did you hear that just now, sir?"

"No need for discounts young lady. You . . ."

"Did you hear that, sir? That sound. Just now. That . . ."

"My dear, there is no need to . . ."

"That sound from . . . The noise from . . . The box. That noise from inside the box. My god, sir. Do you hear that?"

"I have no interest in noises, my dear. Fifteen pounds square. No need for discounts. In fact, take this."

"Uh, sir. This is . . . This is, my god, one hundred pounds. Uh, well that is . . . You must . . . Do you want a receipt?"

"I need no paperwork, my dear. Thank you."

"Sir. Thank you, sir."

"Tell me, my dear. Your uncle. Mr., uh . . ."

"McCourt, sir?"

"Yes, Mr. McCourt. Did he . . . Do they know . . . uh, how . . ."

"How . . .?"

"Yes. How he . . .?"

"How he died sir?"

"Yes. I understand he was found."

"Found just here, sir. Laying on the floor, he was. Just below the counter. Key ring in his hand. Had just locked up for the night and . . ."

"And, the . . . the injuries."

"They aren't certain. A misfortune. A creature. Perhaps a rabid . . . small . . . Well, the inspectors still aren't . . . They aren't quite . . ."

"Yes. Uh. Well. My best to your family . . . and for the expeditious closing of the shop, my dear. I have enjoyed frequenting it since the day it opened."

"Since the day it opened, my dear sir."

"Yes. Since the very day."

"Since . . . since 1858, sir? Indeed."

"Indeed, madam. Indeed. My umbrella?"

"Uh . . . Yes. Here it . . . is. And the door. My best to you, sir. And would you like a wrapping for your box? Your coffer?"

"My dear. We don't need to protect this box, young lady! My goodness, no, no! I merely wish to protect . . . uh . . . protect YOU . . . protect YOU ALL . . . FROM this box. Good day to you my dear!"

-------------

Please indulge me By Answering These Questions:

1) Briefly describe the shop you see in your mind's eye?

2) What does the purchaser look like in your mind?

3) What does the shopkeeper look like in your mind?

4) Describe the box. What do you see inside of the box?

Thank you so much for answering these questions! :)

-- Wade Nash

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Prompt Tuesday (2/2/10)

To me, the most important (and elusive aspect) of writing is the simple motto "Show! Don't Tell!" The "showing," in addition to a compelling plot, is what distinguishes good writing from dull writing. I struggle with this.

Today, when emailing a friend with a writing critique, I ran across this article, which I enjoyed:

http://users.wirefire.com/tritt/tip1.html

I'll summarize with a short "crumping" poem:

Don't Tell! Show!
Stupid mofo!
(repeat)

(Sung to the tune of "Pants on the Ground.")

And here is a haiku that I wrote to immortalize this concept:

Quill dips . . .
Exact descriptions inked onto parchment
The readers snooze.

My best to all . . .

-- Wade Nash

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Prompt Tuesday (6/16/09) -- Lie to Me

For Prompt Tuesday at Deb's Blog at:


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Pride

My upcoming "Rings of the Lord" trillogy. Arch-Angels (Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer) form a pact with each other and each don a power ring of Black Hills gold. But one of the angels falls from Grace, and his ring melts in the fires of Hell, allowing him to rise up and . . . Ah, well. Trust me. It's going to be great.

Envy

My awesome typing speed. 90+.

Gluttony

Two Black Bean Brownies. (Recipe on the WeightWatchers.com website. Yummy!!)

Lust

Really big, historic homes that are already fixed up and have perfect foundations. And big tits.

Anger

That my mother-in-law wouldn't plug in the power cord and hand it to me, so I had to walk all the way around the house to do it myself.

Greed

The bathroom key at the office.

Sloth

I once turned in a math paper by writing all the odd CORRECT answers from the back of the book -- and for all the even answers I put a Zero. My math teacher was so pissed, she ripped the answer appendice out of my pre-Algebra book! What WAS I thinking?

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Prompt Tuesday (6/9/09) -- "Decisions, Decisions"

It was so astoundingly simple where before it it seemed hard.

There are not many things in life like that. Fixing a car for example. You have a basic concept of the grease and tools and crawling above and under a car to repair it. Or, for example, if your home's water heater breaks, you generally understand that a plumber will disconnect it and drag it out to the street, drag a new one in, and somehow attach it with his tools and torchy thing.

But this thing before me . . . hmm . . . A lightbulb was going on. If everyone else still thought it was hard, and it was actually really, really as easy as this, I betcha I could make some big-time money here.

It was late 1995. Just months before, I had just separated from my wife and had moved back from the rain-splattered hell they call Eugene, Oregon, and back to my hometown of San Diego. My parents had gracefully allowed their peniless 33-year-old son the use of the trailer on their back driveway to serve as a flophouse. I was working temp jobs, and had somehow ended up at the corporate headquarters of Jack in the Box restaurant, working on technical manuals: basically diagrams of how to put sandwiches together for minimum wage working, often-E.S.L. fast-food workers.

Just two months before, an aquaintenance in Oregon, a former postal worker on permanent leave (due to some form of '60s-drug-induced agoraphobia), had invited me over to his "manufactured home" in the woods past Fern Ridge lake, to hang out. His wife, whom I worked with, could tell that I had been depressed at work, and so, after serving me salisbury steak in a foil tray, Jim got excited to show me something he had discovered on his computer. It was called"MOSAIC." He said it was called a "Web Browser" -- something that he promised would change my world.

He connected his Macintosh with his modem, complete with those all-familiar noises of buzzing and clicking that I had been familiar with from connecting to America Online. But then a small window appeared. And then the magic happened.

Using a large phonebook-sized tome, an "Internet Directory" that he had purchased at a bookstore in downtown Eugene, Jim proceeded to type in string of characters:


and pressed the key.

I then saw a page of information -- and it looked like a word-processed document. Big deal. However, Jim then explained to me that this information being sent to us from CERN, a university near Geneva. He told me that if someone changed the document at the other end and we clicked refresh we would get the new document uploaded near-instantaneously. He then proceeded to explain what all the blue underlined "links" meant and how they actually jumped us around to other "websites" -- and explained to me the concept of a "web."

It was hard stuff I assumed, though -- programming a website. I had no doubt it required a computer science degree -- and completing coursework to understand network/modem protocols and international telecommunications, special computer equipment. I had never been so wrong.

So that is why, a few months later, when I got a glimpse into what a website really was, the lightbulb went on. And it wasn't just glowing. It was beaming like one of those sky-high spotlights waving back and forth.

This one particular day, around November 1995, a flamboyant Mac consultant whom I'll call "T" had arrived to help some of the graphic artists in our wing with some software installs on the Mac 9600s (a now long-defunct model). "T" had been making the moves on one of our graphic artists, my friend Scott, for a long time, and he seemed eager to impress all of us in the office -- often hoping to extend his morning consulting visits to lunchtime so he could ask Scott to head out for "bite to eat." This particular day, though, I had a problem with my computer and "T" stopped by my desk. It was a quick fix -- done! -- and then the magic happened.

I'm not certain what started it, perhaps that he saw I had a "Netscape" icon loaded on my desktop -- but "T" was suddenly showing me how to create my own web page using a very simple language called HTML in a Text Editor. He said it was NOT a programming language -- just a markup language. (I still don't understand why the consultant didn't meet with our Creative Services director and offer to create a website for us. His oversight was my gain, though.)

It dawned on me at that very moment that Jack in the Box had no website. And maybe, if it were as simple as I thought, I could create one. That same day, I drove to a computer store across the I-15 and picked up a book called HTML For Dummies. That night, I read it nearly cover to cover. I began to realize that this was clearly something that people thought was difficult to do -- but was actually very, VERY simple.

Within 2 days I had created the very first JackintheBox.com website -- and worked with a friend in the M.I.S. (now "I.T.") department to launch the site. Of course, I touted my highly-specialized technology skills to our P.R. department and explained to them that they would need a "webmaster" (a term I had picked up from the Dummies book). Of course, I knew of just the person they needed: me. My position was expanded on the spot -- and I found myself as the first "Webmaster" of JackInTheBox.com.

I made daily changes to the site and expanded it with more and more photos and sections. I submitted the site to a pay-per-entry web-design "contest," and garnered an award for myself.

I was now an award-winning Webmaster for a Fortune 500 company's website -- all within a month's time and very little effort. Of course, I exaggerated my own importance to everyone who would listen, obscurely referring to the complexities of web programming and HTML.

The following week, I overheard a temp I hired, named Deb, talking about trying to get website-development work at Qualcomm -- an up-and-coming company not far away. She even mentioned the hiring manager's name. It was a cinch to call and get the hiring manager's fax number and start faxing my resume over. And the rest is history. After being hired by Qualcomm in September 1996, I have slowly built up my web development resume. I am now a Sr. Software Engineering specializing in web programming for a San Diego-area defense contractor.

Eventually, though, the magic at Qualcomm faded as everyone and their grandmother started creating their own webpages with WYSIWYG web-development tools such as FrontPage and DreamWeaver -- and the technical regard of webmastering died out. In true "Who Moved My Cheese" style, I had to learn to keep changing and growing into new areas of web technology (but that is for another post).

Before that fateful day at Jack In the Box, my career path had been aimed toward journalism and magazine editing (per my Journalism Degree, SDSU, 1992) -- a choice that would have certainly spelled low wages in a dying industry. I can't imagine how my life would have been different if I hadn't decided to get that HTML for Dummies book that first day I saw how easy it was to create a website "under the hood."

Now I keep thinking -- what is the next "hard thing" that is actually really, REALLY easy. Programming for the iPhone? Hmmm. I've got to look into that.

Thanks for readin! :)

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Prompt Tuesday, 5/5/09 -- My Favorite Toy

My favorite toy remained unchanged from about age 4 through my early teen years: Blocks. And marbles.

I would construct fortresses with blocks that I would roll marbles into. They marbles would cascade through the small tunnels through twists and turns -- and then roll out through a little exit tunnel at the end -- making a plinking noise as the marble cascaded down the ramps.

I was fixated on this game, Mouse Trap, at the time, but my parents didn't want to buy it for me ("The plastic parts will only get lost or break, honey,") and so, I continued with my blocks.

Later my dad built me a large HO train board with its own mountain and even a little HO-scaled Western town. However, my attention would soon run dry and I'd find myself, yet again, laying on my orange shag rug, laying down the blocks, and rolling marbles through them.

Watching my kids grow up with race car tracks and roller coaster "kinex" and Harry Potter Legos and robots and then Rios and now iPod Nanos and various computer games (Wow, Starcraft, etc) -- I wonder how much more fun that all is compared to constructing your very own marble factory.

Now where are my blocks? I'm beginning to feel that they are my "Rosebud."

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Little Things that Make All the Difference

I was on my way to NYC to fly out of JFK to Prague. To make the trip more enjoyable, my friends, David and Ray, and I were driving across country -- stopping in Albuquerque, New Orleans, and New Jersey before I was to meet my sister in Albany just days before my flight to Prague.

Whereas my arrangements had placed us with friends in New Orleans, my friend David's girlfriend Ray had arranged for our accommodations in New Jersey. It was on the Jersey shore with an old friend of Ray's mother, a woman named Pat, who met us graciously and took her into her home. She had hot pastrami sandwiches awaiting us -- and good spicy brown mustard. Her condo had rust-colored shag rug -- and 1980s furnishings -- but her view across the highway to the shore was stunning. She had prepared clean sheets on the fold-out bed for me in the living room. My friends stayed in the back room by themselves.

We were exhausted from our drive, but I had some difficulty falling asleep. Pat sat not far from me in the kitchen with the light on, smoking cigarettes and coughing, and doing a crossword puzzle. I remember thinking that she was coughing very hard. I popped half a Xanax, as was my custom to fall asleep in a strange locale, and drifted off.

That evening, I was awakened by my friends' crys to call 911. I thought I was dreaming, but it was a different kind of nightmare. Pat had coughed so hard during the night, she had burst a vein in a lung tumor. She was able to rouse my friends from the back bedroom, make the international sign of choking, before running into the bathroom and collapsing on the bathroom floor, where she bled out, entirely, through the mouth, covering the entire floor with the majority of her blood.

"Don't come in here," David yelled to me in the hallway. "You are not going to want to see this. Trust me." To this day, I owe David a debt of gratitude that I don't have that memory etched into my brain.

What I hadn't been told is that Pat was a New Jersey Police Detective who had recently retired after putting away some mobsters. When her fellow police officers arrived on the scene and saw Pat in a huge pool of blood on the bathroom floor, and three strangers in the house, it was a no- brainer to interrogate us.

We were separated by the police officers while forensic specialists examined the Pat's corpse. As the sun came up over the Jersey Shore, I was asked repeatedly about why I was in the house (just to crash, I said) and how I knew Pat (I didn't, I said), and what I did to Pat (I ate a sandwich with her and wished her good night, I said). Luckily, I was still slighly high on Xanax.

Within the hour, Pat's doctor was summoned. He told the detectives that Pat had terminal lung cancer. She knew that she could succumb to the disease at any time. She chose to take us in and give us a place to stay, taking a chance that she would be fine during the 12 hours of our stay. What she didn't know is that we would arrive just hours from her imminent death.

In many ways I'm glad I was there for Pat's death. Oddly enough, not only was it exciting to be interrogated for Murder, but I found out later that my friends were there at Pat's side, holding her hand, and easing her fear as she left this life into the great unknown.

We all had separate plane tickets, so I left David and Ray behind that morning and drove to Albany, as was our plan.

Ray naturally was depressed by all of this. When I next saw her, in Prague, she was clearly shaken by Pat's death. This, however, was my post-divorce, never-been-to-Europe trip, and so, perhaps selfishly, I resolved to leave the both of them. I arranged to meet them in Warsaw . . . and then reversed direction and instead journeyed southeast by myself through Hungary and Romania and Bulgaria into Turkey, traveling with whomever I would meet in the local pensions who were heading my direction. It turned out to be the trip of a lifetime and I met many friends from many far-flung places: Australians, Irish, Chileans, Kiwi's . . . and without Pat's death, I would never have made the decision to travel on my own. Traveling on my own became a liberating experience that has changed me profoundly to this day and given me a boost of self confidence in traveling, life in general, meeting new people, experiencing new things/places and personal relationships.

----

After a seven year break in our friendship, I recently met up again with my old travel companion David. David had just exited a rehab program for heroin users -- and became employed by the Seattle needle-exchange program. After an accident left him with a broken leg, he moved back to San Diego, and found me. We met up at a local museum for a special event, had a cocktail or two, and started talking about the old days . . . our college days at Pt. Loma College, old friends, and our Eastern European trip. Ray had never quite gotten over the death of Pat, he told me. She fell into a depression that trip that caused their relationship some problems, and once they returned to Seattle, she shortly left David for another man. She got pregnant, and had a little girl with the new boyfriend, which was enough closure for David to move on.

--------

"Ray is dead," David told me recently. His lips tremored. "Her boyfriend shot her."

He explained that both Ray and the little girl were shot in a murder-suicide by the depressed boyfriend one rainy Seattle day.

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I have a photo of us three that I put on my website back in 1996, shortly after returning from the trip. Here's a photo of us three on a roadside stop in Baton Rouge, LA. I'm kneeling in the middle. Ray is on the right.

http://www.paulwade.com/travel/new-orleans/images/no_three.jpg

Ray had such beautiful red hair and such a wonderful singing voice.

I look at this photo now, and think about the little decisions in life that can change a lifetime: The decision to crash at Pat's place, my choice to travel through Europe alone, Ray leaving David for another man.

Those little details of life, those "sliding doors," they always make all the difference.

-- Wade Nash
(San Diego, CA. 4/21/09)

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Prompt Tuesday (December 9, 2008) -- Baudy Writing

Here's my entry for this week's Prompt Tuesday:

A black-habited Catholic sister
met a strapping young Father who kissed her
He said "do not mourn He,
cause you've never had me!"
So she said "Then de-veil me, Mister!"

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Prompt Tuesday -- October 14, 2008

I have a strangely haunting fear of not finishing a book. It is a sort of guilt and fear mixed together that causes me to keep the book and organize it on a shelf with other books I haven’t yet finished. As they pile up (sideways, that is), I have this fear that I will someday die without having finished them all. Weird, I know.

So, after having read and enjoyed many Jack Kerouac books, for example, I came across, yet again, that unfinished copy of Big Sur recently and I threw it away. I didn’t donate it to the Salvation Army. I didn’t put it up there on my “unfinished reading shelf.” I had the balls to just say: “You know what? This book sucks! I will NEVER have time set aside to waste on this particular book!” And I tossed it. And by ridding myself of it, I gained permission to actualize that I don’t have obsess my way to the end of something to know it’s not for me.

Now if I can just start learning how to walk out of movies, things will be even better! :)

Monday, August 18, 2008

Prompt Tuesday -- August 18, 2008

This is just to say . . .

I have filled the freezer
with your splendid body parts
that I took from your charming yet lifeless body.

Forgive me -- but your hands were so lovely
and they had been upon me so passionately the night before.
I could not bear to part with them.

And your cute, natty dreads -- and soft lips.
Your head with the still surprised look on its brow.
I'll preserve my memories of our short time together.
You were so sweet -- and are now so cold.

-- Jeffrey Dahlmer Carlos Williams