no one said it would be easy

okay, so i'm a bit disappointed that people haven't gone online to purchase either a book or a downloadable copy of my work. i began an initial printing of 10 books (all i could afford right now), but have been waiting over 10 days for the usps to deliver it. i intended to sign and send the copies to a few people.

i think i will have to distribute all the books in this old-fashioned way: purchase a large number of books in bulk, and hold them in my trunk, and pass them out.

as they say, you can drag a dead horse to water... (or something like that).

i get my hopes up a lot, without even being aware of it. i tell people about things, and then later on, check to see on whether they follow through (it is possible to check on "hits" or "views"). but the ticker never really changes. it's a down time, a bad economy, and quite frankly, no one is really interested in what i write anyway. i just thought that a few people would, out of curiosity, or friendship, or whatever.

you can't count on people. bottom line. after all, it's the consistency rule. in the soul asylum song, david sings: "you can't believe in yourself. you can't believe in anyone else. so why sit and wait for the new world to begin?"

so i'll stop sitting and waiting.

and i'll work as hard as i can to support kids, family, friends, in their endeavors to express themselves. it's hard to find a voice in this world. a little encouragement goes a long way. there are a lot of people who are so particular about their tastes, and feel that modern "amateur" culture is like a cacophany of bastardized, inauthentic, unqualified novices and charlatans giving opinions on things they know nothing about... (so what's wrong with that?)

when i went to williams college, i was always considered the "rude hawaiian," who knew nothing of snow or culture, as i surfed all day and slept in a grass shack. but i survived and thrived in that environment, when some of my brittle prep school peers fell by the wayside. i'm a strong believer in the amateur. as they say, zen's mind, beginner's mind. i get a bit suspicious of those who have crystallized to the point of only seeing limited potentialities in the world. and, as i mentioned earlier, i HATE statements about very young children being "moldable." (education is not about cookie cutters. it's about drawing out. it's about nurturing soil, and seeing what surprising things break through and grow.)

so i, for my part, will try to be nurturing.

and as i'm an older tree myself, i will refuse to wait on harvests, or the behavior of the weather (which is as predictable and reliable as the behavior of people), and simply draw sustenance from my roots, and breathe through my diffuse contacts with the sun and sky.

no more sitting and waiting for the new world to begin. it begins (and ends) with me.