Unrelated Post

I spend a lot of time thinking about the future. I know you're not supposed to do that because I've been told repeatedly that one ought to live in the present, meaning one would have to think about the present rather than the future (or the past) in order to satisfy the Zen of others.

Truth is I spend a lot of time thinking about the future because I don't quite know what the present is about, what it represents (if anything), how to deal with it, lasso it, cage it, or whatever it is you're supposed to do--in the Zen sense.

For me the future is all about Round Bend Press. Here is what I believe will happen. When I am dead and the legacy of Round Bend Press is finally acknowledged, people will naturally "feel horrible" that they did not pay it higher respect when its creator was a living, breathing, tangible entity. I expect those horrible feelings--catastrophic in their effects--will finish off a few people I have known personally who don't think artistic endeavors are important. I have a lot of folks like that in my family, people I've disassociated from because talking to them about things other than Art is painful.

When I announced years and years ago that I wanted to become a writer the typical reaction was, "That is not something I'm interested in. But good luck."

So I naturally stopped talking about it and discovered the familial void. Immersed in it for years, I tried to play poker with the gang at Christmas. I lost a lot of money, too, a second curse.

I have a sister who has never owned a book. I doubt if she has ever read one. Wait, I take that back, I saw the Autobiography of Naomi Judd once sitting next to the telephone in her foyer. Still, I doubt if she read it.

One day she (my sister) was so incensed at something I did to upset her sense of proprietorial reality that she screamed at me, "You have no common sense!" We were moving a table in her curios gift shop, and evidently she believed I should know where she wanted to place the table before she did.

What a mind.

She wouldn't have had to scream such a vulgar statement had she the slightest clue regarding poetry.

You see what I'm up against?

Is there any wonder poets often end it all and move on to the blessed second life comprised of television and the factory lathe?

Round Bend Press. Love the sound of it, its roll off the tongue.

It is a dream.

Come true.

TS