Later I'm back in New York sitting around with Irwin and Simon and Raphael and Lazarus, and now we're famous writers more or less, but they wonder why I'm so sunk now, so unexcited as we sit among all our published books and poems, tho at least, since I live with Memère in a house of her own miles from the city it's a peaceful sorrow. A peaceful sorrow at home is the best I'll ever be able to offer the world, in the end, and so I told my Desolation Angels goodbye. A new life for me.
Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels
A LOT OF HASH MARKS FOR VERY FEW STRIPES. 31,000 words. September 1 - September 11 (2002). Art "Home" Brew, compare art brut, hospitality industry report writer and folk art critic, drives around Florida's Panhandle as The Above-Ground Gourmet, writing about his adventures, posting the accounts at his web page, roman-feuilleton.com, in real time, and publishing and selling pamphlets afterwards through his filthy pamphlet publishing operation, Garage Band Books. Who wants it? Fuller Warren considered two postcards from Blountstown a draft. Brew takes out an ad for Garage Band Books and roman-feuilleton.com in the Arts & Crafts section of the classifieds at The Walton Sun and begins publishing A Lot of Hash Marks for Very Few Stripes in pamphlet form. He pitches the first pamphlet to Sundog Books, in Seaside. Suddenly, his travel guide twitches and veers off into myxoscopic zoophilia, women taking ecstasy at raves and sucking on a pacifier, don't they know what that's a symbol for? It's enough to make you stop calling yourself Jack the Raver. Brew's book snaps itself off on September 11, after he comes down with a dose of shingles, from writing, walking on the beach, and eating out. He makes a few new members of the Buzzard Cult by having the pamphlets to give away after the Dread Clampett gig at The Red Bar, Sunday. He's getting up into the high-one-, low-two-figure range.
OUT OF THE SOUTH COMES THE WHIRLWIND. 29,000 words. September 10 -September 22. Hurricane season in Northwest Florida. The first pamphlet of Hash Marks comes back from Sundog Books marked Return to Sender. Tropical Storm Hanna comes through Panama City. I draw my first social security check. I draw my first unemployment compensation check, after being penalized for 10 weeks because of my separation pay from OFÉ. I make up Pamphlet 1 of Whirlwind. I am advertising the pamphlets for sale at my web site. I see that the three short books of the series A New Life for Me are parts of a book in three sections, A NEW LIFE FOR ME. This happens. A book serialized online as it is being written and published in pamphlet form, as I get a pamphlet's worth of pages. Hot off the presses, Chief. So fresh it smokes, as Uncle Warren said of the turkey shit. As Miami Bureau Chief, YU News Service, a parody news and disinformation syndicate, Brew notes that the Homeland über alles Security Czar's raising of the Chicken Little alert status to orange defenestrated an attack on the anniversary of September 11. Good job, Chief. The War on Totemism is being won. Brew sees that there is a fourth volume to his series, after RED TAPE, THE GOLDEN YEARS. It happens. You can't predict the path of a hurricane, or of a book. I make a loop around Florida's Forgotten Coast, and see Jack Rudloe, at Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories. Tropical Depression No. 10 becomes Tropical Storm Isidor, which becomes Hurricane Isidor. Brew has lunch with a friend he used to work with ten years ago, when President Bush's father was president, and they were both out of work. He hears from a former co-worker at OFÉ that the whole documentation group was let go. So he did flunk out early and avoid the rush. If this is a recovery I'd hate to be in a recession.
RED TAPE, WHITED SEPULCHERS, AND BLUE-NOSED CHAUVINISM. 19,000 words. September 22 - September 30. I learn that Allen Morris, Chronicler Laureate of the State of Florida, died, in April, at 92. I write the Division of Cultural Affairs and apply for the post. I'm the Chronicler Contender, after all. I print out a catalogue raisonné of the books of 30-Year Run: The First 186 Volumes of Jack Saunders' Stack and read over it, to remind myself what it was like, dealing with arts agencies, foundations, and so forth. FC2/Black Ice Books rejects A COUPLE OF HEATHERNS. I reply to the rejection slip, in slavish imitation of the movie Big Bad Love. Of course, I was doing it, in print, in 1975 (Playing Hurt, Raw Energy, Trailer Park Tramp). Brenda comes down for a week and we go to a seafood festival, buy a copy of Full Box for Balder, Full Box baseball caps for Balder and Owen. Owen has a copy of the book. 100 Years of Fishing and Boat Building History in Bay County. Many of their relatives are in it.
THE GOLDEN YEARS. 35,000 words. September 30 - October 19. Brew and Brenda work around the house, painting and refinishing floors, go over to hear Balder and Kyle play at The Red Bar. Eat barbecue in Dread Clampett's yard. Off the hood of a Chevrolet Caprice Classic. Gerald and Del come to stay, Hurricane Lili evac, as the house in Parker is wheelchair-compatible and their house in Slidell isn't and Gerald is in a wheelchair, his leg in a cast like Monty Wooley in The Man Who Came To Dinner. They had flood damage in Hurricane Isidor. Brew gets a contributor's copy of Bukowski Review 2 with "Similarities" in it. Owen and Jeannie visit Balder and Owen sits in with his various bands. Brew and Brenda drive over to hear them at the Dog Dayz Festival at Shops of Grayton and at Fermentations, in Seaside. Gerald and Del go back to Slidell. Brenda goes back to Atlanta, to work, and Brew goes to The Red Bar, to hear Balder and Kyle and Owen. Brew is glad to have the house to himself again, catch up on his writing. He rents a booth at an Arts & Crafts Festival at Downtown Carillon Beach for October 19, so his book will run until then, I suspect. Brew gets invited to the opening of a Franko Washboard Jackson show at the Toulouse Women Studio in Point Washington. He'll go to that, with his camera box, maybe interview Franko, afterwards. Music by The Flying Palmetto Brothers. Brew writes three pamphlets for the Arts & Crafts show: Cult Writer, Typewriting Colossus, Culture Hero. He goes to see David Allan Coe at Stetsun's, in Springfield, buy a David Allan Coe Bikeweek 2002 T-shirt to wear at his booth, it's all pro wrestling. Show business. Rather, it's half show business. And half the writer alone, at his writing desk. If you have to go into the street you don't know the street. You are being seen. The street will look for you. The street finds the authentic. I attend the opening of Franko's show, and write about it. That is, I continue to explore the connections between, or among, vernacular writing, vernacular painting, and vernacular music. In the language of the street. Explore the tension between that tradition and the fine art, belles-lettres, and classical music traditions I feel equally at home in, conversant with, and an admirer of. The arts & crafts festival goes off with great éclat. Brew does not sell a single pamphlet.
LABORER. October 15 - October 27. 29,000 words. Working as a laborer, writing in my head, and typing it up after work on an office manual typewriter. Brenda at the house, having, then nursing two babies, Owen and Balder. I man a booth at the Fall Arts & Crafts Festival at Downtown Carillon Beach. Don't sell or give away any pamphlets, Buzzard Cult membership certificates, or autographed pictures of Art Brew, suitable for framing. Sunday I go to The Red Bar, to hear Dread Clampett. Monday to Cool Notes, in Downtown Carillon Beach. Kyle replaces Franko Washboard Jackson, so The Flying Palmetto Brothers become Dread Clampett with Duke Bardwell.
TECHNICAL WRITER. October 27 - November 11. 35,000 words. Having a job with a desk and a typewriter, access to a copying machine, money for postage and to buy books. Brenda working at a high-paying, high-tech job. Spells at the house, being the houseperson in the home. Or latch-key husband. I drive to Atlanta to hear Owen play at the Everett Brothers Music Barn, in Suwanee, with the Warrior River Boys. They eat with us, on the way out to Suwanee. We list the house with a realtor. I help Brenda pack boxes. We are stunned by the results of the mid-term elections. Back in Parker, I go to see Dread Clampett at The Red Bar. When he played with David Grisman and Jerry Garcia they called Vassar Clements Clamp, because he smoked a pipe. They call me Clamp because I'm hung like a radiator hose. Put this where the sun don't shine and smoke it, I tell the victors of the plebiscite. At my web site.
VIRTUAL WRITING-STUDIO TOUR. November 11 - November 18. 27,000 words.
I revisit the places I have lived and written, looking at the relation between domestic
arrangements, occupation, the equipment I used to write, and publish with, my assumptions
about the writing trade, as these changed by virtue of what happened to me, as I
developed, as a writer. I print up a pamphlet of poems from "Laborer"
and "Technical Writer," Southland. We get an offer on the house.
I drive to Tallahassee, come home the coastal route, US-319. Been to Sopchoppy,
met the potter. Start writing Southland (cont'd). Poems from "Virtual
Writing-Studio Tour." I drive to Atlanta to sign some papers on the house.