Wake Up: Christmas in Parker

Note: WAKE UP: CHRISTMAS IN PARKER was not posted at The Daily Bulletin

IT ALL COUNTS TOWARDS 40. December 2 – December 17. 35,000 words. In IT ALL COUNTS TOWARDS 40, I go from an Olympia portable typewriter, a sheet of carbon paper, and a yellow second-sheet to writing series of related books and posting them on the worldwide web, daily, as I write them, and responding to reader comments, in the book. When the book starts, I am a newlywed. At the end, I am on social security, retired, but looking for work. I am the houseperson in the home. My wife works. We keep the grandchildren, on holidays. I was a headliner at the Underground Literary Alliance (ULA) Legends of the Underground readings, off-off-Broadway, in 2001, and John Bennett called me, “Prolific, and probably the most overlooked writer in America today.” Brenda and I watch Julie and Julia, on DVD, then buy the book, Julie & Julia, and read it. I had read My Life in France, but not Julie & Julia. We cook. Brenda keeps backyard chickens and has a hay-bale garden. In Parker, Florida. At her old home place, where we live. We’re across the street from Parker Bayou, from where her uncles used to seine-fish, and shrimp, in the Gulf of Mexico. Her brothers worked on fishing boats. Our sons fished. Now they are bluegrass musicians. The occupations are related. Bluegrass musician, commercial fisherman, writer. It’s a feast or a famine. Always scuffling. It all counts towards 40.

THE AMERICAN DREAM. December 18 – December 24. 14,000 words. Mike Palacek sends me a copy of Speak English, in which the hero goes on tour promoting Wake the Eff Up From the American Dream. I see that IT ALL COUNTS TOWARDS 40 and THE AMERICAN DREAM form a series of two books called Wake Up! Or a book in two parts. What is the American dream? Well, it’s a pipedream. It’s Jack Kerouac waking up with Gilbert Millstein’s review of On the Road in the New York Times. It’s John Martin giving Charles Bukowski an allowance to quit his job at the post office, stay at home, and write Post Office. It’s Julie Powell writing a blog about cooking all the recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and having Amy Adams play her in the movie with Meryl Streep. Wake up! You live in Parker, Florida. You are unemployed. Your money is running out. On the other hand, you are at the house, writing. You are living the dream. This is it, the old pulp-ghetto ideal Blaster Al wrote about, “…to do a lot of fundamentally rapid work and use a lot of different pseudonyms and not make a dime.” Thoreau says to put the foundation under the dream. You have had the dream. Now put the foundation under it. Brick by brick. Would you hit a woman with a baby, no, I’d hit her with a brick. e. e. cummings said. It’s supposed to be hard for a poet. Poetry—are you nuts? You chose it. You God Damn complainer. You dirty phony saint and martyr. The American dream is Hemingway winning the Nobel Prize for The Old Man and the Sea and not being able to finish A Moveable Feast. Not being about to write a beginning, an end, or a title. All he could come up with is, “This book is fiction.” This book is fiction. This book is literary criticism. It’s literary theory. Why did this book take the form it took? Instead of some other form. It’s a novel. A novel is hard work. One soldiers on. It isn’t finished. It keeps going. That’s the thing about a novel. It keeps going. Looking for Bigfoot turns into The Progrrressive Avenger turns into Speak English. IT ALL COUNTS TOWARD 40 turns into THE AMERICAN DREAM turns into WAKE UP: CHRISTMAS IN PARKER. We celebrate Christmas with the children and grandchildren at the Pinkston Lodge in Grayton Beach. Jennifer’s mother and sisters are there, Gerald and Del.

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