Fundamentals of Business Writing

COOKIN'. A book in four parts, "Cooking with Owen," "Cooking with Balder," "Cooking with Brenda," and "Cooking with Jack." Start book February 23, although the first 12 pages of it were written in the previous book. Change title of Mixed Bag: A Writing Life Outside the Mainstream to In the Maelstrom. I can't write with authority about something I am outside of. That's guesswork and bluster. As I called Norman Mailer's book about Henry Miller. But I am in the maelstrom, which translates grinding stream. Grist for the mill. A typewriter is a mill. Also a food mill. A hurdy-gurdy. Am I the organ-grinder or the organ-grinder's monkey, Black McGoon or Hylobates Lar? Amadeo Modigliani, a white silk scarf and Latin Quarter hat, or Charlie Parker, 3-D glasses up on his head, one green lens and one red. I'm not Sonny Rollins, saxophone colossus, I'm John Coltrane, cookin', with Miles Davis, on the 1956 Prestige lp, Bob Weinstock back there saying, "Yea." I advised Bob on self-publishing one time. He didn't want a publisher to treat him like record companies treat musicians. Lucky Thompson on the streets of Seattle, homeless. I take a three-day Business Writing class, off-site. There were two white males, two white females, a man from Ecuador, a man from Kuwait, an African-American man, a woman from Panama, and seven black females. Nobody talked down to anybody, nobody had a chip on his or her shoulder, we worked together, in teams, toward a common goal, with enthusiasm and humor. It was a perfect example of what diversity ought to be, and in fact is, where I work. Mind you, when we go back to work we will not be able to implement what we learned, because the people we work for don't want clear, concise speech, they want obfuscation, weasel words, cant, and shibboleth. And it really called into question, for me, the diversity class I took, which did more harm than good, was divisive, and polarizing, with the stark premise that what we had in my Business Writing class was a sop, a Band-Aid, was enabling the Eurocentric patriarchal hegemony, and was proof that we were in denial. Huh? "Politics and the English Language." Orwell, where are you now that we need you? You're in denial, you double-standard, doublethink, casuistic son of a bitch. I survive the Force Management Program (FMP) at work (am not FMPed), and Brenda is not winnowed at her job, as temp-to-perm, where the contractor effort was continuously rebalanced, that is, the contractors sacked. Here comes, there goes William Saroyan. We only alone ourselves are escaped to tell, like Job. Safe for three more months. Swiss Family Paranoia-Critical. I take two days off from work and fly to Manhattan for my reading. Reading is not a public act. Performing is not reading. The writing is the easy part, for a writer. It's after that the work sets in. Work being something you are paid to do, or expect some monetary gain from, down the line somewhere. Two tin cans and a string. A EE-8 (pronounced double-e eight) field telephone, crank for ring voltage. Semaphore. Smoke signals with trade blankets. I meet Bill Blackolive. Jeff Potter flies in from Michigan. No media show up, no people from book publishing, no professors from the university. I gave away a few copies of Notes From Underground, to members of the audience, and one or two sets of COOKIN', to participants in the reading. A legend on my own time. Finish book March 23.