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    Summer Words, 2000 eBook
    Summer Words, 2000 eBook
    Summer Words, 2000 eBook
    Ebook92 pages59 minutes

    Summer Words, 2000 eBook

    By Robert Nichols

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    About this ebook

    It began as a mass attack on writer's block. My strategy: Write a 200 word essay every day during the summer of 2000. What it became, once I dispelled the nonsense of “grander notions of the purpose of art," was this collection of some of the best words I have ever written, such as the following excerpts: And when air is given flight in laughter, and food is given art in flavor, and sex is given bliss in love--we're talking profound existence. / Truth spoken becomes myth. Life given to myth can never know Truth. / And the Poem... how I revel in the wretched-blissful-winsome hilarity of the Poem I live. / For nature, we must show up with a canteen of water and some quiet shoes. / ... what I know most passionately—the incredible significance of a smile. Enjoy!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateDec 1, 2001
    ISBN9780962761584
    Summer Words, 2000 eBook

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      Book preview

      Summer Words, 2000 eBook - Robert Nichols

      Wealth

      An old lady slowly makes her way around the perimeter of the parking lot sorting litter and salvaging the treasure of aluminum cans. She puts them in a large plastic trash bag and moves on up the street to the lot next door.

      I am a poet and I have little money—less, in fact than the great majority of people of my age, education, and experience dwelling in the economy of the United States today. I really don't particularly like money. It seems, in my case, that it takes more time to accumulate than it's worth. But, then, my poverty is a self-inflicted blessing, and well protected from desperate need by the safety net of loved ones who would hardly allow me to go hungry or be without shelter. I get by and usually carry my share. This past year, I let the poetry go dormant for nine months and worked as a carpenter. I'm stronger and leaner and not quite out of hundreds yet. Almost, but not quite. I still can afford to eat high-cholesterol breakfasts at Mexican restaurants, then spend hours writing in coffee houses where everything costs two dollars.

      There was a time, up in the mountains, when I lived with sparse resource and little promise of help. A time when warmth came from twigs foraged from the forest floor and cash came from diverse day jobs consuming precious poetic hours that I might buy bread and cold cuts and just break even. But I didn't mind. A dozen years ago I quit a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year job to enjoy such austere liberation.

      I know nothing of the experience of the broken-down old lady with the Hefty bag ever so slowly filling with aluminum cans. With the change and loose bills in the pocket of my jeans I could give this maven of the dumpsters more money than she'll make in a week of scavenging. But I can't.

      There are many layers coexistent within the Earth's illusion of a three-dimensional reality. I can see her labored step, her tattered clothing. I can see the filth of trash and rubble and weeds through which she walks. I could step outside and feel the same sun that bakes upon her bent back, but, even so, there is no connection between the world of my pocket and the world of her purse. We dwell in different realms and between us there is a border I dare not breach. Poverty, pride, penitence—who could know what forces come to bear upon this summer's morning of the old lady: Karma? Bad luck? Bad living? Who can say bad? Bag lady or Bodhisattva? I'll never

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