Knitty Gritty Ditty Bag

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In this tale Sunset Mauve talks about his favorite writers. This group includes, wouldn’t you know, Somerset Maugham who many say, including Sunset bears more than a passing, hmmmmm, resemblance to S M of yore, just plain yore, not E Yore.

Sunset also encounters an interesting acquaintance returning down a storm blown breakwater. His name is Ronald - Pseudo Grampa Ronald.

Part one of the story is, ahem, podnme, on YoPod at:
Pseudo Grampa Ronald part one

Part Two
Sunset Mauve finds Ronald’s weakness and his desire and wouldn’t you know they would be related.

This second part of the story has no text as yet! What we would like to discover is whether people who like stories would just as well prefer to take leave of eye straining stuff and have the story told to them orally.

But just remember you CAN make reading easier by adjusting text size and setting scroll and scroll rate. See the About section to see how you can facilitate this and log a comment if you have questions.

You can enjoy getting into the story comfortably without the eyes being supertaxed.

You can as well take the audio route with no eye tax at all.

Here is the the pod seeding link to part two:
Pseudo Grampa Ronald part two

Part Three - The Heart of the Matter

As usual, Sunset gets to the nub and in so doing without saying so does Pseudogrampa Ronald.

Pseudo Grampa Ronald part three

We hope you find Sunset’s wisdom entertaining and come to love Ronald as we do.

metaphors be with you,
jack mothershed

Somerset Maugham is not a writer who rushes to mind, if he comes to mind at all, when you limit the rushing to great quotations. Yet, I have a few. Here comes one.

“It is a misfortune for me that the telling of a story just for the sake of the story is not an activity that is in favor with the intelligentsia. I endeavor to bear my misfortunes with fortitude,”

I must tell you this although all the writing teachers in the world backed by bleachers and bleachers of critics say I should not explain stuff. I use stuff loosely here, probably not with the consummate denial of a Richard Dawkins nor the convincing certainty of a Stephen Hawkings who cares enough to make his point that he will with Herculean effort give ideas birth, or rebirth, through the difficult medium of a robotic voice, etc.

But, I must tell you this. I am going to, sometimes, talk about people and characters as though they are in the present because that is the best way to enjoy the story. You would not go to a mega-cinema action adventure without suspending some TIME disbelief, at least, on the way in. When you watch triple crown slam match RERUN, hey, it is happening right now for you. Especially if you have high definition TIVO or such. But once everything is in the present, why then you can create past(s) and present(s) and future(s) within it, or characters can.

Maugham is a being who has several things in common with someone who may not easily and quickly be recognized as likely to fill out a pair… not just in the, heh heh, limited environs of a poker hand but neither is the character I have in mind likely to pop to the top of the imaginative image heap, though the heap be as vast as one of Hawking’s time-space tacos, speckled spicily with parallel universe portals.

With perhaps Dirty Harry similar spicing? With, one, a recognition of limitations. For example, Maugham did not have a tremendous vocabulary. Two, the stories that come out of Dirty Harry and Somerset Maugham both come out of people who, for the most part, do not have tremendous vocabularies either and, truth be said, are often likely to replace a thoroughly expressive general vocabulary with argot, vernacular… or slang.

Three - Maugham and Harry do not seem to be concerned with whether the story is correct, in the sense of politically correct, or socially correct. What I am reaching for is that Maugham’s characters and Harry extend what we have come to except and accept without knowing until it is done differently. That is, a pragmatic morality that sometimes characterizes itself as janitor just cleaning up, a janitor who loves his work.

sunset mauve has a little bit of harry or a little bit of hAIRy and a great deal of a somerset maugham unshaved. But FOUR in common with harry and somerset, mauve just wants the joy of conversation, though it may seem a one sided conversation while he is telling you a story.

When you see a Dirty Harry flick (how would you read one, I mean if it were there to read) you get the idea he does not want to talk. Just a trick. Somebody in there wants to tell a story. We didn’t come just for the bullets and bad scatalogue, badman.

What am I saying here? The unnecessary. Don’t expect. Don’t expect. Don’t have any expectations when you listen to sunset raconteur. And don’t recall that you are objected to my relating somerset and harry, the one with the inculcated always tied tie, the other with the intentionally always untied tie, when you say “FIVE, duff sqawl,” they are not alike at all.”

Did you like the story?

EXCERPT
‘,’Somerset Maugham and the Unclean Hirsute part one’,0,’Somerset Maugham is not a writer who rushes to mind, if he comes to mind at all, when you limit the rushing to great quotations. Yet, I have a few. Here comes one.

“It is a misfortune for me that the telling of a story just for the sake of the story is not an activity that is in favor with the intelligentsia. I endeavor to bear my misfortunes with fortitude.”

or A RUMI FIELD NOT FAR

I extend to you the following confidence as a gift. I do this in a time (winter holiday season) when the three major religions coming out of the middle east, more or less, tend to be more charitable, more or less, to those of the same group, and perhaps that stretch, more or less, causes an extension of good feeling to the other groups and who knows? Perhaps \”good\” feeling overflows oozily, xmasly, to those outside those major groups to even other \”disenfranchised\” , heh heh, groups, more or less, just in case they are not feeling pretty uncommonly charitable already.

I am conifdent that humans can step over, jump across, pole vault, catapult, even make human bridges if necessary. I am confident humans can correct the belief to which they have conditioned themselves that damns them to forever being charitable sometimes and maximally tolerant at other times and minimally or normally ready to torture or kill at the drop of a misunderstanding or failure or a mispronounced shiboleth.

Can it be possible that one belief root can do all vining? If they were NOT there would we have to create all the seven deadly sins to foster and present the layout of what we call reality? Wow, does a core belief dim and damn us all? If so, what is it?

I will tell you briefly so you know what it is and when you know what it is you will understand why I have wished for you what I have wished and still am wishing for you. What I know you can accomplish. What bugaboo you have to get by, get rid of, get over if you are going to trade in brachiating through the trees like apes and go swinging through the sidereal jewels, brachiating from star to star like cosmic chimps instead of earthly chumps.

I WISH THIS FOR YOU BECAUSE I FIGURE IF YOU CAN DO IT, THEN PERHAPS I CAN TOO.

Three people came together during my recent convalescence from a brain injury. My convalescence has been an exciting time. The load on my mind, a pool of blood from an intracranial hemorrhage diminished my logical capacity. Programming computers took many times the normal time. Simultaneously, I experienced probably the most creative time in my life.

The ouput wasn\’t all due to causeless eruptions. I had a lot of input. Hence the three magi, the three wisemen I mentioned. They were Alan Watts, Karl Jung, and one other.

Alan Watts was perhaps my final real guru. He made me wonder, ponder, wander, squander. He made me laugh. He made me cry. He told me about the wisdom of insecurity. He told me about the taboo of knowing who I am. He taught me to share. We shared Karl Jung.

I didn’t really read Karl Jung. I suppose I absorbed him. When I thought about why I love a round moon, I thought of Jung. When I thought about dreams, I thought of Jung. When I thought about the shadow, I thought of Jung.

After WW2 Jung was approached to join voice with those determined to exact the same total damage from Nazi survivors as their victims had suffered. Jung, the brilliant counselor, said no. He could not join them. Not a good idea.

Alan Watts said that a fundamental principle underlay all of Jung’s thought. That principle was his recognition of the polarity of life,

JUNG’S RESISTANCE TO THE DISASTROUS AND ABSURD HYPOTHESIS THAT THERE IS IN THE UNIVERSE A RADICAL AND ABSOLUTE CONFLICT BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL, LIGHT AND DARKNESSS THAT CAN NEVER NEVER NEVER BE HARMONIZED.

Now I don’t know much. If I were to know anything, I would know that claiming to know would be presumptuous. Presumption can be found as the sixth of the seven deadly sins. The monastic who described the seven deadly sins said the list pogresses from least serious to most serious, suggesting each was causal to the next in the progression. So the sixth sin, vainglory, would include presumption. Presumption, whether about oneself or others, would bring pride, the top of the seven deadly heap.

Rather than presume, let me ASSUME for just a moment.

Assume that I and you and everyone else in the world rejected Jung’s conclusion. That is not a great assumptional leap. We, very obviously, already HAVE rejected Jung’s conclusion.

I, and probably Jung, would agree. The exercise dividing every thing into evil and good is a mistake. To dedicate ourselves to warring on that which falls into the evil side is a mistake.

A MISTAKE? Yep.

Jung understood this after he spent his life thinking about it. Jung being recognized by most who know or don’t know as the greatest of all psychological counselors. I cannot convey the correctness of Jung’s decision to you in a few words. I can only slowly balance Jung’s influence on the developing thought of a late bloomer.

AND: I can suggest two things. One, a consideration. Two, an action.

One, look around at the world. No, really look. Look in this way. About a month after my crash I drove one day the twenty miles “to town.” Coming up a stretch of road through a neighborhood I had come through a thousand times before, I looked at the area intensely. I saw it as though for the first time. I did not RECOGNIZE IT. I SAW it for the first time.

That is the way I want you to look around at the world.

Two, the action. When you have done with that consideration, ask yourself this.

Did the long time worldwide project to classify everything into good and evil solve anything or did it just result in immeasurable suffering for everyone who has lived with that classification?

With that fear of the stranger? With that suspicion of those you don’t know?

With fear of those whose habits are different?

With hatred of those who think differently? Those who dress differently?

That woman who wore white pumps after September? The lady who came to my al fresco lunch table in the Rathaus Platz in Munich and told me I was damned because I was eating weisswuerst after high noon?

GET IT?

The simplicity is FOR WHERE YOUR TREASURE IS, THERE ALSO WILL YOUR HEART BE.

If you are thinking about division, you will be divisive. AND YOU WILL BE DIVIDED. The mind is positive. Tell it not to think of something. It will think of it. That is how it works.

So forget everything I said before about division. Think about unity.

“As a man thinks, so is he.”
“You are what you eat.”
So if you are thinking about peanuts and eating peanut butter, which will you become?
Hey, just smell the peanuts!

I threw that bit of apparent silliness in there to break things up a bit. Let it go.

I wish for you a desire to think about unity and solutions.
I WISH FOR YOU A DESIRE TO THINK ABOUT UNITY AND SOLUTIONS.

But if you recall, I said I was recently influenced by three writers. Who is the third? Well, he has been quite a fad lately. So much so that I fear he will be declared good and all the others will be declared evil. I am joking with you a little.

Anyway, he was pretty astute about the psychological problem I mentioned just now about the “DON’T dot dot dot” problem.

He said the following about seven hundred years ago.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and right doing is a field.
I will meet you there.”

His name is Rumi.
He is an Islamic mystic from the thirteenth century.
He is a Sufi Dervish type.
Once he started writing, he just could not quit.

AND HE JUST COULD NOT QUIT TALKING ABOUT UNITY.

THAT IS WHAT I WISH FOR YOU.

Find the pod version of this essay at:

A Rumi Field Not Far

‘,’A Rumi Field Not Far’,0,’From braking to brachiating in one easy spell - ing lesson
From Jung to Watts to Rumi to me and you.’,'publish’,'open’,'open’,”,’a-rumi-field-not-far

by sunset mauve

i saw him often
listening to his pod
i would be talking into mine
telling you a story
I thought about him.
had he not been listening
to music on his pod
i would have thought
him to be a writer.

When i would see him,
he was like a Flash
cartoon
in my head,
in my cartoon,
in my head.
words were snowflakes.
this was in winter.
temperature well below
fifty fahtrenheit.
cold enough for
cartoon snow.
snowflakes bounced out of his eyes,
avalanched from his nostrils,
gathered around his collar.
zeus, i would say.
he must be freezing.
i always saw him at night.
often i would walk after things
settled down
around the hood.
sometimes i do my
Perapatetic Prosing
without a single vehicle
or person passing.
that is when the imagination
runs ramp ant.
the surf becomes tsunami
driven or becomes the falls
on the Columbia and
i become the indian in
one flew over the cuckoo\’s
nest - long before the arrival
of Randall Patrick McMurphy.
or the light of the full moon
becomes a space ship,

sometimes a flying saucer
but more often It is one of those
flat on the bottom and
round at the top pseudo art
things that make snow when
you shake them.
Do you see what I mean about the
neighborhood night mood?

And often the pod listener becomes a
character in a story.

So, I see him coming tonight
He is still too far away to have
become a character yet. besides,
something that is, i suppose, akin to
writer\’s block is on me. not like it will
not let me create write.
it is somewhat holding
it in me like fingers on a balloon leak,
maybe to keep me from developing
fiction incorrectly but why?
maybe i am too
early. i have made wrong
development a trademark. I was thinking
about a patent on it even.

I hold everything in. it settles into a simmer.
pod listener gets closer.
He is not listening.
he is talking. into the pod.
he is 20 feet from me.
he says to the pod,
THE END

I stand there agape, agape in mouth,
agape in posture, agape in brain,
agape in spirit.

He says something to me.
i am agape in speech, too.
well, well being, my mouth is
wide open.

I KNOW.
that is what he says.
BUCK. I AM BUCK.
i am sorry. i only know you
as music listener.
please forgive me. i am so…
so stupid.

I KNOW. I KNOW.
that does not help me at all.
I MEAN I DON\’T KNOW.
I MEAN I EMPATHIZE.
IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME
THAT SOMEONE MIGHT ONLY SEE
THE SIDE OF ME WHERE I
APPEAR TO BE LISTENING,

THE EDITING SIDE OF ME.
I ALWAYS WRITE GOING THE OTHER WAY.

i am so sorry but i am also so amused
at myself, at my presumption, at the you
who just ceased to exist for me forever
do you know how many characters you
have become in my tales?

YEAH, I READ YOUR STUFF, SUNSET MAUVE.
BEFORE YOU BECAME SUNSET MAUVE.
DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES YOU
APPEARED AS …

no, no, no, wait, wait,
now i know who you really are
you are buck blogger
you are buck blogger
you are the famous,
the originator, the first,
the first …

YEP, I AM HE.
BUCK BLOGGER THE GUY
WHO BROUGHT THE KID STORIES
TO BLOG LAND
AND YOU, SUNSET MAUVE,
YOU ARE …

no wait, don\’t tell me.
protocol flew out
the window that was not.
i began weeping.
uncontrollably fountaining
into a raging tributary.

YEAH, THIS IS MY EDITING TIME.
DAD IS PUTTING THE KIDS TO BED.
WHEN HE TAKES THEM OFF TO SCHOOL
AND KINDERGARTEN IN THE MORNING,
THAT IS WHEN I BEGIN WRITING
THE REWRITES

and i…
i am …

THAT IS CORRECT, SIR.
YOU ARE MY FATHER.
IN MY STORIES.
I HAD TO DEVELOP A DIFFERENT
CHARACTER, WITH A BIT TOUGHER
HIDE, A TAD MYSTIQUER,
THAN MY FATHER.
WE ARE TOO CLOSE.
i NEEDED CONTRAST.

i understand. i understand.
i love your work.
you capture the spirit of children
so well. i know a lot about children,
from a distance, you know.

hey, different ouvres
different chef d\’ouvres
but we have something in common
you do that same thing,
like i do, like i am just
determined to do in some
kind of revolt against
propriety in language

I TURN NOUNS INTO ADJECTIVES.
LIKE MYSTIQUE INTO MYSTIQUER.
GUESS WHERE I PICKED THAT UP.

i am honored. i am so pleased to meet you.
we must have tea. i know you like tea.
you lapse into lapsang souchong
sometimes in your writing.

HA HA - YES WE MUST HAVE TEA
BUT IT WILL HAVE TO BE INFREQUENT
I WOULD HATE TO LOSE YOU AS A
CHARACTER.
IT WILL HAVE TO BE IN THE AFTERNOON.
THAT IS WHEN I PUBLISH.
SO THE KIDS WILL HAVE A …

BbEeDd TtIiMmEe SsTtOoRrYy

[ed. note -
Not all Sunset Mauve stories make it to text. This one probably did because it introduces Buck Blogger whose real name was something else and who stole the name Buck Blogger from sunset who was knew dim well that Buck was a reincarnation cross breeding of

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BEDTIME STORY

- STORM]