Greetings. [Having by some infernal and accidental use of the spacebar in combination with unknown other keys keys lost the first and brilliant iteration of this post ... I try to recreate, which means recreating the exact mental/emotional state ... fick fick fick!]

i don't remember

i can remember

ok:

anyway ... take 2:

Having tasted the first wobbly victorious marching bohemian hallelujah Missing Street not-mincing steps down to Cafe la Boheme; having [oh, this is not as good as the first iteration, but you get the point] gone from seven weeks bedrest to hiking vertical up 24th Street hills; having thrown the cane in the backseat and mingled with joy and risk among the potential knocking-down sidewalk mavens of Mission and 22nd; having [pausing to Save Draft and Preview now because whatever the fuck happened I do not want it to happen again and frankly therefore wishing for the days of typewriters when your words did not ever just randomly disappear] after seven weeks of no driving and riding only lying down in backseats not even sitting up front like an able-bodied human but across the backseat with pillows, scrunched down these many post-surgery housebound weeks; having instead two days ago climbed proudly high into the driver's seat of my Toyota Tundra and cruised the Sunset, stopping at every stop sign to breathe in the sea; having after no sitting for seven weeks sat for over an hour at our Cafe la Boheme writing practice table; having done all this without thought of consequence or recompense or the devil taking his due:

Now comes the morning after:

Holy fuck shit goddam what is that motherfucking red hot poker burning in my left foot? Whose flaming hands are squeezing my foot? Goddam I think I cannot move. Whoa.

And so begins another day of partially controlled nerve pain, courtesy of the necessary manhandling of the S-1 nerve during surgery, so I'm told. (Had to move it aside so as not to injure it further.) Which is fine, so I'm told. It'll settle down. So I'm told.

Slowly the red-hot poker cools. We get on with it.

Yeah, I know the customary precautions vis a vis "save your work often" but what writer of any passion has not felt that momentous sweep of words and gone on typing long past any cautious pausing to Save Draft and Preview, what person with warm blood pumping through his veins (pause to Save Draft and Preview) has not gotten lost in the flow of words and failed to stop every minute or two and Save Draft and Preview/ like whqt the fck? It's like putting on a condom or pausing mid-riff to get the levels right or trying one more time because the tom-tom was flat: It's an artificial interference with the pure creative moment and I think it sucks!

Then: Gotta push. Gotta get stronger. But today will not be another upward foray even farther. Today is a day to rest and recoup. Gotta recoup. Two steps forward, one step back. Lie down on the rug and write.

Ow fuck shit goddam motherfucker man my foot hurts. Holy mother goddam fuck shit ow motherfucker holy damn what is that motherfucking pain shooting up my foot? Neurontin I take. Tramadol I take.

Ah, morning song. The birds are singing for me!

And so we do not go out into that brilliant rainy Saturday today. We rest up.

And guess what else, Grandma? I lie on the floor. I crawl around. I like it down here. I type lying down on the rug with a pillow under my chest. I found during those long seven weeks when I could only lie down or stand that typing into the computer while lying down has advantages; is it the extra energy saved by not sitting up? Is it this feeling of intimacy and secrecy I have -- it's like I'm hugging the thing, and there's something childlike and innocent about lying down to do it. At first your neck gets sore but you get used to it. And now I crawl to the door to let the dog in because standing up is still a complicated matter.

Anyway it's clear that writing is a habit and that's why I'm writing for Open Salon because I just can't stop and it's wonderful actually to know that I can write however I choose and my livelihood does not depend upon it although my reputation may suffer if I am too clumsy and self-indulgent but on the other hand concerning the lifelong development of a writer's unique talents and voice I wonder how many censorings and conservative swervings off the flight path of ecstasy I have trained myself to make because I've been earning a living as a journalist most of my working life (when not temping for an oil company or stapling insurance forms together or addressing envelopes for a home health agency or making copies or sending faxes or delivering envelopes or sending telexes or making appointments or transcribing insurance company memos or typing legal documents, that is) but I've grown up a bit and finally have people who love me and meaningful work to do, and I give to the world now, and trust that in this giving I'll be taken care of, which seems to be happening so far, just like it says in numerous books of wisdom.

So, uh, what else is new?

Well, on another topic entirely, I've just been thinking, to the extent that the origins of the avant-garde are in jealousy and resentment and striving for difference and status and fear I reject all deviation from classical form solely for the sake of deviation because at heart it may only be saying I want my daddy I want my daddy but to the extent that the origins of the avant-garde are in the soul's pure purpose of extravagant play and luxuriant worship of color and form and sound and texture and word and sky and earth, I praise it and seek it and love it always. And what brought that on? I guess the awareness that as young writers we try so hard to be different, and we are so hungry for praise, and we will take shortcuts sometimes to get laid and find the fashion. So now closer to 60 than 50 I've found this form, odd indeed, of the daily letter writing, and I want to find a place among the practioners of literature, I want to be in Poets and Writers as one of the winners of something, and I am blessed by the occasional hand and occasional kindnesses, the kindness of Pat Schneider, founder of the Amherst Writers and Artists; the kindness of Sy Safransky, editor of  The Sun; the kindness of Karen Novak and all those at the Colgate Writing Conference; the kindness of everyone at Salon who have allowed this admittedly oddball phenomenon of the somewhat literary advice column to flourish and grow; the hand of Jane Smiley who kindly said, Here, sit down, you are writing a novel? and who wrote a very helpful book, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, and the kindness of many, many others who have heard something kindred in my voice, and now also blessed with a helpful coterie of like-minded writers and searchers throughout the country who come to the workshops and the getaways, and here at home in San Francisco we are forming our little groups to do our readings and socialize and support one another.

I still have a few weeks left on disability. I won't be able to write the daily column for a while now, as I am still working up my writing muscles, getting stronger here in the Open Salon gym, knowing -- as many have speculated -- just how much mental energy goes into each and every column, and knowing that writing it five days a week is different from writing just whenever I feel like it, and also, and mainly, because my wife and I still have to go down to Loma Linda for several weeks of proton beam radiation therapy, just to make fcking damned absolutely sure that no chordoma cells remain anywhere in the vicinity of the resected sacral tumor.

On and on and on. I could go on but I'm tired. I hope I'm not boring you. This is a little self-indulgent. I'm just trying to connect.