Books

Bridging Change

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Great Things Await Those Who Dream Big

How do we get from here to there? How do we get at our most obstinate aspects and create a path to a more refined self? In the picture is the new seismically safer western portion of the under construction  Bay Bridge. You are looking at the single suspension tower that will support the skyway. It will have the same number of lanes as the cantilevered bridge it replaces, but it is designed to withstand a higher magnitude earthquake. It’s a better bridge that will accommodate the same number of cars per day as the old bridge. It is one of the few really BIG things to be done in decades in all of the United States. A nation needs big things done. My generation’s legacy has been drowned. Some groups have been obsessed with lowering taxes and the result is we are leaving to the future a worn out, scrawny, meager version of a once more bold and
visionary nation. Still each of us evolves and with the passage of our lives on this grand stage called life need to get up in the attic, down in the basement, and clean things out. We all have to update, refine, and discard old ineffectual behaviors with the possibility of a more evolved more wise self. Same body, same mind, same person but we must construct of our lives a structure that is better able to withstand the inevitable unforeseen event that we must be better prepared to cope with. We all need a passion for colossal change….

 Highway Home   The Novel

He listened to the cracking of the flames in the fire. The sounds of crickets grew as the darkness became deeper. After a time spent looking into the flames he stood up and began to dance in the darkness. Jasper looked over at his best friend. Noel was dancing between the van and the fire, his mind taking him on a journey far away from the meadow. He was singing a song beneath his breath. It was as if he was reciting a prayer, taking his vows, answering the night spirits. His arms swung back and forth. He swirled  his hips in a circle.

Books

The Whereabouts of Change

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Is it the wood, the varnish or the sun's fault...

Much effort is made to identify the location of change. You changed, they changed, she changed… it wasn’t me. It was you. You did it, I didn’t. Is change’s location inside of my mind or is change located in your mind, or out there, up there, down there, east or west of here, is it something from the past, is it located in the future? At the quantum level is stuff made of energy or is it matter? Is the temporary location of this energy/matter conundrum the underlying principle that infuses the world the reason change… that the state of impermanence is so
frequently found and located everywhere? I prefer to hang around the good vibes, the fun stuff, the warm weather, the banquet table. I am only beginning to come to terms with the notion that perhaps the other hang outs might provide me proximity to opportunities that might invite unexpected experiences for growth as I wander the byways and highways of life in the pursuit of flowing with the full measure that my changes offer. It means things appear to look different, that difference has much to do with not looking for the whereabouts of that new way of seeing, it just is different, the location is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter who did it.

 Highway Home  TheNovel

Until that moment, and in that honey
dipped timeless space of summer, he looked with an urgent inner force dunking
him into his own depths, into the deeper waters of his own being. He leaned
forward lost in his desires and primordial quests and kissed Leslie all the
while conjuring up hopes he would find a part of her he would never have to
abandon, never have to give up, never forced to reckon with her loss. That was
unimaginable now.

When she dove into the river, that leap
had sealed his dream.

Books

Cheating Changes Everything

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You Can Run But You Can't Hide

Every so often I survey single men while in conversation about whether they have ever had a sexual affair with someone they knew was married. Some men answer no, some yes, and others anguish over the question and in so doing reveal their experience by way of a non-answer. The married men are all but for a handful mute on the topic. Some of the confessions I have taken are soaked in sympathies for the abandoned wife’s no longer attentive partner who is often likely to be one of these muted married men. Entrance into this secretive world and speaking anonymously to sources inside this frail human yet full sized shadow world is to view things as they actually are, not as how we think they should be. Sad to
say if you’ve ever made this trip to the other side of integrity, this other side of having had your good word gone bad, there is a profound price to be paid for this incredibly human weakness for the forbidden fruit. Usually, in a rational world we’d decide we are not happy in our agreements, change the agreements and get on with finding new partners to pursue the wholesome healthy appetite that comes with our being alive. But, no, that’s not how we prefer to do it, and so instead we are pulled into this vortex of irreversible action suffering all the consequences of this act, pretending that we’ve been able to do what we had to do, and nobody needs to know, everything will work out, everybody will be happy go home and resume what they were doing. Cheating doesn’t change everything, cheating changes a person’s ability to live in the open, where the world may see them, where there is nothing to hide, it isn’t the sex it is the secret that changes everything…

Highway Home the Novel

 “I’ve got one more customer to kick out
over there, count up the money, put it in the safe, and I’m walking home.
Thought you could walk me home.”

Noel wasn’t sure what she meant by that.
“I guess, Kathy, sure. I’ll walk with you.”

Noel thought it was odd she’d asked him
to stay. She had pulled a sweater over her head. It was low cut too. She made
an act out of the thing, and leaned over, almost like on purpose, and wriggled
into it. It fit tight. She glanced at Noel. She noted that he seemed to enjoy
the show.

Books

The Niagara Falls of Never Ending Change

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Performing before a Pyramid of Escalating Changes...

All this change is just killing me, but change then births new opportunities. Just when I got my first tour organized an initiative on a ballot shut funding down for just such a tour and with it came to an end a way to book the show. Then, a few years later and another incarnation was again rendered obsolete by a spike in the price of gas. Then, a favorite stage in San Francisco closed. And in this present moment a huge revolution is taking down a substantial portion of the fair industry. It’s like New Vaudeville is just like Old Vaudeville…it came into existence, did a little dance, and then begins to fade and fall apart. All this talent drawn into the scene is once more dispersed far and wide into new as yet to be discovered venues. Still, when we capitalize on some aspect of the marketplace it is hard to let go when those market forces that worked so well for us now have turned against the opportunities. We’ll beat the old dog into the ground swearing it used to work like magic. Change with change…let it be the canary in your coal mind (old polluting inefficient industry) let change sing you a melody that you can invent a new you from, in the long run, life is a short run, and the most fun, is often had not by doing the same things again and again, but by discovering new things again and again…thank you world for keeping my change on her toes…

Highway Home the Novel

From afar it was nondescript, anonymous,
empty, and untamed. Each part of each piece of the trail provided habitat for
all manner of animal. It was time for him to say goodbye to all that, just the
way the world worked. The work of leaving a mountain takes its toll, the work
of leaving behind a part of your life takes a toll. It wasn’t what was down
below or left behind was second rate, but that what was up ahead took so much
determination to get to. A person didn’t just stumble into the Ruby’s, they had
to have a good plan. The story of the high country was as real as rock, and
just as hard.

Books

Controlled Change….

Dana SmithLeave a comment
Get A Grip on Yourself

Do we control change or does change control us? Do we blend our reaction to the forces of change and alter its possible more serious outcomes? Is it our lucky day, is it the fact his number was up, did we do everything we could, but even that wasn’t enough? It is odd that our actions have a positive and negative attraction or repulsion. It is a mystery how synchronicity seems to extend beyond our ability to know why it seems to work when it does and why it doesn’t work when it doesn’t. We can’t manifest synchronicity we can only witness it. Internal controls seem
to have a huge impact upon external outcomes. Dreams can come true…….they can happen to you………..

June leaned against the kitchen counter
holding her spatula in one hand. As usual she was in her denim pants, boots,
cotton shirt with pearl snap buttons, and she had her hair pulled back into a
ponytail. She pleasured in watching Noel eat. Something was right in the world
when she was feeding a man with a bright sun rising over the mountains out east
and the promise of another day unfolding.

Highway Home

Books

When Will You Ever Change

Dana Smith
A Place Where Time Stands Still

My first drink in the Mauna Loawas much the same as my last drink. It was with much the same folks who were there the last time I was there. And while the people could not possibly have been the identical group of people there the first time they were linked by some mysterious attractant that somehow pulls these like minded souls to frequent the very same place. I was on tour in and passing through Parker, Arizona and pulled over to catch the Super Bowl. It was an out of Mauna  Loa experience. It was as if the venerable institution had beamed its community from San Francisco south some 600 miles and they had gathered for a convention of the like minded. Of course they came with the same fire in their belly to drink, cuss, shout and cheer for a game that seemed to increase in consequence with the sacred consumption of the spirit laced beverages… Your faithful digitally published author is investigating in long form all evidence of impermanence (I use the word change in my blogs…) , its relevance to helping us understand the passage of our life while here, and nothing could be more of consequence in this journey through change than to have that quintessential close encounter of the neighborhood saloon kind and find that in some defiant,
against one of the fundamental truths of existence that at least in one small corner of the Universe…….some things never change. One more for the road barkeep….

For relaxation at night he went to a place called The Tavern, where he shot pool, drank beer, and idled his time away with the hired help. He could always count on a conversation with Leslie, the bartender, and she seemed to like him.

Tonight Noel was drinking Blitz, the local beer. He had been picking at the label with his fidgeting fingers, the metallic scraps
scattered in front of him. Leslie was a less than demure woman. She kept up a constant discussion with customers at one end of the bar and the other. She wore a long skirt that fell almost all the way to the floor. Tucked into the skirt was a tight turquoise blouse, unbuttoned just enough to allow the fullness of her breasts to fill the open neckline. Lovely and fetching, Noel thought.

Highway Home

Books

Ride into a place that change passed by….

Dana SmithLeave a comment
No Appetite for Change

Pouilly-fuisse is a French white wine. The vineyards and villages of the region maintain retain a sensibility of the timeless. The countryside is spectacular. Each of the Fuisse regions villages by rule and code are protected from change. Materials and methods of construction must adhere and fit with what is already there. We visited offseason. Was as if we were in a science fiction film, the villages were empty. We knocked on doors, roused the sellers from their private quarters and were able to buy a dozen bottles from one merchant or other. We drove between each village twisting through hillsides. The vineyards were lush green beneath a bright clear blue sky. It was October, the grapes had been harvested. The reddish- orange tan buildings, the red tile roofs, the old brightly painted wooden doors hung with hand forged metal hardware etched in mind a way of life preserved in the present. Some winemakers remain ever vigilant in their efforts to make wine as taught to them by previous generations. As little is changed from one year to the other as is possible, but for perhaps due to weather and sugar content of the grape the winemaker adjusts and adapts to the making of a vintage to the quality and character of that years harvest. And like that it was gone, vanished, we turned onto a highway, drove back to Macon, the spell had been broken, and we had been changed….

   Gentle nights come seldom to the coast, and tonight the ocean off Carmel  Bay was as smooth as a finely crafted wood table. Minimal swells coming home from the sea swooped in, falling on the shore. It had a soothing appeal to their nerves, but then their nerves were taut, each holding back what they wanted to give to the other, kept in, stowed out of sight.

Highway Home

Books

Bound to Change

Dana SmithLeave a comment
Foreground same show, Background Different World

You’ll find the world is set up to be unpredictable even if you are adamant about insisting things remain the same. Keep the old cell phone, buy season tickets to the favorite team, don’t trade in the old car, you’re playing the way you like, close, keeping things just the way things ought to be. I had come upon a good formula for a show. Worked it for all it was worth, as long as I could, dialed in, polished it, but didn’t do anything that would alter the approach I had found superior. But, if it wasn’t me, it was the world around me. Something was bound to change and did. The world I’d relied upon to be my oyster had changed and I had to change with it. Of course a show is not a fixed temporal entity. It is alive and evolving and no two performances are ever in all details the same, even when you are trying to slow the rate of evolution, even when you’ve found yourself right where you want to be, there it is, one way or another, as they say, when you look and see change, you are looking at a  defining feature, one of the places in the cosmos where the rules that govern our existence are revelation.

“I’m just now coming out of Palm
Springs, worked there for the winter, didn’t suit me, before that I was going
nowhere living in San Jose, now, I’m headed somewhere,” he laughed,
“got oblivion nipping at my backside and trying to find the guts to make
my mark, while I’ve still got the chance.”

“Slow and steady, how a cabinet is
made,” Kenneth said. “Mighty hard on a young man waiting his turn for
life to finally come his way.”

Highway Home

Performances

Metro movie change

Dana SmithLeave a comment

image

Union street street shows…playing the Easter Day Parade. Street shows are eternal movie palaces, an art that no civilization, no amount of time will force to die. It’s just cheaper rent, we don’t have to fill the seats, we just have to fill the hat, we can always sleep beneath the stars, where we set our dreams and wishes for one more embrace of an audience……….The Street of Dreams, you can’t play the game unless you absolutely have to…….

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Books

The More Things of Change…

Dana SmithLeave a comment
how does it feel, to be on your own, Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone...

I loved long playing albums. My first purchase was Highway 61 Revisited. I loved my 8 track stereo player in my 1939 Chevrolet Businessman’s Coupe. I enjoyed my cassette player in my 1967 Ford pickup. I dig my CD player in my Toyota.
I dig my stereo aboard my sailboat where it allows me to hook my Ipod into the system and control my recordings on the pod via the controls on the stereo! I still have some LP’s, cassettes, and compact disc’s. I gave up on the 8 tracks
several revolutions ago on the merry go round of life. I must be a merchandiser’s dream come true having repurchased pieces of music I simply can’t live without. It seems we are doomed to repeat ourselves as we reinvent ourselves all the while trapping in this innovation nothing new whatsoever…in fact the more things change the more things remain the……

Noel couldn’t suppress the thought that she had a spectacular figure. Her shape and bulges were arousing him and invoked a male driven delirium within. All men have this state of mind. All men, from time to time, are driven to the edge of madness by such a simple thing as the figure of a woman. Men do not cultivate lust so much as they find themselves the victim of its forces. These passions can be fleeting and even misguided, but while in the full thrall of this harbinger they can be immeasurable and utterly, irrationally wonderful.

Highway Home