Mount Shasta, 9 June 2004: At the end of the warmer days, as the house cools from the open windows, you can hear them more clearly.

The trains pass by on some schedule all their own, and as I drowse or sleepily read by the single light beside my bed, at first on the edge of hearing a vague rumble comes. This grows, into the churning sound of diesel growl, metal wheels ringing on the rails, and a thousand clacks like monstrous and rhythmic insects.

Then comes the wail. And again. Growing louder and louder, and again, and then so close you could touch it, it begins to grow faint, and changes in subtle timbre, and then fades away as it came.

Strange. It would seem I’d hear the same wail night after night. They must use the same great engines. Wouldn’t the train’s whistle sound the same?

But no. As the train blows its whistle — to warn the cars ahead in the crossings — it seems that every train’s voice is different. Some moan. Some shriek. Some beep long and hollow. Others wail.

An infinitude of voices, each one alone, shrieking in the night. A warning, jarring and sweet, above the roar of life, and then fading away.

San Francisco, 1977: I was the only operator at Network Answering Service, and our hours were 6AM to Midnight, seven days a week.

I took the messages that came in for my clients, and then they called me to pick up those messages. It was natural that we got to talking. And quite a few of them were friends, out there in the world.

Hokum W. Jeebes, for example, juggled on the street and occasionally at the Bohemian Club. He knew Lennie Sloan, the dancer, who produced “Three Black and Three White New Minstrel Show.” Lennie knew Doug McKechnie, who once played Moog synthesizer number three. And Doug knew Harvey Warnke, a self-taught electronics whiz who built computer-controlled light shows.

So when someone mentioned the benefit for Doug McKechnie, to be held at the Intersection Coffee House, on Pacific above North Beach, somehow I got invited.

And I went.

The show was a blast, featuring a film Doug had done for NASA, with a far-out soundtrack. Hokum juggled, and Harvey was operating the lights. The others were my clients, but I was meeting Harvey for the first time.

And that reminded me of a project, so I made an appointment for Harvey to visit at the studio apartment where I answered the phones. I’d envisioned a gadget that would answer the phoneline and make a sparkling sound. Then, after a delay, it would connect through to me. This way, clients could set their call-forwarding easily but I’d not be burdened with taking those calls. I described it, and Harvey sat in my bentwood rocker, with his finger to his temple, nodding sagely. Yep, he said, he could do that.

We never did the project, but we did become friends. I learned that Harvey had no memory of anything in his life before the age of twelve. And as a teen out of high school, he’d taken a job at the planetarium, and learned to repair and modify the machines that moved the stars across the heavens.

From there, he’d learned to read data sheets. A data sheet is kind of like a cheat sheet for a computer chip. A data sheet will describe how many pins you’ll find around the edge of the chip, and if you put a signal on this one and that one then this other one will show a signal … or some other complicated arrangement. You don’t have to know what’s going on inside the chip. The chip is just a black box, and the data sheet tells you how to hook it up. Your computer is filled with such chips, and somewhere there is a data sheet for every one of them.

From reading data sheets, he learned how to control lights with relays and circuits, and that’s how he came to design the light shows for the loud-music clubs over on Haight Street. When I met him, he was casting about for new projects.

And about then he met Lin, a dancer and conceptual artist. I didn’t know what that meant, but when I visited their apartment I found photos of Lin dancing, except that there was no light except the blue laser that painted her body as she danced. Huh! So that was what a conceptual artist was, I thought.

I remember a photo, included with their wedding invitation. It showed the two of them, climbing on some rocks, and they looked so young, so alive, so happy.

By then, I’d found my Lori, and we were getting married too. I guess it was in the air or in the water.

Projects and dinners came and went. Harvey made frames for Lin’s canvasses for a show. The canvasses showed invisible women wearing bikinis in colorful beach settings, and the frames were made of plastic pipe. They were a creative couple, and so many nights, sharing dreams, laughing, roaring with enthusiasm, so fun!

Harvey and I exchanged a project. He designed the relays and sensors for my “Line Seizer” device for my answering service. In turn, I wrote the software that drove his “Counter Intelligence” device, which was a clever add-on for movie film editing machines. You just stuck a colored wheel on one of the shafts, and an infrared beam bounced off the wheel to a receiver, and the thing would calculate how many feet and frames of film had moved beneath the editing head. A great boon for the cutting room floor, I think. But the marketing didn’t work and that was the end of the company.

At that same time, Harvey and Lin were trying to purchase the condominium they occupied in North Beach, but it all bogged down, and they moved away from San Francisco, down to the Hollywood area, where Harvey worked for the movies. If you saw the movie “War Games”, in the final scene where the large screens in the war room are showing the missles, then you saw Harvey’s work. He made those big screens.

Somehow, Harvey and Lin came to a parting of the ways. I don’t know much about it, though there was much sturm und drang in the air. By then, they had a son, whom Harvey loved, a lot.

So the youngster spent years growing up, sometimes with Lin, and sometimes with Harvey. Harvey continued attempting to resurrect the Counter Intelligence device. Lin went on to expand her art, and I learned of her only now and then, in the newspapers.

Sometime after my own marriage was fried, Harvey told me about a woman named Beatrice. I met her and I liked her, and she had a young son who became a friend for Harvey’s son, growing up. Harvey’s business teetered and tottered, but then he contracted a heart ailment. He invited me to a dinner, and seated at the counter, awaiting a table, he told me what the doctor had said; it wasn’t good.

He was smoking a cigar. I asked if it was wise. He said that it wasn’t going to make any difference in this case. “I’ve learned that my life,” he said, “my life is going to be very different than I’d expected.”

In short, unless a heart donor appeared — and Harvey was very low on the list — then Harvey could expect his own heart to fail, utterly and soon. It was not cholesterol or any of that, but another malady entirely. His heart was enlarged, and weakening.

Harvey’s office was locked up for back rent, and all his circuit diagrams thrown away as trash. Harvey moved in with a friend, a fellow who does soundtracks for movies, and spent his last days living there. One day, visiting at Bee’s house while she was out of town, his heart stopped, and he was with us no more.

Bee called me, and told me about the service.

“God***m it!” I cried out.

The service was on a remote beach which was very difficult to find. The soundtrack wizard was there, and other folks I didn’t know. There was some sort of a service, and then a lady let loose a cage of doves.

With a rustle and soft explosion of wings they wheeled and rose. One made a beeline for the horizon, out beyond the point, with the ocean far below. The others circled upward and became orderly, wheeled and turned to the north, and flew out of sight beyond the woods.

In the far distance, I watched the lone dove flying until it became a dark point, and then vanished into the blue.

Some years ago, Adrienne’s friend Bruce described his grandfather, a thin and elderly man sinking into dementia. On some days he was unable to find his way around the house, but on this particular day he’d put on his uniform (from the second world war), and he’d started walking up the street.

They found him thirty miles up the road in the next town, patiently waiting for a bus. He said he was taking the bus to rejoin his unit.

Lately the radio has been full of news of Iraq, and yesterday we walked the dog in the beautiful Shastice park, where long meadows of lawn wind around the tennis courts. Lizzie rolled on the grass and drifting clouds folded around the mountain, and glided in our direction, promising weather to come.

While we were walking and enjoying the peace, some punk stole Adrienne’s purse from our parked car.

Driving away, she realized. “Stop the car,” she said.

We returned, interviewed folks, examined nearby cars, and peeked into trash cans. No luck. The thieves were long gone.

At the police station, I told the burly guy behind the glass that we’d been robbed, that her purse had been stolen from the car. He smiled. “That’s not robbery,” he said. “That’s burglary.”

“Ok, fine,” I said. “Burglary. How do we file a report?”

He fetched a patrolman who asked questions, and we went home. Somebody has our keys. Adrienne is mightily upset. I think it’s not just the loss of glasses, cards, and somebody having our keys. It’s the loss of the feeling that everything is so safe, here.

We’d planned on dinner, and so when some calm returned, we left Lizzie to bark away intruders and went out. In the restaurant, a lady in the next booth excitedly pointed and gibbered to her husband; a mountain lion was crossing the road. The husband didn’t seem very interested.

When we returned home, everything was fine, no problem. I’m guessing the thieves were kids, looking for thrills or dope money. We’re out about $300 for glasses and keys, and they got $24, plus a sweet picture of Tulip our border collie. But that’s the problem with criminals; they got no consideration.

Today’s been strange too, arranging for the locksmith to change the locks — just in case — and cancelling credit cards, atm cards, auto club card, kaiser card, etc, etc, etc. Voicemail jail and around the block. The Sears card lady in Iowa wrote down the information while tornado alerts boomed in the office behind her. Thank you.

And Friday was strange. We discovered a large white pickup parked mid-block, at right-angles to the street, rear wheels on a lawn with the tailgate pushed into bushes. No plates, keys dangling in the ignition. The cops came and drove it away.

Strange. Strange.

Adrienne tells me she feels like putting on her uniform, and taking the bus to rejoin her unit.

Los Angeles, Summer 1969: I’d parked my green MGB sportscar at the supermarket, and walking across the parking lot, I was approached by a young guy who started talking real fast.

Oddly enough, he was dressed exactly like me. And this is more odd than it might sound, because I was wearing a pale blue sportscoat with white stripes, over white slacks, and he was wearing identical clothes. I stared.

“Are you happy?” he demanded, “Would you like to have more money, a better job, more women? Would you like things to be better? Well it’s easy …”

He attempted to press a cardboard ticket into my hand.

“It’s easy!” he insisted. “All you have to do is chant these words — nom meyoho ringey kyo! — you just chant these words, and you can have more money, or a better job, or a lot of women. That’s all you have to do! And you can have anything you want!”

I continued walking. I smiled my superior smile. I knew better, of course, because I was studying Scientology. Chanting things, how silly!

He kept trying to put the ticket into my hand. “Just chant these words,” he demanded. “Come to this meeting. We’ll show you how. You can have anything you want, and-“

Ignoring him, I’d turned to the supermarket door, and perhaps because I’d been distracted, I walked into the Out door, at the very moment that a cute little child started out the door.

The door swung open, hitting me right in the middle of the forehead.

Stunned, I stopped. I felt the paper ticket slide into my hand, my fingers closing upon it.

“You see?” the guy shouted. “I don’t want things like that to happen to you!”

Mount Shasta, May 20, 2004: This morning over coffee, Adrienne told me about how Chakras get clogged up with bad events, and I told her how Dianetic auditing is said to clear up clogged events. We came to agree that Dianetics was really Chakra theory, which will amaze and alarm any student of either Chakras or Dianetics, but it’s swell for Adrienne and me. To agree, I mean, if you follow me.

We then discussed the upcoming dog park in Mount Shasta, and Adrienne had made a collections jar that she took to the Pet Wash, and she said it was an “apocrothary” jar. I said “apothocary.” She corrected herself. I said it was no problem, and that such mispronunciation just showed the moo treening of a munctioning find.

So the morning was off to a great start, and the coffee pretty good.

As we discussed our theories of life and the meaning of meaning, I had a brainwave. In the (probably foolish) hope that you might find it as stunning as did I, here it is:

Probably all of the blunders that we make and all of the confusions that we experience come about because of the creatures that we are.

That is, the creatures that we are are exactly liable to make those particular blunders and experience those particular confusions. So what we are actually seeing is nothing but the cosmic dance unfolding, perfectly and just as it should, for creatures such as we are.

This means that there is nothing wrong here. Maybe it works out swell for us individually, or maybe we suffer and die. But there is nothing wrong. This is the perfect unfolding of the universe for exactly the creatures that we are.

What you think, kemo sabe?

[The HobNob, today, by Billy Bucher]: If my records are correct, and, heaven forbid, they aren’t always, we lost Paul B. Miner ten years ago today.

It was a very great loss.

I think lighting a candle tonight would be in order.

I hope to get some of my favorite Paul B. pictures placed here over the next month. If you have a special Paul B. thought, hit [this link] and add your thoughts.

Paul B. loved plants and gardening as much as he loved reading and writing. Spring always was very special to him. Life and friends were very special to him.

Paul B. was one in a million.

[March 19, 1994, by the Bloggard]: Only a couple of years ago, Adrienne and I had lived in an apartment overlooking the Sausalito bay, where boats glided past on the silken blue water, and gulls wheeled in the sky.

With my nose buried in computers and dreams, I hardly noticed when Paul my best friend from college sent me new literary magazines, and letters. I didn’t really stay in touch.

Later, I understand that Paul, dying of brain cancer, lay for days in a bed, and one day asked his mom, “I wonder whatever happened to Richard.” (Which was my name way back then.)

I wonder, too.

Jade Garden Chinese Restaurant, May 18, 2004: Adrienne said, “Let’s go to dinner!” and so we did. The food was good, and we were noshing on garlic prawn and rice and some peppery-hot thing.

And then the waiter brought our check, and there were two fortune cookies. I picked them up, and then remembered.

Adrienne saw me, and began to cry.

It’s been just two months since Tulip our border collie died in our arms. Now what you didn’t know is that Tulip’s favorite food was fortune cookies. In fact, back in San Anselmo, at Christmas-time before we moved here, I gave Tulip a present which was a huge bag of fortune cookies. It was a big hit.

Tulip loved to go get Chinese food.

Adrienne cried, remembering. I said, “We’ll just have to eat these fortune cookies for her.” Adrienne nodded.

I loved that Tulip, and then she died. It leaves such a hole in our lives, that she doesn’t come stretching to see us, waking late as we drink our coffee. Sometimes in the middle of nowhere, it comes back, and it hurts all over again.