Two monks were once travelling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. As they came around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

“Come on, girl,” said the first monk. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

The second monk did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he said. “It is dangerous. Why did you do that?”

“I left the girl there,” the first monk said. “Are you still carrying her?”

Mount Shasta: Why am I writing a weblog? Why would you want to write a weblog?

A long, long, long time ago, Lao-Tzu was leaving the city, and the gate-keeper stopped him. Recognizing Lao-Tzu as a man of great learning, a walking treasure, the gatekeeper refused to permit Lao-Tzu to leave until Lao-Tzu wrote down what he knew.

The book written down we call the Tao Te Ching, and it describes the mysterious Tao which underlies and animates all the universe and all life.

Frankly, I don’t have anything that valuable to write down. I might as well admit it; you’d have guessed it anyhow. But I’ve seen this in action …

Some years ago at Network Answering Service, a young man named Chris N. came to work. Of hundreds who worked there, Chris stands among a handful notable among humans because he took responsibility for his actions. That means you could assign him something, and he’d do it or discover what was needed to do it and handle that and then do it. If he made a mistake, he made no excuse. In my experience, this trait is rare in humans, and I greatly respect it.

One day Chris made a one-page comic strip, called “The Airtight Answering Service of Richard French” (later re-titled “Cronographics“) about our little band of OPs. From time to time, Chris would add another page, spotlighting various OPs in some science-fiction adventure. These we posted on the wall in the bathroom, where all could enjoy them.

Chris worked there for some years, and then one day it was to be his last. If memory serves, it was the day of our Christmas Party, and there was a certain amount of wine. When Chris was ready to leave, slightly sloshed, he was surprised when I ambushed him in the stairwell, refusing to let him leave until he finished Cronographics.

He requested pen and paper, and sat on the stairs, and drew a final page. And then he left, going on to other adventures both sacred and profane. His final page was magnificent.

I have no such talent. But I’ve seen some things, and known some people, and some of these people and stories might be interesting to others.

So in the hope that some of these stories might be of interest, and that some of these insights might prove useful, I write them down, in this world-wide journal, the weblog.

May you find something of interest here.

Henrietta, Texas, 1953: The television show “Winky Dink and You” was a big hit. I bugged my mom until she sent for the magic screen and crayons. On Saturday morning, you stuck the screen on the television, then drew from dot to dot, drawing for example a ladder which saved Winky Dink from the bad guys.

Out in our back yard, my dog Bullet was largely ignored. The television was pure magic. Weekdays after school Howdy Doody and Pinky Lee cavorted until godawful country music and boring weather reports. Saturday mornings, Boston Blackie, Superman, and Winky Dink paraded in sequence.

Bullet, whose heart beat with love, was forgotten.

I am making no excuse. I have none.

When we’d moved into our little house in the north of town, my mother bought aluminum siding in a pale green. I see Bullet against that green, nosing about the back yard, peering through the fence. Laundry day was big for Bullet, because I helped my mother hang clothes on the clothesline. Lots of company, for a while.

I was in charge of feeding Bullet, and in my minds eye can still see my mother doing it. I made a rope for a Cub Scout merit badge. Then Bullet helped me test the rope. I wonder now: was there any other time in my life that I played with him?

Eventually, I talked my mom into letting Bullet run loose around the neighborhood. Or maybe I just left the gate open. This gave him more to do; he could roam around.

When my mother the nurse married Doctor Strickland, we moved to larger quarters, and Bullet retired to a new, larger, fenced back yard. He helped me to build a trapeze. He helped me attempt to throw knives to stick into a tree. He visited while I read Dracula, old gun catalogs, and Rosicrucian literature in the back yard.

At fourteen and a half, I got my license and bought a green 1951 Chevrolet. I used to take Bullet riding with me. He loved sticking his head out the window, and didn’t mind waiting if I went into the stores downtown. That is, until one day at school, when Marie Spikes commented on my habit of including Bullet, “What’s the matter?” she said. “Can’t you find a girlfriend?”

It shames me to say it, but that was the end of the rides for Bullet.

I did get a girlfriend, and later another car, and in due time drove that car to college. A couple of years later, on a visit, I asked my mother why Bullet was walking so stiffly.

“He’s old,” she said. “He’s got arthritus.”

I petted him, and he looked at me with his eternal, loving brown eyes. Always a constant. My mother said he had lots of pain. Since Doctor Strickland had a drug cabinet, now and then she gave Bullet shots of morphine, or something like that.

“Sometimes he comes and asks for a shot,” my mother told me.

I just stared at her.

Two weeks later, after finals at school, I visited again.

Bullet was gone.

He’d grown ill, and they’d put him down. I hadn’t even known it. I was hurt, and angry that I’d not been told. He was my dog, I thought, in spite of eternal neglect throughout my entire life. I fussed and complained. Then I went back to school, and, caught up again in my new life, again forgot about Bullet, my dog.

Forgot about him? Then why, forty years later, do I miss him so?

Evolution isn’t only for the birds. Artforms also come and go, develop, mutate, expand, reach dead ends, or evolve into something new.

The short essay. I think that means spelling out an opinion, or writing about something as if you know what you’re talking about. Do we really know? Maybe. Maybe not.

Once upon a time, cuneaform writing evolved, apparently to keep records of how much grain was stored, then perhaps adapted to sending messages. Generally this would involve land, money, or women, most likely. At the time, hired guns called scribes were the only ones who could either read it, or inscribe it.

But with the invention of moveable type, things changed.

The possession of writing by certain people was a power tool. Writing evolved over and over again. The technology of the times were different alphabets (pictoral, syllabic), including numeral systems (Roman, Arabic), and materials on which to write (clay, papyrus, vellum).

Educated ancients thought science worth keeping, in Phoenician, Greek, and Roman times. Priest classes found writing powerful, and used it to store vast amounts of holy gobblygook, as is proper.

The development of syllabic alphabets made the use of moveable type feasible, and the Gutenberg press came into a world where writing mainly stored oral tradition. After printing the bible many times, the printer looked around.

You know how it is. Give a man a hammer, and he looks around for nails to pound. It was natural that the press expanded to print more and more and more.

As taxes, civilization, and engineering tamed the wilds and the roads, sending letters expanded, as did distribution of books. In between the letter and the book, emerged newspapers.

You gotta fill up a newspaper, right? Reporting news, the telling of stories (Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle), and the owner’s essaying to splain the world filled newspapers. Thus the essay. As literature became more accessible with the torture of young children- Oops, I meant the development of schools, then an appreciation of writing, and of essays expanded.

By the time of Marconi and Tesla, fiction of all types was flying around the world in books, magazines, and newspapers. Essays rode along. With Tesla’s invention of radio, and Marconi’s invention of radio, a new medium searched for content. Distributing news by radio worked well, and so did distribution of music and fiction. Thus the Green Hornet, the Lone Ranger, and the soap operas. Rural farm electrification in the 1940’s made radio universal in the USA.

Evolution continues. Evolution’s rule is that the old form doesn’t vanish. The old and the new exist side by side, and begin to separate in function, to specialize. Like the right and left sides of your brain (visual and language), the two completely nerve transmission systems in your body (fast and slow), and the two completely different circulatory systems in your body (lymph and blood), both the old and the new coexist, but now handle different tasks.

Thus, handwriting took over from verbal storytelling, specializing in long tales. Then printed writing emerged, specializing in news, fiction, and essays. Radio emerged, taking fiction from magazines and music from live venues. The magazines were left to specialize, and magazines today all focus on specialized subjects. Movies arrived to take drama from the stage, and in the 50’s, television took drama from the movies and the radio, leaving movies with spectacles and radio with music.

And the short essay? What has happened to the short essay?

Like the short story, this artform has languished. Oh, great short essays have been written. Look in any New Yorker, or any trade-oriented magazine, or political newspapers. But the short essay has not been widely appreciated in our time.

But perhaps this may be changing. Perhaps the short essay — such as this one you are reading now — has found a new home, on the internet, in the weblog.

San Anselmo, California: Last weekend Adrienne and I had a hard talk. For us, talking about money is usually difficult. I’ve learned my lessons very slowly, and so only in recent years am I trying to be smarter, learning the lessons better learned at 30 than at 59. Adrienne, younger, seems even slower; and so we struggle.

She agreed, however, that the only possible way to have wealth is to (a) live below your means, however modest that might be, so that you can (b) siphon off some money, and (c) with these funds purchase assets which will bring you money without working.

For example, buying a rental house. Purchasing stocks or bonds paying dividends. Owning some sort of copyright or patent that can be leased. In other words, going from paying interest to collecting interest.

So then yesterday, after a mysterious ‘going shopping’ trip with daughter Lilah, she arrives home, having purchased a nice new car. I’ve now been physically ill for 24 hours.

The car is quite lovely, but I just do not comprehend. We’ve just spent the last several years getting free of debt, and presto here’s more debt. And, we don’t need a car.

I feel ill because it is painful to realize that we’re living on such different planes. I am appalled that she did not consult with me about this. I believed that we had some other plans, but, come to find out, they seem to have changed. For the last several years I’ve set aside a certain amount of savings, and immediately in one day, we have debt almost as big as those savings.

I suspect the daughter. The plan as hatched is that Adrienne is going to give the car to the daughter to drive for a while, and daughter is allegedly going to make the payments for a while. It remarkably similar to buying a car for daughter. Something is wrong with this picture.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say. Except one thing.

This is bad.

Ulloa Street, San Francisco, 1972: I’d flown my MGB across the desert between Christmas and New Years, to start a Masters at San Francisco State, and I’d found a room atop Mrs. Douglas’s house on Ulloa Street. From the windows of this single, high room, I could see the land fall away for twenty blocks to the ocean, and on the hazy ocean horizon, the Farallon Islands.

Dim steamers crept across the edge of the sky, the gulls wheeled and circled around the houses, and the night breeze from the ocean chilled to the bone.

But I ordered a hi-fi stereo receiver and powerful headphones that weighed a ton. I listened to new radio stations, and then sat at my IBM selectric, filled with cheap yellow paper, beside the window gazing to the ocean, listening to the foghorn warning the ships passing by. And wrote stories.

But one day I felt bad. Real bad.

By nightfall, I was doubled over with a pain in my guts. I awoke from troubled dozing to find all the covers heaped high, while I shivered with chills. Clearly I was freezing.

I had a thermometer. Puzzled and dim-witted, I checked it twice. It did indeed claim I was running at 104 degrees. Because my mother claimed that brain damage begins at 105, I called a medical emergency number. I described the pains. Appendix, they said. They said to take off the covers, to open the windows, to douse myself with cold water.

Mrs. Douglas, awakened, kindly gave me ice, and I spent the night pacing naked in that high room, in the dark with the cold ocean breeze flowing into the west window and out the east. Now and again I doused myself with ice water. My mind was blown, and I felt not warm but freezing. I felt like a penitent in torment.

In the morning around five, my fever broke, and I slept. A few hours later, my alarm reminded me to hie myself for medical attention. Diagnosis confirmed, into the hospital, and by three o’clock appendix gone.

During the night, I gained a roommate in the next bed, rather an old gentleman, still out from the anaesthetic. The next morning, I spoke to him. He replied briefly, but something was wrong. We fell to conversation. Here’s what had happened:

He was German, very German. In fact had served, a lieutenant at age 22, as communications officer for Rommel, the desert fox. I didn’t ask much of those days, for I knew nothing about the war, and he was preoccupied.

His story emerged. He’d had an operation on the spine. And this morning when he awoke, he was mostly paralyzed, and he was blind. He was waiting for his doctor, but doctor had gone out of town.

Off and on, we talked. We were in limbo, lives in abeyance, entrapped by the body’s failure. How did it turn out? The good news is that doctor did show up, and reassured the lientenant that a temporary swelling had caused the problem, and that it would pass. He would recover from paralysis; he would recover from blindness.

Did he? I think so; he seemed to be recovering when I left. I wish I could describe the flow of conversation, the way it unfolded in dramatic bits and pieces. But I cannot. I was drained and loggy for sleep, and the ache in my belly seemed far more important than the man next door and a war in a desert far away.

Within three days I had healed up, and things were back to normal. I hardly remembered my days in the desert.

Some visitors may not know that I collect seashells. My collection is quite extensive. In fact, it’s so large that I cannot store my seashells at my house, and so I store my seashells on various beaches around the world. Perhaps you have seen some of them.

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

It is more profitable to save money than to earn more money.

That’s it.

Whenever you earn money there is a certain amount of drag and cost. An example of drag might be government forms. Suppose you sell more retail merchandise. In that case you’ll have to do some additional work calculating, collecting, banking, reporting, remitting, and bookkeeping the additional sales tax as part of your forced labor on behalf of your state, so that for every new earned dollar you must labor.

An example of cost might be your cost of goods. Suppose you sold more groceries or birdhouses or teddybears. For each one you sell, you must purchase the groceries or birdhouses or teddybears, so that each newly earned dollar has some cost.

But suppose that, instead of selling more stuff, you found a way to save. For example, getting a cheaper supplier, doing manufacturing with a less costly process, or shipping it more cheaply. In that case, each dollar drops directly into your pocket, with no drag nor cost. That’s why saving money is usually more profitable than earning more money.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.