San Francisco Archives - The Adventures of Bloggard

The Book of Hu

03.21.2026 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

Mount Shasta, CA, March 21, 2026 — A new project beckons. It’s called “The Book of Hu.”

I’ll explain the name later, but here’s what it is … The Book of Hu is a guidebook to a better life. It contains clear, useful, and easy-to-apply methods to Live Longer, Prosper, and Find Peace.

Although that may sound presumptuous, I was startled recently when I realized that–somehow–in this lifetime I have stumbled across, or developed, or in some cases just plain stole a rather large set of simple-to-use methods to accomplish many, many things that people generally think to be difficult, or even impossible.

How to Live Longer, Prosper, and Find Peace

As it happened, these many short methods of how-to do things just naturally fell into three categories …

How to Live Longer: Although I took *lousy* care of my body in early years, I was always interested in things like diet and exercise, as most guys are. Read a lot of books about weight-control, about this or that marvelous supplement, or about weight-lifting machines. And in my 40’s one day I ran across a mention of a book called “Life Extension,” and I thought to myself: “Now why WOULDN’T a person read that book?” Got the book, started studying, got real serious. I’d already been taking my vitamins since, at age 26, a minor starlet in Hollywood had told me about vitamins, back when NOBODY took vitamins, back when there were only two stores in Los Angeles that sold vitamins. But I started taking them, and taking my vitamins had been the one smart thing I’d done that paid dividends for my whole life. Aside from vitamins, no method of diet or exercise seemed to stick, until I was 70, way too fat, and felt crappy. And then I stumbled into a sequence of simple things that removed the weight, restored the health, and felt a LOT better. And it was rather easy!
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How to Prosper: This is a collection of many different systems for doing things in the world. Some I learned from others, some from books. Others I developed. These don’t cover everything, but there are a surprising number of them altogether. For example, if you need to write things, I have simple systems for how to cure writer’s block in two weeks, how to write an entire book in a week, how to modify language to persuade hypnotically (beneath conscious awareness of the reader), and more. For example, if you need to manage people, I have simple systems to select people who will work out in the job when you’re hiring, how to either repair or eliminate any problem person, and how to quickly get rid of stage fright if you must speak before groups. For example, how to find a sweetheart if you don’t know how. For example, how advertising works, how to debug systems that are broken including electronics, paper trails, the sales process, phone wiring, and business systems. These don’t cover everything, but they cover a lot, and they’re all … simple.
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How to Find Peace: This was a side-effect of my college studies (and earlier) in psychology, plus later learning in hypnosis, and a number of “rapid-results” therapies that led me to become skillful at handling either my own unruly emotions or helping others clear problems out of the way and find clarity about pretty much anything. Examples include how to clear troublesome automatic emotions from your life, how to find and clear limiting beliefs, how to actually understand dreams (and use those to find limiting beliefs, negative emotions, and discover new truths), and how to hugely increase your communication with your own unconscious mind, which has FAR more awareness of things outside your vision than you do. And you’ll even find a surprisingly simple explanation of how we create our own unconscious minds, how there are actually three functioning brains in your head, and why you can have fear trembling you even when everything *seems* to be OK.

Lao Tzu and the Tao te Ching

The story goes that Lao Tzu, in later years, grew weary of society’s corruption, and decided to leave the city forever. He had a water buffalo, so he packed a few things, climbed on top, and left the city. He was heading west toward the mountains, intending to disappear into solitude.

In those times, at the western border stood the Hangyu Pass, guarded by a gatekeeper named Yin Hsi, and recognizing Lao Tzu as a sage, Yin Hsi refused to open the gate, saying, “I won’t let you pass until you write down what you have learned, to share with the world.”

Lao Tzu wrote it down, in a concise book. This was the Tao te Ching.

In the book, Lao Tzu explains the essence of the Tao–which roughly corresponds to the aether of ancient Greek philosophers, to the infinite web of even older Vedic documents, to the omnipresence of God in many religions, to the discussions between David Boehm and Albert Einstein about an all-pervasive substance not exactly of this world that connects, creates, and contains both ourselves and the physical universe(s), and to the latest revelations coming from quantum physics today.

And in that book, Lao Tzu goes beyond the essence of the Tao, explaining natural harmony, humility, and “Wu-Wei,” which means “effortless action.”

Chris Neklason, the Airtight Answering Service, and Cronografix

And then, many centuries later in San Francisco, I came to operate Network Answering Service in a building on Geary Boulevard at Parker Street (not far from Arguello). And working there was a wonderful and sometimes quite magical crew of people who were somehow drawn there, who became an active and energetic community, and who enriched so much of our lives.

Among them was a fellow named Chris Neklason, who became interested in my very-early “micro-computer” and then went on to learn programming, then more and more and more, and today operates an absolutely fabulous ISP (Independent Service Provider) called “Cruzio,” providing internet services for people all around Santa Cruz and beyond.

Chris had many talents. Among them, he could draw pretty well. And one day, as a lark, he created a page–and then another, and then another–of what became a little comic book. It was called “Cronografix: the Airtight Answering Service,” a pun on my name and featuring the people in our crew at the time, in a lively space-faring adventure. He posted this, page by page, on the wall in the bathroom, so we all watched it grow. It had seemingly halted by the time that Chris–who later married Peggy Dolgenos, another amazing crewmember–was leaving for a higher-tech job, down in Silicon Valley, which led him on to astounding events.

But that night, after the party we’d set up for him, when he was quite drunk and about to leave, I stood at the bottom of the stair, and I told him, “I won’t let you leave until you complete Chronografix.”

He groaned. But he sat down on the stairs, and drew a final page, very very carefully. And this single page, with a single image and a single line of text, summarized and completed the entire story he’d created. Chronografix was complete.

And now, it’s my Turn …

And somehow, this is how I saw–in a recent epiphany–that I could take the hundreds of lovely things I’ve found along the path, and create a way to share them, and then combine them into a printed book.

Because, in this way, although our world will change, when I leave, perhaps some of these lovely, useful things can persist in the world, in a book, for … who knows? A hundred years? Two? Five?

Why not?

🙂

… click the card …

The Apartment From Hell

03.13.2011 by bloggard // 3 Comments

North Beach, San Francisco, 1974: I’d found this neato apartment and thought myself lucky. The I Ching had said “Supreme Success!”

Little did I know how much the Chinese Gods of Divination love a good joke.

It was a success, for there I found Rosie the Cat, and took her away and lived happily ever after. Other than that, it was a disaster so stupid you can’t help but laugh.

In North Beach, on the corner of Grant and Green, in the picture you see a bar, but back then it was a Hawaiian Bar, and just above that Hawaiian Bar, behind the large bay window you see on the right, along with mice and cockroaches and loud Hawaiian music on the jukebox of the bar downstairs, that’s where I lived.

Living Over a Hawaiian Bar

Strange and bizarre … all night long, loud lyrics like: “Hooka lakka shooka lakka, wikki wikky ogaloo!” Over and over again. The guys downstairs had the consolation of alcohol to take the edge off these songs; I had nothing.

However, I worked an odd shift at the Westbury Hotel at this time, from seven in the evening until three am. This saved me from several hours of Shooka Lakka Hooka Lakka, for which I was grateful.

Strange Chinese Vegetables!

It was also interesting, leaving work at three in the morning. The busses run infrequently that late, and taxis were expensive, so I’d walk through the Stockton Street tunnel and through a deserted Chinatown at three. All the shop’s trashcans pungent with strange chinese vegetables and worse, but these barricades didn’t stop me.

Home at Last, at 3 a.m.

At home at last. But two doors up at Wumpers Bar, they had after-hours entertainment with Perry and the Pumpers. I’ll give the Pumpers one thing: they were plenty energetic. So, to the strains of pumping rock and roll, it was time to hit the hay.

The bars and shops on Grant have lots of garbage, and trashcans filled with empty bottles. So much that the trash companies come every night, sometimes three times during the night. The growling trucks and the crashing din of the bottles leant an exotic ambiance to the late hours on North Beach.

Luckily, the mornings are pretty quiet

Except one day, I’m awakened by a loud, repeating banging. A voice is chanting “Goddamned Phonebooth! Goddamned Phonebooth! Goddamned Phonebooth!”

Rising to peer blearily from my window at the sunny morning, below my window, a stringy unkempt fellow is kicking the back wall of the phonebooth below. A burly fellow across the street calls out “Hey!”, meaning Stop, or maybe What the hell are you doing?

Stringy guy sticks his head outside the phonebooth door, and screams, “It took my dime!” The guy across the street, a big guy, makes a fist and yells to knock it off. Stringy guy, glaring, makes off down the street.

I go back to bed.

And then …

I’m awakened by a loud, repeated banging. A voice is chanting. I rise and peer from the window. Stringy is back.

Now, the mailbox has been tipped over and lies flat on the sidewalk. Stringy guy is kicking the mailbox over and over again.

“Goddamned Mailbox!” he screams, “Goddamned Mailbox! Goddamned Mailbox! Goddamned Mailbox!”

Ah, life in North Beach.

A Tiny Miracle on Napa Street

03.13.2011 by bloggard // Leave a Comment

Lacunae — blind spots —
like black cats prowling midnight,
but just out of sight.

Napa Street, Berkeley, Summer 1977: In Christine’s room, Richard W. and I were yakking about nothing in the late morning. The windows were open; the day would be warm. A fat fly buzzed lazily around Richard where he lounged on the floor beneath the window.

Our talk turned to magic and miracles. He’d seen some; I’d seen some. I was relating a strange experience in England. How magic can happen in an instant, with no sense of effort, and as though something else is acting through you. I’d felt it before. It feels natural, more natural than most days’ living; it’s hard to describe.

“It was as if, suddenly, there’s a kind of a wave, and you’re being carried along. You’re caught up,” I said, trying to capture it.

He looked dubious.

Suppose I said, to the fly …

“It’s like this,” I said. I pointed to the fly. “Suppose I said to that fly, ‘Come here.’”

The fly flew across the room, and landed on my finger.

“And then suppose I said, ‘Fly out the window.’”

The fly took off, flew past Richard and out the window.

And it was so …

Richard gaped. I nodded. It had come; it had gone. I felt no sense of triumph, or strength; it wasn’t exactly me that did it. It felt … right. At the time, it seemed inevitable.

Is this something that’s always in us, waiting to emerge? Or does it pass through humanity like a wind through the boughs? Why does it appear seemingly only at great need, or, like today, in no need at all? Is it a matter of attention, or, like conscious dreaming, a matter of exactly the right amount of inattention? What is it?

These things — miracles, epiphanies, synchronicities — surround us, like nebulae of faeries, visable and hiding in plain sight. Magic breathes into and out of our world, transient lacunae, trailing thin and smoky tracks like cosmic rays in this cloud chamber we call Earth.

A blink of the mind; they are gone.