This post today about mystery and surprise wanders a bit between Birmingham and other places and the Florida Keys/Key West, but I think it all gets sewn together by the end, perhaps a patchwork quilt of sorts.
In my email this morning:
I am Content to Live in the Mystery
By: Henry Miller
POETIC OUTLAWS
FEB 11, 2024I have a theory that the moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
I have tried this experiment a thousand times and I have never been disappointed.
The more I look at a thing, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I want to see. It is like peeling an onion.
There is always another layer, and another, and another. And each layer is more beautiful than the last.
This is the way I look at the world. I don't see it as a collection of objects, but as a vast and mysterious organism.
I see the beauty in the smallest things, and I find wonder in the most ordinary events. I am always looking for the hidden meaning, the secret message. I am always trying to understand the mystery of life.
I know that I will never understand everything, but that doesn't stop me from trying.
I am content to live in the mystery, to be surrounded by the unknown.
I am content to be a seeker, a pilgrim, a traveler on the road to nowhere.
You can find this passage in Henry Miller’s fantastic book—Black Spring.Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
It is my experience that mystery is essential to soul development, for if we know how everything will turn out, what is the point of living? If we do not get ruffled, disturbed, surprised, disappointed, pleased, infuriated by what life serves, that would be really boring.
In January 1994, I started attending a church service of sorts in a rented hall in a commercial building. Each Sunday morning, someone responsible for the meeting talked about this or that.
After a few weeks, as a meeting came to close, a man, whom I had not seen there before, came forward from the back of the meeting hall and faced the gathering and told us to all close our eyes and ask God what we can best do to serve God?
That was the first mention of God I had heard in that “church”.
I closed my eyes and silently asked God what I could do to best serve God? Into my inner vision came a white quill writing pen. Tears welled in my eyes. I opened my eyes and got up and left.
That night after dinner, sitting with my diary and. a ballpoint pen in my “sitting chair” in my wife’s and my bedroom, looking out the window at an old, majestic black willow tree and a big moon behind its branches, I opened my diary and put my pen on the paper and one word at a time started appearing, as if I was taking dictation, and I started bawling, and that went on every night for weeks, and then it stopped, and I typed it all up into my computer and then made it into a little saddle stitched pamphlet, which I named “A Crazy Person’s Bible”, because any one who lived God would have to be crazy to live as God wanted them to live, turning the other cheek, praying for our enemies, taking no thought for the morrow, it is more blessed to receive, first take the beam out of our own eye, etc.
Then, I had a couple of hundred copies made at a Kinkos and I put them in a cardboard box and took them to the mall where I lied to hang out during day time, and at night, when street performers were there. I set the box on a bench and I left. Later I came back and retrieved the box and what pamphlets were left in it and went home.
I kept doing that, and I kept printing more copies, and I kept doing that, and then a sequel came, and did it all again, and another sequel came, and I did it all again, and then it played out. And, then I wrote two novels at the same time, and finished writing them both on the same day.
Then, my life there imploded and I moved away and all those writings remained there and cannot be reproduced.
By then, I was beginning to use the internet, and in time I wrote maybe 50 thousand pages on blogs on goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which I paid the owner of bigpinekey.com to create for me, which developed a pretty good following.
Then, I got tangled in something in Key West, which I could have avoided, but if I had, I would not have learned a lot of things I didn’t know, which were very important. the cost was the two blogs were taken down by the web host host and were lost, unless I knew how to use cache to retrieve them, which I did not. The hotmail account where I had sent out blasts of the blog posts to quite a few people got shut down, because I forgot the password and hotmail became outlook, and all those emails were lost.
I started a new blog, afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, and kept posting there daily for several years. Then, I started writing non-fiction books and novels again, and I put them on blogs until they were done, and then I put the entire book on the blogs’ home page. A friend converted them so they could be read at the free internet library, archive.com, where they were, and are, read by people all over the world.My friend digitized my first novel and a book had written where the meltdown occurred, and he put them in the free internet library.
Because of him, the internet, and the free library, I will live on Earth for so long as that library exists, which might or might not be a good thing, depending on who is asked.
Here is the mystery poem written by the white quill pin and ended up in A Crazy Person’s Bible.
“Rosa Mystica”
Rosa Mystica,
Sweet Mystery,
Bride of Christ,
Living Water
without which
God is dead
and there are no rainbows.
Linda OReilly
“Then, I got tangled in something I could have avoided, but if I had, I would not have learned a lot of things I didn’t know, which were very important.“
Too true. If I had avoided all the things I should have avoided I’d be a lot dumber than I am right now.
Sloan Bashinsky
Hilarious, Amen, Praise the Lord, F-ing A! :-)
In 2011, I injured my low back doing an isometric exercise in my trailer on Little Torch Key. Standing in a doorway and using my legs and arms and hands to push up against the top of a door jam, I felt something snap and I was barely able to move for weeks. Last year, an MRI showed my L4 and L5 had fused naturally.
When Coach Saban retired in early January of this year, I hoped he would run for the U.S. Congress, like Auburn’s head football coach Tommy Tuberville had done. Tuberville got elected by saying he would do whatever Donald Trump told him to do. I seriously doubt Coach Saban would do whatever Donald Trump told him to do.
So, I wondered if the dream wasn’t about jogging, but was about running for office, which I did 10 times when I lived in Key West and on Little Torch Key, the island just below Big Pine Key. US 1 runs from Florida City all the way down to Key West.
I remembered what I had posted at poetic outlaws yesterday, and that before I turned in last night, I had asked God to show me what I can do to best serve God?
I wondered if maybe it was not a lot of pins down US 1, but a lot of pens?
I sure penned a whole lot of pages down there on goodmonringkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, and on bigpinekey.com’s popular Coconut Telegraph forum, and there are lots of poets and some successful writers in Key West. It olden times, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost and Tennessee Williams lived there.
But for me to live there again, run for local office again, wouldn’t that be, been there, done that? Many times.
In 2006, I ran for the Monroe County Commission, when I lived in my trailer on Little Torch Key. I friend in Georiga gave me serveral hundred “Re-Elect No One” bumper decals, which were left over from something he once had gotten involved in.
I ran as an Independent against the Republican incumbent.
My campaign mantra was, “No more new development, period, the end. The Florida Keys already are way over developed and there is not a person living here who can look in a mirror and honestly say otherwise.”
I got about 1/3 of the votes cast.
In 2010, there was a Democrat challenger as well, and got about 10 percent of the votes cast.
Living in Key West, I ran 6 times for mayor of that city, starting 2003, once for county commissioner, 2008, and once for school board 2011, and didn’t get enough votes in any of those races to cause a ripple in a dead calm bayou.
I was the out of the box candidate, the minority report. My constituents were Mother Nature and her sea and land creatures and vegetation, affordable housing, and homeless people.
Land and water polluters, developers and their lawyers and captured elected officials, and law enforcement officers who were rough on homeless people were my prey.
I said every time I ran that it was because God told me to run, if I knew what was good for me.
I was told several times that I might have gotten elected if I had not mentioned God, or angels.
My goodmorningfloridakeys.com and goodmorningkeywest.com blogs might be lost forever, but afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, dormant for some time, can be woken up and put back to work. Or, perhaps a new blog might hatch.
But haven’t I been there and done that? Many times.
When last year (2003) I wrote the novella, Return of the Strange, the sequel to Heavy Wait: A Strange Tale (2001), inspired by a street performer I had met in Key West, I wondered if maybe I might end up back in the Florida Keys, because some of Return of the Strange is about the invasive species, humans, raping and pillaging the Florida Keys, and infesting the ocean with flesh-eating bacteria, which is never told to the tourists.
Here are links and descriptions/leads for both tales at the free internet library:
This free book starts with an earthly and metaphysical romp about how the novel came to be written, what it was like for Sloan while he wrote it, and his irreverent philosophy of writing, poetry and living - preferring to be a frog instead of a prince.
The novel is based on a storyline given to Sloan by street performer Birdie McLaine, whom Sloan met in Key West, 2001. Sloan told Birdie he had pretty much lived about half of the storyline the year before.
A non-stop romp. A cornicopia of love, loss, lottery winnings, psychiatry, fishing, law, kidnapping, paradise mating, incest healing, human greed, criminal prosecution, karma, incarceration and spirit set in Birmingham, Alabama, Port St. Joe and Apalachicola, Florida, and the Caribbean garden island, Dominica.
The main characters, Mary Lou Snow, Riley Strange and Willa Sue Jenkins are a the gods must be crazy menage de trois only a mystic, or a street performer, could dream up. The supporting actors are loveable, detestable, unforgettable.
There really is no way to describe Heavy Wait in writing, or verbally, and do it justice.
It is not for the faint of heart, prudes, people who hate lawyers, lawyers who think they are hot stuff, people who think Jesus loves them no matter what they do. It is not for anyone, who doesn’t have a helluva sense of humor and a fertile imagination.
Sloan wrote the story stone cold sober without any chemical assistance, There was a good bit of other world assistance.
Sloan still believes God wrote the story, and he was just along for the ride, trying to keep up with the many unexpected twists and turns, which perhaps a novelist like Tom Robbins, who wrote Just Another Roadside Attractions, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Jitterbug Perfume might appreciate.
Sloan doubts a novelist like John Grisham would like Heavy Wait.
Perhaps minor actor Stepehen King would like it. Perhaps not.
Same for Oprah, the principal supporting actress.
https://archive.org/details/retun-of-the-strange-v-20_202306
The long awaited sequel to Heavy Wait. This book had a gestational cycle of years and it is a rip roaring romp through America and both the kindness and also the dark heart of the American experience. Equally moving, sometimes you will laugh, sometimes you will cry, sometimes you will not know whether to continue, and sometimes you won't be able to tear yourself away from this STRANGE tale of Riley and his paradise mated wyrd love, Willa Sue, who thought of living in the Florida Keys, but something unexpected happened.
Larry King and Oprah Winfrey and lot of Americans wanted the hero, Riley Strange, to run for president, but something unexpected happened.
As for me, I have two doctors in Birmingham, who keep me going. One probably can be replaced by a doctor in the Florida Keys, but the other is the reason I still can talk. He developed a laser treatment to mow back and keep at bay a viral growth on my vocal cord. Either the angels take his place, or I have to return to Birmingham every six months to see him.
I don’t know if I have the stamina to make that long drive any more. I can’t imagine I have the stamina to pack up and leave Birmingham and move Key West and find a place to live and move in and unpack what the movers bring down from Birmingham.
I would miss a lot of people in Birmingham, whom I met and came to know pretty well after I moved back to my home town in 2019, after hanging out a while in Tuscaloosa, sleeping nights in a spare bedroom in the home of my children’s mother.
I know I am a strange bird. I did not find anyone in Key West, aka Key Weird, where the weird go pro, who was anywhere near as weird as me- until 2017, when I met “Bob”, who now does the tech work for our Redneck Mystic Lawyer podcasts, and who gets my books into the free internet library, archive.org.
In March 2118, as I rode my conch cruiser bicycle to Hometown Pac's call to candidates at Salute Ristorante on Higgs Beach in Key West, where that event always took place, it came to me out of the blue what I would say during my time before the audience.
When I was called up to the speakers' stand by my good friend Todd German, who presided over Hometown Pac candidate events, chuckles and groans came from the audience. Todd handed me the mic, and I looked at the audience and said, “Everyone here knows Key West is an open air insane asylum.” Laughter and nodding heads from the audience. “And that I'm the head lunatic.” Laughter and nodding heads form the audience. “So why not make it official? Sloan for Mayor!' Groans from the audience.
I was way too wyrd even for Key Weird.
So, why would I do that again?
Besides, I fucking detest politics, which I made crystal clear every time I ran for office in Key West and the Florida Keys, and that but for God threatening me, I would not have run.
Yet, I confess that I do enjoy poking politics and seeing the response, and it’s a lot more fun poking in person, at candidate events, in city and county commission meetings, than on a blog or in a podcast, where there is no live interaction with the pokees and the spectators.
So while what lies ahead is a total mystery to me, what’s behind is crystal clear.
America is so totally fucked up that SNAFU is history and FUBAR reigns.
I have painted that in many posts at this mock presidential campain blog, and in many episodes of The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast at Torrent platforms, and The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast and the Redneck Mystic Podcast at YouTube. Same material, different platforms.
So, can’t help but wonder what Coach Saban tried to tell me around dawn today?
Do another podcast? Not for a while. Bob has really serious medical stuff that’s laid him low. But my fingers and laptop keyboard still work pretty good.
Perhaps the answer lies in why I got into politics in the first place?
In late December 2000, I got on a Greyhound bus in Los Angeles headed to Key West, where I would begin another stint of living on the street. When the bus reached Tallahassee, the seat of the Florida government, I fell asleep. The federal judge for whom I clerked after graduating from the Alabama School of Law, who ran the Democratic Party in Alabama from his judge chambers, except for the George Wallace faction, came to me in a dream and said he was thinking about getting into politics. I replied that I didn’t think that was s good idea, but, knowing him, he was going to do it. I woke up knowing I was fucked.
I can’t imagine fucking up America worse if I were president, and maybe America. Or maybe I would fuck it up worse that might be just what is needed?
I said quite a few times at goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningflooridakeys.com that I am a mere bait shrimp and the fisherman is God.
Here’s a submission I emailed today to bigpinekey.com’s Coconut Telegraph. Big Pine Key is the home of the key deer. My mechanic friend in the submission is “Bob”.
Re: hydrogen-powered cars and trucks submissionHi, Deer Ed -
Hope all is well with you.
I have a friend, who knows a whole lot about cars and trucks, tractors, motorcycles, and anything that uses a gasoline or diesel engine. He can take apart Ferraris, Lotuses, Porches, American cars and trucks, motor cycles, and tractors, and put them back together.
He wonders where will be stored all the several thousand pound toxic waste batteries in electric cars after the batteries die? I wonder where people like me, who live in apartment buildings and have to park our cars and trucks on streets, will charge our new electric cars after our old gasoline-powered cars die and go to the junkyard with their tiny toxic waste batteries?
My friend said there are several patents in the US Patent Office for automotive engines built to use electrolysis to separate hydrogen from water and the hydrogen powers cars and trucks. He said the technology was road tested in existing cars by car makers, and it worked great. On a quart of water, a sedan traveled several hundred miles. He said the technology can be installed existing and new vehicles.
He said The Atomic Energy Commission, egged on by the oil industry, declared the patented technology could be used to make nuclear weapons, so it cannot be used by auto and truck makers. He said it would take a very long time using the technology to make enough radioactive material to make even one nuclear weapon, and anyone working on the project would die of radiation poisoning long before the weapon was made.
I’m a tech idiot, but he convinced me that something is rotten in the Atomic Energy Commission. I already knew something was rotten in the oil industry.
Imagine hydrogen-powered cars and trucks putting Tesla and the Chinese Tesla knockoff out of business.
Imagine hydrogen-powered cars putting Saudi Arabia, the Middle East and Russia out of business.
Imagine America having no reason at all to be involved in the Middle East.
Just another fool
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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