Shamanism

2011_10_16 Books and more books

Dear Hal,

Like you in California the heat has not let up here either. We have been in the high nineties for the last 3 days and there aren’t any let ups till next week. We are pretty tired of it, as you are. Strangely, even though I do not go out much any more, I am not subject to cabin fever. I love my studio even though it drives me mad because it has become too small, which promotes losing things in the welter of stuff jammed into the space, like an address on a piece of paper and bigger things, like a particular book or drawing. As a case in point a Mandala design that I used on the title page of BRIDGE IN THE FOG, has disappeared, which is a bummer because the printer wants to scan it again. I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find it. Frustrating. I may have to draw it again. But there have been dozens of little and big problems in getting my three books done. Yes, I said three. It’s three because I have rewritten and revised PRIMUS ROTA, something I have thought about for years so I did it last week. I cut away the verbiage, like excess fat on a steak, and made the narrative shorter and more concise, plus I added 7 more drawings. I have the 50 copies of EROS AND PSYCHE and I’ll send you a copy when I get some mailers. I have the other two books in hard copy and they look good but they need editing. I have hired an ex-English teacher to edit BRIDGE to edit the 375 page final book in the trilogy, but Suzie has volunteered, with a little urging from me, to edit the revised Primus Rota. Bridge will probably be the last book printed because the gal is out of town till November. Plus PR is now only 53 pages long, so we should get that in a relatively short time. 50 copies of EROS cost me $730 and PR, if there are few complications, should be around $275 for 25 copies. I will get 25 copies of BRIDGE too, for around $750. That’s not bad for 3 “Art” books with lots of images inside. (All black and white of course.) Wait till you see EROS; the drawings look great, I could not be happier how they came out—but of course it took 6 runs before they got to the quality I wanted and finally got. For the last three weeks I have been going to the printer’s place almost every day. And it will be several weeks before we are completely finished with this project. I don’t have a price for the EROS, so I’ll let you contributed to the cause as you see fit. Incidentally, I found a slide of that self-portrait I sold to you that you seemed to have trouble finding. I had it digitized and copied. It is not very good but the image is there and you can use it to refresh your memory. In the drawing I am standing along side a pool table and I am wearing a cowboy hat. As for your question about a masse shot, that’s when you stroke down on the cue ball, in a nearly perpendicular position, which will put spin on the cue ball to go around a ball that is an obstacle to the ball you want to hit. It’s a curve ball, so to speak.

As for our health issues, they haven’t gone away, but I am in no mood to talk about them.

I probably haven’t told you that Ryder finally had his heart operation two weeks ago and it came out well and he’s back to normal already. A specialist was flown in to do the operation, rather then a local doctor because it was a tricky procedure. His heart had a hole in it the size of a quarter. We had all imagined a hole like pin prick—not quite. They went in up his groin with a Dacron patch and the first one was too small, so it had to be withdrawn and a larger one tried
And that was attached. Another doctor, his cardiologist, went down his throat with a camera to make sure the surgeon did not invade the esophagus area. Kaia is now furious because her insurance is refusing to pay for the cardiologist’s role in the operation. And the cost is in the thousands of dollars. She’s trying to justify his participation but right now the case is not resolved.

I am glad to see the grassroots anti-Wall street demonstrations and I hope the spirit of the protest translates into beating back the Tea Party, other Republicans, and the Money Clique that calls all the shots. I also hope the gulf between Romney and Tea Party gets wider and wider. Romney is the R-Party’s establishment candidate who is trying to wrest control from the Tea Party-fanatical-uncooperative-right wing faction, which gained control last November in the House and by abusing the filibuster rule in the senate. If Romney wins the primaries it could split the party and the Tea Party might try to form a third party, which would really help the D-Party and Obama. If you remember when Perot ran in 1994 Clinton was elected with only 43% of the vote.

Later,

Jerry P