On The Road With Al and Ivy: Blog

"Though frightening, your dream is a significant portent. You must know the Gods have decreed that the lot of the living is to grieve. Your dream ordains mourning for the one who survives." - The Gilgamesh (Gerald J. Davis 2014 translation) "I have heard it said that there are men who read in books to convince themselves there is a God." - James Fenimore Cooper (Last Of The Mohicans) "...I was playing the guitar but heard an orchestra in my head." - John Fahey As of this writing (of this opening section), this blog has reached a wonderful milestone; a half million visits, virtually all of it for the "On The Road With Al & Ivy" homeless literary journal that began on the Delta Snake page and was later split off into it's own blog. The half million figure is the total for the two blog pages. The earlier blog was called the Delta Snake Review, which was intended to be a continuation of my 80s blues and jazz...

"Then, here in Argos, we’d have often met in love and gladness, two as friends and guests, with nothing that could ever part our paths till, wrapped in blackest clouds, we met our death. A god must have been envious of that, for he has destined him—a fate not known by any other—never to come home.” - Homer (The Odyssey Of Homer, Allen Mandelbaum 1990 translation)  No one, be it remembered, seeks the desert for a pleasure-ground. Life and business traverse it by paths along which the bones of things dead are strewn as so many blazons. - LewWallace (Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ) One of the concepts that's made it into the Pop Psychology/Philosophy canon is that life is about the journey, and not the destination, and like most truths, it's true if it is, and isn't if it isn't. In the Middle Ages the Christians in the lower economic classes were taught to endure the present or at least enjoy the little things in life for the greater reward of Heaven after death. That...

"So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality —" - Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) The caged bird dreams of clouds.  - Japanese Proverb To believe in one’s dreams is to spend all of one’s life asleep.  - Chinese Proverb I began work on the final draft of the book last week. I had planned to do maybe three or four more revision passes, but realized over the past few weeks that it was ready to be finished. There were several issues with the earlier versions, the most serious was figuring out what the basic "story" was. The original structure was chronological, and that was the best way to get it all down. What made the revision passes difficult was that it wasn't how I wanted to tell the story, but was stuck in a linear structure. The original conception, which dated back to the 80s, as relate...