Delight in the Darlings!

OK, whew. Those last couple of posts have been anything but uplifting. Let's try some cotton candy for a change. I'll pick on the kids.

So, first there's Colin. We passed him the link you see here from the WSJ about naked pumpkin running on Halloween in Boulder. Now stop. Before you read further, read the story. Really. All of it. Its genius is that they treat it as an actual story and keep coming up with more comments that make it simply hilarious. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125693458626119361.html

OK. Fun, right? We sent it to Colin to remind him of his undergrad days; but as people mature and go to law school, and prepare to enter the law profession, their take on the goings-on changes a bit. To wit:

"Not that I'm really passionate about one's right to run around with pumpkins on one's head. But just so you know, a state law that bars nudity that is "likely to cause affront or alarm" is probably constitutionally overbroad. Especially so when violation results in a sex offense conviction. I read the follow-up stories on November 1. All the streakers covered up. But if they hadn't, and then were charged using that law, I think they could have challenged it and won."

So. There. Former Buff's undergrad morphs into aspiring Philly lawyer.

And then there's Steph, taking the world by storm today in ATL, across the conference floor space from my own meeting. Training 29 men on an on-line application system for vehicle service contracts sold by car dealerships that -truth be told - they'd rather not learn. Yawn. Eye roll. How WILL the young lady capture not just their attention but their engagement and commitment to learning and evangelizing the system in question? Persistence? Personality? Who knows. It's fun to watch, though, and more fun yet to keep meeting in the middle of the Atlanta office, both of us out of respective home turfs, but in the same hotel. At different functions and dinners, but catching up for oh, so brief periods. She is on her way to Buckhead now to "watch the Yankees" while I refuse to "watch the Phillies" in my room. Later she'll sneak in here to sleep in my bed with me before flying to the Bahamas in the morning, ignoring her own room because she's had a stressful week and doesn't get much of a chance to cuddle with her mom. Any city will do. And I'll be asleep when she comes in, but will relish the opportunity to give her hugs in the morning before we both go off to our separate gigs.

Night all.

Oops. Morning postscript. Wake-up call at 5:30, Steph wants to leave by 6 to get to her 8:20 flight. She has a car to return, bag to check. Bleary-eyed morning hugs and off she goes. Minutes later, a phone call. Her flight is at 7:15, not 8:20. She hadn't looked at her ticket. She doesn't make the flight. This is a trip purchased by a friend and is only for the weekend, and there isn't another flight until tomorrow. She's already turned in her car. She's stewing in line at the ticket counter - mad at herself, disappointed, embarrased to confess. I look for options on-line. Nothing until tomorrow. Then, a bit later, another call: bright, cheery. "Mama! This nice man got me on a flight! I get there at 3!" "Really? And who was this nice man?" "The over-booker!" "The what?"
"The over-booker!"

So, they put her on a full flight and now will bump someone else off for cash. I asked her: "What did you have to do to get him to do that?" But it's a pointless question. She was just Steph. On her way to the Bahamas.

Snippets in the key of life

On a random rant. Full of impressions, sensations, thoughts and ideas, streaming at me from everywhere.

From That Distant Land... "He liked the way the neighborhood gathered into itself on such days. Now and then, in the midst of the more casual conversation, a little trade talk would rouse up over a milk cow or a pocketknife or a saddle or a horse or a mule. Or there would be a j0ke or a story or a bit of news, uprisings of the town's interest in itself that would pass through it and die away like scurries of wind."

A simpler time. A conversation. Innocent and precious, and likely as or more important than the crap that passes for news or "national conversation" today. Makes me nostalgic for something I never really had. But is is community, si?

And from the same book, before I move on, a provacative thought: "If God loves the ones we can't, then finally maybe we can."

Only to ponder, guys.

Cycles of love and loss... most emotionally devastating pair of messages from friends, parents of Rachel, 28, who was a baby with our Colin. Simply must share, because it is so real and so raw and such a body blow.

"10/22

After over 5 weeks in the hospital, Rachel has been home with us since the evening of October 8. It is familiar and more comfortable for her. I wish I could say her coming home is good news in relation to her cancer. It is not...
...We take turns taking care of her at night. Evan took the last 2 nights and I'll be with her tonight...
...On the more positive side, she started another chemo drug last Saturday...
...So how are we holding up? Okay I guess. We have wonderful support from friends, family, work and home health care. It is tough to sit with a child slipping toward death. The best I can do is tell her I love her, put a cold cloth on her head, and do my best to make her comfortable...
...Evan has started reading to her at night sometimes. One of their favorite stories is "Where the Wild Things Are." So he read it to her a couple nights ago.

11/1
Rachel is resting quieter today then yesterday. Her breathing is slower and more steady. The focus of her care now is to keep her comfortable.

Thank you all for your love, prayers, hope and good wishes. It has given us strength."

So while we deal with economic crises, I am reminded yet again about what is important ... about how lucky we are, how it all comes down to stuff that is so very very basic: talk that "rouses up" and passes for excitement in the bucolic pace of simplicity, love for family, grief for loss, all of us just keeping on, keeping on. Extracting meaning and experience at every step.

How we keep all of that right up front within us and make it central to living is a challenge - but one worthy of taking on. It's all down at the core, baby.

Learn to be still

Lyric girl comin' at ya today, with a meditation on stillness... and the peace it provides...

The Eagles:
Though the world is torn and shaken
Even if your heart is breakin',
It's waiting for you to awaken
And someday you will-learn to be still

Probably the deepest, most sustained stillness I've engaged in was back in 2005 in the mountains of Tennessee. I was at a week long Stop at Nothing retreat, held at Barry and Su's "farm." Each participant pitched his own tent at least a half mile from anyone else's and much of the meditation during the week took place sitting outside the front flap. In the early light. In the dark. On a mountain. With the trees. Opening up to only the sound of my heartbeat, no movement, no thoughts, just being.

Wind stirs the bambo,
But once the wind passes,
the bamboo is silent.
Geese land in the chill pond,
But once the geese fly away,
there are no reflections.

In the same way,
Once the red dust passes,
The mind is still.

When the mind is still, it can't shriek quite as loudly that it is in control. Breath, heartbeats, sensations, come to the foreground, and it is sometimes possible to recognize that much of the time the mind is exerting a level of control it shouldn't have. In the woods on the mountain, putting myself in that place allowed me to see and feel energy around me that I would have been oblivious to on a normal day. I connected to it.

And while one or two experiences during that week counted as profound, the benefits of quieting the mind and focusing on the breath don't need to be profound in order to make a big difference in your life. Detachment from the noise, scattering, and frenzy swirling around us most of the time is reward enough - especially since that benefit lasts and can help us seal out the anxiety and shallowness that are everywhere.

Best of all, it takes no effort. You don't need to do anything, just be.

Moon above water.
Sit in solitude.

If waters are placid, the moon will be mirrored perfectly. If we still ourselves, we can mirror the divine perfectly. Neither the water nor the moon make any effort to achieve a reflection.

Sisters

I don't have a sister. (A great brother, but he was a "little" brother, and although I love him dearly we weren't particularly close growing up). I don't honestly remember whether I really wanted a sister, but I said I did. And when I imagined the family I would have one day -- in the form of a 3rd grade project called "My Life" -- I created three children, one boy and two sisters. Voila!

And as I watched Lindsey and Stephanie be sisters, I experienced some pangs of jealousy from time to time. They would fight, of course: Stephanie's first tattle-tale moment came when she was only two and yelled down the stairs: "Mom! Lindsey hit me back!" But they had "sleep-overs" in each other's rooms once a week, regardless of who had stolen whose jewelry or socks.

Lindsey recounted a memory about her little sister:

"I was about six and Stephanie was about four. We were a block away from home swimming at a friend’s house. It was one of those four foot tall pools that kills the grass in the backyard because it’s up all summer and filled with water…the kind you can easily pour out by accidentally flipping part of the wall down. It started raining lightly, but quickly became a thunderstorm and Steph and I had to get home, so we took off at a full sprint toward the house. We were almost there…about two driveways away, and I realized that I had left all my little plastic jewelry, which was more important than anything on Earth at that time, sitting by the pool on the fence. I stopped the both of us dead in our tracks.
“Stephanie, I have to go back!” I yelled over an earth-shattering clap of thunder.
“Okay,” such a tiny voice replied.
“Stay here!”
I took off back in the other direction, heart racing, mind racing, so frightened I couldn’t even comprehend what was going on. I snatched my jewelry off the fence, terrified and alone, and it seemed to take forever to get back fighting through rain. As I neared the point at which we had stopped, I saw little Stephie standing there on the sidewalk being soaked through, lightening streaking right above her head, thunder shaking the ground…she was so calm. My dad was on the front porch yelling at her to come in, but she just watched the other direction for me. She waited, staring as I passed each driveway. She waited patiently until I was right by her side, and when I got to her, she broke into a run again and we were home safely in a matter of seconds. She doesn’t remember this, but I’ve told her the story a million times."

As they got older, they were there for each other in all the important ways,and they have stayed true friends. Whenever I see a picture of them together, I feel all warm and lucky. Sisters. What a blessing.

"We Wait to Hate"

When I worked for CCG, one of the most interesting and rewarding clients we had was Baltimore Safe and Sound, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation program site dedicated to improving the quality of life for children and families in Baltimore. Lots to improve there. Our initial set of focus groups we conducted to position the campaign yielded some poignant and insightful revelations. "When you go outside," we asked the young people, "what do you see that tells you that things aren't OK here in Baltimore?"

"Babies crawling on the steet."
"No nets in the basketball goals in the park."
"Hypodermics on the ground."
"Kids out at all hours with nobody watching them."

One young woman said, "Why can't someone give our parents home training?" Home training, we asked? "Yeah, like somebody needs to teach them. Like not to throw garbage out the window, but to get a trashcan to put it in."

The campaign had seven goals, ranging from improving prenatal care, to making sure kids entered school ready to learn. But all of the goals - and all of the problems - were interrelated, and systemic, and sometimes seemed insurmountable.

Hathaway Ferebee, executive director of the campaign, headlined one of the advertorials we created as "We Wait to Hate." She said, paraphrasing, that we don't ensure moms get good prenatal care, babies are born with low birth weight and struggle with cognition, we don't provide good pre-school education, kids start school unprepared, and through all of this we either feel sorry for them or ignore them. Then, they fall behind, drop out, hang with bad people, commit their first crime, and then we decide we hate them.

Thinking about this today after hearing the press conference in Chicago about starting a national conversation about youth violence. Someone asked Arnie Duncan why today people appeared to show up to hear this message when he has been giving the same speech for years. His answer was the power of video. Watching an innocent child get beaten to death moved people.

If only the problem wasn't so entangled. But it is. It's like a giant root system, underground. The predictive modeling program they've developed to identify and target the most likely victims and perpetrators may help. (And to Hathaway's point, they are the same group). But until we go oh so far back upstream and start with the addicted pregnant mom who needs inpatient drug rehab, which costs far less than the foster care her children will eventually need, until the systemic problems are fixed at their root, it's going to be a continuing game of Whack-a-Mole.

We'll get outraged, and many of us will hate.
God love and protect our children and their parents. We can do better.

50+2 Great Memories

Capturing two - among many - wonderful memories of my 50th birthday, two years ago tomorrow. It was a spectacular birthday, starting with the arrival of Sid, and ending with the wonderful trip to Sedona with the coolest women I know.

On the actual day of my birthday, Jeff presented me with a a series of prints. Each one was an image of the state flower of the places I've lived, accompanied by a poem that reflected that particular time in my/our life. One after the other... Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, Indiana, Georgia, Kansas. I was overwhelmed, and just sobbing by the time he gave me the Kansas sunflower and Grace Cavaliere's Tarot Card VI. The Lovers:

"Having loved me when I was young
and now when I am not,
you are twice blessed
for giving
a rich person a gift.

In no one else's dream but yours,
I will be the old man
wearing a white straw hat

with a red satin bow
who says Thank you."

OK, he substituted man for woman, but that just made it all the more precious. Was there ever a more loving gift?

And, was there ever a more loving friend than Terri? She gave me a gift of words, as well, powerful because they came from deep insight and an attempt to understand another. People who make the effort to"get" you, who really pay attention are the very best friends. Here were her words:

"When I think of you and the reasons I admire you so, two words come to mind. Not optimism. Though you do, as we say, default to it. Not compassion. Though you are the first to shed a tear for someone else’s pain. Not strength. Though you sail through crises that would swamp others. No, the first word I would choose would be arthroscopy. While the rest of us are wallowing in the muscle and tissue, you are able to bore to the core of the issue, the problem, the irony – even the joke – with the accuracy and certainty of the finest surgeon. In this one way (and others), you are uncanny. The other word I would choose is easier to explain. Love. I love you, Jeanne."

My deepest gratitude to you both for making my life so rich. I am very lucky.

Resist Hysteria

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/28/assignment_america/main5347232.shtml#comments
My friend John Martellaro always teases me about my frequent use of exclamation points in my emails and other correspondence. He's right. I do use them alot. But I think I'm going to give them up. In my case, they almost always signify excitement, pleasure, wonderment. But in the year of our Lord 2009, they are everywhere. And they mostly signal outrage.

I don't know how or why we got here. I'll let the pundits speculate about partisanship, racism, fear and the rest of it. But I do know that I've been taught the lesson, directly and indirectly, over and over, that you can only control yourself. And that railing against the (whatever), or trying to make (somebody) do (something) or behave a certain way is almost always a losing proposition. That's not to say I can't or don't try to influence people to adopt a certain viewpoint from time to time, but I focus only on what is in my own circle of influence because the rest of it is a tremendous waste of energy that would be much better spent on something positive.

The story linked here is a perfect example of when to groan and go on. It is a beautiful story about a dog whose family was in a horrific car accident and who stayed on the scene for 13 days, sleeping with the little artifacts he had gathered up - toothbrushes and the like. A very smart rescue worker who "wouldn't take lost for an answer" figured out what had happened, and found the family, who had all survived and thought the dog had died. Unfortunately, the family's medical bills - there were five of them in the accident - meant they temporarily had to move to a place that wouldn't allow pets. So the rescue lady agreed to keep the dog for them until they could get back on their feet.

You know where this is going, right? The very first comment on the website where this is posted was this:

Quote: "Unfortunately, because of the accident and the medical expenses, the Kelly family has had to temporarily relocate to a place that doesn't allow dogs."I hate these veiled attempts at swaying the majority opinion on socialized health care. We're smart to your tactics, CBS!!!!

Note: FOUR exclamation points. (Yes, John, I guess capital letters could fall into the same category). So I'll re-state. Four exclamation points. Don't you wonder what this person thinks those extra little marks are going to do? Be the last straw that convinces Texas to leave the union? Convince Nancy Pelosi to drop the public option? More likely, the post wil be featured on Colbert. And people will laugh, but uneasily.

And this isn't just about politics, by the way. What about children flying off the handle over minutiae and murdering each other in Chicago? My point is this: there is so much craziness that the only sane response is to abstain from participation in it. So I won't rant. I won't exclaim. I'll remain calm and focus on what I can contribute.

And, sorry, John, you won't have my exclamation points to kick around anymore. At least not for now.

Longing for Sedona

http://www.enchantmentresort.comSeptember is waning into October. My favorite time of year. And my favorite place this time of year is Enchantment Resort in Sedona. I don't remember how many years ago I first went to Sedona, but as the following story is told, perhaps you will. I was there for a "roundtable" of independent PR firms, and our host took us on an early morning, silenced hike through Boynton Canyon. The canyon was accessible publicly a mile or so back from our property, but we entered via card key in a gate at the end of Enchantment's property. We were hushed upon entrance - about 7:30 or 8AM, and walked single-file through what seemed like six different climates. As we moved back deeper into the canyon, our guide pointed at the cairns by the side of the trail. Two high, three high, ten high, more and more as we went. And as we got deeper, the trees grew higher, the light grew different, and the feeling grew stronger. This was magic. There were places I was compelled to stop. To watch the trees and light shimmering. To feel the earth energy thrumming like I had never before experienced. An hour in, about. Then, turning to go back, peaceful at first. Then the silence was shattered by laughter of people hiking in. Loud, boisterous, out of place. Offensive. And then we met up with them. Men and women in khakis and ranger hats, armed with sticks, striking and dismantling all of the cairns we had passed.

Because we were in a place of silence, we only cast anxious glances at each other on the way out. By the time we reached the gate and could talk again, our guide explained that these were forest ranger hires, paid to knock down the cairns for fear they would frighten people. It was jarring, given the beautiful journey inward.

And then, outside the gate, when we could talk, members of our group who had not accompanied us, approached and told us that the Governor of Missouri Mel Carnahan had been killed in a plane crash, a month before an election he would win posthumously, beating John Ashcroft, later attorney general of the U.S.

It was a stark contrast. Peace and wonderment followed by harsh, glaring, and violent.

But, oh, the splendor and peace of the canyon. Go.

Sid is Cold

Sid came into my life almost two years ago, now, on my 50th birthday, one of many spectacular gifts from my husband. Our 20 year old cat, Coffee, had succumbed earlier in the year, and now rests in a coffee jar on the shelf above the TV. Jeff had said no more cats, because he was allergic. But on the Friday evening before my birthday, I was instructed to come home early, and when I did, Jeff told me to get the dog and load her into the car. He then drove us to the shelter, where Sid waited for us, hunched down in a cage with a few other felines, a small gray Persian who had been in residence for eight weeks or so, partially because he was an adult. His name was apparent to me almost instantly: he scowled up at me with his baleful yellow eyes and any meet and greet session that had been contemplated was cut short in half a second as he twisted and clawed his way back into his cage. Sorry, Roxie, the dog meets the cat session didn't materialize either.

Shy, I thought. No worries. We brought him home and unloaded him from his carrier into the small toilet room in our master bathroom, and there I spent the next two days, on and off, trying to coax him to come close enough that I could reach him.

Since then, he has gradually warmed up, but only in a Persian way. He won't be picked up. He won't sit on my lap. But he stays close and follows me wherever I go around the house, sitting just out of reach. When I took him in for his annual check-up last week, Jeff put him into the carrier and I warned the vets to get their gloves out. Instead, he was meek and acquiesent, prompting the vets to attempt to take him in back and get rid of all of his knots.

He came back seventeen minutes later, with a "lion cut" - face, tail and boots intact,but the rest shaved. He looked mad, but mostly pathetic. Lo and behold, though, he has moved from the headboard of the bed, looking down at me each night, to the bed itself, making himself a nest and settling in to sleep on the bed. A first. After two years. And all it took, apparently, was to make him cold.

I'll keep you updated on whether that ever translates into letting himself be held.

Guilt. Motivation.

Circumstances have conspired to prompt this post. Truth be told, one reason I started this blog was to re-acquaint myself with writing. Why? To recover motivation for a project that has been too long idle. The Jim project. Jim is my 93 year old father-in-law. The former head of the Journalism school at Iowa State, Jim has an award named after him that is presented to a distinguished journalist each Homecoming at Iowa State. This year's recipient is Christine Romans of CNN, if any of you watch her (financial reporter). This award has been given out for years and years, but not until Stephanie started attending ISU did we ever make it for one of the ceremonies. Shame on us. Maybe three years back, the whole family made it for the award presentation, including Jim and Toni. The recipient was Pat Dean, associate dean of journalism at USC, although she spent a lot of her life at NBC in Chicago. Her speech inspired me to interview her and many, many others about the extraordinary accomplishments of a man who would describe himself as "ordinary." My intent was a book. But after a year of interviewing him for an hour each week, and talking to many incredibly successful students of his, I've let it lie dormant. Again, shame on me. Tonight I got an email from Jim, passing on a story written by one of those students, for me to use in my writing. As if I'm doing that. Arrgghhh. Get me started!!

Other people's words

I'm a voracious reader. I devour books, and recommend only the ones that stand out for a long time after reading them. It is not at all uncommon for me to to forget a book shortly after reading it. The ones that remain in my consciousness do so because they held a resonance for me. And that resonance is not one-dimensional. I can be moved by humor, by plot, by mood, by character. Sometimes the book is summarized so well by a quotation or poem the author includes at the end, that it is what I take with me, or jot down to visit from time to time.

Sharing two of those today. The first is from The Time Traveler's Wife (a movie I haven't seen because I'm so afraid it's going to corrupt the beauty of the story). Henry and Clare's love is made stronger by the shock and disruption of a continual cycle of unexpected absence and uncertain reunion. The passage from the Oddysey quoted at the end paints the picture:

"Now from his breast into his eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sun-warmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big surf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
Her white arms round him pressed as though forever."

As though forever. Love exists outside of time, which is a miracle.

Gilead is the story of a 77 year old pastor from Iowa, who is writing a letter to his young son by his young wife. He won't be around when the boy is grown, so he wants to impart his thinking, and his philosophies. One set of passages in the book:

"There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us..."

"...Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave – that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm..."

"...There is no justice in love, no proportion in it, and there need not be, because in any specific instance it is only a glimpse or parable of an embracing, incomprehensible reality. It makes no sense at all because it is the eternal breaking in on the temporal. So how could it subordinate itself to cause or consequence?"

I simply can't add any commentary. The words speak for themselves. Enjoy.

Do This, Don't Do That

The New York Times this morning published an article titled "Travelers' Fee Can Help Fight Disease." It described a UN program that has raised $1.2 billion over the past three years for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB through a $2 optional fee added to airline tickets sold by many prominent travel sites. Currently active in 15 countries and accounting for 7 to 10 percent of airline tickets sold, the program is now going global.

Compare that to another fee, imposed by federal lawmakers, that was the subject of a front page USA Today story last Thursday. In this case, the fee is not optional, amounts to 15% of the cost of the flight, and subsidizes 2,834 "general aviation" airports with no scheduled passnger flights - handling mostly recreational planes and corporate jets,along with frequent trips by members of Congress, according to the story. Funding was $1 billion in 2007, and funded 95% of the capital costs for the airports, as well as kicking in substantial percentages of operating costs. And a kicker: airports who receive this federal money cannot close for 20 years.

I'm sure the USA Today story could have provided better balance - at least according to the howls of outrage on the paper's web-site. But in the "do this, don't do that" category, there's no contest.

Down Here Below

I called this thing Lyric Girl, so I guess I should include some. Last week I was in the remarkable melange of humanity in New York, walking to work from the Downtown Marriott, past Ground Zero, which was jammed with trucks filled with building parts, and with (more than I expected) tourists with cameras. Presumably they had come for the anniversary of the attacks, and had stayed over the weekend to extend their trip into the next week. Up on the 41st floor of the JP Morgan Chase building where our office is, the views are spectacular, and you get that birds-eye view sense of looking down on the busy people/ants living in their world. The perspective is humbling. A different feeling from the one I get looking at the majestic Rockies and feeling oh-so small and irrelevant, but similar in the sense of feeling that as small and ant-like as we are, we are all a part of the collective. Humanity as an entity. So, then, that naturally got me singing the Steve Earle song "Down Here Below" in my head. In the song, Pale Male, the hawk is circling above Manhattan - with this narrative voice over:

Pale Male the famous redtail hawk performs wingstands high above midtown Manhattan
Circles around for one last pass over the park
Got his eye on a fat squirrel down there and a couple of pigeons
They got no place to run they got no place to hide
But Pale Male he’s cool, see ‘cause his breakfast ain’t goin’ nowhere
So he does a loop t loop for the tourists and the six o’clock news
Got him a penthouse view from the tip-top of the food chain, boys
He looks up and down on fifth ave and says “God I love this town”

Then, the chorus, really the only part of the song that's a song.

But life goes on down here below
And all us mortals struggle so
We laugh and cry
And live and die
That’s how it goes
For all we know
Down here below

The Red Book

So, how cool is it that Jung's The Red Book will be on "store shelves" next month? I, for one, buy my books from Amazon (prime), and signed up to be notified upon publication. The NYT magazine article started out eerily similar to the opening of "The People of the Book" and just got better from there. 205 oversize pages with elaborate calligraphy and with richly hued, staggeringly detailed paintings? Ten years in translation? 1,000 footnotes, citing everyting from mythology to the alchemical formulation of gold? Jerry Garcia wishes his long, strange trip could have been as deep a dive into the unconscious. Or maybe he doesn't. I just can't wait to get a glimpse of what has been locked away for so many decades. It may confuse rather than illuminate the layers of the mind, but the journey promises to be rich.