Year Two

He did it for a living. He was a public speaker. He had to be able to handle a wise-guy. He was a poet. I was not. He came to San Francisco because it was the poetry capital of the world - North Beach. I ironically was influenced by the North Beach Beatniks. They called San Francisco the magic city. We are concerned with ideas here, or so I was. Poetry was too broad. Can't write laws on it. Of course some had different opinions. One guy even thought that the painting Guernica could stop wars. Anti-war-impossible philosophies and treatises were written on the eves of Word Wars I and II. How did it happen? An admirable endeavor. The word to end all wars. Unfortunately those who make wars, make words to justify them. Word to the dies.

So the Professor had been to Japan in the army and loved it. He had an interest in Zen and Zen poetry. So he influenced me there as well. I was playing with form and not words. I studied art for a long time. Did it have any validity as a war-stopper ? Are you kidding ? But I think what I was doing was using sculpture to registrar people's unconscious if I could. So the Professor - half and half, half Massachusetts, heavy duty puritanism sweaters and pipe and the zen flower sword. He had the English chair and the Japanese table, with Japanese style cups and dishes Jan made in the pottery shop. He had the Japanese robe and slippers. But more than anything, what he was - was a story teller. He also had a car, a station wagon to drag us all along with five kids to the woods and beaches, to wherever they wanted to go and we could come along.

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