I think time seems to be moving fast but it's really going slow.

In the mid-nineties a computer-meister friend of ours said, "No one's ever going to make any money selling stuff on the internet." I told him I was posting all of my books on my website.

He said, "Good advertizing but it still won't sell the books." Seems like minutes ago when he said those unwise words. Books and books, editions and editions later the books are still moving along in their own stream of time, mostly propelled by the internet.

I remember saying to my friend, "I suppose you're going to tell me that Amazon.com isn't selling any books." His answer -- "Not that many cause they're still not making a profit." I didn't like to hear such discouragement because I was just setting up my first website. I was hopeful that it might help me make a little living.

It did - pre-google, pre-Amazon-making-a-profit. Publishers still had huge publicity departments then and editors took you out to lunch and if you did any promotion for your book there was a limo to pick you up. Those were the days . . . seems like seconds ago to me.

Is that what the brown lizard thinks on my doorstep? Moments ago, I was a great big, scary dinosaur. Now look at me!

Yeah, they do. Sometimes I'm not sure though -- it could be somebody else.

I once had a conversation with Geronimo in Dunkin Donuts. Not the real Geronimo but one who looked like him. Iron Eyes Cody, or somebody who looked just like him, showed up at a reading I gave at Boca Raton. He said to me, "I'm here to draw them in; you sell the books." What a sweetheart. When I went to thank him after the event, he was gone.

Couple years ago on the streets of Manhattan, well not too far from Bleeker and the offices of my agent, I spotted a funny looking little guy with a cellphone and he was saying in a loud New Yawk voice -- "Yeah, I sawr it, but whatdaya want me to do about it?" I said to my wife Lorry, "That guy looks just like Danny DeVito." She said, "That's because he IS Danny DeVito."

Jackie Chan winked at me once in the Atlanta Airport but that was because I picked him out of a sea of faces, a wave of people coming at me. I wanted to throw him a kick but I'm very glad I didn't.

Yesterday we were in Washington DC and we were having dinner at a lovely Ethiopian restaurant just up from Eads St. when in the door stepped a mild little man with beautiful dark gold skin and a haunted sort of worried hawk-like proud, dignified face and Lorry said to me, "How is it possible?"

I said, "What?" She said, "Look at him. . . isn't it . . ."

I finished it for her -- "Haile Selassie, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah."

With no imagination, you would see the spirit of the beautiful little king in all his glory -- old workclothes. There it was, the crowning moment of the imagination -- truth -- the king who faced Mussolini and had him disgraced. The king, who with dignity and solemnity and bravery faced a modern day army with bows and arrows, slings and rocks. Did he not know it was the 20th Century?

Anyone who doubts Selassie I's courage, get yourself to the corner of Eads and 23rd St and walk a little ways, order dinner, sit down and eat the best food you've ever eaten. The king will come walking in. But he won't see you. You will see him.

I was telling stories at the Miami Public Library's "The Art of Storytelling" annual festival.

Someone said, "I like those tall tales."

Tall is just another word for s-t-r-e-t-c-h. You pull the tale along like taffy, you exaggerate, you draw it out until it's laughable. Well, that's one way we do it. My way, anyway.

Our grandson Taj was present for each of the storytellings I did and so was his sister Anais. Our daughters, Mariah and Hannah were also there. My wife, Lorry was also present. I guess I am a family man storyteller: I bring my family along when I tell.

Taj did a stretch of his own when he wrote Mariah's Mom's Day card -- "You are the bestest mom in the world. I will behave for over 100 years."

That's sort of what Chipmunk said to Gila Monster when he was trying to get back in good favor with the wizard-lizard. I think I told that story for the thousandth time on Saturday. Or was it the millionth? Anyway, it was the bestest I ever did.

I bought a copy of The Lake Matters: Notes about Writing and Life by Aram Saroyan. Lorry had just made dinner and we were preparing to eat and there I was standing, reading Aram's book and loving it and I forgot about time. I was standing, reading. Time stopped. Dinner stopped. But life did not stop. Life was going on in that book, especially in that chapter I was reading where the author says -- "The writer reads, so to speak, as the carpenter looks at a newly built house -- with, perhaps, the idea of building another one like it, or maybe incorporating a nicety into an edifice currently under construction." Yes, I thought, yes. This is what's it's like to read as a writer where every comma is a dovetail joint and where every period is a ten penny nail.

What a magnificent book this is for teachers. And for writers. Both of which Aram Saroyan is.

And do not forget, he also wrote a poem that completely changed the way I (and most of my generation) listened to crickets:

Not a
cricket
ticks a
clock

As I read, and the dinner cooled on the table, a blue glow came around Aram's book. And the room, and those in it, were lighter and brighter and wiser. I looked around. The book of the blue glow was still glowing. And that's how writers read books. Something may happen that has never happened before. Aram Saroyan, 1965

Mary woke up and broke her foot. Nobody was in the house. Her closet doors were shaking. She got up very quickly. She went to the kitchen to get the telephone and called 911. When the police got there she was on the floor dead.


The above beginning of a story was written by Claire Lerner who was visiting our home two years ago with her parents, Higgy and Renee. I love the accidental ease with which Claire, age 11, just "fell" into her story. She did this while we, the adults at the table were talking. Bored, Claire opened my laptop, which is always on the long white pine trestle table in our kitchen (in all of our kitchens since 1972) here in Florida. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Claire tickle the keys a little. Then, satisfied she had a good beginning, she quit typing and went outside.

Claire's facile typing produced, I think, a good beginning. A springboard for more, and more. I don't know if she ever wrote another word, but it doesn't matter. In such good beginnings, the story lies in wait for the writer to return.

Here is another from a young writer in New York state. His reading teacher, an old friend of ours, Fred Burstein is a very gifted man -- poet, story writer, picture book author, fine woodworker, sculptor, former actor on daytime TV -- all rolled into one. But it's Fred's finesse and intuitive skill as a reading coach that has made him one of the best teachers in America. His student Joshua wrote this --

In the Woods
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by Joshua Kenneth Swartz
>
>
>I don't know the last time I was in the woods. I don't live by the woods.
>The last time I was in the woods I had a tick on my shoulder and it was
>sucking the blood out of me. It was this big, about 2 inches, dangling
>from my shoulder. Another time I had two ticks on my leg. My mom used a
>hair clip or something with a rubber tip. She tried to burn the tick off
>with it and instead she burned me. Then she took her name tag with a clip
>and she grabbed it with that and then pulled it out. When she burned me it
>really hurt.
>
>In my back yard there is a water falls like Niagara Falls. It makes
>a "D" and I tried to walk through it and my hand got wrapped around a
>thorn. I don't know how. I can take prickers and regular thorns but not
>blood thorns. Those are the long red ones. That's what I went through and
>they went into my skin. I didn't bleed because I took them out a certain
>way. You have to twist the thorn right a little, then twist it left twice,
>then push down gently and you yank out quickly and put your finger over
> the hole and it doesn't bleed.
>
>Once I was in the woods and I heard a branch start to crack so I
>stood under it so it would hit me. It didn't really hurt. Then I just
>walked home.

Good work, Joshua and Claire, keep those stories coming. With a good beginning, the story will practically write itself.
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