Don't Speak To Me; I'm Broken-Hearted

 

Tom Robbins died. 

Oh, I didn't have any easy way to say it because there is no easy way to tell the world that your favorite author of all time has left you here without another book. 

News Report

Oh, don't even speak to me. I don't care if I am being dramatic. I cannot tell you how many rough patches in my life this odd man's odd books got me through. Nor can I adequately describe how he made me want to be a writer. I keep my laptop on a stand now, at the behest of my chiropractor, and I have Tom's photo on the stand, looking up at me from under my laptop. Telling me to be laid back, but to also write the thing.

You can see me talking about his book Still Life With Woodpecker here.

I've met some cool authors in my life: Ken Kesey, Kinky Friedman, Walter Mosley, Juan Felipe Herrera, but never Tom, my #1. And never my #2, which would have to be Raymond Chandler, but I think he was gone before I got here.

If you haven't read Tom Robbins try what is probably his most accessible work: Jitterbug Perfume, and go from there. 

 

And trust me on this one: do not wait to see that band, or meet that author. Life, even though Tom made it 92 years, is short. I am so lucky to say I saw Glen Campbell's last concert, and the last one from ELO in Los Angeles, and Cyndi Lauper's farewell tour. Yes, your money is for shelter and food and kids' needs and college educations, but it's also for living, for fun. Do the fun things, see your favorite people, whoever they are, be they friends, family, or mildly famous, while you can. It's the best way to blow money, and you'll remember it more than all the other ways you blow money.

 

I saw a photo on FB of a friend of mine taking his pre-teen son to the Super Bowl today. Those are expensive tickets, but my friend has done a lot of years of working hard selling houses, and he has one son, one child, only. What is life for if not pleasure?

 

Oh, how did he dare to die and leave us wanting more?

Dear, and sadly, so sadly, departed Tom Robbins, I wish I had hunted you down on your rainy island and gushed over your books in person. I remember a long dark night rescued by Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas which I read in one sitting. I remember how many copies of Still Life With Woodpecker I gave away. I imagine your atoms doing a conga line with those who were fantastic and went before you. I knew, too, you were really getting up there, but I had never lost hope of another book.
Religion has a strange idea, in my view, of an afterlife: heaven and hell both seem equally awful prospects to me, and science has not yet discovered that we do something cool like rocket through the space-time continuum, our stardust matter mixing with other stardust and seeding into a new world, but, I hope, for Tom, that something like that does happen: transported inside a cosmic maraca to a fun new world.

If YOU want to be transported inside of a fun maraca like precious magic beans without having to die first, pick up one of Tom's books.