Shana Tova

The rabbi (Adam Morris, aka Rabbi Mo) at the temple Fred and I are about to join (Temple Micah in Denver) had a couple of stories tonight. The second, which resonated particularly with me, was one of the Baal Shem Tov's -

A man goes from town to town in search of justice, and is continually disappointed in the people he encounters - "Does no one care?" he asks himself. "Is no one righteous?" He enters a very dark forest, and when he is far within, sees a strange light. He approaches - it's coming through the windows of a tiny hut. The door is ajar so he steps in. The hut is filled with an unimaginable number of wicks in oil, each wick alight. The flames flicker and dance, and he stands transfixed, utterly amazed. An old man appears who explains these lights are souls - each represents a living person.

Naturally the man wants to see his own, so the old man leads him to another room where he points out one of the scores of lights. But as the man looks at his own wick, he realizes it is dwindling, and its oil nearly gone. The old man has disappeared, leaving him alone with this soul of his. The man is grieved and disturbed to see how soon he will die. A wick near his has much more oil. He reaches out his hand to give himself just a little more, when a hand clamps upon his outstretched arm.

"Is this the justice you seek?!" the old man thunders.

The man awakes in the forest, alone, in darkness.

I thought that was a fine story, but in the garden of forking paths* which is the creative mind, I had a different version. In mine, the man comes to the hut, and seeing the door ajar, steps inside. There he sees countless wicks, their flames dancing, and every wick draws its life from a single great bowl of oil. Some wicks are small and others long, but they have one source from which to burn.An old man appears who explains each flame is a living soul.

And when the man sees this, he understands he draws his life from the same pool of spirit that sustains all souls. Some give greater light, some lesser, but each is alive with the flicker of its own fire even as it feeds from a common origin. In appreciating the wholeness that is the basis of these individual lights, he sees that the notion of separateness is mere illusion.

When he can recognize in others what he is proud to believe about himself, he will find the justice he seeks.

* a concept for which we thank Jorge Luis Borges.

Karmafornia Road Trip, California Edition

From Chico, where I'm standing in
front of the now-gentrified house
Fred and I lived in 25 years ago, with
my friend Nancy who still lives in this
small Sacramento Valley town,




To San Francisco, where there's art
pretty much everywhere you look,
such as the Tractor Book
in a bank window,




To the early morning thrill of
Big Sur in the fog,

I've enjoyed my travels
through this great state.




And here in Venice,
the sights are always a wonder -




check out these bikes!

Karmafornia Road Trip, Second Leg

I thought I'd be blogging more but I've been enjoying my travels & encounters too much!


Visit with a long-time friend in Eugene - hadn't seen her for decades, but we just picked up where we left off.
Then over to the Pacific and down the coast into the redwoods - camped in the forest then drove through Avenue of the Giants where I had to hug & kiss one of those ancient wonders.



Among the giant trees are horsetails, one of the most primitive of plants (dinosaurs ate them). They make a fine contrast to their immense neighbors.

Across the Trinity Alps into Redding, then to Mt. Lassen Nat Park for a hike into Bumpass Hell.
This completed our volcanic vista trifecta - Craters of the Moon in Idaho (giant lava flows and weird formations), then Crater Lake formed in the collapse of a massive volcano 7700 years ago (in the historical memory of the Klamath tribe), and now the youngest of them all, seething, spewing and sulfurous, Mt. Lassen.



Arriving in the evening in Chico we took up residence with friends I haven't seen in 25 years. Shared stories, rode bicycles and devoured the most marvelous tomatoes in the world (so ripe they remind one tomatoes are fruit - sweet!).


Friday evening attended a potluck at another friend's house where I gave a reading and sold the most copies of Karmafornia yet on this journey.
So far the calling card that gets the most attention is that the chapter on New Wave (punk rock) music was vetted by my friend Jello Biafra.

Sunday I came along to a woman's 65th birthday party, attended by a group of adventurous creative older women (and some younger ones).

Tomorrow I'm selling books at San Francisco Arts Market down by the Civic Center - hope to see you there!

Karmafornia Book Tour, Part 1

Marigold & Ernesto set out from Denver heading north. Spectacular cloud formations in North Park, CO then found a campsite on Rabbit Ears Pass. Break from rain for dinner, then while we slept in our cozy tent it rained through the night. From Steamboat Springs we went into Wyoming; north of Baggs we held tent and rainfly into the stiff breeze, drying gear in a matter of minutes.

Back on the road into Grand Teton Nat Park. Ernesto's a Virginian - he's never seen much of the West, and finds it amazing. We camped along the Gros Ventre River - treated to a rainbow - and in the morning toured the park.

West thru Idaho:

Atomic City, Arco (1st nuke-powered town in US)

then Craters of the Moon Nat Mon, an otherworldly jumble

of lava beds, tubes and other crazy formations.

Campgrounds on the map near Boise didn't exist

so we ended up at Stinker's Fuel Stop that night.

On to Sisters OR for the Folk Fest - camped on the frigid Metolius River 3 nights and listened to music and hocked books 2 1/2 days- these Karmafornia t-shirts are great! Sold & traded a few books & handed out my book cover card.

Nice people and fine music - headliner Dave Alvin, new to our ears Cow Bop and Sweet Talk Radio. Excellent program Sept 11 morning - a dozen pieces, story and song, by diff artists, united us in sorrow and community. Rest of the day anything but gloomy - Hoots & Hellmouth, a Philly band playing at breakneck speed, and JT and the Clouds to finish off the festival with well-written songs.

Sunday a staffer gave my tray table "kiosk" the evil eye - "You know there's a really big fine if you don't have a vendor permit" so we packed that up & just gave out cards.

Monday drove to Crater Lake - gorgeous place. Hiked up Mt. Scott to highest point in the Park, then outran storms back down the trail. Tuesday boat ride to Wizard Island and around this stunning lake, then on to Eugene.

Sights along the way:

bear warnings in the campgrounds;

smoke from forest fires - east of the Tetons, west of Sisters, east of Crater Lake;

Adopt-a-Highway signs - businesses, families, schools, apartment buildings all doing their bit to keep the roads clean (which they are) - gives me hope for America.

Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place

This movie has both sufficient narrative coherence and trippy footage to give the viewer balanced doses of history and immediacy – which makes it a rousing success. From forty hours of footage shot on the Bus, interlaced with clips from the era, editors Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood take a shot at making sense of what cameras and tape recorders preserved, knowing that what was in the heads of the participants is well beyond what pictures and sounds are able to convey. And they hit the mark, more often than not.

Starting with Kesey, they dissect 1963, 64, 65. We meet the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion, then we see him participating in Stanford's LSD experiments. With visuals culled from Kesey's journals, we get the flavor of that "supervised" trip, even as we shake our heads at the stark conditions under which a person is assumed to behave "normally" before he slips the bonds of external control. Even as he's reveling in a universe unsuspected, the clinicians are asking dull meaningless questions and diligently noting his replies on their clipboards.

The Merry Band of Pranksters opened the way for hippies without being members of that tribe. They were a pretty straight bunch, except they had these drug experiences that blew the lid off the world they were accustomed to, and that lid never fit back on again. What they were, fundamentally, was Americans. Try to imagine Furthur (or Further if you prefer - the bus including its name was repainted many times) anywhere else on this planet, and you know the bus would be confiscated and its crew in jail before they got a mile down the road.

One of the more effective devices the editors employ is to contrast TV clips in black and white, with footage from the Trip in wild vivid color – as good a metaphor as one could hope to find, for the difference between the status quo and these pioneers. Even Timothy Leary's International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) in New York is a black-and-white spot, until the invasion of the Merry Pranksters. And no, he doesn't appreciate his retreat being colorized in anarchic fashion. Richard Alpert (soon to become Ram Dass) hangs out with the Day-Glo visitation while Leary makes himself unavailable.

The voice-overs, culled from the recordings on the bus and ten years later, work with visuals of that unimaginable Trip to immerse us. Gretchen and Jane are matter-of-fact in their recollections of how the world appeared to them – "I was so happy in the pond slime – and it was happy with me," "I was in a dark place and just wanted to be alone with my thoughts" – the effect is both comical and grounding: these people are not insane, they are tripping. They know the difference. But their behavior reinforces the truth: that watching and listening to someone trip, is to know nothing.

The star is Neal Cassady. To see his restless antics and hear his mile-a-minute patter is to recognize the creative catalyst for Kerouac and Kesey both. Cassady is unchained – he does whatever he wants to. The son of a Denver bum mesmerizes all comers: Beats, women, Pranksters, even the cops who just wave him on his way. One can't help noticing that he's up while everyone else slumbers. That isn't just the speed – he's more awake anyway, a man with his fingers jammed in the great socket of life, continuously buzzed.

My only quibble is the editors' detour into the media scare tactics that demonize LSD and its psychedelic cousins. To be sure, some people cracked up – when all the closet doors in the mind fly open, not everyone is happy to see what they've stuffed in there. But in the context of this film, the scolding seems both petty and tangential.

Go see the movie – it's quite a trip. As the Pranksters painted on Further in Phoenix in 1964, "A Vote for Barry is a Vote for Fun!"

A Little Art & Rhyme

Sometimes we have to stretch and do things we're not so good at - just for the fun of them, and to see what we're capable of.

At the urging of a friend, I took part in Art House Co-op's Sketchbook Project.
I chose a theme from their list, and they mailed me a chapbook in which to do my art.

I never claimed to be skilled at drawing but I certainly had a good time!
The whole book is here -
Fishing in the Cosmic Dancehttps://www.sketchbookproject.com/library/5190
So enjoy! I sure did!

Karmafornia Review

Review of Karmafornia, a novel by NC Weil

by Lorine Kritzer Pergament

From the image of an Indian bedspread print on the cover through the trials and tribulations of the twenty-something main characters, Weil gives us descriptive details of a culturally and politically volatile Berkeley during the late seventies interspersed with national and local current events to weave a colorful and compelling story.

When Laura and her boyfriend Walt are trapped in a snowstorm on their way to Berkeley where Laura is to begin graduate school, they take LSD and “fly together,” becoming mentally and spiritually one. But when they arrive, Laura becomes attracted to Cob, a student in her program, and he convinces her to become a fruitarian and get off the pill to make herself more physically appealing. Outlandish as this may sound in light of the fact that Laura is an independent woman, Cob is convincing, and Laura complies. So begins the love and sex triangle that sets the theme for this rip-roaring book that culminates in a surprise ending.

If you want to reminisce about Berkeley during the period of the Jonestown massacres, the shooting of Harvey Milk, the Dead Kennedys and “Box of Rain” with a hefty dose of drugs and sex, or if you just want a good read about that period, the tightly written and thought-provoking Karmafornia will engross you.

Lorine Kritzer Pergament's stories have appeared in "Bridges" and "Penn-Union," and she was a winner in the 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest. Her story "Smell the Roses on Your Own Time," will be included in "Amazing Graces," Richard Peabody's anthology of Washington area women writers in December, 2011. Lorine also writes book reviews and is a member of the Women's National Book Association's Great Group Reads panel.