I FEEL LIKE MARK TWAIN

I may have said this before. Because I’ve felt like this before. Most likely because I’ve read his books and read about his life. He keeps cropping up in my consciousness. There his house was on a "This Old House Classic" this morning. His house in Hartford, Connecticut.

Well, I come from Connecticut too. He explored some of the same parts of the world as I have. I lived in the small town in Switzerland where he lived. I did not know when I went there, by the way, that he’d ever been there.

Then I read in a book about his life that he worked for a San Francisco newspaper. Currently I am working on an article I am going to submit to the San Francisco Chronicle magazine. I have written my first column—part of a tri-weekly arrangement I’ve made—for the Ukiah Daily Journal.

And… I’m seriously thinking of building a boat to sail the Pacific. Didn’t Mark Twain sail the South Pacific? I know he got as far as Hawaii, anyway.

Do you think I might be following him? Stalking him, long after his death? Or maybe just identifying with him the way one might with anyone who has come before that they might admire—the way President Clinton identified with President Kennedy.

I’m not sure about my motives—they’re not bad ones, anyway. It’s all part of my spiritual quest as I like to think about it. In this case thinking of Mark Twain somehow helps put my life into a context.

Right now this is helpful because at the moment my life seems to be something like free-floating, stream of consciousness poetry. It’s good that thinking of Mark Twain kind of helps to ground me.

Does this all sound pretty crazy? Maybe it is, but it is what it is.

Anyway, I think I’ve found a topic for a future blog: It is "Life as free floating, stream of consciousness poetry!"