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Date Posted: 02:24:18 03/30/00 Thu
Author: LUXTON (ALL RIGHTS COPYRIGHTED 2000) PERSONAL USE ONLY
Author Host/IP: spider-to047.proxy.aol.com / 152.163.204.23
Subject: EXERPT FROM "COLOURED LIGHTS CAN HYPNOTIZE"


DECEMBER 15/1971
MISSISSIPPI
TRIADS AND FLOWNS

We might toast a December with champagne and Queen Grace,
We might lose to a limit the fallen can borrow,
To eternity’s children the seasons are changeless,
Eyes...

California, the circuit, the sun drenched anemia
In a biscuit or wafer the seaside is crackling
Live a lot, live a little, but bowl a two hundred
Eyes...

Who the hell asked ya, trap shut, mealy mouthed, mousey liittle man...
Do us all a huge favour...make like a tree and leave...


These few lines above comprise the second extraction so far from the diary entries that were made incessantly on the road. For many years I felt almost obligated to make at least one small entry every day. I carried with me the same Schaffer’s cartridge pen I had had in high school, using Washable Blue cartridges (my colour of choice). That pen travelled the world with me. In 1972, I lost it in our hotel in Tokyo, thinking I would never see my old friend again. A week or so later, I got it back from the lost and found desk. I was never meant to lose it. I guess the reason I’m saying all this is to reinforce my desire to have a book. Hope you’re still with me.
During 1957/1958, my Grade Five year at Luxton School, several things occurred during the school term that encouraged me to become more of an extrovert. Our teacher, Miss Thompson, seemed to take an early liking to me and before long I sort of became “teacher’s pet”. Any neat jobs or errands that could turn an ordinary school day into an abberration were usually designated to me. This was the top achieving class in Grade Five at Luxton, so I was in there with some pretty bright kids. There was a guy named Gary Rubacha who pretty well got 99 in everything, and several others who you just knew were going to have brilliant achievements later on in life. Miss Thompson was a pretty, bright young woman who made school fun for us. She aslo had a sarcastic streak, which I personally liked, but I was never directly in line of the wrath from it. One kid had a bad habit that was kind of disgusting and she literally shamed him into breaking it during the course of a few weeks.
One morning she told us she wanted each of us to write a short poem. She would give us the first line and from then on we were on our own. She wanted to see where each of us would take it, simultaneously perusing whether any of us had any feel for rhythym or iambic pentameter. The line she started us off with was
“If I were a cowboy, living out west...”
I wrote that down and proceeded to dash out two verses composed of four lines each. My finished poem was as follows...

If I were a cowboy, living out west,
I’d wear tight jeans and a leather vest.
I wouldn’t fall off my horse, I hope,
And while doing my chores I would never mope.

I’d become sherrif and clean up the town,
I’d put those outlaws six feet down...
I wouldn’t have much time to rest
If I were a cowboy, living out west.

When I see it in print now and say it to myself in my mind’s ear, I see that there’s a slight problem with the first line of the second verse. If you read it naturally, the accent in the word “become” falls on the “be”, which isn’t really kosher. All that aside, I left it just as it appears above. When Miss Thompson had collected all the poems and read them over, she seemed to take a particular shine to mine.

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