Get in the Car

 

I do not usually use this space – it might just be sacred space – for hawking my own wares. That’s not what Couch Surfing at 70 is about.

But today I’m gonna.

I was shipped this morning the first, fresh copies of my just-published book – “Get in the Car”. It is a book of stories, some of which have appeared in similar form in this very ‘Couch’ space. I like to think the stories are fun, mostly, and encouraging, generally, and pretty much from cover to cover offering up a big dose of hope. And that what we do, as sometime struggling humans, what we are made for, is to simply keep on keeping on. Suit up, show up, do the best we can with what it is we’ve got on any day we’re lucky enough to crawl out of a warm bed and start all over again.

Most of the stories in “Get in the Car’ live and breath in that suit up-show up, do-the-best-we-can place and space. I make fun of myself – often – and brag a bit – rarely – and sing the praises of friends still with us and too many gone. I get to talk about Laura Nyro a little too, which is very cool.

As stated in a previous Blog post here, every copy I sell of “Get in the Car” will be person-to-person: someone messages me and we arrange payment, someone else rendezvous’s with me on a sidewalk and slips me a couple of finskys. No corporate go-between with this one. (Well, full disclosure, the book is available on Amazon. You can buy it there and they will print a brand new copy and send it off directly to you in the mail. The purchase price is a couple of bucks higher, and my slice of the pie is reduced to about the size of those tiny, little “Table Talk” pies we used to bring to school lunch back in the day. If you don’t know what I’m talking about that is all the more reason to read this book. The point hopefully made is it is a far better thing to deal with the author directly.)

Go ahead – send me an email at couchsurferboy19@gmail.com  Or a Facebook message. Call me up if you know my number. We can figure it out.

There’s a story in “Get in the Car” titled, well, “Get in the Car. This is from that piece:

“At a meeting once I heard a guy say this repeatedly – “Just get in the car. Just get in the car. Get in the car”. He was talking about going to another meeting. I’ve been talking about becoming an artist. And how I describe how that happened. This morning I decided I was going to look for the best in this day. Another day I’ve been given. Go to a meeting and hear something waiting there just for me. Get a haircut and laugh at my fuzzy, nearly bald head. Send a resume. Make dinner. Pay attention to the sounds of bird song. Be grateful.

To control or not to control? That is a question. And my answer is to say yes, and to do my very best to let my little light shine. Life doesn’t just happen to us, or at us. I make choices and decisions and my life moves in those directions, with mystery and serendipity the occasional walking companions.”

I made a decision to gather together all kinds of writings I’d written over the years and create a book, and now today here it is. I hope you will buy a copy. It won’t make me rich. But there is much in it about the opportunity and process by which we get to let out little lights shine.

And that has to be enriching.