Robin Rule:  

Scribbled Secret Notebooks & Wild Typewritten Pages, for Yr Own Joy- Jack Kerouac i'm the girl who always wanted to be a poet when I grew up and so I did. I hitched up to Berkeley where all the coffeehouses and bookstores gave poetry readings. The big city, a bit scary and a bit weird. I realized after reading Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums" where I really wanted to be was the country, so I hitched to a town of 5,000 about 32 miles from the coast in Mendocino County and 150 north of San Francisco. I lived in a two room cabin built in the Depression era, out in the redwoods. It cost $60.00 a month. Like everyone else, I grew a little pot to keep the wolf from the door. I heated the place with downed wood, I had (thank God) cold running water in a small white enamel sink and I cooked on that wood stove. Eventually I got a manual typewriter and learned (sorta) how to type. If only I had taken typing at Anaheim! I've had five books published and have written four more. Working on two right now.I travel around the Great Northwest giving poetry readings and actually getting paid. I spent ten years teaching poetry at a charter school and then I went back to just living in the redwoods and scribbling scribbling scribbling.I've read in Paris twice and Firenzi Italy once. Yes, the food is fantastic. Not very many students at Anaheim knew, but I was born with a heart condition and have had eight surgeries including three pace makers, so I live in town now in a caboose, so that I'm close to the E.R. The caboose was moved after the San Francisco earthquake at the turn of the last century to this little town and I have a green house and pretty big amount of space to garden in which I can live on by canning the food from the garden. Every Autumn a four point buck hangs out in the alley behind the caboose and waits for hunting season to be over. I hide him. There's a wild apple tree and I have a pear tree I planted and in the winter I let the grass grow and the buck eats that as well. Oh, he so beautiful. Naturally I have a cat, because country living always means mice. So Tom Twitchit takes care of my mouse problem. It's so nice living in a small town. The houses are old, some were built in the in the 1800s and some pretty darn new and small. The small houses are very effiecient and well taken care of; everyone has a garden and is caring about water and electricity. Our county has a program called EverGreen and it's an alternative to PG&E or Con Edison. It's all solar, water, and wind. So no one has to feel bad about burning coal or petroleum. This October 10, I will have lived here for 43 years in various cabins and houses. Everyone has a garden and trades stuff backnforth and no one has to pay $2.79 cents a pound for string beans. I live across from an Spanish adobe church which was just bought by Calvary Chapel which I went to down in Costa Mesa, so I find it very funny that one branch follows me up to this wonderful little town. Down around the corner is our town's Grange where we have a farmer's market in Winter, (we hold the market in the local park in summer and early Autumn) and it has a buncha rooms, so people can rent them out. In one is a writing class held by the local college, another one has an art class; there's dance classes on Thursday and once a month there's a pancake breakfast that the Farmer's wives put on. I've always wanted to know what happened to Mrs. Lenore Fields. She was my favorite teacher and I learned so much from her. She gave me my insight into what it means to be a writer and I have stuck to it, rich or poor. She wanted to teach a certain book that the faculty said no to and I heard she quit. I admired her courage for that move so much. I begged her to tell me what the name of the book was. Of course I was going to read it on my own, but I had a feeling she was told if she let it be known, she would be fired and not allowed to finish out the year. Could be a school girl's romantic fantasy, but the whole thing had such a strong influence on me that I decided I was going to grow up, be that writer who told the truth always about things like that and help out young students who wanted to be writers. The first day of school in her honors English class she had written on the board Virginia Woolf's, "Every person must have a room of their own" and I've always made sure I have had just that.Even when I lived in a tipi, I built a dais for my almost on the floor writing desk, typewriter and a flat pillow to sit on. In Berkeley I had a room twice the size of a walk in closet, a single bed and a small table for writing on. One window to dream out of. After washing dishes in Smokey Joe's Cafe, I went home and wrote and wrote and wrote, stood at Open Mics trembling with fear, but reading my poems outloud and inwardly thanking Mrs. Fields for having been in my life. I live by Kerouac's rule. "No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language and knowledge. " I had saved so much of my dish washing money when i lived in Berkeley that I could live in the woods for a long time before I had to figure out another way to earn money. It's nice that marijuana is legal now. And yr doctor gives you a 'scrip. ********************************************************** "Don't look back" to quote bob dylan, so I won't edit this one. But i'Ill give you another story about going to Anaheim High. I'll start it anew so that I may have all my 3,000 characters to work w/. grrr************************************************************************************** DOES THE CLOTHES MAKE THE WOMAN? In my sophomore year I dressed pretty much like most of the hippie kids: hair down to my bottom, Levi 501s & Tshirts from the thrift stores. Then I babysat for a couple next door & saw some old movies. I won't have a television in the house now, (besides, no electricity.I use candles); but when I babysat, I watched old movies from the 30s & 40s. A whole new world opened up for me. I saved every dime I made baby-sitting and car washing in Anaheim so I could wear the clothes I saw on those wimmin! So, when I would go to the thrifts on Harbor Blvd, man, it was a whole new world of sophistication then, I went to the back racks where the really old clothes were kept. I suppose the workers didn't think anyone would wear them. I began wearing I.Magnin suits in ecru silk wool & silk stockings (which I did have to buy new w/ a garter belt)) & Miriam Haskell costume jewelry (for you that don't know, Haskell jewelry is very expensive, very classy: my grandmother was shocked when she saw me & of course took the credit & of course deserved to.) I learned how to put nearly three feet of hair up in a french twist, a chignon or a braid that I wrapped around the back of my head. I wore just a tiny bit of lipstick and mascara. I didn't do this often for school, but if my god...Expand for more