Slow morning. I woke up as the coffee grinder lept in my hands. I poured the fill, a powdered east African bean known to be exciting and flavorful, into a cone filter and left the teapot to rumble and stumbled out to the deck.

Sam was curled up on his pad by the door...my snoozing guard. He's never been inside, has never seemed interested. Seems perfectly rational, when you consider there are millions of people who have never really been outside...outside in the sense that the American outdoorsperson knows it.

I lay in my chair with a Tepco china mug of joe. During my years as a ship's captain, every single morning I'd be ahelm with a mug of Tepco china, built to withstand everything short of a direct hit. In the worst blows, my mug would still stay relatively warm.

The mug served as my calm in the storm. It has a rim chip, but my rank is intact. I often dream of the Tepco China mug, and I look forward to the mysterious moments when the mug will again be in my hand brimming with a candid java laced with cold Jersey.

Maybe a bit of fine Bavarian pastry on a plate nearby (the French may have had pastry before the Bavarians, but still, they were never Bavarian. Pity), then I know the day is truly under my command. I would sail through the jaws of hell as long as I have a reasonable start to the morning.

I learned in my Leyte Gulf adventures during the Big One the Tepco wouldn't take aircraft fire, but a smaller caliber bullet isn't much problem. In the long run, I figured it's hard to concentrate on a mug of brew when you're being shot at.

During the heaviest storms, like what I saw in the Atlantic and 'rounding The Horn I'd munch snorkers on rye (heavy on the mayo) up in the wheelroom and sipping from The Tepco...the very mug that sat on the glass patio table under the umbrella next to a funky, hotrod MacBook running Ableton...software I use for my poetry.

Next to the laptop glistened a Mason jar holding a fat, juicy specimin of Colas de Zorro recently shipped meward by a good friend, Hector Bonefrit from the East African nation of Malawi. As an archeologist and cultural scientist, Hector is always interested in my opinions concerning the offbeat or paranormal.

My interest in certain herbs is probably equal to that of Luther Burbank, Martin Luther, or even Martin Luther King, for that matter. Certain herbs interest all kinds of interesting people. However, as interesting as this specimin appeared to be, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it.

I hesitated to tackle the paranormal alone, but resolved the dilemma by falling back on the old Dirty Harry saw that a man's gotta know his limitations. I know mine. And making such a decision so early in the morning before the joe sets in is a repudiacious, impudent and brazen. I screwed the Mason jar ring once more to its open thing and put some in the pipe.

I made sure Sam, the half-wolf, was on patrol...surely enough, he occupied his sullen aerie on his mat by the door. Sound asleep. I've wondered which part of the wolf Sam actually represents. There must be a small part of every wolf that flies blind into the night.

That part would be Sam.

I thought some bum had taken my lighter. If there was a bum here, I decided through elegant string theory and deductive logic, Sam would rip the living hell out of him.

Sam was still asleep, even snoring, occasionally displaying the claw-and-ear twitch common to all sleeping mammals, so there must not be a bum here, which meant the lighter must be somewhere. Maybe in my pocket. You gotta love reductive deductionism, the lighter was in my hand the whole time...and the whole time I knew it.

I sat with my Tepco in my hand as the world swirled around me. The Mountains were lost in purpling gauzy rapture as shields of gold and bronze stretched elegantly across a fastening horizon.

Majestic magenta on showy sequoia
Purpling sawtooth ridges of snow
Sway and knock of wind in the pines
Ravening thickets of boughs and vines
Moribund glens, coves in the gloaming
Fetch little comfort for I who am roaming
The lightness, terrible bleakness of things
Coming of darkness, and all that it brings
Things that I don’t hear, things that I do
Visit my mind as they’re passing through
The orbit of fear over dreams of the mild
In the depths of the night,
the Call of the Wild

The trees blazed, shimmered...then settled into luminous emerald as fires of sunrise faded into day. Lazy lambs of morning, drawn to blue sky pastures, dawdled across the heavens...sometimes resembling birds in flight, sometimes hovering like gentle faces gazing from above.

I sipped and tapped into elastic audio to check my work from very late last night. When everybody else would technically asleep. I get on Ableton to mix, loop and globalize my poetry. Sam came over, sat down and smiled at me. It's a cute smile, and I can never resist a good scratch.

He curled up beside me, I leaned back in my chair and let the sun pour in to my closed eyes. Both East Africans caught up with me at once as I drifted into a morning meditation...

caterpillar winds through gnarled bark to highest limb
salmon fights upstream from salty sea to cold shallow waters
pollen floats on wind without eyes a seed without home
endures
the same wind carves stone in time
waiting, an industry which shapes destiny
but I am no stone
my destiny will be measured by drops of water
only those drops which will fit in my hand
and only as my hand has strength to carry them
when I fall, they may not wet my face
nor wet even my tongue one last time
I am no stone
And waiting carves me more than the wind
Dust falls through my fingers as birds fly south
Climbing, swimming, floating, flying
They are not waiting, nor am I a stone
Carved by the wind

As sweet as the moment was, it was time to get to work on the score for a script I've been working on for a year. I publish, perform, write and edit from the same keyboard on the glass table or in the kitchen, on the butcher block next to the wood-burning stove.

Running Ableton on the laptop through my little Mackie PA/Mixer, I’m able to be a pretty good one-man band. Elastic audio lets me match any tempo to any text, on the fly.

Unlike your average one-man band I have hundreds of real-time video, spoken word, instrumental loops…plus instant repose to my audience and provide everything from stage production and live video production from two can-sized cameras to keeping in touch with my crew around the globe while I perform.

I like to loop Miles, Duke and Flava Flav with Tara Vinson and Xavier Cugat (whoowah! UNHH!) with Jimi, Esquivel and Smokey Robinson.

I click and drag elements from archived loops on one screen while reading text on another and monitoring the live video feed to my website on yet another screen...checking my blog, e-mail and website for content and response.

My fans often get to be part of my show as the show is happening. The choicest text comments are scanned, translated into my voice, looped, bookmarked and loaded into the mix.

Nobody gets off cheap in my world when I'm on the job. When work's done and I come back to the farm, it's just me and Sam, the birds and cougars and all the Great Outdoors at my feet.