The Book, The Trigger.

"All memories reside in a physical space or object as well as in one's mind" star map maker David W. Teske from Manchester, Iowa proclaimed.  If true, some of those object become triggers for inevitable irreversible feelings or actions. Teske called all the things, stuff, paper, or photos of life ... "media."

In the hills above Santa Fe, New Mexico Shirley Parker McClain is on the phone. She is talking to Ralph Nader about his new book.  A housemaid cleans the dishes and someone is photographing Shirley's little rat dog. I know, I know 'love me, love my dog' and as Marge Garber of "Dog Love" fame told me, "You can't kill the dog off in the first fucking scene of your film script."
Anyway, Nader seemed to be reaching out to McClain for some literary advice and Shirley responded to Ralph somewhat like the way she barks at her servants, "People want to be in the room. They want to know what people said in that room"
A few years ago Shirley Parker McClain bought a piece of property above Wilderness Gate, a luxury subdivision on the east side of town. She conned the Trust for Public Lands into buying the land and to dedicate it for 'public use.' That land which really could only be accessed by helicopter made Shirley a bundle. That's Santa Fe for you.
The Trust for Public Land in Santa Fe is made up of rich lawyers who really deserve the name I gave them, "The Mistrust for Public Scams.' Santa Fe has more lawyers and lesbians per square inch than any other place in the universe. One lesbian lawyer named Eileen, who shuttles back and forth to Seattle ran into a friend of mine there. Learning that Eileen had a home in Santa Fe Paul asked if she knew "Cove"?
"Oh that lunatic", she said.
Knowing me and being my wife's first husband, Paul and I almost pissed our pants laughing about her comment. It's like Judge Pheffer's said about Cove's or even his own life story ... "Who gives a shit?"

 What good is to look back if it doesn't have something to do with the future. Obviously, the stuff we keep relates to the story of who we are. We give a shit. Maybe some people in Milford, Connecticut might remember the Color Bar,  Beard Sand & Gravel, or Savin Rock but none of the related media pictured will trigger memories as powerful nor as specific as my memories of girls underpants, being beat into a gang and the place of a mothers infidelity.

 I have written before about my beating into the high school "fraternity" AFO at the Beard Sand & Gravel pit in Milford. AFO which was really a gang with black and white colors in old English letters that stood for All For One. The pen, for me, might just a be a secondary stimulus for a story or memory but the actual '61 AFO jacket the appliqued letters sitting in a trophy case at the Parsons Center in Milford was a actual trigger for reckless immediate irreversible action. Right there and then I broke into the case,  stole the fucking jacket and split. It was like that fucked up guy in The Manchurian Candidate when he saw the Queen of Diamonds The why and where of it all is sitting in a boxin my attic on some ink jet printed pieces of paper from a long gone and shredded hard drive.  Which brings my to David W. Teske's 2nd Rule of Media:
All Media Can Be Honed Into Smaller Places.
There is always room for more media as long as you keep a clear pathway between boxes of stuff and papers. It is amazing how much can be collected and condensed. My pathway between the boxes of memories are violence, sex, politics, free speech, art, love and Spirit.
The process underlying process to make media has changed minute by minute and in away is the story not me. From Guttenberg to Gates happened in my life time right in Milford, Connecticut, Santa Fe, New Mexico and every other place in space time.
To outline a book, movie or someone's life one needs a tag line ... a fucking hash tag. For me writing in hyper-text in a cool lazy way to write. I can send people to places at a quantum mechanical pace.
For example:
Anton Wilson's daughter was Patricia Luna Wilson brain was put in cryogenic suspension.
Or maybe even just  ... J



Danny, I don't know if you've seen my previous comments, but my name is Mark L. Vines, & I really want to talk with you about Luna & Star.

I never knew them, but knew Bob Wilson starting maybe 11 years after Luna's death. I met him only about 5 times but we were simpatico & some of our conversations were intense. In our last real talk when we discussed the unlikelihood that Luna would ever be resuscitated, he said he now understood that if she does awaken, most of her memories will not have survived her time in cryonic suspension, & then he said with regret & something like self-loathing, "She won't learn much about who she was from reading Cosmic Trigger," characterizing that book as revealing more about Tim Leary than about Luna. At the time I thought he was nerving himself up to write more about Luna in his own subsequent career, but it seems he never did, so I may be taking that on, since Bob owed her & I owe Bob.

I have a book concept that renders revelations of life in mid-70s Berkeley rather safer than they might otherwise be: it'll be a science fiction biography or SFB, set in the far future with flashbacks to Berkeley, & will have a kick-ass disclaimer defining the book as fiction. But my SFB needs to be true anyway & it won't be what it could be without input from you &, for that matter, without input from Star.

Having learned of Luna's death & chosen to run away, would Catherine Star have gone for help to Paul Segall & the EPP, disappearing into their network of refuges? Or are they more the kind of people she would have wanted to run from? You'd know the answer to that; I wouldn't.

But, even though Dr. Segall died in 2003, some people close to him are still alive. If Star used the EPP to run away, my chances of learning more about her, our chances if you choose to sign on, are probably better than zero.

Respectfully....
==
Mark L. Vines