Ed Hale

A Note to White Bear

Seems our lives, as if not already limited enough, are about to be, or already are depending on the bar you hang out in in cyberspace, ensnared in a ‘144 characters or less’ world of no goodness, as I was unable to post to your wall much of anything other than the usual “whatup dog?” which though mildly amusing like a morning rub and tug are not nearly enough to sustain or feed us to the point of providing real heel kicking call a good friend and scream into the phone “Goddamn I’m happy! Aren’t you?!” joy, the kind that some of us still claim as one of our rights for the mere fact that we’ve made it this far. So I figured I’d throw you a note while my able bodied team continues to work out the kinks to our big move to “dedicated servers.” Meaning yours truly cannot post freely on his own empire turf due to CPU overages they claim are due to traffic violations on the information super highway. So here’s that ten-year note. Or is it twenty? Either way, it’s been a long time my friend. Too long.

For those in the know (readers of the Transcendence Diaries), this is where Fishy reconnects with White Bear, the beer belching bourbon loving bearded bard of infinite alliteration who mentored young Fishy in his college years while he called Atlanta GA home for a few years. And so, after many, many, many years, the reply to the unexpected electronic letter that appeared from nowhere went something like this.

Dear White Bear,
As older brothers go… I’ve been missing you too; for years my friend. In response to your question, yeeaap (not too long but slightly drawn out) I was wondering the same thing… I feel our spheres are close enough to share a drink or a two-hour chat now and then. (and they don’t call me the ambassador for nothing. I find it awfully difficult to not get along with just about anyone truth be told. Not always to my benefit. But certainly to theirs.) I wholeheartedly agree with you on the Kennedys. Thought Bobby was the White Knight we’d been waiting for for decades. Idolize the man. Love but hate the behavior of the dark forces that took him from us, those same forces that now seem to control everything except my left nut, though even that I wouldn’t bet on.

In terms of money and fame, I’ve haphazardly and ironically made a fortune over the years while chasing that ever-elusive dream of stardom seemingly forever intent on ignoring my imagined greatness. Unlike you, I’m not interested in money. Just give me the influence so I can help right the Becks and O’Reillys of the world. I’m glad we’re still playing at the same table on that front, but I do lean more toward the “you don’t really believe they’re working for different people still do ya?” view. David Icke et al. (Oh how i would love to see you laugh that one out in person) But truly I bailed on all those left versus right legends long ago and tend to operate somewhere outside of but in between it all. Some people refer to it as conspiracy theory (which I find fallacious because that would imply something “secret” and there is no longer anything secret about the self-serving cabal of blood thirsty murdering fuckhead bastards that rules all governments of the world at this point.) Others call it libertarianism I’ve heard, but I haven’t had time to check. I just call it being human. Fluid. Bamboo. Never stop researching.

One thing I’ll tell ya is that your influence was a great and mighty one on the young Fishy, once known as Ed Hale, then Eddie Darling, then Guess Darling, and eventually the pretentious as all hell Ambassador. Wrote like a mother f*&ker for 20 straight years based on your many deep-voiced mid-of-night suggestions and ended up with a ridiculously over-weighted 5000 page novel series called The Adventures of Fishy, spent eight years blogging from it (based on a suggestion from another brother from a different mother who you might equally enjoy we call G2) to something called the Transcendence Diaries. See it here: www.transcendencediaries.com. Some damn good passages in there. A few I’m actually proud of. And not a year went by that I didn’t wonder what you’d think as I pounded those keys. Thank you for that.

By the way. Got married recently. You may remember my hopeless romantic ideals that true love really does exist somewhere out there if we just wait for it that I would occasionally espouse during those obligatory drunken late night talkies (did we actually get college credit for those as you once told me?) Well it turns out that for once I was right. It does. Sometimes it may be right under our noses… PLT, better known to readers as Princess Little Tree, had and has been my best friend for over seven years when I finally proposed to her on a row boat in the middle of a lake in Central Park on the sunniest day the Good Lord ever created. But indeed you really do just have to wait for it. I had plenty of just about everything else; so I knew what I was looking for. And you know what it was? (still is…) A “Yes.” Something we hear inside that we ourselves cannot muster up no matter how hard we try. One day I hope she gets the opportunity to meet you… I am sure she will consider it every bit the honor that I did way back when.

Very very good to hear from you my brother. Your presence was missed.
E (or F as the case may be)
;>

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Michael Douglass

Fuck me you little shit. David Icke, I’d sneer at ya.
I must say this. I am honored and flattered.

Understand, I was growing up too.


My memories of you are so fond. You fascinated me. A pompous sixteen or seventeen year old punk with a big ass thirsty brain who wore frilly blouses.

We met when you battled pimples and I was able to grow my first beard.

Honesty though. Painfully honest. Recklessly honest.

I’ve missed you too my friend. That I influenced you in any way is huge to me because honestly I meant to.

I have no idea why but I did.

I was pretty sure you were smarter than me but you needed course correction.

I’m about a third of the way through a rewrite of a novel and writing a book about the biz. I got this blog which I adore. I just get on it and spew or post a chapter from one of the books I hack away at.

Sheezus you flatter me. Thank you. From long ago and far away you have touched me today.

I’ll follow the link.

My old friend, how cool it is to hear from you. Let me count the ways.

I look back on my life and realize I’ve always had a collaborator, a partner, an intellectual counter strength for ballast and balance, I’ve long owned that you set the bar. Remember we called it “knowing”?

Exactly how simple is that?

Yesterday at 12:00am ·

 

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Ed Hale

Wow. My heart just grounded one step deeper into earthly comfort as you mentioned “Knowing.” For i carried the term quite far and wide over the years, long past the end-zone and off the field entirely into the world and beyond, sharing everyone what this cool guy from college and I used to talk about and how few actually even seem to get it… thatSee More “to KNOW is to know you don’t know. If you flat out know you don’t know shit, then at least you KNOW. But if you think you know, then you don’t KNOW. I found a few other people who understood the concept… Harry Palmer (created the Avatar Materials – deep as all hell; talk about KNOWING. His first book blew me out of the bathtub i was reading it in at the time). Reconnected with an old Junior High crush known as Juliet who turned out to KNOW, G2 got it, and of course PLT… She so gracefully “doesn’t know” that she may just KNOW more than any of the rest of us. It honors me that you remember that. I had assumed you had abandoned the ideas of our youth.

And no i had no idea that you intentionally were attempting to have an influence, but rather thought that I was just leeching due to feeling you had so much to offer. I will never forget this subtle but impactful father to son talk we had sunning by the pool where you taught me that just because I may be generous at times does not imply that I can just assume others are the same way and that perhaps I should ask others before I eat their food or use their ______(fill in the blank). I LEARNED that. I took it with me. It changed me. I HEARD you. It helped. Tremendously. I always wanted to tell you that.

There were many such instances.

Yesterday at 12:22pm ·

 

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Ed Hale

PS — in direct line with this same thread, I took up a similar mantle with a young man who lived in the same building as I here in New York known as Little T. Found him when he was a mere 11. Had him reading Howard Zinn by age 13 and writing better than Van or Bruce by age 15. Recognized his genius long before he or his parents or teachers did. See MoreFor a brief spell it felt as though I was his only lifeline… SO despite how difficult it was at times (I remembered your occasional frustration when I would fall) I stuck by his side. I often reflected back on you and your subtle don juan like life lessons even when I pained your ass just by my very presence. But without you there would be no Richard Bach, no Carlos Casteneda, no Kurt Vonnegut, no Steely Dan or Mozart… Little T couldn’t pass a urine test when I found him let alone a final or entrance exam. I knew all he needed was someone that understood he KNEW, that he was special. Happy to report that my work is now finished with him, that he not only gets straight A’s, attends Bard College two years earlier than the rest of his lot, but that i openly acknowledge that he is leagues more intelligent and more well read than I am already (he is 17 now) so I now use his lyrics for my songs rather than my own just due to the sheer humbling fact that they are so much better than mine half the time. Talk about a humbling experience… but i figure better to sing great lyrics penned by a 17 year old poet than to sing mediocre lyrics penned by myself just for the sake of doing so. My ego doesn’t need the tickle. I just want to sing great songs. He offers me that. He also strangely has turned into one of my best friends, which, well, talk about weird… but if we do KNOW anything, then it is that “age” may just have nothing to do with “it” at all.

Yesterday at 12:43pm ·

 

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Michael Douglass

Man. You haven’t changed but to hone yourself either. I’m sincerely so goddamned impressed I can’t stand it. Gorgeous honing my old friend. Your voice is so clear and honest, literally like bells.

I like who you are, who you’ve become. Because I know. Certain things after this long, we know for sure. I see you’ve become a human who’s easy on the eyes for them who see enough to understand there’s far less known than not.

“I find it awfully difficult to not get along with just about anyone truth be told” -that’s what I’m talking about. You were a bit of a cunt back then but I understood that much. See More

We need face time.

I hesitate to say it it because it smacks of patronage, but I’m overwhelmingly proud of you. The tone of your typewritten voice is all I need. I tell you this as an equal.

Understand, I never considered you anything else. You were the smartest person I’d met at that point in my life. I worried a little that you might be smarter until I understood it just didn’t matter. I learned that from you my friend.

I understood I didn’t have to worry about every good brain I came across but rather aspire to appreciate it. It helps me as of today.

Later, I met a lot of people way smarter than me and ended up grateful for that lesson.

You taught me plenty my friend, much of it by example. I have been grateful to know you since we met and have thought about you too over time.

The idea of “knowing” meaning we can’t begin to be so enlightened as to even understand understand what we don’t know, I doubt to be an exclusive concept, but I believe you and I put it into those specific terms together. It never was my idea, it was ours. I could never abandon such a thing. Profound truth. We know it now for sure don’t we?

That you’ve mentored someone into a muse must fit into some rare and delicate self actualization. I trained a few engineers but …………yes, age has nothing to do with “it”.

Allow me to update you: “……….don’t doubt that the randomness of life is in some way synchronized with all the things that we don’t understand about the universe. It’s what we do know that confounds us. All the while, what we don’t know blows us along. ” -I wrote that.

I’m traveling through an exasperating period in life. Frustrating. I haven’t stopped learning and understanding new things however.
It never stops as I’m sure you know.

It would be huge to drink dirty cheap whiskey with you.

Someday soon I hope.

10 minutes ago ·

 

Drinks for my friends.

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