Rod McKuen - Flight Plan


1st & 2nd November, 2007		Rod at Dos Vidas. Photo by Thomas Kist from the 2006 Arjan Vlakveld film “Rod McKuen: A Man Alone” for Netherlands Public Television. Photo ©2006, 2007 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives. All Rights Reserved. A Thought for Today Common sense sees the visible; imagination goes beyond. FROM the¨BOOKS WHY LOVE It is not just for our own good pleasure that we come to love each other, discovering the differences divining the sameness that finally tell us what we truly are: selfish in our needs yet willing to give everything so that we might please our God not just each other. For the desperate God is not the father but the waiting arms of love. Love, as simple as we see it on the outside, as complicated as it soon becomes at closer quarters. I believe no animal or man, nothing that depends on contact within the universe we know beds down with another of it's kind in the absence of love. Some thing not always something has to swell the heart to make things work. Who among us has come away from love with nothing but a self-reward? What is left behind, what sticks and stays as we move on is the part of us that's best. If we ever wish to see the best side of ourselves the side unselfish, unafraid, then we must learn to love. - from "The Beautiful Strangers", 1981 Click on the Stanyan House logo to buy Rod McKuen books, CD's and lots more Click on the heart logo to subscribe to the Rod McKuen mailing list Catch Rod McKuen live! Click on the links below for details of concerts and appearances. ROD McKUEN CONCERTS ROD McKUEN APPEARANCES



		Thursday 1 November Bill Anderson o Sholem Asch o Benvenuto Cellini o Toni Colette o Stephen Crane o Victoria de Los Angelos o Keith Emerson o Larry Flynt o Robert Foxworth o Sophie B. Hawkins o Eugen Jochum o Lyle Lovett o Betsy Palmer o Gary Player o Jim Steinman o Fernando Valenzuela o Marcia Wallace o Michael Zaslow Friday 2 November Marie Antoinette o Reginald “Fieldy” Arvizu o Daniel Boone o Pat Buchanan o Paul Ford o Kerrie Friend o Warren G. Harding o Burt Lancaster o k.d. lang o James K. Polk o Stefanie Powers o Ann Rutherford o Giuseppe Sinopoli o Warren Stevens o Luchino Visconti o Ray Walston o Tracie Young

		Loss is something to be gotten over in preparation for the gains upcoming. The planets keep exact time in their revolutions, why can’t we keep appointments? Men fear thought above all else, but only thinking sets us free.

EMPTY PLACES for Alvin Grimwald		Despite two heat waves in a row, Santa Ana winds that made the nights too hard to sleep and too hard not to, there seem to be enough new ripe tomatoes to go round. Enough for all the neighbors, for every bird to have some, and more than plenty for squirrels of all ages to leave half-eaten Early Girls and Celebrities in assorted crotches of assorted tree limbs. I am discussing vegetables so that I might ignore the empty place at the kitchen counter in the morning and the dinner table when evening comes. The key is in the same place; you know where. The tomatoes? Redder, riper than they ever were. Second crop a-coming. Berries, too, of every kind. Because you’ve always had more patience and a willing hand I need you to pick the Red One Hundred and the Yellow Pear. And those hands– I need them more than ever to caress my ears and eyes and ease my shorts down past my knees while I’m asleep, surprising me while not surprising me. You know where the key is and how much I love surprises. -from “A Safe Place to Land", 2001

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