Rod McKuen - Flight Plan


THURSDAY		Rod & Sunny: Photo by Bob Gentry 8/5/1999 A Thought for Today Hills have never worried me it’s the valley’s that are treacherous. GETTING TO KNOW YOURSELF The more we get to know ourselves the harder it is to justify our quirks and habits. Fortunately the older we grow the more at ease we become with who and what we are. That’s how it should be, anyway, some kind of balance. Boy is balance tricky. I could never be a high wire walker; I’d fall to ground the first day up. But, God, how hard I try to balance what should be done and what has to be done. How do others do it? That’s a book I’d pay to read. Such books exist on miles and miles of self-help shelves, but none have ever worked for me. Do you continue to ignore a couple dozen letters that should have had an answer three months ago in favor of work deadlined tomorrow? Beats me. Making earlier deadlines on how and when a project can and should be done is not the answer. I’m already sixty odd years late on that one. - R.M. 10/3/98 Click on the heart logo to buy Rod McKuen books, CD's and lots more Click on the Stanyan House logo to subscribe to the McKuen Mailing List Catch Rod McKuen live! Click on the link below for details. ROD McKUEN CONCERTS & APPEARANCES



		Troy Aikman o Bjork o Vivian Blaine o Joseph Campanella o Tom Dorsaneo o Coleman Hawkins o Goldie Hawn o Rick Lenz o Laurence Luckinbill o Lorna Luff o Natalia Makarova o Juliet Mills o Stan Musial o Franco Nero o Eleanor Powell o Marlo Thomas o Voltaire

		Peace is powerful but love is mighty. What dawn divides is kept alive by need. What is normal without perversion as a go by?

OURSELVES TO KNOW		Our losses are the sores we box and bottle up far back, ladder down amid the unlit chambers of our cluttered minds, hoping they’ll stay lost or unrecovered like the mother lode of some as yet uncovered mine. Those things first dear to us then lost or yet undone, no matter what the reason go unlisted in our wills and codicils. No pirates bearing half a map find the other half marked x. the interview is over when the questions come too close. Grudges come and settle in with ease when losses are the subject. We wear our gains like barfly gear or rows of medals on an unpatched shirt. Hurt, like loss, is no brother to ill attention, the more we leave it unrepaired and unattended the quicker it will go. It leaves behind at most a residue like sediment that bubbles at the bottom of the wine. Why is it then that simple sorrows seem to thrive as though the weekend gardener was charged with keeping them alive. One snub and every act of joy once raised in toast and sweetly celebrated is crushed into the never was. Friends are not immune to this ill treatment and lovers bear the brunt. Acquaintances remain immune to arson even as the ashes smolder. Not yet close enough for love or final friendship, they remain unblemished and unblamed. Why make tedium safer than it should be, constant, crossfiled, calibrated dried and dreary hauled out in a hurry dusted off and fluffed like paper flowers that go unnoticed as counterfeit and crude until the posy paper tears or the paint upon the plastic wears thin and peels enough to warrant touching up. Reality is square and easy to make out. Its shadings are the works of men imbibed with building barricades and battlements. The more we hide our summits or our sorrows the less of what we are or can be is reflected or looks back at us from mirrors. Pause before you give up seeking the exit to the maze send the guard or guide dog off to chase a bone. Be unafraid to leave some portions of your life to fate, to change, to God. Should a friend’s behavior worry you you may at last be given the chance to give some friendship back. Some unexpected love arriving right on time is more welcome to the ill than penicillin. We know ourselves but we’d know our worth and, yes, our worthlessness better if we paused with more regularity to take the boards off the shuttered windows and let some sunlight in. The worth of man is not in how he treats himself or his dearest dozen friends but how, when it is offered him, he treats the treat of giving. - from "Looking For A Friend", 1980

Birthday research by Wade Alexander o Poetry from the collection of Jay Hagan o Coordinated by Melinda Smith o Sound & Fury Dr. Eric Yeager o Webmaster Ken Blackie

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