Rod McKuen - Flight Plan


31st March & 1st April, 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 I glory seeing your reflection coming back to me from other people's eyes. FROM the¨BOOKS ENCOUNTERS / MARCH 31 I'll ring up one day and you may wonder who I am. I too might not be quite so sure if you're the one who smelled like violets or left my shoulder tattooed with a bite that took three weeks to go away. Or the one who, going down the stairs, turning back long enough to say Don't call me till after ten o'clock my mother goes to bed quite early. Those of us who think that need and night are both the same have so many little scraps of paper stuffed in wallets and tucked up under books or safely put away in dresser drawers. Names and numbers scribbled on the backs of business cards or finely printed on old matchbook covers. I never have the guts to thrown them out. Do you ? I suppose that like a pilgrim I keep imagining my colony of cards can one day be called up to form a fort against the need to walk. I must remember from now on to write beside their names thin shoulder blades or this one had a mole along the left side of her stomach. Some identifying thing so when I go to make those calls I'll know just who I'm calling. But saving little scraps of paper and knowing they'll remain just that, not transferred into address books or indexed in a file, is a kind of mental masturbation good to no one. Not even those of us who think the inside side of matchbook covers with a penciled number is a kind of life insurance can expect a proper settlement when the accident of being with our own selves only overtakes us in an alleyway or a bedroom. -from "In Someone's Shadow," 1968 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



		Saturday 31 March Herb Alpert o Pavel Bure o Leo Buscaglia o Richard Chamberlain o Sydney Chaplin o Cesar Chavez o Rene Descartes o Colin Farrell o Lefty Frizzell o Al Gore o Joseph Haydn o Gordie Howe o Shirley Jones o Gabe Kaplan o Richard Kiley o John D. Loudermilk o Ed Marinaro o Ewan McGregor o Henry Morgan o James Nederlander o Red Norvo o Sean O’Casey o Rhea Perlman o Christopher Walken Sunday 1 April All Fools Day Wallace Beery o Brillat-Savarin o Jim Ed Brown o Lon Chaney, Sr. o Eddy Duchin o William Harvey o Alberta Hunter o Gordon Jump o Dong Kingman o Ali MacGraw o William Manchester o Abraham Maslow o Ann McCaffrey o Toshiro Mifune o Annette O'Toole o Jane Powell o Sergei Rachmaninoff o Debbie Reynolds o Edmond Rostand o Gil Scott-Heron o Hannah Spearitt o Otto Von Bismarck

		Relax, it helps relax you. Work is the ladder from self-pity. Deceiving those we love isn't worth it, the hangover lasts too long.

SPRING SONG		Long before the trees begin to bud, before the new grass starts to roll with the curvature of the hill and spread out evenly on the common, a certain uneasiness, a kind of insecurity arrives one morning or maybe just at dusk. It presents itself, moves in and settles in. Not unkind, not troublesome, this uncertainly is more an itch - a harbinger that finally scratched enough boils into the apple blossom. The thrower of the seeds lets go his kernels in mid-March. The early April rain cooperates. Later on the lilac trees are all so heavy that their boughs bend low and nearly break. The prairie dog sits up and calls from mound to mound... a high pitched squeak that all his brothers answer. New pinafores for Sunday school. New patent leather shoes for Easter. The May pole dance. Lost balloons begin to decorate the inside branches of trees. The song of the Wandering Angus is lived out and sung. The plainest of us begin to feel beautiful again... and the fever deepens. -from "A Book of Days and A Month of Sundays," 1981

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