Experience New Realities

 by: Jesse S. Somer

The Internet and Tom Robbins are both windows into new realities, realities that are prone to incite laughter and ludicrous behaviorisms.

These days I go on to the Internet not having any clue as to what is going to grab my interest on that particular day. What is slowly seeping into my subconscious like sludge into the sewer is the idea that I’m probably going to learn something new of interest to my already strange and twisted human existence. Whether the information turns out to be credible is another issue altogether seeing that my fellow human weirdoes are prone to the occasional exaggeration and ‘white lie’. Nonetheless, every time I go for a so-called ‘surf’ into the deep blue waves of social consciousness I seem to find myself sitting on some new island of information that inevitably causes a smile to crack across my crystallized serious Internet writer’s façade that I must present to my colleagues so that they don’t uncover my secret true identity, that being that I’m a Sweet Medicine Clown from the planet Zepton. That last sentence’s structure is dedicated to the mastery of Tom Robbins.

Today’s particular Internet search was triggered by memories of laughter caused by the reading of books by a fellow named Tom Robbins. Although this guy has written eight awesome novels, most people I ask have never heard of him. After searching for sites dedicated to him I did discover that a lot of other people have read his stuff and actually feel very strongly about it. The main site I found was called the AFTRLife at http://www.rain.org/~da5e/tom_robbins.html. The real buzz I experienced was the biographical information I learnt about Robbins’ personal history, I mean it’s one thing to really be affected by someone’s fictional writing, but another dimension altogether to read about what they supposedly got up to in their life.

With names like: Another Roadside Attraction 1971, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues 1976, Still Life with Woodpecker1980 Jitterbug Perfume1984 Skinny Legs and All 1990, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas1994, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates 2000, and Villa Incognito 2003 you might get a little insight into the style of this writer. I say you might, because you’ve really got to read it to believe it. In his biography it said that a copy of “Another Roadside Attraction” was found on the floor next to Elvis Presley when he died on the toilet. Maybe Elvis laughed just a little bit too hard! You’ve got to be careful reading these books; they just might bend your so-called ‘normal’ brain into a warped device with unimaginable powers…

It is alleged that he was thrown out of his university fraternity for throwing biscuits at his housemother. Are you catching my drift here? This guy really likes to look at reality from a different angle, actually multiple angles. The first book I read, “Skinny Legs and All” was written from first-person narrative perspectives of inanimate objects like a can of beans, a conch shell and a painted stick- I think there was a spoon in there somewhere as well! Have you ever thought about how a can of beans would perceive the world?

Having made it back from Timbuktu alive and with a son named Fleetwood Star Robbins, Tom Robbins proves to be my kind of human: original and fun. Perusing the Internet has once again added depth to my experience and to my reality. It really is fun learning more about people, places and things that I was already interested in. I’m a sponge soaking up the rays of the sun and then washing the windscreen of the Universe!