Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Departure


Shipped dog-eared stack of pages to Madison; received voluminous index file from publisher's outsourcee. More close scrutiny of antlike colonies of tiny type. Meanwhile ....

in Burma thugs crush monks' heads against the wall, so what's a broken pull quote in the overall scheme of things? Orphaned lines? Or a mean, saw-toothed typeface showing battle fatigue? The Casablanca "hill of beans" syndrome kicks in. Embroiled in the minutiae of page proof mark-up, I'm on Greenwich Mean Time while across the Atlantic in northwest London, Golders Green, friends mourn the harsh passing of a mutual friend, writer co-worker from the Sixties and situationist, urging us to the Paris barricades in 68. Bye, Dave. You made us laugh and we'll miss you.

Photo: David Robins, June 2005, 37 years later,
all too brief reunion with Dave in David Bieda's Soho garden,
London. The two friends were editors of Circuit,
known in the 60s as a subculture 'zine;
I joined the ranks on several issues before
leaving for New York. Robins went on to write
several books about troubled teenagers, including
"Cool Rules" .