Meeting, Loving, and Losing your Heroes

My Word Affair with Tom Robbins

Tom Robbins | Photograph by Don Wallen

It keeps happening: the unexpected. I just returned from my 10 day silent Vipassana retreat and I was planning on publishing a completely different theme for this month’s full moon newsletter. But on Sunday, the day I got back home, my favorite author Tom Robbins died.

I fell in love with Tom Robbins over a decade ago. Like most love stories, it happened by accident. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon and I was strolling Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn with my friend Gala. We came across a bookseller with a wide selection displayed on an outdoor table. I went to grab a biography of Frida Kahlo, when another customer snatched it before my hand could reach the cover. My disappointment was consoled by my friend, who spotted a book by Tom Robbins.

“Have you ever read him?” she asked. I had never even heard of the author. “Oh you’ll love him!” she exclaimed. I consider my friend Gala my literary match – we always seem to enjoy the same stories, ranging from fiction to memoir, from science to poetry. When one of us needs a reading suggestion, we’re never disappointed by what the other proposes. So I trusted her advice and purchased ‘Jitterbug Perfume’.

As soon as I cracked the first pages open, I was enthralled. It was unlike anything I had ever read: whimsical, spiritual, captivating. The story, like most of Tom Robbins’ work, is hard to summarize. It takes place across New Orleans, India, and Paris and weaves the lives of several characters over the centuries, on a quest for immortality through the creation of a special perfume.

‘Jitterbug Perfume’ was published in 1984 and instantly became a New York Times bestseller. Like millions of others, I was immediately hooked to Tom Robbins’ wild prose and expansive imagination. I was also in awe of the way he depicts women – always the central heroes of his stories – revealing an intimate knowledge of the female psyche. I’ve admired the craftsmanship of many authors but have never felt so seen and understood by an author.

I went on a quest to purchase and read every single Tom Robbins title (over a dozen). I couldn’t get enough of him. Each book is wildly original, blending comical absurdism with philosophical wisdom.

I was so enamored by his work that I did something I never imagined I would do: I wrote him a fan letter. The words came pouring out of me. To illustrate how much his characters and narratives reflected my life, I used quotes from his various books to tell my own story.

I then decided to type the letter on a typewriter, sealed it, and mailed out to the P.O box listed for Tom Robbins’ fan mail. I didn’t expect an answer, especially since one of his books is dedicated to “To everybody whose letters I haven’t answered.”

To make matters worse, I had also forgotten to sign my last name and to include a return address. So a week later, when I remembered, I sent him a short follow-up note with my details. It seemed like a far and hopeful stretch but I was young(er) and willing to ridicule myself.

The following month, I received a response. True to Tom Robbins form, the envelope featured a rubber stamp labeled “Union of Mad Scientists” and the letterhead included a jungle girl battling a panther. I have never been so excited to open a piece of mail. I turned the process into a special ritual: I lit some candles, sat on my bed, and stared at the special delivery. Like a teenager receiving a love note from her crush, my heart skipped a beat as I carefully opened up the envelope.

It exceeded any expectation, with the opening words “So charmed was I…” I couldn’t believe I had “charmed” (!) my favorite author. Not only that, but he gave me a vague rendez-vous, announcing he would be coming to Los Angeles in a few months to promote his latest book.

Sadly I missed his visit, but a few years later our paths did end up crossing. Meeting in person, in a crowd of many, didn’t compare to receiving this special letter from him. It still hangs framed in my office, and I consider it one of my most prized possessions. Yet the greatest gift of all is ultimately the one he left for all of us to enjoy – the incredible characters, the wild tales, and the dreamy language he created in his books.

For this Valentine’s Day, let us celebrate another kind of love: the one we have for our favorite authors. Perhaps instead of buying roses or chocolates for your romantic interest, you might consider writing a letter to an author whose words touched your life. You never know: they might actually respond. And if they don’t, you still can be enamored with what they do best: crafting the stories that swell your heart and enable the wild horses of your imagination to run free.

To honor my favorite author, I’m dedicating this full moon’s Seven Senses to the language of Tom Robbins, offering you quotes from his books to SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TASTE, TOUCH, BALANCE and ENVISION his whimsical world.

In Joy,

Sabrina

My letter from Tom Robbins (with the best sign-off)

SEE

Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life

Available at your indie bookstore or online

“…language, that magical honeycomb of words into which human reality is forever dissolving and from which it continually reemerges, having invented itself anew. The adjective in the lotus. The jewel in the inkwell. A blue dolphin leaping from a sink of dirty dishes.”

HEAR

Skinny Legs and All

Available at your indie bookstore or online

“Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mocking birds aren't content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird collects snatches of birdsong from this tree and that field, appropriates them, places them in new and unexpected contexts, recreates the world from the world. For example, a mockingbird in South Carolina was heard to blend the songs of thirty-two different kinds of birds into a ten-minute performance, a virtuoso display that serve no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art.”

SMELL

Jitterbug Perfume

Available at your indie bookstore or online

“Jasmine is sweet without sentiment, sweet without effeteness, sweet without compromise, it is aggressively sweet , outrageously sweet. [...] Expansive, yet never cloying, romantic, yet seldom melancholy, jasmine has the poise of a wild creature.”

TASTE

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Available at your indie bookstore or online

“They embraced until their 306 bones squeaked like mice. Their bed was a boat in a weird sea. If space is love, Professor, then is love space? Or is love something we use to fill space? If time eats the doughnut, does love eat the hole?”

TOUCH

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Available at your indie bookstore or online

“The problem here, Gwen, is that the more desperate you are to achieve financial success and the tighter you hold on to what you've got, the greater your chances of losing it. Money's like love in that respect.”

BALANCE

Still Life with Woodpecker

Available at your indie bookstore or online

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”

ENVISION

Villa Incognito

Available at your indie bookstore or online

“Just because you're naked

doesn't mean you're sexy,

Just because you're cynical

Doesn't mean you're cool.

You may tell the greatest lies

And wear a brilliant digsuise

But you can't escape the eyes

of the one who sees right through you. In the end what will prevail

Is your passion not your tale.

For love is the Holy Grail,

Even in Cognito.

So better listen to me, sister,

and pay close attention, mister:

It's very good to play the game,

Amuse the gods, avoid the pain,

But don't trust fortune, don't trust fame,

Your real self doesn't know your name And in that we're all the same:

We're all incognito.”