About Back to Nature

Posted on February 7, 2026

Intending to get that next Substack post up online yet unable to get to the task for weeks, I finally went to my bookcase and found my copy of Harum Scarum. I had already decided in advance that I would defintely not post the final short story from my father’s book. Keith Abbott’s Harum Scarum is made up of six stories and all of them are autobiographical. “You’re lucky,” a friend said to me. “You have material about your father. I wish I could learn more about my father.” Well, the materials are not only about my father. In the last story, “Back to Nature,” I am in the picture and so is my mother. Harum Scarum was published by Coffee House Press in…

Categories: Book, Memory

Tagged: Harum Scarum, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, naropa, Routine Apparitions

Negotiating

Posted on November 8, 2025

“It seems we lose the game before we start to play.” Those words from Lauryn Hill’s song “Everything is Everything” always resonated with me. “We never argue.” I told my boss when I was twenty-two. I was aiming to relate how perfect and idyllic my life with my parents was to him. I was living in Paris and not ever planning on moving back to the states. He stared at me, wordless. Right then, I knew something was up. I had said something wrong. And I was wondering how to backtrack. Of course, he didn’t straight up reply that that policy was abuse. He finally said something along the lines of, “I don’t know about that.” Looking back, I recognize that at that time: …

Categories: Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Narcissism, naropa, Persephone Abbott, Richard Brautigan

“Do you have any unfinished business with me?”

Posted on October 12, 2025

A friend of mine related to me that her father had asked her this particular question during a visit to see him. This was about ten years ago. And recently her ninety year old father, a former scientist and teacher at MIT, died. “No,” my friend had replied to his question. So before her father passed to the great beyond, she spent ten years with him, hanging out, working on a book of his memories, marathon watching educational videos, enjoying a meal together, etc. Imagine. I am working on a book with my father, except that he’s been dead these past six years and I have a truck load of unfinished business with him. It’s complicated. Keith wrote a memoir of his friend, Richard…

Categories: Memory, Poetry

Tagged: Downstream from Trout Fishing in America, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, memoir, Mordecai of Monterey, Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America, unfinished business

Beat Scene 112

Posted on June 9, 2025

My piece on my father’s missing manuscripts and notebooks was published in Beat Scene. Thank you Kevin Ring for highlighting this matter and supporting Mordecai of Monterey! Maybe some of Mordecai’s melanoia (the feeling that good things are going to happen) will grace us all! #keithabbott #keithkumasenabbott #beatscene #beatpoets #mordecai #monterey #longmontcolorado #naropa #persephoneabbott #watergate #zen #buddhism #bouldermennonitechurch #rhinoritz

Categories: Book, Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: 1046 Grant Street, Beat Scene, Buddhism, Colorado, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Longmont, Mordecai of Monterey, naropa, Persephone Abbott, Zen

Some thoughts while transcribing my father’s memoir on his acceptance of Zen Buddhism and his relationship with Kobun Chino Roshi

Posted on April 12, 2025

I was, by all means, skeptical. My father had never shown any interest in organized religion, but there he was in front of me in his study in Longmont, Colorado. He was talking to me about sewing up his little pouch and explaining how my mother had helped him. This was possibly a few years after his refuge vow ceremony which I missed. At the time I had been in the process of moving from Singapore back to the Netherlands. I don’t recall if I actually had been invited to witness his vows. It seems to me that I had been told about the occasion and was, in some way, expected to show up. Didn’t I understand the importance? In years prior to Keith’s…

Categories: History, Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: 1046 Grant Street Longmont, Buddhism, calligraphy, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Kobun Chino Roshi, Longmont, naropa, Persephone Abbott, Zen

Pilgrimage

Posted on March 16, 2025

Reading Shakespeare and drinking tea are pleasant occupations. And drinking whiskey and reading Shakespeare are also pleasant occupations. A friend of mine and I meet up every so often and read a play together. We switch the parts freely. She’s a health care professional and during the break between transitioning from the tea to the whiskey part of the evening she said to me, “You know, living with a narcissist ages a person.” She meant literally ages a person physically, mentally and spiritually. I remembered myself at the age of seventeen when I couldn’t recall what I had done an hour previously. I wasn’t taking medication, I wasn’t under the influence of any substances. In despair I dyed my hair grey for a period…

Categories: Amsterdam, Memory, Mindfulness, Spirituality, Tourism

Tagged: Amsterdam, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Narcissism, Persephone Abbott, Pilgrimage

She Put Me On X

Posted on March 12, 2025

Keith sighed and looked down into his beer.Sitting next to him in Beer Springs his good buddy asked what the matter was. “She put me on X.” “Who?” “Persephone.” “Well, you named her.” Don’t miss out and check out Routine Apparitions….or X

Categories: Announcements, Memory, Poetry

Tagged: Ghost Story, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Longmont, Mordecai of Monterey, Persephone Abbott, Routine Apparitions, Twitter

Routine Apparitions: a fictional novel in blog form

Posted on December 25, 2024

Routine Apparitions (a fictional work and an online novel in blog form that is free of charge): Keith Abbott’s important notebooks and manuscripts have gone missing. But so is Keith because he died years ago. This doesn’t stop the ghost of the Soto Zen monk from wandering around Longmont Colorado looking for his stuff while busy solving crimes with his zany buddies. Of course he has the help of three teenage rebels. Meanwhile the city is in the grips of formidable conspiracy theory and oddball religious zealots, a few in the shape of Tirzah Pyrestone, Gator Matcha, El-Don Mast, Teary Filisteinsdatter Mast, Rabbi Dianne T. Lakein and so many more! Drawing on Rhino Ritz, An American Mystery Novel by Keith Abbott, of course the…

Categories: Announcements, Book, Poetry

Tagged: Archives, Blog, Blog Novel, Colorado, Ghost, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Manuscripts, Mystery, Novel, Persephone, Persephone Abbott, Routine Apparitions

Thoughts on Richard Brautigan’s A Confederate General in Big Sur

Posted on October 20, 2024

“There was a ship going someplace. It was a Norwegian ship. Perhaps it was going back to Norway, carrying the hides of 163 cable cars, as part of the world commerce deal. Ah, trade: one country exchanging goods with another country, just like in grade school. They traded a rainy spring day in Oslo for 163 cable car hides from San Francisco.” (Excerpt from A Confederate General in Big Sur by Richard Brautigan, 1965.) I first read A Confederate General in Big Sur when I was a teenager and I just finished reading it for the second time. I would like to think that this novel has made the same impression upon me as forty something odd years ago, however I must say that…

Categories: Book, History, Memory

Tagged: A Confederate General in Big Sur, Big Sur, Downstream from Trout Fishing in America, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Lee Mellon, Monterey, Mordecai of Monterey, Persephone Abbott, Price Dunn, Richard Brautigan, San Francisco, Trout Fishing in America

The Next Move

Posted on September 18, 2024

Spacing out in the airporton a toilet, almost no sleepwaiting for a connecting flightI think I might be hallucinatingA month quickly gone byvisiting family and friendstrying to put togetherwhat happened to my fatherThe duffle bag in front of my feet — never out of sight — filled with memorabilialovingly donated by hisfriends and familyI look up at my handbaghanging on a hook against the stall wallchecking if that too is movingThe duffle bag isrocking back and forthnot far from my toes

Categories: Poetry

Tagged: Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Longmont, Persephone Abbott, Poem, The Next Move

Posts tagged “Keith Abbott”