“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

Paradise

Posted on March 31, 2025

I had thought about it. The American Photography exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. Then my phone via Facebook or Instagram or Osmosis-Goo suggested that I seriously consider buying a ticket, like right now, click the link and chakka-gotcha! The Rijksmuseum sits just around the corner from my apartment, a five minute walk. Motivated, I took the bait. Walking through the exhibit at 9 a.m. on a Monday morning, I thought about my age. From my memory bank I can understand the subject matter in the photographs, either because I was already born or my grandparents were alive during the early to mid 20th century era or because the historical photographs of locations were still somewhat recognizable to what I recall seeing when I lived in…

Categories: History, Memory, Mindfulness

Tagged: Amsterdam, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Mordecai of Monterey, Nevada, Persephone Abbott, Washington

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

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

Persephone August 16 – 27

Posted on August 25, 2024

Travel Blog USA 2024. I am traveling to visit friends and family and to visit Keith Kumasen Abbott’s partial archives at the University of Western Washington in Bellingham where I will discuss my father’s missing materials. Where are they? What could Eldon and Terry Mast have done with them? August 16 – 27 Topics Include: A Discussion about Responsibility and Fraudulent Identity The Boarding House on Marion/Aryan Kelton Tim Hildebrand/Keith Kumasen Abbott’s materials Keith’s High School Friends and his Mother’s Oil Paintings The Cutting of Contact/My Mother’s Mental Illness A Visit to Tacoma’s Mountain View Cemetery X-Cel Feedmill/Keith’s poem Leonard Elwood Abbott Jr. Bethlehem Lutheran Church/My Norwegian Grandparents Visiting my Grandmother’s House in Tacoma after 44 Years Looking for Cheap Groceries at Dollar Store…

Categories: Announcements, Memory

Who was Mordecai of Monterey?

Posted on July 17, 2024

Who was Mordecai? I am working on my father’s comic novel Mordecai of Monterey for (re)publication. And the character of Mordecai was based on a long time friend of my father’s, the poet Michael Sowl. And then there is the Miracle…

Categories: Book, Poetry

Tagged: Boulder, Colorado, Keith Abbott, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Kumasen, Longmont, Michael Sowl, Monterey, Mordecai of Monterey, naropa, Naropa Institute, Naropa University, Persephone Abbott, Poet, Sowl

Keith Kumasen Abbott: Mordecai of Monterey

Posted on May 17, 2024

It’s been nearly five years since my father passed, and I hope by the end of this year to publish one of Keith’s novels that has faded out of view. It’s a comic work and when asked how I am editing it, I reply that it’s more like I am retelling the story. Although I’m aware that he was given some advice, I’m not a hundred percent sure Keith actually had a serious editor for “Mordecai of Monterey” way back in the day. I’m discovering I have my work cut out for me. As I remember rolled up bills falling out of my father’s shirts when I was collecting the laundry back in 1984, I am pretty sure the inconsistencies from one paragraph to…

Categories: Poetry

Tagged: 1973 California, Big Sur, Keith Abbott, Mordecai of Monterey, Persephone Abbott

Keith, recollections from his daughter

Posted on September 16, 2023

Keith Recollections from his Daughter I am unable to remember when I met my father. He told me he recalled the moment even though The nurse thrust a substance upon his person To keep him (well mustached at 23 years of age) from fainting And falling on the hospital floor in a heap. He admitted he liked both: The baby and the intervention. It was a good day. I remember my father busy in the mornings writing something important. Then he’d come out of his lair for coffee. He was adored and admired for his charm and wit but he also drank coffee. He ground the beans first. It’s not a secret to making good coffee. When I was a young girl, my father…