Have you ever had been in a situation and had that horrid little deja vu feeling of, 'I've been here before, and I didn't like it then. Why on earth would I like it now? Oh dear God please make it stop'? Yeah, me too. Have you ever noticied that those horrid little deja vu feelings seem to repeat themselves like you were in some sort of cosmic feedback loop? Maybe you always have the same kind of miserable dating relationships that end the same rotten way or maybe you always end up in a job where you feel like a victim or prostitute. Or maybe it's not work or relationships but something else, perhaps many things, but the KEY THEME is that you ALWAYS feel like you've been there before. Welcome to the wacky and wild world of your EGO, where history is destined to repeat itself unless you process it so it won't. Leslie calls these cycles energy patterns, and I tend to agree with her mostly because when I'm in one of these deja vu hideous moments I feel like there's a vortex that I'm getting pulled into. (You know that feeling, don't you? We all do!)

This book will show you how to process these energy patterns so that one day you'll be at the great precipice of one of those deja vu moments, and you'll look down into this canyon, knowing that you've taken that leap oh so many times before and it never ends well... AND you'll say 'NO THANKS! Not this time!' Then you'll hear your thoughts bouncing around your mind as if you had actually taken the dive, but you're in an ascended state of consciousness where you are peaceful and even amused at your (ego) thoughts though you aren't reacting like you usually do. Instead, you're watching everything around you like you have fallen into the parallel universe of 'what ifs.' Yes, I've been to this place. It's amazing. And yes, you can make a choice to not repeat those deja vu moments that suck you in like a black hole! We don't have to live a deja vu life. We can process and choose to NOT go to those ugly places ever again. Really!

This book will give you the key!

Leslie Temple-Thurston has added something new - and in my opinion much needed - to the spiritual literature, a manual for dissolving the samskaras. Samskara is a sankrit word that refers to all those tendencies and bad habits that sabotage any efforts at achieving anything, such as losing weight or becoming enlightened. It is otherwise known as our patterns, and makes up our conditioning, or patterned behavior.

By thoroughly eluclidating on the subject of polarities and their effects on us personally - and she is working on the level of clearing the personality or ego throughout this book - you first begin to understand how energy has been routed and patterned throughout your system over the years (and lifetimes.) Once you clearly see the problem, you can begin to do something about it. But it all begins with being aware of the problem first, and Leslie gently brings our awareness to this, beautifully.

Then she has a series of exercises designed to bring out the polarities in any situation - again, to become aware of the problem further - and other exercises to help you to neutralize them so that the energy they have been using up for so long can be freed and reclaimed for your own use. Do this long enough, and you are completely free of any energy stealing habits, patterns and conditioning. Voila - liberation!

Sound good? It is. But this is not your father's Jonathan Livingston Seagull. You gotta work at it. I myself have shied away from the material, only to come back to it again and again. Each time I work with it, I come away with a greater awareness of my own conditioning, via the polarities they use. Little by little, I think I am getting it. It is a work that demands your full attention and whole-hearted devotion, but you will easily see rewards comensurate with the time you put in. Even your first little "ahas" of recognition will be very exciting. By then, you'll want more, and it won't seem like work anymore, just thoroughly satisfying self-discovery.

Editor James Laughlin provides an "exhibition gallery in book form" for experimental and unconventional writing including a previously unpublished film scenario by Lorca, seven poems and a translation by the late Denise Levertov plus five zany parables from a young Russell Edson. This is fine reading with a historical look back into the early Sixties.

These memoirs are anecdotal and readable and the story moves along quickly. The only criticism I have, however, is that having read subsequent works, such as the Fitch book on Sylvia Beach, there were a few occasions in this volume when the editors back in the 1950s cut sections of her manuscript that dealt with "controversial" subjects, such as the relationship between Ms. Beach and the French bookseller Adrienne Monnier. One would hope at some time a publisher might afford Ms. Beach the opportunity she gave to James Joyce: to have the book published as she intended.

The store opened in November 1919, offering works of T.S. Elliot, Joyce, Chaucer, and others, a variety of literary reviews, and photographs of Wilde and Whitman. It ran first as kind of lending library, and almost immediately the many native and expatriate writers of Europe were borrowing books--and giving her their own new writings. Very early customers included Gide, Maurois, American poet Robert McAlmon , "Mr. and Mrs. Pound, " and the following couple:

"Not long after I opened my bookshop, two women came walking down the rue Dupuytren. One of them, with a very fine face, was stout, wore a long robe, and, on her head, a most becoming top of a basket. She was accompanied by a slim, dark whimsical woman: she reminded me of a gypsy. They were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas."

Sylvia Beach writes clearly, candidly, and fondly of her many visitors and friends in prewar Europe, especially the 1920's ( she and her friends dismantled the shop when the Nazis threatened to confiscate her books in 1941). She evokes an entire era though richly told and plentiful anecdotes. She writes of encounters and friendships with such notables as Sherwood Anderson, Katherine Anne Porter, Satie, Bryher, H.D., Paul Valery, Valery Larbaud, D. H. Lawrence, and Hemingway (at the end of the book, Hemingway liberates "the wine cellar at the Ritz" (Hemingway's words) as he and his company try to rid the Rue l'Odeon of the remaining German snipers. Perhaps her closest relationship was with James Joyce, and she tells many stories, both amusing and sad, about him. (Sylvia Beach published the first edition of the highly controversial "Ulysses" in 1922.) The book feels intimate; one feels as if M. Beach has let one into her confidence. Highly enjoyable, fascinating, personal--and ultimately thrilling.

Laughlin himself was always an aspiring writer; many of the poems in this collection prove that he wasn't too far off the mark---that is, bits and pieces of otherwise run-of-the-mill poesy have a certain wonderful spark, a gleam of genius that suggests, had his circumstances (family wealth and a sense of duty) been different, that he might have proved remarkable. But they're not. These poems have much of Laughlin's grace in them---elegant but somehow tame and somewhat bland.

When young, Laughlin visited Gertrude Stein in Paris. Stein told him that his talents lay elsewhere, that he could help out the written word better by helping other writers, which Laughlin, dutifully and gracefully, did. He never gave up on writing. I don't see why he should have---if anything, his poems might seem pale because they are surrounded in _New Directions_'s catalog by so much genius. I hope that Laughlin was pleased by the good company.