Tales & Flukes from Life in the Trees, Fractal One - Saving the Cosmos ('til Tuesday) - Softcover

Born in 1935 on the California coast during the Depression to educated parents, Jim grew up in a loving household of modest means where both Mom and Dad made do with civil service jobs, simple pleasures, and offbeat adventures. Four fundamental traits have shaped his life: a keen intelligence; a whimsical nature; poor eyesight, albeit correctible; and a physique like Adonis; all leading to his unique view of the world and a remarkable confidence in it. He attended public schools, earned a Master's degree in mathematics, taught high school math, began to write in the sixties, then dropped out and moved to Maui in 1970. Through the years his life has assumed mythic proportions, being revered for his innate nobility, humor, and goodness. He stopped cutting his beard twenty years ago. Jim vows to return to his treehouse where he lived for nineteen years and wrote this book. For now, he lives on a small farm with his family, three cats, flocks of chickens, monarch butterflies, and random herds of feral deer.

At last we get to hear from this mind, this physicist of consciousness who has walked naked and splendid into the incredible opportunity that we all call life. Each of his great little tales is a koan. --Paul Wood, Writer

This book is a trip. Seriously. For anyone who knows Jim Loomis, this isn't at all surprising. Part memoir, part photo album, part poetry collection, the book is all Loomis and all fantastic. It's clear from reading just a few pages that Loomis' mind spins just a little faster (and a few degrees off) from the rest of us. The result is crisp, living prose that dances and leaps off the page. Quote: I'm grateful for the typing course I took sixty years ago. And agriculture: my carrot won first prize. Wish I had known then, that was the apex of my career. Apex of a water chimp's career. Not seaweed, but a carrot, orangeness bursting from the brown soil. (End quote.) Somehow, Loomis has managed to distill the entire island of Maui all its vibrant color and contradictions into a book that we can hold in our hands. It's an achievement we should cherish. We hear about Loomis and his young daughter in a sailboat lobbing water balloons at a nuclear submarine off the Westside. We see him at the optometrist trying to talk his way out of having Glaucoma. And we can smell what happens when he eats mangoes with a homeless guy under the Banyan Tree in Lahaina. Loomis' book offers not just a new way of thinking about Maui, but a new way of thinking about everything. There are few people anywhere as thoughtful as Jim Loomis, and we're all richer that he's given us this book. --Anthony Pignataro, Editor, Maui Time

Heart-rending and mind-bending, these vignettes, woven together over a lifetime of epic proportions and synchronicities, are psychoactive. Each story is like a fresh bouquet of wildflowers, handpicked for soulful travelers on the road of life. But be forewarned, as these stories simmer in your consciousness long after reading them, you might just decide to sell everything and take up residence in the warm arms of a banyan tree. --James Whittle, M.S., L.Ac

This book is a trip. Seriously. For anyone who knows Jim Loomis, this isn't at all surprising. Part memoir, part photo album, part poetry collection, the book is all Loomis and all fantastic. It's clear from reading just a few pages that Loomis' mind spins just a little faster (and a few degrees off) from the rest of us. The result is crisp, living prose that dances and leaps off the page. Quote: I'm grateful for the typing course I took sixty years ago. And agriculture: my carrot won first prize. Wish I had known then, that was the apex of my career. Apex of a water chimp's career. Not seaweed, but a carrot, orangeness bursting from the brown soil. (End quote.) Somehow, Loomis has managed to distill the entire island of Maui all its vibrant color and contradictions into a book that we can hold in our hands. It's an achievement we should cherish. We hear about Loomis and his young daughter in a sailboat lobbing water balloons at a nuclear submarine off the Westside. We see him at the optometrist trying to talk his way out of having Glaucoma. And we can smell what happens when he eats mangoes with a homeless guy under the Banyan Tree in Lahaina. Loomis' book offers not just a new way of thinking about Maui, but a new way of thinking about everything. There are few people anywhere as thoughtful as Jim Loomis, and we're all richer that he's given us this book. --Anthony Pignataro, Editor, Maui Time

Heart-rending and mind-bending, these vignettes, woven together over a lifetime of epic proportions and synchronicities, are psychoactive. Each story is like a fresh bouquet of wildflowers, handpicked for soulful travelers on the road of life. But be forewarned, as these stories simmer in your consciousness long after reading them, you might just decide to sell everything and take up residence in the warm arms of a banyan tree. --James Whittle, M.S., L.Ac