I know, I know. I've been absent this space again. Mea culpa, and thanks for sticking with me.

Three things I'm excited about:

1. ¡OBAMANOS! Seriously. I don't care about the politics, either. Barack's a guy I'd follow into battle. He's an eloquent speaker and he's a smart motherfucker and he's everything the last guy wasn't. I don't blame the current credit crisis on Bush, any more than I blamed the dot-bomb on Clinton, but frankly, he looks and sounds like a blithering idiot, and I'm tired of his face. And his choices of advisers have gotten worse and worse - from the heights of Colin Powell, we sunk through that Brownie asshole and into Henry 'Good Trillions After Bad' Paulson. It was time for change, time for someone who looks, sounds and acts like The President to be President. I'm enthused.

2. We (The Creative Cusp) have our first songwriting workshop this weekend. Bobby Shaddox is leading it, and I can't wait to take it, let alone teach part of it. Check out the details here.

3. Trying not to look forward to this Spring, but... anybody know a good French teacher?

October in San Diego

Wednesday, sweating standing still
a sultry spell. Vietnamese. ninety-five degrees.
bought some veal at the market
- a bone-in shoulder, which I salted
the site said 'rain this weekend'
a system. a cold front. from Alaska.

Saturday, up with those crows
needed my beanie getting coffee
silver cloud bands streaked the sky
I braised that veal in a Paso red
& stock I made from two hens
six hours. three-hundred degrees.

After dinner, out on the porch
Surfliner blowing down at Sassafras
the wind's swishes in the eucalyptus
that skinny palm swaying away
first drops on the palm of my hand.
a downpour. a new season. from Alaska.

It's that one moment. 1:17 or 3:14 in the afternoon, and you realize the light's different, not quite as intense as it was, and you get this sense of loss that begins in your belly and moves through your chest towards your head. Something's wrong. Everything has an ending. And then you need to stop what you're doing and go outside to think for a moment.

It was a sunny Sunday and I was lazying around Balboa Park, reading Kerouac's Desolation Angels. I've read it many times so I was sipping - skipping some parts, spending time on parts I didn't know or some that I knew well but wanted to revisit.

There's this scene when he's wandering around New York after traveling on the West Coast and through Mexico. He's noticing everything and the words are pouring out, so authoritatively, like God told him he could so he did. And it got me thinking about how I sometimes need to remind myself that I have the authority to sing the beauty of the world. And how a biblical education might grant you an assurity that I missed out on with the secular smartypants atheism of my youth.

At the time he wrote Desolation Angels, Kerouac was wrestling with the Buddhist notions of emptiness and meaninglessness of everything. Even in the face of these seemingly contradictory notions, throughout the text he continually throws out the name of God. His Catholic God. It's as if, even if the true nature of the universe was The Void, it were unthinkable not to have God there, too.

I not only respect and admire those cemented beliefs, I also have the creeping feeling I may be missing something by lacking them. And thus this poem -

JK
a pint of port in
declares he's the
'Greatest Writer in America.'

'n walks like he means it
shaking scenes from streets
shoving his snout deep
into suffering & joy & dramedy
revealing with that authority
internalized early -
a catechismal upbringing
affirming the duty and right:
    'Sing his PRAISES.'

- sing!
stop arguing
the existence of HIM, boy.
outsmart your smarts
the painting is not the paint -
shove deep
walk like you mean it
call it like you see it
    - sing boy!

Sorry all, I've been away for too long without explanation. I was absent from this space for two months - longer than I've been away for at least four years. Please, forgive me a brief catch-up before I return to posting regularly -

• I took the last two months to finish my next-to-last draft of A Story About San Diego. This draft is approximately 130,000 words long, or about 20,000 more than it should be. Next week I'll begin the final cutting process. I'm expecting to take at least the rest of September on it - if you've signed up for updates on the site, you'll be hearing from me soon.
• I'm teaching again this weekend, at our September Write on the Cusp workshop. There's still time (as of the morning of Sept 12) to signup at a discounted price - ping me.
• La Chingadera, our San Diego quarterly, is on track for its first publication this winter. If you or anyone you know is producing printable art (with a preference for but not exclusively to fiction, poetry or photography), let them know that there's an opportunity to get their work published.

Cheers,

J O

Finally, another poem about Cambodia. I knew more would come. I didn't know it would take this long. Maybe it was the intensity of the place, the way it burns oddly in my mind - It's like a candle you might have left burning, but you're on bottle number two at the restaurant, and did you blow it out or didn't you?

I, Back From Vacation

Back from Cambodia, in at the office.
The return of the shafts to the mind.
The gears. The rudder. The wheel.
     1 and 1 equals 1 again.

overseas, where machinery molders
naked kids scatter the muds
play in the remains, a France brought too far.

durian, fermented fish, flies on the plates.
eat with the hands. sweat. grandma's bloody teeth -
'betel-quid'. chawed to fade. an old free.

scooter kids, zip and sling, chthonic traffic
the yellow rues of Batambang
    one and one and one
mud busses, green sense, buffalo in mists,
    Cambodia.

The Holiday Cafe

He just dove in. And got it all over his nose, his cheeks, even his glasses. Whipped cream. His friend clapped and cracked up. Said You ordered it! He did, too. His friend started to wipe him off. No! Get away! He dove in again. And now the white, on his glasses? Brown from the coffee. They cracked up. Clapped each other on the shoulders. His friend said You ordered it! They shook their heads. Then he dove in again. They couldn't help themselves. His friend leaned over and dove in too and sputtered it all over. He was laughing so hard. They both were. It was the sidewalk cafe, full already, where people chatted or read the LA Times and teenage curves carried trays of big puffball pastries, steaming quiches, tarts, little glasses of orange juice, and lots of the fat mugs topped with four inches of whip. It was still early. But warm already. Sun spangled the tables through the jacarandas. Top down zoomsters, beatbox SUVs, and a 908 chugged up the Avenue. Strangers said 'Good morning'. I took my coffee to go, and hurried home to get to work.

I walked home from the Coaster. Little Italy was full. Couples in ones and twos, threesomes, gangs of men all chests and swinging arms. I walked on the sun side of the street. Girlfriends were on the patios, bottles of white wine between them, the bottles beaded with water. There were families where dad and grandpa both had tall glasses of Heweweizen, slices of lemon floating in the beer. There were couples having shy conversations. First dates. Old lovers. Husbands and wives. All in the June late afternoon sun. And everyone gesticulating, nodding, smiling, talking, their voices like bottles of champagne popping and sloshing into the street, into the sun in the street, India Street, 5:15PM.

I meant to stop for a beer. I thought how a Duvel would look in a glass on a table in the sun, my laptop on the table. I thought how it would taste. That first big sip. How it would feel in my mouth, throat, belly. How a little bit would hit my head, and I'd crack the laptop, and the words would come.

I couldn't find a place though. Sogno DiVino was packed. Princess had too much energy. The place next door was dead. The cafes were fine, but I wanted a beer. You can't get a beer just anywhere. You have to order a meal most places. They look at you funny, they rush you. I walked on.

I ended up stopping at Tango, the wine shop. I meant to have a drink at the bar, but it was packed. It's one of those places that's packed when there's four people there. A shame. I bought a bottle of Paso red, and another because the lady was nice. The lady was almost a girl, and could have been a girl, but she was a lady instead. It was ok. I took my wine and walked up Laurel to Banker's Hill.

Everyone was out in Banker's Hill. A girl jogged past who I thought I knew, but I didn't say anything because she was into her jogging, and didn't see me, and I didn't want to scare her.

I thought about cutting over to Avenue 5, or Bassam, or Modus, but none of them were quite right. Then I thought about my porch. And a martini. The bite and the burn of a first sip of martini, out on my balcony, watching the sun set in the shadows against the wall.

I made the martini extra strong. 10 to 1. Montgomery. I thought about everything while I shook it up. It wasn't that bad, anyway. In fact it was pretty good. Sure, I'd thought of some pretty rotten things on the way home, but everything was ok now.

I took my martini to my porch. The first sip was pleasure. The second was joy. The third was extacy. I surrendered. I sat on the porch, drank my martini, waited for her to come home, and wrote this.

A little prose poetry for the summer solstice. Dance your pagan butt off.

On The Son

He's the muscled one, fecund and indomitable. Kept his promise to take dominion. We adore him without adoration, this one who's brought back the parts of us that cower. Turned our spirits, our work into gifts. He hauls us out in the mornings, we lay splayed under his body in the afternoons, we run wild with his shadow on full moon nights.

We whisper to be polite. For his own good. Yes, our man has grown! Such pride and aplomb! But always, the worm. We've noticed for a while how his growth has slowed. The hulk, hulking, but no longer expanding. And today is the day - this mid-June day of all days, so soon, just as his reign is ascending. It's the begin of his ending.

He doesn't have a clue. In his mind he's still waxing. After all, he is who-is. Raised on the glory of his boundless increase. Why should he have even an inkling of some old rule lingering just outside his light?

It's begun. The wane. He won't notice it, let alone acknowledge it, for a while now. His cock & surety will carry the coming days. He has no mirror, he has no model, She's told him no stories to warn him of cracks or wrinkles or cold September winds.

Above all, what he doesn't know - that we and especially She have seen this show before. It's her burden - To give birth to these sons, to nurse and nurture them, to notice on a May day how she's now the shorter one, to beam up at their June dominions, to catch them caught off guard by late August, to see them fade horrifically in October, to bury them in the finality of November.

How many iterations? And our Lady's still game. Her pregnancies keep coming. It's the repetition, this illiterate patience of the Goddess. An old stubbornness. A cycle that makes a man shake his head and wonder why she doesn't just give up. A man would've lasted three, maybe four go-rounds, shrugged his shoulders, cracked a beer and tossed the whole shebang into the sea.

And maybe that's why we prescribed this metaphor. As a method of making love to the perseverance of our women.

Why did we make words to make myths?

Maybe because caresses alone felt insufficient, in light of what we learned from these sons' inevitable wanes.

What's going on...

• I've given up trying to blog A Story About San Diego and have put up a static info page. I'll still be talking about it here, of course, but maintaining two blogs proved untenable. A Story About San Diego, available October 2008.
• Our first Creative Cusp workshop is in less than two weeks! There's still space left, if you're a San Diego writer I want to see you there.
• Attended SDTweetup last night, lots of neat people, reminded me that I need to be more active in the geek community. Kinda lost my passion for it in the last few years - for the networking, not the geekery of course.

Nice thing about flying Virgin from Seattle to San Diego is, you get to stop in San Francisco. Yeah, it adds about two hours to the flight. But unlike Southwest, you get to get off the plane and stretch your legs. There's usually just enough time to take a shit and drink a beer. In fact, that's what I'm coming to know SFO as - the place where I get off the plane, take a shit and drink a beer. And Virgin's in the International terminal, so it's nice - bright, spacious, and there's several good bars that serve decent snacks, and if it's night there's lots of asian cuties boarding flights for Shanghai and Bangkok and Manilla. Get off the plane, walk a little, do some squats for the calves and quads,use the boy's room, munch a greek salad, guzzle an Anchor Steam, tap a few words, get back on the plane and less than two hours later I'm in SD. Sometimes it's the same plane. Sometimes it's even the same seat. It's like rail travel in the old days, a hint of civilization for the jet age.

Stuff that has me enthused...

The Creative Cusp!

The Creative Cusp is Abbie Berry's baby. Abbie's a phenomenal woman, and a damn good writer too. I'm helping her with web design, marketing, and some of that make-it-happen magic that I sometimes conjure.

What's The Creative Cusp? I think - and this is the reason I chose to get involved with it - it's the best opportunity that's come along since I've been here for us as San Diego writers to find our niche, to grow in our own environment, and to have some realistic goals for what we can accomplish and what our role is in the community. There's two parts to it -

1) Weekend Writing Workshops. We've gotten together with local writers to put on fun but serious learning experiences. The workshops will take place once a month this summer - go here to see which weekends are available. Abbie's got a ton of people interested in these things, so if you're considering going, sign up now so we can save your place.

2) Publishing. San Diego is starving for words! Every quarter we'll be staving off the hunger for a bit with La Chingadera, a selection of fiction, poetry, and non-fiction writing about San Diego. If you love San Diego, we need your words. We'll also consider publishing