Oh My God

Yesterday I got off work early, the off-shore winds where going and there was a little swell. I haven’t surfed in over a year. I’ve been really focused on a book and at times in the past, when I’m focused on literary work, I smoke cigarettes. This last stint, the three years on this book, near the end of it I was almost chain-smoking.

Smoking, my history: smoked Marlborough Reds for a couple years in my twenties, and remember once from back then, paddling out in big surf, that smoking affected my stamina, and I got out of the water thinking, “Dude, either quit or lose surfing top notch.”

I remember the year or so of quitting, breaking down, quitting, and the real struggle that smokers go through in quitting. Finally I lifted off and didn’t smoke or think about it for ten years or so. Then somewhere in my thirties I smoked at a wedding or something, and really enjoyed it, but the next day didn’t feel the urge to buy a pack. I went along like that for a handful of years, and then somewhere near the completion of my first novel, I actually tried to become a smoker. For some reason I couldn’t take to smoking--tried different brands for the one that delivered the nicotine best, but couldn’t find it. Then several more years, and I’m into my latest book, and again I tried to be a smoker, and I found a brand I liked--an organic blend, hit the spot, I was able to enjoy all the great things there are to enjoy in smoking: the one after a movie, the one after a meal, the one after a lot of work, and of course, the best cigarette.

And so this late book was so intense that I was smoking like I never had before. I was actually waking up in the morning with a cigarette, and smoking a pack a day (I’ve never been able to smoke more than a pack in a day). But I'd made a deal with myself, soon as I finished the book, I’d flip the leaf, and get back out in the water.

So I did, and yesterday was the first day I’d been back out in a while. It was great. It was awesome. The offshore winds had glassed off, and there were these sweet, bowly, rights that came in along Miramar. The reason I titled this Oh My God is based on what I said today when feeling my surfing muscles--my shoulders/upper-back are worked.

But I’m really glad I finished this book. It’s taken three years, and part of that is because last February, when I was ready to publish the book as it was, I’d read an essay then, and realized I had to totally dive back into it and rewrite and add a lot of stuff. In fact today when I was looking at the ISBN/Library of Congress info, that back then it was listed as being 254 pages, where published sometime in the next few weeks it will be 288 pages.

But because of the nature of it, there was a period last year where I really wondered if I had gotten myself in over my head. It was pretty intense for about two weeks, so fraught between believing in it or if it had fatal flaws and was therefore not worth publishing.

I recently turned in the final edits I could find (it was a list of ten on the back of a page, which just thinking about it now, I think I threw away in past couple days, and am wondering if I might be able to retrieve it tomorrow--it would be a cool thing to frame if the book does find its mark). The cover is looking really neat.

The political science project you would not believe. Lately I’ve taken to describing it as a three-part national discussion. First I ask the person what they think is killing America. If they’re Republican they fire off it’s the Democrats; or if it’s Democrats they fire Republican--but I interject and say--“Politics as Usual.” That’s what’s killing America, Politics as Usual. And I explain how the convention clause in actuality is a three-part national discussion (the part about electing delegates [who are they, what they think a good amendment], the part about the actual deliberative assembly [what the delegates vote up or down as amendment proposal], the part of ratification [what the people lobby to have ratified]).