Late Note

Here’s the deal. Life is crazy. All the land, all the people, all the buildings, and the transportation, all tumbled into this thing unfolding this very moment--existence.

There are these things called books, and there are these things called plays. Books are words that make sense, or attempt to, about this and that. Plays are like books, but instead of reading the idea, you watch it. Since certain situations occur again and again and again in life, some plays have nailed them, and displayed them for an audience watching, to help raise consciousness and make life more romantic (because knowing things about life is romantic). Shakespeare is known and loved because he figured out some of these archetypal things which occur in life and nailed them down with characters and lines.

Of the Hamlet/Macbeth translation I’ve tried to make it so that whether you’re reading it or watching it, you won’t know where the changes were made. When you’re finished, you’ll feel like you just experienced Shakespeare. I’m still making some minor edits, hope to get the back and forth with the printer squared by next week, and then print.

I’m kind of scared about Othello and Romeo & Juliet. I hope it goes quick, I really want to get to other projects. The only reason I’m doing it first is because if I get hit by a bus the translation is more important than plays or another novel.

And then there’s the Leica camera. I really, really want to use it more. I have this photography thing burning. It took me a while to get used to the feel of it, so different from the Nikon shape I had. But I feel it now, it’s no longer foreign to my hand. I can retrieve it and one-hand it in the way I did with the other. I hope to be posting photos here soon.

(untitled)

I am a human being.
I am a human being,
and I really, really love trees.
I see each one as a sculpture of nature,
capturing space,
and I get high on the abstract balance.
The tree I love most is the Sycamore,
the sexiest tree on the planet.
Whenever I see one....
Whenever I see one,
I exhalt in it like I would witnessing
an amazing animal,
or a woman of pulchritude.
I am a human being.
I am a human being.

Today I thought I was going to begin work on the Othello/R&J translation, but a political phone call as I enjoyed my espresso, down on the steps at Miramar this morning, threw me off, and I decided to go on a photo safari instead. I have this thing for trees, especially sycamores. It was a good safari, got some good shots.

It's so perplexing that the solution to all our problems is attainable, and those who could really make a difference, somehow, for some reason, balk or shy away from it. We'll see what unfolds this next Saturday. I have to admit, just as poetry and literature has transformed in every respect over the past several decades, that what I thought I was going to do with this life, may be a thing of the past. A life caught between the wheels of change, or a life left at a shore where the ship sails on.... It's happened before, in so many ways--things are left behind. I do have a lot of poems I should publish. First the Othello/R&J translation.

Note On An Unseasonably Cool Day

Now that the Hamlet/Macbeth book is done, I wanted to get back to a new novel. Working on it the past couple days, but just realized today, smarter to translate Othello and Romeo and Juliet first. Then the new novel.

I wonder if I can write a novel and plays at the same time. I think it's possible.

The political science project may be at an end. It’s unbelievable that OathKeepers, the group which gets military/police officers to affirm their oath to protect/defend the Constitution--that they can’t see the irony in them saying a convention is dangerous. A person professing to want the Constitution obeyed, and somehow a constitutionally mandated convention is dangerous? How does that happen in someone's brain?

Some guy who ran a populist website five/six years ago published some political pieces I wrote. Then a couple weekends ago I was asked to speak to a Tea Party group in Orange County, and that same guy from years before was there. He runs the Tenth Amendment Center now. He’s leading a group that call themselves Tenthers. They want the states to nullify federal laws (which got me thinking, what if you could find a state to nullify federal cannabis laws? Any state that did would become wealthy--a cannabis industry suddenly emerging would be a good strike against the corporate status quo, maybe a fatal one). Of course you know what I think--we need a federal convention.

Anyway, the guy from the past is holding a big political gathering in downtown LA. How did he have money back then? How does he have money now? The Tenthers and OathKeepers will be there. I'm going to have fun seeing what the response is while getting signatures for the initiative.

Late Note

Today I woke up in a motel and drove to a ranch in Menifee, California. It’s out there, inland Orange County. Some Tea Party folks had gotten together to hear speakers and discuss late news. I was invited to speak because I had become known as an advocate for the Article V Convention.

There was a Harvard graduate/New York Times best-selling political author as main draw, then a couple conservatives with various speaking rights--meaning they had published a book, or were active in some way in conservative political spheres.

One of the speakers was there to talk about how a convention is dangerous and how we should do all we could to make sure one never happens. He gave a really good speech in that he had the crowd vocally agreeing with him, big applause at the end. I spoke and was told afterward by various folks I had been persuasive and that they wanted links to more information. One guy told me I had changed his mind about whether or not a federal convention were dangerous, he said he realized it’s exactly what runaway government doesn’t want.

Driving back to Santa Barbara, I was struck by the question and had to remind myself how I got here. When I was in my twenties, the stereo-typical surfer, drinking beer, smoking cannabis, and chasing tail, I had no idea what I was going to do, I just had a strong desire to do something good. So I went on as a poet, writing and reading far and wide. Then 9/11 hit, and knowing what I did, I knew the event would create a vacuum of power and the bad guys were going to start dismantling human rights and protections in various ways. I knew of the convention clause, knew what it would do if it ever happened, and dedicated my life to doing what I could to make it happen. This September will have been ten years of various legal actions, writing, attending conferences, and talking with folks on the street. Of all those years, it’s only within the last year that blogposts are starting to go up across the internet about it.

People who say they’re not political or they don’t get involved in politics aren’t really as bright as they think they are. In blunt terms, every breath anyone takes is political. Why? Because every thought is political, and if you aren’t breathing, you aren’t thinking. Every action is either for common good or against. Why? Because everything is connected. And people who say they have their issue which they focus on, which addresses a symptom? Do you want hobby-horse politics, or do you want real politics?

Are we going to get out of this mess? Are we going to derail the corporatization of the planet? I don’t know. I do understand well enough how the idea of a convention, or asking someone to think of it, is tantamount to asking them to bite the hand that feeds. I understand all that well, but there’s something about thought and action that makes a mark on how things unfold. Ever going south and inland, use the 71.

The Dragons of Shakespeare

Today I worked all day on a book of translations of Hamlet and Macbeth. I feel dizzy, a strange feeling one gets after poring over thick text all day, attempting to make just the right choices. I had thought, and I have thought, numerous times now, that I was finished--that I was ready to send it off to the printers. But then, the choices are innumerable, and looking through the text again, things were found which were not just right. Although I am tired, and wishing it will all be finished soon, I am gratified that some very important errors were caught and corrected. Are the dragons of Shakespeare finally slain this day? Time will tell....

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]).

Three Poems

Here are three late poems. I'm hoping to use this blog more, sometime soon--so much going on in life, so much changing. Anyway, these poems are recent, so I'm not sure if they're set. I'm pretty sure the last one should be expanded to include more verses. We'll see. Wishing you peace and joy.


(untitled)

There is bravery in the world, and hope
is its bed. You are gone, while we
now live on with choices made.
I wanted you for us, if only we could
escape who we’ve been for so long.
But truth has shown its face, so it seems
we’ll never again pick the fruit
which used to lie so low.

I wouldn’t have had you laboring with our past,
but out with others whose labors are done.
If there is such thing as mates whose souls were
two halves of one, I suspect we would have
come through this folly
to comfort the will,
which perhaps now
will never be known.
There is bravery in the world,
and hope is its bed.

(untitled)

I suppose I will always love you
though just not in the way I wanted to.
So I’ve lost that hope I so
heartily believed,
where now,
day by day,
that song
becomes a
faded
memory.

Oh that I would have waited until
I was ready--oh that I would have
known much less; but perhaps
we shall meet again one day--perhaps
when we’re older and gray;
where you will understand all I meant,
and what that means then and there,
for you and those you love.
Whereupon we could laugh and carry on,
thanking the stars for that happiness
hidden in their dim and bright mysteries.

(untitled)

Oh that I would see the world,
that in seeing it so,
saves it from what it should not be.
For a rose, it’s form and fragrance,
does not exist to be damned,
its petals ripped
and dispersed to space.
So the earth should
turn in grace,
and the scent it holds
remain in place.
Oh that I would see the world,
that in seeing it so,
saves it from what it should not be.