I can’t talk about the trial/case, or give details (I’ve been sworn!) but suffice it to say that all is not resolved in an hour, like on Law & Order (and there’s no Chris Meloni to be found!). Still, it’s been very interesting–who knows, maybe a book will come out of it???

There are certainly no shortage of characters when you hang around a courthouse.

Speaking of… of course my book is getting major neglect right now, though I’ve been sketching out ideas and scenes in my journal.

And summer is two thirds over! I think I have maybe a month left? Yes! A month to the day and I’ll be driving to campus. All those plans I had for a creative summer (writing, reading, making stuff…) are a bit hazy now.

Wahh, wahh, wahh! I’ve still got those four weeks, right?

Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way Every Day says:

Creativity is inspiration coupled with initiative. It is an act of faith and, in that phrase, the word “act” looms as large as the “faith” that it requires. When we do not act in the direction of our dreams, we are only “dreaming.” Dreams coupled with the firm intention to manifest them take on a steely reality. Our dreams come true when we are true to them. Reality contains the word “real.” We begin to “reel” in our dreams when we toss out the baited hook of intention. When we shift our inner statement from “I’d love to” to “I’m going to,” we shift out of victim and into adventurer.

In any case, I did read the 5 Nonfiction pieces by: Jennifer Egan, Junot Diaz, Tea Obreht, Edward P. Jones, and Salvatore Scibona. They were all good, but my favorites were Scibona’s Where I Learned to Read, Jones’ Shacks, and Diaz’ The Money (and also Jones, but I’ll save that for another blog post).

As a side note, I’m currently reading Tea Obreht’s novel, The Tiger’s Wife, which is getting phenomenal reviews, she’s being called a new wonderkind, and Colum McCann says, “Téa Obreht is the most thrilling literary discovery in years.” I’m only about 100 pages in though I’m enjoying it–especially the magical stories the narrator’s grandfather tells her (hence the title), that are woven throughout the book, which is essentially a mystery (the narrator is trying to discover why her grandfather left home to die without telling anyone).

Anyway, back to the 5 Nonfiction pieces. I love it when NYer does these 1 page shorts, because they’re so easy to use/teach in a writing class. I’m definitely going to be using these in my Fall Creative Nonfiction Workshop at the college.

Scibona’s particularly appealed to me because it’s basically a love letter to reading– though told through a twisty series of events in his young school life. But it reminded me of my own growing up, sneaking away at recess and lunch to the library in grade school to read those short bios of famous people– called the Childhood of Famous Americans Series: Lincoln, Dolly Madison, Jim Thorpe, Betsy Ross, Jane Addams. Remember those bios? They were meant for grade school, probably only about 50 pages (if that) and had the most basic information about the peoples’ lives– though all told very melodramatically (lots of exclamation points!). These were some of my best friends from 2nd to 6th grade.(I SO remember reading this one– Narcissa Whitman, Pioneer Girl).

In talking about finding his way to reading Scibona writes:

By senior year at St. John’s, we were reading Einstein in math, Darwin in lab, Baudelaire in French tutorial, Hegel in seminar. Seminar met twice a week for four years: eight o’clock to ten at night or later, all students addressed by surname. On weekends, I hung out with my friends. The surprise, the wild luck: I had friends. One sat in my room with a beer and “The Phenomenology of Spirit,” reading out a sentence at a time and stopping to ask, “All right, what did that mean?” The gravity of the whole thing would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so much fun, and if it hadn’t been such a gift to find my tribe.

You can also find out what these writers are reading this summer.

I’ve been wanting to post more about my recent fascination with Zines and about how I’d like to produce some in the near future.

Here’s a cool Zine I found online a couple of months ago and then it took me a while to order it and now it’s finally come!

The publisher is Elk Zine and they have such terrific zines, and films.

This one is by writer and photographer Vince Aletti (he was one of the first critics to write about Disco music) and has a gorgeous photo of Rebel Without a Cause actor Sal Mineo on the cover and inside it’s made up of beefcake photos mostly only of guys from the shoulders up, which I find is kind of charming.

There’s a cool write-up about it at Book Du Jour with more photos.

Ah Sal Mineo. I imagine that so many young gay men who saw Rebel Without a Cause in the theater must have felt such a connection and recognition with him.

How the heart aches when Plato (Sal Mineo) says to Jim (James Dean):

If only you could’a been my dad. We could have breakfast in the morning.

Finished Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff. I loved the information about Egypt and Cleo and Mark Antony, but I was missing dialogue (the book is serious nonfiction). Still, Schiff impressed me with her knowledge and Cleo impressed me with her sheer tenacity.

My office at home is looking like one of those NYC apartments where the reclusive tenant saves every newspaper, magazine, letter,  leaflet and flyer. I’m too embarrassed to post a picture of it.

I cut the tip of my middle finger off and it hurt. Ok, it wasn’t really the tip, more like the corner of the tip. But it still hurt. For a couple of days I had to wear one of those splint-thingies so that I wouldn’t bump it on anything, but it definitely made it seem pretty drastic (but if you know me, you know how melodramatic I get with just the sniffles). And then I had to learn how to type without using that finger, which a couple of days ago I finally mastered. But now the finger is healing better and I can pretty much use it, only I have to re-learn how to type with it. Arghh!

While I was in the Emergency room Ted brought me Nicole Krauss’ Great House to read. I absolutely loved The History of Love and have been wanting to read this. It doesn’t disappoint. I read about 50 pages in, but I’m also reading another book so I may have to put the Great House aside until then.

Speaking of books…though I’m not finding, or rather making, the time to write as much as I should (I think that I somehow didn’t get the gene for discipline…), the little bits, spurts of writing that I’m doing I’m pretty pleased with. I’m loving working on two characters that I’d only been sketching out, or had only been on the periphery so far– the young female English High School Teacher with the secret stash of lipsticks in her desk drawer at school and the Shivwit Indian boy, Limpie, whose POV is told entirely through an essay he’s writing. It’s funny how developing these characters more and letting them lead me on this journey has sparked such new energy in me.

Ted‘s out of town for a week visiting his mom and then our new niece, and the cats, Betsy and Jack, are so neurotic (i’m fine though, thanks for asking)! They are completely underfoot. Betsy sits with me while watching TV, her head resting in my lap.

On another note, I’m obsessed with this website Instructables–have you seen it?– from which you can learn how to do anything from how to tie a tie, how to kiss, to other more craft-oriented tips such as  book-making, how to knit, make mosaics, origami, and my recent obsession: how to make linocuts.

I really really would love to have a letterpress machine, but this linocut thing looks a bit simpler (and less expensive). See the samples of what you can do below.

Many of the how-to’s have step-by-step photos and videos. Check them out, search for how to make or do just about anything.

Watched the last episode of TCM’s Moguls and Moviestars– the epic documentary series about the rise and fall of the movie studio system. It was completely fascinating. I couldn’t help but feel for the movie stars and studio heads when the studios started crumbling around them; not to mention the footage of the old studio land that was sold off.

Went to a fantastic reading Friday night at The Ink Spot. James Meetze (in the picture) read from his book of poems DAYGLO of which Rae Armantrout says “James Meetze is, in some sense, a ‘landscape poet,’ except his landscape includes ‘FA-18 Hornets’ that ‘boom above the freeway / as eucalyptus leaves rustle.’ He has a feel for his hometown, which is also mine. In fact, San Diego, with its ahistorical ‘Dayglo’ pastels, best glimpsed in passing from a freeway, is where we all live now, somehow, or soon will.”

Ryan Murphy (a friend from grad school!) says “Dayglo is a conscious artifact…”

Indeed, his poems took me back to my days growing up here. The beaches, the sunsets, the valleys and malls. But also they look at Southern California, and San Diego especially, through the eyes of someone who left here and then came back. They speak about beauty and warmth, of Eucalyptus trees, freeways and fluorescent lights, but also separation, isolation, regret, disappointment.

I’m particularly taken with the first two lines of the poem “To Make You Surfer”:

In all the movies about California youth,

we are made to believe in gold everywhere.

Rob in EW

My letter was regarding a fantastic review they gave Mark Richard for his new book, House of Prayer No. 2, A Writer’s Journey Home, a memoir.Richard’s been compared to Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and I feel like he could be a distant brother to the late, great Barry Hannah (Airships is his masterpiece).

If you’ve never read Mark Richard please please search him out, especially the book I mention in the letter, Charity, which features, in my opinion, one of his best stories, “The Birds For Christmas.”

We wanted “The Birds” for Christmas. We had seen the commercials for it on the television donated thirdhand by the Merchant Seamen’s and Sailors’ Rest Home, a big black-and-white Zenith of cracked plastic and no knobs, a dime stuck in the channel selector. You could adjust the picture and have no sound, or hi-fi sound and no picture. We just wanted the picture. We wanted to see “The Birds.”

You can read the whole story on Boldtype.

House of Prayer No. 2 also has a fantastic cover by artist Michael J. Windsor

Ok, enough objectification.

The night was so literary! One of the best events we’ve had at the Ink Spot and surely one that affected all who attended. Ulin was there, courtesy of the PEN Center USA and the always wonderful Amy Wallen,  to plug his new book, The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, but he gave us much more than that. The book began as an original essay by Ulin from the LA Times 2009.

Says Ulin:

Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.

Here’s another thing that Ulin said at the event that really resonated with me. Rather, it was more of a suggestion:

He explained that reading a book for 20- 30 min. before bed isn’t enough-- one should dedicate a good couple of hours every few days, or a few hours on the weekend, say a Saturday, to really read a book.

What a concept!

Most of my reading is propped up on my pillow at 11:30 pm (much like the lovely James Franco in the picture to the left). Me and Ted touching elbows as we read our books. But by the time we go to bed i’m so tired I can usually only get in about 15-30 minutes of reading before my head starts nodding. There are exceptions, I mean I have been known to read for an hour or more at bedtime but that’s usually because I’ve had too much coffee during the day.

I’d really like to take his advice though, and set aside a couple of hours to read each weekend (cuz lord knows I can’t do it during the week with my schedule). But how luxurious! Right? Reading a book for three hours on a Saturday. Who does that? Do you? It sounds wonderful.

The other anecdote (among many) that I loved but I can’t remember if it was Arthur Salm or David Ulin who told it was this little story:

A [fairly well known] writer [I can't remember his name!] had a visitor to his house and the visitor, looking at all of the books on his shelves, of which there were hundreds and hundreds, asked this writer, “Oh my, have you read all of these books?”

To which the writer replied, “Of course I haven’t read all of these books! Who would want to live in a house with books you’ve already read?”

I can’t tell you how many times people have asked Ted and myself this same question!

*Photo courtesy of the Guardian UK’s Writer’s Rooms series.

I was obsessed with Egypt as a kid. This was during the King Tut craze of the mid-70s. It was King Tut mania! And then there was the Agatha Christie movie, Death on the Nile (still a favorite for the batty performance by Angela Lansbury and the blue-eyed charm of Simon MacCorkindale). I wanted so badly to go to Egypt and see the pyramids and ride a camel. Maybe one of these days.

And, I’ve always loved the musical number, Cleopatterer, performed by June Allyson and Ray McDonald in the MGM Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By (itself a number from the Kern musical Leave it to Jane).  The sounds a bit off, but click the picture to watch it. June at her husky-voiced best.

My favorite postcard of all time.I think I bought it when I was about eighteen or nineteen, as a sensitive young gayboy in San Diego.

Peter Orlovsky (on the right) was incredibly beautiful and also a writer, but definitely inspired some incredible poems by Ginsberg, his partner of 30 years.

Peter Orlovsky 1933-2010

There’s just no teaching. I applied for some part-time teaching at a couple of other schools but it looks pretty dismal.

Hopefully unemployment will kick in and they won’t screw me this time like they have in the past.

In other, happier news I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books last Saturday–took a bus up with Judy Reeves and other wonderful folk as part of San Diego Writers, Ink– and had a great, if overwhelming time. Overwhelming because there’s so much to do, see, so many books, panels, booths.

I did get to see panels featuring:

Colson Whitehead–looking awesome, handsome as usual and when he said, “I’m obsessed with outlining. I like to know what happens”– I wanted to go up and shake his hand, or kiss him. Probably kiss him. (ok, I admit to a guy-crush on Colson Whitehead. If that makes me gay, so be it. Oh, wait. I am gay).

Paul Harding—the guy that just won the Pulitzer and a Guggenheim (I bought and he signed his PP winning book: Tinkers, which looks beautiful and the reviews are staggeringly positive. He was also very sweet and gracious).

Rafael Yglesias–whose book, A Happy Marriage (a fictionalization of meeting his wife and then losing her to cancer), sounds heartbreaking and glorious and I think I’ll need to put it on my list. He also said, “Reading poetry helps bring emotional power to your own writing. You can’t make books or stories vivid without doing something to the language.”

Antonya Nelson–she was dead on when, speaking of the importance of reading (as learning tools, as inspiration, as teacher), she said: “A lot of what I’m writing is a response to what I’ve read.”

Marisa Silver–Love, love, love her story collection: Babe in Paradise who said “the story has to be an exploration for you.”

Ron Carlson– “I’m only interested in surviving the draft.” Love that line. I took a Creative Writing class from him at Arizona State in the mid-late 90s.

I also attended the “History Through the Lens of Fiction” panel featuring Tom Curwen, Gabrielle Burton, Thaisa Frank, and Indu Sundaresan. All very accomplished writers of historical fiction. One interesting thought I came away with is: “Finding parallels in your work (the historical fiction you are writing) and the world of today.”

Oh, and I came away with a new subscription to Tin House, too!

More on writing… later.

“The tough poetry of Fisher’s novel buoys this chronicle of Oregon migation along on an incantatory wave. It’s 1847 and dour patriarch Israel Mitchell drags his reluctant wife , Lucy, and their chilren out to the Oregon Territory. Their paths cross with James McLaren, a bereaved Scot trapper whose children have all died from smallpox and whose Nez Perce wife has run off. Each day the murderous landscape spools mercilessly ahead of the emigrants, and Fisher’s depiction of a familiar seeming journey that is not adventurous, as myth would have it, but a daily exercise in folly and survival, is astonishing. A Sudden Country requires a patient reader, but the spell it casts is transformative and rare. The heartbreaking first chapter alone is worth any number of lesser novels.”

The review doesn’t lie. The first chapter left me breathless. When I finished the chapter I turned to Ted (we were both reading before bed) and said “Wow.” I didn’t have the words to describe how mesmerized and devastated I was by that first, extremely short chapter. This is what editors and agents mean when they say the first chapter (let alone the first page) must grab you and pull you in.

Happily, the rest of the book is proving just as beautifully written and intriguing and surprising. One particularly moving turn of phrase:

He remembered the dry grief cracking out.

Fisher is teaching a daily workshop called “Spirit and Matter in Historical Fiction” that I’ve signed up for. I can’t wait!

On a probably not-so-related note, or, well, speaking of the big country, the wild west, I watched “Calamity Jane“– the western musical starring Doris Day as the title character and Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok, her eventual love interest. The film and the Academy Award-winning song “Secret Love” is referenced in my book as is the hunky Howard Keel.  Though I think this photo on the left is from “Annie Get Your Gun” in which Keel also starred, this time playing opposite another brassy blonde: Betty Hutton.

“Calamity Jane” has its moments, but I was really just watching to see Keel (my main character has a crush on him; it’s easy to see why) and to hear the song. You can see/hear it here.