This Is Guy Tiphane Writing

Words on a Typewriter

2010-02-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

The Chosen

2009-10-11T12:26:00.001-07:00

See The Chosen at TheatreWorks, Mountain View.

I’m not religious at all, so the idea of going to see a play heavy with the subtleties of Jewish teachings wasn’t appealing. But past the references to God (which in my atheistic vocabulary just means whatever someone has made up a few thousand – and sometimes not so many – years ago), The Chosen had a lot to say about fatherhood and the passing of knowledge and skill from one generation to the next. Strangely devoid of any female input, the play (and I assume the novel on which it is based) focuses on the differences between two grown boys, and the relationship with their fathers. I just remembered that in my family, one would talk to my mother to discuss an issue and possibly escalate it to my father, who was the silent one. In the play, the chosen one is an unlikely friend through whom the father and son will communicate, and who will act as a catalyst in their relationship. Finally, each son will be able to confront his father with who he really wants to become.

I also appreciated that what was being passed from one generation to another was the ability to inquire and discuss, a quality that’s often lost in our world of absolutist trends. If it was at all possible to debate the TV pundits and preachers that pollute the airwaves, they would soon find nothing to say, and the fanatics would calm down. And I would also welcome the challenges of discussion by finally admitting that the other person is just discussing the subject without trying to hurt me. That’s always a difficult issue to deal with.

I, Too, Wanna Be Punk

2009-09-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

Broadway shows put me to sleep. But once in a while, they’ll put together a show that won’t let me go to sleep, like American Idiot. And it’s not only because I keep tapping feet and hands at the rapid beat of most of the songs that the musicians play really well (get the CD to compare). Personally, I don’t really care for the voices in the show, and find it more satisfying to have the original Green Day voices in my head.
So this, too, would put me to sleep if not for the visual explosion in front of me that resembles what I saw with my eyes closed the first time I heard this CD (it was something akin to those laser shows we had back in the days). Not that there are any laser shows here. The set is massive, with TV screens all over a two- or three-story high wall complete with stairs at the top of which one can observe a lone violinist is playing. The cellist travels under the stairs that the actors move around (and gets off while they transform it into a bus). The dancers execute moves I wouldn’t even dream of trying at home, and the whole choreography is fun to watch. And I really like the projections on the wall.
What I find puzzling, since I’m a wannabe punk, is that the end is anticlimactic. I didn’t want to be an American Idiot, in full agreement with the first song, didn’t want to be part of this alienation, but that’s where the show leads you. Calm down, you too tried to rebel, but look, this is Broadway after all.

Which leads me to another play I saw at NCTC, called The Little Dog Laughed, which is about actors in Hollywood who stay in their closet for fear of breaking their career, and the alienating forces that dictate a good story has to be heterosexual. My friend expressed his surprise, as it appeared anachronistic to him, but read the program notes and you’ll discover that Hollywood loves to conform, whatever the right wingers say. I thought a play like that belonged in mainstream theatres as an “issue play,” but then NCTC’s Decker theater is nice enough and located near the big mainstream opera and concert halls.

Unless you live in Potrero Hill, chances are you won’t know that there’s a small theatre on 18th Street that’s currently hosting the Asian American Theatre Company’s world premiere of a play by Philip Kan Gotanda called #5 Angry Red Drum. The title, a play on the reversed word “redrum” made famous in the movie The Shining, is more cryptic than Waiting for Godot, which you are inevitably reminded of. The play is filled with references to the well-known absurdist play, and the comical scenes (starting with Pick’s coming out of a hole in the dirt) are brutally overshadowed with scenes of conflict between two men who may or may not want to coexist. When the warmonger appears in their midst, he coaches Pick to murder Gorum. They finally kill the drummer boy, apparently because he’s different.
To many in the audience, the play illustrates the state of affairs in the twenty-first century, with wars going on that we’re trying to forget, and politically angry people who believe whatever Fox News feeds them. But beyond its meaning, the play was very well put together, and at the forefront of new theatre.

Moved Again!

2008-08-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

I got all excited by wordpress, so the blog is now moved to guytiphane.wordpress.com

Puzzle

2008-08-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

There he is, dead, alone
You cannot disturb him any more
And you think that’s how he wanted it
And you think your puzzle is incomplete.

You look above for signs of an angel
Taking away his soul
As in the image in catechism.
As in the image in catechism
You remember the angel busy cleaning your soul
But yours had cracks in it
Caused by a fall
Caused by you
Causing eternal pain
Causing unmanly tears retained

Your head bounces on an aluminum locker
Your head spins about unsaid words and questions
Locked in for eternity
Another mystery, as they had many
You had to take for granted

Your finger ventures its back
On a one-day beard
Your lips prohibited long ago
On the freshly shaven cheek
Reserved for a good housewife
Now watching your gesture

And you withdraw deeper
Into a mound of puzzle pieces
That will never come together.

The Story of a Marriage by Andrew Sean Greer

2008-07-17T20:41:00.000-07:00

I live on the other side of the bay from San Francisco, so I listen to KALW radio. That's how I heard his name, and his voice I think. So when I stood in front of his book at Moe's one Sunday afternoon, an autographed copy, I thought I might be missing something if I stopped at the suggestion of the title: it would be a boring story of some successful marriage by perfect people.

I read the first page, and thought this might be good.

"We think we know the ones we love."

Okay, whatever, it's still a happy marriage story.

"Our husbands, our wives. We know them -- we are them, sometimes; when separated at a party we find ourselves voicing their opinions their taste in food or books, telling an anecdote that never happened to us but happened to them."

I was ready to put it back on the shelf. I think I did. I took a walk to the literary remainders, you know, the $6 Everyman Library classic that you'll get to replace the paperback version you have. "Give it one more chance," I thought.

"We think we know them. We think we love them. But what we love turns out to be a poor translation, a translation we ourselves have made, from a language we barely know."

Take a chance. Those are beautiful sentences. Get that ATM unit out and pay the nice guy at the register who will even put the penny you don't want into the donation pot for books in prisons.

I started reading, and didn't stop until my eyes could no longer stay open. This doesn't occur that often with me. The thought of going to see a movie will get me back on my feet if one sentence speaks less than enchanting words. It didn't happen. The days after that I couldn't wait to have time to read more. At the end, when I read the last word, I needed to share this incredible experience of spending a few hours with Pearlie, the narrator of this story, the more than just a wife person I would like to have here, now.

You'll find the story elsewhere, on other web sites. After a few pages, I thought, "I bet the husband is gay," and he was. But that was in the 1950's when that was hardly an option. And then they're black, and the beautiful man is white, almost stereotypically German and successful. There's Ethel Rosenberg being killed by the state because she was a good wife. There's the hysteria that makes everyone be a good citizen and follow orders (a bit like now). And there's Love, especially the one nobody talks about, with secret encounters with someone you know will never be your lover. It's amazing how the transposed heart metaphor resonates over and over in this novel.

"Perhaps you cannot see a marriage." I'm still on page one. "Like those giant heavenly bodies invisible to the human eye, it can only be charted by its gravity, its pull on everything around it." I don't know, this book is full of sentences like that. I want to reproach it that the last page doesn't have them, as if the author had decided that since you were going to close the book right then, he'd no longer talk to you. He gave you that moment when you wanted to cry for whom? A fictitious character? Ha! I wanted to. I was in Pearlie's head all the time. For nearly two hundred pages I wanted to be Pearlie, because she was a beautiful lady.

I thought, maybe I could contact that author and he'd come to my writers group, maybe even for free. Fat chance: he'll be at City Arts and Lectures with Michael Chabon. That's how good he is.

On Chesil Beach

2008-05-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

On Chesil Beach: A Novel by Ian McEwan

I love it, first because I could read it in two seatings (big novels are, how can I put it, intimidating, and lose me in the middle). OK, seriously: this is the second McEwan that I read (the other was Saturday), and every time I am enchanted by his craft, i.e. the way he forms sentences that flow and go back deep in the train of thought of his characters to tell you how they ever got where they are now. So, would anyone say, how can he keep you reading this story about the failure to have sex on the night of one's honeymoon?

For one, it talks about a huge myth, the one that makes people hang soiled sheets at the honeymooners' window in Sicily. While reading it, I thought, "shouldn't they just relax about it and talk, maybe see a counselor?" And that is what people don't do. People assume they're deficient. They build tension on trifles just because Love was suddenly distilled to intercourse and everyone has a degree of discomfort with that.

But at the end of the day, this novel is about intense love, the one that is trivialized now but that is the foundation of oneself. At the end of the day, it isn't how much sex you've had, it's about how you connected, and how you experience this abstraction called Love. When you reach the last pages of the book, that is where the author has taken you, and nothing else. There's no moral, no lesson learned, just the hint that you too, could have been so close to that ideal. I just love books like that.

Becoming a Writer

2008-04-05T16:48:00.000-07:00

I'll participate in a panel at Montreal's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival called "Becoming a Writer," in which I should talk about my experience with self-publishing and all the steps of the seemingly infinite ladder towards making one's name emerge in a very crowded and noisy market.

Of course, I'll talk about having the book on lulu.com, more as something anyone should do if they're not going through getting their work torn apart at an MFA program to shake them out of their bad habits. We always question that, we, the beginners. We don't like to have our egos deflated as an exercise. Perhaps that distinguishes the hobbyists from the wannabe professionals.

All the same, I feel that with the Internet and people's changing habits, an Internet presence is necessary if you want to be an author and it doesn't seem you're in line any time soon for major recognition. Anyone can start a blog like this one on any free service currently available (if you don't like google, try wordpress). The harder part is to figure out how to integrate audio and perhaps video into the equation. People download lots of mp3 (even to their cars, I gather), and it would make sense to get your work in that format.

Just today I found this article in the San Francisco Chronicle's Datebook section about a writer who records his stories into free podcasts, hoping that he'll have enough of a following to get them to buy actual books. It may work. By the way, he's a graduate of the Iowa program, and I was surprised that he didn't get an automatic book deal out of that.

Here is the article:

Take my book. It's free.
Giving away books as podcasts is new way to promote sales

One also needs to get his name (and especially his web address) out there to get people's interest. That may even be a healthier lifestyle than that of the typical writer hiding in his chamber with a raven. Perhaps it means you get your name out there by writing (part-time) where it will be recognized.

sharing in the writer's market

2008-03-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm probably not reporting anything new by telling you about newpages.com because if you just google "literary magazines" or "online literary magazines" it shows up at the top of the results. I may even have heard about newpages.com, and it may even be in my browser's bookmarks for what I know. Except that today, faced with another rejection letter and faithful to my promise to just keep submitting the same story to other magazines, I felt overwhelmed by the number of literary magazines out there. It became even more overwhelming once I found the lists at newpages.com

A few days ago, I thought: I'll start my own! I know how to make websites, and since I even own the web site, litbazaar.com, I might as well use it. That will take a long time. And there are so many out there! How many writers can there be? Some of the most obscure (to me until now) online magazines already post "no more submissions for now, please," and it feels like arriving in a town where there's a big convention going on and no rooms in even the dingiest motel. You rent a car, because you have to go out of town and seek the "Vacancy" sign. Then you try one and they look at you and tell you they don't really have a bed for you. You don't take it personally, because the motel wants to attract a kind of clientele that does not include you.

Now if I look too deeply at a magazine I selected for its name, I find out it's based in the south, and tell myself they'd never be interested in a story that talks about a kid being stuck in a snow bank. Or would they? Maybe that qualifies as novelty.

So, seriously, what do I do?

- start my own magazine. Being its editor, I'd slip in my writing here and there
- become a novelist and withdraw for a few years until I come up with the novel that someone will surely want to publish
- look around me and find an open mic so I'll keep writing poetry with the only goal of "publishing" it at the open mic (and then on this blog). I read somewhere that people my age are past their prime as poets (an issue with the fossilization of one's language, I think), but then wouldn't it be an antidote to aging?

A decision will come soon.

Oh! newpages.com also lists independent bookshops in your town! Go there, then review the store on Yelp.

issues of the day

2008-03-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

Wow, I keep forgetting that the rest of the U.S. out there is really strange. They keep thinking whoever isn't like them, i.e. ignorant, is dangerous. It reminds me of what we learn about the Middle Ages, and frankly the U.S. has been plunging into something like its own version of the Middle Ages for a while now. It's amazing that today, with technology that would allow anyone to get a proper education, we can hear them.

There's the case of Sally Kern, a State Rep from Oklahoma spreading her message of hate and bigotry
http://www.victoryfund.org/files/listening.html

And then, much more to worry about the loss of civil liberties that is now an institution, a University professor in Florida was arrested and jailed because he's Palestinian, lost his job, has been in prison for no reason for five years...

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/21/al_arian_enters_19th_day_of

This is so much bigger than it seems. We see the tip of the iceberg, and we do nothing because we think Obama or Hillary will fix it. But I'm pessimistic.

It's About a Sweater

2008-03-12T23:39:00.000-07:00

Berkeley, November 16, 2002
Dear S.,
I am returning this sweater to you in this package addressed to the last place I know you lived. Yes, it is an old sweater that maybe you don’t remember, or if you do, the burden of claiming it from me was too formidable… I understand. I could not imagine trying to contact you since the day you left.

The whole letter in PDF format at www.heatingupthefog.com

Memories of a Waltz

2008-02-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

This is a revised version of the story originally published in The Bohemian:

She had recognized her music playing on the radio after hearing a few measures of it. The Blue Danube it was, unmistakably. Not everyone could, she thought, recognize this piece from its introductory notes. They always stood there on the dance floor, the men wondering how to start, when to catch the downbeat; the women patiently waiting, and hoping nobody noticed. Mrs. Brown knew her Strauss and marked the tempo by tapping her fingers on the counter of the pharmacy.

get the whole story in nicely formatted pdf format at www.heatingupthefog.com

.

tearitdown.org

2007-12-13T17:39:00.000-08:00

93106
you know? That place the Associated Press calls "gitmo" so it sounds friendlier?

While you're at it, check out another place they need to close:

http://www.soaw.org

image: meilleurs voeux

2007-12-06T16:04:00.001-08:00

Meilleurs Voeux

2007-12-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

Décembre.

La nuit devenue froide et sombre
T’invite à dormir.

Des bougies et autres formes de feu
Remplissent le vide laissé
Par un soleil en vacances.

Commence l’examen
Du temps qui passe.

best wishes image

2007-12-05T15:39:00.000-08:00

Best Wishes

2007-12-05T15:29:00.001-08:00

Ah, December...

Suddenly the cooled and darkened night
Sweet-talks you
For more sleep.

Candles and other forms of fire
Fill the void
Left by a sun on holiday.

The scrutiny of a year past
Begins.

A Last Waltz, Rev. 2

2007-09-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

Her fingers dance along
The steps of her favorite waltz
Coming to her ears
Floating on a legendary river
She counts: One, Two, Three
And enters her reverie

She sees the soft green eyes
Repeats the dizzy spell
Of a night in her distant past
Rescued by his agility
The strength so subtle
Of a charming dancer
Whose name she forgot

It feels like New Year in Vienna
The images of people in black and white
The angels of her mind
Counting to midnight
On a monumental clock

Their feet glide unencumbered
On the powdered floor
A fine dancer, she thinks
The palm of her right hand
Barely touching his left
Their fingers curling
Towards a desired embrace

If only she could break the rules
But the clock strikes midnight
Her eyes open to the present
Darkness she recognizes
Aches and discomfort
A reality she can evade
Counting: One, Two, Three
To see him, touch him, feel him
Once more
Waltzing into infinity

The Night of the Shooting Star

2007-08-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

In this mid August night
Enrobed in wool
Wholly surrendered to gravity against the earth
I watch in the dark sky
Shooting stars coming alive
Each meteor begging for attention
One I follow from birth to extinction
Says to me:
"I am but a speck of light
in the vast expanse of your vision.
Why do you pay attention to me?"

I cling to the uniqueness of my star
As others display equal if not superior spectacle
To the underdog of pyrotechnics
And I make a wish that

You, the unlucky winner of fewer summers
in the lottery of life

You, who take an uneasy step every day
on a fallen staircase

You, beautiful one, robbed of your youth
be my star. Let me try to pass you

The olympic torch and hope that
one day you will run and illuminate
the sky.

Until then I replay the memory of
The night of the shooting stars in mid August.

Thoughts on the Anniversary of Hiroshima

2007-08-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

note: I read this at an open mic and it started a controversy about the justification of the bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So I failed to raise our consciousness to the level of what it means to be human and at either end of weapons. My personal opinion is that all weapon manufacturing, small and large, should be stopped and made illegal by all countries. Take that for a controversy. I'm sure many men will scoff at the idea, as they usually do, since they've been brainwashed from birth that one should have more weapons than the neighbors in case they used theirs. What happened to talking about our differences? What happened to trying to understand events under a different light?

Peace,
Guy

Thoughts on the Anniversary of Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, this child’s sixth birthday
Never happened, erased from all memory
Records pulverized by a gigantic mushroom
The fungus on humanity’s foot
As it continues trampling on
Principles, teachings, evolution
As it continues spreading the seeds
Of hatred under engineered flowers
So pretty, so noble, so smart.

Sixty years later it is history
Lessons not learned
Our daily sufferings far superior
To that of others
We play God and establish dominion
We pronounce final judgment
We rehearse the end of the world
And expect a daily prayer
From those in the shadow
Where gigantic mushrooms can grow.

What Will We Do About It?

2007-08-01T21:47:00.000-07:00

They say we replay forever in our minds
The rules learned in the first six years of our lives
The mother of all mantras, like a broken record
Images of your first fears
Seen through your first tears
Adults standing by
Deciding whether you will love or hate
Be selfish or generous
Withdrawn or outgoing
A poet or a politician
Observing chaos or causing it
An innocent bystander or a perpetrator.

Now we sit on the edge of chaos
And the voices say, “do nothing, you cannot do anything about chaos, you don’t know how to deal with chaos.”
Do we stand up, or submit?

Crafty discourse rides on the mother of all mantras, expecting complacency and extinguishing all growth of conscience, as if we were six years old.

This could be our collective age
A society unable to learn
Stuck in its fears and instincts
What will we do about it?

The Birth of a Neo-Expressionist Painting

2007-07-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Birth of a Neo-Expressionist Painting

Memories clog the channels of the mind
The fingers twitch from the need to paint
Alerting sensations to the task.

Eyes sit on the subject
A mantra meditatively clearing ideas on a false start.

A tentative dip in color
An adroit skin tone begins
In softness imagined, moisturized and hydrated.

A dissonant vase made and cracked in a virtual world
A nest in a corner of what could be love
Unseen notes from a singing voice
Floating to the suggested ears
Give the body a frisson.

A timely switch to a less dominant hand blends in
A quasi medieval being massages the back, invisible
Thrusting the body towards the viewer
An unintended provocation.

The painting is unfinished.

Gravity

2007-07-17T10:42:00.001-07:00

Gravity

Trust gravity to keep your feet on the ground

Looking down, you fail to see the attraction of the earth, of life on it, despite the many ants, ladybugs, tiny flowers, and micro-organisms busily mixing things up.

Being a distinguished person, you don't lean to better distinguish those elements of life, for fear of exposing a side of yourself other forms of life dislike.

That is gravity.

Fighting gravity keeps you out of the grave
Until it lowers your eyelids
Like the end of the day
With the sun going down
And the moon rising on the other side.

Moved for a While

2007-06-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Am I ever the computer geek. I had moved the blog to my own site, powered by wordpress, and away from big corporate control! But then I realized that it required a lot more effort to maintain and keep going than I was willing to spare. So it's all back, I think.
The blog was at www.heatingupthefog.com/blog

Your Peaceful Existence

2007-05-14T17:32:00.000-07:00

Your peaceful existence
Comes in a colorful package that you buy
And you become diffident of
The no-name brands denouncing
The dominant point of view
That war is good, out there.

In your package
Comes educational material
Justifying the building of weapons
Under a veil of good morals and principles.
Even you can shoot and kill
Under the veil.

No child is left behind
All pledge allegiance
All are given the freedom
To shoot and kill
And peace becomes the enemy,
Driven out of the classroom,
Arrested, suppressed.

You pledged never to challenge
The official view.
You pledged never to question
How many are killed in your name.
You pledged never to look
Outside your peaceful existence.

There is no money to be made in peace.
Aspiring peace leaders withdraw,
Threatened of becoming martyrs,
Their words distorted to rekindle the war effort.
War leaders continue to get
Airports, buildings, and freeways named for themselves.
They continue to call peace the enemy.
So, you say, war must be good,
And looking the other way
You return to your peaceful existence.

Self-Portrait, revised

2007-05-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

Is this better?

Self-Portrait

Every morning, facing the mirror
You feel like Dorian Gray who saw in his portrait
The old, consumed man he was supposed to be.
You have seen it before,
The image you try to project,
Blending in time, growth, and decay.

Every morning you have a routine
You perform magic
And transform yourself into
What you want to be.

Every morning you select
From a wardrobe blessed by fashion
The clothes that you need
To make you part of your world.

Years spent making yourself up
And today your mask presses
Uncomfortably against your nature.
The leaks in your mind
Wet the plaster
Of your mask, and it crumbles.
You can’t find yourself in a magazine.
The lost identity never was yours.

Today, you start a new portrait
Incorporating strange features from a night filled with dreams.
You need to slow down, to let the colors blend
Allow for experimentation.
Paint
Your true self, one trait at a time,
Sometimes over another you tried and disliked.

You call it, work in progress
Vowing never to finish
Ignoring the critics
Resisting the urge to hide your portrait in the attic,
Because one day you could be Dorian Gray
Discovering your true self
And wanting to tear it with a big knife.

Poetry read at sl4db: Self-Portrait

2007-05-09T10:56:00.000-07:00

A new feature of my blog: the poems I wrote for Spotlight for Dust Bunnies Monday nights (see www.sl4db.com). Yes, they usually are first drafts (or first and a half, or even second). One day all the revisions will magically appear.

Self-Portrait

Every morning you face the mirror
And feel like Dorian Gray when he saw his portrait:
The old, consumed man he was supposed to be.
Why is it a shock?
You have seen it before.

Every morning you have a routine
You perform magic
And transform yourself into
What you want to be.
You select from your wardrobe
The clothes that will give you the confidence
You need to face the world.

You spent years making yourself up
And today you want out of your mask.
Your mind is leaking,
And your mask crumbles like wet plaster.
You can’t find yourself in a fashion magazine.
You have lost an identity that never was yours.

You start to paint a new portrait
Incorporating strange features.
You need to slow down
You need to learn, and allow for experimentation.
You paint
Your true self, one trait at a time,
Sometimes over another you tried and didn’t like.

You must ignore the critics
And resist the urge to hide your portrait in the attic,
Because one day you could be Dorian Gray
And want to stab it.

The Daily Grind

2007-05-09T00:12:00.000-07:00

In the cavernous food court

Of their office building

The men in gray find their daily food

For the half hour, perhaps a whole hour

They allow for lunch

Between a phone call and the filling of a form

Calculating precisely how long the path is to retirement.

On plastic trays, they put hamburgers or ham sandwiches

The occasional fries also

A bottle, of juice, sliding dangerously

Threatening to spill the whole tray

If not caught by a spasm of hunched shoulders.

From plastic chairs attached to plastic tables

They occupy their tired minds

With a strategic view of a TV on the wall

Playing something they will soon forget.

A man in black, the word SECURITY on his back,

Walks by

Making sure, in his silence

They are happy and undisturbed.

Oh, how they long for retirement

As they adjust mentally their calculation

Glancing at their watches

Dreaming of doing what they want

The enjoyment of the rest of their lives

In the tranquility of a well-furnished living-room

Free to choose from the day’s options

After a late breakfast

Grinning from a coffee mug at the radio’s traffic report.

With those happy thoughts they rise

Empty the plastic trays and pile them up neatly

Walking unhurriedly

To phone calls and the filling of forms.

podcasting at sl4db

2007-02-21T11:31:00.000-08:00

I missed the President's Day show of SL4DB.COM, which means no new recordings were made in this new venture.

I started recording two weeks ago, had the computer crash on me while uploading. It meant I should put more work into it. Once at home, I edited a few of the individual recordings and put each one up separately instead of one big huge mp3. But that means I would have to work harder to enter each performer's name in there, and record it to a unique mp3 "show" as they call it. Once I have a name in, it's going to be easier to overwrite the last one. Yes, that's how I see it: podcasts aren't a permanent archive, they are something you can subscribe to. You can actually put a link to your favorite performer's show inside pages like "My Yahoo" and access the show from there. There's a link to a strange code sequence (XML) next to the link to the mp3, and that's the link you copy as "RSS feed". It sounds like I know what I'm talking about, but I'm not.

We also didn't have a proper microphone, and used my notebook computer's internal. I tried to plug the sound system's line output into my computer's Line In, and it made the whole sound system hum annoyingly. I'm always surprised that an "IN" connection can cause noise at the other end. I'm sure an Electrical Engineer could design a filter for that. So next Monday, February 26, we'll try with a separate, directional microphone, and it will sound just as if you were there...

I wish you

2006-12-18T23:47:00.000-08:00

I wish you…

A life of discovery and wonder
In total peace with yourself and others
Disregarding the voices of discord and war
Welcoming the voices of joy and friendship
Exercising your right to demand
That such a life be accessible to all.

May you be the instrument of peace on earth.

The Golden Gate is a Metaphor

2006-12-13T15:57:00.000-08:00

Work in progress, part of something I intend to call “A San Francisco Odyssey”

The Golden Gate Is a Metaphor

The visitors said,
We have come to seek the Golden Gate
To climb Lincoln Boulevard
On rented Blazing Saddles
Filling our lungs with eucalyptus,
To brave the wind, the fog, and the foghorn,
The real cyclists and the other tourists zigzagging around us
As we take pictures
Of boats sailing underneath
Coming for the promised gold.
For the bridge isn’t, as promised,
Golden, it is the Gate that is
An opening, a passage
Allowing the gold seekers to come and go.

Now of course, they fly over it
The captain tells them “there it is, folks”
And they twist their stiffened necks
To see the bridge
Perhaps to compare it with a postcard, or a Ghirardelli chocolate wrapping,
A view they had before
Of it next to a cable car and Alcatraz
And if their view were really warped
Next to palm trees and snow.

How many photographs, and paintings,
How many imprints on retinas, engravings in memories,
Speak of it as the golden city
The true sightseers avoid,
Never crossing the gate
Where peace, love, and a little bit of weed
Meet
Liberated personalities and genders
That have found it to be home.

long sentences

2006-12-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

Although recently would you say, there hasn’t been anything great on TV, or for that matter on any kind of media, be it the radio, the newspapers including the tabloids, the magazines, and of course the Internet, there is no sign of anything negatively beginning like the dark ages as they had way back when nothing great was happening because they had more doers than thinkers and when that happened, the doers got armies together and purged the rest of the world of their thinkers since they would try to influence those who just waited for the news of what they were supposed to do, in a sense like today when people wait for the TV, that is whatever network they prefer to be told what to do on, and the TV somehow, one way or another, tells them, oh my, here’s something you should pay attention to, aren’t you nervous and excited, and shouldn’t your fearless leaders do something about whatever it is that you now feel is a priority or should be a priority for everyone around you, especially your family or company or anything you like to identify with, which could be your favorite chain store, the maker of your favorite food, something that could be considered decadent and a hint that we have reached a form of dark age in this day and age of communication to the masses which does not include poetry readings and other fringe events that will be disregarded anyway for their lack of significance.
Regain control of your life. Turn off the TV.

I took BART the other day and it slowed down and stopped in the middle of the tunnel, which always makes me nervous even though nothing ever happens in it, not even people having panic attacks, because the driver, or maybe he’s not really driving, he’s just the eyes and ears of the computer, this particular driver reassured all of us by first saying that there was another train ahead of us that took too long to clear the tracks, and I thought it’s these people who block the doors for their slow friends to make it to the train, when in fact, it was later discovered when the train stopped a second time, a third time outside the tunnel this time, that there was what they called a disabled train at the 12th street station, so the other trains had to go around it, as we could notice when we got to that station and the other platform had been cordoned off with yellow tape as if there had been a murder there, as if a train had died and there should be a police investigation or something that official people do while we only worry about being late like those people who use cars and always say things like “parking was terrible,” or “I got stuck behind a school bus,” which everybody believes and understands, oh the poor people who must use their car and therefore have so much pain imposed on them.

I sat on a bench this afternoon on the shores of the bay facing San Francisco, which I could not see because the sun burned right into my eyes, and instead I looked to the side and saw in the haze the Golden Gate Bridge, followed by the Marin Headlands and a mountain that had a peak like a tit on a breast that was Mount Tamalpais, so that being established I looked down the calm waters, practically windless and without waves, and the sailboats quietly moved right and left, that is left towards the port and right towards, well, more water, as there is a lot of water there, although a guy passed by with an empty bucket and fishing gear, which reminded me to watch for what kind of fish he would get out of the water, to see if it would glow in the dark or something which I could not verify except that they say the fish is full of mercury which may mean that the stores are overcharging if the density of mercury is larger than that of muscle.

Parents and Government

2006-05-13T14:52:00.000-07:00

Parents and Government
Now that the cat is out of the bag, privacy is a big issue for everyone. Someone may be listening to so many tiresome conversations that it’s amazing they would bother. With e-mails, snooping is much simpler, because you can feed all e-mail to a machine that analyses the contents and decides if it’s worth looking into (or keeping for later).
What’s ridiculous with the current record-keeping and analysis, is that one could infer from looking at how many times you called a certain number that you are conducting business of interest, while, say, it could be an affair. They would arrest you, thinking it’s the latter, and since they can do that, they’ll keep you for a long time.
They say it’s for your own good, and that otherwise they won’t catch the terrorists. Problem is, they’ve already shown that they could look the other way when they saw something suspicious. So now, even though they may not get anything from their domestic spying program, they could look the other way when someone serious shows up with a truck loaded with fertilizer, and say “you see, had you let me do more snooping, we would have caught someone like that.” Words would be chosen carefully to make you feel like you need to give them everything, so they’ll take care of “protecting” you.
It’s like having abusive parents. If something happens to you, they’ll say, “it’s your own fault.” They’ll lie for your own good, because the truth would hurt you.
Studies of FoxNews audience have shown that people can believe anything that’s fed to them, especially through TV. In other words, you can fabricate information, and truth becomes irrelevant. We see it over and over in political discourse. After that we wonder why people are so violent and abusive, why parents raise children without giving them the best education they can get, and instead give them biased information and do not develop their thinking abilities.

Street Spirit

2006-05-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

Street Spirit
At Andronico’s in Berkeley tonight, I arrived on my bike, presented it to the door to see if the store was still open. It was. This man selling the “Street Spirit” shows me I could park it on one of the racks. On my way out, I buy his sheet, and ask if he writes in it. Puzzled by it, but made curious, he wonders if I would find out who would take his story, and I say he might want to ask whoever gave him the paper.
Of course, I might have offered to write his story for him. As I went home, I thought it would be a good idea to gather these people’s stories. I also thought it could be another of those cool projects, to get the homeless a kind of occupation to write, to compose something…

Arthur and George

2006-03-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes.
Knopf, 2006.  ISBN 0-307-26310-X

I was at Bookshop Santa Cruz – funny how a visit to towns like Santa Cruz end up at that bookstore – and this book on the New Fiction table just jumped at me and said, “buy me.”  It had, of course, the appeal of being hard bound, which I really like, and of having that round sticker on it that said “Autographed Copy.”  Yes, I remembered, this Julian Barnes was around, and I never paid attention.  I heard him on the radio, on KALW, but sometimes I hear the radio and don’t listen – or so I thought.  In a definite leap of faith, I bought the book – my friends and I had just discussed how I was frugal when I didn’t need to be.
Arthur and George takes the reader through short episodes in the distinct lives of Arthur and George, entitled, “Arthur” and “George” until they are merged to “Arthur and George” in an episode that does not talk about either of them.  The expectation builds up: when are they going to meet?  What do they have in common that will cause them to meet?
When Arthur turns out to be Arthur Conan Doyle, I strangely remembered hearing that in the radio interview.  I should listen better.  George is this cautious man whose life is all ordered and calculated.  He takes the same train every day, performs the same walk just before going home, and publishes a laymen’s treatise on the laws of the railway so that people would know what to do in case of, say, losing luggage, or being caught with the wrong ticket.  This goes well until the local police designates him as prime suspect for a series of anonymous letters ultimately linked to new moon animal slaughters.  It is absurd, because George does nothing to draw suspicion on him.  All the attention of the Chief Constabulary, and therefore of all the police, is on him, apparently because George is of Parsee heritage.  George thinks himself an Englishman – he was born in England, his father is a minister of the Anglican Church, he has very English habits – but not the police.  Soon, they arrest him, try him, and all along George thinks the error will be corrected and he will be free.  He ends up in jail with an exemplary long sentence.
So, we think, that is how Arthur will meet George, because it is important for us to know how the law can work in the right way.  Arthur does not pay particular attention to the many requests he receives from the public believing that he is Sherlock Holmes and that he can investigate crimes for them.  It is only due to his circumstances at the time that his attention is steered to George’s injustice.  He meets George, who has been inexplicably freed but unable to resume his normal life as a solicitor, and is convinced that George is incapable of the crimes imputed to him.  In his first investigation ever – imitating Holmes – Arthur soon discovers that it would have been impossible to conclude that George could have been guilty at all.  He publishes articles and makes it a national scandal, but at the end the judiciary is nothing but political: it will not retract, only withdraw its guilty verdict.  The ordeal is said to be the precursor to the addition of the Appeals process to the court system.
It could not be more timely to point out this fact, when people have been arrested and incarcerated without due process in the USA under the umbrella of the “war on terror.”  There is no difference between the Chief Constabulary’s belief that George can only be guilty and the way the US Government is treating not only “enemy combatants” (a convenient appellation to avoid the Geneva Convention and US law), but also its own citizens (by placing them in a new category defined by the Patriot Act).
Regardless, it is not the purpose of a book review to be a soap box for justice.  I was simply surprised at the coincidence.  There are more to be found in the book.  There is the fact that all along George is the only believer in the law of the land, whereas Arthur and everybody else are the victims of passions and beliefs.

Book Reviews

2006-03-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

Book Reviews?
I noticed this morning that I read the Sunday SF Chronicle’s Book Review section more than any other.  My favorites – Comics, of course, Travel, Datebook – had all been made available by a generous patron of Printer’s Inc Café, and I snatched them as soon as the presumed generous patron had abandoned them on the table.  I then noticed that many reviews are written by people who are probably not employed at the paper, and who knows if they are even paid for it.  And then, why wouldn’t I try to publish a review of my recently read books on my blog?  That is a very contemporary thought.
And so I started imagining what I would say about the most recent one, which will be the subject of the next article.  I figured I should start with a confession as a preamble.

I don’t know why I have grown up liking to be among books, because I had hardly received any stimulation at home or in school.  I just liked going through the stacks, reading the titles, making catalogs in my head of books that I would never read.  Later, reading Computer Science at University, I often ended up in the Library trying to be intellectual and to do research by stacking books on the table and going through each one to find arguments in favor of my thesis.
Fast forward to helping a partner with research on Raymond Carver.  Being a computer person, I of course scanned the stories and made lists of words to help understand the universe of the stories.  Weird stuff, at best, and it didn’t help support my friend’s thesis.  I read drama, and I still don’t know why.  Then much later I had the opportunity to read Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin to a friend, and the quality of reading it aloud precipitated me into loving the text.  Then I understood that it was time to do an M.A. in English, which required a lot of reading and analysis, also known as criticism.  But I am uncomfortable with criticism, because of the blurred line between what is the critic’s opinion and what is absolute truth.  It is a silly point, I must acknowledge, especially after Derrida and deconstruction.  No, there is no absolutism in reviewing a book.  We just like to put our ideas on paper, or, in this case, in a blog.

Recently Read Books, in order of preference:

Shroud, by John Banville
positive: the incredibly strong first person in the first part that learns from contacting a weak third person; the treatment of multiple personality disorders (the real and the built up); the richness of the language.

Arthur and George, by Julian Barnes
positive: the construction of how two characters develop separately; the believable absurdity; details (pearls) in the text.
disturbing: how the administration of justice gets its bias
oh, well: I’m always bothered by where is fiction, and what part is non-fiction – the characters are based on actual people.

Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro
positive: being able to hold a first person narrative all the way without becoming annoying; developing the horror without being horrible; the strength of the title as a mantra throughout.
oh, well: the overuse of “like”

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
positive: it’s practically a thriller and the reader won’t sleep quietly until finished reading.
disturbing: being able to accept that it’s fiction.
oh, well: the fact that most of us will learn about Afghanistan through it and form weird opinions about it.

Life of Pi, by Yan Martel
positive: the notion that the tale is constructed in order to replace the unbearable reality
oh, well: I suppose there’s a limit to what can happen on a lifeboat, so as in Robinson Crusoe, it can be tiring to go through the details (lack of imagery?).

Publishing as a Hobby

2006-02-14T15:34:00.000-08:00

Publishing as a Hobby
I never expected that my book would get anyone’s attention in the publishing world.  I put it together for my own entertainment, and to give as party favors.  My friends like it, or at least they like the idea of the book.  It does look nice, something I owe to my younger years spent around typographers.
The next step for me should be to show up at bookstores around here to ask if they would just put one copy on their shelves.  Again, I would not expect any sales, but if anyone came across it, opened it, read maybe one paragraph of it, I would be very happy.  How would I know?  Perhaps I could visit the bookstore once in a while to check if the book has been opened?
Regardless, I find it very hard to go to the store and say, “I am the author of this book, I was wondering if you would put it on your shelves?  I’m not expecting it to sell; it would just be to say that it is on the shelves.”

On Censorship and Starting a Novel

2006-01-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

I will have to resist applying self-censorship sooner or later. I picked up a book at the Library called Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block and after reading the bit about writing short stories versus a novel, I put myself in front of the computer and continued to write – or rather, revamped – a short story that was already, in my mind, part of a novel. It is just that I get lazy when I think of the amount of pages still to be written, and the holes I leave to fill later. The initial story draft, for example, was written in the first person, which to me was limiting (it seemed to help to give the character a more definite personality). To some extent, I keep wanting to write the chronicles of a character in whose head I like to be. Here’s the rub: the character engages in gay prostitution, and it raises red flags in my mind. The funny thing is that I have no idea about the lives of actual sex workers, and this character would definitely be of high morals when compared to the image we make in our society of the albeit illicit trade. Perhaps if we followed my model, there would no longer be a need for the underground industry where people are abused and are put in conditions resembling slavery. I remember hearing that in Germany sex workers were licensed in the name of public safety. My sex worker and his business partner seem to have a high ethical sense, and after all I should not censor it because for what I know it could become a model.

Self Publishing

2005-11-25T19:09:00.000-08:00

Self-publishing…

There was a rumor that short story collections did not sell.  You could not find a publisher to put them together, much less convince a bookstore to place them on their shelves.  An author should keep submitting stories to literary journals in the hope that one would be accepted.  There is no money to be made: it is only a way to get one’s foot in the door, because one day there will be a novel, the big thing.  Having published short stories is a way to elongate one’s resume to propel one’s first novel up the slush pile.
I have come to the realization that I just needed to get my writing out in print.  The perspective of receiving more rejection slips keeps my pen up.  After all, why should I write if I know my chances of having someone, anyone, to read the story?  I already have a number of reasons to block myself, why add this one?  It is even worse after finishing school, where at least one gets the teachers’ feedback.
Enters the Internet.  I first thought I would build a web site with paid access (for a very low fee) to stories.  I would use my programming background to devise a method of payment.  There would still be no book.
Add to this the new print-on-demand method.  An author can now put together a book and “publish” it on a web site from where readers can buy either the printed version or the PDF file.  For a low fee, it is possible to obtain an ISBN and get it on “Amazon Marketplace,” which I suppose is simply representing the vendor.
So my plan becomes:
- continue writing!
- put together my first collection, Heating Up the Fog, from my master’s thesis, and publish it; have a book to brag about at a launch party.
- set up a web site, www.heatingupthefog.com, with more stories (for free!) and cross-referring with the book.
- do fun Marketing with little cards sending people to the web site.

Kepler's Closing

2005-09-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

Whoa… Kepler’s (our local bookstore) closed yesterday, bankrupt after a four-year battle. They had just celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. It was the southern end of the literary triangle with Cody’s in Berkeley, and City Lights in San Francisco. So, would you ask, where does someone get his books around here? Online? At Border’s? How about the author events that Kepler’s used to hold? All gone.

It’s amazing how these “signs of the times” keep happening. Recently we got upset at the perspective of a Starbucks establishing yet another of its standardizing stores on California Avenue, one of the streets until then forgotten by the corporations. Printer’s Inc. Café across the street, is the only remnant of the Printer’s Inc. bookstore that went bankrupt (how should I say, coinciding with Border’s and Amazon’s flourishing?). On University Avenue, now very much invaded by chain stores, there used to be a record store that soon disappeared after Border’s came up with its vast selection. The really nice Torrefazzione Italia café is now closing, with the revelation that Starbucks had bought the small chain a few years ago. It’s all about corporations now, with a few people deciding what you will read, watch, listen to, eat, and drink.

Ants On My Desktop

2005-08-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

Ants on my desktop.
It happened a few days ago. An ant was going up on my computer screen, ignoring the borders of windows. I looked around and found more ants making their way through the randomly stacked papers and objects on my desk. Where was the food, I wondered? Perhaps they had found crumbs from cookies I had consumed while typing a story. I should clean up. I should really clean up, because I plan to change my office furniture. It will be nice, I think, doubling the shelf space to fit the books that are currently on the floor or just stacked in front of other books.
I realized that the ants had formed a path to the waste paper basket. Of course, I thought, I should not have thrown foodstuff away in this one. I emptied it and washed it after leaving it on the porch for a while so the ants would go away by themselves.

Here I Am Again... Encounter with Parkinson

2005-08-22T15:10:00.000-07:00

I suppose I have not joined the Blog revolution.  I still write little notes in my notebook, start stories either on the computer or on paper, but I am still far from reaching blogspace.  Yet, the railroad tracks can be bad and I won't be able to write by hand at times.  Maybe that means I should only read while riding the train.  Should I be like those power people who dictate?  Talk to a machine, then pass it on to a secreatry?

It was nearly midnight Saturday night when I returned to Kepler's to retrieve my bike after seeing a movie.  Near the bike rack sat a man with big glasses and a walker loaded with travel bags.  He tried to get my attention by looking at me and vaguely gesturing while saying words I could not understand.  It was as if he could not pronounce the words very clearly, in the way people with degenerative disorders end up.  I approached him, expecting the usual request for money.  But it was not so: he could still not make himself understood by me.  I remained silent and felt powerless.  He needed something that I could not guess.

Realizing in my silence that I could not understand him, the man pulled a pen and notepad from his pocket.  He could write with his shaking hand:

    Call 911 for me

Reading this, I wondered what could be wrong with him.  He did not seem to need any emergency treatment.  He was breathing and was conscious.  I asked what was the problem he needed help with, and he wrote:

    I cannot stand

I thought he was going to write "Living any more" or something like that, but he stopped writing there.  He could not stand up, get hold of his walker, and go away.  Having helped elderly people before, I was told that I should offer an arm if they can help themselves with their own strength.  So I said "do you want to try?" and offered my lowered arm.  He took it, but there was no strength in his grip.  So I said "OK, I'll go inside the store and ask to call 911 for you."

It was difficult to describe the situation to the store employee, but they offered to use the phone.  It was difficult to describe the non-emergency situation, but the operator would send the fire truck.  The store employee had gone out to check on the man, and returned saying that he had been sitting there for a few hours already.  I decided to stand by him until the paramedics showed up.  I felt like I owed him the assistance.

The fire truck came from the station two blocks away blasting its siren.  It's always embarrassing hearing that when you know that it's not a life-or-death emergency.  A police woman showed up with her flashlight and started to talk to the man.  She then told me to step away to let the firemen do their work.  So I stepped aside, but still wouldn't leave.  the bookstore employee had mentioned that it was better to be there because the homeless sometimes got mistreated.  Indeed, I realized that someone with a speech impairment can be the victim of assumptions and jokes.  Of course, an older man with a caretaker would not need them.

They got permission to look for what medicine he had in his bag.  They spelled it out for their report.  There was another policeman who had come to offer his partner's services "who could speak Spanish," as if it was the issue.  He contributed to making it a joking matter.  Finally, a more serious paramedic who had looked through a booklet determined that the man's medicine was for Parkinson's.  It was no longer a joking matter.  Everyone was aware of older people with Parkinson's disorder, the latest public figure being the Pope.  Here was this man, recently let go from a care facility with a disabling disorder, obviously unable to care for himself.  They took him for a ride in the ambulance.  Before he left, I went to shake his hand and wish him good luck.

It was a sad moment.  The joking policeman asked me where I was from, since I had no lost my accent in so many years (thank you for telling me how badly I integrated, I thought).  I asked him if someone would notify the man's family, and he said yes.  He also said something like "good job," realizing that nobody ever cared.

Notify his next of kin, I thought, if there is one.  Maybe there was a family, a brother, a sister, who knows?  Maybe they had got a phone call one day and decided to let him go.  Or maybe he was alone in the world, alone with Parkinson's disease, the Pope's disease.  He would continue being released one day after another, sitting somewhere until unable to get up, find his way back to a hospital for the night.  Nobody will care for him except those who are paid and have time.

I thought, "what should I do?"  I didn't know.  I imagined paying for his care in a facility.  Then I imagined even that made no sense.  The Pope died, surrounded by doctors and nurses, his priest and nun friends I supposed.  This man was on his way out a well, surrounded by paramedics and nurses with the occasional doctor to renew his prescription.  It was obviously a one-way street.  We are all on a one-way street, but we get the chance of taking side trips (sometimes shortcuts).  There comes a point where there is no side trip possible any more.

Have I Run Out of Ideas?

2005-07-15T14:54:00.000-07:00

I must say that while I was in school the impending deadlines kept me going. Now it feels like whether I write or not will not change anything in my life. But perhaps it will.

There's my project of publishing "Guy's Peninsula Rides" or "Rides from the Peninsula" which I think will be a web site.

I have also written a short story that I sent to a Glimmer Train contest. One never knows. The drawback is that the story is kept prisoner until the verdict (winner? loser?) comes out. The story is that of a man who finds out that his lover died in the war, uncovering issues of acceptance of gay men (to others and themselves), and the absurdity of war. Look back at the writers of the Modern period in England and similar themes come up. It seems that history repeats itself. I think that the process of looking at our world doesn't change. We have bigger and faster machines, but the people around us still behave and adapt in the same ways. They receive more or less the same kind of information (someone is a threat, someone is your friend, you must behave like everyone else does) and react more or less in the same way (how can I protect myself from the madness).

"Falling Angels" by Tracy Chevalier was my latest good book. It tells the story from each character's point of view and voice, and I liked the falling angels bearing the transition from the Victorian period to the modern.

Entering Blog Space in the twenty-first century

2005-05-23T16:24:00.000-07:00

Can you tell I'm done with school? Yes, I graduated a couple of weeks ago with an M.A. in English, having completed a collection of short stories "Heating Up the Fog" as a thesis. You, my reader, can see some of it on my web site www.tiphane.org/guy/portfolio
but only my friends (or a publisher) can get a complete copy. Actually serious requests will be served gracefully with a paper version. I still think I could publish the collection as a book, but since I have submitted a few here and there, I will wait for the rejection letters before I do so.

I liked the process of writing each story separately, then putting them all together as a collection. The final revisions were the most difficult, as when one is close to having completed several levels of a house of cards and someone slams the door behind. Fortunately we have computers to preserve our work. At the beginning it felt like submitting essays to a teacher, when the student makes sure to put his copy underneath someone else before leaving class, avoiding the quick judgment of the teacher which the student assumes will be negative. But then with the right kind of reviewer you don't get really bad feedback, or at least not as bad as what goes on in your head.

Well, something happened during graduation week: they gave me the "thesis award!" This really meant a great deal to me. The first forty-some years of my life have been spent thinking I was a fraud: someone would, sooner or later, discover that I really didn't know anything. Friends gave positive feedback, more positive than I gave myself of course, but I thought it was because they were friends. But then something happened last Fall, when I completed "Dispersed Are We," something very strange: I had it in my hands one day and I thought, "this is my Opus Magna," something I had great satisfaction with. And now, this. Judgment from my teachers, and public recognition.

Now the party is over, the relatives have gone home. What will I do with the rest of my life? How can I improve my writing? What other "cool things" do I want to try? There's teaching in Africa, there's cycling around the world. Waiting for an answer in my mind, I keep myself busy with little things here and there. Soon I will complete the recording of my stories so that my blind friends can listen to them (I hope my reading is a little better than the computer's). I may take classes this summer, try a writing group.

I just finished reading "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro (spelling?), which I picked up at Kepler's from their author readings. I didn't know what to expect, but at the end I was very pleased by it. There aren't very many books that keep me going. I often drop the book down the side of the bed and never pick it up again. It's as if there were a hump somehwere in the middle of the book: you read and read, but how can you look forward to the resolution until you are on the other side of the hump? The hump is problematic, I think. Anyway, this book didn't have a big, insurmountable hump. I liked its treatment of the relationships between the characters in their limited world. I couldn't put them in boxes, really. That's how I would like my characters to be, I think.