I used to smoke cigarettes and sip whiskey and sit on top of a 12-foot ladder to look at paintings stapled to the floor of my twenty-one hundred square foot studio at Third and Main. There were a bar and a liquor store below me. Screams and cursing and jukeboxes and cops in the street. Noise till two or three in the morning. Chinatown and Japantown and MOMA were a few blocks away. LA felt like home.I left. I came here. Everything cultural got smaller, less wild and less exciting. I stopped painting. I started drinking cappuccinos. My body, against my wishes, grew older. I got lost. The weft that holds together the various chronological threads of self changed into something neither rich nor strange. Something in me curled up and went to sleep.This book records my thoughts and feelings as I wake up.
About the Author: Not everyone, to paraphrase Bugs Bunny, is born at an early age. But we are all born, to someone, somewhere, sometime. In my case, to David and Matilda, in the Year of Our Lord, 1945, in the coastal city of Long Branch, New Jersey, in the New World: swamps, skunk cabbage, stag horn sumac, Osage orange, poison ivy, cattails, railroad tracks, beaches, and the cold, heaving, endless Atlantic. The swamps of my youth are now all filled in with tract houses. I've regrets. Places I've visited where I wish I had stayed. People I've met whom I wish I had loved. And, in loving, often not loving unconditionally. But they tell me I couldn't have arrived here without having been there, so I've decided to be practical. I'll take care of those things that need caring for, like food and clothing, and supporting my friends; and the rest I'll allow to unfold like a big flower. If it were not for Eleanor Roosevelt, we probably wouldn't have Social Security in America and I probably wouldn't be alive to write poems from Black Point. This county was home to the Miwok people. Till some king or other took it away from the Miwok (who couldn't even conceive owning land) and gave vast tracts to rich and powerful friends. That was before my time: when I got here, the place was full of wealthy, white liberals and bicycle riders. I used to qualify in three of these four criteria, but I no longer ride a bike. Marin/Sonoma are still hauntingly beautiful despite the ongoing influx of people; and these days you can't drive any distance without passing a vineyard. I love it here. I love this planet. I'm not crazy about some of the people. But as Wodehouse's volatile chef, Anatole, says, "I can take a few smooths with a rough." From a Rorschach analysis I learned that I was a 'people person.' I will say that if you're going to be a people person, you probably should not be an introvert at the same time. Thus the poetry, from an early age. Think of it this way. If I saw you in Peet's arguing with the barista about the texture of the foam on your $2.95 cappuccino, I might join in; and you and I might end up talking about taste buds, aesthetics, and the life of the spirit. But since I have not met you, I reach out in words, hoping we will understand one another when we do meet. I look forward to that day. Meanwhile, I'll keep making poems.