It's amazing how clear things become, like waking up and realizing you have been asleep.

Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label coffee. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

San Diego Dreaming

The palms are lazy to the fact that inside the buildings there are people living, and working, and dreaming who don't see them, nor are aware of their being.

No one should stress in Southern California.
The beaches are ready and waiting to absorb your stories and tell you theirs.
The air is warm but sometimes dry.
Sometimes it's so dry that newspapers curl up at the corners and it hurts to breathe.
Santa Ana winds are no joke, ask Joan Didion.

On every corner is fruit, or coffee, or alcohol, or Mexican roadside tacos.
Suntans and painted toes rules the sidewalks.
Gyms and Wellness Centers and Yoga Studios run the streets and glitter in the ever present sunlight.
Cars never die because they do not rust,
rather the roads beat them to pieces
and the gas prices keep their tanks low.

We are all fighting for the same jobs,
jobs that pay us like the cost of living is low
and treat us like we can be bought and sold.
Some of us choose to surf instead
or start our own consulting service or operate a Food Truck.
Some of us live on orange juice and smiles.

We all come here with big dreams seem to grow stagnant in the sun.
Or maybe we were born here and simply never left.
We get caught up in traffic and happy hour martinis and organic foods and living expenses
and forget to open up our eyes, enjoy the Palms lining the streets, and just breathe.
We are San Diego.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Walking in Hawthorne's Footsteps

Strolling around Salem with iced coffee in hand and sun on my shoulders, it is not hard to see why this place is so inspiring.  There is the breath of history in the air, you can feel it with every step.  Granted, the year 1692 is the focus of choice because of those horrible witch trials, but this quaint harbor town is rich with so much more.  For example, the telephone was first demonstrated at the Lyceum, and for a time Salem, which was once a bustling and prosperous port, had exclusive trade with India. 

Today, it is run by witches, artists, and lawyers, a combination which keeps its strange spirit alive.  In all this, one must recall the beasts New England has so often bred: writers.

Edgar Allen Poe stalked around in Boston, Emily Dickinson holed herself up in her house in Amherst, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman (among others) scouted about in the woods in Concord (and of course Walden Pond), Robert Frost homesteaded in New Hampshire, J.D. Salinger also hid out in New Hampshire until his death in 2010 (I'm still waiting for his family to discover a wealth of new work and publish it posthumously), and of course, Nathanial Hawthorne lived and worked in Salem. 

I am a writer in a land of writers.  And yet I don't know how to go about being a writer; I don't know where to start (my friend Luke recommends the kitchen).  The simple task of putting pen to paper had never been so distant or so daunting.  What do I write?  For Whom? I must begin somewhere.  Simply, I must begin.  Write anything, even if it's crap, just for the exercise of it.  Then, I will find my one true sentence.

Anyway, it's time to start the day.  Hopefully it will be a good one.

Until next time ...

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