one thing i did notice, was that letters aren’t as open-ended as it seemed. tricky ass letters. looking all expansive and full of possibility. any kind of writing, any kind of style, to whoever, whatever, however, it didn’t seem to matter. as long as it said, “dear who the fuck ever”, and ended with, “sincerely”, it was all to the gootz. but fuck, man. this shit was hard for me. i can only say for me. because what i planned at the beginning, was this in and out of reality story based around letter writings to real people.

erik was you, holly was jeanie, cookie was kandy, bill was armando. it looked good in my head. the way the story was going to unfold. it was going to match the time we silently launched the pub. and when all this money from the cotillions and event planning was going to come in. it was supposed to be a way to tell a story from the “normal” perspective which, at first was going to be infiltration into an alien lifestyle, but now, i’m enjoying it quite well. and it was going rather well. timing everything right, setting up story hooks, using the tricks i learned, the story was coming along. but three months of real life have a way of changing plans.

i knew those three months were going to be a do or die situation. and i wanted the letters to reflect that. everything set up two years ago was going to come to fruition in april may and june. and i was right. they did. but not in the way i had thought. it turned my story into this jumbled mess of insecurity, inadequacy, triteness, didactic-osity, and superfluous-itinessocity.

so i scrapped it and then decided to write letters to people in the workshop. i honestly thought people would be doing that. but no one really did. it surprised me, actually. we brought the letters into this because we wanted to see if the writers would interact with each other more. but surprise, surprise, the 15 writers we had didn’t have the opportunity to. because what ended up happening was something i didn’t even plan for.

i got an e-mail a day from some random person who wanted to join the writers workshop. it blew my mind. i got scared. jeebus, man, i didn’t think this project would catch on to so many. i thought there weren’t that many writers out there, really. at least the kind we have strived to be. the kind that would put ourselves within the structured limitations of rules and regulations on top of developing our writing techniques. but lo and behold, there were. there were writers who wanted to get better. who weren’t afraid to put their writings out there. either delusional or confident enough to share shit with a binary world full of strangers. i weeded out fickle ones early and brought on the genuine ones. we ended up with 30 writers real quick with 10 more on the way. in fact, i got two more pople waiting for the next session to start so they can get on board. all this meant was, new people mixed with old people, the expanding population, the writers workshop would not write to each other. they weren’t familiar with each others works. only 5 or so have been here from the beginning, and that includes you and me. ha. so funny. anyway, this is really long. and you get my point. people weren’t going to write to each other so i decided to write to them.

but fuck, man, it got hard. i tried. i was planning on giving constructive criticism to every single member of the writers workshop. but then i started thinking, who the fuck am i to give people who barely know me, let alone who probably have never heard of me, any kind of advice on how to write? so i switched it over to more story. real stories. from the past. but that shit got old real quick. because it had to be done in letter form.

fuck letters. i will be so happy to move back to poetry or novels. i gurantee you, bro, unless it’s in your inbox, i will never write another letter. this shit is too hard for me. i’ll say it again with the rumbling baratone of a thousand dwarven warriors, fuck letters.

but we got to thank them, though. the session at least. consequently, we ended up with fourty writers. all to varying degrees of talent, craftsmanship, and dedication to the Art. by their letters, i got to know some of them in a literary way.

elaine. one of the first to sign up. really apprehensive at first, and i actually didn’t think she could write. but then agian, i never read any of her shit. and then, all of a sudden, during the novels, she kicked both of our asses at the same time. some of a bitch. that woman can write. and she needs to be published. she alone confirms that whatwe are about to do is right.

amirah. i worked with her for a good year at SIPA. she was trained by professor allan aquino at CSUN where he teaches. she’s quiet, unassuming, almost disappearing into the background. she writes a lot. because she has a lot to say. she joined next. real big fan of writing.

rima. now her novel was getting pretty fucking crazy fascinating. and we both know her. quirky is a tame way to describe her. i just wished she would write more. she is really good. i hope she can control that war raging inside of her. coz she gots some good skills.

fucking chow. i actually made his wordpress for him because he’s so fucking lazy when it comes to web shit. even though this fool plays world of warcraft 24/7. selective stupidity i think. he worte two chapters and then quit. the bum.

earl was early on, too. i just knew he did theatre shit and carried a guitar around. but his two and only chapters got me interested because he was writing some sci fi shit. represent, motherfucker! then he stopped. the bum. i saw him again at some bar in los feliz and then he joined letters. then he got consistent. then he understood the training. roll intiative.

christine. your wife. little monkey mother of kelsoe the superhero. never ever admitted she was a writer, and maybe she joined to keep tabs on you, just kidding about that, but even when i met her, when she was 18ish, she was good at writing. artist inside there.

roderick. he’s a big fan of writing. i thought he was chinese. i really did hate him when i met him. but his heart is really big, not only for writing, but also for his community. good to have him. he needs to write more, too. and to get better. i can say that, coz i’ve told him. this isn’t talking shit. he gave me permissino the moment i bought him coffee and apologized for hating him.

vanessa. always has and always will be a god damned good ass writer. an architect in the community, figuratively, a mother of two, and an explorer in every sense of the word. that kind of spirit coupled with the carpenter skills of writing, makes her a literati, in my opinion. her wit is biting, but you can still hear a sense of maternal toughness in there. she be one of the goodest ones.

rafael. big bad ass. el maestro. slow moving, chocolate. soul of poet. father to a teenage daughter. musician, bodyguard, and entrpenuer. i’m glad he came on board. now i got someone to fuck around with. ya know what? was he ever invited to the original writers workshops? coz if he wasn’t, we missed one.

beverly. now i share office space with her and on the daily we don’t really talk. but from when she joined six months ago, to today, she has improved at a fucking fast ass rate. i spent three minutes trying to come up with an good metaphor for quick, and all i came up with was fast ass. god damn it. i think during all these sessions, she has gained a bit of confidence in her writing. good thing we haven’t told anyone the real reason why we want people to write everyday. if anything, she personifies what one attains during that arduous process.

aimee. i forget how she heard about us. she was the first to join who i actually didn’t know. she writes for asian journal and some martial arts mags, i think. so i got scared when she wanted to join. her inquiry legitimized our project. we couldn’t fuck around anymore. haha. i like what she did with the letter. flying all over the world. looking inside herself. good stuff.

tony. his poetry was heartbreaking. reminded me of what i was going through in a parallel sense. to be honest, it our situations were no where near identical, but because it was poetry, i felt him on his shit. one of the first interstaters, other than you and christine, to join.

carina. i met her at a bar in chinatown. i told one of her friends to join and carina was the one who was interested. i was hoping she would write more, but the stuff she wrote down, mostly poetry, was good. i haven’t really heard from her since the letters, except for one e-mail saying she didn’t get my e-mails. i hope she joins us again next session.

soda. i gotta smile at this one. if people only knew the meandering strings and ropes that actually connect the writers in this writers workshop, they would choke. i didn’t think she was this good of a writer. makes sense though. she likes the same shit. honesty, wit, pain, and fight. good writing. comes out even stevens.

sandy ahn van phan. she would come to cafe while you still lived in LA. friend of jenny. best friend actually. because they would always say that when they got up to the open mic. fan of writing, but never called herself a writer. now she does. because she knows it’s true.

margaret. margie. papercut postcards. she didn’t write one single thing! haha. weirdo. i love her. wish she would put something down here. it would be most pleasurable.

geneva. originally from seattle. quirky one that is. only wrote haikus. she hates me i think. she always picks on me. not in her poems, but more in person. but her haikus are well done. i guess that’s why she’s the haikumama.

jenny yang. remember when NBC hired her to have her own sitcom? i thin that’s what it was. she’s funny. but it probably hides a lot of pain. you can see it in her saxaphone playing ass. and she’s got a deep heart. i should play softball with her.

aaron. another chicago-an, right? don’t know much about him except what he worte about. i liked it. and then he stopped. real life probably took him in a head lock. or maybe he just wasn’y interested in this shit anymore. too bad either way. his stuff was good.

allan is a fuciking nut. got some balls and consistency. this guy breathes poetry. i hope he goes over to the poetry session. professor and poet. application and theory. good role model even if he doesn’t believe so. crazy fucker. i love this guy. ya know i actually was a guest speaker in his class once? yeah. he was hard up.

kristopher. he’s buddies with earl. i met him at that bar in los feliz. deep thinker. really talented at theatre. not as good as me, but hey, who is? haha. just kidding. kind of. didn’t really want to join. but that night, i don’t know what it was, but he was looking for something. and maybe the writers workshop wasn’t it, but i’m damn well certain it’s helped him move a little in the direction he needs to. because he writes often enough for this to not be a passing fancy.

kayla crow. she’s part of that group i call “the new kids on the block.” even though they’re probably not new and they’re probably not kids and there is no block. i just call them that because they’re all good writers. and i don’t know them that much. kaylas got this sensitivity to her writing. reminds me of a family member. she’s there, man.

alfie. stopped writing after a while. probably life got her in a choke hold. she’s got a million things, from what i hear. i wouldn’t mind if she kept writing. but i think she’s more into painting. and baby-sitting vanessa’s kids. hopefully, things will clear up for her and she’ll join up next session.

mike fu. he’s one of the “new kids on the block”. dude, i think he’s is really, really, really, good. sometimes you read someones stuff and there are parts that make you drift to other thoughts. mike’s shit, even that french shit he put up, and i don’t read french, i was riveted! i think this guy is gold. i wonder if he takes his writing seriously.

narinda. this one. she’s tiny, man. i met her at the cafe a couple ago. but, dude, her drive is shaq-like. she has some good stories, she’s down to train, she wants to write, and the stuff she writes about are all so very interesting. in my imagination, she’s the leader of the new kids on the block. haha. man, i made up stories about al the people here i don’t really know. but narinda, she is, i think, going to be in it for the long haul.

angela. it was interesting. everytime i talk to a friend, and they’re going through some shit that seems to big for themto handle, my suggestion is always, always, always, just write about it. and she did. her grandma passed during this session. she had a lot to say. i hope she’s doing cool.

charles. i think he is one of allan’s students. in one of the classes he teaches. i like when this guy writes about love. he seems to be a nice guy hopeless romatic dude. i could be wrong. but that’s how i interpret his shit. he seems to be down. he’s already expressed interest in writing in the novels section.

rascal. she read at the cafe once and then went with us to weillands. it was a bunch of people and i just so happened to mention the writers workshop. it turned out she had already requested membership. she wanted so bad to be better. so she joined and wrote a couple of posts that i liked. unfortunately, she keeps the rest in private and since we don’t do private anymore, i don’t think she presses publish.

irene. one of the foremothers of pilipino poetry in los angeles. she’s the one that got me into it. without her, inadvertently, this wouldn’t have happened. but damn it, she hasn’t written for us in a long time. i feel bad now. hopefully, she comes back and blesses us with her shit again. coz she’s got some control of words, yo. like a wizard should.

siwaraya. she epitomizes enthusiasm. i met her in seattle at the beginning of this decade and easily acquired affection for her. good fucking heart. she lives in the bay and is all about the bridge. literally and figuratively. i liked where her letters were going, but then she stopped. i hope she joins up again and keeps going. i wanted to know how that story was going to end.

hanalei. mike says she’s the new york version of elaine. i can see that in her writing. because she writes really well, too. she stopped, though. and i wanted to get to know her writing a little bit more. real life, man. gets to people sometimes. or maybe we just weren’t her cup of tea. we’ll see if she joins up again. it would be nice to make this bi-coastal.

melissa. i like her shit. she’s the one with a comcast e-mail. there’s a poetry to her writing even in letters that comes out. in fact, she just switched over to writing poems after a while. haha. she don’t write anymore either. too bad, too. i wanted to see what else she had in store.

khanh. i met this guy through traci. he helps with the tech shit at the cafe and is a computer programmer by profession. when he expressed interest in the writers workshop i was like, sure. you better be good though. let me just tell you, i really like his shit. he’s fucking funny. i want to see how he develops.

ruzenka. another member of the “new kids on the block”. god i hoep they won’t resent me for calling them that. because collectively, they are really good writers. and ruzenka is no exception. her writing is heart felt. she wants to join up again. that’s good. i lioke her stuff.

vicky. oh man. she kicked letters ass. i think it’s kind of easy for her. almost too easy. consistent, confident in her writing, and really good stories. each one of her letters is a story in itself making one want to buy her book. she’s good.

april. she’s amirah’s sister. i’ve met her. they look a lot the fuck alike. they probably wouldn’t want people to say that, but they do. i like her stuff. pretty different i would say from amirahs. they probably won;t like that i’m comparing them either. but i can’t help it. they look alike. they write different.

emerson. good guy. bike rider. but for exercise more. he has those tiny little shorts that bike riders nowadays wear. i want to see his writing get more controversial. maybe that’s just me. but he’s got a handle on writing.

eddie. now i don’t know why he wanted to join. i’ve known him for quite some time and this guy is trying all sorts of things. i guess writing is one of them. his posts have shcoked me. i wonder where he was going with them. and maybe, if he joins again, he can finish the story he started. otherwise i’ll kill him just for posting up rants. if you’re reading this, eddie. i will kill you! just kidding. i like him.

helen. dude. i’m psychic. i knew this one would be good. man, i love the way she writes. she’s expressed interest in a novel, i think. and i hope she keeps it up because i can really see, even with the skill set she has now, and combined with her natural talent, she can really do this full time. her biggest obstacle, she told me, was that she was happy. let’s see if she can write from a happy place.

Heinrik Hiramatsu. well, i’ve had the opportunity to read your writings over the course of tenish years give or take a couple five. my, friend, you are really good. and i say that with all sincerity. publishable, yes. and now it’s time we take our own advice and put shit out there. flagbearer. that’s you. write it, publish it, make millions. we’re at the cusp.

edren. i’m just bad ass. ’nuff said.

so this is the last letter i’m going to write. gonna take these five days to finalize all the other shit we need to do to make this next session work. simultaneous sessions with sections and publishable material, third party makers, contracts and legal shit, registering and crap like that. i’m kind of glad i got to do all that shit. keeps me away from letters. stupid letters. fucking letter. i hate them.

begrudgingly, i thank them though. got me to get to know a lot more writers out there in the world. hungry ones. talented ones. got to know their grandfathers and grandmothers. their kids. their lovers. their fears and their hopes. got a chance to read some stories. get reacquainted with old friends and make new ones. helped me realize what the power of words and those that weild them weapons can really do. and we’re going to do it. all together.

the new artistic revolution is upon us. this is the year of the genius. the world will shift. because the writer says so. sound familiar? of course it does. but this time, man, this time, there is an army growing. training, everyday, improving their skills, marching towards the Undeniable. and someday very soon, regardless of if we are ready or not, we will inherit the world. and when that time comes, we shall all be wizards competent enough to help shape and change the world. we’re magic.

cheers, bro. see you next session.

but seriously, i didn’t like you when i first met you. probably because you were wearing a black robe when i first met you. the kind that mages of nuitari. complete with ingedient sack, pentacle necklace, and an owl familiar. just kidding about that shit. but i swear, in my mind, that’s what i saw.

it was weird, man. your bespeckled ass came floating into the studio while i was recording some awesomely genius shit, the likes the world has never heard of. shit that would crack peoples toenails once their ears grabbed it. shit that bent reality. shit that made trees weep and stones laugh. nahm sayin’, brodah? i’m gifted, woop woop! somehow my no name loser ass from the san fernando valley was recording poetry with the heavy hitters of the pilipino los angeles. and i was ’bout ready to make them feel the concentrated heat that i grew up in. then your darky city graymalkin ass blinks in and ruined everything.

“oh, it’s allan aquino! he’s so awesome! he’s better than edren! i like his glasses! nice robe!” what a dick, i thought to myself. what a dick.

and then your creepy ass started talking. man, you weirdo, if i hadn’t memorized the dictionary when i was a lad, i wouldn’t have understood a god damned thing you were saying. i swear, you didn’t use a single doulbe syllable word. everything was around five or six syllables. even your verbs. i mean, what the fuck, dude.

when you get down to it, all i was, was a typical guy who got lucky in a contest. where these people who were making the CD just so happened to be at. liked how i rhymed talaga with agenda. that’s it. you, however, mr. college professor, mr. budhist philosopher, mr. established poet and writer, deserved to be on that project. when you get down to it, i was intimidated and scared.

but then i found otu you liked comic books and that you also lived in the valley. so we became friends. ha. i get over my insecurities pretty easy. thank you filterless lobes.

and i don’t know how many conversations we’ve had about the pilipino-american or the dark knight or the language of writers or the evolution and revolution of literature. but everytime i walk away from those conversations, i feel smarter. a little bit more armed when it comes to my Art. you, sir, are the walking epitome of poet warrior. except you’re a mage. so you, sir, are the walking epitome of poet-mage.

and man, i remember that time we were at that chinatown bar. it was an after party for some asian-american hoo hah thing. all these people were wobbling about drunk as fuck, basically wanting to not remember their past week, coz it sucked donkey nut, and then i’m there, all by myself, i forget why, and i end up standing in the middle of the dance floor holding two glasses of some tropical mixed drink. i’m not even dancing. i’m just standing there wondering why the fuck i’m standing in the middle of the dance floor not dancing. this wave of displacement washes over me. i see the whole place turn a different color. all the people talking to one another, all the music reverberating from wall to wall, all the energy shared between these social creatures that seem to be just a shade brighter than mine own. i felt stupid. i was going to go home.

then all of a sudden, through a window crack past the forest of undulating party people, i see this bald-headed, glasses-wearing, black robe mage of nuitari, sipping on some drink, and writing. what the fuck, man. why is this guy writing during a party? then i realized it was you. and it made perfect sense.

i still got that picture someone took of us. writing drunk poetry. i read your post on that night. about the drunk poetry. we got a chance to write something together and i was able to hang. it’s an honor that you would consider me a poet. and i’m serious about that.

so now here we are. about to enter the next phase of the writers workshop. i’m wondering where you are. maybe busy with work. with family. with the ladies. with the incredible hulk. but you’re not writing. that surreal correspondence story you started balls a blazing about three months ago. may i just say, that shit is out of this world. that shit could actually be on bookshelves. with secret mages storing them in their astral libraries. but you haven’t written in a month and i wonder why.

i have your phone number. and i can ask one of my henchmen to find out where you live and bring you to my tower. i can easily get to you with the leverage i have on the planet earth, but i’d rather you write me a letter, regaling the adventure that lead you away from the “pen and paper”, from the lovely somatic rhythm of fingertips on buttons. away from the staring contest between bloodshot eyes and the conduit to a million voyuers. away from a company of writers who could benefit from your dark brilliance. but i’d rather have you write to me.

this is Vaugner Kurt, Copernicus. tell me how your asylum smells.

when i first met you, i didn’t like you. you were this quiet ass, agreeable, mouse. i don’t like shy people. they make me feel nervous. like i’m walking a tightrope with egg shells taped on it. and it’s really windy. like, anything i’d say, and because i’m nearly filterless, blame my family who incorporated rudeness as a defense mechanism, i might offend them. and it hurts my head trying to search my awesomely massive vocabulary for the appropriate words. so what ends up happening is, i just shut the fuck up. which means a very quiet room.

but then you got moved over to the afterschool program. you took over the elementary school kids. which fit you perfect because you’re just a kid inside. while paolo was the authority, and i was the mean motherfucker from jerktown, you were the loving, caring, friend to all the kids. it was a good mix and i watched the youth benefit from us all. as a team. and that’s when i started thinking, okay, this one ain’t so bad.

from your time in the afterschool program, when all we had was elemetary school kids for you and middle school kids for me, i learned how to care for these kids without being scared. the thing, back then, was, everytime i looked at them, i got sad. knowing some of the truths that age and forced experience brings, i saw on these kids foreheads, social security numbers and barcodes. i saw numbers. i saw statistics. more than 50% of them won’t be going to college. 25% of them won’t be graduating high school. 90% of them would have experienced physical altercations and the lapd roaming through their hallways. i don’t even want to think about how many of the girls might get pregnant. or get into heavy drugs. 99% of those kids that walked through the halls of SIPA would not be concentrating on their future. they’d be forced to concentrate on their present because the LAUSD is a war zone. school is not school. and that scared the shit out of me. looking at those kids, those tiny faces and little hands, big watery eyes and genuine smiles, i just couldn’t bear the thought of them dying inside. having to fight. so i ended up just doing what i do pretty damn well. reminding them of the rules. making sure they followed it.

see, i got this friend who i’m fake married to. her name is kristina. i was in love with her for ten friggin’ years. we shoulda had babies together. they would’ve been awesome. but i’m going off on a tangent. she is a registered nurse. she’s been one for a while, since she was 23 years old. bought her own car at 24. owned a house when she was 25. typical over-achiever. she ended up at a county hospital. in the ER. can you imiagine the kinds of shit she saw every friggin’ night? she told me this one story of how this guy came in, literally, his scalp was flopping off his head, she could see his skull, and he asked, “am i going to be alright?” jeebus, man, that’s some in your face reality shit.

anyway, i’m going to start a new paragraph coz that one was all over the place. so basically, as a nurse, you can imagine she had to deal with a lot of people in pain on a personal level. and in that specific type of work, just for the psychology of the doctors and nurses involved, they tend to adopt two types of thinking. one is a really clinical, numbers, bookish type of approach. that way they don’t get attached when someone dies in their face. someone they’ve been caring for. coz it happens a lot. the death thing. when they die, these clinical people don’t get hurt as much. because they never got attached. the second approach is the wholistic way. care for them like you would care for your own family. attach yourself to them because there is no better medicine for pain than love. except maybe marijuana. but that’s the same thing. sure, these wholistic people end up crying a lot when their patients die, but before they died, they had life. because of the care and concern of their doctors and nurses. and i think i read somewhere smart that it’s a proven fact, terminally ill patients who are subject to a wholistic approach become immune to pain. you get what i’m saying.

i saw the faces of those elementary school kids walking around SIPA after hugging you. and they were bright as the sun. nothing compared to it. it was beautiful to see.

and then it hit me. by the way, i’m starting to hate that phrase. i think i’m going to start using, then i was slapped in the face with the delicate, yet authoritative hand of an idea. this job we have, taking care of kids, is a lot harder than a county facility ER. because we save lives, too. but there is no clear cut way to save them. there is no fool-proof books, no true reference formulae, on how to save these youths. we’re doing it with the limited amount of knowledge we have because of experience. and we’re doing it with little pay to ourselves and little shit money for these programs. we’re up against the vegas odds. these kids are 10 -1.

but ya know what? you probably do. we’re the only thing in the way of statistics. statistics is trying to meet her quota. we’re the only thing stopping it. the end of the books these kids live have not been written yet. and even if they got next to no chance of not only surviving in this world, because that’s what they’re parents do, that’s what they do in school, but thriving in this world, we are the group of people that can help them make that change. by showing them the rigid rules, the flaws and foibles of law and life, the ugly, expansive, gap between them and the privileged children, and helping them develop courage, confidence, and strength to fight against the statistics. with love. and care. and cocern.

you taught me how to show that i care. so thanks amirah. thank you very much.

well, it’s hot up in this mug. i’m going to go to work to get some air conditioning on. to scare some little kids. because i love them. and then tell them that i do.

see you not at SIPA anymore, but in some books you write.

joseph pinmentel. did he ever tell you i hated him when i first met him? that one summer, walking into the courtyard in little tokyo, protective of my grove full of druidic artists, organic and natural magick beings, this motherfucker walks in with a royal attitude as if we owed him some sort of reverence because of presence alone. i wanted to snake style punch him in the throat just enough so he wouldn’t breathe for eight seconds. long enough for him to shit bricks, but not long enough ot kill him. coz prison sucks.

somehow, the next year, this glendale fuck, which explained everything, no offense to people who were raised up in glendale, i’m just saying glendale people have this entitlement air about them, just in comparison to my valley ass, which society could easily label as apathetic, which will go well with how i’m, once again, going to prove myself wrong, becuase it’s necessary to compare in order to reveal, and yes, i can go on forever, i practice it enough in real life conversations with people who don’t have enough time to sit and talk, just because that’s funny to me, but it’s all relative to the individual anyway, somehow, this glendale fuck became my friend.

he went with us on one of our many adventures. the one to chicago. to meet with our fellow New Artistic Revolutionaries, one of the cowboy bebop bounty hunter writers, erik matsunaga. you know him. you’ve read his shit. he lived in chicago at the time. he still does, i just didn’t know how to include that all in one sentence without writing like joseph. because back then, joseph’s writing sucked.

when we got back from that adventure filled with stories enough to write a trilogy, he sat me down and asked if i could help him become a better writer. and that he would buy me beers for it. shit’n A, man. why the hell not? he didn’t know i didn’t know the first thing about beign a good writer. i just knew what made me a good writer, which probably wouldn’t work for him, because, hey, when you get down to it, writing is your personality symbolically combined on a piece of paper. and my pattern is way different than his. but, shit, man, free beer and i got to talk shit? why the hell not.

we had two sessions i think. he wanted to meet every monday at my other house, a bar on first and central in j-town. i’m worried about writing down the name because it might come up on some search engine and then the owners will find out what i did there. so i’ll call it the bar on first and central. two sessions even though he wanted a years worth. i think schedules conflicted. or maybe, he didn’t like what i said. or maybe, he figured it out on his own. who knows. all i know is that two sessions happened and i only got to drink 47 glasses of beer.

the first night.

“so how can i be a better writer?” he asked.

“you wanna get some beers first?” i replied. i needed to get drunk in order to tell him my secrets.

“sure.” he calls the waitress over in a way only joseph can do, rude as hell. made me laugh though because they didn’t know what kind of heart he had. lovely guy actually. just really misunderstood.

we get our beers. drink a few sips. sit in silence for a bit and then, antsy, he asked again, “so how can i be a better writer?”

“well,” i said after a big gulp of heff, “you got to learn how to edit.”

“edit?” he asked perplexed.

“yeah edit.” i said.

“what do you mean?”

“edit, motherfucker. do you not know what the word edit means?”

“yeah, i know what edit means, but how is that gonna make me a better writer? i thought it was all about being honest and true to yourself and not giving a fuck about what anybody thought, that it was the writer against the world? you know, like how you talk about bukowski and shit. how all you guys, jonathan, you, erik, and shit, how you guys write?”

“it is.”

“so doesn’t editing ruin that?”

“no.”

he sat there staring at me waiting for a follow up. he didn’t get one. “okay.” he noticed my glass was empty. “want another beer?”

“sure.” i said.

we spent the rest of the night writing. he recited what he wrote down and i told him it was crap and to write it again. but shorter. and he did. and then he recited it again and then i told him it was crap and to write it again. but take out the bad words. and he did. and he recited it again and i told him it was crap and to write it again. but fix the grammatical errors. and he did. and he recited it again and i told him it was crap and to write it again. but take out all things opinion. and he did. and he recited it again. and i told him it was crap. and i told him to scrap the whole piece of paer and write an entirely new piece. this took a good two hours for a paragraph of writing. by the end of the night, he understood what i was talking about. by then, we were drunk, and it was closing time. so we left.

the second night. we’re already half way into the night, finished writing a shitload of crap, drunk as shit. i look at this little bird. i had to ask him. it was about time i checked.

“hey, joseph.” i slurred.

“sup.” he was in the middle of some crap sentence.

“why do you write?”

he looked up. bloodshot eyes. hanging sacks of eyelids. “well, because our community is a small minority in this country. i feel that, as an asian-american, especially as a pilipino-american…”

i cut him off. “that’s bullshit. you bullshit-filled shit of bull. tell me the real reason.”

he paused. that was the good thing about joseph. he never took offense to anything i said.

“well,” be said, “because god gave me this gift and opportunities to be able to write. and i have an olbigation…”

“bullshit. tell me the real reason, you fucker.”

well, because i grew up reading inspirational writers. it made me want to be a writer.”

“bullshit, joseph. you’re starting to piss me off.”

“uh, well, because there’s this spark inside of me that feels in regards to the universe…”

“god damn it! i swear to god, if you don’t stop lying to me, i’m going to take this glass and smash it acorss your fucking face! now tell me, motherfucker, why the fuck do you write?”

he looked at me. he wasn’t scared. he knew i wasn’t going to do it. but he had no idea what i was getting at. see, that was the problem he had. he was wondering what i was trying to get him to say. i wasn’t trying to get him to say what i thought he should say. i wanted to know the actual answer. he was approaching this whole thing like it was a test and i was the professor. in reality, i was just curious about the honest answer.

“well…” he sat there and thought about it for a little while. took a breathe. unfurrowed his eyebrows. took a gulp of his beer. shrugged his shoulders in futility and ended up saying. “well, shit. i guess i have stories. i wanna tell them.”

“bingo!” i offered him a high five. i think we were so drunk we missed, but he understood the intention.

Art is telling stories. plain and simple. writing, painting, dancing, song, singing, videos, movies, it’s all about telling stories. each medium had a different way of expressing that story. each medium has different rules and regulations, different powers and flaws, different approaches and processes. but the bottom line for all Art is to tell a story. and it ultimately depends on the Artists how they want to tell it. that’s what the fuck Art is. the individual way one person expresses their stories to others by way of the chosen medium’s rules and parameters. if it gets across, it’s good Art. if it doesn’t, it sucks. plain and simple. everything else, is just semantics. it’s a process.

“so tell me,” i asked. “why writing?”

“well, i believe…” he notices i picked up the glass, aiming it at his head.

he smiled. and then he simply said, “because i’m good at it.”

i nod. “cheers, bro. welcome to the writers workshop.”

and we wrote crap until it was closing time.

i hadn’t seen him since. that was four years ago maybe. every so often, i’d get an e-mail from him. or i’d hear from someone that they saw him and he got fatter. that he got married or some shit. that’s he’s writing for a journal. that life’s hard for him. this and that, the same shit everyone else is going through, just with a joseph main character. i miss that fool. i miss his heart, his incessant desire to learn. his need to improve not for self-glorification, but because he felt he deserved it. glendale people, i swear. but it works for him. as it should.

next time you see him, aimee, tell him to join up. let him read some of your stuff, if he hasn’t already. help me introduce him to the rest of these people who are on the same journey as him, part of this ever-expanding, ever-evolving, writers workshop that he, in a strange way, birthed. it might do the world some good.

as for you, as for your poems, as for your letters, as for your spirit and participation in this writers workshop, i thank you. people get from this project what the put into it. and you, my friend, have put in a lot. i’d offer you a high-five, but that would be difficult over the internet.

looking forward to your next post.

hey, are you still interested in writing a column? or some sort of article type shit? we might get some sort of online publication type thingee headed by the cyborg, nailat-xj34.5, and i remember that e-mail exchange we had a long time ago. without going into further details, because if i remember correctly, there was some ninja shit going on there, mayhap you’d be interested in something like that?

ah yes. remember those e-mails? all five of them? i sent some sort of survey to twenty people i thought represented a section of society? you were one of those people. although i barely knew you, i just knew you liked rubbing the palm of my hand with your finger as some sort of salutation, you cad bastard, i had this feeling you were more than just a beer drinking, bike riding, community member gangster like the johnerics and yaps you hung out with. nothing but male affection and mad admiration for those bro’s, yo. but from you, i smelled, literally, coz my nose is pocked with ninja skills, somethign that had more to do with intricate systems and crap like that. science shit, ya know. and thusly, i sent you a survey to fill out.

well, those surveys sent to twenty representatives of society, made a lot of sense to me. the fake reason i sent them was to be cute and funny and make people laugh and, possibly, shit in their pants. i’m a man who loves fucking with people. it’s my thing. call it genetics. my moms taught me. she’s an expert. but the real reason why i sent those surveys was for market research. see, i had this plan, (dude, i should’ve totally indented for a new paragraph. but fuck it. i alread worte this far ahead. and yeah, yeah, i know i can use the mouse and click and press enter instead of writing this whole explanation of why i won’t, but again, fuck it. i don’t even go back to corrected mispellings. onward!)

see, i had this plan right? ( i know. whatevers.) i wanted to make this website based off of internet networking that exchanged art from all over the country. all types of art. music, paintings, comics, writings, all that type of shit. they would be able to collaborate, converse with, comment on, and basically, work with whoever the fuck they would want to. in whatever media they’d like. this world-wide artistic revolution on the internet. and i had this idea a couple of years ago. it was just that i didn’t know how to make it happen. but the week when i sent you guys the surveys, i figured it out. by the way, a couple of weeks ago, i fugred out the secret to the rubik’s cube.

anyways, i’m probably not the first guy with this idea. and i won’t be the last. but i hadn’t seen it yet and i figured why not now? so i got some money ready, a good $100,000, and was ready to throw it up on the world and save lives and babies. but then i realized, that’s a shit load of money to just see if it’ll work. my mom would’ve killed me if i wasted that much money. and a dead me ain’t good.

so i talked to some level-headed friends of mine, mostly earth signs of course, the friend i go to when i want discouragement/motivation. they told me it was a bad idea. that i didn’t have a plan. a business plan, contigency plan, or marketing plan. because this shit would need to sustain itself and if my goal was to pay artists for their work, there would have to be a profit. and for there to be a profit, there would need to be consistent traffic. maybe membership. maybe adverts. maybe incorporating and going public. maybe selling. maybe creating small companies within the umbrella. yada, yada, yada. shit i already knew.

but then it hit me like an angry ex-girlfriend who’s been taking kick-boxing classes. i should do some market research. see what people say. if they would join, participate, how much time they had in their daily lives, and shit like that. all the questions i needed answered were hidden in the “funny”, “cute”, and “sexy” questions i asked. and people came back and told me what they thought.

the website would’ve sank fast. everything i thought people would do, these people told me they wouldn’t. and i beleived them because these people are the people i was trying to get involved. it might’ve been my approach. it might’ve been the system i created. it might’ve been the site was way too big too do so soon.

so you e-mailed me back after answering the sexy questions and asked me what it was for. i told you. you gave me advice. and guess what happened?

i talked to erik matsunaga, who was also on the survey list, and we ended up creating this writers workshop.

i think from the three shits i took this monring to the full moon while driving down from san francisco last week, i think everything happens for a reason. for some reason, your biker shorts wearing ass came to the cafe, ended up on an e-mail list, and joined the writers workshop. for some reason, i’m writing you this letter on fathers day when i should be taking a shower getting ready to go eat some chinese food with my family.

that survey was about a year ago. the website idea happened two years ago. the writers workshop, live, happened five years ago, i think. and the idea fora  website for writers work happened ten years ago. things happen for a reason. sometimes it takes a long ass time to realize.

anyway, i have to go jerk it before i drive in fucked up heat to the hot ass valley to eat some chinse food with my family in northridge. spank you later, dude.

but i work part time with the kids so’s i can have a flexible schedule, so’s i can do other things that, in a weird way, contribute to the evolution of humanity, so’s i can go to heaven. coz i hate heat. and hell, from the pictures branded into my psyche, suggest it’s kind of hot.

my time sheet should read, monday through fridays, 3pm – 7pm. that’s the time the kids get out from school, and since their parents are still at work, and since them parents don’t want their kids roaming the streets, they send them to us. so it’s cool that i can go to sleep when i want, wake up when i want, and still have a job that is fullfilling because super-heroes get satisfaction from doing good deeds. i’m usually in around 3:01pm.

but sometimes i come in early. just because i know it’ll be quiet. the kids, i love them fucks, but the kids are really, really, really, loud. i don’t think they have a volume knob. i think it’s just one and off. and on is pretty fucking loud. imagine that. 30 loud sounds, all different pitches and tones, some pubescent and some adolescent, crashing into one another, ultimately fucking with my ability to logically reason out why they’re all so very fucking loud. i love them. like my own. i would do a lot for each and every one of them. but fuck man, sometimes, i just want it to be quiet. so i come in early every so often. also, because my pad in pasadena doesn’t have air conditioning.

i’m here. 2:30pm. on a thursday. everyone in the office is on the other side of the building. i got a whole wing to myself. i came in planning to read this book my friend, erik matsunaga sent me a long ass time ago. alarm, by mike daily. heard of it? i was listenign to the CD in the car on the way to work. pretty innovative that dude is. i like his style.

i say down in this here chair i find myself cross-legged on, set my shit on the big, wooden, castle of desk in front of me, and take my first sip of grocery store coffee. i can feel my eyes dialating even before the last drop of yuban leaves my tongue. i love artifical influences. thumb the spine of that paperback and then glance over at my keyboard.

son of a bitch, i think. i have to write a letter right now. it’s the rules. can’t break them. you’re a superhero, i think to myself. you must be the epitome of order. you must be the unwavering representative result of following the laws of the writers workshop. otherwise, evenetual implosion. god damn it. why do i have to be so melodramitic?

so i put the book down, fire up the old computer i have named, computee, and click, click, click, on to the undeniables.org.

now kayla, i got to warn you. all that shit i wrote up top, all that shit was just intro. just set up for what i’m really going to write about. which is the mortality of grandparents. the eventual loss and the series of coping mechanisms significant others go through, consciously and unconsciously. and i’m going to do it in a way that forces myself to have to look death in the eye and let the tears roll on down. because there are no kiids here right now. just me, the buzz of computee, the finger slams on the keyboard, and unattended feelings of history. and we’ve never met. and other than the couple of inseption e-mails into the writers workshop, we’ve never talked. i know you’re a friend of, matt nailats. i know you have a facebook. i know you know a couple of the other undeniables, and i know you wrote about your grandfather in one of your letters, which is why you’re the one i’m writing this letter to. but other than that, i don’t know specifically what kind of situation he’s in, or you’re in, or you’re family is in. i don’t know how you feel or how you react to these types of situations. i do know how i feel about mine. and how a tough little friend of mine has handled hers. so, if you don’t want to read the rest of this, you should stop now. i’ll even count in down just to make sure. okay? here we go.

5

4

3

2

1

0

i got a phone call yesterday. the time was around 8pm. i just got home from work and my roommate wasn’t home. so i took off all my clothes and then started watching the history channel. that’s the type of shit i did before i had a roommate. because i couldn’t afford cable on my own.

i was planning on going to the valley, where i’m from, because my best friend, jerry, was moving to san diego for a new job he got. i wanted to help him pack up some stuff and just spend some quality time with the virgin. i was going to bring my friend, chow with me. what i wanted was reminiscing about the old times. because me and jerry and chow wouldn’t have an opportunity like that for a couple of years. it was a good way to visit another friend of mine, who just so happened to live a hop skip and a jump from jerry. she’s been going through some stuff that i can’t mention online. because she got mad at me and didn’t talk to me for a whole year when i did it the first time. i was lying there, naked, rubbing my pot belly, trying to understand how some guy named, tarzan from the red mafiya became so famous, when the phone rang.

it was angela. i like her. i wouldn’t mind kissing her. i love her company. she’s smart. sarcastic. which i like. an extrovert. which is good for my intrinsic introversion. she smells nice and says she’s mean cook. plus, her soul is beautiful. so i pick up the phone and say, “well, heeeeeeeelllloooooooooooo!” all goofy and shit because i like hearing her giggle.

“my grandma is dying.” she says, cracking between deep heaves, and waterfalls of thick tears.

i could almost smell the hospital through my wireless service. all the milky, dull lights. the absorbent, soudless, carpeting. the occasional echo of a distant, metallic, beeping machines. the white coats, the fading, multi-colored scrubs, and the hanging sanitary masks, all human, but not really. and swirling around all of it, invisibly, is this light breathing of life and eath.

“oh man…” is all i can muster. “i’m sorry…”

for the next ten minutes, she’s trying to tell me what happened just a few hours prior. how she was cooking, her grandma had a heart attack, they took her to the hospital, how she almost passed, but they revived her, and how she was hanging on by a machine. how they were waiting for one fo the aunts, how she, angela, couldn’t breathe, how she looked out the window and saw a hawk, and how it reminded her of grandfather, who past almost a decade earlier. she said he was there to bring his wife home. i think this is what she said. i’m not certain though. because there was more weeping than words.

i didn’t know what to say. every single cliche ever created for situations like this ran through my mind. but just as i was about to say one, it crossed my mind had stupid it would be to say it. because, ultimately, nothing can be said in situations like this. so all i ended up doing, was breathing with her.

 sorry. i can’t finish this one.

but then you became a mom. and shit, sister, everything changed. i was wondering how that story would play out. christine, on the skateboard, with the microphone, and the glue gun, and the sewing machine, and the yo momma jokes, and the thirft store sense, the kid, had a kid. what the fuck right?

that was so long ago. now you’re not even in eagle rock anymore. you’re married to a very good friend of mine, starting your own business, still a mom, and from a letter i read, cooking eggs. how things change when someone doesn’t stop fighting.

that’s one thing i can say about you, my friend. you never gave up. no matter what the fuck happened in your crazy life, you never said, die. for someone as small and dainty as your ass, you got some warrior fight in you. that was with you from the first day i met you to the last day i talked to you.

here’s another thing i can say about you, christine. you’re a friend of mine. you always have been. and that’ll never change. i just want you to know that. you got extended family, dude.

so here’s a cheers to you. to snow. to left-handed. to motherhood. to skateboards and bmx’s right next to each other at the park. to clothing. to business. to networking. to being earth signs. to having a laugh i can actualy spell out like so: hahahahahahahahahahaha! because that’s how you laugh. to singing. to cooking eggs. to pete’s burgers on colorado. to kelsoe. to erik. to chicago. to los angeles. dude, seriously, if we drank to everyone of those cheers’s, i think i’d be unconcious. but, i think, it’s about time, i let you know how much you are appreciated. by falling down drunk.

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

now get to writign letters, man.

cheers.

so you’re 21. again. how does it feel? how does this very day, the calm in between your shows, with a legit theatre company, (by the way,you say theatre like this: thee AYE tur.) on the brink of multiple directional
explosions. like a grenade made of opportunity. and you’re quite capable of following every piece of shrapnel towards the human skin that…jeez. why the grenade metaphor?

it’s like you’re holding twelve kites in your hand. (yeah. that’s better.) and all this time, all this time meaning your life up until this point, and your holding twelve different kites. shaped differently, colored differently, and each needing a different amount of wind ressistance to actually soar. and you’re holding all twelve. on a beach in madagascar of all places. i said madagascar just because i’ve never use the place in anything i’ve ever written and i feel, because of that fact, i’ll use it in a long ass metaphorical situation for you. dude, i should totally start another paragraph.

from birth, you’ve had all twelve. it was written into your DNA way before your grandma was born. when the angels knew no difference between heaven and earth in fact. yup. that long ago. all twelve kites, all different colors, all different tassels, all different speeds, as a baby born, all twelve strings were held tightly in those tiny little hands of yours.

and you knew it. you knew you had more than the rest of the pink and blues in the same baby ward, even across the country. maybe even the world. dare i say, the universe? this includes the marklar of ursus minor VIII. and you know them grindops!

but you never ever really did anything with them. i mean, you did sometimes. you would tug at a couple, watch them jump. fancy at it like it was an orange colored frog or a baby cricket, but you never really saw them for what they really were. perhaps, you just didn’t know how to work them. or maybe they were just occasional toys you would play with on thursday afternoons because the cartoons sucked at that time.

and 30 years would pass. and a million pieces of your heart would be scattered across north america. right next to thousands of crumpled contracts and hundreds of evaporating particles of promises. your feet, slowing down from a walk to a drag, and at times, completely stopping. there was hardly any space around for you to go. every where you went, was a reminder of the ugliness of the ground. where you’ve been was, for the most part, rocky, choppy, cracked, and littered with pieces of your past. such rugged terrain for feet like yours.

i got this friend, right? can’t say her name or even write down the “literary” version of her name because i wrote a book about her a while back and she read it and we didn’t talk for almost a year. so i got to write this part of your letter with the precision and carefulness of a cirque du soleil performer. with the delicate dexterity of an argentinian tango dancer. with the hands of a sniper surgeon hybrid superhero.

sidenote: you know, i might be risking losing the reader at this point by introducing another character, another story, that might be too much, too much story. even if it is applicable, which will be revealed towards the end of the letter, the reader might just roll their eyes and walk away. dude, they’d say to themselves. get to the point, already! but then i figure, even by doing this, writing this sidenote thing, introducing a new character and a new story, that at first may not seem to apply, ultimately, at the end of this whole letter, there will be a revelation of how all things are connected. dots and shit. and if anything, you’ll be able to relate. which is why i’m doing it. the only thing i actually worry about, is if i’m sidenoting too soon.

she’s staying here in glendale at a friends place for a while. things happened where she was living, a lot more north, and my advice was to get the fuck out of dodge. coz it’s crazier than tombstone up in that mug and it wouldn’t be beneficial to survival in all terms of the word to remain. so she’s here. i’m here. the friend in glendale is here. we’re all cool and the gang like that. we’re talking like it’s a slumber party, making jokes, making plans for the future, watching movies, drinking coffee, and going to work, because we work together. and it’s cool. it’s fun. it’s something new that’ll help me get closer to a bigger brain. unfortunately, things aren’t going to be easy from here on out. now i can’t fully explain what’s going on, for legal reasons, but i think you’ll know what i mean when i say, shit is bad.

last night, we were driving back to glendale, talking about work and shit. we were coming from oxnard, so that meant we had a lot of time to talk. coz oxnard and gelndale is like africa and the moon. she talked in detail. and for a long ass time. she wept. she looked out the window a lot at the disappearing distant lights. couldn’t tell the difference between the stars in the sky or the stars of the cities we passed. didn’t really mater to her. the difference between sky and ground. the glow from the radio made a silvery half mask of a tired, beaten, worn woman at the brink of quitting. giving up. a fighter from day one was about to lay down and call, i lose.

there was 15 more miles until we got to glendale. i had to time my monologue just right, so that when we exited the 134, i would light my cigarette, exhale, and finish it all up with a, “you know what i mean?” wink, and hit the side streets. ya know, it would look cool.
“we’re all subjects of entropy. deterioration. things are going to break down. they are going to die. some people reason, so why fight it? why not adopt this fundamentalist attitude? we all end up the same way regardless? so why waste energy trying to keep it from happening? ultimately, entropy wins. but, dude, you know what i think? don’t answer. because you don’t. i’ve never talked to you about shit like this. usually it’s about who’s fucking who and who’s fucking who over and how much money are we gonna make and what’s the plan, jackie chan, and can i borrow the car kind of stuff. but i’ll let you in on a couple of secrets that keep me alive from day to day. it works for me, so it might work for you. coz i think you’re an INTJ, too. you ready, freddie? the coffee’s kicking in, so let’s dew this!

“
i’ll do it in a story. bear with me. i talk in metaphors. it’s this writers workshop thing i’ve been doing. it’s all about telling stories. so i can’t really do it in a couple of sentences. i have to do it long ass monologues filled with metaphors and analogies that take a long time. but i got about 15 minutes, and i’m gonna use every single second of it. because it’s my turn to talk. anyway, that was stupid, wasn’t it? i should’ve just went into the story, huh? you’re probably at the point of tuning out, aren’t you? okay then. i’ll get on with it.

“there was this time me and armando were getting gas. it was a 76 or some shit. across the street was these apartment buildings. residentials and shit. not the big city type of street. a small street in the middle of north hollywood. outside of this one apartment complex there was this old man with a broom and a dust pan. it was sometime in the autumn so, even in LA, all the leaves were falling. dying once they had no strength to hold onto the branch they were born into. the brown crispness indicative. i was thinking, how sad. dead tree children. softly floating to the ground. waiting for time to dissolve them into air. near infinity. over and over again. never ending. always the same. done and gone. nothing remains. made me kind of sad. i pulled out a cigarette and started smoking tobacco.

“after i tok my first puff, i exhaled out the window. armando was pumping the gas and i was sitting shotgun. i looked over to that apartment complex once more. the old man with the broom and the dust pan was sweeping all the leaves into the dust pan. filled it to the brink and then went over to his garbage can and shoved it in. he went over to the other piles and did the same thing. over and over again. armando was getting a lot of gas, so i watched for a long time. and i started thinking. man, this guy, probably, does this everyday. everyday he comes out with hsi broom and dust pan, sweeps up al the dead leaves that died that day and puts them neatly in that garbage can of his. everyday. because he wants the sidewalk clean. and the next day he’ll do it again. and the next. and the next. everyday, the leaves will fall and everyday he’ll sweep them up. jeez, what’s the point, ya know? it’s always gonna happen. why waste your time, old man? why aren’t you playing pinnocle? or rummy? or going to pachanga and playing slots with all the other senior citizens? why are you wasting you’re time?

“and then i started thinking, because dude, he has to clean. or else it’ll get messy. it’ll get ugly. see, i end up debating with myself because i’m a capricorn-aquarius cusp, year of the tiger, left-handed, middle child, only boy, INTJ. and that is a lonely existence. but it allows me to debate with myself. i guess you can say, i’m a master debator. just kidding. but anyways.

“see, what i was thinking all that time while armando was filling his, apparently, two hundred gallon gas tank because he was taking a long ass time, was that, to the old man, it didn’t matter if he had to do it everyday. to him, it was more important to keep what he considered his, his sidewalk, his apartment, his little part of the big ass world, clean and tidy. to him, the effort he put into it was necessary to keep him happy before the inevitable came. because the alternative would be some fucking huge ass wall of cracked, brown, leaves in front of him. and that was worse than the daily effort he put into cleaning. to him, it was worth it. it was worth it, you know what i mean?

“finally, armando was done. he got back in the car, i finished my cigarette, and we were off to wherever we had work that day.

“so, Kan…er, i mean, Coo…,uh, i mean, friend, what i’m trying to say is this. everyday there’s gonna be something we have to clean. there are those that don’t think it’s necessary to address them issues. they’d rather not think about it, let it build up, because it’s a waste of time to clean it up. then there are others out there who think it’s a waste of time to do nothing about the daily issues that drop in front of us, laying there on the ground, collecting into piles that they can’t even move around. so those people decide to clean it up.
because they want to be able to walk around. maybe even run around. so for you, friend, what do you believe? what do you think? do you think it’s worth it? you know what i’m talking about? you know what i mean?”

and then i exit the freeway and take a puff of my cigarette.

that’s what happened last night, while you were performing for the first time in a long time, on stage, with professional actors, with a completely enthusiastic, drama free ensemble cast. a new kind of experience for you, angela. on the eve of your again 21st birthday. while i was talking to my friend, driving her back to glendale, i was thinking about you. because, my love, soft water wiggle deliberate, ocean eyes, curtain eyelids, playful lips and teeth, tiny dancing hands, through your life, things have fallen on the ground, all over, piling up, making it hard to maneuver, sometimes completely stopping. and i’ve seen it. i was witness to it. those twelve kites you held in your hands never got a chance to really fly. they’d get trapped on the ground because you weren’t moving, because you had no room to move.

but now, fantangela angela, because you’ve been “cleaning” (remember your hour and half phone number deleting? that was funny. thank you marijuana and realizations!) you got some room. and you’re looking at your hand and remembering those twelve strings you got in your hands. and you’re looking down the sidewalk and seeing there’s a lot more room than there was before. and you’re walking. briskly. maybe even, soon, like tomorrow, maybe you’ll pick up the pace and start running. coz you got room now. and maybe, just maybe, one day soon, maybe tomorrow, ah ha ha, i’ll be able to see what twelve kites look like when flying in the sky all at the same time. and more importantly, you’ll feel what it’s like.

happy birthday. i’ll see you tonight.

ya see, ya big lug, i got the day off today. not because it was coming to me, but because i just wanted to. and usually, that’s the type of thing a person gets fired for, especially since i’ve done it for quite some time, simply by saying, “hey, dude. i’m not coming in tomorrow.” and i don’t know why he doesn’t ask, “why?” he ends up saying, “okay. cool.” and then my carefully prepared, highly detailed, half-truth explanation never gets revealed. so i save it for the next time i feel like i don’t want to wake up early and go to work. so far, i have stored 16 excuses in my database. i’ve only used two. and i think i can reuse them soon.

i took the day off today because i wanted to write. i’ve never been this close. i can actually feel it’s presence. i can almost see it. it’s blurry, but i can see where it’s standing and dancing. outside my bedroom window, on the sidewalk, next to that tree that always seems to drop a branch every two weeks. should i make more of a reference to the feeling of it’s presence? otherwise, what was the point of even bringing that up, right? oh well. i think i just fixed it by recognizing that i introduced a descriptor without a reference. that’s good.  

you know what else is good? God.

but you know what else is good? that i’m going to write you a letter about work, art, the Undeniable, and your beard. a letter so fucking awesome that it will make you cry out of your ass. literally. and not because you ate that chicken burrito last night. but because your eyes won’t have enough room to send tears through, because they’re the size of eyes, that the tears will be forced to find a large orifice to escape from lest you explode from intense emotion. and from what i remember, it’s your ass. geez. i hope that sentence worked. it had a tinge of grossness. but, i guess, it depends on who reads it, eh. how come i always talk about asses? anyway…

let’s begin.

so you’re looking for a requiem. you’re looking for a venus de milo. a starry night. a left handed guitar god. an eye-humping interpretation of romeo and juliet. but can’t find the fucking gems inside the coffee grinds. can’t find the paintings on the walls of office high-rises. can’t find the lynyrd skynyrd inside elevators. can’t find the magic inside the mundane. sorry about that. i think that paragrpah contained too much. i think i could’ve moved on without so many descriptors. at least i evened them out. oh well. i’m awesome!

i’ll tell you what, brother. this is what i think happened.

we all lived in the land of nod. maybe i should capitalize that to make sure people know it’s a place. okay. i will. we all used to live in the Land of Nod. a magical city-state hovering on the canopies of giant redwood trees floating in the middle of the Abanasinian Seas. it was as big as five Los Angeles’ with much more diversity and a freedom from parking tickets. because no one drove cars. they could all fly. The Land of Nod was where benign vampires named, Chuck ate vegan style plates on the corner of 1st and central. where hairless elves drank wine with anthropomorphic grapes. where artists aboud, and the works they created, came to life. the Land of Nod was where you could see music, physically. and where you could eat writing. and it tasted like everyones favorite ice cream all at the same time. where children ruled the city hall and adults played in parks. we all lived there. and we were happy then.

and man, oh man, i don’t know how many books and movies i’ve seen where places like that get destroyed. and it’s usually after we get off the drugs and the sauce. but not always. sometimes people call it growing up. getting older. becoming an adult. investing in property. finding the right IRA. voting. registering your car. paying parking tickets. saving up money for your kids college tuition. barbecue pits in the backyard. swimming pools with floaties floatie-ing. bills.  a pile for the paid bills and a pile for the unpaid bills. checkbook right next to them. or a folder in your inbox labeled, bills, some paid, while the others, flagged, unpaid.

these two worlds do not exist together. one is real and the other imagined. one is the dream and the other is reality. can’t have it both ways, they say. can’t have your cake and eat it, too, they say.

bullshit, i say. my ass.

do you know what strings are? they are smaller than quarks, which are believed to be the smallest things all things are made up of. so they’re smaller still. pulsating and vibrating notating the music that is the be all end all of what we know. this becomes friction. becomes energy. becomes gravity. becomes strong and weak force. becomes molecules. becomes atoms. becomes complex compounds. becomes chemicals. ad infinitum sans infinity. this leads to theories of multiple dimesions. a point, a line, a cube, space-time being the same thing, beyond space-time, yada, yada. this may lead to m-theory. which includes all the theories suggesting that ant the end of it all, it’s a fucking circle. the analogy is, an atom to us, could be a universe to things we can’t even see. but we feel it. because of the vibrations of the strings.

now i’m not saying elves really exist or some shit. and i’m getting to point, have patience, old man. but i’m not saying they do not exist. i’m saying they could. and, of course, this has more to do with physics and astrohpysics and quantum physics and shit, but here’s my point as it relates to what we’re talking about.

everything can exist. everything is probable. just hasn’t happened yet. the more we move in life, the more we challenge ourselves with things that seem insurmountable, and once we overcome thems obstacles, something new is created. we’re all children, really, learning how to a ride a bicycle all over again. the bicycles is the metaphor. if you didn’t catch that.

millions of synaptic tunnels are left unused in our heads. they all correlate to specific possibilities of the universe. i swear to God, i beleive there’s a region in my head that will allow me to, literally, fly. i just have to open it up. and the way the brain works, we have to exercise, we have to do over and over again the activity that sent electricity through the tunnel in the first place.

for instance. writing. something we do. the part of brain lights up everytime we do it. everytime we do it, the space gets bigger and bigger because, shit man, that’s a lot of electricity that won’t be denied. so the more we do it, the easier it becomes. the less we do it, the space becomes unused, and over time, gets smaller because the room is needed elsewhere, since we are finite beings after all. just the capacity is so huge it almost seems limitless. but i’m going off on a tangent right now. but i think it’s interesting. either way, i’m going to make a new paragraph.

simply put, the more you write, the better you get. in this situation you find yourself in, the bigger-bigger it will get. there will be an ease, after a while of doing the life thing repeatedly, that will become natural. because that’s just what humans are. adapting machines. ever-evolving. if we allow ourselves to be that way.

here’s the fun part. at least in my opinion. the fun part is to keep all the parts of my brain functioning while accessing new parts. so the “real life adult shit” is working, as well as the “elf drinking genius writing” part. because i’m working them. and then, eventually, once i get consistent with both, it’ll get big enough to coalesce into a bigger part of my brain.

the key to all of this? not intelligence. not passion. not heart. all necessary, though. all ingredients to make this all work. but the key, the fucking key to all of it working in the first place is simply this. and i’ll even make it it’s own paragraph.

endurance.

physical constitution, brother. that’s it. and that’s all. when i say training, i mean mind, body, and spirit. this is the time we meld all three, everything we have ever learned in life, comes together now, glued by that big boring thing called, endurance. training. discipline. craftsmanship. same shit. you just gotta last longer.

rafael, what i think, is that it’s just a matter of perspective. from the string to the universe. from playing to working. from writing and not writing. it’s all big and small all at the same time.

dude. that was a lot of coffee. i timed it right so i could end this as i sip the last drop. tada! i’m done. woop woop. if anything, this gives you somethign to write about. wow. i’m really not going to end this well, am i? how about this.

fuck john.