trip report #2

I'm sitting under an air conditioner in the first week of May. Normal for Los Angeles, maybe, but very strange for me.

We’ve been terrible busy the last week or so with driving and sightseeing and eating and sleeping and such – hence the lack of posts.

Here are the latest (and at this rate, maybe last) "silaronesque" updates from the trip:

We spent a few days in San Francisco, where we checked out City Lights and a few other book stores, and even managed to take in Ferlinghetti, a new documentary on (shocking!) Lawrence Ferlinghetti that was screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival. It certainly had its flaws, and was no Born into This, but it was a solid film and a great addition to our trip.

My only new book bought in S.F. was a collection of essays on African Literature by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, which I picked up at Marcus Books. It’s sure to produce a few good quotes for OGOV’s Time with the Philosophers.

Next, in Monterey, we visited the hotel where Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island (supposedly), and I picked up a used copy of Very Bad Poetry at a local bookstore. My favourite so far, awarded the prize for “Most Convoluted Syntax” by the editors:


from On a Procession with the Prince of Wales (by Joseph Gwyer)

At evening too the dazzled light
Illumed the darkness of the night
I can’t paint it for reasons best.
‘Twas grand, though I in crowd was pressed.


In the “Not Very Bad Poetry” category, I recently finished reading Yellowrocket by Todd Boss. I had dangerously high expectations for the book and was disappointed, though only somewhat. Much like Margaret Atwood’s The Door, most of the poems in Yellowrocket started out with a whack of potential then either ended awkwardly or were drawn out until they were drained of any of the energy they’d originally started with. Still, some of them held their potential to the end and proved to be quite fantastic.

We swung by the Bukowski bungalow today. It’s been so well preserved that there is still someone living in it...

I decided not to try and stare in the windows to see what they were watching on TV, and other than that there isn’t really much to do. The city has put up a sign marking the spot, which at least gave me a poorly-lit photo to post with this update - so it wasn’t a total waste of time.

Swine Flu Update: NO SWINE FLU YET.

Ok, time to sleep!