Wednesday, May 13, 2012—Orange, CA
Finishing up finals—within about forty-eight hours I will be completely done with this (unpleasant-ass) semester. I got my schedule for the fall finalized today too. I’m still underemployed, but things aren’t any worse than they are now and in some ways they’re better: I have four classes, and, with the exception of a Thursday night class, they are all in the morning. This is important because the main issue I’ve been having with my work has been slept depravation because of having early morning classes scheduled after late night ones (two years straight of this has really messed me up and I think might be exasperating my nagging health problems). The Thursday night class won’t mess me up much either, because it’s the last class of the week for me. In other words, I don’t have to get up on Fridays. Thursdays will be a long day, though. I have an 8:30 AM class at SCC, then I have to drive to IVC teach a 10:00 o’clocker, and then I have to head back to SCC and hang out until my 8:00 PM class starts. The rest of the week, though, will be a piece of cake. Considering I could have been very underemployed this semester, things have worked out pretty well.
Since I’m not going to be working at all this summer (whether I end up going to Greece or not) I plan on using the time to start laying the ground work for my transition to the full-time literary life. This means nailing down the website and really putting time into BSP. I’ll also be looking for a new author to bring in, someone who will help articulate the new direction I see the press heading in. What I’d like to do is have it turn with the way my writing is going, which is much more socially oriented. I really want to get away from the whole post-Bukowski thing, which I feel is completely played out. I’d like to see it move into a more green-political direction. By this I mean I’d like to put out work by the current equivalent of, say, Gary Snyder or Edward Abbey, along with some more overtly political work, Chomskyesque essayist and the like. I’d also like to bring in some socially relevant sci-fi and maybe even see if we can resurrect a few older titles that have gone out of print that should be available. I’d like to think at some point publishing books falling under all the categories will be an option—if chosen well all of these options link up in important ways.
Feeling pretty pent up still, in regards to my personal life. I feel ready to spread out, be more. I know I’m repeating myself, but I really need to get back to writing. I want to hit that hard this summer and have at least a nearly complete draft of Sunshine Seas (I have several stories that have coalesced in my head and should flow out of me pretty easily once I finally get the time to deal with them). I’m starting to envision a big non-fiction project as well, incorporating ideas I’ve had for a number of essays for quite a while, perhaps interspersed with pieces I originally saw going into a Greece book, which has no coalesced in me at all as a stand-alone project. I’m not sure exactly how to describe this project. A kind of semi-urban Southern California-based Practice of the Wild might be the best description. Big historical explorations set in a bioregionalist framework. A ethno-eco exploration spreading out from a L.A. Basin starting point. Big questions posed. Hopefully some big answers found. (Man, does this sound arrogant? I Hope not; I just have some sizeable ideas floating around in my head at the moment that I think will ulitmately sort themselves into something of some importance.)
Still the same personal weirdness and frustrations with my inner life. I’m continuing with Jung’s biography. Still having weird dreams as well (I had a really odd one the other night, but I can only recall flashes of it, not enough to really examine it). I’m beginning to understand a fundamental issue I’m dealing with at the moment and its importance: I’m essentially a materialist in search of meaning that in some sense is beyond that realm. Am I speaking of something that could be called religious? In some sense, I suppose. What I’m really looking for is connections, that to which material is can be reduced—a universal power. I sense these connections all the time, but just barely; I feel alienated from myself and ironically the material aspects of existence on which my vision of existence is based. There is some knowledge I do not have, which has left me in a place where I lack perspective in certain very important ways. There is something that is both within me and outside of me that I don’t understand. I am disconnected, in my understanding … from something …
Finishing up finals—within about forty-eight hours I will be completely done with this (unpleasant-ass) semester. I got my schedule for the fall finalized today too. I’m still underemployed, but things aren’t any worse than they are now and in some ways they’re better: I have four classes, and, with the exception of a Thursday night class, they are all in the morning. This is important because the main issue I’ve been having with my work has been slept depravation because of having early morning classes scheduled after late night ones (two years straight of this has really messed me up and I think might be exasperating my nagging health problems). The Thursday night class won’t mess me up much either, because it’s the last class of the week for me. In other words, I don’t have to get up on Fridays. Thursdays will be a long day, though. I have an 8:30 AM class at SCC, then I have to drive to IVC teach a 10:00 o’clocker, and then I have to head back to SCC and hang out until my 8:00 PM class starts. The rest of the week, though, will be a piece of cake. Considering I could have been very underemployed this semester, things have worked out pretty well.
Since I’m not going to be working at all this summer (whether I end up going to Greece or not) I plan on using the time to start laying the ground work for my transition to the full-time literary life. This means nailing down the website and really putting time into BSP. I’ll also be looking for a new author to bring in, someone who will help articulate the new direction I see the press heading in. What I’d like to do is have it turn with the way my writing is going, which is much more socially oriented. I really want to get away from the whole post-Bukowski thing, which I feel is completely played out. I’d like to see it move into a more green-political direction. By this I mean I’d like to put out work by the current equivalent of, say, Gary Snyder or Edward Abbey, along with some more overtly political work, Chomskyesque essayist and the like. I’d also like to bring in some socially relevant sci-fi and maybe even see if we can resurrect a few older titles that have gone out of print that should be available. I’d like to think at some point publishing books falling under all the categories will be an option—if chosen well all of these options link up in important ways.
Feeling pretty pent up still, in regards to my personal life. I feel ready to spread out, be more. I know I’m repeating myself, but I really need to get back to writing. I want to hit that hard this summer and have at least a nearly complete draft of Sunshine Seas (I have several stories that have coalesced in my head and should flow out of me pretty easily once I finally get the time to deal with them). I’m starting to envision a big non-fiction project as well, incorporating ideas I’ve had for a number of essays for quite a while, perhaps interspersed with pieces I originally saw going into a Greece book, which has no coalesced in me at all as a stand-alone project. I’m not sure exactly how to describe this project. A kind of semi-urban Southern California-based Practice of the Wild might be the best description. Big historical explorations set in a bioregionalist framework. A ethno-eco exploration spreading out from a L.A. Basin starting point. Big questions posed. Hopefully some big answers found. (Man, does this sound arrogant? I Hope not; I just have some sizeable ideas floating around in my head at the moment that I think will ulitmately sort themselves into something of some importance.)
Still the same personal weirdness and frustrations with my inner life. I’m continuing with Jung’s biography. Still having weird dreams as well (I had a really odd one the other night, but I can only recall flashes of it, not enough to really examine it). I’m beginning to understand a fundamental issue I’m dealing with at the moment and its importance: I’m essentially a materialist in search of meaning that in some sense is beyond that realm. Am I speaking of something that could be called religious? In some sense, I suppose. What I’m really looking for is connections, that to which material is can be reduced—a universal power. I sense these connections all the time, but just barely; I feel alienated from myself and ironically the material aspects of existence on which my vision of existence is based. There is some knowledge I do not have, which has left me in a place where I lack perspective in certain very important ways. There is something that is both within me and outside of me that I don’t understand. I am disconnected, in my understanding … from something …
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