over the weekend i was doing a lot of reading and rereading. well, no more than usual i guess, however i was taking books out and reading a few pages here and there of one of my favorite travel writers pico iyer. one of iyer's major themes is 'the global soul', how the world is increasingly a hybridization of its languages, cultures, peoples etc. etc. you get the drift. then i read the first 20 pages of sawako nakayasu's long poem so we have been given time or (verse press 2004). then i considered how my name, lopez, is common as dirt in california yet considered still a minority in the united states. tho i don't feel minor at all. so then what is regionalism today? many of my closest poet friends live on opposite sides of earth. both iyer, an indian by heritage, and nakayasu, was, according to her bio, born in japan but living in the u.s. since the age of six, write in english. each writes in an english different from the other. that that englishes is a participation of the the world becoming smaller, and stranger. for example of the world getting smaller, more familiar, and certainly more brand-name oriented i recall a couple of years ago when anna and i spent a week in london, and while seeking a cup of coffee we stepped inside a starbucks cafe without realizing the shop was a starbucks until we saw the familiar green logo. then it hit us starbucks is not only on every corner back home but everywhere in the world, just like mcdonald's and that ubiquity seemed to happen suddenly. every spot on earth must have both a mcdonald's and a starbucks. what is next? and but so are we international poets with regional flavors? or regional poets with a taste of the international. are we in danger of turning everything into one corporate franchise? i don't live in airports. i live in california where there are many languages spoken. why travel when one can take an international culinary adventure right in the neighborhood, complete with language, music and flavors. yet the world is still huge, in my humble estimation, i can get on a plane and be anywhere in 24 hrs. how then, does that change how we write and read.