just got back from santa cruz where i am sun-dried, bleached and beached. the mantra of santa cruz is, according to the bumper stickers on all the local rusting vw buses and volvos, is keep santa cruz weird. and it is, a bit, like it is still 1969 but with skateboarders and loads of surfers.

we had a great time. wi-fi router in our beachfront house wasn't working so my laptop stayed idle. read only a bit, cuz we spent most our time looking at the window, and going from there to here.

came home to a lovely gift from mark young: his most recent book episodes. read only bits and pieces cuz we've been home only a couple of hrs, but the range and vitality of the poems is astonishing. and gets me wanting to bust out and write, not as well as mark, but that such work makes me want to write. gracias, poeta.

also, check out mark's latest publishing venture otoliths where i have a couple of poems. i'm deeply grateful to be in the company of a solid group of outstanding poets, visual and textual. esp. check out jean vengua's chap.

the following are various pics from our trip. too tired to explain except that the the mystery spot really is weird. anna and i got seasick in that slanted house. almost had to hold our heads to our knees. and the last photo is the view from the living room. we saw whales sounding just a 100 yards offshore. we spent most of our time looking out the window to find more whales. when we found them we became as excited as our bambinos at the beach.