let's ski in july!

sorta. i mean it's late may and the average temp. hovers in the high 80s, low 90s f. and yet this morning had a barrelful of rain dump on us. same for yesterday. it's a bit strange. not that i'm complaining but i see adverts for the upcoming holiday weekend, which is the unofficial kick-off for the summer season, and i'm wearing sweaters and my rain gear to work. the ski lodges up in tahoe have enough snow to remain open still but i do think they pretty much closed down for the season. not that i ski because i don't. but it seems according to popular lore that if every resident of southern california surfs, then every person in northern california heads to the hills each winter to tackle the slopes.

oh what the fuck. i don't mind not needing to crank the air conditioner and the plants and trees in the garden are loving the cool, inclement weather.

i've been diving in to the collected poems by the late, nyc poet jim brodey, heart of the breath [hard press, 1996]. he was by all accounts prolific as hell and his style tripped in registers that were loaded with cuss words and slang along with a measure of wearing his learning lightly. i've decided to use a line of brodey as an epigraph for my BLAST series once i get those texts into some manageable shape. dig this.

Toke up, stranger, this'll get cornier.

how's that for a killer.

oh, if you're gonna do some clicking around the net then do read allen bramhall's visit to nyc to see the dalai lama at radio city music hall by clicking here. allen had me cracking up so hard this morning i'm afraid that i thought i'd broken a rib.

do click here too to read one of the best book reviews i've read in quite some time by jeff harrison. harrison snipped lines of poems from the book under review, prau [meritage press, 2007], by jean vengua and created a new text of praise. that's how i read it, an any rate.

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