Sorry, got behind a couple of days. Actually forgot to write on Friday! Forgot! Forgot to write the column too! Then encountered something like an electrical storm in the head, scrambling the writing whatever it is that writes, bringing me low, laying me out, reminding me how much adolescent time spent just fucking off at 7-Eleven, wandering aimlessly, unable to concentrate. Focus! They said focus! You're going to want to get into college so you've got to focus! And me saying nah, i'm having a strange dream and you're not in it but that's where my 16-year-old "head" is "at," "man." 'Cause we talked like that back then, really we did.
So I've got to really admire Stephen Elliot for doing this daily thing every day, 'cause after only 8 days I can see how you've really got to be at the top of your game to write something every day (do you get his rumpus letter? You'd probably like it) ... and so OK I do write the column every day, and that's kinda hard, but ... oh, here's the difference: I'm paid a salary to write the column! So this is much stranger and riskier because why am I doing this? Because something tells me this is the thing to do.
Sometimes if you're a creative type you must feel like one of these characters in the Bible who do things just because God told them to. Or like whatever voice it is in your head says, OK, now you must go forth and write a daily e-mail newsletter. Trust me, the voice says. It's the thing to do. And I really think it is. And Mr. Elliot was saying in his e-mail newsletter how he feels about blogs, that he doesn't get a good feeling from writing them, and I'm the same way, and there's something about sending you something that I like. I'm sending you something.
If I'm writing on a blog, I feel like I'm just leaving my shit out there in the desert on a rock. Whereas in this thing, I'm actually sending you something. It's a transaction and it feels right.
So OK on Saturday I tried to catch up by writing about all the jellyfish on the beach and got slowed down by my attempts to add images. It's unbelievable how clumsy I can be with really basic stuff. But I got delayed by the battery ran out on the camera and I was charging it and ... this stuff annoys me. OK, so what's next is what I wrote Saturday.
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 the power of ocean beach.
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Skipped a day so am writing to you on Saturday. Got ahead a couple of days on the column so did the writing practice at Cafe la Boheme and then played a 1971 Martin D-28 at Real Guitars. But what I want to say is about the jellyfish on Ocean Beach.
There are many things to say but this is what moves me this morning and what moves me has proven to be a reliable, even divine, indicator of direction. What moves us is what needs to be written. We learn to trust it. We learn to trust that yesterday morning's morning star, so incredibly bright rising just above the sun -- was it Venus or was it the star Spica? (Or possibly Arcturus? Or could they be so close they shone as one?) Whatever, I lay in bed watching it rise, so bright I thought: jetliner? But it slowly rose into the fork of the tree and as I watched the star rise I felt the enormous energy of the earth turning. What a dynamo of turning? What a magnificent gear, slowly turning at its axis? And what grease keeps it from squeaking, this great turning wheel?
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jellyfish! jellyfish! jellyfish!
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So then instead of writing my dumb thing about the jellyfish let me turn you on to the new Ocean Beach Bulletin, which august journalistic enterprise was all over the jellyfish thing.
There were millions!
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