Alastor's Reflection

…all the City Lights like stars…

Ξ January 19th, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Creativity, UNBOUND, BOUND, and my other creations |

The current 90th Anniversary issue of Writer’s Digest contains, among many other invaluable-to-writers articles, an excellent interview with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who is essentially the godfather of the San Francisco Beat poets, and owner and co-founder of the iconic City Lights Bookstore in North Beach. This bookstore was an early hangout for me beginning in 1968 for several years until real life (a.k.a. “work”) dragged me away, as it is wont to do. This man was such an essential early influence upon me and my writing ever since those wonderful long-ago days, and kept me in good company through his and other poets’ respective works which I found for sale  in this magical, wonderful store. Lawrence and his bookstore were so important a symbol to me of the ideals of those incandescent moments of the ’60′s that City Lights is featured in several scenes in my own novel, Unbound.  I hope that the Reader will consider it a well-deserved tip o’ the hat

I bought A Coney Island of the Mind there, along with other slim and slender books of his poetry, including Starting From San Francisco. While searching for poetic epigraphs for the novel, I found one poem in particular that summed up the part’s essence for which it was intended. Since I’m unsure whether I’ll be able to afford the rights to include it upon Unbound‘s fervently-hoped-and-prayed-for publication, I’ll include it here:

But still-
birds flute up here
Crow-caw cracks
the universe
Ah there’s a slit
to slither through
into eternity
Look look
there’s love
yes love
Ah love
Cannot make it
Pied Piper’s cave
clangs shut

(Excerpt from “Flying Out of It” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
From Starting From San Francisco [1961])

 (EDIT:)… okay, now I’m really pissed. I just lost an HOUR’S worth of typing the continuance for this entry   For SOME reason, WordPress stopped auto-saving. I was typing up a storm (which for me is a minor miracle) and had about ten paragraphs with Important Points to Make which I was later going to expand upon. IMPORTANT POINTS!!! Then, for SOME reason, in the midst of typing, I get this error about “Do you want to navigate away from this page?” Uh… NO. Why, did I act like I *wanted* to? GRR!

So, I thought “ya know… I’d better save this just in case.”  So, I clicked “Save Draft.” Then, FOR SOME REASON, it goes to the Log In page! WTF?????????????????????? So, I logged in (again) and got taken to the Drafts Page where lo and behold, my Draft was lying in wait… at its earliest auto-saved point! It didn’t even save my Draft as I told it to! Everything was gone below the above Ferlinghetti poem. And there was a LOT (see previous Posts; all of them). I’ve tried to resuscitate my enthusiasm to continue, but it went south along with all of my Important Points to Make. Shit.

So, I’ll continue this thoughtful post on publishing, the creative arts, the Beat Scene and Mr. Ferlinghetti at the next opportunity. Right now I need a drink. Or something.

Lesson learned: Always save to a .txt file!