Into the great gramophone of puzzling existence (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

Book 4 - San Francisco Poems (Lawrence Ferlinghetti) 

The final book bought on my recent overseas jolly comes from City Lights Bookstore.

Because of its concentration on San Francisco and his life there, it's pretty much a perfect collection of his poetry. 

As he himself says in one of his poems, Write an endless poem about your life on earth or elsewhere.

Thanks to an autumnal storm, we had a power cut last night and it brought home to us again how reliant we are on the flow of electricity. 

It meant no water (pump needs power), no light, no dinner (half way through cooking some chicken), no more setting up of my ART room (hard to read record labels in the dark), no phones (cell phones ran out of juice, land line plugs in), no showers, no television, no music...no Internet!!

Yikes - instead we reverted to candle power, a cold cereal meal, and early bedtime.

Thankfully, we're back on the grid this morning. Phew! Just in time for me to write and post this message.

Love and peace - Wozza

Fortune has its cookies to give out (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

Book 1 - Pictures of the Gone World (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

Book 2 - The Beatles in 100 Objects (Brian Southall)

My goal of 50 books in 52 weeks kicked off in earnest last week with the Ferlinghetti collection, and this week I'm into the Southall book on the fabs (up to page 124 at this point).

Both were recent purchases from our Christmas holiday trip to San Francisco and London.

I couldn't let a visit to City Lights Books go by without some Ferlinghetti. It's almost against the law! I read Coney Island for the Mind back in Auckland University days and the beat poets put their crazy hooks in me.

This one took my eye because it was his first collection, published in 1955.

I've had to have a few goes at it - the intensity of the word pictures is erm...intense. Rewarding in unexpected ways. 

The fabs book was bought from a bookstore on Upper Street in the Highbury/Islington area, close to where we were staying at Pat and Randy's place in Newington Green.

It's written by Brian Southall - I have another of his Beatle related books (which looks at Abbey Road), and this one is also a wee gem.

This time he uses 100 items like posters, suits, records, guitars, cars and other groovy objects to tell the story of the greatest band of all time (it's official!).

Every page has a photo of the object in question and a mini essay about it. This one, on the left, for instance, features a run down of the Beatles' bug logo used on a French LP.

Apparently it was first roughed out as a design by Macca, who passed it to Liverpool sign writer and artist Tex O'Hara (whose brother was a member...shock horror probe... of The Fourmost) who developed the idea further.

I know!! Fascinating stuff, right?

It's a quality, largish format book with brilliant colour reproductions, great stories and well, gush gush gush. It's fab and gear and I just love it! 

Love and peace - Wozza

The love you take is equal to the love you make (The Beatles)

Epilogue (You may say I'm a dreamer - the end)

Move on fast! Wozza shifts gear - into the future!

Age 59, looking out my window as the sun sets on Rochdene and the autobiography.

It's been a long strange trip so far. We've been through some things together over eleven chapters, with trunks of memories to come.

Although Keith Richards is right - you can't celebrate the future (things which haven't happened yet) but you can celebrate the idea of a future (the potential to come).

Hurrah!! Here's to the future!

It's the start of the school year and for my students that means setting some goals - I recommend two: a learning goal and a personal goal.

I wrote mine out while some of my students were writing theirs. My personal goal is to get back to writing blog posts well in advance of the publishing date. That way I'll build up a bank of posts and be able to edit more thoroughly than I have been able to so far this year. By so doing, my writing will improve.

My learning goal is an ambitious one: to read fifty books by February 2018! So far lately, my reading has centred on music magazines. I want to stretch my reading beyond that. At roughly one book a week, this goal will really challenge me, given all of the things I pack into a week.

As well as my students keeping me honest, this blog will trace my progress through those fifty books!

First up - a book of Ferlinghetti's poetry I picked up from the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.

Tally ho!!

Love and peace - Wozza

The light of San Francisco, is a sea light, an island light (lawrence Ferlinghetti)

All my roads seem to be leading to San Francisco at the moment. The America's Cup has contributed to that but for me there are other pointers aside from the fact that Samantha and Jesse and the SF whanau live there.

I watched The San Francisco 49ers play an NFL game last week on ESPN (unfortunately they lost to the Seattle Seahawks so at least Clay will be happy).

I have been grooving to SF band Beyond O Matic and their track Wish during the week.

Reading my 1979 poetry journal I was struck by how many of my favourite poets have a strong connection to SF (Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Snyder, Creeley).

We had a House sports day at school during the week. I'm in Wallingford House which has green as its colour. As fate would have it - I have only one green T shirt; it was bought on the corner of Haight St and Ashbury St in SF in April. It has pretty flowers and the replica street sign saying Haight Ashbury; it's cool!

And last night I watched Bullitt again. Steve McQueen is sooo cool! The actual movie plotline is a little too convoluted for today's tastes but the coolness factor is set at 10. From Lalo Schifrin's jazzy soundtrack to McQueen's character (Frank Bullitt - what a cool name) to THAT car chase - all is coolness personified.

The other real star of the movie is the city itself. Here's to you - the city by the bay! 



Love and peace and island light - Wozza