I had a writing group meeting tonight. I really love the people in my group. We all met through a creative writing class at UC Berkeley Extension in Spring 2000. We formed a writing group after that, and although we've evolved into more of a social group, I love my group anyway. I don't have any close friends who are writing, or who even think about writing, so being in a writing group is such a god send for me. We're all all different stages of writing. Some of us pursue it seriously and submit. Others are afraid of show their work, but have the urge to write anyway, and there are people like me in the middle.

Our group is small, 5 people now, but everyone in it is so fun and so cool. I can't help but think what would have happened to my writing aspiraitions, if I'd found a writing group when I first started out. Writing is a lonely occupation; it' s not the kind of thing you do in groups. As a writer, I appreciate being in a group with other people who want to write, even if that desire never manifests itself beyond a thought. I wish I had been in a writing group, when the desire to write was tiny, tiny seed. I had to nurture that seed, against the advice of all of my friends, all of my coworkers, and mostly against my better self. But nurture it I did, and now I think my writing is starting to bloom. How much eaiser would my writing ;ife had been, if I was surrounded by people who had the fantasies, wishes and hope.

Going to the writing road alone is difficult enough. Having companions along the way, who are in different stages of the journey, makes me feel not so alone, not so freaky in this desire to create art through words. I take great comfort in knowing there are people just like me, struggling to write, struggling to find time to write, frustrated that the life you love gets in the way of that thing you call your art. Once a month, if we're lucky, every three weeks, I get to feel for a few hours that I'm not alone in my desire to write, I'm not alone in thinking that life gets in the way of writing because I have four other people confirming my truth. Okay, sure we sometimes talk and drink more than write and critique each other's work, but I don't care. For a few hours once a month, I get to feel that I'm not the only one out there struggling to write.

Opera in the Park - Hearing Nessun Dorma

I picked up a free ticket to hear Tom Stoppard speak later this month, because I'm an American Conservatory Theatre subscriber and they were offering free tickets to hear him. Stoppard is one of my favorite playwrights, although most people probably know him for his work on the movie Shakespeare in Love.

I also purchased a ticket for Turandot for a Sunday matinee. I really wanted to see this opera, but I was hesitant because I've had so many expenses lately. But the SF Chron gave it a good review, so I decided to buy a very cheap ticket. It's not the cheapest ticket you can buy, but it's the cheapest ticket I've ever bought for an opera performance. I usually like to spend a little more for a ticket, but every dollar seems to matter to me lately. Oh well. At least I'm going.

I ended up going to Opera in the Park, after telling friends I couldn't go. I had cleared my weekend, thinking my writing group would have an emergency, but by Friday nothing was happening. The picnic was cursed from the get go anyway. A friend who susually attend the picnic is in Spain for a month, and I'm on this new eating plan. My weight loss has been easy so far, and I'm committed to keeping the momentum of it going. Drinking mimosas and eating tasty picnic food all day loing is not my idea of fun right now. I know, I need to have my head examined for that thought, but Opera in the Park happens every year. I want this diet to be the last diet I'm ever on. I want my weight issue handled and handled for good. Not that there's probably ever going to be a time in my life where I can eat like a pig for days on end, but at least I won't have to worry about losing this much weight ever again.

After church I walked to the park from my apartment, and sat on a hill next to the tennis courts. The sound from that location was great, and I didn't even need to go to the actual meadow where I would have to deal with people with picnics on blankets. Other people had the same idea, because there were quite a few people on the hill. I watched people playing tennis on the courts, and a group of guys player roller hockey. I think I need to write a scene for a movie, short story or novel, where the characters are playing tennis to live opera music. The scene looked so surreal to me. I sat on my towel, read "A Room with a View", lay down at one point, all in the glorious sunshine of a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Golden Gate park.

I was hoping that they would sing something from Turandot, and they sang my favorite song from that opera "Nessun Dorma", and hearing that song definitely made my day.

The San Francisco Chrnonicle's website no longer has the link to 9/11 stories. If it's there, I can't find it. On the front page of the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle, it said they will publish a 12-page section on Wednesday 9/11/2002 called 9/11 Voices. Perhaps they are no longer taking submissions because they are doing a print version. I'm wondering if they were bombarded with entries.

Now I'm glad my piece got in and will now end up being printed in Wednesday's paper. My meditation teacher was so right. He said when you get a thought that feels like a divine inspiration in your head, you should immediately try to act on it. Divine inspiriation, he used to say, is a gift from god and if you don't act on it, you lose it.

When I first saw the 9/11 stories section on Wednesday, I immediately thought about entering mine. After all, I'd already written up a part of my 9/11 experience on my blog in August. My original blog version was longer than 500 words, so I spent an hour editing it down. Afterwards, I sent it. I think if I had hesitated now, I wouldn't have gotten published on the SF Chron's website, or be published in the Wednesday paper. Somebody up there must be looking out for me, because I'm now going to be part of my paper's, my city's anniversary 9/11 newspaper memorial. This is so cool. I live in a city with a population of about 1 million people, about there's about 9 million people in 9 county SF Bay area Region. My 9/11 experience is going to be part of the area's permanent record of what we did for the anniversary of 9/11. The San Francisco Chroicle also has about 1.3 million readers. It's website SFGate is rated # 6 on the top 10 newspapers sites, says the some org called Media Matrix. And SFGate was 332,000 unique readers everyday. As a writer, when am I ever going to get this kind of distribution.

Listening to Destiny by Zero 7. I love this song, although it's about a girl singing about breaking up with her boyfriend. The singer sings that "we are each other's destiny", and the music is so dreamy and haunting.

Movie review time.

Blue Crush I love surf movies. I grew up in Hawaii, and watched surf movies constantly. The surfing shots are great! The story line is so so. It's supposed to be a girl power movie, but it gets spoiled by some contrived love story in the middle. I thought the story fell apart after the main girl and the friend had the fight after the jet ski thing, and she runs into the arms of the quarterback. Not sure if it was the actress' fault because she couldn't convey enough emotions or the writing or the director's fault. The pro football quarterback love story for me, kind of took away from the girl's story. Too much of them flirting and not enough of her fighting to overcome her fear.

What worked was how they showed her having flashbacks of her accident every time she surfed. Also, depiction of surfing life and guys skateboarding was very authentic. Strange how it's all still like I remembered it. Things in Hawaii never seem to change. The music was great and also authentic with the reggae and rap/hip hop. Not enough Hawaiian music though which is off, because surf culture is into all things Hawaiian including the music. Also authentic were how some of the locals feel about tourists in Hawaii.

There is a lot of racial tension between locals in Hawaii and the tourists, especially the white tourists. I remember growing up and hearing about some murder spree in Honolulu in the late 70's called "Kill Haole Day". Haole is hawaiian for white person. My cousin is the assistant DA on the island of Kauai, and she was filling me on the few tourist murders that never get reported in the press. The press don't want to scare away the tourists, but yes tensions between white tourists and the locals is there, although very few incidents lead to actual murder. The condom scene was hilarious, because to most girls, condoms are so darn spooky and gross!!!

Some off things. The girls came across as really stupid! How can you have a girl power movie and have stupid chicks! No one had authentic Island accents except the boss lady at the hotel, and the surfer boys. Supposedly one of the girls was a local, but she hardly spoke so I couldn't figure out whether her accent was good or not. The main actress looked way too nice. The real surfer girl at the end is how surfer girls really look - sunburned and old and full of scars from falling on reefs. No real surf girls wear skimpy bikinis to surf. Those things would come off when they're tumbling in a wave. Getting wiped out in a wave was very authentic, haven't done it lots of times myself.

NY Times review touched on this a little, but surfing for girls in Hawaii is like skateboarding was for the kids in Dogtown and Zboys. Only girls from the bottom rungs of the economic scale surf in Hawaii. It's a class thing. Film showed it, but didn't really go into detail. I mean, you could kind of tell that the girls and the surfer boys were all from broken down, poor homes. Surfing and getting famous for it for those kids is a way out of their economic hell hole, like sports is for minority/poor kids.

Because the film didn't really go into it, surfing for girls comes across as this glamorous type thing to girls not from Hawaii. But sadly when I was there and I think till today in Hawaii, like my mother used to say, "girls from good families don't surf." For boys though, it's a different story. In other words, the film glamorized the world of women's surfing for anyone outside of Hawaii. Also, not enough drugs. Surfing and skateboarding is a drug culture, except for those christain surfer types. I think there should have been more people smoking marijuana, drinking beer, etc, but maybe that's just me.

Other than that though, great photography of the banzai pipeline on the north shore of Oahu and surfing, and for me the movie was worth seeing just for that.

13 Conversations about One Thing I liked how all the characters lives intersected and interweaved, but thought the movie in the end seemed shallow somehow and rather depressing. I don't see the movie playing well across the country, and didn't stay long in the top movie houses here. There was such a big missing in the film, and for me it was faith. None of the people in the movie had faith, or seemed to have faith in anything but themselves. I found the characters hard to relate to because of that. I don't know how people go through life without sme kind of faith. How do they get through life when bad things happen to them, or when good things happen to them? I can't imagine.

I think what the film tried to do, as one reviewer put it, was to show in a literary way the movements of a person's soul. But how do you show that without showing what they believe in? I thnk that the movie tried to show how life is random and that sometimes you don't have control over it, but in the end the conclusions the film reaches left me feeling deflated, and thinking interesting movie, but not very enlightening for me on what is to be human and to live in a world that could change at any moment.

I didn't see alot of humor in the movie, which is odd, since I think humor is necessary for survival. It made me wonder that if the characters in 13 conversations just laughed more and didn't take life so seriously, maybe they wouldn't be so damned depressed about life. Perhaps this movie is a lesson on what happens to people who totally bought into the enlightenment's premise that we live in a rational world of science and reason, where there is no god. See what kind of life you'll likely to be leading if you give up god and your faith.

Minority Report Philip K. Dick is a genius. I need to read his stories. That man's mind goes further than mine will ever go in my lifetime. Compared to 13 Conversations, Minority Report was the better movie for enlightening an audience of what it's like to be human and to live in the world that we live in. First, the world the film makers created for 2056 was just amazing. The only bothersome thing was the ad placement. As if Gap is going to be around in 2056, and Lexus and Aquafina for that matter. Yeah right! Gap has the butt ugliest clothes, and their stock prices shows how far they've fallen in fashion favour. Second, the plot was great and really kept you guessing. I hate plots that I can figure out right away. Tom Cruise gave a great performance, probably his best since playing Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July.

Philip Dick's story shows such a deep understanding of the human need to love, for revenge, for power, and for good. And he shows it through an action filled story. The ending was fulfilling, and left me marvelling at Dick's storytelling ability. You see how low people will sink to further their cause, and what's worse, as an audience you totally understand how they could have done it. Dick plumbs the depths of human depravity and how much a person will do to achieve what he/she thinks is right. What is that saying, more crimes are committed in the cause of righteousness and good.

I also loved the precogs too. I'm supposed to have some precognitive ability, and it's sometimes such a burden. I pick up impressions of people, and it shows up like someone dropping information in my head. Most of the time I freak out, and I don't pay attention to them, but I do remember them. But it's not long before I find out that my impressions are true. I don't pick up future events instantly like pecogs, but just whiffs of what people are like and a general feeling about their future. My impressions are never wrong either. I only pick impressions up if I think about doing it or if they're so strong that I can't ignore them.

I get depressed sometimes, especially if pick up a general feeling about somebody's future. I hate when I do that. No one should have the right to know anyone's future, and I believe that the future is always changable anyway, so what I'm picking up is just a point in time impression. In a month, that person's future could change depending on what choices they make.

I wish I had Philip K. Dick's deep thinking mind. It would make the writing thing much easier for me. Dick's story blew me away. There are very few stories that blow me away like this. In the last few years, the only the movies that blew me away were: Signs, Bulworth, The Matrix, Gattaca, What Dreams May Come, and The Truman Show. At least, that's all the movies I can think of right now.