Dear Friends, Present and Former:

I realize that the only time these ``Christmas letters'' actually work out well is when I'm actually writing to some specific person, and then realize that what I'm saying ought to be sent to a lot of my other friends as well. Somehow the things that rattle around in my brain at various times never seem to be there when I need them. So here's a portion of a letter written to one of you.

You might try listening that poetry tape I gave you [I wrote her]. This will give you the distinction of being the only person in the world who has listened to it. I know that the crappy sound quality makes it really a chore to listen to (my friend Brenda explained that I should have covered the mike with foam), but it would be a way of your getting to know some poetry that I think is really worthwhile. Aside from a lot of Tom Waits: a Native American woman poet named Joy Harjo who I think is very good and who also plays saxophone and has a band, and a quirky little Englishwoman (now dead) named Stevie Smith, and, oh I can't remember, Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, several more.

One of the big things that's been happening to me recently has to do with Ezra Pound. There's a guy in the English Department who is teaching a biography seminar this semester (Fall Semester, 1999) on Walt Whitman and Pound. So I thought maybe it was time for me to come out of the closet about having known Pound, so I sent him some email. Big mistake! We turn out to have a major personality clash. He is the first person in the English Department I've met so far who is the sort of total academic I despise. And he has his own agenda for studying Pound, which is in complete contradiction to my own memories of the real person. Which in turn only makes him mad. So....

But that's really pretty much beside the point. The point being that this interchange, plus some email from somebody who was once involved with Sheri Martinelli (never mind, just click the link) all made me think a lot about that part of my life. I realize that I don't really have any feelings at all now about Pound as I knew him, neither positive nor negative. But I do have strong positive feelings about that whole crowd of people who used to sit out on the lawn at St. Elizabeths. Pound's ``disciples'' as we used to call each other ironically.

Also, I finally started reading the journal Paideuma that's devoted to Pound's life (and works), and came across some names that I'd long since forgotten about. Reno Odlin and Hollis Frampton, among others. The names won't mean anything to you, although Frampton (now dead) did become a somewhat well known experimental film maker. I only met them once, or maybe I met Reno Odlin twice. But I still have a memory of the experience of meeting these two weird guys with weird names in Sheri's apartment. Odlin asked me to cash a check for him for $10. There were no cash machines then, of course, and $10 was a lot more money then than it is now. (Consider that candy bars were a nickel.) He assured me that because of his family connections, no bank would dare reject a check from him, but I had grave doubts about whether I'd ever see the money again. He didn't look like the sort of person one should trust with money. (The check did clear, though.)

So thinking about those times made me start wondering how it ever was that I stopped knowing interesting artists and writers and started having the life I have now. And wondering how it can be that I am now able to find this life I now have acceptable. Not satisfactory, certainly. But acceptable enough so that I don't outright reject it.

Never having figured out any better alternatives.

There are so few times in my life that I can look back on and think that I was really having a life that was worthwhile.

Taking drama courses and being involved with the campus theatre at the University of Arizona (but always backstage, never acting) was one of those good spots. And about ten days spent in Mexico City with my ex-wife before I married her (that was during the U. Arizona period as well), that was a brief good moment. Then evenings on weekends in North Beach during 1962-65 (leaving just before the Hippies arrived), although I didn't know anybody and was always lonely. (My wife knew some people, but mostly I never got to meet them.)

The two alternative schools/communes I was at for six months. Summerlane and Green Valley. That was the sort of experience I should have stayed committed to, instead of going to graduate school. But from a practical/financial point of view, it seemed competely desperate.

Graduate school in La Jolla. (Let's not even mention the University of Maryland, Yuck!) Yes, both the social life and the academics seemed exciting. And there were lots of exciting things that happened on campus at UCSD. Harry Partch came and gave a concert. (That probably doesn't mean anything to you, but it should.) Alan Kaprow came and gave a lecture on happenings and staged a happening on the beach. I got to attend a dinner with David Riesman (who was a major disappointment, however; very conservative in his views, by then).

God, how did I wind up at a temple to mediocrity like the University of Hawaii?

Humboldt State was not a high spot, but not a total loss. (Actually, I count the teaching I did at Humboldt State as among the worthwhile things in my life. Certainly it was the most worthwhile teaching I ever did.) But let's just fast forward over New Mexico State and the University of Kansas. There were moments that were good to remember, but there was nothing that I can now look back on and say, ``That was really worthwhile.'' Or, more to the point, moments that I can look back on and say, ``I was really doing something worthwhile then.''

Well, mathematics was actually important to me then. Finally writing a dissertation and getting my Ph.D., becoming a somewhat well known young (although not so young!) mathematician. It seemed worthwhile at the time. Now, I wonder how I could have been so deluded.

Which brings us to Hawaii. Well, that twenty-plus years is not totally dismal. About 90% dismal, but there were good periods.

Going through the NLP training on my first sabbatical, in Berkeley. That was worthwhile in a lot of different ways. For a short time then, I was moving in a direction that really made sense. And then the following year, being a volunteer at the Suicide & Crisis Center here in Honolulu. That was certainly one of the few times in my life I was involved in something worthwhile.

And a few years previously, going to Clarion (the summer science fiction workshop at Michigan State), although I never did become a science fiction writer.

And I should mention the various fiction workshops I've been involved with in the past ten years, and the handful of stories I've written.

My three years as a suicide prevention volunteer. And taking courses at the Institute for Advanced Study for Human Sexuality and getting involved with Janus and San Francisco Sex Information and the rest of the alternative sexuality community in San Francisco. And the scenes I did with Petra. Those will always be a high spot, despite the way things turned out later.

Oh, and creating the NLP archive on my web page. That turned out to be much more worthwhile than I ever expected it to be.

Hm... I guess I'm just summarizing my web page. This is really not quite where I was planning to go when I started this letter.

I guess I'm going to have to send this part of the letter out to my mailing list as one of my ``Christmas letters,'' although I know it will sound like a real downer to most of the people who get it.

The point is not so much how much of a disappointment so much of my life seems to me now, but the question of why I'm willing to continue to live it this way, realizing that fact.

It occurred to me recently that I actually could manage to retire at the end of this year and rent out my apartment until I can afford to sell it. (Everyone is now saying that the economy is recovering in Hawaii, so surely the real estate market will begin to recover too.) On the face of it, that looks horrendously expensive, but in the long run it would not be as disastrous as it looks. It would still not be the sensible thing to do, though.

But I can't afford to go live in San Francisco. That's out of the question now. So: San Diego? Seattle? Or should I just stay here. After all, everybody except me thinks that this is a wonderful place to live if you can afford it, which I can.

So... I guess it's a question of to what extent I can make my life worthwhile for myself. By doing some serious writing, presumably. Or something.

Love & kisses,
--Lee