The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

It's late to be reading it. I could have been more inspired reading it back when I was 18 and reading Kerouac as well and trying a lot of that shit for the first time. But still. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. What it makes me think about now isn't so much 'Man, how do I open those doors for myself and prop them open for a while?' but more just about sub-culture. The newest thing on the edge. How did the Beats turn into the Heads, and what was before the Beats? Who is on the edge of the edge right now, and pushing further? Even at the turn of the century, there must have been that group of people taking it where it hadn't been yet, doing something different. But if the current sub-culture is technology-based, if it's about metal implants and genetic modification, I'm not so interested. Maybe that makes me the same in a 2007-type way as the suburban work-a-daddies horrified by the Day-Glo bus driving through their neighbourhood. I don't know. The kind of edge I want to push towards involves free living, directed by intuition. Going where it goes. Where is the most current sub-culture on the literary and intellectual edge, and going further? That's what I'd like to know. Maybe if I take off somewhere warm for a while, with my backpack and sketchpad and a novel-in-progress, find a good surf beach to kick back on and throw around a lot of ideas with whoever's there, maybe that's my Day-Glo bus. I'm hoping. Discipline leads to prolificacy. Prolificacy leads to innovation, and that, ultimately, is what I'm going for. Innovative expression of the things everyone already knows but hasn't put into words or pictures yet.

Actually . . . It's Nicaragua

I've decided to go to Nicaragua instead of Spain, at least to start. Originally I thought I would move to Spain and live there, indefinitely, so going in January was okay because I figured that way I'd be all set up with an apartment and a job by the time the nice weather came around. Spend the shitty time of year getting set up. But. Now I'm thinking I'm going to be doing more of a travelling type trip instead of actually moving somewhere. I'm going to apply to the UBC Creative Writing MFA program again next November. I see myself back on the west coast not too long from now. This is a time to just travel and hang out before moving back to B.C. and getting serious about writing, in Vancouver.

The idea of moving to a big, expensive European city at the coldest time of year, and having to start looking for work and an apartment is not exactly appealing. I want to go somewhere warm. I want to travel. Nicaragua it is.

Nicaragua. I'll go there with almost nothing. I'm not bringing my laptop or a strict rewriting schedule. I'll go where it takes me. I'll write, for sure, poetry, creative non-fiction, short stories if they come up. And I can draw as well. This will be a time of major raw material. I can refine it later. That's what I'm bringing -- pens and paper, sketchbooks, pencil crayons, that kind of thing. It'll be hot. There'll be volcanoes and steamy, wet rainforest, and lagoons and waterfalls and flowers and whitewashed buildings. Beaches and reggae and surfing. Little villages. And the spirit of a people, that I don't know yet but will.

This is a great choice. It feels right. If I want to go on to Barcelona after that, I can. I have a potential guiding opportunity in Europe for Butterfield and Robinson that can apparently earn me $3000 or more per six-day trip, and the trips are scattered, here and there. That would definitely get me by. It's falling into place.