First

I guess I got tired of writing a journal. I would write and write and write to such a degree that I now have volumes of journals stacked on the shelf in my closet. I would carefully balance the frequency of entries with the depth of self exploration that would ultimately peel away the leaves of my exterior and reveal the "nugget of pure truth" that lies within me; that lies within all of us, really. I stopped journaling. It was a combination of factors, really: I had been in therapy for several years and the Freudian interpretation of my memories became sufficient enough balm to assuage my psychic ills, and then there was school. I was writing hundreds of pages each semester and journaling got pushed aside.

So why a blog? A couple of reasons really. I have been feeling the itch lately to begin writing again. I'm done with school, finished my thesis and am suddenly faced with an empty hole (is there any other kind?) where my writing would get funneled. Also, a friend gave me a book Julie & Julia (Julie Powell, 2005, Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company, New York) that has helped to inspire me. In this prose non-fiction work Julie, at a moment of personal crisis, decides to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Child, 1963, Knopf, New York) and in doing so, she starts a blog. The book is wonderful by the way...

You see, I'm a chef. I also recently graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a BA in English (Aug '07) with a marked propensity towards the genre of prose non-fiction. I had been cooking for the past twenty years and decided that going back to school might be fun, certainly much more fun than the long hours standing over a stove followed by the long nights of drunken debauchery with my restaurant fellows; all in hope of garnering a degree that would free me from my indenture to cheap, clueless and heartless restaurant owners who have no respect for the creative genius of the non-celebrity chef. But a BA in English is still just a BA, even from Cal. So while I contemplate the merits of various graduate programs, I've not only extended my indenture (to a corporation this time) and cook the shit out of some grub, I have decided to come back to my first love (I was writing long before I started cooking) and write.

The blog. My intention for this blog is for it to become a sort of online journal; not a day by day recounting of the inane bullshit that we all encounter, rather, an exploration of self and discovery. I realize that this sounds a bit mundane and why not? I'm sure there are hundreds of blogs, if not thousands out there that say pretty much the same thing no matter who is/was the author: absolutely nothing. Vacuous and malodorous malcontents who's only claim to fame is that they have no claim to fame. So I'm going to throw you, gentle reader, a bone. I've recently started dating again after a very long hiatus. "No big news," you say, "everybody has lapses in dating, whether due to work or other circumstances." True enough. Without getting into the Freudian interpretation of who I am (for the moment), I have HIV. Needless to say dating women over the past year has not been very successful for me. Now I should be clear here, I have had success meeting some very nice people who, at least initially, are willing to work around my virus. But nothing of a lasting nature has been attained much to my dismay.

So this blog is about a postmodern Stephen Dedalus as he wanders the city streets ruminating about the nature of literature and self and how the two shall meet in the lap of love. My great post-baccalaureate experiment; will anyone read this besides myself and my therapist? it will be interesting to see.