This is Ella, my stepsister’s daughter, wearing the little kimono I bought for her on Hayes Street.

“When people ask me where she got such a fabulous outfit,” my stepsister said, “I tell them she has a gay uncle in San Francisco. Everybody kind of nods knowingly.”

Next up, a trip to the salon!

I suppose it’s a combination of motives: stubbornness, of course. Optimism that I might find within myself more energy than I’ve shown. And, worst of all, my grudging acceptance of the conventional wisdom that today all writers (or all artists, or pundits, or fourth-graders) need to maintain a “web presence,” a marketing tool, an idea that wasn’t around over six years ago, when I started this thing.

Back then different motives drove me: the need to start writing again after a long dry spell, the need to document the last couple months of my mother’s life, the desire for approval, and the yearning to connect to what used to feel like an underground community of freaks.

Around the time that people started throwing up blogs featuring nothing but photos of half-naked boys, blogging went from something I loved to do, to something I felt obligated to do. A total snob I sometimes am. Unwilling to pull the plug, however, I need a different motivation.

Over Christmas, in the long lazy hours at my father’s Palm Springs condo, I picked up a copy of Newsweek with a cover story on Amazon’s Kindle– the new digital “reading device.” I belong to the camp that can’t imagine an expensive piece of plastic holding the same allure as a bound book. But I can acknowledge that times change.

But the section of the article that most disturbed me was about the ways in which technology could, or would, change the very nature of reading and writing. The article quoted a guy who heads the Institute for the Future of the Book (paging George Orwell…):

Stein sees larger implications for authors—some of them sobering for traditionalists. “Here’s what I don’t know,” he says. “What happens to the idea of a writer going off to a quiet place, ingesting information and synthesizing that into 300 pages of content that’s uniquely his?” His implication is that that intricate process may go the way of the leather bookmark, as the notion of author as authoritarian figure gives way to a Web 2.0 wisdom-of-the-crowds process. “The idea of authorship will change and become more of a process than a product,” says Ben Vershbow, associate director of the institute.

This is already happening on the Web. Instead of retreating to a cork-lined room to do their work, authors like Chris Anderson, John Battelle (”The Search”) and NYU professor Mitchell Stephens (a book about religious belief, in progress) have written their books with the benefit of feedback and contributions from a community centered on their blogs.

“The possibility of interaction will redefine authorship,” says Peter Brantley, executive director of the Digital Library Federation, an association of libraries and institutions. Unlike some writing-in-public advocates, he doesn’t spare the novelists. “Michael Chabon will have to rethink how he writes for this medium,” he says. Brantley envisions wiki-style collaborations where the author, instead of being the sole authority, is a “superuser,” the lead wolf of a creative pack.

An-ever updated book, written by a thousand keyboards. I couldn’t help imagine picking up a copy of Lolita, only to see Nabokov pecked to death by a thousand earnest voices. Not to sound too dramatic (too late, I know) but what a fucking loss that would be.

When I read a book I want to dive down into a world, or a consciousness, and listen to just one voice tell a story. I want to absorb just one person’s insights. I want to stay, listening to that story, and that voice, without interruption, for more than two minutes at a time. The thought of that one voice interrupted by a thousand others disturbs me to no end. But I’m not sure I buy that my preference for one author, and my distrust in the “wisdom of the crowd” means that I’m somehow against democracy.

I suppose this is why I prefer a nice long dinner with one or two friends over the chatter of a cocktail party. A good conversation with one friend makes me inordinately happy; it pulls me out of the gloom of my personal obsessions, the abandoned carnival of my mind, and briefly restores my faith in humanity. As in books, the more time I spend with one person, the better I understand them, and selfishly, myself.

In the month since I turned in my thesis, I’ve lost several days surfing the web, emerging at one or two a.m. feeling irritated and disgruntled. Certain things, like the internet, Playstation 3, and a tub of pudding, feel good in the moment. But they never feel good at the end of the day.

Unlike Philip Roth, who apparently doesn’t own a television, and spends his hours, when not writing, reading and rereading the classics of Literature, writers of my generation grew up with television and the internet. Some of them seem able to balance the twin pulls of literature and popular culture remarkably well. But I’m no good at it. Popular culture, so shiny and bright and sweet, swallows me whole and spits me out later with nothing to show for it but a more well-developed case of cynicism. Books feed me more, but they require more of me, too.

This isn’t so much a declaration of a new motivation for blogging, so much as a reminder to myself of what I’ve been trying to do all along. I don’t want to offer only hyperlinks and jpegs of naked rugby players. Not that I have anything against naked rugby players; I’m sure they’re very nice people, and if you sat down with them over coffee you might glimpse the richness of their inner lives.

But I guess I want to strive for the feel of literature conveyed through this form of pop culture. I’d like to try and offer one voice, one consciousness – flawed, grouchy, and a little too earnest – and hope that every once in a while somebody can relate, and maybe recognize themselves. I guess I want to give back to those writers who kept me company, and to provide a place where other people might leave feeling a little less alone in the world. That, interspersed of course with photos of Manly Fireplugs and my adorable puppy. Too much self-seriousness leads to bloating, and drives people to poke you with sharp sticks.

The Fireplug and I finally caught up on the latest season. Omar, my Omar.

It takes weekly upkeep to look this good, people.

This photo was taken by Paweena ‘Bo’ Attayadmawittaya, a young woman who took photos at the Manly Fireplug’s shop for a school project. She said, “Credit me as a strange random Asian girl who spent a day at Joe’s Barbershop and learned so much more about everything else in life other than just watching people getting ‘a little off the top.’”

In the mornings we ate in the restaurant of our hotel, the Queen Kapiolani, affectionately nicknamed by our posse as “The Queen Krap.” The restaurant, like the rest of the hotel, had seen better days, but I appreciated its down-at-the-heels aesthetic. Kind of like Amy Winehouse, now that I think about it. A hotel forever caught in the tropics of 1973.

The Fireplug tore open a packet of C&H sugar for his coffee, then read its label. “Guess where this came from,” he said.

“The Big Island?” I asked.

“No. Yonkers.”

It was a repeat of our last year’s trip, though this year it was more of a working vacation for me, as I spent the two five-hour plane rides, and several hours a day in the Queen Krap, working on my thesis, which I Fed-Exed back to Columbia yesterday, in time for Monday’s deadline. Yep, that part of my life is now over. In May, if all goes well, I should get my MFA, which the Fireplug in Hawaii decided meant, “Mighty Fine Ass.” He’s sweet like that.

In January, upon first print, the thesis totaled 369 pages. I spent the next month cutting, fleshing out, and polishing it into a 270-page, leaner, meaner manuscript. And though it’s far from perfect, I’m proud of it.

I surpassed the 120-page minimum for thesis requirements, but at 270 pages it’s still only two-thirds of my intended book. I still have a lot of work ahead of me before I send it off to agents. So today I went back to my new office and back to work on the rest of the book. I read some interview recently with Michael Chabon, who writes 1000 words a day, five days a week. I figured I could do that, too.

Not too long ago the Fireplug was running into Spike’s coffee, across the street from his barbershop, and a boy at one of the outside tables yelled to him, “Hey! Tell Dogpoet to put some excerpts of his book on his blog!”

The Fireplug yelled back, “Fuck no! He’s done with giving it away for free!”

I really do love the guy.

“To the left, to the left.”

Speaking of music, I’ve lost track of how many times the Manly Fireplug and I have gotten laid to the sounds of Massive Attack, Boards of Canada, and Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ (seriously, try it sometime).

So I’m soliciting suggestions for Best Sex Music Ever. Fire away.

Unfinished Manuscript                        Puppy
370 pages                                        18 weeks

So instead of taking yet another year to finish my thesis, I’ve decided to graduate in May. Which means turning in my thesis by the end of February. I’m way past the minimum page requirements, so I’ve gone back to the beginning to revise, edit, and polish up the first big chunk. Turn that in, graduate, get my degree, then go back and finish the rest of the manuscript, and start looking for an agent.

The little monkey is good for distraction and comic relief. Right now he is hiccuping, again.

Finley wishes everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. He can totally help with drumsticks, in case you were wondering.

More later, if the Fireplug and I make it back from Ireland alive.