Charles Manson's House- The San Francisco mass murderer

The Full House, House(s)?

A lot of you might remember the house from the sitcom Full House staring Bob Saget and John Stamos, the ex-husband of College 8 alumni Rebecca Romijn - the most famous person to graduate from UCSC (just kidding).

I've lived in San Francisco till I was eighteen years old and I've never been here, Alcatraz, Coit Tower or in a car down Lombard st. These are places that my friends wanted to visit in San Francisco. I'm not a tourist and these things seem to be lost on me.

What many people don't know is that there is no real Full House house but rather a random line of ideal houses in some rich area of the city. Why people want to go take pictures there is lost on me also. That show was terrible. A house in that neighborhood on that street would cost at least 1 million dollars. I'm not joking. I don't even know anyone who lives in that neighborhood. A single father could not provide for a 3 child family and live there. That is probably the richest and whitest neighborhood in SF. The myth of a white-washed, rich and not completely crowded city of San Francisco is encapsulated by Full House.

I live just about here, on 8th ave, across from Star of the Sea elementary school. It doesn't really look anything like Full House does it? Old Fobs smoking on street corners call it china town #2. Not really though, it's just another part of town. The same as every other district- the real San Francisco.













THE WINDMILL


This is a major tourist attraction in SF, the windmill near the cliff house, where people like to take pictures by the garden. Locals, such as myself, know never to go there at night. DO Not Go there at night! It is know for prostitution at night where homely husband businessmen go to the park restroom to have random gay sex. If you saw the Movie Something About Mary, this is where the idea came from. Dudes and hookers get it on over here at night.











CHARLES MANSON's HOUSE


The Beat Movement gave birth to many things. One of them being the mass murderer Charles Mason. He loved to wear flowers in his hair and hang out in the Fillmore. This is his house.

Brautigan

I've never had it done so gently before
by. Richard Brautigan

The sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
I've never had it done so gently before.
You have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.

Richard Brautigan has tons of longer prose and poetry in the collection that I don't think follows any traditional archetype. This poem is about the most use of form or line break that you'll find in the book. What I'm trying to say is that Brautigan is no E.E. Cummings. Most of his poems come in sequential block paragraph like stanzas. I never thought that a poem about cunnilingus could be so beautifully written. And that is also not and is the punch line meaning to the poem.

The poems works to take the act of cunnilingus in a poem as a serious and beautiful act. While all the time taking a tone with itself that is a serious poem that can be written about cunnilingus. This poem is very reminiscent to the straight man comedy of today. Brautigan says this poem in a straight face to say that he can say it in a straight face. The poem is to be beautiful to be beautiful and not to use cunnilingus as beauty. It tries in a way to bring legitimacy to poetry and freedom of speech in it's own content's symbolic nature.

I love the personal emotion and sensory imagination that this poem brings out. The use of 'I' brings the reader into the consciousness of the poem and at the same time the classical beauty of the poem. You would not even know it was about cunnilingus if not for the word "penis". Brautigan's choice to use classical analogy and simile of nature to this subject creates a mental bridge towards the legitimacy of beat poetry and poetry in general.

As a man, I immediately connected with this poem. I mostly connect with the power of emotion that words can have. What this poem does is show the emotional content and lyrical beauty in something that society deems vulgar. The poem functions in it's own form/topic to destroy this claim.

Angel Headed Hipsters

Angel headed hipsters is a term that is often used to glorify the beat movement and it's poetry. It is a term that is used mostly as a synonym for the followers of the hippie counter culture. Society at the time of origination had classified the long haired hippies as a negative and dirty excess on society's traditional conservative morality. The term "Angel Headed Hipsters" is the poetic reaction to this negative assumption about the beat movement. In a way, poets like Ginsberg are very much creating a mystifying innocence around the followers. When in actuality a lot of drugs, pain and ruination followed the beat movement,

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
             madness, starving hysterical naked,
      dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
             looking for an angry fix,"

There is a negative side to the term "Angel headed hipsters" that is remarkably overlooked. People were ruined in the beat movement. We are to assume and interpret that the "angel headed hipsters" as a more roving wise guru motif rather than what America really thinks they are. Because hippies are not homeless, dirty, drugged up, dumb, giving nothing to society dregs but rather wandering Buddah like wise "angel headed hipsters". Maybe this term for the beat generation is deserving. Maybe that selfless, kind and friendly nature is absent in contemporary society. I see that era through the 50s and 60s as very much an American poetic renaissance. Just as much as the Harlem Renaissance moved American literature so did the beat and San Francisco literature.

I have no authority to comment but rather interpret. I know that the professor used to be a hippie and he has all the authority to talk about it because he was there. I'm music columnist reviewing a punk cd when he's never been to a concert. I wasn't at the Howl trials or anything like that and sometimes feel that I can't talk about these things without being objective.

Ginsberg

Carl Sandburg once said that, "I've written some poetry that even I don't understand". Howl is this poem that everyone knows about and that everyone thinks is great. Don't get me wrong, I like the poem a lot but what makes it so good? I don't want to be that one guy that everyone hates because he didn't enjoy Catcher in the Rye. I also don't want to be the one person who didn't enjoy Ginsberg.

Thinking about Howl, I am reminded of the controversy most of all. I think about GG Allin. A homeless hipster on Pacific once screamed at me coming out of Street light Records: "What do you know about GG Allin?". I know that he was a punk rock icon because he ate his own poop on stage. His music was mostly crap. People love him and saw him because of his on stage performance. I doubt he'd be even remotely as successful or famous if he didn't eat poop on stage. This isn't a question just for Ginsberg and the Howl trials but for all of literature. Susan Summer's Butt Buster 3 self help book probably will sell millions if she were on trial for double homicide. I know that Howl would have been successful regardless of the trials but it probably wouldn't have caused a lasting interest that it did. Howl broke boundaries and laid the road for future poetry both politically and artistically.

Sometimes I feel as if the greatest days of American literature are behind us. Maybe ipods and PS3s' have made books a lesser voice in contemporary society. Can literature break any more boundaries or explore anymore corners? I don't see another Howl or another author writing things is as big a historical context. Maybe today there is another great book or poem out there that could be great but doesn't have that historical breaking hysteria behind it. Howl is great but would it be as successful without the controversy?

My Dad told me that there hasn't be a Great American author since F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read that David Foster Wallace hung himself in his living room last month. Ann Rice is still Alive. Why?

Challenges to Young Poets

My Own Challenge to Young Poets

I myself am a creative writing major and if you ask me what kind of people are poets at UCSC I'd give the opposite of Ferlinghetti's Challenge to young poets. Young poets at UCSC are squirrely, sexually frustrated, acne plagued and full of unnecessary emotional baggage. I've taken a few poetry classes and it feels like I go to class to just listen to ten people read their teen angst and emotional baggage out loud while I sit very awkwardly. Also most of the poems suck. This poem, Challenges to Young Poets, is one that questions the sad archtype of poets and their work. Innovation and passsion are things sorely missing from poetry. I feel as if Ferlinghetti is half way serious and half way critiqueing the occupation of poets. When Ferlinghetti says, "Climb the statue of Liberty." He is talking about creatively striving higher and he could also be infering that most poets should get out of their houses to literally climb something- exercise. I love that at one point he says, "Be Naive, innocent, non-cynical" Because most literature majors I know are very cynical.

I feel that poetry is something so intimate that people are very protective of it. In the creative writing classes kids throw a fit if you point out a spelling error. Ferlinghetti takes the occupation with a grain of salt, " Be a poet, not a huckster." Poetry is something you do and who you are. It is very weird but people like to cry when they read their poetry. Maybe I'm just not emotional. Maybe I'm just not a poetic soul. One day in poetry three people started crying. I just want to stand up and say lighted up baby life is not that depressing. Ferlinghertti is absolutely not being snide, faux-intellectual or pretentious. He is being soo light hearted and funny about this idea of poetry as a thing you do along with other occupations. I've had it in my head that poetry was so intrinsically elitist. Ferlinghetti is just plain poking fun at the sterotypical poet here, "Don't contemplate your navel". I do not contemplate my navel.

Have a nice day.

Week 1 Ferlinghetti

The animorphism of the Dog is a reflection on the nature of man. The context of the speaker's tone is not one of a feral animal. In fact, the speaker describes a analytical dog that dissects the world around him, "He doesn't hate cops/He simply has no need for them." As man's best friend, this choice to use a dog is one made to more easily symbolize man's own loyalty to authority figures. Men are dogs and in this case it is literal. The obident dog is brought in to parallel the complacent man in the world. Throughout the poem, the dog wanders the world looking at "drunks in doorways" and "tough policemen" but does nothing. The dog is waiting for "some victorious answer/ to everything." By the third page there is a line break with a change from traditional line form to a more avant-garde style of line ordering. This is also meant to symbolize the change in narration and also thought. The wandering dog becomes a "barking / democratic dog." The poem becomes increasing scarcastic and darker in it's message about societal obediance.