Like I said, it’s spring break, friends have been in town. Two days ago Antonia and I met up for some Mexican food at Pokez - a Mecca of the indie crowd as of late thanks to mad plugging by Fahrenheit. Just like we practice, Antonia was late and I was later. Smoking on the corner, wearing a black skirt, black shirt, and flip flops she coulda fit into any scene … which is the scene I think she goes for.

Antonia and I met on a study abroad trip in Barbados. I had been on the island about a week before the rest of the kids - mostly Bezerkelites - arrived en masse. And then they did. I had no idea what to expect as I saw the big school bus wind its way up the hill to where the University of West Indies dorms were.

I was just getting back from the beach where I scored two new freckels and the first person I saw walk off the bus was little white Antonia with her squeaky voice and flip flops.

“Hi, I’m David.”
“Antonia.”
“Nice to meet you.”

And it kind of went from there. In fact, Antonia and I didn’t even hang out that much in Barbados, but we kept in touch afterwards and her best friend lives here in San Diego.

Jesus … where am I:?: So … there’s Pokez … and we’re in Pokez … and - ok, right, so Antonia works for McSweeney’s up in San Francisco. A self-confessed intern/volunteer/run-around bitch, one of the things she does is tutor kids at 826 Valencia. We’ve often talked about how San Diego needs a similar type program for teens down here and we were doing the same yesterday afternoon over burritos and fajitas. It was the same conversation that Antonia and I have perfected so well:

“What are we doing with our lives?”
“Well, you’re working in a cafe and I’m writing my honors thesis on Native American Road Movies”
“Native American Road Movies” “What in the hell is that:?:
“Road Movies … you don’t know what road movies are?”
I was feeling a bit insecure - “No idea”
“You know, like a movie, about people on the road.”
“And a native american road movie.”
“Native Americans on the road.”
It all made way too much sense.

“So, what are you going to do after school - Austin? Brooklyn?”

Everyone is going to Brooklyn … Everyone. Some kinda crazy San Diego exodus trying to introduce sandals, pastels, and smiles to Brooktown. Antonia and I have both privately entertained the idea. They are opening an “826 NYC” and it sounds like a project much in need of help that I would much like to help out on.

Just like she promised, Antonia handed me a copy of The Believer, quite possibly my favorite monthly publication of all mediums. In fact, I just thought about it and yes … it is. Then she handed me The 826 Quarterly, a collection of student writing from 826 that she helped edit. We hugged.

Lately it has occured to me that San Diego is coming up. Creatively, intellectually, progressively. It used to be that after graduating high school or college in San Diego you moved to San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, or New York City because San Diego had nothing to offer. Because it stifled your creatively. Because it’s a navy town with one (and only one) of the most conservative newspapers in the country. Three years ago the closest thing to independent media in San Diego was The Reader. Now, an abbreviated list:

• San Diego Independent Media Center
• Fahreneit Magazine
• City Beat
• Activist San Diego
• Free Radio
• Radio Active San Diego
• Alternative Focus
• KPBS
• And the endless independent media found at sandiegobloggers.com

It seems to me that San Diego is no longer a place to leave, but a place to get involved. I can’t believe how much Laura and I have been coming across in the past couple weeks. I started driving her down to City College first out of necessity (we were down to one car) and then out of interest - because every time I went downtown I found something new. One day walking from City College across the I-5 to Sherman Heights in search of Cafe Influx we came across a new, small museum with an energetic and dedicated staff. The Women’s History Reclamation Project at 2323 Broadway is an attempt to educate, reclaim, and institutionalize the true history of how women have shaped history. I think it is an important project and if I didn’t have to work, I would head over to UCSD tomorrow afternoon for the San Diego Women’s Hall of Fame Induction.

Yesterday, after dropping Laura off I took my treasured The Believer to Cafe Influx with me, sipped my double Americano, sighed, smiled, and began to read. Reading, with a cup of coffee in front of me … why is this so often the favorite part of my day?

I started reading where I rarely start reading: the first page. Through the letters to the editor and then Yukimo Mishima and the Dream of the Holy Explosion: The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Noble Culture of Death, which, through the life of Japanese Novelist and “patriotic martyr” (and idiot) Yukio Mishima, meditated on the taking of one’s life for his/her country. Of course, author Marcela Valdes soon makes clear that the essay is about more than Mishima himself:

What seems more urgent to understand is how a man as accomplished as Mishima came to believe that the most glorious way for a person to die is to kill himself for a radically traditional cause, and how entire populations in the Middle East have come to believe the same.

I’m not sure if Valdes really succeeds in answering that question. Her basic conclusion was that “psychosexual deathwishes blossom into kamikaze nationalism.” That Mishima was a sex crazed, narcissistic nut and that, in the face of literary failure, choosing nationalism was his best chance to end his life as a hero. But history had already passed him by. The Japanese no longer thought of the emperor as a holy incarnate. Institutions had changed in Japan after World War II, there was democracy, there was hope for progress, and suicidal patriotism was so early 40’s, not 1970 when Mishima stabbed himself in front of 100 cadets and had two assistants decapitate him.

Without saying it outright, Valdes insinuates that anyone willing to kill themselves fits into Mishima’s story of a traumatic life caught in endless failure, looking for a noble way out. She says that Mishima failed in his search of honor failed because Japan had moved past its celebration of patriotic suicide, but that the Middle East has not. And that until its celebration and glorification is put to an end, there will always be Mishima’s lurking around, looking for a way out.

It would be interesting to see if she’s right. I would like to see Valdes write an entire book comparing the biographies of patriotic suicides throughout history. They are surely not limited to Japan and the Middle East (though those two regions have the most documented “culture of patriotic death” in recent times). But there have also been recent suicide bombings for nationalist causes in Argentina, Russia, Indonesia, Kenya, India, and Sri Lanka. (and not all of them by Muslim groups - though the Koran’s celebration of sacrifice in defence of the faith would, I presume, be influential)

I am so happy today. So happy to be in San Diego. So happy that the sun is shining. So happy to have my Believer. Now, before heading up to work, I will freckel at the beach and read In Search of Jim Crow: Why Postmodern Minstrelsy Studies Matter