domingo sunday 28 febrero february 2010.

1.

IT IS ALREADY tomorrow in Dubai and they have announced, as promised, the semi-finalists for the contest over which I have been obsessing for the past two months.

No. All twenty are someone other than myself. All 20 are young, in their 20s and 30s.

As I suspected it would be. A crew of young, energetic, go-getters.

To be fair, their videos, the few I have watched, are good enough to be chosen, if I were doing the choosing.

2.

Perhaps I will say more later. Perhaps not. It has been a pleasant armchair journey, trying to figure out how to visit the maximum number of places in only 80 days.

I am almost relieved it is over and that now I am free.

Almost.

3.

I went to a lecture and reading a week ago this afternoon, on Sunday the 21st.

Pedro Assaf. A Cuban poet and philologist spoke. He has been away from Cuba for many years. Has taught for a number of those years at a university in the Carolinas, and now is doing the lecture circuit.

Interestingly enough, he is of Arabic descent, but there’s not it. I managed to avoid talking about the contest in Dubai. Or I think I did.

There was an open mike reading afterwards, and several of us read one or two poems. I offered up Que huele el río and Halcon nocturno.

Three weeks from this past Friday and Saturday, on the 19th and 20th of March, there will be a meeting of poets at a hotel on the beach south of Rosarito, a few klicks beyond the Fox movie studios (where Titanic and Pearl Harbor were filmed), around kilometer 38, I believe. Of course I already google-earthed the place to make sure I knew where we were going. It is not quite as far as Puerto Nuevo. I have been invited to participate, and will be given a room and meals as well as a place at the table of poets. Am very much looking forward to it. Will probably go armed with some chapbooks I am hoping to print before then, to give away or sell.

It appears this has been organized by Pancho Morales, or at least under the shining light of his star.

So I have something to help me be happy and not so angry that I did not get into the semifinals of the Around the World in 80 Days trip contest. No.