A: WELCOME TO PACIFIC AND MAPLE

There is an old Paul Weller song titled, 'My Ever Changing
Moods'.

I've been playing it a lot recently.

Let me explain.

Up until a month ago I was supposed to be writing a novel, but my
topsoil of angst became so buried that it cannot be achieved now, not a
chance. It was going to be titled 'Memoirs of a Disco Dancer'. It was a
good novel in the making, really good. I wrote a chapter and showed it
to people I trust. They liked it a lot; made them remember their cool
youth. It was about this troubled, cynical thirty something London man
who was once a champion of the neon lit, mirror balled menagerie. In
the story he recounts his eventful life through Disco. I could tell
more, a few gags, but there really isn't much left in it. My zest has
been aired dry.

I have tried writing other things since of course, but I know now I was
just going through the motions in my compelling addiction to write and
to be read. People who would normally exhale 'Yes' when looking at my
work inhaled 'Mmm'. I was not that bothered and neither were
they.

Are you getting the gist?

No.

I'll go further.

This world had swallowed me up, took a single gulp and suffocated me,
rendered me useless and numb. I stared out of rain-tear windows
wringing my hands. Conversation became muted, a pushed humour and nylon
laughter. The planet crushed into soft disposable tissue paper because
of that Tuesday morning in September.

Clear now?

Here comes that song again.

That was over a month ago and things have shifted as of this morning.
Surprise and pleasure of just living can creep up from behind sometimes
with a big squeaky hammer. The reversal came in the simplest of forms.
A cup of black coffee was all it took, that's all. It was the smell,
strong and luxurious. I carried this cup into my dew sodden autumn
garden. It was a beautiful break of day; the leaves on my unknown tree
were turning Seville red and a plane sliced through the East London
cornflower blue sky. I lit a cigarette from a crumpled packet and
exhaled, the coffee was good. So good that it reminded me of another
time, a blissful day only six weeks ago. Monday September 10th 2001. A
time when I did not look at planes so much as I do now.

Are you tapping your feet a little now?

I was in America you see when the world went really bad. I was out
west, California dreaming with my beautiful partner Jane and one of our
dearest friends Paula who lives there. Through Paula we met other
people who have become important to us in ways myself and Jane thought
impossible. Marcy, Karen, Rae, Travis, Lisa, Kevin, Arnie and Jenula
and a dog called Harry. They have grace.

Clap your hands with me.

I was so excited on that Monday morning in Santa Cruz. We had just
eaten a monster breakfast of eggs, bacon and honeyed pancakes at
Zachary's. Paula and Marcy had gone into the auto mart to get new
windscreen wipers for our trip south. We were going camping in Big Sur,
the legendry coastal strip that is both steeped in outrageous beautiful
landscape and literary history. Kerouac, Miller, Ginsberg and numerous
others had laid their imprints there and now so were we, however small.
It was going to be one of my never forget moments and my heart was
beating like a hummingbird. I was even thinking in rhyme.

A little two step maybe!

Jane and I waited on the corner of the streets of Pacific and Maple and
watched the world go by. It was a clear American morning, the sun
ricocheting of the golden pavements like a comet. The shops were
opening and the out of town buses were chugging in from Frisco, LA and
all over. You could smell coffee and bread and hear folk music eking
out of the pantries. Stringy students on skateboards pulled by dude
dogs glided by in a shimmering window dream. And I lit a
cigarette.

Spin.

I do not think that I have ever been happier as I was in those few
minutes standing on that corner. My vision of my world
encapsulated.

Relax a bit; it's the middle eight.

Santa Cruz is a small university seaside town in northern California
surrounded by mountains and towering redwoods. It lies about seventy
miles or so south of San Francisco. Like Santa Barbara, its much
wealthier cousin, which sits much further down the coast, it is one of
the archetypal seaside communities of romantic dewy-eyed California.
There is a famous old-fashioned Coney Island style boardwalk with
rickety but irresistible funfair rides that get lost from view most
evenings when the rolling Pacific mist appears from nowhere. It is also
a surprisingly big Theatre town with an annual well-attended
Shakespeare festival taking place within the wooded university campus
during the summer months. Troupes of actors, stage managers and
carpenters run camp riot throughout the town at odds with the Harley
driving bikers and ex beat merry pranksters who still survive and
believe. The houses are old and wooden with welcoming porches and fruit
trees sprouting everywhere. Santa Cruz is a proud, progressive liberal
town, which is not surprising considering its lofty university status
and its slightly seedy history. It was famous for its hallucinogenic
drug intake in the sixties long before it defined various
generations.

Lets go for the big finish, come on.

Break a little sweat.

So this book tells the story of twenty-four hours in the life of the
city of Santa Cruz. It tells its tale though the voices and actions of
its inhabitants and its visitors on that beautiful day of September
10th 2001. These are heartbeats of a town that was completely at ease
with itself for the final time. Characters bump into each other at
random, leaving dents and impressions like thrown clay. A few fall in
and some out of love. A family leave town never to return and one man
arrives and never leaves. There are fights, deep kisses and the buying
and selling of souls. All these beats, because that is what they are;
cross, weave and stitch each other forming a patchwork map on the last
day of old American history.

This is the story that I have to write. Nothing else matters, who needs
disco dancers.

Welcome to Pacific and Maple.