Still in Hollywood...

Well, actually not. Still in Whittier, which is pretty nice, actually. Was in Hollywood last night, having Thai at Toi with friends. Much, much fun. And yummy. Evidently, we are still eating our way through Southern California. Discovered Native Foods Cafe in Costa Mesa yesterday. Tasty vegan food! Fake chicken I actually enjoy! Whatever else is wrong with SoCal, people here know how to eat.

The air's cleared up some. Been kind-of in the ash zone from the big fire inland. The cloud from it went for miles.

Reading at the Ugly Mug at eight. Dinner at Papa Hassan's at six. MORE GOOD FOOD!

Scene vs. Community

In poetry, we talk a lot about poetry scenes. Other times, we use the phrase poetry community, as though they were interchangable terms. They're not.

A poetry scene -- or any scene, really -- is a transitory thing: the group of writers around a particular reading or set of readings. It implies an active investment and participation. A community is something else entirely. California, for example, is blessed by a strong community of writers, although several of those writers travel within different scenes. A community can embrace several disparate points, even if there's little traffic between the groups it contains. You can recede from a scene, but receding from the community that contained it is more difficult. One is defined very much by the now, the other is relatively timeless.

This has been evident thoughout this trip, as we spend time with writers from different parts of SoCal, who travel in different circles or who don't get out much at all anymore. They're all part of the same community. That doesn't change, even if the accoutrements of the scenes do.