It is a noon hour on Thursday again folks, Ted Rawlson here in our downtown Hummeloo studio, welcoming Ray Sushiama on for the first time you've been on this show I think Ray, but you're not a stranger to think tech. No, I've been on this show twice. Oh, you have. Yes, that's right. If I was as a whole I'd remember that better. That's right. Anyway, thanks for coming on at this hour and I don't know what it is, it's a new hour. That's right. The time before was Fridays at four o'clock and now we've moved it to Thursday at noon. It's just the world of our, of our, of our resolutions out there, sets our clocks by this show. So it is noon hour on Thursday, you can set your clocks and adjust your calendars as appropriate. Anyway, I wanted to thank, first of all, thank Mike Elliott for coming on this show two weeks ago, hosting it. I was with Margie in a conference in San Diego on manned air systems, UAS, and then we had another one, a complimentary conference on the same subject up in Santa Fe last week. We've had a vacant slot last week in the show, back on live and should be hidden and hard for the rest of the Thursdays of the year, which was about two left. Anyway, what was, we talk about drones on the show a lot. There's nothing, there's no drone on the table, there's no one who drones on here on the table, but there's not a drone on the table because we're going to talk about the virtual aspects of drones. Things we can't necessarily see, it's how they fit in the economy and the growth of our economy here. That's why we have Ray Suchiyama online and we have Dr. Peter Quigley sitting online also by Skype. Often we use Skype to get to this show to Alaska or to East Coast or something like that. Today we're getting this show from Honolulu all the way to Manawak by Skype and by cell phone. So Peter, welcome aboard again. There you are. Great. Great to be here. And Peter's been on the show as well. Peter, of course, is the associate vice president for the community colleges in the university system. We have two guys here in the show who've been thinking a lot about the role of education and the future of our economy and how technology and STEM fit in that economy. And I just think that drones are a really interesting example of that. And people that we deal with shouldn't, our viewers, shouldn't think of drones forever going to be just like they are today. One guy and a controller and a drone to get out of a box and go fly it somewhere. There's, the whole world of drones is changing and changing rapidly. As command and control schemes change, the mathematics of complex systems comes into the picture and the value measured at the customer end begins to drive what's going to happen here. So we're seeing, we have a whole career and future here in drones and we could do a lot of that right here in Hawaii. So I was kind of reacting a couple of weeks ago to some information about enrollment and such and went back to the op-ed that I had written a paper that you wrote, Ray, about maybe six weeks ago. No, it's way back. Oh, I mean which one? This is one about the your experience at Google and bringing a technology theme into our economy here as a salvation for it. So I thought of that and I thought of what Dr. Figley's been doing in terms of looking at other areas like San Diego, for example, that have come up from a tourist or military base to a more high tech base and how that all occurred because fortunately we have to deal with that situation. So I wanted you to speak first on the themes that you had in your op-ed a couple of weeks ago and what ideas you have about how we might take that forward and think of drones as a carrier of that vector and then talk to Peter about what he's seen taking place in San Diego, how that worked and how that might be a model that we could try to get her here. Just a few weeks ago I did publish an op-ed of a star advertiser and it was on Lessons for Hawaii from Google for my experiences as a senior consultant at Google in Tokyo and Mountain View. And I talked about how Google is a meritocracy. It's based on research. It's focused on products, on design products and really of a global marketplace. And I touched upon all those things in my article. However, having said that, about two years ago in the fall of September of 2015 I published two op-eds in Civil Beat actually. And it focused on drones, UIS or drones, being a foundation for economic development in Alaska, in the state, and also in Oregon and several other states on the mainland and how the drone becomes a centerpiece for K-12 teaching of math and science and engineering for use in startups for manufacturing for all kinds of things dealing with agriculture. And so it becomes a kind of a focal point for whole new diversification of the economy. And Alaska was leading the way according to my op-eds of that period two years ago. And I had a whole strategy for Hawaii to go forth and do a similar thing using the drone and then using that as a topic of research at UH and community colleges and startups, Bishop Street, agriculture and so forth. So the Google article is one thing, but I did focus directly on drones as a centerpiece for economic diversification for the state. So interpreting all that, there's a strong value here in STEM itself. And drones as an instigator of STEM interest and value is measured at the agricultural, environmental or law enforcement level and quality of life ultimately at the end of the day in Hawaii. And to some extent, Peter, that's what you have observed taking place in San Diego in terms of the quality of life in San Diego having been approved by this transition from a tourist and a military-based economy to something that's much more diverse and has a lot of high tech and medicines and such like that in it. So how do we take what Ray observed and what you've observed and think about them in parallel that can be used to enhance operations and economy here in Hawaii? Yeah, thanks Ted. The San Diego example is, as you point out, very compelling for us because 30 years ago they looked around and saw they had real estate, they had a naval base and they had a tourist economy. And the fathers and mothers of that area were worried about how narrow that is. And we've got plenty of people on record in Hawaii talking about the narrow profile of our economic offerings. We're in those same three areas, primarily as well. And as Howard Dykes frequently points out and as economists frequently point out, it's terribly cyclical to be tied to something like the tourist economy because, first of all, it can be disrupted and changed so easily. And of course, in the tourism economy, which we love, of course, we love being a point of destination and that economy I'm not suggesting that we don't have that economy. I'm just suggesting by itself, it puts us on a pretty dangerous footing. 80 to 90% of the jobs in the tourism sector require no college degree. Half of those don't require a high school degree, which is a great sort of entry access for a lot of folks. But in terms of a place where we're living here, where the average cost of housing starts $500,000 on the low end. And if you're trying to pay for my salary in the state or the government salary and retirement based on $15 an hour jobs and tourism, you can see where you get perhaps an unfunded liability building up because you're not paying your bills. So San Diego took the bull by the horns and they had some long-term thought leaders in that area get together and they go, this place has simply got to be more. And that conversation had been going on in San Diego for a long time, like it has here, that we seem to be sitting on so much potential, like the drone opportunity, like cybersecurity. And what's keeping us from really exploiting that and making that go further? It becomes not so much the technical opportunity as it does become the culture. We simply have to figure out how to develop a culture of shared risk-taking, a culture of impatience about where we are now. And San Diego moved, as I mentioned to you before, in a span of 30 years from a $3 billion regional economy to $182 billion regional economy. And they added two sectors. They added biotech and they added telecommunications. So drones and the associated technology, and Ray already mentioned some of the agricultural applications, security applications, creative media. Right now, on the triple count of the North Shore, they're doing some of the most marvelous photography at Pipeline that you can possibly imagine. Shots of surfers at Pipeline nobody's ever seen before, flying alongside the surfer on top of the wave, behind the wave. And certainly with our creative arts media, you can see the applications here. So it's not simply the opportunity is sitting in front of us, like San Diego had these opportunities for a number of years, but until what I call the three stools of the engine of innovation come together, and that's the government, the university system, and the private sector on a collective agreement to take some shared risks and to put some benchmarks out and say, we're going to grow this place in some new ways. And the drone is a disruptive technology, as you know. And we need something to disrupt the status quo in our economy and bring some excitement. And as Ray was pointing out, this reaches right into the classroom, reaches young people, as well as professionals in real estate and other folks in the market. So it's got some real potential. But we need folks to see the urgency of our sort of current narrow economic profile and see this as an opportunity for us to develop and have startups and businesses, et cetera. One of the things that people might look at that we need regardless of whatever level of the economy we have here is the government costs a certain amount to run. We've got the roads, we've got the infrastructure, we've got our legislative system, we've got our city councils and all. There's a certain fixed cost that we need to bear regardless of whatever we do. The one factor alone is just the cost of government and the cost of government in the future being paid by a progressively less wealthy economic status is itself threatening, is it not? Well, I guess that's my point too.  If you imagine bringing on STEM sector opportunities like the one we're talking about with drones or cyber or some of the other areas that are being talked about today and you create new jobs there, you're creating new wealth and you're creating new tax revenues. We tend to go back to the same well and say, well, we're going to tax real estate or something of that nature and you can only take that so far. That's the going back to the same well over and over again. New wealth is created by bringing in new companies, new jobs, new sectors. They at least don't come out of thin air. Usually with San Diego, those sectors have been around for a while, slumbering and it takes this kind of courage of those three legs of a stool, I told you about, you know, San Diego went out and the mayor went out and did some recruiting of companies, did some land policy renewal, did some incentives. The university started bringing in the research dollars to sort of match the economic strategy of the mayor and then the private sector put together a group called San Diego Connect that helped understand the cluster behavior in the area so they could all sort of mark and assess how the growth was going. But the point was they all wanted, these were people that were not in it for themselves or for their own businesses, but they loved the region so much that in 20, 30, 40 years from when they started, they wanted San Diego to be this incredibly rich area both in culture and intellectual richness as well as economic richness and it's pretty easy to see that they've made that, they've accomplished that goal and you throw your hand out, San Diego, you're going to meet a smart person that's got a start-up going. That's just quite an incredible picture you've painted here, Peter, and kind of a model for us to think about. So in your experience with Google and such, Ray, how do you see the elements that we can do here in Hawaii which don't mean heavy duty production and manufacturing but has to do with intellectual development and such and software and small elements that can be easily transported and shipped and don't depend on a supply line of raw materials. How do you see the Google model following what, acting as a channel that would allow Peter's idea to go forward? Well, what Peter said is a vision for the future of Hawaii, but if you put names and companies to the San Diego growth history, we have universities like San Diego State, UC San Diego, Scripps Institute, those were really a key to research and entrepreneurship and so forth. So they have great centers of excellence in cybersecurity, for example, at San Diego State and Asia Pacific Studies at UC San Diego. And plus there were a migration of people, I used to work for MIT, and Irwin Jacobs and Andy Diverturbi were two founders of Qualcomm. And that was a major center and that brought in more startups in the mobile space, Cure Center came, Nokia came, and of course Biotech followed that later on. So there is a kind of a symbiotic relationship between university research, entrepreneurship and the city of San Diego that saw that military and tourism were not going to be growing that much in the future. They needed another growth area, which was high tech. And there was another part of this that we have to see, which is the Maki Lora, the duty-free tax-free zones on the Mexican border that added to Sonys and all kinds of Japanese companies coming. And in fact, there's a Japan Society of San Diego and Tijuana. There are Japanese companies that came in and made headquarters and people who went south to work on these plans and shipping duty-free TVs and phones and PCs into the US. So those are a lot of converging factors that really assisted San Diego to blossom the last few years. But again, what Peter pointed out very well is that there was a synergy among business and universities and of course, kind of a community leadership that really brought this to fruition. Okay, so there's a couple of different factors here and what you've added to the conversation. And one of them is that labor pool available. Obviously, raw materials and transportation and such to get materials in. Now let's take our first break here, our only break and come back and talk about how we might outline a path forward for Hawaii based on the experience you've got at Google and what Peter outlined that San Diego has done. We'll come back in one minute. Aloha kakau. I am Andrea. I am from Italy and I've been studying and working here in Hawaii for more than three years for my PhD. Hawaii is home to a truly fantastic community of middle and high school students. And did you know some of them are currently out there right now using their free time to invent new quantum computers? And did you know some of them are exploring cyber security and the new frontiers of robotics? I am just always amazed as I talk to them at science fairs. Oh, but there's more. Did you know that these students are coming here on Think Tech Hawaii to share their story with us? Come and join the new young talents making way show and discover how these students are shaping our future. Starting on February the 6th every Tuesday at 11 a.m. Only here at Think Tech Hawaii, mahalo. We are back, folks, in the second half of our show where the drone leads on Think Tech Hawaii. Thursday noon hour, which of course people run and set their clocks by that and recognize of course that daylight saving has gone away so think of standard time. Anyway, in the studio here we have Ray Suchiava. Thank you again. And we have Dr. Peter Quigley standing by well across the city of Honolulu in Manoa up in the valley. And we just had a really interesting discussion here in the first part of our show about the model that San Diego has laid before us, whether they like it or not. And of course the models that you experienced in terms of technology component and into a economic growth. And we're talking about how Hawaii might grasp or turn that into a picture useful for Hawaii. We don't have a source of inexpensive labor like San Diego does. We don't have the shipment aspect of easy transport of materials. We don't have any raw materials. So our raw material here is intellectual property and the fact that it's an attractive climate to come to work in. Our product would have to be something that isn't like a rocket. It isn't like a heavy airplane. It isn't like heavy machinery. It's something more in the software, in the intellectual domain. And so what we've outlined is that we've got to have the university involved in this future. We've got to have business involved in the future. But there has to be something that we can produce and sell. If we can't produce and sell it, regardless of how good we are, it doesn't become part of the economy. So what do you think, Peter, about what kind of outline we can create or picture we can put onto paper or something like that that deviates from what San Diego did because of the reasons that we can't copy them necessarily. But embraces what Ray's been talking about and a few folks we can get a hold of to take it forward. Well, you mentioned what we don't have. What we do have is a 10 campus university system with a flagship research institution in the center of it, which is usually one of the primary variables for an innovation economy anywhere you look in the United States. We do have a med school for context and a cancer research center. And we have an astronomy science in the state and other science and technology investments that are pretty formidable. So, and we do have a metropolitan district. We have a banking industry. We're a great point of destination. As I said before, tourism is a great sector to have. And you can certainly modify tourism by adding medical tourism and environmental tourism and all those things are in front of us too. But as you point out, it would help to have a plan. And we've started in coordination with the Chamber of Commerce series of sector convenings where we're meeting with the CEOs of the banking, healthcare, tourism industries. And we're gonna meet with energy and creative arts to talk about how do we enhance their sectors? What is it that we can do as a university system as well as a community of concerned folks to make those industries more powerful than they are today, more deep in their place here and the layered sophistication of those interests? So we have a process now that has started and some work groups that have occurred. So we've got the, I think the fragile beginnings of what you would call what San Diego Connect did, bringing everybody around the table to say, how do we benchmark our way forward from our current economic profile to something more complex and rich and deep in the next couple of decades? That's a real possibility. And it's, you've got a lot of folks at Hawaii Business Roundtable that have been working this issue, Rich Wacker has been a real help, the President of American Savings and a thought leader in helping us figure out how to, and Terry George at Castle. So you've got some of the real important variables. You got the people that count are in this conversation, we've got a nascent structure of a way to do business in Hawaii that could focus on how do we take drones and make this into a research slash startup slash business job creating industry. I'll tell you, I was on a panel of 10, 15 folks this summer in China talking about the future of the entrepreneurial university and to a country, Malaysia, China, Japan, India, they are going full bore in this area. They see the university system as a crucial part of their national security. They're going STEM, like you wouldn't believe it as a matter of fact, one university says we are not graduating job seekers, we're graduating job creators. And I thought, oh my goodness, they get it, they're on it, we need to make sure we're there too. Okay, and actually the drone issue could contribute to the consolidation of thinking you're speaking of. We are just, the state of Hawaii is through D-Bed is putting in a proposal to an FAA solicitation for a way that the local community, and including its governance, not the federal side, but the state, local, tribal, and community organizations could find a way that drones become most useful in their particular environment under 200 feet, under 400 feet as the first step in having the local organizations, the local governance, manage airspace in its own domain. And I'm not gonna quite get there in this pilot program, but the idea of bringing together the community, all elements of it, so that the whole solution is present, and it isn't just a technical solution or just a product solution, but there's a solution that includes STEM, includes education, includes the community participation and such. So we have a real need, Peter, we could toss in the middle of this activity you're speaking of, where all the members that you've got in that community of business leaders would probably have a really important opinion here. And we have to submit this proposal on the 4th of January. We've already submitted two of the six volumes that are in the proposal. So if there's some way we can get this story out in a condensed form to that round table, I'd like very much to do that and give a copy to both of you guys. But this is kind of like, this is actually a presidential directive. It's part of the drain to swamp thing. Get the federal government out of local business and local governance and have the local agencies figure out how to collaborate, work together, and drive the future in their own domain. So I think it's a modest, but an example of what would be the kind of collaboration that you're seeking. And coming out of that would be the engineering associated with drone usage, the software that comes up with the analysis of farm crop analysis and such. So there's a way we can tie these together, I think. Yeah, well, I mentioned Alaska early on. And they, in 2015, more than two years ago, they published a comprehensive report called Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Economic Development Strategy for Alaska. And that triggered, of course, you've been there, University of Alaska Fairbanks campus. They have a UAE Center there. They call it UCASI. That's right. Did you have a copy of that report? I can send it to you and to Peter. It's a very interesting document because they point out advantages about how big Alaska is. Of course, the focus on Native Alaskan children, K-12, STEM education, and of course, becoming a center for, as some Peter said, and we have to focus on it for business. How do you design drones? How do you make apps? How do you make them? You don't have to make them there. You can make them somewhere else in China. DJI is now a billion-dollar company. That's all they do, and everybody is gonna drone for Christmas. So it's a big, big, you know, and the thing is, when you look at robotics, and robotics is a great multi-disciplinary field, but there are no personal robotics companies. They don't make money. We have DJI, and many others that make money. Okay, and so the making money is the end state of this. That's what generates the growth in the economy, and that's what pays the bills for the government and such. So let me do that, Peter. Let me get you the synopsis of this proposal that is due on the 4th, and we'll figure out how to deposit it in the roundtable, get feedback, at least get them to be aware of it, and then we have between then and May to get all of our coordination in place and the themes struck out and such, and then we get notified in May of what we're gonna proceed or not. So let me go ahead and do that, and if you'll get the Alaska report, that'll be great, and then we'll all get together on this show again sometime. And anyway, for today, Ray, thanks for coming on to the show and bringing our usual incredible insight. I wish we could execute your insight really quickly. And Peter, the leadership you got in thought leadership here in terms of pushing forward and identifying barriers and identifying pathways that might work is really enlightening and very thoughtful and appreciate that very much. So thank you to guys for coming on and we'll see you all next Thursday.


please visit jamescarrenewpollett.com. James, take us away. Good afternoon. It is a great, great honor to be here with you and to start this beautiful reading off. I should say that my book Martian, Saint of Loneliness launches Tuesday. And I actually have a copy over here.  But first, this is a poem that's relatively new. And it's called Sapphire Grape's. Angel of God, aromatic antelope of jasmine and cedar, bouncing above gravity. Crunchy afro, cheekbones, arrowing the jaw. Divine and delicious, we dare not speak of this again. Exodus of eyelashes, eyes resisting echo, fragrant, fashionable, and highly favored.  Incense of inner thigh meat, junk, sea also tender, juice, sea also fruit, knuckle kinship, wee knights of suede and leather, lemon and tomato, lick luggajurious, milky mouth too supple not to touch. New ports, nasty and nonstop, overindulged, overanalyzed, objectified, pennies pitched to the gutter, filth from smudged with brown sugar for sacrament. Our youngest qualifier asks too many questions. Rough housing, rumbles in musky jungles, sinned smoke signals strut with swagger, throat singing tenors with thyroid infections, unwavering, unbent, utter utopia under the surface. Vulture and virtuoso of voluptuous vixens, while we walk, air wrestle, worship a clock of hip bones. Our yoke of youth, its yummy divinity, zestfully clean, yet yawningly unzipped. And in that introduction, I believe you used the words weird, tender and exuberant. Yeah, that describes the mood of this poem I'm going to do from the new book, Saturnalia. The new book is called Martian Saint of Loneliness. The poem I'm going to do is the poem that I had a discussion with my editor about as to whether I should include it at all because I felt self-conscious and slightly embarrassed. And she said, yes, include the poem. And here's my reading of it. This is called Saturnalia.   Since my body prison brewed its way through puberty, there remains a compound of failure in my blood. Let me not remain so sensually challenged, illiterate in every language set the blues. My tongue losing its intimacy with words, mistaking touch for rupture, or lust with lethargy, or et cetera, or et cetera. Never before have I rattled with so many impatient corpses. Never before have I needed so little from a stranger to be recognized, to be handed a thing gently, a dollar's change palmed back to you as if it were an ultritional hatchling. For certain strangers, I am easy kindling my ashes sweet to taste. Just ask the saint of loneliness about my labyrinth of weddings. Ask my dead about the witchcraft of memory. Ask my hands the origin of their humiliating nicknames. They stay in my pockets while I hike mile-long steel and glass canyons, passing several identical uncrowded coffee shops just to stand in line and briefly see you. Worship at the altar of your legendary eyes, famous only in my private theater of cruelty, and spin my rings around your fingers soft ballet over all my hardened denominations that resist being broken down. The smallest prayer I got on me is, our father, what's wrong with me? And it remains uncashed beneath this mirroring sky that never stops falling. How you looked up, genuinely surprised that any word shrunk between us was worth keeping, even as its suggested promise was not.  I remain unnamed on your tongue as any of the problematica and spittle in the vinyl compilation spinning colors around Saturn. Thus my desire for anything reaches across to you unanchored, unanswered, unwanted, yet who besides me has ever offered to hold the sun through your embrace? Let me bite the brassy spark igniting the chasm between us and plunge my nostrils into your lotus blossom afro with the slam dance of a bee in a ballhouse of pollen. The fibers of flaking stamen sprinkled like crumbs of atoms in your star-gazing eyes. Your lips dewy from narrating privately screened dreams, dreams, small-town playhouses that parody waking actions, cabarets blinking from orange to indigo to magenta and back in twilight darkness.  Your complicated dreamscape ending in morning reflections that approach and admire you first. You steaming fragrant as fresh bread to find purchase in the world. Any part of the world with you in it, raw naked as a vegetable, electric fibers erect and reaching all sticky, sweaty with earth, your bouquet conflated in a promissory blossom and ooze. To go any further, I will have to inquire your expectation of a lips sugar. What pushes the simplest song into a hymn? What triggers desire to go viral? What veins sustains it? What lures anything to burst forth blooming?  Can I drink from you to resize me? Goldenrod, Columia, Crimson Columbine? What visions might your fermented nectar reveal? Camacia lily, blackbeard shrub?  I'm a demoted planet spinning, melting in an unmoved corner of space. I'm a bygone reptile that hungers prescription flora and truffles of the body. I'm drawn and fluttering under your black light of lichen ears, lightly salted, cinnamon hot, bold and buttery, perfectly foamy and fresh, holding a spring's yield of aggressive rouge, dimpled lacquer, shouting nature by its myriad names.  I break out in Pentecostal devotion. Where have all the maps of bliss promised to lead? The shower and scrub of ultraviolet pollinators, the ecstasy of scratching every itch at once. My skin's unfinished spit shine beneath the complex solar halo of your caramel eyes holding me down, captive, captivated, broken, open and drowned in teasing, tonguing petals, bucking across an operatic keyboard of size, notes of varying touch. What have you done to me? What have you done through me? What have you done with this amused stillness, this solid river, this silent garden of eyelashes? What solves the riddle of my true name?  What remains after sucking gunpowder out of red hot shells? Thank you very, very much. That was absolutely stunning and so blown away. Thank you so much. James, do you have one more work or are we moving on? I know that we have an interview. It was so awesomely long. I thought those two were, I certainly can do one more if you would like. Yeah, let's close it off with the final poem that you selected. Thank you. For which I forgot, oh, okay. Which I forgot that I submitted that because I thought that second poem was so long. I was like, yeah, that's about 10 minutes in and of itself. This is also from the book. This is called Interview with a Rose, curved as a lip pouting for a kiss. Sponge of sunlight, my tiniest filaments stand in ceremony to your song of color.   Would you have preferred to be a robin burdened with the sky's most unique song? Do you wish you were the moon, a whole planet of petals with an atmosphere of cologne, a dolphin bathing in the coral medicines of an oceanic garden? You itch when you are closed, shy and anxious, unconcerned with weather, death or dementia. You are the earth's soldier of love, desire. Yes. What do you know of it? Okay. Thank you so much for closing us off your section with that wonderful interview with the Rose. Thank you. Alrighty, well, let's move on to our second reader. Excited to introduce Lydia Elias. Lydia is a queer Ethiopian-American woman based in Oakland, California. Her work includes poetry and personal essays. She has performed spoken word around Northern California. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and she enjoys spending time in nature and investing in community engagement in the Bay Area. Join me in welcoming Lydia to the stage. Hi, everyone. I'm so honored to be sharing in this space with you all today. The essay I'll be reading is How to do a three-strand twist. And this is a braided essay. And for those who are unfamiliar, braided essays weaves in multiple threads together to make one cohesive essay. As you listen, try to see if you can recognize the different threads that make up this essay. How to do a three-strand twist. Before you begin your twist, be sure to wash and condition your hair thoroughly, twice with shampoo and once with conditioner. Brush your conditioner-filled hair with a comb in sections. Wash out the conditioner. I never knew how safe home could feel like until I lived with you. What it felt like to want to come home every day. What it felt like to wait on the couch and hear the key turn and see your face and feel my whole body glow and smile. I did not know I could be this happy. I did not know I could feel this safe. But I did with you.  Denman brush, a bore bristle brush, Cantu's Curl Defining Cream, and a hair oil of your choice. There was always so much happening on campus. Classes, parties, extracurriculars, midterms, exams and events. So much freedom. More freedom than either of us do what to do with. I was scared and so were you. I never told you though. You never told me either. Being away from your home where you always felt safe terrified you. Being away from my home where I never felt safe terrified me. We were okay as long as we were together. We watched stand-up comedy in the apartment. We laughed until tears fell. We cuddled. We talked about everything and nothing. I was your home away from home. You were my first real home. I do not wanna write about my mother. I do not wanna write about my dreams and my fear of those dreams never coming true. I do not wanna write about the time my parents betrayed me. I do not wanna write about the grief that has not left me for years. You will work through the twists and sections. Put half of your hair up in a ponytail while you work on the other half. Split the half that you are working on in two. First focus on the half that is closest to your face. Take a dollop of Cantu in your hands, rub it together and spread it through the first section of your hair, from the ends to the roots. Rake through your hair with your fingers, then brush through it ends to roots using the Denman brush. You cried a lot. I didn't, you cried so much and I cried so little that I wondered why that was. I watched as you furred your dark brown eyebrows and ejected whimpers from your throat as tears fell and parts of your face, mostly your nose began to redden. Why couldn't I cry like you? Why couldn't I let it out? If I did, it would kill me, I would think. That scared me, so I stopped asking myself. I do not wanna write about making myself small so my mother could feel worthy. I do not wanna write about the loneliness I felt when I was with her at her house and the loneliness I feel now in my home. I do not wanna write about numbing my emotion since I was nine years old. I do not wanna write about never being good enough for her. Spray or pour the oil onto your scalp in that section only. Massage it in, put oil onto the ends of that section, rub it in, brush again using the Denman brush. After that section is properly moisturized, use the bore bristle brush to brush flat the top of your hair a few times. Shortly after I broke up with my girlfriend at the beginning of the fall semester of our junior year, I knocked on your bedroom door. It's me, can I come in? I asked. Yeah, dude, come in. You quickly responded. You're laying on the extra long twin bed they provided in our on-campus apartment. You began to sit up to make room for me. I sat at the foot of the bed. I wanted to tell you what happened but I did not know how. I opened my mouth and closed it. I tried again. We see, we broke up. I broke up with her. I gassed and tears started to fall. I felt the violent wave of emotions began to release from my body. I looked into your eyes.  I immediately relaxed and allowed myself to release more tears, more pain. I do not know if I was crying about the breakup or if I was crying about something else but I did know that as long as you were holding me it was okay to let it out. I do not want to write about my feelings of hopelessness that have been a theme since I was 12 years old. I do not want to write about the near suicide attempts. I do not want to write about my poor body image or my mother's poor body image or my sister's poor body image. I do not want to write about my eating disorder or my mother's eating disorder. Separate the hair into three equal strands. You will start by braiding your hair until you see the root of a braid. Loop the most left strand of hair over the middle strand then loop the most right strand over the middle strand and under the most left strand and tighten it against your scalp each time. Repeat this three times to see the root of the braid. I had just given my two week notice at my job as I walk onto the campus of your graduate school. It was strange. I was going to see you after not speaking for five months. I felt guilty and ashamed for cutting you off after graduation before we both moved to California for pushing you away for all of our senior year for being the reason for your tears. But when I reached out to you last month, you responded to my text the same day. When I asked if I could meet you to talk, you agreed. That had to mean something. I do not want to write about my childhood. I do not want to write about the house that was never a home. I do not want to write about my mother's abuse and mixed messages of love and hurt towards me. I do not want to write about the homophobic Ethiopian culture I was immersed in for years. I do not want to write about the hands wrapped around my neck. Now begin your three strand twist. Take the most left strand of hair and wrap it over the most right strand and take the newest most left strand and wrap it around the most right strand of hair. Continue to follow this pattern of wrapping the left strand past the middle and all the way around the most right strand. If the amount of hair in each strand becomes overly unequal, redistribute it evenly in between your twisting. When you are near the end of your three strand twist, you will convert it to a simple two strand twist to finish it off. Take the three strands and evenly split it into two strands. Twist the left strand over the right, tighten and repeat. You have now completed your first three strand twist. Repeat this process for each twist. When you sat down in front of me, I became shy. I started to smile and bit the inside of my cheek. I always smiled when I was nervous and you knew that but you did not smile. You sat there waiting for an explanation. You deserved one. You were my best friend after all. The explanations I gave our last year of undergrad were not genuine, just a delay of this inevitable conversation and the one we would later have in my home that month. But for now I needed you to understand. So I explained what I had been keeping in for so many years growing up. I said the speech I rehearsed at least 20 times in the mirror and I watched as you slowly began to soften. Tears fell on your face and when I finished you said, okay, we can hug now. It was strange. I was running from you for over a year and during that time I forgot that you were my safe place. But I felt it again. I felt so good. I felt good that you were tall and I was short. When you held me, my body got lost in yours.  That would come later. You did not reject me that day. That would come later. We did not stop speaking to each other. That would come later. It was time for good. At that moment, all I could think was, I am finally home. I do not want to write about gray areas. I do not want to write about the anger and hurt and confusion and love. I do not want to write about the uncertainty of my future. I do not want to write about providing unconditional love to my mother and never receiving it back from her, the person I needed it from the most. I do not want to write about that heartbreak that steps in unison with me each day. I do not want to write about any of this anymore. That sometimes, that is the only way I can move forward. The only way to get back up, let go and move on. Thank you. Thank you so much for that essay, Lydia. That was really beautiful. Don't forget that we do have a Q&A session at the end for our readers. So feel free to think a question, prep them away, or we will return to them at the end. Next, please join me in welcoming Charlie Jane Andes. Charlie is an author, columnist, and speaker living in San Francisco. She has written multiple science fiction books, including the Unstoppable series, and has published a book of essays. Never Say You Can't Survive about how creativity bolsters resilience. She also hosts a recurring literary event, Writers with Drinks, in which local writers share their work with an appreciative and tipsy audience. Welcome, Charlie. It's actually Charlie Jane. Hi. Yeah, so I'll keep this kind of short. I'll just read part of a story that was in Zizava a while back called This Is Why We Can't Have Nasty Things. And I'd love to see people reacting to the chat. If you're in the audience today, please go into the chat and chat because it feels like we don't actually know there's an audience unless you're actually in there responding. So, you know, love to hear your thoughts in the chat. Okay, I have something to tell you. I'm leaving. I still love you, but I can't love this city anymore. Wanda gestures around, indicating the remains of San Francisco. Smoke break. Wanda and I pass a pre-roll back and forth on the sidewalk in a crowd of five people. Girls in skimpy clubwear, guys in either track pants or wrinkled business suits that they clearly just wore on an airplane. A homeless guy watches us from across the street. The same guy who was just telling us the city seized all his belongings after we gave him 20 bucks. I can't help loving this town, I say. I'm one of those weird people who is a slut, except when it comes to cities.  Glamrock isn't actually dead yet, but it's holding its own wake tonight. This sticky-floored railroad-shaped dive bar has nurtured and protected and sometimes annoyed generations of trans girls, punk sluts, sex workers, drag performers, strippers and random queers.  And it's going out of business next week. San Francisco used to have a million pockets and folds in her long, flowery skirts where the strange and the barely loved could create their own reality, but lately, not so much. This is why we can't have nasty things, Wanda grumbles. The joint burns all the way down to her fingertips, so she tosses it and heads back inside and I follow. Random memories overwhelm me when I venture inside Glamrock. Over here, over here on this tiny stage, I did my first and last performance in the Friday Night Drag Show, which was mostly trans women. I lip synced to an old Sheena Easton song about walls made out of sugar.  The back corner with the long bench against the mirrored wall is where I used to hide with five or six trans friends from the brat army snarking about everything. And right here, by the women's room with the busted hand dryer is where I met Wanda for the first time ever.  I can't describe the feeling in terms of a physical sensation except that there was this valve inside me that had rusted shut, maybe never opening fully since the end of adolescence and somebody suddenly grabbed a pair of pliers and yanked it all the way to the left. Something flowed that was warmer than blood and twice as oxygenated. My head floated. I felt Destiny's Child in the soles of my feet. We danced on and off surfaces with and without rhythm. Eyes open and eyes closed until our hands became petals for our stamen faces. I couldn't believe Wanda actually wanted to go home with me out of all of the pervert stars in this place. Mouths glued together, hands on each other's elbows, grunting, giggling as we rolled around on my futon. But we also never left this bar at all or at least we always came back every weekend and many weeknights. Dating Wanda meant getting to know every filthy inch of this place and the names and backstories of a dozen semi-regulars. Our whole relationship centered on this one watering hole. There are places where you go to get picked up or to pick someone up, but then if you spend enough time in them you find yourself getting adopted instead, becoming part of a whole scene. I told this to Wanda once and she laughed. Sometimes the best communities come out of people just trying to get laid.  Wanda works as a graphic designer and her phone is full of work contacts but also people she had sex with five years ago who will still move everything, sir who will still drop everything to help her move a refrigerator. That's just how it works, Wanda said. It's true. Back when I first met Wanda, I had so many lovers that I had no more bandwidth for all their problems. Like Gravy was getting evicted and Jerry's bed frame shattered and Roxy was getting evicted and Suzie's water heater broke down and ZQ was getting evicted and Frankie's truck was making a noise like one of those truffle, sniffing pigs all the time and also Frankie was getting evicted too. I couldn't be there for all of them so I just started networking them with each other like I got Frankie to replace the bed frame while Gravy fixed Frankie's truck and I was also sleeping with a housing rights attorney named Trini who helped everyone to fight their evictions. I basically became a referral service among all the people I was fucking.  Ricky hugs two people at a time. Wilmot keeps buying me drinks, Jess wants to take selfies in front of the neon sign with anybody who comes near. I'm seriously going to have no place to go anymore where I don't feel like an endangered species. Angela yells over the vintage techno. We drink and we drink but we don't get drunk because Glamrock has always watered its drinks like tropical ferns. The next smoke break, Wanda starts talking about all her lovers who live in other cities. There's the cute NB in Portland, the soft bearded boy in Detroit and so on. Maybe it's time to become poly itinerants or polynomadic, polyperipatetic, traveling around from lover to lover, living nowhere except for a dozen sweeties bedrooms all over the place. Wanda has a job that she can do from anywhere and an apartment that she doesn't mind abandoning unlike me, every city a different body. You're really just going to up and leave, I say. The neon sign sputters and goes off for a moment. I'll come back. Wanda looks into the gutter. You can be one of the lovers that I visit. I don't want to be a way station. I don't want to have to reconnect over and over again and keep disconnecting. I want to be the place where Wanda comes to rest. And I'm going to stop there. Thank you so much, Charlie Jane. I loved seeing the world of Glamrock and thank you for inviting us into it. Last but not least, I'm really excited to welcome Leo Min to our virtual stage. Leo has listened to, played and performed and written about music for most of their life. Their debut novel, Beating Heart Baby is about boys, bands on Los Angeles. They've profiled and interviewed acts including Japanese breakfast via Sayawama, Mooney, Caroline Palaszek, Christine and the Queens, Ravina, Tashi, Speedy Ortiz and Mitski. Leo, welcome. Thank you so much. Hello, thank you for having me and the other readers here today. So yeah, BHB, Beating Heart Baby is out now but the thing that I'm going to read today is an essay that I actually read a little bit of at The Last Writers With Drinks. That was hosted by Charlie Jane Anders and it's called Talking to Girls in the Bathroom Line. I sense them, those radiant celestial beings glittering like craft store floors. Girls, girls, girls waving at their friends who are somehow always at the front of the pit asking, is there something in my teeth with a strange voice, lips pulling beyond their smiles, blowing a strand of hair out of their eyes while tapping their fingers on the steering wheel waiting for the train to finish crossing, wiping their forehead with the back of their hand, touching the stove when it's still too hot and yelping, holding their breath under sweeping waves, cupping their hands around their friends' ears to bequeath quotidienne or astronomically life-shattering intel, pinching their screens and tilting their wrists to conjure other versions of themselves or maybe taking their hair down or up or turning on some light in the background or off to their side or maybe they're talking, chattering to the listeners who may or may not exist, chanting their prayers as they unroll their lives, their magic, their misery, their potential and possibility. They're almost and could've beens and still want tos on calls and work calls and emergency calls to friends and lovers and friends who could almost be lovers and lovers who will never be friends or family or the ones who've earned the mantle or professionals or priests or magicians or just God themselves, listening to music through headphones on the way to the corner store right after twilight, down streets shivering with music and more music and laughter and shouting and crying and life, all that life just for girls. Within the cosmology of girls, there is no girl quite like the girl you meet in line for the bathroom at a party, somewhere between the hours of five more minutes and is this forever? She might look intimidating but she smiles when you accidentally on purpose meet her eyes. Yeah, you can't believe how long you've been waiting, just like what's going on in there? Are we short? Hey, are you sure the door is actually locked? Can you try knocking again? Giggling even as some gear in your mind slips its teeth.  You talk yourselves into two halves of a locket and you talk endlessly, feeling the rapidly contracting silence around you because you trust each other here. You want to trust each other, sharing a clamshell universe until the door clicks open to let one of you in and when it's time to pass the baton, you don't let your palms touch in the handoff. And sometimes you bump into someone and you wait for something that used to happen to happen again, but something has happened to you. And as you walk away, she watches you with not fear but not suspicion. All of this is to say, one of my favorite parts of going to parties at houses, at clubs, used to be bumping into girls while waiting for the bathroom. You'd learn so many names and share yours so many times. You'd very quickly pick up various scripts and situations such as if a girl is crying or there is nothing like a crying girl in the bathroom of the club, she's married, she's more married than married. She's the dawn that Juliet faced and the dawn that gilded her death. Secrets and snot and bold-faced intentions flow like a skating waterfalls. Sometimes you'll walk away with a promise. Let's hang out again at curdles once you step back into the party. But it felt good to be believed. It feels good to be believed and received and rewarded. I'm amping up the drama a little bit. Really, most bathrooms at most parties unequivocally suck. The floors can be so sickeningly sticky like you're walking on a honey-lathered tongue.  But every now and then, you talk to a girl who leaves an etching of herself in your inner eyelids. You might not remember what she looked like, the sound of her voice, the way she carried herself as she talked with you. But she's an extra flourish around a cursive capital letter, an example that justifies the rule. And she's who you remember when you remember the girls. I'd been injecting myself with testosterone for four months before the office I tempt that shut down for shelter in place. I'd already changed my name on the communication channels and answered some questions and dodged more. On my end, I was taking a bus and then a train to get to therapy where I talked for what felt like hours but was usually more like 40 minutes nonstop about the slowly growing certainty that my gender was emerging into some unexpected final form and that the chrysalis of womanhood was beginning to choke it slash me. But once I ejected from the orbit of my office life, I had unexpected time to build another cocoon from the privacy of home and I dissolved in anticipation of transformation. For the longest period of my life, I had my body pretty much to myself. No one besides one to scan, judge or praise from a distance or as close as I wanted. My partner and I settled into a new rhythm and hit repeat. Every day passed as a showering of leaves scattering and smattering light and shadow like diffusing rain. I got used to not thinking about my body though I did startle a few times over the weeks that turned months and then years caught by the reflection in the mirror realizing that something was different. Then the engine of commerce coughed and clamored as the world opened up, I tiptoed around the degraded contours of my scheduled life but eventually did begin going to parties again performing the rituals of seeing and being seen. And I did what I thought I always did as me who I was am bopping and blushing from my heart to my toes. And talking to girls, including a girl I met at a party where the host was painted blue and the rented lights were blue and the strobing halo around her head left a blue after image in between flashes of starlight. She asked me if I was on drugs and seemed surprised that I wasn't and that I didn't ask her for any.  It was hard to see anything clearly through the fog regardless she regarded me and I felt this inner ear frequency shift and then dawn in a flash. She knew she was a girl and she wouldn't phrase it like this but she was curious where exactly I landed. What exactly I was? Mostly she didn't know how to talk to me or she thought she knew but now wasn't sure and I knew that I'd gotten exactly what I wanted. I don't remember what she looked like, the sound of her voice, the way she carried herself as she talked with me but I remember that shift, a spilled open shaft of pure sunlight like a smear of mascara across the cheek of the world. Of course I had to lose something to step into that light but it gained something so much sweeter than it was bitter though the bitterness did linger and linger still.  The last few times I used the women's bathroom I was uneasy about how uneasy I was, how badly I handled the specter of attention which was sometimes real but mostly not and how desperately I wanted to explain that maybe people who look like me belonged here but I knew I didn't belong here but old habits were hard to shake and I still didn't have the courage to face or trust myself completely. Intimidated not by the intimacy of undressing which at least always occurred behind the stall door but instead the fake intimacy of mimicry. I knew enough to know what I should do in that space and how to do it. I also knew enough to know that I didn't want to be there and that every effort I made to unravel the Gordian knot of my intentions, desires and actions would be better spent just changing which meant giving up the girls who are actually no monolith except in my memory but with whom I used to swim in a school, at school, at the club, at a rest stop, at a show and of course in the line for the bathroom trading glances and compliments and cruelties and collective madness and toilet paper under stall seats. All those girls who built me up and tore me down all those girls who knew I wasn't one before I knew myself and all those girls who arrived at girlhood in the same way I've departed. I tugged the ribbon in my hair and it unfurls and keeps unfurling as an illusionist prop my own shy but sure sleight of hand a magical girl transformation in reverse that keeps going farther, further until I hit the beginning of the universe or at least my life. She's still there wrapped around my wrist like a balloon string or a charm bracelet or a child's hand captured in photographs I can look at and ones I can't recorded in writing where she wonders why, why, why? She raised her palms to the sky and planted them on the ground and pressed them together in her mimicry of prayer. All she'd wanted was to make it to the future and I brought her there in the ship of Theseus my mimicry body which over time has become real in the ways I wanted it to and real or still in ways I never knew it I could be. I've never chatted with anyone in the line for the men's bathroom in any way there usually isn't one. Inside the guys don't talk or they stop talking when I walk through. I feel the glances like mats on a hot day but everybody has to piss. I do what I came into do and then I wash my hands dry them off, stretch out my shoulders and emerge back into our ugly, gorgeous world grateful and relieved living the life that used to only be a dream. Thank you so much Leo, that was wonderful. Really enjoyed that. So that brings us to the end of our readings for this afternoon. I'd love to open it up to a general Q and A from our audience. So if you have any questions for our readers please enter them into the chat. Give a few moments for people to hopefully do that. And also if any of our readers have questions for each other I'd be also really happy to help facilitate that as well. I kind of started with like at least one question for all of our readers. Something that I noticed that was common between all four of your pieces was there is like there is like a deep sense of reverence and almost worship for different types of spaces or memory. So, you know, in James' piece there is like, you know a literal address to the gods and in Lydia's there is the exploration of like the college like dorm room as like a space where intimacy is created. Of course, in Charlie Jane's work we have glam rock and this queer space that is changing and the question of what happens when we depart from it. And then finally, we have Leo Min's this ode to the girls in line at the bathroom which is such a specific space. So I'm really curious about about, yeah, where these like kind of divine spaces like how they exist in your work. Like what questions you bring to them and curiosities you bring to them. And I'm curious if in listening to everyone else's pieces it's brought in new ideas about the space that we consider to be sacred. I just have to say like one of the things that it's I think partially because I also miss this a lot while, you know, we were all in shelter in place and not running around was like the idea that there is something so specific about being able to like not even necessarily like make contact with someone in a space like that but to like just be around other spaces like that where it's like the ability to have like a chance encounter, you know, or to have like that moment with a stranger or to have a moment of intimacy just surrounded by other people so that it in some ways like takes the pressure off of yourself in that way. That was like something that I just noticed in the other pieces too. And I was like, yeah, like I don't know maybe it's like the edge on that is just sharpened because of the isolation that a lot of us have gone through recently. Yeah, I'll go really fast. I mean, I'm really interested in how we build community and what kind of spaces bring people together. And I think part of what I wanted to talk about in my piece that I wrote for Ziziba's Bay Area issue is partly how we're losing a lot of spaces that are really important and how we have to really fight to keep the spaces we still have because especially here in San Francisco you know, gentrification and displacement are just driving away communities but also destroying the places where we're able to gather. And you know, I feel like there's this kind of idea that in order to have a really great community space you have to be kind of take it really seriously and build something that's like very kind of institutional and very kind of, you know, kind of sanitary. And I feel like, no, actually the best, a lot of the best communities spaces that I've belonged to have been ones that were kind of dirty and kind of like people who just came there to get laid but then they ended up sticking around. And like, I feel like that's been my experience of queer spaces especially is that we come together just because we want to party sometimes and then it actually turns into something deeper and more meaningful and I think that that's actually beautiful. Yeah, I think it's essential for all of us to make sure we document our safe spaces as a way of kind of like illustrating to other people how the fact that no two safe spaces are kind of alike and the fact that it's possible to create a safe space unique for yourself that may be unorthodox. It's kind of like to listen to the variety of artists discussing the creation and the claiming of certain spaces help and validate other people to create something unique and special for themselves. So it's kind of like as we talk about our own situations it seems to help and validate other people to go out and claim space for themselves purposefully. Yeah, I just want to add on to that. I think the physical space is so important. Charlie, Jane, when you were reading your part it painted such a clear picture in my mind the emotions that you spoke and it also brought my own memories and I think that's something that I think we've had to learn to create and foster community in new ways with the pandemic but with a physical space you go into that space again even after years or months and it brings on those emotions likely and it brings on those memories and I think that's something about a physical space whether it's a campus, a club, a house whatever it is, whatever it is for you. So I think that that's something that's just very valuable. Yeah. James, I know you're unmuted. I want to give you a chance in case you have anything left to say. No, no, I'm good. No problem. Yeah, I really appreciate all of your answers and this exploration of what it means to build community especially as a queer and trans people and Charlie, Jane I really appreciate what you said especially about the Bay Area and San Francisco and how urgent it is that we preserve those community spaces for us. We have one more question from Min in the chat that I would love for the four of you to answer before we depart. So Min wrote, I'm really struck by how much vulnerability you all shared as a writer. I'm curious how you know when you're ready to put a story to the page. I guess I'll jump in. Oh no, you go, Leo, you go. I mean, we can keep the fee, it's okay. We can maybe go through the same order as we did before just because I started talking and now the onus is on me. I think that like for myself, like this has been one of the things that it was just the kind of memory that would not leave me. And there was a moment where I was just kind of like rolling the central idea of like, I don't go to parties and like talk to girls the way that I used to talk to girls at parties or the way that I talk to girls at parties just feels different now. And eventually it's like, that is, you know, your hypothesis in some ways. And the way that I tend to write my own like personal writing is like, I'll take that and then just start spitballing around everything there. And if I end up feeling like I have enough to say about it then it eventually makes its way down on the page because that's how I process this stuff. I don't really personally like to talk about this with other people. So then it's kind of like, if I'm feeling some kind of way, you know, most human experiences are not so specific that there is no kind of common theme. And so it was like, okay, like this is my thing but then how does it, how is it now becoming like a thorn, like sticking into other like the other thoughts that I'm having just being alive. And at what point do I have to address the thorn? And that's how, that's how I know. Yeah, I mean, you know, I feel like in terms of vulnerability in my writing, sometimes that some of the things I write are more vulnerable, some of them are less. Like if I'm writing something that's just like a fun adventure with like people shooting each other with like ray guns, that's not necessarily as vulnerable but then you find unexpected vulnerability in there sometimes that kind of sneaks up on you when you get to like something that's like emotional and kind of intense and personal in the middle of that. And that's often what I try to dig towards. Like I try to kind of dig down to whatever that is. But sometimes I really make a conscious effort to write stuff that's more personal and vulnerable because I feel like that's part of keeping your writing fresh and keeping it like honest. And so, you know, I'll have moments where I'm like, I really want to write something that's more kind of like that speaks to me and my situation more. And that's often a lot of trial and error and just kind of like kind of writing a bunch of versions of something until you find the version that feels kind of true. But it's all super messy. It's a messy process. Well, I guess I'll do it. I guess I'll go next. When I started doing poetry, I did not really hear or see, excuse me, a lot of black men talk very personally and very closely and very intimately and very vulnerably about anything. And I realized that the reason I wrote anything at all in my journal for myself, stuff that was never intended to be shared or poems that I was working on, anything that sent me to the page was this sensation of something larger than me that I both am puzzling about and in the process of figuring out and want some kind of validation for, want to be seen for.  I'm not very friendly. I'm not very much in people's faces, but I feel like what my vulnerability is comes out in the art because I periodically feel cornered by something. And when an animal gets cornered, you respond in a certain way. And I respond by creating art. I respond by exploding in a sort of like understanding and that vulnerability and that ability to take those elements and put them on the page is an act of courageous movement and it's something I was taught in some open mics by some other poets, but it also seems essential to me to be honest and to be truthful on the page because honesty to me is a version of intimacy. And intimacy is something that I don't get a lot of, I guess personally in my life, they're not people I can go grab and share this thing in my heart so that thing in my heart gets placed in art. And that version of intimacy and vulnerability gets exercised on the mic. And it is something that works for me. And it is scary and it's also incredibly relieving because it is a sense of finding validation for oneself and creating like a pearl, like an oyster might a pearl, creating something of beauty based on a slight irritation that's going on personally. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, this is such a good question. I think it depends sometimes when I'm writing poetry, often for me that just starts with emotion. It's a emotion that I need to get out and I just need to put it on paper because that's a release for me. If I share it as a whole other story, but that's usually how I sort of work with poetry and then with other stories, sometimes it is something that is sort of reoccurring that keeps coming back to me, sort of like calls to me to write about. And sometimes those can be the ones that are more vulnerable like the piece that I read today and they can be harder to write, but also important for me to write them. Yeah, but I think it depends. And sometimes I don't know that something is going to be a story until I'm already in the process and I have started and then I say, okay, maybe this can be something and expand on it. Yeah. Thank you so much everyone for those answers. I'm James, I think that the image of being cornered by something and having to respond through art was really stunning. If it's all right with everyone, we've got one final question that I think was really compelling that I would love for our readers to answer. So Dior asked, wondering if any slash all of you can speak to what constraints, if any you were writing through or writing up against as you were writing what was shared today.   And so I really did feel a huge responsibility to be careful and get this right and be respectful of that space that I was one space in particular I was thinking of. Yeah, I think for me, I had never done a braided essay before. So that was something I was sort of experimenting with. So just doing a different type of form and structure was interesting and playing with those threads. And I think another constraint came actually in the editing process with Foglifter because the guest editor I was working with kind of pushed me a little bit, but in a good way. And I, the very last thread at the end was something that I had added on after the fact. And I'm glad that I did, but it was also very hard for me to write because it was, I think one of the most vulnerable parts. So yeah, definitely I think just a lot of emotions can come up when writing about vulnerable topics. I think for me, oh. No, no, no. No. I would just say that like I, my book came out this summer and it was the first long form fiction writing that I've done since I was a child. So then obviously I'm trying to write another thing like that, but it's been in the process of working on that book, besides picking up like other freelance reporting assignments because that's my original writing background. I haven't really had a chance to just kind of like play with language in the way that I used to kind of for fun through short form fiction and stuff like that that I wouldn't necessarily share or finish. But it's like as I've tried to reorient the way that I write in all these different forms that are both now I'm used to it and now that I'm also like in a very public facing, I guess like I'm working through stuff publicly now versus before it was like there was no expectation that any of this would ever actually be seen by people or heard by people. And it's like I have never written poetry formally before but I've always really admired the way that poetry comes alive when it's spoken. And that was something that now that I'm doing this stuff and thinking about actually performing this work and performing this, all of this, that part has pushed me into playing more with the actual music of language as it's spoken. Instead of always thinking about it as something that someone is reading in a magazine or online.  Cause now you have like the onus is on that and it's like, okay, now that I know that this is a path forward for like for myself and like I can both appreciate the bravery of everybody who regularly does this kind of thing. And also I'm just kind of working toward that bravery and that whole new world for myself. Yeah, I was just going to say which even as I think it sounds like marketing copy but I realize I don't really think, I think I feel constrained in my personal life. I only actually feel free when I'm writing. So I don't think in terms of constraint or constriction in the work itself I just feel it dealing with people and with myself on a day-to-day basis. I always love questions about what your writers are kind of challenged with especially after we get to be blown away by their work cause at the end of the answer that always feels so connected and feels empowered by knowing what you're working with and knowing what you're working through. So thank you so much for giving such thoughtful answers to those questions. I think with that, that'll be the end of our question and answer session. Thank you so much for those who have said in those really wonderful questions. So thank you so much for our readers. Again, if possible, please like give them love and the chat, another round of applause. Thank you so much for sharing your voices with us. I'd also really like to thank the San Francisco Public Library for hosting this really wonderful event. And thank you too for everything that you do for Career and Trend Stories and for everyone who attended. I'm gonna quickly give it back to Kevin who will do a final wrap up of this event. Thank you, Misha. And yeah, I just wanted to thank all of our writers for those truly stunning readings. Thank you so much for sharing today and for being here. And thank you, Misha and Boglitzer for creating this wonderful program. And thanks to our audience for being here on a Sunday afternoon and for your great questions. It was really wonderful. So we'll see you next time. Have a great day. All right, you too. Thank you, thank you everybody. Bye everyone. Bye. Thank you.


It's great privilege to be in such a service when we can see such many testimonies and enjoy and apply it in our life. This morning, I want to talk about on a subject, prosperity for the sake of kingdom. And for the beginning, I asked Salamiya to read for me one verse. Look 18, look 6, 28. Oh, Salamiya, sorry. Give, and it will be given to you. Good measures, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you. I want to start from the thought that salvation is not out of the world, but in the world. Salvation which God prepared for us and how he saved us, how he saved us, he saved us not out of the world, but in the world. It's so important for us to understand. Concerning prosperity, many Christians have different views. Is it called? Maybe. Is it good? Temperature. Okay. Many people in church have different point of view on the prosperity. Today I want to talk about prosperity for the sake of kingdom. It's so important for us to understand, with my weak English really slowly, I want to talk to you about so important subject because prosperity, finances is the wheels on which and what two kingdoms running, kingdom of darkness or kingdom of God. And Jesus gave for us command to pray in the Lord's prayer, pray, let your kingdom come and let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And revival, salvation cannot function without finances. And for us as a Christian, we have to, we must clearly understand subject of prosperity and have clear God's point of view on finances because to ignore subject of finances and ignore be wrong in the area of finances, we can sin and be guilty before God. I will explain a little bit later. We consist of spirit, soul and body and God gave for us salvation to restore us back in the previous position when he previously put first couple Adam and Eve. For us to important understand who is our God and what he planned for us and to more clearly understand when we turn ourselves back and see in the beginning, in the paradise, in garden Eden, is there was poverty or prosperity, abundance of lack and shortage. From the very beginning, who is our God? From the very beginning, God placed people in abundance, in surround with everything what was needed, it was prosperity. And salvation, yes, it's true that we consist of spirit, soul and body and main part of personality is spirit from God. But God sent his beloved son Jesus Christ to save us, not out of the world, but in the world. We being saved in spirit, we are still on earth and we have to understand God's logic and his motive and his desire and his point of view. Salvation of the soul, so important, God saved us because sin came, great tragedy, catastrophe which happened in the universe and broke heaven, Lucifer, angels and Lucifer, main angel and his community of angels were cast out from heaven. That's the first sin occurred in heaven. And for Lucifer and his angel, there is no redemption, there is no salvation. In God's kingdom, God has, in universe, in God's kingdom, in heaven there is a law, sin punished by death. In God's understanding, death, it's not an existence, but it's separation on the opposite side. God is light, opposite side is darkness.  And great grace of God, God stretched toward humanity to save us.  But we still on earth, there is plenty of people, millions and even more people around. They come in this world where Satan, where devil, his angels, and they are born in the kingdom of darkness. And God wants to save them. In the kingdom of darkness, devil, Satan, use money to promote, to advance. Devil use money, finances, to capture as many as possible people. Take money from devil, from demons, his kingdom will be destroyed. Take finances from drug dealers, from drug addicts, from perverted people, their industry will collapse. We have to clearly understand that finances, money, it's not just paper, it's not just numbers on a paper or on a screen of computer, but finances is the wheels on what devil run his business. In the same way, God cannot run his business, his kingdom without money, without finances. It's so important for us as a Christian to understand this subject. That without finances, without money, kingdom of God cannot move forward. To have finances, money in the kingdom of God, they cannot be there if they will be first, will be not in our pocket. If God's people will not prosper, if we will not have money for ourselves, we cannot bring money in the kingdom of God. That's so important for us to understand. My subject today, prosperity for the sake of the kingdom, not for the sake of my home, if somebody doesn't want money, doesn't want to be rich, it's okay, but you don't have right to reject money because you commended by God to pursue money, to hell money for the sake of salvation, for the sake of the kingdom of God. As devil tried to grab as much as possible money because he wants to promote, move forward as far as possible and capture lives and souls of the people to keep them isolated from God, bring them in the pit of hell, and wheels of the money, same way, the Holy Spirit, God himself, knows that without finances, it's impossible to move the kingdom of God and save people. A lot of things needed to preach the gospel of God. In Christianity we have in New Testament such a doctrine as a rapture. For in many churches, this doctrine, a rapture of the church, and coming up antichrist, these two doctrines confused many churches. Doctrine of rapture and doctrine coming of antichrist in this world. And many Christians living by the life of escaping, ignoring, trying to leave everything behind, just orientated on their spirit and their soul. I don't want nothing in this world, I just want to save my soul and nothing more. It's true that the biggest value of us is my personal soul. But we have to remember our neighbor has soul too. And our class colleagues in our college, they have souls too. You don't have to care just for your personal soul. You have to remember that we are living in the city, in our streets, there is people, they have souls. And these souls cannot be saved brought in the kingdom of God without preaching, without churches, without finances, without that Levites, pastors and leaders of the church to preach it that the kingdom of God moves. Holy Spirit as an engine, he pushed it. But if there is no wheels of finances, you cannot push so far. And we have to accept this truth. Prosperity for the sake of kingdom. God doesn't want to have your 100% of your finances. God wants your 10%, somebody can give more. But we have to come deeply to this understanding. Many people, Christians are confused. How much I can have? For how much I can claim? How big percentage of money can belong to the kingdom of God? How big church can be? How big finances church can have? And usually we split or we distribute this percentage and we say for politicians such a percent, for prostitutes, for alcoholics, for drugs, for Hollywood. And we have a big line of... Consumers. We have a big number of consumers. And each of them, they require money, finances. And for us as a church, in our mind, we just leave small percentage. But the rest of it, because we see with our eyes, that's the reality of life where we live. And this reality we accept as a truth. We accept as a God's will. We accept because somebody told us about it. And we accepted that such a percentage for drugs dealers, it's normal, but it's not. It's not normal. Such a percentage for perverted people of money. But it's not, it destroys people's lives. Rapture, it's not escaping from devil. If some churches, theologies, confirmed and believe in that verse, which it's written about rapture of the church for the few years when Antichrist will come on this earth. Concerning the scripture, we know that Antichrist will come for seven years on earth.  But seven years are split on half. First three and a half years he will, by lying, will be a snake on the politician's arena. And three years and a half will be a really hard time. That's the Bible teach about it. But when Antichrist will come on his, by God, a loved arena, God allows him to come on this arena and take over to be punished by God, to be judged by God.  That's the Bible teaches about it. And rapture is escaping not from the fear of Satan, Antichrist, but from the judgment of God, which when judged with God will judge the earth during this seven and split it on half, three years and half, when Antichrist will come. Three and a half years, that's really short period of time. We don't have to be scared this time. We are champions, we are overcomers. God on our side and to God, it's God's gold and silver. Finances, all money, all finances belong to God. God is owner, devil just stole it. He stole it for drugs, for alcohol, for any kind of sin. Finances totally belong to God. As a church we have to have clear understanding. If we pray today for thousands locally and millions globally, it's not big number. There is much more people. God sent his son on a cross to die for all earth, for all people. If billions there, God paid the price for all of them. And we as a children of God, we have to think as God think. We have to claim for what God claims.   God don't want such a condition. It's devil who stand behind it. When God calls Abraham from his land and from relatives when he lived, he said, I ask you, go with me and I will bless you and you will be blessing for nations. Every time when God calls somebody, he always promise blessing. And Abraham was really rich man. Isaac was really rich man. Why? Because they work with God. They knew character of God, nature of God. Jacob was really rich man. Brothers and sisters, our church is really young. And most of you young people, from this stage, we talk about prosperity and finances because your finances are needed for the kingdom of God. There is many sick people. There is many who are bound in addictions. There is many who are lost. There is many who are captured by demons, by devil. It's so important that the kingdom of God will have such a wheels to run and go forward and save people. Bible teachers will be on a short period of time when judgment of God will be on earth, on the kingdom of Antichrist. And later Jesus Christ has to come on this earth for thousands, for thousands years, establish his kingdom with the church. That means that escaping, running from devil, from demons, it's not Christian idea. Devil has to run and flee when we pray. We have to accept this biblical understanding. To be rich, to be millionaire, we know many people are rich today in the world. And we can clearly see those rich people, they do not have two hats, four hands or more legs. Same person who is multi-millionaire and bombs under bridge, same person with outwardly they are same. What makes difference between poor person and rich person is his knowledge, his mind. This mind is not yet millions here, but when we have right mind, millions comes. Because we read today when Jesus said, give and that shall be given to you. With, how you said? With good measure, pressure, press down, shaking together and running over. Give because with what measure you measure, with same measure will be measured to you. In many cases, people do not believe that how they measure, how they measure, many people believe that to be rich just it's happened by self.  With good measure, press down, shaking together and running over. Give it will be given to you. Over here I want to say not only about our offerings, but how we give our mind for education. To measure for ourselves, how we measure ourselves, we have to give something. As a millionaire doesn't have different towards the poor person, same body, but because he gave his mind to renew his mind. What different between poor person and rich person, different just in mind. Rich person gives his mind to renew, to develop, to reach farer and they have a lot of money. Devil can renew mind of person and lead to destroy. Three weeks ago when we had our here prayer line, and this one young man over here was possessed with the demon of Legion. Five years ago, because of divorce of his father, when his father left him, he went on a cemetery and because he was so depressed, I don't know maybe that young man over here, but we heard his testimony and he was manifested over here. And demons cried through him that they did for him all things of this destruction. It's happened, maybe I have to, okay, I will take this example. I won't talk to you, brother and sisters, that's my passion, that's my desire. I teach with my week, usually I train my son Ilya, Martin and Vladimir, the three main leaders we have in our church. And I teach them that many millionaires has to rise among you. And listen to me carefully, it's possible, you will do it, because for the kingdom of God, you don't have to be, don't scare money or pursue money. Because money needs for the sake of salvation, for the sake of the kingdom of God. If you will be poor and I will be poor, we cannot do nothing. That's miserable life when we don't have money. And many of us, we experience such a things. Who calls Abraham, Isaac, in Jacob and many others, these God is the rich God, full of love, he has abundance. And he sent his spirit on earth to lead us, to show for us his abundance, his progress. As a spirit of Satan, demons, when he enter this young man, shortly he start create in his life such a miracles. And when devil comes in the life of person, supernatural miracles become happen. Divorces, sicknesses, unimaginable tragic things begin to happen. When Holy Spirit comes in our life, there is the spirit of God, spirit who calls Abraham, spirit who calls Isaac and Jacob, Solomon with his wisdom.  That's Holy Spirit when we have communion with him. He create positive miracles, demons, unclean spirits, when they come in the life of people, they are in the beginning, they can give you something. But in the end specifically, when they discover that you are going to leave them, they will be really hurry to destroy you. But Holy Spirit, God, he is good God.  That's why Jesus said, give and that will be given to you. Because with what measure you measure, the same measure will be measured to you. If you measure for yourself college, it will be measured to you. If you measure yourself for your business, it will be measured to you.  I will return to you with that. Press down, shaking together and running over the good Holy Spirit which wants to live with us. I was, when I heard testimony of this young man, I was amazed. Ignorantly this young man during the night came in a cemetery and just prayed simple prayer, devil, I want to offer to you my life, give me joy in power because I am depressed. And devil did not miss such a prayer. He snicked and later many years are ruined. Devil did not suffer, did not pay price for that body, for this young man. Devil wasn't crucified on a cross for this body. But Holy Spirit let Jesus on a cross and participate in whole earthly life ministry of Jesus on earth. Why? Because Holy Spirit passionately wanted to live in human body. But he couldn't because over there was full of sin.  Why? Because Holy Spirit wanted to live in our body. And that's Holy Spirit is God and he is good.  That's so important for you to look for fellowship with the Holy Spirit. That's so important for you when George today talk and we heard testimonies. That's so important this morning prayers because Holy Spirit, he has all abundance. He wants just parts of your finances to promote, to move his kingdom. But rest belongs to you, for your good car, for your rich house. But rest of you belongs to your family. Holy Spirit has abundance. And we have to love Holy Spirit. And with Holy Spirit there is miracles financial. There is abundance. Holy Spirit, he lead us on such a podcast, sermons, places from the Bible when the Holy Spirit show for us. And we have to deeply understand with what measure I will measure, if I will give, yes including our offerings. But when we give our mind to develop, I stay over here and I not my mind. I can commend to my mind.  I said, my mind commend to my hand to be stretched. When I said, and I stretched. What I did, I said to my mind, your mind can be developed.  Holy Spirit will help you. He will lead you in such an area when you will be exposed to the great business, education, great money. Measure with big measure for yourself. And God says for the kind, for the sake of the kinder, you have to prosper. In Ecclesiastes there is such a saying, in one time poor man saved with his wisdom, cold city. But after all, he will not know remembered because he was poor. If you will have finances, you will have influence. If church will have finances, we represent kingdom of God. We represent God on earth. If you are weak, if you are poor, if you are in divorce, if you are miserable, that's the representative of the kingdom of God. We have to clearly understand that spirit of God and Jesus clearly said nobody can enter the strong man's house and take his possession until strongest one will come and find the strong man. Only then he can take possession which that strong man plundered. When Israelites were in Egypt, Pharaoh took all their money, all possession. It's impossible was to be rich for the Israelites. But spirit of God met Moses in wilderness. He revealed himself in wilderness and he spoke to him as Moses. I am God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. You will go to Egypt and you will take all money, everything. We spoke in there in wilderness. This is the nature of your God and my God. But there is Pharaoh today who won't keep our generation in bondage, in destruction. That's why Holy Spirit raising today young generation who will clearly understand prosperity. If you don't like it, like for the kingdom sake. Be bold, measure with great measure. And spirit be connected to the spirit of God. And spirit of God says, I will be with you. Your measure, I will feel it. Press down, shake it together and running over. This is the nature of the Holy Spirit who lives in our heart. As demonic spirit create miracles to destroy in same way. Holy Spirit when you walk with the Holy Spirit, not long time will go. He will create miracle. He will open for you opportunities, doors, connection for the sake of the kingdom.