So it's fifteen years since my first Thanksgiving - Fairfax, Marin County, California, to be specific - which is a long way from Kirkcaldy and Inverkip, Scotland, where I grew up. I recently re-established contact with someone from that time-period, and he called me "Wild man" - something I've heard before from people from back then. So on being thankful, I'm thankful that's no longer true - in fact, it's kind of ridiculous to think about now - though I'm thankful that it was once true, otherwise I wouldn't be who I am today(I think)....

I'm thankful for the crazy couple from the Southwest, the femme fatale who was indeed French, the coked-out lawyers and realtors, the Mill Valley people who smoked pot every day for twenty years before joining Narcotics Anonymous, the people who claimed to have known Van Morrison when he lived there - and who claimed he was an asshole - for the party I went to right up the street from Grace Slick's house(after it had burned down, and the firemen had been hauled over the coals, as it were, for looting personal items), for Muir Beach, for The Pelican Inn, for Lagunitas and Stinson Beach, for they guy who accosted me in a store to tell me he'd just been in a movie with Kevin Costner and Wow, what a lovely family we were - for my introduction to America, a place I'd fantasized about since I was in grade school - and I'm thankful for where I am now, after all the things that have happened in between - for meeting my wife, Tristi, for (somewhat) getting my shit together, for poetry and for where it's taking me and for who I have met because of it, and for still being here.....