— Leonard Cohen, 1964

The names have been changed to protect the innocent. The accused have already fled the country. The guilty remain. They are entrenched, fat with power, emboldened and arrogant, harnessing all the new technologies that strangle the weak. But the writers, the artists, the poets, the painters...they stay free. They slip into the cracks. They sleep on friends' couches. They run away to fight another day. They ignore the illusions of "success" that a prostitute entertainment industry dangles in front of their sunbaked dashboards, cruising down Valley Boulevard from all points East and West. Gathering below the hills of El Sereno in the back room of an Italian restaurant purchased long ago by a Korean man who left the menu unchanged. They have come to this small space for six years and counting. They come for that rare sense of community one can hardly find in this fragmented city of devils. The Creative Writing Club. Once a week, whether you need it or not, a few beers, some salty food, some good writing, some that needs work, some chiding, some brawling, a little bit of magic and the occasional visit by the muse.

Six years and they keep coming every week.

In January of 1992, Cal State Los Angeles University Professor Mark Roberts decided to put the creativity back into his Creative Writing class. After the perfunctory hour-long lecture, his twenty students rambled down campus to Garfono's restaurant. There, together, they read, critiqued and shared each other's writing. Human connections confronted the academic process immediately. But the results were not conflict. No administrators were present. Buddy, as Professor Roberts will insist you call him, was a passive moderator at his most effective and a den mother at his most obtrusive. He was, most importantly though, a participant. He shared his writing as an equal, accepted students' feedback as much as he gave his. The results were an experience far beyond University education. It was Universal education. It expanded the consciousness of the participants to consider the ability to learn along with someone as opposed to learning from someone or some thing or some source. Social interaction with a diverse group of peerage and feedback triplechecked by the wisdoms of spontaneous reaction, friendly ribbing and serious attention--it was a university without a media, without tuition, without colleges, without institutions, without politics. It was a free public space in a little room as large as the human mind could imagine and write.

I think everybody got an "A," but you'll have to ask Buddy to be sure.

The sense of purposeful community established during that Winter made the group of students realize their desire for the class to continue beyond Semester's end. Every CSLA student learns the realities of the Cal State bureaucracy, so the students understood the futility of involving the institution’s "official" channels. But one student knew the intricacies of the CSLA student government. A group was organized to fill out paperwork and jump through the requisite hoops to obtain status as an officially recognized student organization by Associated Students Incorporated. Within a week, the Creative Writing Club was an official student club with no ties to the University administration or any of its academic departments. It was of the students, by the students and remains for the students.

In a world of increasingly powerful swords, it was another small triumph for the pen.

Cal State L.A.'s Spring 1992 quarter began with one less academic course, but possessed one new pitstop for the human spirit to charge its batteries. The fact that the Creative Writing Club celebrates six years now is a testament to the hunger in creative beings and the communal satiation available in the gathering of a few independent minds. Many pens have passed through this loose confederation. That they may persevere because they were here is the reason for it all.