There are days when nobody sees you. Nobody shows up and you’re not needed. You spend the hour talking to your co-worker about comic books because the personal questions get too close to the hotel he’s trying to move out of, and how do you like that drawing of bees posted with a green thumb tack to the bulletin board. One option is to push against the hard spots. Like leaning against a lone tree in a wide open field, the comfort of its shade keeps things fixed perspective.

Hear Ye Hear Ye

Announcing: A reading, this Sunday, the 29th of July at Unnameable Books (456 Bergen Street,Brooklyn NY)w/ the poet, Erika Howsare. 3 PM. I will be selling a new chapbook ("New Place") that will also be available through the Pierce Press site (not yet up and running). Amy and I are in town for a wedding so I wrote Adam an email and he said what the heck why not? Thus, the reading.

I had a dream this morning where someone had given me, or I won, a two door pea green muscle car. I was so happy and parked it next to a small pond. When I came back, it had rolled backwards into the pond. And not only that, someone had built a basketball court over the pond. I was lifting the panels of the court one by one looking for the car when Amy woke me up. I told her that I had had an awful dream.

Jobless in Seattle, I frequented a coffee shop named Solistice, not because I liked their coffee but because of its front porch like sitting section, slightly elevated but exposed to the flow of traffic. One night while reading a Harper's Magazine an older man sat down at my table and asked me if I was an intellectual. We talked but he was hostile, taking me for someone I had no idea I was.

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He told me he was a genius and a playwright, busy staging a major production in Seattle but stuck outside for the night, a day too early to start his residency. He told me about what it meant to be a writer, reading Shakespeare, and writing everyday. Hard work, and I asked questions. At one point, after passive-aggressively challenging his genius status, he snapped at me: "You're the one who wanted to play chess."

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As it got late I offered him the couch of where I was living. I didn't like him, but enjoyed the attention and adventure of meeting a stranger at a coffee shop. We walked back and I asked him to read a chapbook that I had put together. Shaking his head, he said I needed a lot of work. He was tired and grumpy, and I suggested sleep. He let himself out in the morning.

I jumped onto the pier and tried to keep the boat's momentum from slamming into the concrete. It didn't work too well, but Brian and the other's got off okay. I was standing on the handle of a concrete fork of a pier, with a rusty and unused warehouse occupying the middle space. Two guys were laughing on an adjacent pier, and I guessed why: the pier I had just jumped onto was not connected to the shore in a friendly way. The wood was rotted on one side and the seagulls were swooping at my head. I asked the guys how to get off the dock and they gave me shitty advice, so I walked to the other side where another man, wearing a captain's hat, laughed at the situation. I could see a fence down at the end, and there I was met by a representative of the Coast Guard who also laughed at the situation. I asked him if I was doing anything illegal, and he said I was trespassing. There fence was high and unsuitable for climbing, but there was a way around the fence by going along the outer edge. I threw my back pack over the fence and climbed along the edge onto the wooden dock. I said thank you the Coast Guard and walked to the train.

This morning I got up at seven and went running. Near the end of my route, the route around the lake where I get off the path and run through the grassy area where the Canada Geese like to congregate and eat/poop, a man pulls up next to me in his van, driving slowly and shouts, do you agree with all those environmentalists? At first I thought maybe there was some mistake and continued to run but after he shouted his question a couple more times I asked him (still running) to clarify his question, which environmentalists did he mean exactly, and he rephrased it: do you agree with all those environmentalists claiming that the sky is falling. I took this to mean the climate change business and I said yes, but it depends. I said (still running, at this point, maybe a hundred yards he'd been driving along side me), I think they're right about climate change coming but we're not really going to feel the effects for another fifty years, that maybe he didn't have anything to worry about (he was older, maybe in his fifties) but I might, and ran behind his van across the street to make the final half block home. He shouted out his window, "You don't know how long I'm going to live, and you could die tomorrow. Only god knows that." I made a gesture of acknowledgment (hands together in a kind of prayer raised slightly over my head) and ran across the street.

this isn't the exact one year anniversary and what is a year anyway but the earth revolving around the sun a couple birthdays a wedding and a christmas party but it is close enough and on a lovely holiday day in july i thought that maybe this was the time to asses the state of this blog through a little free associative meandering forward that is to say writing forward and concentrating about the purpose of why i'm doing this which lately has become a chore in the sense of its been a while since i've posted anything why don't i post something and then remembering that i have other projects that i need to do such as the chapbook i'm putting together in time for the reading at unnameable and preparing for class and feeding the cat and thinking about seeing the transformer movie because the fireworks are supposedly canceled in jack london square but that's unconfirmed as yet and i don't feel like going into the city because this apartment is totally awesome and amy's gone away for the rest of the week and stuff and junk but all this is to say that the blog has at some times become semi serious in the sense of thought out and worked on postings mostly expanding my comfort level in terms of what i'm willing to show but anonymously and sometimes its this tippy tap writing including everything until a good resting point comes or the cat wakes up or whichever comes first but really truly it's something of a project one that goes on and the challenge of keeping it interesting to myself is foremost and i apologize for letting those down who are looking for something but just when those somethings begin to crystallize is when it becomes pointless to keep going they don't need us and maybe the lesson learned is a process and the refusal of abandonment i wish it was enough to say i try but we all know that's not enough we need results to make investments to make it worth it but the ideas keep coming see adam's and erika's and john's and cole's blogs they keep coming a commitment to testimony and new spaces for our memory to inhabit more later