Geometric Haircut

Liu Hai was said to posses a three-legged frog that could transport him anywhere he wished, but on occasion this frog would slip out of his pocket and jump into the nearest well. To retrieve the magic frog, Liu Hai would dangle a fishing line baited with a single gold coin, feeling for contrast. The same angle from a different side.

there was the man on the street i gave ten dollars a brand new ten dollar bill the story of a car crash a racist policeman and the need for a tow truck the promise of tickets to go see david letterman where cold play was playing i guess i looked the type and gave him my number to get the money back to get his car back in brooklyn on the way to my brother's to watch lost in my dream last night he jumped and didn't make it i woke up crying

and then another tow truck a kid talking frantically on a cell phone outside a bar a scam a set up and approach an idea premeditated a graduate school and a static flock of sameness as a known constant he asked I sympathized he gave me the deed to his car for collateral forty bucks later a couple phone calls to what may have been his parents to no fruition i threw the deed away in want of putting it away

i reached across his desk and broke his pencil both times in the middle of something both times in service to an abstract idea of good to quote again from 'tree of smoke' "I was dating Darlene Taylor until this hippie named Michael took her to a party and gave her drugs and fucked her and turned her into a hippie and if michael the evil hippie is against the war, than I am goddamn for it. That's all I know."

Sonnet

The town is empty because I have my headphones on.
Sitting in the cafe window two men with glasses eat breakfast.
Intellectuals need their space.
The stoplight was green but there were no cars
to go. I walked across the intersection.
I reached into my pocket
and found finger nail clippers. I put them there
to remind myself. John
handed me a pear blessed by Buddha.
Surrounded by statues of the Buddha.
I had been feeling kind of disconnected, and thought the pear
might help. By setting it on the counter at night
I remember to eat it the next morning.
My face is sweet like a teenager.

Holy Cow! This is even better than Richard Nixon's resignation speech to the cabinet...Barak Obama speaks on race amongst other things...

Found Poem

I saw a small parrot
yesterday in a restaurant. He had
soft blue and purple gray
feathers . I got a chance to touch him and to
play with him. I named him
“little blue.” No one knows.

We work to be with each other but are kept by the work. This is a description of loneliness but I am not lonely, worried about the future, the week off, the surplus of time and lack of things to do with myself. If I had an invitation to seize I would feel more settled and I do: Portland on the 20^th but until then everyday, get to know the city maybe travel to the grocery store and settle into this apartment. What I don’t want to do is worry about what I’m not doing or have to do or stay so busy that I run out of things to think and forget to relax to take my time, to ease into tomorrow its supposed to rain all day and I look forward to it, to be warm inside all day tippy tacking on my computer while the insects hide in their nests. I’m one of them I guess. But the strange thing about these fears is that they run deep and grounded in real life situations, because last night, I could not sleep. I tossed and turned. There were things on my mind marking an area to walk carefully around. What I really want is to lay in bed and smell the light streaming through the old barn window the fire high on the mountain unable to keep us warm so far away from home. We try to understand and engage this primitive mind without choices and try to quote from nature but end up with muddy things and rocks held between impossible straights the practice making us perfect and translation a result of our frustration it seems easy to reflect on the earth’s curve but there is motion to coming around.

When I was in 2^nd grade, we were given a crossword puzzle, and I sat at my desk and filled in the blank spaces to the best of my knowledge, unable to find the answer to a number of questions. My desk was in the front row and I could easily see into the basket where work was collected, completed crossword puzzles and all. Feeling a twinge of guilt, I filled in my missing answers with Kevin Gregg’s answers, and a couple days later when we got these puzzles back, mine was affixed with a bright sticker of a smiling bear and the words “Grin and Bear It” beneath the bear’s body. Confused by what this meant, Mrs. Rocco explained the word play and smiled at me.

the following is an email strain from the last couple days...

Subject: hello. please call me.

Tyler:

dear team: i've lost my cell phone. i think. i think it's turned off but am not sure. my worst fear is that somebody has found it and is making calls calls calls and i'll have to pay for it. if you get a chance to talk to this person please tell him that you are the police. the battery will be dead soon. if i don't find it in a day i'll get a new one. hopefully this loss will not tear me a new one. thank you to you and yours.

Aaron:

What is your current mailing address and if we speak to someone where should we tell them to return it to. Do you have a friend with a phone number that the person can call to coordinate a return? Did you call AT&T broadband and personal instant messaging service company to get your plan suspended?

Aric:

Did you fart into a paper bag?

Aaron:

I called your phone and left a fart message. It appears to still have
power and be somewhere. A trick I like to use is to go out on the
street and ask everyone you see if they've seen your phone. If they
say no don't just give up that easy. Sometimes you have to use a
little bit of "persuasion" to get info out of individuals.

Aaron:

Aric says it's at the Tempura House Restaurant in Coral Gables, FL. What the fuck were you doing in Coral Gables last night?

Cole:

Herons communicate by farting. I'm getting a new phone, do you want my
old one? its a little smelly.

Tyler:

thanks everybody. please give it a try later on tonight and tomorrow if you will. i'll get a new phone on saturday if it doesn't turn up.

Aaron:

Dude, go to the Tempura House Restaurant. That's where it is.

Aaron:

That doesn't ring a bell?

Aaron:

Hello? Anybody?

Aric:

Hello? Tempura House. Would you like to try our lunch special?

Aaron:

Uh, yeah, that sounds good. Can I have the vegetable tempura, and my
friends phone as well. Also, what types of beer do you have?

Aaron:

And I just want to double check...you're not the police, are you? I
would naturally be worried about an officer serving me lunch.

Aric:

No sir, I am not a police officer. But I just finished serving a police officer our lunch special. It's a grilled heron breast served with 2 quail eggs and a cell phone in a brown paper bag farted into by our top chef.

Aric:

Oh, and for beer we have Molson, Coors Light, and Woodchuck hard cider.

Aaron:

This police officer sounds familiar...did she have short brown hair,
about down to her shoulders? I think that might have been my wife.

In any case, was it my friend's cell phone that you served with the
grilled heron and then handed over to the officer?

And can you make a black and tan with Molson and Coors Light, with the
Coors Light on the top?

Or would you recommend a cider bomb with Molson and Woodchuck in a
sake glass suspended by chopsticks just seconds before I slam my fists
down on the table thinking about that Bitch and then plop! A nice
mixture of Molson and hard cider.

Aaron:

Oh, and Tyler...don't forget to check at the Tempura House Restaurant.
I think you might have left your phone there due to a recent visit.

Aric:

And as a reminder Tyler, if you've recently been inside of an Asian restaurant in the San Francisco area lately, particularly any restaurants specializing in tempura, they may have your cellular phone.

Cole:

is it an iPhone? those are pretty sweet.

Cole:

this cell phone mess is about as confusing as this story
http://www.kansas.com/news/updates/story/339011.html

Tyler:

you know, it's funny. the last place i ate was a tempura place. really. i'll go ask them tomorrow.

Aaron:

Now I think he's on the right track. Was it called the Tempura House
Restaurant?

Aaron:

Way back in this email session I wrote, "Aric says it's at the Tempura

House Restaurant in Coral Gables, FL. What the fuck were you doing in

Coral Gables last night?" I wrote that because Aric called me and
told me to tell you it was there. He must have had someone pick up on
the other end of your phone from the restaurant. He told me to tell
you presumably because he wasn't next to an Internet terminal. So, I
thought I would "tip you off" by mentioning the tempura thing.
Apparently it didn't ring a bell at the time. I added in Coral Gables
(the city that I work in), for comedic effect, but this may have
sidetracked you further. I think you should check at the restaurant
that you ate at recently that served tempura.

Tyler:

yeah yeah i get it now. i'll pick the phone up today. you know, it's hard to take these emails at all seriously, but i should of put two and two together. the story: tuesday night i got some chicken donburi at a restaurant called the Tempura House Restaurant, right before class and I was in a hurry and only ate half my meal and then asked for a box and made a little to go package and in the process forgot my cell phone which I had set out on the table to remind myself how much time I had to eat...

reading this emails, at the first mention of the tempura house i thought about where i had eaten but didn't understand why the person from the tempura house had called one of you guys, which is a total failure of my imagination in the sense for some reason i couldn't imagine that you all had called and spoken to the guy who works there quickly enough...i think that was the thing: the rapidity of the response that threw me off, (and the fact that i wasn't in coral gables), because i sent the email and then ten minutes later you mentioned the tempura house and i thought it must be a conincidence. what finally did it was maybe the fifth blatent reminder, i think written by aric, that asked me to think about if i had eaten at a tempura restaurant in san francisco...that one hit. thanks for keeping the in formation coming. the funny thing is that i was actually going to get a new cell phone this weekend.

The void eternally generative. Wen Fu. It feels good to say that, to imagine myself saying that. Had a conversation with Shorewood following Chris’ lecture on Alberto Masferrer, an El Salvadorian writer; the lecture’s history leading to a memory, leading to a sense of place and closure. Always a beginning, I asked Shorewood, the man sitting next to me what he though gender normative is and he replied the societal standards enforced by our culture, manly men and those around us. One Big Self. Photographs of walls being built and children painting them.

He cited the example of his sister’s children being given things to play with based on gender, and encouraged. This an example of reinforcement, a virulent idea of ourselves. I responded that it seems like the same day for everyone in the terms of “getting over” ourselves as children; that regardless of where one comes from the necessity of self-actualization remains. Our conversation stopped. We looked away. I was self-conscious of the rapidity that I responded; the eagerness to disagree, at least rhetorically, and wondered if that was a bad habit or a brave one.

The lecture ended on a question, that of translating things for oneself, a theme of the evening, and an idea I can understand. The how more than the what the what the content of the lecture the how how we might make sense of it. Translation and talk of translation, to follow up on, to lecture and ask questions. That to become ourselves we must translate for ourselves we must make our own meanings from our own words as opposed to letting someone do it for us. Here is the link to Chris' lecture.

It's great to be back. Thank you. Thank you very much. This morning the sun burnt a hole in my head the sun came through the french doors and hit the guy this guy sleeping in the closet which might sound bad but its actually a large closet and the mattress fits perfectly so as just enough room to extend fully and wide enough to have a small stack of paper goods on one side without rolling into them throughout the night. All of the above frees up the rest of the room to form some kind of living/working area, two desks, a little couch, plants in the windows, the street outside filling with cars and people slightly asleep from the new style wake up time the sun in a new position the mailman chuckling with his mailman buddies and babies pushing daddies and strollers staffed by mommies and construction workers down the street come back to find their machines covered in graffiti and bikers and bikers and bikers and instead of a small window facing a yellow apartment building there is a entire panoramic view of Valencia which is different if noisy at night meet the artist meet the drunk college kids meet the surly punk rocker selling delicious pizza again the sun burning holes in my head it's time to make breakfast drink tea sit back down its Monday the last week of school before spring break.