hello. long time no post. it's been busy. what is "it"? that's what i ask students in the writing lab. sometimes it's hard to tell. sometime it's the weather. it is raining. what is raining? it. it is raining. or, it has been raining here in san francisco. not hard but on and off for the last week or so. it's been cold for san francisco, dropping to the low forties at night and last week there was a few reports of a few flurries in noe valley. yours truly has been moderately warm, but it was an adjustment the first couple weeks of cold air and in addition to the feeling that i've become a weather wuss living in california. next monday i'll go to wisconsin to spend christmas with family where from what i'm told, there is a lot of snow and cold. i'm looking forward to it, for at the very least, when i get back here in late december it will feel warm.

it's been a pretty busy semester and even though i'm not going to apologize for not posting more frequently i just haven't had much time or impetus. maybe these are the waning days of this blog. maybe this will be the last post. no, but i've been busy with other things. what can i say. teaching has been relatively peaceful this semester, i've been out of town the last couple weekends seeing friends, i've also been working diligently on a kind of new manuscript for most of the semester that given the in-between semester time of january i should be able to finish and send out. i just killed a bug on my computer screen...it was about to be run over by these letters so i squashed it instead. i'm not proud of this.

over this last weekend i saw rosemary waldrop give the george oppen memorial lecture. it was fascinating! i've also been kind of morbidly fascinated by the tiger woods business, mostly because every day there is a new porn star or waitress claiming they were in love. there is a kind of interesting chit chat about the inner-lives of athletes in today's internet paper. but really, there is so much going on news wise with Afghanistan (i support more troops in the hopes of getting the Afgan government on their own feet. however, in the paper on sunday Scott Atran's dry but really interesting/helpful editorial suggests that doing less would actually do more. He writes: "In fact, it is the United States that holds today’s Taliban together." and goes on to explain this. Here is the full article.).

shamefully i admit that the nytimes is one of my only news sources asides from huffington post which i read during down time in the writing lab and the local daily and weekly newspapers here in san francisco. it's hard work to keep up on these things and if i didn't, well, i wouldn't. but i write shamefully, because yeah, the nytimes has its problems too. last week during the opening days of the Copenhagen talks when the authorities there seized a bunch of shields, steps, wirecutters (and other tools protesters were planning to use,) from a building that was specifically set aside by the authorities for the protesters to use, the times ran a picture of the stolen goods but said nothing more about it.

outside of mainstream media and whatever other tangent i was about to go off on, most of all, and the reason for writing this post, right now, today, is that i wanted to post a link to Jack Foley's radio show that he did last week about Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (one of my favorite books). He did the show not about the movie that is has recently come out and gotten okay reviews, and i have not seen it and do not plan to, but about the book, specifically he does a Freudian analysis of it in a pretty interesting way, explains the Freudian concept of paranoia, and then read a couple passages. In a way it begins to address why popular culture is so obsessed with the end of the world these days. Here is the link, and by the way, I think it will expire in the next couple weeks so if you're interested don't delay. Have a good day and if I don't talk to you soon merry christmas or have good day off.

While preparing dinner last night (eggs with spinach, garlic, some pumpkin gnocchi that I got from Rainbow grocery) I listened to Karen Armstrong, a writer on religion, speaking on the local public radio's City Arts & Lectures series, and was supremely riveted; listening to her speak about the history of religion, laterally moving between topics such as Brahmans, printing presses, politics, and Nazis. She has a new book about that is a kind of counter argument or response to the Christopher Hitchens anti-religion writings, and after finishing dinner,and doing the dishes I sat in the dark kitchen listening while the cats did laps around my legs looking for pets.

Today on Wikipedia I gathered that she's a popular writer on religion, and there was all kinds of discussion on the back end of the article about her particular biases, tunnel vision, selective facting, and the her self-educated-ness suggesting that she is a kind of huckster. Malcolm Gladwell, similarly and more obviously a kind of huckster, on the same program about six months go was asked about the differences between popular and academic writing. He said that academic writing presents both sides of an issue with an intentions towards fairness, while popular writing has no responsibility or claim on presenting the truth. I recommend listening to this Karen Armstrong interview, not the one I heard (unfortunately City Arts & Lectures is not archived) but she touches on many of the same ideas.

In other news, a couple announcements: about twenty pages of sort of new work is out in Essays & Fictions # five. There are a couple of short essays, and a long memoir-ish piece, made up quite of few things that originally appeared on this blog, granted, they have been worked and reworked over the last couple years. The issue is available on-line for free, but I recommend the print version because the pages are bigger and is a little easier to read. Also, on the topic of me, I've added arras.net to the links on the right, Brian Kim-Stefans' site, which is chock full of just about every media you could imagine, all in the name of poetry. If you click on the video link, you will find some movies starring yours truly as well as my roommate (he's in the "vex" series). Along with lots of other funny/weird/interesting video pieces. My favorite is the one about the raviolis.

When I was in fifth grade I had a crush on another fifth grader named Erin. She had blond hair cut short, covering her ears not quite down to her neck. She was not in my class but in the one next door and I would catch glimpses of her during recess, or when our class used the computers. One day towards the end of the year, when all the fifth grade classrooms were having an open "party," I saw her dancing to the Salt n' Pepa song "Push It" and felt unsure of my affection. I actually had a crush on her since the second grade.

Soon after, in my mother's basement, I looked up her number in the phone book, finding the listing under her mother's name with the help of my friend Aric. He was more advanced than me when it came to romance, having "gone out" with multiple girls and generally, was a little more street smart. It was tense; picking up the phone, putting it back down, trying to back out, laying on the bed, hoping my mom didn't come in, pleading a little, thinking twice, doubting. Aric kept me on task.

I dialed and her mother answered. I asked for "Erin" with an E, though, having a best friend named "Aaron" with an A, I was always a little unsure how to pronounce Erin with an E, and pronounced the E with a little bit more nasally sound, as in the word "See." Whereas, normally, when pronouncing Aaron's name, I would pronounce it with an A, as in "fat." Ehir-rin vs. Air-ron. I asked: is Ehir-rin there? Her mother said yes, hold on, and in her walk to find her daughter, she jokingly proclaimed to somebody else in the room, "Is Ehir-rin here?" emphasizing the high nasally sound. I imagined a divorced mother with a single child speaking and joking with her girlfriends about the little boys calling her daughter. I imagined I was not the first to do so, and imagined a nest of women rolling their eyes at my transparent little boy-ness. When Erin came on the line, without introducing myself, I said, "You probably don't know who this is...." Aric burst out laughing and I hung up.

how Danneil Tammet (who has autism) visualizes some numbers ...seems right to me...

The Truth About The Swine Flu

I don't know the truth about the swine flu. However, I do know that last Sunday I came down with a flu that lasted throughout the week, and like most flues, there was a fever, a sweaty body, a sweaty forehead, an "ache", a sore throat, a generalized terrible feeling, one that was both existential and physical (if there's a difference), followed by low energy, a cough, green snot, and a few piles of work that were not gotten to. From what I understand, if it was the swine flu, the problem is not the flu itself but right afterwords, as one begins to feel better and resume normal activities, BAM! it hits you: bacterial infection in your upper respiratory track! And then you die and will go to either heaven, or to hell.

Part of the confusion about what that/this was, is because I did not see a doctor. A year or so ago I signed up for Healthy San Francisco, but after going to a couple appointments with what was supposed to be a steady doctor and instead was a couple disjointed appointments with interns who were leaving in six weeks, I stopped paying my premium of fifty dollars a month because, as Amy informed me, all the services that Healthy SF provides we already available to me through clinics. The only difference is that if enrolled in the program, one gets a "primary care physician", which was not working out...anyway, to make a long story short, I didn't go to see a doctor, Bought cans of soup, slept, "took care", went to work, rode the BART, and worked with students. They tell you to stay home, but I don't think too many people have that option.

Yesterday morning after taking a trip to grocery store, able enough to be out about, I spoke to my mother. She said that she had a flu a couple months ago that came and went, and came and went with other members of our family in Wisconsin, and that was that. Friend Bill had a flu about three weeks ago. My therapist told me he was going to wipe the door knob after I left his office. Friends Thom and Corrie, who I hadn't seen for a year and a half spontaneously came into town for lunch yesterday but no hugs or handshakes were exchanged. Friend Anna who just got back from a ten day meditation experienced flu like symptoms but didn't pay them much attention. She recommended that I get a neti pot to clean out my sinuses. Roommate Chris wonders out loud if he will get sick. Cats seemed to enjoy my apparent transition from human into cat, sleeping as much as possible.

This morning beginning around six the cast and crew for the television show Trauma began to appear in the park next to my apartment. By nine everybody was in their places: the camera crew, the table full of donuts, the police officer waving cars around and people through, the director and his assistant in a little black tent decked out with monitors, the rails for the camera dollies to run accross, the lights, the key grip, the sound boom, the mic director, the actors playing the heroin junkies, the actors playing the soccer players, the actors playing the homeless people, the actors playing the doctors, and the actors playing the none of the above people. Ironically, they have to kick the real heroin junkies, soccer players, and homeless people out of the park to film. One the one hand yes, the film guild people get paid, which is always good. On the other hand, somebody is getting paid to dress up a shopping cart to look like its been pushed around by a homeless can collector while there is a shopping cart of a homeless can collector just around the corner. That slight sheen of fakery we recognize while watching the television and the people in the background? Now I think I understand a little better.

For example the soccer players in the background were kicking a ball back and forth from about nine until I left for work today around one. They looked tired and a little bored. As did the actors playing chess, although they weren't actually playing chess, just sitting across from each other with a chess board in between them. Again, for four hours. Probably more. Eventually the director yelled action and the important characters (the doctors) blew through the scene, something about warning all the addicts that there's some bad heroin on the streets. My roommate and his girlfriend spent the better part of the morning throwing paper airplanes out of the window at the cast and crew. Easy targets from our apartment window. We were all a little troubled by the scene.

My roommate described it as a kind of scorched earth policy, why one needs a hundred or so highly trained professionals to shoot a totally forgettable scene for a totally forgettable medical drama. That with all those people, money and resources, we no longer have any option to fail, and in place of uncertainty we get mediocrity, pushing the creative rock half way up the hill for the imagined expectations of the imagined public and their imagined living rooms which are probably being foreclosed on as we speak. Anyway. Medical drama. Sheesh. Sorry to be ornery. I'm a bit sick, some kind of flu. Since Sunday. Halloween cometh. Today a student told me that she thought once people get married then they don't celebrate halloween. I told her it was the devil's holiday.

This morning in the news computer there was this article about the dreaded Hadron Collider that will inevitably destroy the world in late December of 2012. This is an article about a theory about why it keeps breaking down and how a couple of physicists have speculated that somehow the higgs particle is going back in time to kill the possibility of it's own existance. Here is a link to Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" as performed on Conan O'Brien. Here is a link to Cole's "disorientation, excerpt" and thus you've now experienced the three most interesting pieces of media that I've experienced in the later half of this morning.

Earlier this morning I woke up to two doors blowing open from the wind and rain, which I've been told is a storm leftover from the Typhoon that hit Japan a couple weeks ago? It's come all the way over to California! Wow! so, it's raining and blowing outside which is nice if you're inside. It's also doing something else out there, like little gooey chunks of white ribbon but those might just be big raindrops, the kind that accumulate under eves. Anyway. Tuesday morning. Just writing to say hello.

Been reading a lot lately which has been nice. Three J.M. Coetzee books, "Elizabeth Costello", "Disgrace" and "Waiting for the Barbarians", a book of essay's by Eula Biss called "Notes from No Man's Land" which are pretty interesting essay's about race, reread "No Country For Old Men" over the weekend which I still have to say is not my favorite Cormac McCarthy book, but it was interesting to read after seeing the movie. The sherrif's monologues I couldn't help but hear Tommy Lee Jones' (why do I know all these movie stars?) voice. And finally I started the 8th part of the Language Poet's Grand Piano books but I'm pretty sure I'm only reading it because I've read the previous seven. Okay. I've got to go. Hope you're well.

This morning I noticed a large black shard in the middle of my chest. On Monday it was a deep indigo and there have been times in the past when its been an off-white. I think its made by thoughts repeating, muscles tensing in the same way in the same place, the same feeling over and over how one carries their body tension built into the shoulders or how the same part of your shoe wears out no matter what kind of shoe you wear. (In my case its the back right heel that wears from the left outside corner to the inside.)

Yesterday was the last time I will meet with editing concepts study group. Which made me a little sad and gave me the feeling that I was abandoning them, a good group a graduate students. The feeling of leaving in the middle that felt wrong, the feeling of giving up on something before it was done. The feeling that I could in fact have kept supporting the students in the class if I was a harder worker. But this is an idea I want to get away from. I dropped the support class because it met from 7 to 10 at night and was leading to a highly irregular and busy schedule. One where I had to cut out my own work in order to keep up with teaching and other duties. All that is to say when I don't get to my own work shards of various colors begin to calcify in my chest.

Sometimes I have to rely on outside sources to confidently come to conclusions and commit to a course of action. Say, when I begin to feel like I "deserve" things like a bubble bath or a punch in the nose is a sure sign that something is out of wack. If one has to go to extremes of pleasure to balance out stress, like renting a jet ski, this is one way, but I'd rather arrange the day so that it doesn't come to this point. Easier said then done but going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting to my own work is one way to do it. Another name for this kind of thinking about behavior is: MANAGEMENT

Kitty Girl and Jinx ______________________________1.3 Megapixels

...from the preface of the book "In The Blink Of An Eye", a film editing book (that I am reading for one of my support classes) by the film editor Walter Murch:

Igor Stravinsky loved expressing himself and wrote a good deal on interpretation. As he bore a volcano within him, he urged restraint. Those without even a the vestige of a volcano within them nodded in agreement, raised their baton, and observed restraint, while Stravinsky himself conducted his own Apollon Musagete [a ballet] as if it were Tchaikovsky. We who had read him listened and were astonished.
The Magic Lantern by Ingmar Bergman

Most of us are searching--consciously or unconsciously--for a degree of internal balance and harmony between ourselves and the outside world, and if we happen to become aware--like Stravinsky--of a volcano within us, we will compensate by urging restarint. By the same token, someone who bore a glacier within him might urge passionate abandon. The danger is, as Bergman points out, that a glacial personality in need of passionate abandon may read Stravinsky and apply restraint instead."

Teaching the Humanities

i.
Build a house.
Even if it's the ugliest house
you've ever seen,
build it. Later, you can tear out the windows
repaint the walls, the entrance
way, tear out the wires
and the plumbing along with
some walls to expand
the kitchen into the dining room, or
refurbish the basement with a nice
airport carpet and a
dehumidifier. You might also
haul the junk out of your yard
and fix the hail damage. Roofers
finally have time. Third,
and this is only a suggestion,
get rid of that gigantic
concrete block of a front step and replace it
with something a little more
modest, something wooden.
Stain the deck and patch the pool.
Repave the driveway.
Turn the screen porch
into a bedroom and rent
the attic out to a college student.
Install a new sink in the first
floor half bath. Modular
flooring is popular these days.
Wood burning stoves and
solar panels!!! Anyway,
Fix it up when you have time.
What's important is that you have a place
to sleep. What's important
is the space has been cleared.
a foundation poured.
What's important is that it's there, an idea
any idea, has been made
real. That the process
yields.





ii.
Not all emptiness is equal.
Some space takes work to clear and some clearings
appear, blown over
by a storm or a
flash flood, a forest fire
or tornado. Maybe a glacier melts
and the promised land emerges,
or the previous squatters
get arrested, or die
or burn the house down. It's possible
for a herd of goats
or locusts to swarm and eat every sapling,
bush, and tree branch within a forty foot radius.
Or for a mole to gnaw
at the roots of a thistle blocking the path
of a few pebbles, blocking the path
of a few rocks, blocking the path
of some large stones, so that a boulder hurtles down
the mountain leveling everything
in its path.
Volcanoes are possible.
Meteorites can raze entire
continents. Paul
Bunyan drug his axe down the gut of America
leaving us the Mississippi. In the beginning
there was but a single crow
fighting with an eagle
on a post
rising from the sea.
It's possible
to find the most perfect place
you never imagined, stoned, eating a carrot
change rattling in your pocket cell phone
set on vibrate, but who
would have the heart to start digging here?
Who would have the money to lay forty miles of pavement?
Who would have the fortitude to be so isolated?





iii.
Demolition
is fun, until you have to vacuum up
the glass and find
a dumpster big enough to hold
the spent 2x4s and bent nails.
Not to mention your mud
pit of a yard littered
with Caterpillar tracks and Hardee's cups.
It's going to take a while
for the grass seed to take root and if it keeps on raining
like this it will all just wash
down the hill. It might be a good idea
after leveling out the soil
to cover it with hay and pound
in some silt fencing
at the crease of the decline.
And hey, if you're not going to re-use
those beams, I know a guy
who could take them away tomorrow,
no problem. Same with
the front doors and the kitchen
windows. Construction waste
is as American
as drywall. The good news
is that you don't need to dig
a new well, or re-pave
the driveway. The phone book already knows
you exist. Besides, it's nearly impossible
to bang nails into air
or hike forty miles with a wheel barrow
full of concrete. It might take
a long time but
you're going to have to deal with
the fact of work. Sorry.
I'll come back
when you're done.

...have been enjoying Pitchfork's reviews (9/8 & 9/9 & 9/10) of the recently re-released/re-mastered (whatever) Beatles' albums that are being hyped in accord with the new Rock Band Video Game (no comment)...The reviews are interesting! They're more like mini-essays! Reminds me that I still haven't ever really listened to the Beatles asides from the fact that pretty much every single one of their songs has been played in movies and television and on my father's and friend's stereo throughout my entire lifespan. There was a mix tape that my dad always used to play driving us around in a boxy eighties Camry that had "Eleanor Rigby" (a.k.a. all the lonely people) on it, and as a little kid I didn't really get the lyrics but I did like the song, the strings. In retrospect it seems odd that this mix tape had this and other perfectly lovely but love troubled songs on it such as Diana Ross and the Supreames' "Someday We'll Be Together" and that Roy Orbison song where he sings (in his big beautiful voice) i'm lonely, I'm Lonely, I'M LONEEEEE-LY. Using my 2009 analytical mind I would classify this tape as a break-up sad song mix tape. Why did he keep playing this when we were in the car? Don't get me wrong, I love all that music, but if I were to make a break-up sad song mix tape I'd probably keep it mostly to myself. But I guess that's one way my dad and I are different. Anyway,

All that is to say, it's interesting to read about the Beatles' music, rather than their personalities or fans or as figureheads of an American counter-cultural movement. It's interesting to read about their albums and song writing. It's interesting to put all those familiar songs into a different context. It's kind of like putting a cat into a laundry basket, or a marble into a guitar. Have a wonderful day. I'm back on the Internet after a month off. The semester started last week.

good news. new rat discovered. reported to have "no fear of humans."

was pointed to this via pitchfork. whoa. seriously. or on the other hand...all is well in san francisco. last class is monday and school lets out wednesday. off to l.a. this weekend for johnathan's play and then to wisconsin next friday for most of the month. class has been busy but so has summer been busy too. whew.

Last Saturday on the way home from the beach we stopped at cafe just south of the De Young around 9th Ave. From the outside table we were sitting at I had a view of the a video rental store across the street. Something about it reminded me of the video rental store across from Nakoma Plaza that my Mom would take me to in middleschool to rent videogames.

I hadn't ever really remembered this common occruance before, probably because there wasn't much to remember. The store was lit overhead with flourescents and movies were displayed in rows and around the room. Pretty typical. While I would select a game my Mom sat out in the car waiting. Doing what I don't know. Sometimes, I remembered, I would take an extraordinarily long time to select a game and I imagined that my mother must of been proud of my throuroughness because she never said anything to me about taking too long. What a wondeful and patient mother I have, feeling proud in my cafe chair.

Today I called her in part to confirm this memory. I asked about the waiting but she didn't remember. In fact, the only thing she remembered was how quick I was to select a game, that "with all those video game magazines, you seemed to always know what you wanted."

**

The assistant teacher said to me, "Intelligence is like the camel's nose under the tentNo (a brief pause in thought) no. Intelligence is like the thin edge of a wedge, it pries the door open but that's just a start."

**me and the boys

the image on the far right is BEES. that was a grammatically correct sentence. it's hot out, saturday. pride weekend in san francisco. its the first weekend i've had off for about a month, enabling me to catch up on things like this blog, eating an omlet, making computer music, sweeping, talking on the phone, going over student work, watching a semi-corny but amazingly drawn/gestured anime called "the place promised in our early days", taking a shower, hanging out with bill in the secret kaiser garden roof top, watching cats sleep, listening to bill callahan and the second to last song on the david pajo covers misfits songs album, renting bolt but not actually watching it yet. so far so good.

the second week of school ends and the third begins. three hours is just a little bit too long for an english class. "pad it" johnathan suggests. its nice to come back to work and to have work for all of july, not enough at the moment with 15 hours in class and needing 22~ at the academy's pay rate to really make ends meet, to preserve my luxurious lifestyle. one dollar and eighty cents a can for all tuna cat food. would like to go see the movie named moon.niece beatrix on the left. on the right the beautiful boats my brother built for the wedding. a marvelous time, busy for most of it but got time to relax. the back of the uhaul with knight standing in the center. brother and i drove that sucker to brooklyn. 18 ft. it was hard to park. hard to drive sort of, big to drive more like it. we also loaded the docks into the uhaul .rained on the wedding day. am told this is good luck. more like torrential down pore on the wedding day, or at least during the ceremony. cleared up at night. on sunday people took boat rides. buttermilk falls...kind of yellow. saw all family, many of brother's friends, met some of lindsay's friends and family. sister and i gave a toast, we were nervous; aunt gave a really nice toast, very smart and moving, honest. much love at the wedding. did not make me want to get married or have a wedding. bill callahan sings: if...if...if you...if you could...if i could only...if you could only stop...if you could only stop your...if you could only stop your heart...if you could only stop your heart beat...if you could only stop your heart beat for...if you could only stop your heart beat for one heart...if you could only stop your heart beat for one heart beat. strings. end of song. too many birds. okay. now off to school work. see you around.

wow. i'm in d.c. at my sisters. i flew in yesterday for my brother's wedding, which is in new york, upstate from the city a couple hours. i'm not sure why i flew into d.c....oh yeah, i flew into dc to a) have some quality time with my sister, knight, and niece and b) help transport the boats that my brother has built for the wedding up there. the wedding's on saturday. today is wednesday, it's overcast and threatening to storm but i've been told it's been like that all week. beatrix (my niece) is walking and talking. it's a little amazing.

last time we spoke i was about to head out to a vipassina meditation ten day course which was really something else. very difficult at times and spending ten days with 100 people without talking is a whole other kind of strangeness but all in all it was quite the experience. i learned so much and highly recommened it or something like it and if you'd like to know more about it send me an email and i'll write you back,

but i'll say no more about it on this blog. i got back from that on sunday and then the semester started on monday...one section of LA202 and some ESL and tutoring work. we met in the afternoon yesterday and feels like its going to be a pretty good class. an interesting mix of academy students that all seemed reasonable happy to be there. once we start talking about mla formatting and fallacies in argument this may change but in the mean time its memoir writing which is generally a good time, writing about what one knows best (hopefully): themselves.

in other news, two cultural items that might be a little out dated: saw an interesting movie at the end of may, "The Girlfriend Experience" that may not be the best movie but is pretty interesting in terms of all that's going on / was going on with the economy and the other week in the nytimes magazine there was an article about a comedian named zach g.(cannot spell/remember his last name) that lead me to this youtube clip that also features the comedians (?) tim and eric. it's pretty amazing, but really, everything is pretty amazing after meditating for a week and a half most everything is pretty amazing but soon i'll go back to being paranoid and weird, maybe while trying to find parking in brooklyn for a uhaul filled with boats. talk to you later.

today is the first of june. happy june. i've been off of work for the last two weeks...doing a whole lot of nothing. i feel a little guilty for not having been posting but really, there hasn't been much going on to post. seeing movies, playing checkers, playing videogames, taking walks, sleeping in, swimming, reading, getting ready for my brother's wedding, getting ready for the coming semester, and getting ready for the ten day meditation class that I leave for on wednesday, which I'm kind of nervous about. partly because i've had to quit smoking because i definately do not want to go through withdrawl symptoms while away. symptoms include sleeplessness, sugar craving, horniess, and exterme irritability, all of which i'm going through right now. please understand that i'm not "quitting" smoking, but am stopping for the time being because i cannot and do not want to smoke while away.

but about this class, it's ten days and there's no talking (no email, no phone, no books even!). ten hours a day of meditation beginning at four in the morning. it will be kind of intense, but i generally feel like i'm ready for that kind of study, a natural progression from the weekly meditation thing i've been going to and some more formal and intensive practice. plus, it's free and something i've always wanted to do so there. when i come back i'll have a weekend and then the new semester starts. the following weekend i'm heading out to the east coast for my brother's wedding which i'm looking forward to, seeing the family and my sister's baby. all that is to say that June will be a very busy month in comparision to the last two weeks of boredom and low level debauchery.

pluuus, this month, may, the cats moved in with me, so there's been a lot of cat influenced life recently. thoughts like: cat food is expensive! or, wow, you're soft! they came over from oakland because amy moved out of her place there and her new place didn't accept animals so now they are here. which is nice, though i feel a little bad for them that my digs aren't as nice as the ones they came from but they've adapted pretty well. anywho, that's the news. no plans for the blog in june asides from randomness.

SATURDAY NIGHT I had a dream: on a train like an Amtrak with curving atrium like windows that were easy to look out of. I had a seat at the very front, not as a driver but as a passenger looking to my left at great gray clouds churning above the plain. It was not raining or nighttime, but the clouds were dense and it was dark and it seemed like it had been forever since we'd seen the sun. There was a sense in the dream that at any moment the clouds could turn apocalyptic at anytime, that the world would just end and there was no knowing if or when it would happen.

I was a little nervous about the uncertain timing, but was resigned to the situation and life on the train. It was full of international students. No names, but they were the kind of students I work with a lot at my job. I walked to the back of the train into a kind of supermarket brightly lit by florescent lights and spoke with a Dr. Chang (the scientist from the television series Lost). He didn't have much to add to our situation other than "wait and see." There was also a sense that there was nobody left to ask for help, that if the clouds had not already over taken others then they were in a situation similar to ours. Before I woke up the clouds lightened just a little and I remember saying to a group of students, reassuringly, that maybe we'll see the sun again, but it was still obscured and I didn't really know.

On Sunday I told my roommate about the dream and he said he had the same dream, half jokingly. He suggested that it was about the self dying. That didn't exactly sound right to me. Once in a graduate school workshop another student asked why I was always invoking the end of the world. My newspaper horoscope on Tuesday read "Your idea of "realistic" can come across to other as apocalyptic."

**

Before I went to sleep on Saturday, my roommate and I attended the second half of a symposium on poetry and medicine. The first speaker was a somatic psychologist specializing in sound. She lead us through some sound/song exercises and spoke about music being capable of more than entertainment. She also spoke about a particular interest of hers: Alzheimer's, how it runs in her family and the fact that she has done a lot of work around it and other forms of dementia. I approached her afterward and told her about the sound my father's been making for the last three years at Clearview (one of the "care facilities" he's been in since the spring of 2003); a kind of guttural chanting sound that he repeats over and over:

garh...barh...varh...arh...carh...barh...garh...barh...varh...arh...carh...barh...garh...barh...
varh...arh...carh...barh...garh...barh...varh...arh...carh...barh...garh...barh...varh...arh...
carh...barh...garh...barh...varh...arh...carh...barh....

The first time I heard him do this was in the summer of 2006. Amy and I had taken him outside the facility for a little fresh air, and while standing on the little patch of lawn on the hospital's hill overlooking farmland, he strung together about four of these sounds and then stopped. Almost like a conversation, he would start and stop sporadically, with space in-between. "It sounds like he's saying car, doesn't it?" Like some kind of mystery. "Dad, do you mean car?" He would start again. We took him back inside.

Over the past three years he's come to do it more and more. So much so that his voice has grown hoarse: garh...barh...varh...arh...carh...barh... like a broken machine. I imagine the frontal lobe dissolving to reveal a lizard mind, or a cracked and broken skull leaking liquid the color of brake fluid, or a brain exposed like a cartoon zombie. I told a brief version of the above events to the speaker, waving a hand over my face to signal "no cognition." My question: what does the sound mean? She answered, shocking me out of the closed circuit of my imagination: "Whatever it means, it's not for you."

**

I felt strange walking to the BART after the talk, a little bit out of body, reminiscent of my first year in Providence during the Winter of 2003, goofed up on anxiety and panic attacks, and in serious need to talk to somebody about dad stuff, life stuff; seriously paranoid and unable to open my mouth. A kind of psychedelic nervousness that all of a sudden came up after the event. I felt strange but couldn't put my finger on what exactly the feeling was.

How the dream relates to all this I'm not sure, other than the fear that my mind is closing as well, the clouds are coming etc. but if most people I knew didn't also think there was something uniquely wrong with them I might be able to present this theory with more confidence, that there's nothing particularly unique about a writer with a death wish. Anyway, on Sunday, after a morning of reading and feeling weird, I struck out for the grocery with my headphones on and in the middle of an MF Doom song ("That's That") (of alllll the possible music,) I started sobbing in a good, necessary way.

The clouds. Like the ones I watched over the southwestern Wisconsin hills steaming towards the farm on an armada of wind. Dark clouds, storm clouds, and when the tornado warning would appear in the bottom left corner of the TV I would look through the long narrow rows of windows to confirm the fear. My father was away at work and it was just my brother and I waiting for it to pass. The tornado never came but the storms did, and with them the lightening striking all around the house, the highest point around. I'll stop there. The wind is huge tonight as I write this, Monday might. The last week of school.

flat little gopher ears...







so cute!

shiny matted fur...





how I would like to hold you!

cheeks stuffed with trash...













i could give you so much more!

From this morning's paper:

Sally Quinn, a Washington writer and socialite, who met Mrs. Robinson at the lunch hosted by Mrs. Heinz Kerry, described her as “the perfect grandmother you’d kill for: cozy, nice, sweet, friendly, dear."

hello and good morning. good afternoon good evening. happy International Worker's Day May Day May 1st Spring the end of Winter etc. thus concludes the month of April and the sound of music posts and now it's back to...i'm not sure what I'll be posting in May. I was thinking more collagey kind of things, scanned things but we'll see.

i'm sitting in the speaking lab after a couple students didn't show up for their appointment and have a little time before the next appointment. there's only two weeks left of what has been a pretty good semester, doing mostly ESL and writing lab work, leaving plenty of time to read write and make things, which has been a little bit missing from the daily how to since last summer. that is to reiterate, it's been a mellow semester. two more weeks and then a month off. the government says i owe them two thousand dollars in misreported wages. not true.

this weekend, if you are around San Francsico, i highly recommend attending Anna Halprin's "Sprit of Place" performance, that roommate Chris, amongst many other performers, has been rehearsing for for the last five months. okay? alright. see you later.

Inspirational Message (mp3)

Heroes (mp3)

Recording (mp3)

accident/direction (mp3)

Two Mixes:
Nelson Will Take Over From Now On (link to mp3)
About LD... (link to mp3)

Quietude, 2003 (mp3)

urp ii (mp3)

Berlin, 1945 (mp3)

Johnny's Cabin (mp3)

The Hindenburg (mp3)

thus concludes march's poetry extravaganza. in case you came late to the sequence, the last one is first and the first one's last so as, the intended order of "I've Wasted My Life" is chronological, moving from march 1st to the 31st. does it matter? i'm not sure, but there was an intended order...

anywho, this month is music if you can call it music month, where i'll be posting mp3's of various recordings, probably not at the breakneck (!) pace of march because i don't really have all that much that is finished enough to post but regardless, that's the plan, let's say every three days beginning tomorrow.

all is well in san francisco, week nine (of fifteen) of the semester. spring is here. i'm a little annoyed right now with my roommate about the dishes but in general am in good spirits, need to go the grocery, plan to do some house cleaning this weekend, am thinking about mundane duties but will stop there. read an interesting book called "On Deep History and the Brain" by Daniel Lord Smail, a kind or argument against the notion that history began when we started recording it and the possibilities of a history that includes our psychotropic (read: chemical) needs, including religion, coffee, and gossip; the pleasures one gets from a text message compensating for the withdrawal symptoms of modern day loneliness. sort of. for anyone who has been watching the end of Battlestar Galactica (it's a such a great series, if you have the time), the book argues against the idea that civilization grew from a "seed," further illuminating the show's version of creation myth. anywho. i hope all is well. time to go to the grocery (it was closed yesterday for Ceasar Chavez day).

Cash is King

If you only have enough money to pay two months rent, keep your money and risk eviction. If you know the bill collectors are going to take all you have and want more, don't give them anything. Owing one hundred dollars is the same as ten thousand dollars if you don't have either. Besides, you'll need it when you begin your new life.

Poetry is Expensive 2

Approximating a new P.M., a sudden mistake producing waves of grain and raccoon activities to rival not only the erupting magnificence of the drunk mastodon waving its tail over the ferns, but also the poor man selected as replacement for the tiger. A right way for everyone, a calling, a punching bag barely ahead of our reaching fists but just enough so as to dodge any indiscretionary clucking telephone or lame reel like a film strip letting the light bulb through. Germany, advancing and how long have I asked to be refrigerated shuttling from line to line as such that we no longer have radio to live through, no TV to practice memory skill. We reason as the world prepares gumbo and gammy hens, blood meridians where place asks place to be so barren and inhumane. Allowing us to go free, allowing us to winnow our way towards distant and exotic lands where responsibility can be measured by those who don’t know us.

Believe me I laid on my bed this morning of no consequence. Of no sequence asides from differential equationary partition vision of imaginary happiness, and lines of inebriation partnering with Japanese flowers as bulbous as the bread bellies and their feet sauntering. As Richard Wright Pulitzer dustballs, as part of the menial gym rat lame duck bridal shower pole position. Help me believe this is the fire side gospel, this chit chat macabre violent spasm piece together, the system of puzzlement over Broadways expanded as highway trucks ram their diesel engines through pavement and pay dirt

I wash. I bring you my notes.

Poetry is Expensive

i.
The beginning part father
would bring life statement
generalized
myself, and bring you
back; a nice feeling.

ii.
I remember a girl
my wife be-
came of age, the tough marriage
to read about
them all my libido.

iii.
I forgot to externalize
meaning for you
to you
lead you back to
my father, our guilt.

iv.
While walking the dog is actually
a great risk
of boredom waiting
to go on like this
to die.

I am lonely but not alone. I ride the train to work.

Unabomber
One-way streets
Noun
Black hole
Simple until realized
Day and night
Slips the fold and time begs often
A mother’s face
Without description
Folds of cloth
"Mary-Anne"

The strike
An elastic band
A mushed thing
Roses in your teeth
Outlines
Introductions, puffs of air
Lines of ice
Ropes
The second sun
Comes to me
A brave balloon
Grass clippings
Unsure of its surroundings
Chunks of a person

The an elbow bent over the back of a chair
A perspective
In bronze
A fish in one hand
Two dice and a basketball
Somewhere in between
Two figures and a roach
Galoshes
Screaming eagles and the rest
Famous people holding hands
Intentionally obscure
Pieces of eight
Advice
The tip of an elbow

a crib of wrought iron bars
yarn
a terrific pass play
beef rich in hormones
weather passing overhead
undetermined

Workbook

1. Ronald ________ roses, the heathen collapsed
__into the kitchen. Rescue us.
2. Torrid fantasies glad you _________ it
__wasn't hot enough?
3. The young only died, _________
__re: work site.
4. Give us back to God! _________

Love Poem

Thank you.
I’m sorry.
Say it.
I love you.
Say it.
I love you too.
I’m sorry.
Thank you.

Talking to Myself

i. Authority

My boss says, “what have you been painting today?”
and I says the doors, and he says the “doors.

What time do you get here in the morning?”
“Seven thirty.” I says, “You know, I work hard for you all.”

“Did I say that you didn’t?”
“No.”

“I will ask you what you have done,
do you understand?” Never

what I will do.



ii. Café, Tuesday Night

Christ died, I just realized
this is Christian
rock.

I called you by name (?)
Before you were free

“Were not of this world” (the question mark
is mine)



iii. Fable (no moral)

I asked my pants
which pockets to use: “All of them,
of course.”

Of course, stuffing
my wallet into the back pocket, thinking
are you sure

you don’t mind? The zipper
strangely silent, denim whispers my
passing hand.

I Bought

I bought a sweater I bought a pen.
I bought a small animal from the farm.
She bought a puppy and I sold it to her.

I stood in line but changed my mind.
I ran out of the store with a new pair of glasses.
I stole some fishhooks. I bought a book after trading in some used books.

I rode a horse into the saloon and bought a sarsaparilla.
I bought a cat’s health.
I paid the veterinarian.

I bought a train ticket and took a trip.
I bought a bagel and ate it in the store.
I bought one but forgot it. I bought a bag of barley and fed the horse.

I used my debit card.
I used my debit card to buy groceries.
I used my debit card to buy groceries at Trader Joe’s.

Trader Joe’s is crowded full of shoppers buying smartly packaged goods.
I’m one of them.
I was given allowance and I spent it.

I told my sister I was buying food but instead bought pot.
I bought an airplane part but didn’t know how to use it.
I bought into it.

I lied.
I lied to myself about what I wanted and bought wheat bread.
I wanted to buy white bread.

Careerism

Lines of poetry flashing through my head all night.
Poems I will never write. A bitter man rots from within
sings Smog. The line preceding it goes:
bitterness is a low-er sin. It’s too late for the rhyme.

Bought a Boston Review and read it, each article
a reminder of what I haven’t done, what I could be doing.
Instead I took work off early and pissed the rest of the day away.
No poetry, but a trip to the grocery. Pornography.

Why hasn’t anyone picked either of my manuscripts?
Can’t they see how brilliant I am?
Instead it’s this striving, this wanting
to be something other. Perhaps I need a psychologist,

or a dose of good news from an outside source.
Perhaps I need to be saved.
The life of the bourgeois.
Werner Herzog and the

paved road, but my imagination isn’t brave enough
to envision new surroundings. Work a while
and wait. I ask myself:
what good can come of this?

Liz made hers to cream the competition,
the only way she could get heard. Forrest said
“some people get on the 1st train car”
and said I was one of them.

The only problem is that I’ve been staring out the window
way too long. Passed on the way to the dining car.
Faceless and nameless.
Thingly.

What I want is to be published, to have a book
that people can read and get back to me about.
To have and to hold. This
I think, is what I want.

Easter

A man with blood on his head stumbles into the street.
Wind swept plaza at the corner of 34th and 7th .
Sadness.
I think I’m beginning to know what this is.

The corner of 42nd and 6th.
“It’s not hard to leave you just do it.”
Unless you miss the bus, I thought to myself.
A windy day.

Nobody cares how you do it.
I thought I.
A man drinks his Coke.
The shadow of One Penn Plaza.

Between us, a young couple escapes into each other.
An old man wanders without bearing.
The pull of the moon.
The bus.

Poem on my 30th Birthday

I remember rain
running down the shingles
of the building. Seattle,

2001. I sat in a green chair
in a pink room
under orange light.

I wrote poems.
I remember the rain running
down shingles

just outside the window,
the view a corner
and a few branches. The green

algae on the black
tiles. Evening in Seattle
and nobody

was home. I sat
and wrote poems in the warm
orange light.

Sestina

Standing on the great wide plain
I tried but could not feel embarrassment.
I clapped my hands, farted, walked in a wide circle
Flapping my arms and shouting obscenities into the sky.
Still, the emotion refused to emerge.
I got to thinking in terms of metaphysics:

The basics, not this “what is being” kind of metaphysics,
But the idea that things, plain
old things, real things, will emerge
as solutions to problems like embarrassment.
A bird might drop dead out of the sky
Or likewise, looking behind me at the circle

Of worn dirt, dust rises in the shape of a circle
Sticking to my sweaty head, thinking about metaphysics.
Suddenly I see a tree outlined against the sky
And it comes to me, somehow, it’s this plain
This place. I’m too comfortable for embarrassment.
So in order for it to emerge

I began to remove my clothes, to emerge
In somebody else’s dream, thoughts racing in a circle
In myself, but still no embarrassment.
The wind, or the metaphysics
Of an imagined wind, pricks the hair on my arm, the plain
Curve of a goose bump beneath the sky

Blue sky
Apart as object before nerve endings emerge
And I feel connected in plain
Straight vectors from the bones that en-circle
My heart. Removed from all this talk about metaphysics
I touch my lip: embarrassment

Not as addition to but embarrassment
in place of. The sky
turns red as the Earth revolves or metaphysics
As explanations that emerge
And replace the original: a circle
For an eye, a line for a plain

For a sky filled with embarrassment.
As people began to emerge, there I was on a plain
naked and walking in a circle. We didn’t talk about metaphysics.

Mineral Point

Bob.
Susan.
AbbyBen
and Tyler.

April.
Lucy.
SterlingTuck
and Andy.

Tom.
Alpha-Romeo.
Watercress.
Dirt bike.

Ted.
Adam.
Matt.
Cathy.

Tuesday, 4:54 PM

While fantasizing about
publishing
a Korean tour bus pulls up to the curb.

They spill out
to take pictures of San Francisco
City Hall. Five minutes

later
they climb back aboard
and drive away.

Scene

Walking home I imagine
my life as a movie: it’s raining
and I jog across the street. A cab

cuts through the midground and large
grainy yellow names
are brought to the fore. I imagine

this as the start of the story's
arc, propelled under the careful
guidance of a trustworthy director working

and keeping watch, while I sit
watching basketball
at a Mexican restaurant in Oakland

California.

Advice

Liz told me to be careful of assumptions. That
you know what I know, while I
often enough don’t know, and assume

the same: we are lost
but at least we’re together. CD
chided this loyalty, a tendency

based not in work, but in
gratitude: the fact of Gale being in his office
everyday. The fact of

Hello. Meanwhile, Forrest
announces “something inside of me is broken”
and leaves us, unsure if we should clap.

Or more so, I helped Liz move
when the Iowa winter burst
her pipes. I painted

Brecht’s bedroom. My father insisted I be
myself, not to worry
what others do. My mother

told me about her summer at Dartmouth,
the press of sororities
and gave advice: if you don’t like

where you are, leave. “You don’t have to
follow him,” Susan told me
on the edge of my father’s bed.

I asked Professor Peterson
if there were limits
to sociology. He drew a grid.

From then on I wrote poetry.
More accurately
I don’t know what else

to do. Poetry as an escape
from making decisions
about How to live. What to do.

Wallace Stevens. An insurance executive.
Dr. William Carlos Williams .
George Oppen

organized unions, and disappeared. He shunned
his family, his fate. Most
of the writers I know

are in school one way
or another
unlike Erika, or Adam, who made it out

on the farm, or bookstore
respectively. I look for an authority
and find none. I look

to my notes, to books
to people
in hopes for instruction: A slender neck

is a sign that one
has never been in love. A long hair
on the left eyebrow

is a symbol of long life. That an attempt
to save a drowning man
is to offer oneself as substitute.

hi. its a dribbly drippy night in san francisco. its supposed to be like this all next week which is good because there hasn't been much rain in these parts lately. the rain is good because it keeps plants healthy. it also provides drinking water for humans and animals. buses are good because they take people from place to place. the ones in san francisco run on a wire mysteriously powered by electricity sent from a central hub. tonight i used one to get to the meditation group that i sometimes attend on sunday nights. eugene, the leader, was back from his trip and he talked about his trip to africa, expanding ones horizons and stepping out of comfort zones. it was good. i met some guy from ireland who had come to san francisco looking for work and ran into greg's brother ken, not that anybody who reads this knows who these people are but that's kind of part of the fun isn't it?

anyway, i've been away from the blog, not the computer but the blog, busy being sick (a three week flu like thing), working, and sending out manuscripts. its manuscript season in the very tiny poetry world that i like to think i inhabit, so it was time to prepare a hopeless manuscript for a hopeless contest and throw my lot in with the ten thousand others who arguably *deserve* to be published. its kind of a yucky feeling preparing and sending out manuscripts, essentially paying strangers to read your work. it's so much more normal feeling when you know the people (or at least have an acquaintance with) you are sending the work to. instead you spend your time preparing work for the great void. but i'm not complaining, just reporting on yet another suck ass state of the nation that one is told they need to endure. which is a great segway

to my next trick: i'll be posting a little collection of poems, one a day or every other day, throughout the month, mostly little lyric poems from the last year or so that i'm too lazy to send out to journals. i call this collection "I Have Wasted My Life" after the line in a James Wright poem that can be found here, on this suspicious looking website. So please, enjoy

840 Valencia (Part 2)

The ambiguity of who was going to stay coupled with personal allegiances made for a particular mix of entitlement. I, on the one hand, felt entitled because I was better friends with Chris (a friend from graduate school) than Casey was, and so it made more sense that I stay on in the apartment if Amy left. On the other hand Casey's rental agreement was with Amy and not Chris. If Amy decided not to come back (and Chris did) then Casey could stay in Amy's room and it would be an easy transition. There were two ways to argue and both were fair, depending on who you knew.

What Casey and I didn't know, but soon learned, was that Amy and Chris' communication about all of the above was less than fluent. Amy might talk to Casey on the phone about her plans, Casey would relay the information to me, now taking the form of gossip, and in turn I would pass it on to Chris. Or I would hear something from Liz (a mutual friend of Amy and I), I would pass the information on the Casey, etc. It became apparent that Amy and Chris weren't speaking to each other and to be fair, they tried, but both being absorbed in two different worlds / time zones made things difficult. Maybe this is how information gets spread (selectively) when nobody is in the same place at the same time. Anyway, the effect of all this was four different ideas of the future.

Meanwhile, Casey and I lived relatively peacefully in the apartment, neither of us unable to unpack our boxes or settle. This lasted for six months until Casey volunteered to leave. I write this as a post-script in the apartment, Friday morning San Francisco rain and finally at a (make shift) desk. Not because the story is finished, but because over the winter vacation I had trouble getting to sleep thinking that I had been screwed over after Casey had left. When I got back yesterday I was still angry, the flip flopping and positioning and how leaving the apartment seemed like a better option than to be caught up in some weird drama with people that I apparently didn't know very well. Anyway, I might get into trouble writing like this, so I have to be careful to not spill my angst in a way that does more harm than good. My hope is that I can tell the story in a way that everybody can agree on. It is probably this instinct that keeps the conflict open.

My brother and I listened to Obama's inauguration address on the radio of a Mazda 3 in the hills of West Virginia. We were on our way back from our great aunt's memorial service that we had left for on Sunday morning. An eleven hour car ride from New York, we passed the time on our way there playing silly road games and a long discussion that hinged on the assertion that in reading our brain pays attention to every letter in a word and processes it subconsciously while our conscious mind handles the meaning making portion of reading. Regardless, we got to our uncle's around eight, sister and husband and baby and dogs got in from D.C. at nine. The next morning along with cousins and cousin's children, we set aunt Jean's coffin on a wooden palette and the grave diggers did the rest. Aunt Jean didn't want any services and her wishes were respected.

She was the youngest of three sisters, my father's mother the middle sister, and all three were buried next to each other. She was the grandparent that would come with us to Dollywood, take us to the pool, and in general, make efforts to meet us kids wherever we were at; probably our only grandparent to do this, the fun one. She was also incredibly stubborn and had a reputation for constant criticism spilling out of her mouth, quick to tell you that your haircut is terrible and that your hand writing sucks. Just as quick to love, a squeeze or to give some sugar (her word for a kiss), this honesty, if that is what we call it, was also what made her endearing and there was no doubt how much she loved her sister's children, and their children (us).

After a pizza wake we all went over to her house and began the process of figuring out what to do with her stuff. My sister claimed some light fixtures, I got some end tables and some pans, my brother took with him an eight pack of twelve ounce bottles of Coke, cousin David joking/asking if he could drink my brother's inheritance. I found in an old box of jewelry, the names of my grandmother's children, my brother sister and I and our two cousins, etched on bracelet and a locket containing an old picture of aunt Jean and grandmother Anderson, what looked like a high school picture of them both, fresh faced and smiling in the sun. I sat down thinking that I would write about Obama's speech, reacting to the silliness of pundits talking for six hours about a twenty minute speech, instantly analyzing what might be better left to simmer, but never mind about that. My brother and I made it back to New York last night, and I leave for home (is where one starts from, T.S. Eliot) tomorrow.

840 Valencia (Part 1)

Last march I moved out of the Oakland apartment into a two bedroom San Francisco sublet on Valencia in the Mission district. I was going to take over Chris' room until the end of May while he was away in France doing some movement related studies. He got back in June but was again headed away to teach in El Salvador and a residency out in New York (state), so it made more sense for me to stay until he got back from the second trip, extending the sublet until the end of October.

Concurrently, Chris' roommate Amy was also going to be out of town, working on a Sol LeWitt installation at Mass MoCA until the end of August. Amy found Casey to sublet her room. Since Amy was leaving a month before Chris, I moved into Amy's room in the month of March, the plan being that when Chris left at the beginning of April I would move into Chris' room and Casey would move into Amy's room. In theory I was subletting from Chris and Casey was subletting from Amy, and both Chris and Amy would deal with any subletting issues that came up based on this division.

The trouble, or ambiguity of who is where until when, began when instead of me moving out of Amy's room in April when Chris left and Casey came, I stayed in Amy's room and Casey moved into Chris' room. Though this didn't create any immediate problems for Casey and I, or Chris and Amy, it mucked up the clear cut lines of communication and division of responsibilities.

Originally Amy was due back at the end of August, but having met and fell in love with Nobu out in Massachusets, her plans changed. Instead of coming back immediately, she and Nobu decided to come back to San Francisco and live together. This meant that Amy would be moving out of the Valencia apartment for a number a reasons, the most important being that the apartment was not big enough for three people (Amy, Nobu, and Chris). Thus raising the question: who was going to take Amy's place?

But let's back up a little bit. Casey and I had been living together since April and were getting along just fine. We weren't the best of friends but were both semi-reasonable people, relatively clean, respectful of each other's space, etc. and happy to be in the apartment. At some point early in the summer the possibility was raised that Amy might not be coming back and we talked a little bit about who would stay. Around that same time Chris was in between trips and was around the apartment to pick up some things. He was frustrated at not being able to find what he was looking for through the hubris of Casey's things, and offhandedly, walking down Valencia after lunch, told me that if Amy moved out he would rather live with me than Casey.

A couple days latter, fueled by the idea that if I know what I want I have every right to pursue it (as opposed to passively hoping that things and people will work out in my favor), I mentioned to Casey Chris' remark and the bad blood began to flow.

Brief shout out to Tim DeChristopher the environmental activist / graduate student who mucked up an oil-lease auction in Utah. Civil disobedience at its 21st century best! Here is today's Washington Post article that reasonably summarizes his actions (it requires creating a washington post account which only takes a second...sorry. Newspapers are hard up anyway these days).

Dreaming, in college (will I ever leave?) that part my my final assignment was that I was going to burn down the library. I got it cleared with everybody in the library, and nobody seemed to be bothered by my ambition, so I picked a time right before it closed and wadded up some newspaper and sticks, set fire to it around the computer station and left. Soon I found out that the fire didn't catch and I out one final project. I was disappointed and a little embarrassed that I had failed. What am I going to tell all those people who find out that I didn't burn it down?

Anyway, dreaming in DC, at my sisters and husband's house. I've been in nanny mode feeding the baby mangoes while sister is at work and husband is working on finishing the kitchen. This weekend I am off to Virginia to see friends Erika and John.

Snitznoodle + Neice