Happy New Year. I'll be back in January.

My focus group has just been canceled. Seriously. They were going to pay me to talk about cigarettes. Say what you mean to say. Super Ego ID Ego Etc. Cat sits on desk while authentic blues play on record player. Monday morning still need to finish grades. Going to see Tron this afternoon will be stoned by Disney. Today's Chautauqua is about this blog. Is that boring? Feedback. Authentic blues. Scratched record repeating on unintelligible fragment. Simply: if there is no risk involved in the project forget it. Do something else that is more interesting. Watch a movie. Make out. This semester the project has been a simple one: consistency. To stick to a schedule. In the past there have been more interesting projects, memoir projects or projects where the posts themselves I was not sure of. There have been plenty of those in the last four months: things that I'm not sure I should put up for all to see. This fear of saying too much, something stupid or embarrassing; the presence of this feeling tells me I'm doing something right. Fear equals risk imagined or real who cares nobody will remember anyway. East Saint Louis. But one poor lousy dime. What an imagined reader might think of anything is impossible to know or predict. Following one's own sense. Hard to know what one's own sense is, what direction attention leans. Requires health. Quiet. Some space. Two weekends ago Steven told me about a dream he had: sitting on some jagged rocks and it suddenly it occurred to him that the secret to sitting on the rocks was "balance and triangulation." His waking self didn't know what this meant but was amazed by its specificity. Be specific. As if our dreams can be kept secret. Make me a pallet on your floor.

The semester is over! Six weeks of (unpaid) furlough! Filing for unemployment! Final grading! Christmas shopping! Wisconsin! Christmas! New Years! Chicago! It's raining! Thank you! Good afternoon!

Sorry about all the political stuffs as of late but wait a minute one more thing: an interesting little editorial from Sunday's paper about the Obama tax cuts. Instead of politics, Ishmael Reed uses sociology and race to explain Obama's compromise. "What Progressives Don't Understand About Obama." Psychology and class are useful ways to talk about politics, don't you think?

**

Tomorrow morning will be the end of the digital photography class where there were three students who needed my help. Five actually, but by the three quarter point two of them mysteriously disappeared. Like Batman. Feedback and critique is mostly what will take place on the last class, but like a lot of critiques, it's mostly the teacher who does the talking. In my experience with writing workshops, a helpful critique depends mostly on if the other people in the room are interested in each other, and by extension, each others work. In a studio class (as opposed to a seminar) where everybody is just trying to keep up, it doesn't leave much time for developing group dynamics. Then again, like the current incarnation of my creative writing class, even though we've had plenty of time to 'bond' the workshop hasn't exactly gelled. There are too many variables to possibly understand why some groups work and some don't. Maybe it's a time issue or an effort issue or a homework issue or a confidence issue or a scheduling issue or an economic issue or a personal issue or a teacher issue or an attendance issue or a classroom issue or not. I'd be lying if I said I didn't take it personally, and there lies the problem. And the solution.

One of the students that I've been supporting in the digital photography class has been having trouble with the instructor's critiques, not exactly satisfied with the idea of talking about possible interpretations rather than hard line direction as to what she should or should not include in the photograph. The idea that our creative decisions are our own rather than the jurisdiction of larger governing aesthetic bodies; idea of classics, and canons, and way that things should be. Rather, with this instructors critique, the road to justified creative decisions begins with the awareness of possible interpretations. That you can't control something if you don't know it exists. An approach I tend to favor but for many students coming from East Asia, this is strange way to go about education. "It's the American style!" Freedom to figure things out on our own. And the freedom to fail if we don't have enough time and/or money to do so.

Whew. Back to normal a gray day in San Francisco it's the last week of the semester. Today I'll go to my story boarding support class and watch final projects. I probably will not be needed to reiterate whatever feedback comes up from American English into International English but it will be fun to see the culmination of the students' work this semester, short films shot with a Super 8 camera. Come home and do laundry. Finish reading the Sunday paper. Tuesday afternoon I'll finish the pronunciation classes I've been running, and on Thursday and Friday I'll finish in the writing lab. As the main even,on Thursday and Friday I'll finish my creative writing and rhetoric classes. Mucho change coming very soon. "Preparing for the dive is always a tense time." samples the Boards of Canada. It's been a pretty good semester. I'll be sad to see it go.

"if self can be compared to a raccoon" (click to enlarge)

How disappointing Obama's presidency has been. For a while, compromises on bailouts, health care, wars, etc. were like, "okay, the benefit of the doubt for you Mr. community organizer Chicago pragmatic first African-American academic liberal sympathizer President" but the extension of the Bush tax cuts is kind of 'it', as far as my faith in the guy. It must be difficult to be in charge of running the entire world! Bombarded by one thing after another I don't know how anybody could possibly keep up with all that, much less keep in touch with their own beliefs. Jon Stewart made the observation that since the World Trade Center attacks the media has been on a 24 hour breaking news cycle, and we've been collectively stuck in that gear ever since. This makes sense to me. And though it doesn't excuse the president's misguided decisions, it gives them cause.

Another collaborative poem as written by my current section of Creative Writing. This one is an exquisite corpse, lightly edited.

Sugar Skulls

Old grapes are sour but sweet.
____"Hella deep man." The cold cat said
smoking his own brain.

Meanwhile another weed tends the garden
____until its hands are bloody. Its glass eye
rolls lazily around its skull.

People tend to like sugar skulls but why?
____Too many questions and not enough answers
that don't always lead back

to the questions of life, a stream of endless heartaches
____cured with pills, for its better to taste mud
than to get it in your eye, a

deep dark hole into the soul where love or hate
____can be found at its most desperate
state and religion will both burn when the volcano
________erupts.

Two Dreams I Had While Playing Fallout: New Vegas

I am somewhere but at the end of its path, standing in a corner in front of a pair of window frames that extend from the height of my waist to a couple feet above my head. There is no glass in the window frames and I can see outside: a tree, some hedges, and a bird feeder. What feels like a mid-western backyard. Instead of stepping through the window I have to retrace my steps. These are the rules. But even before I can do this, I have to finish the conversation I am having with the person on the other side of the window. There are dialogue options. What I am about to say is yellow. What I could say is orange, and I'm moving quickly through the conversation, trying to finish so I can get out of here.

*

I am walking down a hallway and there are doors on either side like an apartment building. I open each door and talk to people. I do not know who these people are, but cannot move forward until I talk to all of them. One person in each room, standing just inside the room to receive me as the doors swing inward. At the end of the hallway there is another hallway, bending almost 180 degrees so that the next wing is almost parallel with the first one. Same deal, doors on either side and I have to talk to everybody before I can leave.

Yesterday after work S and I wandered through the MOMA partly because we wanted to, and partly because with our school IDs we get in free. Downtown was cold and dark and its much more fun to go into a museum when there's no pressure to make the most of your money. As if I have to justify going to a museum. Who am I talking to? Anyway, up on the fifth floor there was a little shop set up by the Miranda July exhibit selling little art stuffs, and on one little shelf was a cat drawing. "This reminds me of something I heard on the radio," S said, about cats falling from buildings, that they can survive falling five stories and higher than eight stories, but in-between five and eight the extra time and wind resistance screws up their landing gear and they tend to not survive. Meow. Kitty Girl (KG) one of my cats I was told fell out of her old owners apartment, three stories, to the ground below and seems to be fine. Jinx, the other one, walks around like he's made out of old sticks, creeky and stiff. It looks painful for him to hop down off the bed or descend steps.

KG on the other hand is just as old but still pretty spry. She's a 'ragdoll'

***

DO DO DOOT - DO DOO DOO DOOT
***

I have to interrupt this regularly scheduled blog posting about my cats to talk about all the recent Wikileaks stuff. After typing in the word 'ragdoll' I went to Google images to confirm that KG was in fact a 'ragdoll' (yep) and then clicked on the wikipedia link for 'ragdoll' and then clicked on the message "Please read: A personal appeal from the author Joan Goma" (?) which lead me to this page where I donated thirty five dollars to Wikipedia because after using it for as long as it's been around, for personal reasons as well as work, I thought maybe now that I have a little extra money from working tirelessly and heroically this semester I would donate to them, seeing as even places like NPR are getting attacked in the media and having their funding threatened maybe I'll donate. Sorry about that last sentence. Anyway. That lead me to check my bank account which reminded me that rent was due so I wrote a check to my roommate and handed it to him, sat back down and then, with all these Wikipedia thoughts wondered if Wikileaks was part of Wikipedia (it's not) and wondered if Wikileaks would come up as the first hit on Google and it does, once you get past the news. Which brings me to the present moment, sort of, and the question, well, what's the news?

The news about Wikileaks is this: Julian Assange, the guy who runs it is being followed by the British secret police, the site has been censored in China, Hillary Clinton says the U.S. is taking 'aggressive steps against' Wikileaks, Assange has been accused of rape, thier site is being bombarded with by cyber attacks, Amazon 'ousted' their servers, and most interesting to me, Wikileaks is about to release a bunch of classified information about The Bank of America. All that is to say that the powers that be really don't like what Wikileaks is doing, i.e. the fact that they are releasing all kinds of information that is supposed to be kept secret. I don't know about you, but the fact that banks have been making records profits in the last two year, the U.S. is engaged in two insanely stupid wars, our economy is shit, out politics is so screwed up Obama has been rendered a wet noodle, our corrupt politicians have assured us that nothing important is going to get done for at least another two years (like, say, environmental issues), and locally, teacher layoffs, tuition, general malise and hopelessness that...you know what I'm saying. Anyway, an organization devoted to transparency is under attack from the most powerful governments in the world and the corporations that benefit from things continuing as they are. Please read more about about Wikileaks, their mission, and continue to observe the corporate and governmental reaction to this organization. Have a nice day. I'll finish my cat story later.

hi nice to see you sun's out but it's brisk not cold but cool wear gloves and a scarf gives me an excuse not to reach into my pocket to pull out change was sick the whole weekend not uncomfortably so not dying of flu but mild discomfort a sore throat and congestion, a fogginess that didn't lift for five days but now its gone i'm back to health full health asides from a little cough and a little congestion which will be good proof of my illness in case anybody asks what i did over the break i can just say i was sick and that will be the end of it but it wasn't i consumed eighteen cups of tea i accomplished two things over the break the first was to catch up on school work and i did that graded evaluation arguments, read and commented on work for the creative writing class then calculated progress grades and that was that one night played cribbage with Q lost again goddamn its strange to consistently lose at a game that i've been consistently competitive in and the next night played chess with S and lost again played videogame basketball with B on thanksgiving evening and come to think of it lost that too hmm a weekend of losing maybe but more like a weekend of playing anyway when i wasn't playing games or school work it was reading and the music machine though its hard to compose when my head is full of sand. IT WAS NICE AND RELAXING. that goddamn videogame had taken over my life for a little while but i had made a decision to lay off it for the TG break and that's exactly what happened feels good to be free feels free to be good without periods like erma from a sit com that got canceled i've officially decided that Fallout: New Vegas is evil no doubt about it something that consuming should be encased in concrete and buried underground or shot into the sun i think my mom said to me five years ago i forget the context "we shouldn't of let you play so many videogames when you were growing up" and i didn't think much about that statement until recently playing Fallout when i thought to myself "i shouldn't let myself play so many videogames"

I've taken on a mild cold and went home early from work yesterday. Which is something that I didn't used to do. Instead, if I was feeling sick I would make huge efforts to be 'at' work. At some point in the last couple years I realized that 1) It's not actually that important for me to be there 2) My system gets better much faster if I make a serious effort to take it easy and 3) Sick pay. Sick pay might be the deciding factor. What a concept. Before teaching I always had to be there to get paid. If I didn't get paid, then I was in some kind of trouble in my mind. Sitting around at home being sick produces a weird, existential "what am I doing with my life" kind of feeling, and sometimes it's easier to be at work to avoid this feeling. Kind of the like the dilemma of the upcoming winter break: a month and a half off (unpaid but I collect unemployment) is a ton of time. Enough time to run out of 'things to do', get knocked unhappy, moan, get a hold of myself, plan, do, acclimate to the new schedule, get busy, and by that time school starts again and the whole cycle starts again.

Change is difficult. Which is why I like to go away as soon as the semester gets out. Being ramped up, especially as the semester climaxes, and then suddenly having nothing to put all that energy into is a weird let down. So as, dislocation and confusion pops me out of my schedule. This year, school lets out on the 18th of December and I don't leave for Wisconsin for Christmas until the 23rd. There's a little extra time, but not too much. Thus I try to regulate my emotions but controlling the situations I find myself in. It's like controlling a character in a video game. Speaking of which, I have been playing a video game pretty steadily for the last three weeks. The game machine tells me I've logged 48 hours playing the game. That's a long time to be in a fantasy world. After about three hours I begin to feel parts of my brain beginning to atrophy. Parts of my body. I successfully stop sometimes. Sometimes not.

On Sunday in the newspaper there was this article about the effects of technology on young people and their education/future. That fact that technology is addictive is not exactly news, nor is the idea that people have shorter attention spans these days. What is news is that now we have some data to prove it. For example, studies have shown that video games destroy your vocabulary and sleep patterns. I can attest both of these. Both my roommate, who has been watching me play, and I, have been having weird and terrible dreams. In one of my dreams, while talking to a real (dream) person I had 'dialogue options', choosing what to say from a list of options like I was in the game. Ugh. Anyway, I have some errands to run before I go off to work today so I'm going to go. Happy Thanksgiving. Hopefully you get to spend it with family, or if your family makes you feel weird, hopefully you get to spend it with friends. Thank you for reading.

It's gotten cold and rainy in San Francisco. Which is in stark contrast to the warm border line hotness that we were experiencing a couple weeks ago. It's a little bit of a relief that November isn't going to feel like August, which would make August feel like May, May would have to switch places with December and June might have to get its weather imported from Vietnam or wherever the oversees weather shipping rates are low, which is hard to predict. But a cold rain has been visiting on and off since Friday, for example five minutes ago it was raining but now the sun is shining. One of my co-workers who lived in Ireland for a long time told me that the Irish, when greeting each other, often complain about the weather, but it doesn't come off as whiny. More like small talk. Whereas here, somebody who always complains about the weather might come off as a bummer. So as, "I love the cold moist air in my lungs." I've missed it.

I had a busier than usual weekend. On Friday was the Encyclopedia reading, which, though I was increasingly nervous for for a couple weeks, was really fun. About sixteen people read/performed/played a video/showed drawings, which initially I was dreading as long readings can be not much fun, but the diversity of projects and quality of work/entertainment was really high, and it was a totally energizing two and a half hours. Totee. There were a lot of people there, co-workers and writing friends and even some students came out. It was cool to be out. It had been a while. Saturday afternoon I went to see some friends stage a reading of a co-workers play, and on the way home got caught in Saturday evening's rain. I have a good rain jacket but nothing for my bottom half. It was kind of fun to get miserably wet but only because a warm shower was waiting.

Saturday night I played poker with my politician friends. Elections being over people have more time. Doc helped Malia win district 10. Q is on a paid furlough. Ranked choice voting is not all that great when there are twenty candidates to choose from. Apple and the Beatles are making a lot of money. People from Marin have better manners than people from San Francisco. But the best part of the weekend in a long term sense is that I finally figured out the latency issues that I had been having with my music machine, where because of the sound system that Windows uses, all the music/sound that I've been playing with for the last couple years has been without steady tones and resonance because I didn't realize switching to an ASIO sound driver was really really easy. For example, this song. Please note the steady and warm tones. That's new. Plus, my sister and brother pitched in to help me update my version of Ableton Live, so as, I'm no longer limited to eight tracks and four effects. Right? You know what I'm saying? My throat is feeling a little scratchy I'm going to go swallow some zinc.

Lately there has been a little ripple about the term 'hipster' because of this book or more concisely, this essay about what the term actually means, and its oddly derogatory use. The essay is pretty helpful for putting the phenomenon into a context beyond who is and who isn't a hipster. In reference to all of the above, I can't help but think the rootless desire for space is related to whatever desires I have to be cool. And that the desire to be cool has a lot to do with not having a firm idea of what I actually want to be. The more I identify with being a teacher, with being something based in my own experience, the less I care about what I'm not. A quote from the book Laura Warholic by Alexander Theroux, that I've been trying to find a context for for years:

I decided at one point in my life that I never wanted to be anything that would not allow me to be anything else I wanted to be…I ended up being nothing that I can currently identify, which I suppose means I got my wish.

In other news, this Friday I am reading, with 14 other people, as part of the Encyclopedia Volume 2 release. If you're in the big city, here's the flyer. It's the first time I've read anything in public (not including student readings) for four years. Wow.

In the laundry mat tonight I did laundry. Nothing amazing happened. I didn't have any funny conversations or experience anything profound. I put seventeen quarters into the washing machine, turned it to 'permanent press' and got a slice of pizza (garden). I spoke with my step-dad about possible work in Wisconsin over the winter break in teaching. Got back and pulled the wet laundry into a rolly cart, pushed it around the banks of washers, and loaded two dryers, one with t-shirts, socks, and underwear, and the other with towels and dish towels. It was weird that I dried the dish towels separately, and wondered for a few instants what the professional laundry ladies I was standing next to might say about it.

I read last weeks New Yorker, picking up where I left off in an article about Rory Stewart, an interesting British politician who walked across Afghanistan, amongst other things. My favorite excerpt:

He recently described the concepts of counter-insurgency and failed states as fragments of "metaphysical structures" no more real than the parallel universes filled with demons and bodhisattvas imagined by eighteenth-century Mahayana Buddhists.

I love that one day, people will look back, maybe, and see a gigantic blind spot where we thought we were being smart and insightful; that all our great ideas about how the world works are anchored to our time and place, and don't last. It makes me wonder what it is that I'm doing terribly wrong that I don't know about yet...the Internet? Facebook? Cellphones? Laundry? Pizza? Step-dads? Winter? Magazines? Quarters? But really I just like thinking of policy analysts as religous zealouts.

I folded my laundry and went home. The most significant part of doing laundry was running into Liz on the way up and talking about the semester. I then went to the grocery and picked up some fruit. I talked to Nate about PhD. programs on the way. This is one of those blog postings where if you read it you might get an idea of what my life is like, so as, you don't have to call or write emails. But this isn't true. Even if you read this you should still call or write. I don't know how many hours there are in a week but I usually only spend two or three of them writing in this blog. Speaking of which, I've added a new on-going list of songs I like, forget about, and then remember and find on Youtube; and have added links to them to the right. Scroll down. It's on going. Hope you're well. It's been a pretty hot November, so far which is totally weird. California.

last night the good year blimp passed over just as I got off work

Found this in the Moma yesterday. With many other museum goers. The European guy got a phone call and when he walked out I noticed his pants were acid washed (?) in the back to the point of being completely white. It looked very European and I judged him harshly with my lizard brain because his cell phone was loud and everybody knows you don't start talking on your phone in a crowded gallery! I then wondered if I was homophobic, turned the word over a few times, concluded nothing, and kept looking at the Henri Cartier-Bresson photos that were hanging up. Really great!

Photography is a medium that I had never been too interested in until these last couple semesters. Before supporting the ESL students and their awesome instructors in conceptual photography and digital photography, and going to a museum with someone with which I might need to negotiate with in terms of how our time is spent together, I might say things like, "You know, photography has never really been that interesting to me." because paintings or whatever were more my thing. Generalizations so broad they mean nothing. "Politics have never really been that interesting to me." "Country music has never really been that interesting to me." And then we learn something and are given a lens to look through...a personal context/stake from which to instill meaning!!! Meaning!!

The quote was interesting to me for two reasons: 1) because I've been into 'life' lately, and 2) because I've been playing a new video game (I won't say which one but it involves hit points and dialogue options if you know what I mean) where I walk around a little world. The point of the game, or fun of the game, is to 'discover' this little world. So as, if by discovering myself...than I am discovering the world...and my self is a pixelated woman with a mohawk and a shotgun who walks around with a guy wearing a space suit in a closed post-apocalyptic world designed by a group of well paid designers then I... don't know what that quote means. Just what am I discovering by exploring this world? Oh video games! You're so easy to criticize!

Today is my birthday. I am 32 years old. What's it like to celebrate a birthday on the Internet? It's like nothing on Earth. Only my fingers, wrists, and language functions (?) get worked. Not like a bath or a sun beam on a cat's belly. More like receiving a text message or hearing the Parks and City workers weed wacking the park next door. One of my favorite birthdays was when I lived in Portland, 2002, and Aric, Joel, and Dave came down and we had a night of it. I drank whiskey until I threw up. Last year I went hiking in a new pair of shoes with a girlfriend. Two years ago I went camping. Three years ago I went camping. This year I have dinner plans on Wednesday and a full work schedule.

I have to be honest though: I get sad on my birthday. Not sure why. Something about being 7 years old. Questions like what kind "what kind of cake would you like?" still throw me. If I really got what I wanted, my favorite cake would be decided for me and it would be delicious. Red velvet cake? Chocolate? Angel Food? It all tastes good. I even like the grocery store cakes and their lard frosting. Vegan cakes are good too. That is to say, it's not cake that I want, but reassurance I am understood. C pointed out the other day that I like to bring her little gifts, a sign of affection that is just as much a demonstration of how I want to be loved.Through reciprocation we come to an agreement, learning over time how to be with another person. What I really want for my birthday is to hang out in a womb. Just for a day. To be all of one thing.

But, obviously, it's too late for that. We are condemned to freedom. Sartre said this, at least according to the international student who wanted my feedback on his essay about Sartre. His grammar was excellent! In other news, my brother ran the New York marathon yesterday for the 3rd or 4th time (I forget ) and broke three hours. There were 45,000 people who ran it and he was in the top 2%. Not bad. There is a street in Spain named after the Super Mario Brothers and my niece started the first year (preschool) of her academic career. My sister sent me six cupcakes and three candles in the mail. My mom bought me a coat. Here is a link to the Mu-ziq song "Green Crumble". Happy birthday.

We had an extra hour today.

It's difficult to know where to start. On Saturday was Halloween. I mean Sunday. I mean both Saturday and Sunday. On Monday the Giants won the World Series and then on Tuesday we voted. And also celebrated Día de los Muertos. Wednesday was the victory parade. Tomorrow I think everything will go back to normal. It's abnormally warm right now. In the seventies today. Very nice temperature! One of the guys I was standing next to, under the hot sun, outside of city hall with 100,000 others (as it was reported), dumped a cup of his piss on the ground. At that point it had been an hour and a half of waiting and I'm not actually that into the Giants. I mean I'm happy for them and their fans, and apparently there are a lot of them, like, enough to cover every square inch of the entire down town, but personally I don't have much of a relationship with the Giants.

Except for this t-shirt that I'm wearing. Once I invest money into something I feel compelled to take it more seriously. Like when I got an Athletics hat I felt like I should know a little bit about the Athletics, so as not to appear as a fraud. Wanting to be on the inside. Authenticity, or the appearance of it, is important to me. It's why I value my frayed and ripped hooded sweatshirt. Who knows why. Today's analysis is OVER. Last Saturday I went to go sell some books and wandered into the local science-fiction book store and found this guy giving a really interesting talk about "cognitive dissonance", aliens, and military secrets. I sat down and listened. It was kind of crazy but pretty interesting. The most interesting thing he said was about Milwaukee, where he lives: "The culture of Milwaukee is really interesting because Milwaukee doesn't know it has a culture." Which kind of makes sense to me, being not too far from there, that people who live in Wisconsin aren't all that conscious about living in "Wisconsin." Unlike, say, San Francisco, where I'm constantly reminded that I live in "San Francisco."

Not that that's bad. I love living in San Francisco. But it seems like an urban thing, to be conscious of where you're living. Maybe we can blame sports teams. And those who riot after sports teams claim victory over the other urban sports teams. Maybe the trick is to remain unconscious for as long as possible, like a baby, a cat, or a newborn foal, unfurling its little legs and wobbling up to its mother. And then bleeting a little. Or maybe that's a newborn lamb, actually. Regardless, the guy in the bookstore said its a comfortable thing to live in a place that isn't so aware of itself. It was more of an aside than a main point, but for some reason the thought stayed with me. In other news, two black birds on Saturday afternoon flew around Valencia, as I watched them from the room, with nuts in their mouth. Looking for a place to crack them, drop them on the pavement and eat the inside. Saturday afternoon is a busy time: a lot of people and traffic. They circled for a while and then flew off. November.

After the Giants won the world series it was like honk hu hu honk hu honk honk let's go giants whooooo honk huuu honk honk honk honk hu huh honk whooooo honk honk honk yeaaaaaah hooooooooooooooonkk aiiieeeee honk hooonk honk honk honk whoooo honk honk honk honk hoooonk honnk honk honk hu hu hooonk huh huh huh huh honk honk honk aoooooooh whaaaaaa honk honk beep beep whoooooa wheeee honk honk honk honk hoooooonk honk honk honk honk honk hoonk honk honk honk wheee honk honk whooo honk honk honk honk hu hu honk hu hoonk honk honk honk honk honk honk huh honk huuuuuuuuuuuuuu honk honk honk squeeee honk honk beep beep beep beep bee bee bee beep bee beep whoooo yeah twee twee twee boo booo buh buh buh honk honk hu hu honk honk honk huh huh hu hu beeeeee hu hu honk honk beep beeep beeeeeeeeep honk honk honk honk honk i can't go to sleep amongst this honk honk beep beep beep beep beeeeep beeeeeep honk whoooooo won't even try beep beep beep beeeeeeeeeeee be beep buhp beeep honk huh huh honk its been going for the last three hours beeeeeeeeeep it was fun to be on the street for a while watching people honk slapping five never vrrroooooom lived in a city that won the world series before so this is what it's like beep beep beep like obama except a little bit smaller and it doesn't feel as important but i could feel a wave of happiness move through the city beeeeeeeeeeeep hoooooooooooonnk hoooooooooonnnnnnnnk and it felt good and raises the question now what do we do honk and wave i guess it seems like a parade of cars has been going down the street as if people drive here honk honk honk honk hoooonk honk honk honk beeeeep huh huh honk honk honk to honk down the street now i'll try to go to bed wish me luck the official parade is on wednesday

From the 2010 Dane Country (WI) Cultural Affairs Commission calender, Bruce Dawson's "Good & Bad Knowledge #3". This one's for my homies. The ones who have kids, just had kids, or are just about to have kids. And my niece, "uno caballo azul" but actually just a brown horse with blue ribbon tied to its tail because blue fabric is expensive and no I'm not going to post any pictures because nobody wants some internet weirdo looking at pictures of their kids, and yes I said "homies."

Two Poems Sort of About Baseball

In Texas*

In Texas, instead of saying goodbye
they say “Well.” Well, I am not
in Texas. Goodbye.

Mother's Day, 1975 / Allegations of Racism

____________Marge
____________Schott
It's hard _____was a terrible
to think of __**baseball team
anyone worse owner

*Nothing against Texas. Really. I almost feel sorry for them and their pitching. This is a poem about George Bush. Nothing against George Bush. Really. Not really. But it's actually a poem about the way the characters in the Cormac McCarthy book "Cities of the Plain" speak. It's hard to have opinions/judgments, especially ones that are bigoted and unfair. SF is a city that is known for its tolerance, a value that I try to identify with. Texas is a vast and great state, but their baseball team is not playing well at the moment, and the moment happens to be the World Series. I feel bad for Nolan Ryan. I feel bad the bagel I just ate. We read a Tao Lin book in my creative writing class so I'm writing a little bit like him. I'm a little concerned that if the Giants win without the Rangers playing well they will have nothing to play for next season, the lesson that if things come too easily things are harder to appreciate. The pitching staff is so young. Not that it's easy to be a major league pitcher but sudden success can be difficult to deal with. After you get to the top what else is there to play for? Whatever. "I hate it when you say that."

On Tuesday morning on my way to work, hopping on my bike in the pre-daylight savings time fall, overcast and dark, about eight o'clock a big black bird dropped a nut from forty feet up and then swooped down to eat from the cracked nut. Smart bird. Today I watched a juvenile hawk get swarmed by a team of black birds, perched on top of a light pole. It looked away to say something to my roommate, something about the hawk. I looked back and it was gone. It's hard to imagine death from a bird, or a team of birds. Bird death. Bird Death 2. Bird Death 3: Escape from the Light Pole. Fini. Music. Credits.

Am I Alive or Dead?

There was a time in Seattle after I had come back from helping take care of my father, jobless and isolated in a moldy apartment, when I thought about him, his loss and my own. In retrospect I think this could have been considered mourning, but I had nothing to show for it: no funeral or artifact that anything real had happened.

"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 if you don't have either."

Refusing to advertise or market the product requires a profound confidence in the product; that it will appear of its own strength without prodding or suggestion. It is here that it becomes difficult to separate desire from indifference. Television commercials work or are working regardless if we “pay” attention. I need to tell you something.

--------------

Sometimes it's better to wait to say anything. Like Taylor Swift after the 2008 Video Music Awards, she waited two days before posting to her Twitter account about the shock of Kanye West usurping her award acceptance speech. Or when Indiana Jones watched Mola Ram dig the slaves' heart out with his bare hands. Or the 2010 San Francisco Giants who are playing in the World Series after winning on Saturday night. We listened to the game on the radio and cooked dinner. Then, as if Obama was elected president again, Valencia flooded with well wishers and revelers. Cheering and honking and then a fire truck came down the street blowing its horns and clanging its bell. I think this is the first time I've lived in city where one of its professional sports team was playing for a championship. It's kind of cool. People are happy.

School has been busy. The clouds have been raining. I have been playing again with my music machine, three or four pieces that I will be posting over the next month to the music blog, one a week starting with "Admiring Michael" tonight. More pieces next week and beyond. The link is to the right. Below is a promotional poster for the upcoming cat-of-the-year awards, illustrated by my roommate.

Oy.

On Saturday my roommate and I sat down with our mail-in-ballots for the coming November elections. This is a somewhat substantial task in California because of the massive number of state and local officials, proposals, and ballot measures. It took a good hour even with the SF Bay Guardian cheat sheet / endorsements in front of us. We went through the candidates voting for things such as State Controller and State Governor (they are different positions), as well as the local officials such the supervisor for District 8; though I didn't get to vote for the supervisor for District 10. "It's amazing that these election people can get the right ballot to the right person with the right zip code with all the ballots that they have to send out." It's called bureaucracy, said Sam.

Governor was pretty easy. Jerry Brown over Meg Whitman. I heard them debate earlier in the week and actually kind of liked what Whitman was saying, but then again G.W. occasionally made sense to me. That said, I don't trust my political instincts because I know I'm easily swayed by rhetoric. As a result I try to listen to what others around me are saying about the candidates. Living in San Francisco, I haven't heard much good about Whitman. In 2000 I remember telling my Mom that I was going to vote for Nader and she convinced me to vote for Gore. It was at that moment that I consciously began to defer to others for political opinions. As much as I personally like the idea of collectively moving towards oblivion (or as Bill Maher put it during the lead up to the 2000 election, that if Nader didn't win he'd rather have G.W. in office so people will see how bad things can get. He got his wish.), listening to moderates is, I feel, a good way to stay healthy. The middle path.

Prop. 19 was the other biggie on the ballot, taxing and regulating marijuana, a.k.a. "pot" as it's called on the streets. The weirdness of openly acknowledging something that for as long I've known, has been a minor taboo, and the normalization that comes with this acknowledgment is almost too much change to bear all at once. Good thing the availability of medicinal marijuana is such that anybody who wants it can get it already. And by now we're all used to smelling pot every fifteen feet walking down the street, the headshops, ads, dispensaries, t-shirts, and dealing with our stoned friends, selves, family members, colleagues and students. Around here I don't think it would change much. Which is one argument: that CA may as well be taxing it. The other are the drug cartels along the border, that legalizing pot here will reduce the profits and thus the violence, though that argument is may not be true, according to this. Socio-political issues asides, it feels more psychological than anything: are we ready to change our definition of what drugs are? Do we want them to be underground? Counter-cultural? If they were sanctioned by the government would we use them differently? I imagine we would.

And then there are the rest of the measures on the State ballot, changing the way the legislature votes on the budget, little tax measures, more pollution controls...nothing too complicated that leaning Democrat or Republican won't take care of. The city ballot measures are more complicated, something about hotel taxes? I don't know. I just voted with the Guardian. Not sure what the right answer is on that one. But the big ones: cutting the city pensions (no, based on the argument that it would raise health insurance costs for the poorest) and no on the sit/lie proposition L because proposition M addresses sidewalk bound trouble makers in a way that doesn't give the police the authority to do whatever they want. I have nothing against the police but forcibly removing people from sidewalks doesn't seem like a winning long term solution to homelessness. At any rate, that's what I voted for. Now I'm going to go buy some yogurt.

Two sonnets written by two of my creative writing sections, edited by moi, based off freewrites meditating on an excerpt from John Cage's "Lecture On Nothing":

Structure without life is dead, but life without structure is un-seen.

i.

Life without structure goes unseen
but I wont' tell anyone
what it looks like: a piano playing rests
these thoughts. -------Real life
is about climbing a mountain and talking shit
for hours but I haven't noticed,
dropping out of the sky like a
bird flying into the sunset. -----Air has no structure
and doesn't need purpose. If there's no life
what is art but a structure on a page
a skyscraper by the contractors who
design car door slams and leaves rustling.
Sometimes I wonder how much time gets built
on the backs of other people's words.

**

ii.

Structure without life is dead
but I guess it goes unseen any
way in -- the -- void --that -- is -- my --soul
at any given moment. -------Meaning
that I forget who I am because I need
structure to follow along, missing out
on dinner while climbing a tree
like I was nine years old. ------- I am not
too sure if I understand the
structure I believe in ----or John Cage
or the shark ---- or the line on the ground
the line where my pupils lie
on the ground swinging like a boxer.
Let's say you live alone and have no
friends. Is this mask a structure too?

"City" 2005, acrylic on wood and then some Photoshop. Click to enlarge but it looks better small.

Facebook, because of that movie that I went to see last Friday and no I don't have any children though a lot of my friends do or will soon and yes it does make me feel a little bit like hm what am I doing with my life but it doesn't really matter what other people are doing until I begin to think about what other people are doing in the abstract which leads me back to Facebook, a site that I might log into once a month to reply to a message or write a message through because Facebook is not all that fun for me. Reading about what other people are doing or looking at pictures of ex-girlfriends is kind of painful because instantly my little lizard brain will start to compare itself with all those other bites and picas and pics or whatever else consists of our on-line selves. I read the google buzz because I'm already logged in and its mostly articles. Facebook creeps me out.

This period-lite writing inspired not just by that movie which is pretty good really fast and entertaining with music is done by our old friend Trent Reznor but just now I read this little article about another article about Mr. Reznor's views on Facebook such as this summary his of thoughts: "people don’t put their actual selves forward on the network and instead portray themselves as they want to be seen for whatever reason" which makes me think yeah what a bunch of fakers and then all of a sudden I find myself writing in a blog that I've been trying to post to on a regular basis since the summer and so far have been generally successful and recently I've noticed that the number of people reading the blog has been going up and I can attribute that to two changes; the first being consistency which is primarily the reason that more people visit but second, and maybe this is a distant second, removing the comment option the uncomfortable "0 comments" tag at the bottom of each post which always seemed to create the effect of speaking to an empty room regardless of whether anybody was reading or not.

But I want to circle back to Mr. Reznor's comment about Facebook, that is, of course its a false image that gets presented. That is to say I really overuse the phrase 'that is to say' or 'that said' but it seems useful. That is to say this blog, if it wasn't obvious, is actually not me. It's artifice intentionally made to do intentional things. Like a screwdriver or a banana cream pie. It depends on how I use it which depends on how I slept last night speaking of which the bar across from where I live was bumping the worst trance music I have ever laid in my bed for two hours listening to. I wrote them this letter: "Dear Amnesia, It's 1:45 AM. Your fucking shitty shitty techno/trance has been keeping me up for the last hour and a half. I've called the police. You are a fucking horrible neighbor...." It goes on. I don't know if that will change anything but it felt good to write. This fact of feeling also seems like a legitimate way to go about making choices.

On Sunday while making breakfast I broke my favorite cup. Here are its pieces,and its remainder:

On Tuesday, yesterday, I went to Henry's Hunan Restaurant and received this fortune,which corresponds nicely with the fortune below, in the sense that both talk about days of the week. The one mentions Tuesday specifically, and the other, since I received it on Tuesday, indicates that today, Wednesday is the day to give flowers. Which could happen, though I'm not sure what kind of opportunities I'll have for that today, as I'm working here in the morning, will be at work in the afternoon and then go to Oakland for therapy. I think what I'm going to do, speaking in the present, is give my cats some catnip which I think is a flower. Here goes:LLLLLL
Okay. Now that that's done, that the whole fortune for today has been resolved I can move on with my life. And by move on I mean show you the stamps that I bought on Monday on my way home from work: which I only bought because it was either these or a stamp that featured a painting of a violet (?) and the word LOVE. Barf! When the postal clerk told me I only had two options I said "Are you kidding me?" and then he said "No I'm not." And then I said "Okay I'll take the sailors." And then he said "Would you like cash back?" And then we proceeded in anonymity for the rest of our transaction and I went home. At any rate, I got up at five this morning. Mostly because I feel asleep at nine last night. Also because Henry's Hunan started a fire in my belly. It's a sunny day in San Francisco. Chance of showers said the guy on the radio but I think the chances are pretty slim. It's cooled off since last week and is back to normal. Last Friday a student in the writing lab informed me that in 2004, over 2 million Spiderman costumes were sold during the Halloween season. This morning I ate a delicious nectarine. Hope all is well. See you later.

]
]

Each semester in the persuasion and argument class I teach, the transition from personal issues to social issues is awkward. It's a little like, "okay, now instead of doing this, we're doing this," and the 'why' of our switch remains a little bit nebulous. In theory, writing about something important that happened in a-life-so-far leads into thinking about larger social issues; "the personal is political" or more specifically, everything we go through is something that many other people have also gone though. That our lives are examples of larger social and historical trends. The memoir is, for our purposes, a short narrative about a time when a person learns some kind of life lesson. "A time when I realized I was all alone in this cold and cruel world." Translating a subjective theme into a concrete argument requires some work.

On Friday, it was the point in the semester where we give it a shot, and this time it made little more sense than usual. We started with the chapter on narrative argument and discussed one of the essays at the end of the chapter, an essay by Leslie Marmon Silko about border patrols. We discussed implict and explicit reasoning and looked at on the diagram the book provided:
We worked to figure this "nipple" (as a student put it) diagram out. Say you write a story about being carjacked. Of course it's no fun to to be carjacked. You write, "he pressed the gun to my temple and told me to drive to the airport." This is a scary. From this feeling, our subjective reading experience, we conjure up a reason for being scared: I am scared because there is a strange man in my car threatening to kill me if I don't drive him to the airport. Or in simplified terms, I am in danger (vs. the objective viewpoint, this is a dangerous situation). From this reason we create a 'claim': lock your doors; and in turn, an argument: lock your doors because carjackers are dangerous.

That's about 45 minutes of class time condensed. What's neat about this little system is that it explains how the stories we tell are, in a sense, arguments for certain world views. We all know this in a sense, but the mechanisms that actually persuade are hidden, and it's helpful to see them. Granted that all forms or rhetoric (finding the best means of persuasion) require a little hoo-ha/ magical thinking/ faith that somebody is listening, but the point of beginning the class with a memoir is to ground argument in the personal. To show that the reason we are arguing about prop. 19 or tax cuts is not because it's an intellectual game, which it can be and has seemingly turned into on the national level, but because we live in our bodies and experience feeling. Right or wrong aside, we all have preferences for how we like to feel. These preferences color everything we do, including the stories we tell.

"Idea City" 2005, acrylic on wood and then some Photoshop. Click to enlarge.

In the Fall of 2005 I was working on a house that sat across from Van Hise Elementery and Middle school. Everyday at around 7:30 the little children would line up to be let in. Soon they would be bored to tears and looking forward to recess. Meanwhile, I painted the house. The above painting is made out of the negative shapes cut from primer applied just above the garage. I took a picture of each square, so as , , x38. Then took Photoshop and got rid of the white and then began to play around with the shaggy red squares. I wasn't about to write any of this before my roommate walked in and said:"you should tell the story of how you made it."

Yesterday the MacArthur grant winners were revealed. David Simon, the guy who made The Wire and Treme, amongst other things, got one. If you follow the link you'll find a little video interview with each winner. Mr. Simon's is particularly interesting to me because The Wire taught me more about how the world (or at least the US) works than most anything. In the video he speaks about moving from journalism into TV producing (when newspapers started to go bad in the mid 90's), and that he basically does the same thing in television that he used to do in op-ed journalism, that is, making arguments. Which is a helpful way to think of The Wire; as an argument rather than a drama. That the "Dickensian" nature of the characters was actually a side effect of the ideas in play. By that I mean each season targets a particular area and makes a case for how, in general, the US is no longer concerned with dreaming and progressing as a unified group, and instead is splintering into factions of small groups out for themselves. "The end of empire," as Mr. Simon calls it, and we're steeling ourselves for famine.

On a sad note, RIP Michael Gizzi, a poet and one of my teachers in graduate school, has died. He was one of the warmest parts of a particularly cold two years in Rhode Island. He stood in for CD a few times in workshop, and I took a class on improvisational writing with him. He was always supportive of me and my work, and was one of my favorite people at Brown. He will be missed.

It's hot in San Francisco. It's been hot in San Francisco, since Thursday. In class on Thursday the thermostat read 83 degrees. Each student wore a unique expression of misery as we talked about "On the Function of the Line" an essay by Denise Levertov, an amazingly useful piece of theory, explaining what line breaks do for our reading of poetry and discussing closed and open forms. If that doesn't sound exciting to you than imagine talking about those things in a hot and stuffy tiny room. It didn't work. Misery in the body does not lead to much. We moved to another room.

I read some memoirs for the persuasive writing class on Saturday morning, which is unusual because I try to put off reading papers for as long as possible, a job that doesn't take that long but the constant judgment (do more of this, do less of this) is draining in a particular way. It would be nice if teaching didn't require that the teachers evaluate the students but I'm not sure it's called teaching if you take that part of out of it. That's more like an after school club. "There are no wrong answers." Nobody likes to hear that from a teacher. Anyway, it's hot. The cats are really slow. Slow hot cats baking in the sun. Later on Saturday I helped C move for the second time in six weeks. The upshot of that is that six weeks isn't a lot of time to acquire much stuff, like a leather couch or an entertainment center.

At night we to see Mt. Kimbie play with Bill and three hundred other people that I had never seen before in my life. It was strange. Maybe walking down Valencia, sitting in Dolores, biking downtown, tooling around the city, people generally look familiar, like, mission hipsters or business downtowners. At da club I didn't recognize anybody. Of course it was fun. Mt. Kimbie was a little dissapointing as the sound was all booty bass, but the Brit DJ Mary Anne Hobbs that played before them played records that sounded really good. Real deal dub-step and goofy noisy reggae and hip-hop from the UK. Really loud. It's supposed to be hot all week. Happy Fall.

See It Say It

We wandered around the parking lot driving around pop cans and donut boxes. If you're good at your job you can kick the bottom of the door or bang the top of the VCR. The earth spins in silence. Another reason why we won't worry ourselves to sleep or rock the vote or nothing or just forget it. The void of voidness through indiscretion. We're always wandering around slapping each other on the back collars wider than ever we walk around the gap slowly, replacing batteries and new shoes with mud and raindrops, running through channels and grooves. No puddles, but a red bell of fire reflected in mud.

Self-Love

One thing I like about myself
is that I'm lonely.
It allows for a particular distance,
an industry insider whose views
are shared, nodding around the conference table
or a poet's poet. Each
idea, when I'm alone, is singular
and perfect.

Yesterday I learned a couple things. Number 1: a "bit" is in reference to the number of shades that a computer is capable of displaying color in. For example if you have "red" being displayed in 16-bit there are 65, 536 shades of that red available. If it's 8-bit, there are only 256 shades of that red available. Why is this important to me? Because growing up my brother and I played the Sega Genesis and in raised silvery letters on the surface of the console was the mysterious phrase: 16-Bit. I've wondered what that meant for twenty years and now I know. So now when that skinny guy in a tunic kicks the stones and a blue orb floats out and he eats it and turns into a werewolf capable of shooting fireballs at the undead rising from ruins of ancient Greece, I know that there are 65, 536 possibilities to render the color of his eyes, and the whites of his eyes.

I could of looked the information up on Wikipedia but as you can see it's not all that helpful. People talking is helpful. You can see their lips moving and things come out of their mouths and bodies. Their hands move, they erase things with their fingers and when a students ask questions things come out like spit and sound and heat and words. So, 16-Bit and more, from supporting a digital photography class on Tuesday mornings. I also learned things like what the f-stop is on a camera, ISO, shutter speed, depth of field, "opening up", "closing down", and how this stuff actually impacts what a shot looks like. It made me want to take out my dad's old camera and put some film in it and there lies the problem: what would I take pictures of?

The second thing I learned yesterday I can't remember. But, something I learned last week about dyslexia, how research done in the last ten years has determined that dyslexia might actually be rooted in how our auditory systems processes sound, that certain people have trouble hearing certain sounds, and therefore the spelling and reading of words comes off as an unsolvable mystery, one where there aren't enough clues to make a confident guess. For some a big old psychological block pops up, where it seems like written language is magic, a logic beyond comprehension that leads to a certain hopelessness and a diagnosis, at the very best. All this because yesterday I lead three pronunciation workshops where we work on pulling apart how English and the American accent works. It's pretty interesting. Like how the most common vowel sound in American English is the 'uh' as in 'bus', or more commonly, "Uhhh. I don't know."

Where were we? In bed my brother called me in the morning no my sister called me no Emily called me in the late morning we were sleeping. I wasn't sleeping I was awake, getting up to go to work on the tip the steady tip of BCT Printing the business card delivery place a good summer but it was fall I was dating Toshiko and woke up at her apartment the sick sweaty sleep that we were so fond of but I secretly despised a smell that was unusual a smell that I have never smelled before and never smelled since but it was the combination of our flesh the combination of our sweat and we were sleeping through. If the planes hit at 9 o'clock it was six o'clock in Seattle and there was no wake up call she was not from around there or here but at least she had a television and at least she had a good time in Seattle before she went back to Japan I miss her, but alas time is short I write but not enough the world is a short course timing meter jump shot course and I was awake by nine thirty and oblivious to the pull of the world in that apartment and Emily she called and I answered the call a great sweeping gesture the greatest love of all and I scrambled to listen to the radio in my dingy apartment and tune in and called her and turned her on and called her to tell her to turn on the television and the weight of a thousand dollops and the third generation of whiners and the beginning and the end and the start of the news coverage and the war on terror and the president speaking and the wails of people and that evening I went over to Joel's apartment to watch the footage on television and even on that day we were complaining about how often they showed it over and over again and over again.

From Today's Paper. Happy Ramadan.

Sitting down at my desk after a long nap. Usually on Tuesdays I'll support a digital photography class in the morning, eat lunch, do a shift in the speaking lab, maybe run a study group, and go home. A full day, but today it was a half day. After the support class I wandered over to the new ESL building, or set up, or get up, which is now located in an office that used to be a start up, so it's all nice and new and open and fancy and is totally consolidated, along with student services and tutoring. It's kind of awesome to have everybody in one place, which is unusual for a school that is spread out across the city, the biggest private land holder in the city of San Francisco yet not one of the buildings is next to another and the dream of a centralized campus and the community it would instantly create is a long ways off. At least a few of the departments are together.

I wandered up to see where the writing lab was for my shifts starting on Thursday, randomly ran into Scott who taught me easy grade pro, saw Sarah, Bob, George, etc. half of everybody who works there and ended up spending an hour an a half at "work." Which before everybody was in the same place was physically impossible. Though now that it's a wide open office I wonder if the social-ness will get in the way of work. I long for any office or a similar set up in the Liberal Arts department but that's not going to happen so never mind. It's windy out. Summer is over according to the calender and the weather and the media. It's kind of a confusing time for me at the moment, coming back from travels and not in any kind of creative rhythm, social rhythm, work rhythm etc. and in addition I'm falling into somebody so that also takes me away from this kind of thing, sitting in front of my computer and thinking out loud. Plus it's just confusing, trying to keep track of myself and be charming at the same time. "Just be yourself." Exactly. Excitement as a smoke machine and being happy on my own. It's much much easier. Case in point.

This summer was pretty great. Very productive and relaxing. I wrote a chapbook that given a little more revision and adding in a few more pieces will mean I actually have something to show for it. By it I mean summer. Which is over. Begin again. The lamp post shaking in the wind. Kitty girl has been insane since I got back from traveling, puking and full of anxiety. I finished the second book of The Hunger Games and am trying to figure out a way to get the third one for cheap. In technology news I have been given access to Google's new App creation software so I'm excited to get it working and start in on a few ideas I've had. That, writing, music projects to finish but the second main event this Fall is going to be residency and grant applications. I'd like to take next year off. A sabbatical. I say that every year. Every ear. Nary a dry eye in the house. Shaky trees and the kind out side. I've quit smoking habitually though not situationally which maybe means I haven't quit smoking. I like ice cream.

)
)
Happy Labor Day! Every store I walked past today was open. Happy Labor Day!

Does what we put inside of us affect what comes out? Is it e-ffect as opposed to a-ffect? I will not indulge my second guesser. I'm stalling. The plan was to write a list of everything I can remember from the last seven days, three in Kentucky four in Madison, but I ate at the A & W in the Minneapolis airport and am wondering if my recall will be colored by cheeseburger. One of the best things about airports, fast food restaurants, and combinations of airports and fast food restaurants is their guaranteed anonymity. The lack of context and expectations that come with context. I don't feel bad about eating fast food in airports because nobody I know will see me: no expectations. Unlike a trip to see family and old friends, old palaces and old restaurants. For the first time I wondered if the squash curry I love at the Vientiane Palace in Madison contains MSG.

In Kentucky spent a lot of time with Uncle Jim. Do I capitalize Uncle? He gave me two hats and cousin David let me take a third. After a day with Jim the rest of my family sans elders came: brother, in-law, sister, niece and we stayed at my great Aunt Jean's house who died last last January but the house hasn't sold yet. My two point five year old nicece fell in the pool behind the house by accident, was quickly scooped out, but she had a nightmare that night and told her dad when she woke up, "swimming pools are for grown-ups." Three days of donuts, second cousin Emily's soccer game, chicken salad, a trip to Wal-Mart, swimming, heat, crossword puzzles, Jim's eye, a mammoth's tooth, napping w/my brother, time-zone adjustment, Ebay, that chair made out of horns, a picture of Peanut, and Beatrix and Zane squealing together on the sideline.

On Friday I flew out of Lexington to Detroit, and then on to Madison. J made Pizza. On Saturday I went with my mom up to the horse ranch and brushed her horse Oliver. Also learned how to walk behind a horse before I left and went up to visit my dad at Clearview, where he was sitting in a chair. I spoke with one of the younger caretakers. She was cute but her heavy eye make-up scared me a little. She asked if my dad was a photographer. I said yes, back in the day. I told her about his history in Southern Wisconsin care facilities over the last seven years. It was her fourth month on the job. I wanted to speak to the head nurse about his fever two weeks ago but she wasn't there. I told my dad I would come back on Tuesday, which is kind of like telling myself. I left to go pick up my mom from the horse ranch.

I was depressed the rest of the day. That night I sat with Anna and Kwame by the lake. At this point this blog posting is getting a little long so I will speed it up. On Sunday I went out to Mineral Point to visit Ted as well as Joe and Christy, who were firing the kiln (i'm in the blue hat looking into a fiery little hole). That was probably the most exciting part of my trip. Went to bed early and did school work on Monday, saw my step-brother, and hung out with Nate and Megan in their last pre-Phd moments. There's more but I need to go to bed because I have to get up and finish planning for tomorrow's class. In transit I started reading "The Hunger Games" trilogy which is pretty fun to read, if you're looking for young adult science fiction. to read on an airplane and at your parents house. I will leave you with this image from today's edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Back home after an insane weekend with old friends a couple hours north in a rented house on a Point Reyes ranch. I can't stop crying, not from sadness but as a result of my depressed and abused system. Twenty minutes after leaving the ranch I vomited four times out the left passenger door. Relapse and recovery. On the brighter side, friend Cole came in early last week and we toured the city on bike. We looked at art and ate burritos, talked about music and went to a Kurosawa movie, met up with friends and went grocery shopping. On Thursday more friends came in then on Friday we went up to the ranch. So beautiful and calm. Sheep and a swampy pond. Home to the Strauss creamery, which happens to make my favorite yogurt and we ate dinner. Joked and made jokes, smoked cigarettes and drank. On Saturday we went hiking up to Bass lake and beyond to a water fall by the beach. Followed by drinking. Followed by multiple layers of hangover. I wouldn't have it any other way, but only once a year.

Tomorrow I leave for Kentucky to see my uncle, cousins, second cousins, brother, sister, brother-in-law, and niece. On Friday I leave from Kentucky to go up to Wisconsin to see mother, step-father, aunt, aunt's wife, step-brother, old friends, and my dad. I'll have four full days so it's not much time but enough. I come back here a week from Wednesday and start school on Thursday. Much to do today to get ready to go and be gone and be ready to come back. Unlike last week I will have my computer and will be in touch. In the meantime, here's a Kimiko Hahn poem from the June issue of Harper's. I found it on a scrap torn from the magazine while cleaning out my bag this morning:

Xenicus Longipes

The four known species of bush wren in New Zealand
are, by now, endangered or extinct.
Possessing trifling tails and wings, none fly far—
instead they hop and dart
in whatever undergrowth scrapes the landscape.
Those on Cook Strait's margin of rock
entirely lost the capacity for flight
and in 1894 were destroyed not by farmers,
hunters, pet traders, rats, disease,
natural disaster or want of food—
but by Tibble, the lighthouse keeper's cat.
Oh, what we think we need to survive kills others:
I have consuming need for my beloved, he knows—
and I hope he is not sorry.

3 Reasons to Write

Missing hearing the sound of English and reading, sitting up in the room drawing, but more importantly the realization that my Japanese professors didn't read the papers I wrote, I started writing about ridiculous things, Haiku and moon men for poetry class, urinating in the alleyways for a class on Japanese law. It was so easy to write what I was interested in, rather than force my words into imagined expectations. Wow. It blew my mind, the idea to write whatever I want to write, and the discovery that there lots of things to write.

__"In the first half of the poem, I said that our school had the finest teachers there ever were. And in the latter half, I said our class was the greatest class ever graduated. So at graduation, when I read the poem, naturally everybody applauded loudly."
__"That was the way I began to write poetry." Langston Hughes,
_____________________________________-The Big Sea

Morning in San Francisco. I've been dreaming of acid reflux, the feeling I get when failure appears. Dreaming dreaming dreaming. I dreamt I had no Christmas presents to give. I dreamt of fighting with students. For a while, two weeks ago I dreamt of things bigger than myself I dreamt I kept moving, not giving up like Senator Joe Biden or the McCain campaign.

Update on Sunday's post / sick and dying news: they gave him anti-biotics and attribute these to knocking out the bacterial infection, thereby the fever and thereby he's able to ingest liquids and food again because he is able to swallow. It is relieving to hear this though it only puts off the inevitable. "Of two minds," whether to keep him going or let him go. I feel relieved because I don't have to think about it anymore today. I feel embarrassed, amongst some, because I was so upset over the weekend.

One of the hard to explain realities about Pick's disease is the on-going, non-finite nature of disintegration, and his now, 5 year long stasis in a vegetable like state. It's been almost twelve years since diagnosis. On average, when a person is diagnosed with a form of dementia they live seven more years. It's been almost twelve since he was diagnosed. How does one die from dementia? Usually from a bacterial infection, like pneumonia, which the body is unable to fight off because parts of the immune system have shut down. Or the brain eventually loses its basic motor functions, like that of swallowing. Because he was relatively young upon diagnosis, and because of the nature of Pick's disease, attacking some different parts of the brain than say, Alzheimer's, he manages to keep going.

Part of me is proud of this kind of fortitude, the idea that I'm descended from these genes, the kind that fight with other patients and try to escape from institutions. The rebellious and difficult kind. Another part of me would like for the ambiguity of his situation to be over. It's a sunny day in SF. It's been getting incrementally warmer over the last four days. On Saturday I saw the movie "Inception" alone, at ten in morning. I highly recommend this as a way to see movies. I thought it was pretty good. Smart and well made and beautiful. In the afternoon I spent time with a friend who has gone though similar situations as the one with my dad. Nothing feels better than being understood.