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Purpose comes out of comfort with metaphor, one thing standing in for another. For example, "these objects in the outer solar system are the blood spattered on the wall after some violent murder" (Mike Brown, Discover Magazine May 2009). That to use a metaphor one must have a deep understanding of the process one is using. And backwards, to make the leap into abstraction indicates experiential knowledge of a concept. Purpose is a clear image.

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My psychoanalyst suggested the reason I was interested in the headline "ARE WE STILL EVOLVING?" is because I am interested in my own personal evolution. I see how the logic works, but I'm also interested in evolution as a non-personal subject to read about on the train ride home. Sure we can trace something back to a person's psychology, using what we know to interpret the signs they flash, but doesn't that discount the person's experience?

The possibility that my deepest subconscious thoughts are cliches is a terrifying thought. But that fear, to me, means there's something to it; more threads to follow. Not necessarily the truth of "my own personal evolution" (whatever that means), but my distrust of that statement. The fact that I'm writing about it right now as opposed to speaking directly to him. This is the fruit. Inevitably I come back to my own experience: this one, not some weird abstract idea of my experience.

Dear Editor,

I don't know if I agree with Packer's conclusion that the inability of the US to impose its will on Pakistan is because of credibility problems established during the Bush years. I mean, is it always up to US to determine the fate of the world?Aren't there are other problems (like Pakistan) that need to be addressed as a global community. Right now, the US has got its hands tied and besides, the most terrified people in the world are living in India (?). They're the ones with something to worry about, granted nuclear disaster in 2013 seems like something we should take careful pains to avoid. Will I die alone?

Saw Restrepo on Saturday night and afterward had a drink with poetry friends. (I actually meant to see Yojimbo at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive but it was sold out. Anyway,) Restrepo is a documentary about a military outpost in the Korgengal valley in Afganistan, and the soldiers who built it, and their year long deployment. There is a lot of footage of the soldiers engaged in firefights, and of the soldiers in-between firefights relaxing or whatever you call it during a war. No voice over, just editing mixed with interviews of some of them after their deployment ended.

It was strange how "normal" their experience seemed, at least the soldiers, their conversations and jokes and mannerisms. The only difference between them and the rest of us is that they're constantly being shot at, conditioning that a movie can't really capture, and probably shouldn't. I have a student in one of my classes this semester who worked out of the back of a humvee in Iraq, manning the turret gun with team that rode around looking for roadside bombs. He wrote his memoir (an assignment for the class) about how his military experience made him a man. That when he came back from training, and came back from Iraq, it was hard to identify with his friends.

How is it possible to explain these kinds of experiences? Much less your own hard wiring jerry rigged from trauma, wide eyed and jumpy. The strangest solider in the bunch, at least in the telling of the story, was the one who was smiling the entire time he spoke; smiling when talking about setting up the camp, about being shot at, about his dead comrades, about not being able to sleep, about nightmares. Such a deep smile, and genuine. But in the footage of him in the field, him firing back, smoking, cleaning his gun, he's not smiling. I don't know what this means.

What was most striking was the huge contrast between them in the field, and their post field interviews, how the experiences had seemed to settle in their faces and mannerisms. No ending, but that's all there is to this post. It's Sunday evening. Still light out but overcast. It was a sunny day, in the low seventies. I met friends in the park to watch the SF Symphony do a free concert. The big black cat just jumped on me. It's hard to type when there's a cat on my arms. Did laundry. Ate a burrito. Etc. Hope you're well. Now back to scheduled programming.

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Movie Review!

Quantum of Solace is concerned with building character, the habits and legend of the Bond character, a psychological explanation as to his hero complex, always saving the girl/world. He turns back to save the girl as if he could save the life of Vespa, "the only woman he has ever loved."

"I sometimes feel that we are losing an intuitive sense of our own bodies," Mr. Ito lamented at one point during my visit. "Children don't run around outside as much as they did. They sit in front of computer games. Some architects have been trying to find a language of this new generation, with very minimalist spaces. I am looking for something more primitive, a kind of abstraction that still has a sense of the body."

__________________________________________Toyo Ito, NYTimes 7/12/09

"Allman says a girl recently asked him why he so many tattoos. She's just had her breasts enlarged. Allman pointed at her chest and said, "Tattoos do just the opposite of what those do. Instead of attract, they kind of..." Then he put up a hand, signaling, "Stop right there.""

_______________________Mark Binelli on Gregg Allman, Rolling Stone, 7/09

When I was out of college, living in Seattle, I still didn't really know or see myself doing, or being anything; living with Joel and Dave in the Northgate house. I had no plan, no idea and in some ways I'm still there, the same glass eye half full of desire as seen on TV a small blanket pulled up to my chin. No mountain in the way, but a gravity beyond comprehension I've wasted a lot of time trying to come to and probably never will, but this isn't the first time I've been beautiful.

"If group involvement or the ordering of choices changes the process of making a particular decision, and in turn the result -- whether because it tweaked our notions of risk or because it helped elevate social goals above individual goals and led to better choices for the global commons, -- that isn't necessarily a distortion of our true preference. We tend to always wonder, what's that person's true preference? What do they really want? I think that's the wrong question because we want it all. People have multiple goals."

___________________________- Jon Gertner, NYTimes Mag. 4/19/09

The more choices we make the more we become who we are. That if one is in a position where choices are being made for you (like a child or a cat) one's idea of self stalls. Like a conversation amongst three people, or planning a birthday party (that you later cancel), we must take possession of ourself before we can give it away.

This requires not just knowledge, but an ability and willingness to adhere to what one knows, right or wrong; to test every possible explanation and carry it though (to failure) until one reaches, as Wallace Stevens put it the palm at the end of the mind. You have to be a prince before the kingdom is yours to leave.

Writing will not get me or anybody else there, but the effort of concentration and the nudge of attention helps bring me to autonomy in that I cannot be sure of the choices I am making if I am not aware of the choices I make. Subject verb object and back again. Poetry is what one is willing to take credit for.

set out for work early ended up with a bagel ended up at the bank ended up sitting on a park bench reading a book checking my cellphone for the time and a man comes up to me selling a street sheet and he said sweetly excuse me and began to introduce himself when i interrupted and said i think we've met before you told me that i had nice hair which was true two weeks ago in front of the moma he began by saying i had nice hair maybe beautiful hair i don't remember exactly but it was strange because nobody has ever really commented on my hair not that there's anything wrong with it but it's not particularly remarkable a dark brown with a little wave a little thick and when it begins to grow it grows out not down resulting in a kind of afro that i've only let grow out once living in japan not knowing where to get a hair cut and afraid to ask i said we've met before and he asked if i wanted to buy a street sheet it's a new issue and i said you know i don't have a buck on me and he said well you look like a million bucks and i said thanks and he said have a great day and i said you too and went back to my book

Picked up my new bike from the shop up the street. Not exactly new, but my old bike after a serious tune-up including new handle bars, chain, back wheel, brakes, and wires. So it feels like new. Sorry about the "bait and switch" first sentence. Actually I'm not sorry. I just wanted to use that term: bait and switch. I tried to explain it to a student the other day, something like, offering something to get somebody's attention and when they try and take what you offer, you replace it with something else. Bait and switch. So it was a very exciting today riding around comfortably, running errands and went up to the Fillmore to see the movie "I Am Love" which is so good. It felt old fashioned in that it used symbolism and had "universal" themes. The end of the movie is amazing, a really strange and interesting mix of grief, John Adams, and love. I've never before been taken where that movie goes, at least not at the movies. In some ways it reminded me of "The New World" and "Paranoid Park" (two favorites) in a formal sense, using art school-ish camera work (at points) that did not feel intrusive or indulgent, and in fact advanced the story as much as any dialogue or plot point. There was barely any speaking for the last 45 minutes but you wouldn't know it because the images and editing do so much. That's a complicated way of saying it's beautiful, and I doubt it would be the same watching it on a small screen. Who knows. Maybe it would be just as much of an experience watching it at an airport terminal. Movies! I'm going to go take a shower and go to bed. Good night.

Today I was helping a student work through some ideas for an essay on Gianni Versace, helping her come up a with thesis from the three pages she brought in. I couldn't quite read her mind or her words well enough to understand the larger point driving her essay, and in fact, as is the case with a lot of reluctantly written first drafts, she didn't know her larger point either. This was a problem. One-on-one writing work can be tricky because it's tempting to do the work for the student, i.e. tell them what they should be writing about. It's easy and it's fast. Some students want you do to this, some do not. Personally, I don't want to write an essay about Gianni Versace so as, I have to find a way to help the student think through her own ideas.

What doesn't work is beginning with a big idea: the illusion that everybody knows what they're going to do before they do it. Ninety-five percent of everything that's appeared on this blog I didn't mean to write. I mean, sometimes I'll have a first sentence in mind, or an idea that I'm trying to get to, but usually once I get going I completely forget why I started and am just looking for a good place to stop. Then again (from a Liz Waldner poem,

I fell in love when she said,
"any insect creatures' babies make me disgusted."

For these people, they just open their mouths
and the world is there.

"Wants to Sit in the Big Chair. Does.") Sure there are some people who have big ideas on cue, but most of the students I work with don't. And even if they do, there's just as many problems supporting it, usually leading one to modify or abandon it and start back at the beginning anyway.

What seemed helpful was simple description of the image in front of us: what are these patterns called, how does the shape of the earrings relate to the shape of the dress, what associations come up when looking at this set of colors; simply, where does our attention go? What is there? What do we see? Starting at this point we were able to build an idea, rather than imposing one from the top down. Observing and then pooling all our observations until commonalities emerge. A kind of research. Here, in this moment, all these questions of what to talk about and how to write, disappear and we are working, finally.

on my way back from school a.k.a. work heading towards my bicycle which i lock around a large metal pole on the corner of howard and new montgomery with the black kryptonite cord that will sometimes receive the comment you know you should get a new bike lock because thieves can easily cut through that to which i reply i don't think anybody wants to steal my bike in a self-depreciating way to which they respond well you never know

on my way back from school a.k.a. work on my way to get on my bike and ride the not so far distance home from the academy's downtown location but far enough to warrant a bike ride and save a little money on the bart because i don't get paid until friday so as its been three weeks since i had any money coming in and a student today asked if i was a "biker" because i had forgotten to unroll my pant leg and i said i'm not a biker but ride a bike feeling like the terms was a little bit derogatory but isn't it always better to be specific than general and then we talked about skinny pants and how the crotches of my not as skinny pants have ripped from riding a bike

on my way back from school a.k.a. work before i got to my bike on the corner of howard and new montgomery there was some traffic lined up a car pulling into a parking place the car behind it honking the guys in the car getting out the guy honking leaning out the window telling them "that's not a parking spot" me standing there looking at the parking meter thinking that's a parking spot alright and then saying "that's a parking spot, look at the meter" and then looking up to see a meter maid stopped at the traffic light and i asked "is that a parking spot" and he said "not until seven" and the light turned white and i walked over to my bike and came home

Independence day in San Francisco and it's hot. Tyler doing? Woke up like its Monday meditated walked two corners away and got a paper, made breakfast and read. Laid on my bed and read. Got up and started writing (this). Feeling a little bit punky today, spoke with brother and sister who are in Mineral Point for the annual 4th of July race and parade, an event that my dad used to take us to as kids and in recent years my brother, who runs a lot, has been coming back to run the two mile version. Kind of like a ringer, but it doesn't exactly work out like that as he's taken second place to an 18 year old, maybe twenty now, for a number of years in a row.

It would be nice to be there though, instead of here, where my roots stretch no further than October of 2006. Recently a friend said to me: "There's no reason for you to be here [in San Fransico]." I agree. There is no reason for me to be here. Asides from work, teaching, I have no family here, not all that many friends, no car, no money, no in-roads into a particular community aside from where I teach, no connections, no etc. And not to be a boo bird, or a whiner, but when my colleagues skip town to shoot off illegal fireworks with their friends and families I get a little jealous and a little bummed out.

Then again maybe all this angst is actually a stack of student papers, and the thought of getting though them, so I can go watch the fireworks with a clear conscience. I could reframe the discussion of what my problem is, pretty radically, by getting on my bike and riding to the beach, like I did yesterday on my roommates borrowed bike (mine is in the shop), headphones and a sandwich (yesterday's big realization: if you get all the fixings on a sandwich it doesn't matter if you put meat on it). Lie out in the sun and doze, and read:

In almost any experience there's usually a little agony and usually a little pleasure, and the problem is happiness is something else...containing both pleasure and agony, a state that accepts and encompasses and transforms the whole range of experience, and when I called Jane the following afternoon, happiness was what I thought I wanted.

____________________________-John Haskell from "Out of My Skin"