I have two theories as to why Jinx has lived so long. Three theories actually but I have nothing to say about genetics. Anyway, the first theory is that his middle years were spent in relatively spartan conditions, cold San Francisco rooms crowded with other cats. Thus he appreciates the life he has: plenty of space, warmth, permission to get on the bed, and wet food. My second theory is that he's always been around other cats, and now that he's alone, he finally gets to be the "cute cat," something that he's observed throughout his life but as an alpha male always in the company of other cats, his responsibilities have prevented him from being the baby. Cat fun fact #1: domestic cats follow the same kinds of gender roles that lions follow. The job of the females is to go out and hunt, and the job of the males is to protect the territory, including the lionesses, from other lions. Thus male cats sit around and boss everybody around while the females are social and hunt. From a contemporary perspective this arrangement makes the males look lazy and chauvinist (multiple-wives, periodic domineering gestures), but it seems to work. Cat fun fact #2: cats are the least evolved mammals. Meaning that they've had to change/adapt very little over the hundred of thousands of years they've been here .

I first met Jinx at Melanie and Collin's apartment. Amy and I were cat sitting while they and the kid (singular at that point) were away. There were four cats: Boo, Kitty Girl (KG), Jinx, and Kitty Buddy. I had an immediate liking for KG, who was cute and soft, a little heavy, and a her blue eyes were a little cross-eyed, that, combined with the serious expression on her face made her extremely cute. She would jump up on my lap and dig her claws into my legs and I petted her and she purred and she had found herself another admirer. Jinx, on the other hand, would just sit, either in the doorway or down the hallway, and stare. Sit and stare, usually right into my eyes. It was unnerving, and my initial impression of Jinx was that he was a creep. He bullied the other cats, either wapping them with his paws as they walked by or making them get up from their spots to steal their warmth. In relation to humans, he would jump up on counter tops and dressers and seemingly, intentionally knock things off onto the floor. Yet, at night, in the big bed, he was the only cat who would lay close to me, and would position his then heavy body, to lounge in the space between my legs. 

Part of what makes Jinx Jinx is that he's a big cat. Long legs, really long feet, and strong and stiff limbs that could probably do some damage if he wanted them to. In San Francisco Mitch, the neighbor across the hall, also had two cats. We (Chris, my roommate, me and Mitch) would leave our doors open so that the cats could intermingle and explore. At first the cats would just sit across from each other, stare, and hiss. KG never really expressed much interest Mitch's cats or his apartment, and typically stayed out of sight in my room. Meanwhile Mitch's cats would make occasional raids into the apartment, looking for KG (the only female of the four cats) or trying to score some cat food when Jinx was sleeping. Jinx, who never really cared much about food, eventually started going into Mitch's apartment and laying down on the couch. Like Russia in the Ukraine, there was nothing Mitch's cats could do about it. Or in Oakland, Jinx would wander down the rickety wooden stair case in the back and sit in the court yard amongst the picnic table, the orange tree, and the rotten oranges that fell from the tree. When I started to hear noises, I would come down and inevitably find Jinx sitting calmly, staring at another cat. Said cat would be hissing, arching it's back, and freaking out. All this is to say, since there aren't any more cats around, no KG to protect and not much interest in meeting other cats, his role has changed.

Today I took Jinx to the vet. I've been putting it off for some time both because of financial reasons as well as for holistic health reasons. It's been clear for a while that Jinx has the same thing that Kitty Girl had, and that many cats get when they get old: kidney disease. This means that his kidney's are worn out and not processing fluids, which means that he gets severely dehydrated and isn't absorbing nutrients. He also has hyper-thyroidism which I'm only beginning to learn about and from what I understand leads to weight loss, a rapid heart rate, and vomiting. All three of which are something that Jinx has been experiencing in the last six months, and have been particularly pronounced this last month. He's really skinny right now. Skin and bones. He's had a wobble in his walk since his stroke about four years ago, but now the wobble occasionally morphs into a stumble, and when I saw that it was time to go to the vet. 

My experience with Kitty Girl: $3500 for six more months on Earth to be jabbed once and sometimes twice a day with needles; puking everywhere, pissing everywhere, and above all else, not seeming particularly happy or comfortable during this time, made me wonder what good the treatment was doing asides from keeping her alive a little bit longer for Jinx and I. Or in other words, I'm not sure the treatment the vets and I were providing really did much. Of course I don't know, and the first time through this I decided to take the advice of the experts. The second time through, now with Jinx, I'm approaching things differently, thinking more about this whole process as end of life care rather than as a disease to be treated. After all, he's pretty old (as was Kitty Girl, who was 19 when she died last year), and has lived a full and good life. The quality of his life, though he's been peeing a lot and losing weight for the last year or so, has remained pretty good: he walks around and yowls, eats cat food, sleeps by and with warm things, and hangs out when guests come over. Even though he hasn't looked like a full bodied alpha male for some time, his symptoms didn't seem to impact his actual day to day.  

But as of today it's official: Jinx is sick. I can pay for the treatment, pay for monitoring the treatment, and keep taking him to the vet, but at the end of the day there's not much that can be done about kidney disease in older cats. I believe once we start thinking that's something is wrong, and begin off loading our own care to other people, i.e. trips to the vet, we start breaking the things that keep us who we are, i.e. our routines. I witnessed this in the case of my dad, who once he started going to care facilities, and especially once he started staying overnight at care facilities, his condition worsened exponentially. Within a year and a half after "checking-in" he could no longer remember who any of us where, and I suspect, who he was or used to be. In this sense, to avoid the vet is also to avoid death, physically and mentally, and I didn't want to introduce the idea that there was something wrong into Jinx's ecosystem any sooner than absolutely necessary. There can be value in drawing things out, but above all else, when it's time, I want him to move forward like the cat he is: strong and wise and dignified, rather than like the sick cat he is becoming.

**

As I write this Jinx is at the vet right now getting an all day fluid treatment. For the first time in some years I'm sitting in an apartment where there are no other living creatures asides from the little slow stink bugs that occasionally crawl across the top of the couch as I read or watch tv on my computer. It's quiet, and the urge to look towards Jinx, to walk over to wherever he is, say something and poke him, harass or pet or kiss him on the top of his head, will probably take a while to let go of. In a way Jinx has been my best friend for a long time. Unlike Kitty Girl who I loved and took care of as one loves a child, Jinx and I have always been buddies. Not exactly equals, but at least on my part, I've always respected and admired him. Like I wrote before, he is not unique in many of his attributes, but he is a good friend of mine, and I do the best I can to take care of him, as he has taken care of me.

Jinx communicates. When I come home sometimes he is waiting at the top of the stairs, and yowls when I begin to turn the key in the lock. Yowling. The light is off and I put my bike on my shoulder to carry it up the stairs, and he's at the top, yowling and trying to lead me into the kitchen. I can't tell if he hears me pull up on my bike, which seems unlikely, or if he just happens to be at the top of the stairs, sitting in the dark by the warm radiator. What goes on when I'm not there? This morning I got out of bed and found him sitting in the back hallway in a patch of sunshine, he was looking up in the air and waving his head around. I said, "Hey," sharply, and he turned around and yowled. I think I caught him doing something but I don't know what it was. And so I did my routine, him following behind me as I made my way to the bathroom, flossing and brushing my teeth while he sat outside of the bathroom door by the radiator at the top of the stairs. We are both entirely predictable.

He does the typical cat thing, yowling when I go through the motions of feeding him. He didn't used, which I figure was because Kitty Girl would do it for him. He would just sit there mute, watching, while she laid it on me. I used to think that he was less interested in food, but I think he was just participating in the division of cat labor: KG does the food thing, he does the big cat protection thing. So now he sits by his food and water, watches me and yowls as I open a can of cat food, yowls, and yowls when I set it in front of him. Of course I'm not silent either, and I'm either singing to him, songs about cat food; discussing our relationship, of feeding him and other pet related burdens; or spouting joyous, cat related nonsense. He is, in this situation, a captive audience, and watches me with an attentive look on his face. It's nice to have an audience, and I wonder if I my constant talking to him encourages our constant inter-species dialogue. 

He is so skinny these days, like, really skinny, and I consider it a success if he eats half of what I put on his plate. We suspect (as in, me and my veterinary neighbors) that he has the typical old cat kidney disease illness, and so I've been injecting him once a week with saline solution to keep him hydrated. When I stick the needle in his back, holding him between my legs and my left hand lightly wrapped around his neck to keep him from bounding off, his eyes are wide with what seems either like pain or fear, and I speak quietly into his ear tell him that it will be alright. When all this is done, 100 milliliters a fluid later, and I pull the needle out, he bounds away and yowls. So loud. Like the worst thing in the world just happened to him. KG just took it in silence but he fights and resists and lets me know that he doesn't like it.

This is one of the things I like most about Jinx, his unabashed lack of pretense. I believe this is what has kept him alive so long. When he wants something he asks for it, and if he doesn't like something he let's me know. He is consistent and mature in this regard. If he wants to go onto the porch he stands by the door and yowls. When he's cold he'll wander around and yowl. When he wants food he'll sit by the bowls and look at me. When he wants a pet he'll get onto the couch, walk over, and paw at my arm. Granted this is what cats generally do, and I'm not saying that Jinx is special. He doesn't jump through boxes or know any tricks. But, he seems to understand the word "no," or at least the concept, and if he's asking for something, it's fairly easy to communicate to him that I can't give him whatever it is at that particular time. In this sense, Jinx is a good communicator because he listens. I try to listen too, and we negotiate. He is not smart, but he is wise in this regard, and he engages me in ways I can understand. I admire him and I think he admires me. He comes when I call him, and I think this says a lot for a cat. 

Jinx is 21 years old. Melanie, his first owner, got him in 1993 and he came to live with Amy, Kitty Girl, and I in Oakland in 2006. When Amy and I parted ways and I moved to San Francisco I left Jinx and Kitty Girl with Amy. Every Friday, when I would go to my weekly therapy appointment, I would arrive to Oakland a couple hours early so I could hang out with the two of them at Amy's apartment, taking a nap on the couch while they slept on my legs and chest. When Amy moved in with Steven, I took the cats into the small apartment on Valencia that I shared with Chris. After a couple years I moved back to Oakland and took the cats with me to a large-for-a-studio apartment just west of downtown. The cats and I lived comfortably there for a year and then Quintin took the cats for the summer of 2012 while Dara and I were in New Mexico, and by August I had officially moved to Indiana to start the program here. The cats spent August and September at Amy and Steven's flat in San Francisco, and then in late September, with the help of Dara, Amy sent the cats via airplane, SFO-->Cleveland-->Indianapolis, and I picked up them up and drove them to my apartment in Lafayette. Kitty Girl died last September and since then Jinx and I have been living the life of bachelors. I never intended to have cats or be a cat person, but that is what has happened.

Jinx is 21 years old. He's skinny and kind of scraggly these days. He still yowls frequently, though not as habitually as he used to. He mostly spends the day sleeping and during the warmer months he settles onto the blanket on the porch. These days it's gotten cool in Indiana, and Jinx doesn't want to go outside. Some days he sleeps on the couch, and sometimes on my bed. Most mornings he gets on my bed around six and most mornings I'm happy to see him, and invite him to lay on a the pillow next to me. When I get up I floss and brush my teeth and he'll sit on the little blue rug in my bathroom or just outside the door and wait for me to finish. I'll watch him in the mirror sometimes and he's usually looking around at the things in the bathroom: the metal trashcan, the dripping toilet, the shower curtain. Rarely does he look up at me, or the parts of me that I think are important, like my eyes or my head. I feed him, and then either start making breakfast for myself or if there's time, do some sitting on the floor of my bedroom. Either way, he'll go back to my bed, climb up the little stair case that I made him, and lay in the imprint of where I was sleeping. It's not unusual to come home after work and school, eight or twelve hours later, and find him sleeping in the exact same spot I saw him last. "Hey buddy," I'll say, and sit down next to him, and kiss him on the top of his head and scratch his ear.

When people come over, on a random Tuesday night or sometime during the weekend, he'll usually be sleeping on the couch. They will sit down and pet him and say thinks like, "Jinx is such a sweet cat," or "You're so nice Jinx," but I know that Jinx used to be an asshole. Now in his old age, dependent on me to take care of him, unable to bully other cats and too rickety to jump and run and cause trouble like he used to do; no longer capable of being an alpha male with no more cats around to set his identity against, he lets himself be babied. Maybe this is what he always wanted but now that Kitty Girl isn't around, he does the things that she used to do. When it's cat food time he'll yowl. He never used to say anything or seem particularly interested in food. I can pick him up and sling him over my shoulder which he never used to let me do. And when I'm moving around the apartment, working some on the couch and then moving to the office, he'll follow and make a bed for himself close to wherever I am. None of these behaviors are unusual for a cats but they are unusual for Jinx. Thus he changes, like we all are capable of doing, based on what the situation dictates. Without Kitty Girl Jinx has become a sweet old cat. I was worried about how he would adapt to not having her in his life, after 20 some years, but he, above all else, is a strong and resilient creature. I am lucky to have him.

In the qualitative methods class I've been taking this semester I've done a couple observations on the #3 Lafayette CityBus, the one that stops directly in front of my apartment. After a good four weeks of reading about observation, some history of qualitative research, practicing observations on campus, and writing up these observations, I went and rode the 3 around in a loop, sat, took notes, and did my best to practice "low-inference" observational techniques, i.e. observing and describing and interpreting with as little judgment as possible. Instead of saying the little girl looked excited, a (not particularly skillful) low-inference observation would be something like: the little girl with long brown curly hair in the puffy blue jacket bounced up and down in her seat and smiled. Fiction writing teachers call it "showing, not telling", and when it comes to gathering material one can use for later analysis, the more in-the-moment assertions of value we can remove from our observations, the better. Of course we can't entirely remove the act of inference all together (for multiple logistical, linguistic, and philosophical reasons), so one does their best to minimize how much we bring into the act of observation. 

This pruning of judgment/opinion/preference reminds me of some of the directives that S.N. Goenka uses when discussing Vipassana mediation. That when practicing Viapassana, a kind of full body observation (Vipassana translates as "to see things as they really are") that amongst other things, one develops sensitivity to what's going on in the body on a moment-to-moment basis. Part of this practice is to regard sensations "equanimously," meaning that we can observe pain (such as sitting still for hours on end) as much as we can observe pleasure (such as eating a piece of cake), and that to observe them with equanimity is to learn how to react more evenly to the constant cravings and aversions our lives generally consist of. "Just observe" says Goenka. Of course this, like low-inference observation, is very difficult to practice with a monolithic consistency, and failure is frequent. Thus, part of the meditative practice is to not to dwell on these failures and start again.

Or even in terms of writing, one thing I do when I write is stay wary of language that contains unexamined judgments. This could be as simple as limiting the use of adjectives in the sense that most adjectives overtly assume some kind of intrinsic value (e.g. happy, sad, fluffy, red, green), or in the case of writing about people, avoiding attempts at describing the "inner" motivations of anyone, including myself. So as, descriptions of another person's behavior or what they said at a given time is fair game but what they might have been feeling or why they might have done something is not. Granted when I begin to talk about larger, faceless entities such as "the media," I get a little bit sloppier in my writing (since "nobody" will get upset) but generally I try to write within these constraints. I also have to remove the word "that" a lot from my writing but that's another problem.  But anyway, the basic directive is to try and describe what I know for certain, the "facts" of what happened, and avoid speculating on the unseen or unheard. This means my job as a writer is to observe and report rather than "creatively" write. Or as John Cage wrote,"Privilege of connecting two things remains privilege of each individual (e.g. I: thirsty: drink a glass of water); but this privilege isn't to be exercised publicly except in emergencies (there are no aesthetic emergencies)."

Bluebird

You can’t expect
the milk to be delivered
to your house
by a bluebird
from the picture book
you looked at
at the age of four:
he’s much older
now, can’t carry those
bottles ‘neath his wing,
can hardly even carry a tune
with his faded beak
that opens some nights
to leak out a cry
to the horrible god
that created him.

Don’t think I’m
the bluebird, or that
you are. Let him get
old on his own and
die like a real bluebird
that sat on a branch
in a book, turned his head
toward you, and radiated.
               
                    -Ron Padgett

A brief note on the protests in Hong Kong, a.k.a. Occupy Central; that late last week there were reports of counter protesters inciting violence and sowing confusion. Stories such as this one in the New York Times and this one in the LA Times were typical of the stories published by large media outlets on Thursday and Friday, the headline in the Times article reading: "Some Hong Kong Residents, Weary of Disruptions, Find Fault With Protesters’ Methods." To say nothing of their cause, the reports of violence initiated by other residents are revealed later in the articles to be suspected paid agitators. And so, when it comes to big, wide open protests such as the ones taking place in Hong Kong, it is remarkably easy for a few "bad apples" to break some noses or windows and give those who are watching events unfold reason to turn away. In my own experience during Occupy Oakland  this was indeed the case, as these instigators often got much of the media attention, or as they say, "if it bleeds, it ledes."

Civil disobedience is not a new tactic, and it has been used in the past to varying degrees of success i.e. the Civil Rights movement or India's independence from Britain. Sympathy for a cause, which in turn translates into policy, can be won when the cause is presented in a way that moves the public. In more recent history, Donald Sterling's sale of the Los Angeles Clippers and Ray Rice's banishment from pro-football are clear examples of how quickly things change when put under intense public scrutiny. That said, it's much easier to judge the rightness or wrongness of an event captured on video rather than the complexity of a massive political protest. My point in making this comparison is that the powers that be are well aware of how quickly opinions move and how easily these opinions can be swayed. Insert a few trouble makers and people quickly find a reason to no longer pay attention to this or that. More bluntly: it is much easier for federal, state, and local governments to encourage trouble, infiltrate movements, and destroy them from within than it is to negotiate.

Divide and conquer tactics like these were developed to topple enemy governments and are now being used domestically just as the weapons developed to fight terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan are ending up in the hands of local police forces (see Ferguson or the West Lafayette Police Department's armored troop carrier and its recently acquired collection of M16 rifles). The tear gas being shot at the protestors in Hong Kong is the same tear gas being used in Missouri and Oakland (Literally. Like, it's the same brand). And while I could dive further down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, the reason I bring all this up is to underline the danger in believing the muddied truths of contemporary journalism, especially when it comes to representing the motives of those who don't have PR people to write their statements for them. Thus, I read the reports from Hong Kong that speak of confusion and a disagreement amongst protestors with a grain of salt, and I wonder what movements like these can do better to steel themselves against these inevitable divide and conquer tactics and the unsympathetic media coverage they will attract.

**

I could go on but I'll stop here. Chances are that if you agree with me you already did, if you don't then whatever I write is not going to change your mind, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about you already stopped reading by the middle of the second paragraph. Over the weekend I went down to Kentucky to visit my uncle who had major heart surgery a couple months ago. On the four+ hour drive there I was listening to the Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, fast and slow and he talked about the findings of a study in psychology that found that even if we know better, statistically or factually, we don't change our beliefs. But, the study found, we change our beliefs when we're genuinely surprised in a real life situation, such as when we see somebody do something totally "out of character," or at least, our idea of their character. But anyway, I digress. Have a lovely week,

When it comes to writing I'm not sure what to say these days. There's a fear in the front of my mind that because my interests and everyday concerns have been wrapped up in school and "research," my writing in terms of literary-ish modes will shrivel up and die. Take the way that I've been writing papers or responses so far this semester, typing fast with little worry about quality or trying to impress my professors or peers. More of a concern about the content and the ideas and getting it done without much consternation. After writing through the summer in this mode, and after the intensive experience of a nine day high stakes test, I wonder if my approach to writing academically has been cauterized a little bit, which as I said, is more concerned with content rather than style. (The man across the stress is swearing at his lawn mower as I write this: "I'm so fucking tired of this," as he bends down to futz with the engine...). I believe that a mode of writing is a physically ingrained habit and dwelling over word choice, the truest way to say something, or being hyper-sensitive to cliche for the sake of originality is a mode that develops through the repetition of intention, i.e. develops over time. To put it another way, I worry that the kind of engagement with ideas that seems to be part of academic writing, of having already decided in some sense where one is going before you start, is going to carry over in other kinds of writing. Academic writing, or at least the kind that I've been trained in, is predatory writing, and I'm pretty sure that's about as far away from poetry as one can get. 

But maybe these kinds of concerns assume too much: that there is a something like a self to mess up. Philosophically, spiritually, I don't believe that there is (something to mess up), but I do try to be careful about what kinds of practices I dabble in. The other day I was reading a kind of convention guide for writing literature reviews and when it was discussing the stylistic features that one could begin a paragraph with I deliberately skipped it, believing that to read it would actually be bad for my writing; that to contend with known rules of how things are done limits the possibilities for what you might do. After knowing the rules one either follows them or not, but at the end of the day we still position ourselves in relation to the rule. Maybe this is silly, but there are some things I would rather not know, protecting the little jewel of my beliefs like a hen protecting her eggs. Then again, it seems like an even deeper display of faith to learn practices that conflict with ones beliefs, and then make a decision about the right way to do thing; the "don't knock it until you try it, man" school of thought. I have a hard time arguing with this approach, but some ways of being have a powerful impact on our beliefs, i.e. the politicians and academics who want to change the system but instead become absorbed by it. It's nearly impossible to notice the subtle, controlling influence of the systems we willingly subject ourselves to in the name of progress. 

My interests have been more political lately, which, second to love, charges my batteries; digging into the forums on Ferguson last week at Purdue and continuing to read and think and talk about the contingent labor problem in higher education. I'm leaning towards a historically oriented dissertation right now, investigating the value of language teaching (be it writing, speaking, English or other) within a Democratic/capitalist frame work as far back as Ancient Greece and how working conditions / economics have affected what gets taught. There's so much change happening at universities now, I guess my thinking is that I need to understand how we got to where we are to better be able to come to solutions that don't tread the same didactic ground. In another sense, I'd like to spend some of my remaining time here writing a story about how teachers are valued in "The West." In other school news, my research partner and I finished our data collection (or will Finish on Monday), and now we have a massive amount of data to go through which ultimately will be about the differences and similarities between American and international students when it comes to the kinds of teacher comments they prefer. In other words, when they get their papers back from teachers, which kinds of comments are useful and which are not. Over the summer and during the month of September we had four hundred some students take a fairly involved survey and now we need to figure out what it means, and I'll let you know. But it's exciting, and a novel experience, to be doing this kind of research. I should go now, as I need to clean up a bit before going to the big city tonight (Indianapolis!) to see the movie Boyhood, which I've been excited to see for some time and then totally forgot about once school started. So much more to say but it will have to wait. Hope you're well,

A quiet morning in Lafayette. Labor day, and the cars that usually start coming down Main at seven still aren't coming and its ten now as I sit down to write. I imagine all the people who don't have to be anywhere, work or church or school or wherever there is to go when they wake up, and I'm laying with my chin on the pillow watching the wind push the curtain away from the window, and the dim light of the overcast sky floods the dim room where I sleep. The voice of narration, this one, begins without an effort, and instead of moving towards the day or continuing to look out the window or calling for Jinx, I start speaking to you, as if you are here. Describing not just the morning, the perfect quiet that occasionally descends on this small town in Indiana, but the past month and all that's happened. I don't do this every morning, or hardly at all these days, but today it began before I woke up so I figure I may as well.

Last week school began and the Sunday before I returned from my post-prelim travels. It was an easy week since I don't have to start teaching until this Wednesday, and school was just classes. Three classes in the Second Language Studies department so I can finish both my secondary area in Rhet/Comp as well as get an ESL certificate to officially prove that I'm international student competent. I'm looking forward to these classes as a seasoned graduate school student, and am not worried about the work load or the work itself. My days of performance are over for the most part, and I don't feel the need to prove myself in class, such as the vibe was in many of the Rhet/Comp classes: a thick lair of performance anxiety obscuring every discussion. I'm most excited about the qualitative research class, a class that I've wanted to take for the last two years but haven't had time. We do ethnography, actual ethnography, in the form of observations and interviews, rather than spending the bulk of our time reading theories about ethnography. Three linked assignments across the course of the semester and I was thinking about doing an ethnography of the veterinary clinic's waiting room or if that gets nixed, of the bus. People with their animals and public transportation, both things I love mixed with observation, i.e. the work of writing.

Prelims got done by mid-August and now for the next three years my time here is what I make of it. Though I haven't found out if I passed prelims, I figure I did. Not because I believe what I wrote is totally awesome, but because I wrote thesis statements, topic sentences, made coherent arguments for the most part, cited other people's work, and generally answered the questions that were asked of me. If they were good answers or "right" answers I could not say, but its done and I feel an amazing sense of relief. It's hard to describe how oppressive the prospect and the actual studying for prelims was, but in retrospect it's been coloring my entire grad school experience thus far. To be done with the actual test and with the core courses required for my degree is to be free, and now the work is to rediscover an agenda with the new mind that all this work has built. At the same time all the politics of fitting in and being of this program have suddenly vanished. Halleluiah. But there's still a lot of work to do, and I should probably get on with it. My friend Christian, whose wedding I went to just before school started, wisely said the other day that the sooner you get your work done the sooner you can start in on the things you really want to do.

Below you will find a link to Snow White, an album of music I made with Ableton Live and a sampling rig over the course of the last year and half. It is sample heavy music, a "mixtape" in the hip-hop definition of the word, i.e. using so many parts of other people's music that there's no way I could sell it without getting sued (not that anyone would actually buy it). But it is an album in the sense that it has a beginning a middle and an end, runs about forty some minutes, and has been worked over diligently and thoughtfully over a long period of time. Here are the liner notes: 

A poem in music and sound, built around the following samples and musicians: Cory Russel on guitar, "III" from Born Into Trouble as the Sparks Fly Upward by A Silver Mt. Zion; Nas, Mendelssohn, Derek Fisher, Pajo playing “Horror Business”, Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow (book), Billy Holiday, Ron Artest a.k.a. Metta World Peace;; The Tree of Life (movie); “The Singing from Mt. Eerie” by the Microphones, David Pajo (again), 21st Century Flute Music, “Tititoli” from the Good, the Bad, the Ugly Soundtrack, Stars of the Lid, and Snow White and the Three Stooges; Sparklehorse’s “More Yellow Birds” + Nite Jewel’s “One Second of Love” + Cornelius’ remix of “Windy Hill” by The Pastels + Some Hendrix; D; Aric Naue on guitar, Aesop's fables; “The Skye Boat Song” and “Donald Blue” from The Best of the Black Watch (London Records, 1975),  as well as select moments from Snow White and the Three Stooges (Columbia, 1961); pieces of Roberta Fleck’s cover of “Sweet Bitter Love.”

Click on the link in orange below to be led to a Dropbox folder that will enable you to download the album in one swoop. After clicking the link look for the "Download" box at the top of the page. If you would like a hard copy send me an email and I'll send you a CDR (which will have better sound quality since the download is made of MP3s). Thanks for listening.

Snow White

**

And have a happy August. I take my big test next week, and then will leave for parts beyond, Wisconsin and California, and hopefully, after all of this is over, will not be so grumpy. See you then,

**

The True Encounter

"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

"Wolf! Wolf!"—and up would start
Good neighbours, bringing spade
And pitchfork to my aid.

At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace. 

              -Edna St. Vincent Millay

This morning I got up around eight. I woke up around six something but thought I needed to get more sleep, for my health, the idea that I could catch up for lost time, which as an idea has been propelling me for some time, trying to get back to something I had lost instead of simply moving forward. Easier said then done. This could be the story of the summer or the entire year, a series of unfortunate events that has left me in a constant state of "why me?" Planning for failure and falling into the habit of waiting for someone or some thing to wrap its perfect wings around me. The few years before I moved to Indiana I had come to an uncommon place in my life, feeling content with not just where I was materially as an adult, a teacher and writer capable of taking care of myself (and two cats), but also as a person who had figured out, though a long course of trial and error, how to maintain a reasonable level of health and happiness.Yet now I am not so sure I actually had any answers, and am thinking this forced recalibration might be a good thing in the end.

These days I am tired of myself and my stories. So bored of eating my daily meat cake of anger and sadness. Do I have a right to be unhappy? I suppose, but then there is the rest of the world: my students and my studies, writing and hiking and making jokes with friends. There is loneliness and then there is the fan spinning above, the little clicking noise it makes and Jinx sleeping on one end of the couch. The noises of birds, bugs, and cars as they drive down Main. These things in the world that when I take care to see clearly shifts the attention away from my self, making a positive or negative sentiment just one more thing to set on the coffee table (or the internet) for display. On Saturday my uncle had a heart attack and by Sunday evening the date for his double by-pass heart surgery had been set. He's my father's only brother and an important person in my family and to me. His health has not been good for some time, living with diabetes and its long term impact: near blindness and a set of missing toes on one foot. But he has been there for us over the years, one of the funniest people I know, and especially since my dad went away, been looking out for my brother and sister and I in various ways for the last fifteen some years. At my dad's service in February there was no other person in the world I wanted to be sitting next to more than my uncle Jim.

So on Monday morning I cancelled my appointments and drove down to St. Joseph's in Lexington. I met my cousin outside the hospital and we sat with Jim in the afternoon. My sister flew in around five, and more family came until it was time to go to bed. I volunteered to stay with Jim through the night (we all did, but I insisted) until his surgery the next morning at 6AM, and everyone came back and saw him off before the procedure. The messages the doctors had been telling us were mixed, and we were all worried. Another Carter family medical emergency, and at this point we all know the drill. Jim was distressed, understandably, to be put under when there was a real possibility he would not wake up. It's hard to imagine what this feels like. But the surgery went well, and yesterday, Tuesday, by 6PM the news was good: his heart was working, though at reduced capacity, and he was waking up. It will be six to eight weeks before the doctors will know if his heart is strong enough for him to lead his normal, everyday life. So, for the first time in a while, the worst possible outcome did not happen. I had forgotten that was possible while I was dwelling deep in my wounded ego. Prelims are in six days and I'm glad that instead of going to a funeral and wondering what I could have done better, all I have to do this week is study rhetoric, teach a few students, play some softball (the tournament begins this week), and do some laundry. Onward,

On Friday after work I went up to Chicago. I met up with Nate in Hyde Park and we drove up together to Cole's art opening, standing around the gallery, chatting with random art people, and later, having a few beers at a bar near downtown, we capped the night off in Cole's studio before heading back down to Nate's. It was a nice break from the monotony of studying (and now prelims are only a week a way and to be honest, last week I kind of slacked off). Saturday morning Nate and I got breakfast and walked by the lake and around the neighborhood. Our conversation centered around a discussion of Orange Is The New Black, which both of us had recently been watching, like the good Times readers that we are, bending some of our interests to the cultural Zeitgeist/hype machine. Regardless, I've been enjoying OITNB (as it's abbreviated) and in particular have really been into the Piper Chapman character both for the obvious reasons (charming, beautiful, entertaining) as well as how her character has, to my mind, been a vehicle through which to critique the selfish desires that can co-exist with "good intentions," and illuminate the unseen consequences of a particular American lifestyle. Or to put it in a more narrativistic way, I read the personal change that Piper undergoes during the first fifteen or so episodes as a kind of karmic reckoning for a particular mode of charm that usually goes unchallenged.

Some of the first conversations Piper has in the show are with Officer Healy, who tells her that she is like him (a white, seemingly educated and middle-class person, "normal," etc.). Later an attractive female guard tells her the same thing, that the only difference between her and Piper is that Piper got caught, implying that most everybody is guilty of criminal activity but only some are punished. Piper herself, early on, makes statements that coincide with this outlook, feeling like she didn't belong in prison with the other inmates who not only looked different than her, but acted in ways indicative of their less privileged backgrounds (for more on this idea, see Bourdieu's Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, an empirical study which suggests, amongst other things, that people from working class backgrounds tend to favor the literal pleasures of "base" desires; cheap beer, sex, action movies, as opposed to the deferred pleasures of contemplation; conceptual art, literature, and opera that are favored by those in the upper classes. These specific aesthetic preferences mix together more now in 2014 America then they did in 1979 France, but Bourdieu's point is that our preferences, however cleverly masked, are shaped by economics more so than the intrinsic qualities inherent in a given form of entertainment or person. To put it another way, the pleasure of distance, deferment, or something like irony, is enjoyed from a position of relative power). 

As Piper establishes herself inside the inescapable walls of the prison she relies on her physical desirability to attract "protectors," but also uses her wit and charm to defer the inevitable problems that come with assuming one's intentions, rather than our actual impact on those around us, are what matter. Early on (spoiler alert) she offends Red, the inmate in charge of the kitchen, by spouting a fairly typical complaint: "the food is terrible," and thus, stops being given food. Eventually she does Red a favor, concocting a soothing back rub (since Piper was getting into the business of making high-end lotions before she got sent to prison) and the episode is resolved. This is one example of the kinds of interactions she continues to have, which as the first season progresses, shows her learning that the rules of prison are considerably different than the rules outside of prison. As the show depicts it, a person's status in prison depends solely on the materials at hand. One cannot use their social status to protect themselves (i.e. I will sue you) or trade in future shares (I'll just put it on my credit card) to acquire what one needs. That if you want something of material value you need to have something of material value on hand to trade for it. Another inmate gives Piper the ingredients for the lotion because the inmate is in love with Piper. Thus while Piper is able to get out of Red's bad graces, she creates another problematic relationship along the way.

Piper continues this trend, of solving one personal problem by creating another one, pissing everyone off along the way, and so Piper continues to defer the referendum on why she is there. This chain of events continues up until the last episode where (I'm serious: spoiler alert) another inmate is going to kill Piper and Piper, having alienated herself from everyone around her, has to deal with it herself. The experience changes her and we see a shift in how she relates to people, her prison experience, and the outside world. The violence she engages in to save her life causes her to reexamine her self-conception, and that maybe, in fact, she is not as "normal" as she thought she was. As season two progresses we find Piper at a kind of peace with the fact of her incarceration, which, as I interpret the show, comes from the viscerally induced realignment of her identity. That indeed, she too is a sinner, and is not above her responsibility to others; regardless of her other virtues. More politically, the kind of deferment that Piper practiced, masked by a sheen of middle-class health and common sense, is widely accepted in the States: taking out massive loans to go to school, starting a company that doesn't turn a profit for its first twenty years (Amazon), justifying the purchase of eighty dollar cheese because you work at a non-profit, or assuming that when we run out of oil scientists will find us another power source. Deferring the consequences of our pursuit of happiness until another time, which as some would argue, is what capitalism and Democracy as we know it has been founded on from the beginning.

One thing that OITNB does really well is depict the cultural and material practices of "liberals," Piper's fiance as a prime example. From The New Yorker to Whole Foods, a wish to do good awkwardly aligns with the practice of defending one's economic turf. Or more simply, that "success," i.e. winning in a capitalist society, always comes at the expense others. I'm definitely not above any of this, and arguably am a prototypical example of this kind of person, one who reads The New Yorker and, say, works under the pretense that if I work hard now I'll be rewarded later. But as as I've been watching the show these are some connections I've been making. Nate and I talked about all this stuff as we walked around Chicago yesterday, and while my reading of Piper above is largely literary. I am charmed and awed by Piper, and want her to do and be well, yet on the other hand am bothered by how she uses others to get her through. Alex, her ex-girlfriend, calls her out on this at one point towards the end of the first season, accusing Piper of doing anything, using anyone, to avoid being alone. But in the end Piper's change, a real and significant one that ultimately leads her to a better way to live and be with others, happens because she runs out of options. Abundance is a good thing, but sometimes it keeps us from moving forward. At any rate, it's Sunday afternoon and I think I'm going to take a nap now. ttyl.

The last week has been unusually cool for the middle of July. Mid-60's and overcast, no rain and nights that require at least a hoodie when the window is open. On Friday evening, sitting at my dining room table, playing cards with a couple friends, I unsashed the window curtain to find, sitting in the middle of the gold/brown fabric was a big black beetle, probably a cedar beetle, or as the entomologists on the internet call it, a Sandulus niger. It wasn't bothering anyone so I just left it (after taking a picture and posting it to instagram). Slow and seemingly innocuous. Vague memory of luck and scarab beetles and the story that Jung told in relation to synchronicity, about finding a golden scarab knocking at the window when his patient was talking about a dream about a golden scarab. This morning, Sunday, I picked up a pile of worn clothes to put into the laundry basket and found the beetle sitting there. I got an empty jar from the kitchen, covered the beetle with the jar, and slid a piece of junk mail between the beetle's feet and the wooden floor. I carried him/her downstairs and showed it to my neighbors who were sitting on their porch. I lifted the jar off the piece of paper and the beetle sat there with us as we chatted. Eventually I took it accross the street and released it into the dirt beneath a row of hedges. Beetle just sat there and so I nudged it along with a stick and it started moving and burrowing into the dirt and I left it there. 

I went back and sat with my neighbors but continued thinking about the beetle, wondering why it was in the apartment and what it was doing underneath the pile of dirty clothes. With the unseasonably cool weather maybe it was warmer under the pile, or maybe the beetle liked hanging out in my apartment? Or maybe it was friends with those two ants who were hanging out on my stove in June or maybe it was lost. Or maybe it knew exactly where it was and what it was doing. It doesn't matter really, but as I was sitting there, I wondered if I should have kept the beetle. If it wanted to be in my apartment maybe I should of let it be there. Who am I to presume that a big black beetle (with a greenish tint) is better off underneath a shrub then underneath my dirty laundry? Maybe this beetle and I were destined for each other and I speculated on possible long-term scenarios, keeping the beetle in my little flower garden on the porch or in a glass tank on top of the mantle so we could continue our story.

Tangentially (eventually), I saw the movie Snowpiercer last night and really enjoyed it. It's science fiction, about a train that travels around the world carrying the last living people on the earth. A silly premise and a long story, but the movie is also thoughtful critique of class warfare, a surreal and intense action movie, and a kind of Buddhist parable (the director is Korean but the actors are mostly American). I bring it up because it also offers some insight on narrative and drama, suggesting that aspiration couched in the realm of improvement (self, social, or otherwise) more or less just keeps the train going. The revolutionaries can overthrow the dictators but eventually, and inevitably, all we're doing is starting the story over with a different cast. Constant jostling for power on both a macro (free markets) and micro (an argument between two people) scale is another kind of entertainment, something to do for and with each other as we speed towards the end. Of course these stories of success and failure are what give our lives meaning, and meaningful lives are what we (sorry to generalize all of humanity) generally aspire to live. But meaning upon reflection, and thus purpose, remains contained entirely within language. I don't know if this is good or bad. On the one hand it's silly to fantasize about the beetle and how it and I may be connected in a deep cosmic way. Yet on the other it gives me a kind of pleasure when I do. It is nice to feel that someone has put me at the center of a story. Alternatively, on neither hand, jumping off the train (of language, humanity, etc.) is certainly not a life path I've been encouraged to pursue (and I don't mean suicide by "jumping off the train"). At any rate, it's a thoughtful and entertaining movie. I'm going to stop here and go to bed. I'm going to the dentist tomorrow. Goodnight.

**

Postscript: Oh, and one more thing. Friend/Poet Matt Turner has some poems on Dennis Cooper's blog. Matt was living in China for the last five, six some years and now is back in the States. Here is the link, and here is a very brief excerpt:

Some say we should enjoy the rain, and our soaked boots. I don’t have an opinion on it.

Saturday in Indiana. A little past noon. It's been raining this morning, nothing serious, but the cooler air feels good and Jinx and I are sitting on the couch. In a minute or an hour or so, whenever I get done writing this, I'll work on a practice prelim answer to keep pace with the study group and make new material that hopefully I can use towards the real prelim come August 4th. Prelims work like this: there is a 24 hour component, five questions, each limited to 1200 word answers, and each question is from one of the core classes. Then, after a day break, we're given 7 days to write a 20ish page paper on a topic chosen by the department. It's a nine day task and begins in about three weeks from now. Since the middle of June I've been studying, rereading the important texts and reading the things I hadn't read during the semesters, taking lots of notes, thinking ahead to how I'm going to answer prelim questions, and trying to build a workable framework for each class in the sense of understanding the movements within, say, rhetoric from Ancient Greece to the Romans, or composition/rhetorics development during the Enlightenment and how it's been carried over into higher education in the U.S. It's a lot of work and stressful.

And while I don't want to say, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, that it's been miserable during these last four weeks, it kind of has been miserable. But this is what I've been told to expect, that studying for prelims is not fun, and like most of the things that I've been told by people in the program who have been there (done that), they're right. It's hard to imagine that sitting in a chair or in a library reading and writing on a sunny day in July could be stressful but, well. Or the very act of studying, as opposed to say, writing what one already "knows," is a kind of a lowering, and so to hang out all day with the idea that I don't know enough about, say, the transition from 18th Century rhetorical treatises to transcendentalism or Deluze's Control Society in relation to Derrida's theories of deconstruction put me in a constant state of not being quite good/smart enough. This wears on me, and while maybe some can maintain a degree of confidence in the face of daily self-immolation, I find the whole process demeaning and disorienting. As most people say after prelims, they didn't want to read or pick up a book for a while after the ordeal had passed. So tired, is the claim.

But I understand that it's a "hoop" (as people call it) to jump though, and on the plus side I get to reconsider and relearn this material in a more concrete way. If I'm ever in a position where I am called to teach a class on, say, post-modern philosophy, I'll be in a better position to do this. Um, so yeah. That's what I'm doing these days. In less bitter news, after the day's work (including teaching, which, thank god, puts me in touch with human beings) is done, I've been taking evening hikes along Burnett's Creek, sometimes solo and sometime with friends. A canopy of trees covers the valley and at night all the fireflies come out. They don't land on me, or bite or eat my food. And when the sun sets all of a sudden they're everywhere, like I'm walking through a city at night. I wonder if they can distinguish the different hues of each other and read them as we read people walking down the street. Which lights call us out of ourselves and which don't? Now I will eat some lunch and get back to studying/writing/Summer.

I've posted four tracks (an EP as they call it) to Soundcloud. If this appears to be an effective way to distribute music then soon I will post the album that I have ready to share. About these four tracks, they are from the Spring, mostly reworkings of compositions I made with Cory and Eric. The first track "Daniel" is actually the third track, but it seems to be the one people like best so maybe that is the best place to start. Also I changed my music name to tyty, since the death and prison reference in the old moniker didn't quite fit. Thanks for listening. Here are the links to individual tracks, to listen to or download:

Daniel
Somnambulations (with Cory and Freddie)
My Corpse on a Futon
Crazy (version)

Here is the Link to the "playlist" so that you can stream through all four. If you'd like a hard copy / CD send me an email. And last, this is music that sounds best loud, in headphones or whatever. Hope all is well,

loo
king
at
the car
pet
and the

chair

 Ryonji

      An aesthetic of perimeters emerges: the shoji screen slides
open and disappears, migrating cranes. The rocks perform their
heuristics in freshly tamed gravel; borrowed scenery looking
on, and over the oiled earthen wall. Her conversation drifts
laterally.

        If I entered here, my heels would not break off their
monologue with the stage. So would present love be displaced
by longing.

                -Forrest Gander, from Deeds of Utmost Kindness

The river is high but it hasn't rained much. Indiana summer. The weather been just about perfect for the last three weeks, fairly dry but the creek was overflowing when I tried to cross it the other day. I'm not sure where the water's coming from. Temperatures in the seventies and sunny. During the last couple days there have been two black ants hanging around my kitchen, and I can't decide if it's the same two ants or if they only send two ants at a time. There is a single dried oat, spillage from some oatmeal, stuck to the stove and they seem to like hanging out around it. A couple cool dudes hanging out on the stove stuffing themselves. I caught one of them by a drop of mango juice when I was making lunch today. He seemed happy and relaxed.

Lazy days in Indiana sort of and sort of not. After one glorious week of no teaching responsibilities, the end of the Spring semester, I'm back working at the OEPP as a summer tutor, writing in the mornings and early afternoons, and finding distractions in the form of company or media or music or all of the above in the evening. Next week I start studying for preliminary exams and the summer will become more complicated. I planted some flowers on the porch and am the pitcher for my softball team. It's fun because I get to touch the ball every time instead of touching my knees or wiping my forehead with the back of my hand in the outfield. I have to admit that I like performing as a pitcher. Throwing the ball, catching it, throwing it, catching it, etc.

The reason that I'm writing is to just say hello. All the writing I've been doing has made me wonder where you are. Do words conjure people or is it the other way around? There's a bright moon almost every night in the Indiana sky. Only a few clouds, and the sun doesn't set until 9:45. Jinx pretty much sets repeatedly all day, usually on the blanket on the porch but right now he's on the couch with me. I have to admit that I like small town living after spending the last fifteen some years living in variations of cities. There is nothing here to buy but that's okay because I don't have any money. Forthcoming on this blog: about an hours worth of new music, stuff that I have been working on since last summer and over the course of the year. Once I figure out how best to put it out there. Anyway. I hope you're well.

Since Spring began I've been watching the tree next to my porch. I chose a single bud, one bud in from the tip of the branch, close enough to reach out and touch, and have been paying attention to how it's been changing. First, it was a red cluster, a little wound ball, and then the cluster began to peel away from itself and the red tips of leaves began to appear. The tips started to separate, turn green, and grew out into the beginning of singular leaves. I lost track of the bud for a week or so and yesterday looked for it, but it was no longer where I thought it should be. Its branch had moved lower by a foot and a half, the weight of the branch's leaves bending it closer to the ground. Of course, this must be the same for every thin branch, sagging from the weight of its leaves. I'd never noticed this before, that the shape of a tree in Winter is different then in Spring. The trees in winter stand straighter and more erect, and we can see through their branches and wish for warmer weather and imagine what it will be like when it finally comes. And it has come, but in my mind the image of a tree is still the one made from cold air and contraction, inward and stiff. I can no longer see the shape of the tree, its parts, but instead see its color.

Across the street in big sloped yard of the victorian on the hill yellow daffodils are coming up. The tree next to my porch is starting to grow its leaves. Yesterday in this same tree I witnessed a cardinal, a woodpecker, a flock of little brown birds, and a bluish grackle like bird all hanging out and twittering at each other. Spring feels so good after such a long winter and last week, after passing through a number of deadlines, has brought the end of the semester. Three more weeks + a week of finishing up papers/projects/grades/evaluations for classes and soon it will be summer. Did I mention that it feels good? Yesterday I presented at my first conference, a paper connecting David Hume, Buddhsim, and making a case for the pedagogical functions of "expressive" discourse. I ran out of time and didn't actually get all the way through what I wanted to say but it was a good experience. Next time I'll make sure to time my dramatic reading of academic prose more carefully. On Friday I finished a midterm for the empirical class and on Wednesday wrote a response to the Rosi Braidotti's The Posthuman and now all I have left to do for Post Modern Rhetoric is write one more page and an end paper that doesn't need to be researched, as it's more of a response/synthesis paper of all the books that we've been reading. All this to say, the semester's end is in sight. 

This week I have to read student drafts for their Discourse Community reports which under such a short deadline (10 papers in 24 hours to be ready for Tuesday conferences) is kind of stressful but all the hard work and hurdles of the semester have for the most part, been traversed. The other day I was meeting with one of my students at the OEPP, a graduate student in the material sciences, and out of our conversation, uncovering problem words and sounds, and collecting them into a sentence, we arrived at the following: "We can imagine the image of a very ugly diamond in our minds for months." Sometimes longer. A couple weeks ago when the leaf buds in the tree next to my porch were beginning to appear, I touched the one closest and wondered if that little bud would remember, if it would grow more or less, faster or quicker, and I looked at it today and it seems to show no difference but my eyes are big and if there has been a change its too small to be seen.

Summer is going to be busy but pleasant. For starters, Indiana summer is nice and this apartment, with its light and doors and air coming through is good place to work. I'm flying out to Portland as soon as the semester ends to visit Aric and his family, and then flying to New York to see my brother and his family, along with my New York friends that I haven't seen for three or four years. When I get back I'll have about a month to work on writing, a new project born out of the reading I did last month, putting together a manuscript and with my remaining time hopefully writing out the dregs of the fall, of trauma revisited one last time, extending my memory to the page and letting the page do its archival work. Writing stories like I'm putting away winter clothes, and maybe I'll need them again or just move back to California. Work wise I'm tutoring at the OEPP, the perfect summer job in that I don't have to teach but meet one-on-one with students. No grades to drag on the horizons of conversation. But the main event is studying for prelims, the big test that I need to pass so that I can get started on my dissertation, and those come at the beginning of August and stretch towards the middle. All this I'm excited about, and I'm also on a softball team. Carter, #5. Got a glove the other day and this afternoon I'm going to go play catch. Yah.

Once when I was eleven I told my dad that I was "bored." It was a Sunday afternoon. He was laying on his bed watching This Old House and on Sundays us kids would head back to Madison for the school week. He would drive us to the parking lot of Club 18, a biker bar located outside of Mt. Horeb, the halfway point between Mineral Point and Madison, and we'd find my mom waiting for us in her grey Buick Skylark. Every week it was the same, leave for Mineral point on Friday and come back to Madison on Sunday. Bored was the best word I could find, that I would go to school for a week and then come back to the farm for the weekend and it all seemed the same and nothing seemed to change. And even now its hard to pin down exactly what was bothering me, but it was more an existential pain of being without purpose, a fear that regardless of where I was or who I was with this odd, empty feeling would always be there. And I walked into the room and said, "I'm so bored," and started crying and couldn't help it, and I layed down next to him and he held me a while, and later we all got in the car and drove back to Madison.

I've told this story before. I wrote it down in the blog about seven years ago. I write it again today because today is one of those days where I'm feeling that odd, existential sadness. Maybe this is Spring, when the cold turns to warm rain and all day it's been grey. Low pressure weather systems carrying invisible change. Spring time is sleepy time, some of the Chinese students I've been working with keep saying, that we need more sleep and feel more tired when Spring comes. I think this is true. But I've also been thinking about the last couple months, about not writing and taking a break from telling stories, that since my dad died, and the initial waves of grief and shock and weirdness have passed, I've been oddly happy. Not happy like whee, this is fun! happy, but happy like free. Like wow, I can't believe it's over. Happy like relieved, that my dad and everyone can finally move on. And it seems like a space long occupied has been freed up. Like an old sofa that I'd spend years sitting on has been taken away, and there's an empty spot, an outline and a few dust balls where it used to be.

One night, three or four days after he died, I was going through the pictures I keep in an old shoe box, looking for pictures of him for the memorial service that my sister and brother and I were planning. I pulled out the pictures of him that I had and set them in a pile. Along the way I couldn't help but notice all the pictures of myself, my twenty year old self in Japan, my twenty-three year old self in Seattle, my twenty-five year old self in Providence, my twenty-eight year old self in California, my thirty-one year old self still in California; and thought about how for my entire adult life it's felt like some sad secret I've had to carry around. That because it was difficult to explain, that he was both alive and dead at the same time, I simultaneously had a right to grief and no reason to grieve. Jan told me, in a conversation a few days after his death, that he wished I didn't feel like it was secret, that I felt like I could talk to other people about it, and did on occasion. But I never talked about it with my family. And I kept waiting for him to die, and kept waiting to have those conversations about him and his absence, about growing up and missing him. I am thirty-five years old.

To put it another way, now that his death and all this has finally surfaced, and seemingly, at least in these initial months, now that we all can move on, I'm wondering how to do so when my entire adult architecture, especially in terms of writing, has been built around the idea there is something wrong. It could not have been any other way that they way its been, but if I'm not running for my life then why am I running? If there is no longer a darkness to skirt around, then what will be the mystery? If I am free to say what I need to say then how can I be lonely? There is a river and then there is the river's bed. Something like that. Today I came home and said to no one in particular, "I'm so bored." and I sat down and cried. And I don't know why. But I feel better now. And I miss you.

On Friday it was in the sixties but today it's fallen back into the high twenties. When I went out this morning to move my clothes from the washer to the dryer (having forgotten to do it last night) I thought I saw a few errant snow flakes flittering around and on Monday night it's supposed to officially snow. Today is the last day of Spring Break, a break from classes spent catching up on work, sleep, and attending the College Composition and Communication Conference (the 4C's or CCCC when one speaks the lingo) in Indianapolis. Six more weeks left in the semester and tomorrow I'm subbing for a friend all week long. His class begins at 7:30 in the morning so I'm going to have to get up earlier this week. I'm not looking forward to that but am looking forward to subbing for a 106i section, a composition course for international students that I was thinking of teaching at some point while I'm in graduate school. This week will be my trial run.

It's been a while since I've written in the blog, relatively speaking. This lack of public processing has been intentional for the most part, deciding that I wanted to let the energies and conversations of the last couple of months do their thing without interference from my meaning making / story telling tendencies. Observation of the thing changes the thing and it had been a while since I let anything just be. Of course the gap in writing is also a response to a shifting attention, and I've been more locally oriented lately, towards school and my future as an academic. This recent conference serving as a good example, the first time that I actually physically enjoyed being part of Rhetoric and Composition. I spent two nights and two days there, mostly attending panels. On the first day I listened to some folks who used corpus linguistics (the study of word frequency) to investigate the question of students shifting from written to oral language (or in other words, the question of if "text speak" is infiltrating academic prose...answer: not really), next I watched a movie about adjunct/contingent labor at universities and listened to the discussion that followed it, then I attended a panel on Chinese rhetoric that poked holes in stereotypes about "direct" and "indirect" communication styles (the prevailing stereotype being that students from Asian countries are more "indirect"...which is not necessarily true. The researchers suggested that direct and indirect communication styles are more about power dynamics than any inherent feature of a language or culture), and last I tried to go to a panel on recent trends in teacher mentoring but went to the wrong room and listened to people speak about technology and race. At that point I was too tired to listen anyway.

The next day I went to a panel on mindfulness practices in the classroom, followed by a panel on crossovers between creative writing and composition, which was helpful because I met somebody who knew something about empirical studies on creative writing, which has been a recent interest of mine and there's not too many people out there doing that kind of work so was glad to make a connection; then I went to another panel about adjunct/contingent labor, and the last panel I went to was about "cultural rhetorics," the world of R/C growing to include rhetorics beyond the Greek and Roman (thanks post-modernism!). I learned a little bit about Chinese and Japanese rhetorics, the idea that we have to look through these approaches to understand them rather than judge them with a set of outside criteria. At that point, while there was more to do and see and say, I decided to get back to Lafayette and start preparing for the week. Anyway, all that is to say it was exciting and fun and full of generally nice people talking entirely about rhetoric and composition. Which is why I wrote that it was the first time I physically enjoyed R/C. Positive associations felt in the body (of smiles, eyes, handshakes, cigarettes, being away from home and the bonding that takes place between others in a similar situation, a massive group "high" of indoctrination) that ultimately form habits. Another reason I came back before the conference was over was that I was beginning to feel like I was part of something. 

And so I wanted to write today to swing things back the other way, a singular voice speaking in grey words over a black background. The crux of the entire "problem" with becoming an academic here, that if I commit to R/C fully maybe I lose my connection with poetry, and what has been a fairly fruitful process of introspection? I don't know, but most everybody tells me who has gotten a PhD that the creative writing thing goes away in the process. I don't know, but I'll keep writing, poetry or not. Speaking of which I'm going to get on with the days work, beginning a short paper for class that I think is going to be a post-modern music review, applying Foucault and Althusser to the new Bill Callahan record, and then getting started on the mid-term evaluations for the OEPP. Onward. Happy Spring.

Actually, you know what? I don't think the story I planned to tell in the previous post is going to be a public offering at this time. Not for any other reason than I don't feel like writing about it at the moment. Maybe all the talking, people, love and kind conversations that have taken place in the last three weeks has burned off the immediate impetus. Or maybe I'd just rather be looking ahead. Speaking of which, the reading that I was going to join a month ago is happening again, in a different incarnation, come this Thursday. My first poetry reading in three years. Very exciting, through I'm still not sure what I'm going to read. I prepared some things a month ago about love-ish related things (since it was going to take place the day before Valentine's Day) but now looking at those pages again I'm having second thoughts. As of today I've been leaning towards a prose poetry medley (kind of like a fruit medley but with prose poems instead of grapes and melon balls), and will make some decisions about it tomorrow. Regardless, here is the flyer (apparently Jared is from Indiana), and oh, it seems like Spring is coming. 

Three weeks ago Tuesday, February 11th, at a little before midnight, my father passed away. He had been sick with a nerodegenerative disease called Pick's disease, a kind of dementia associated with loss of speech, memory, and early on-set. He was diagnosed in December of 1998 at the age of 54, and by the end of 2004 most all his language and human-ness, including the ability to recognize other people had dissapeared. It had been close to ten years since he said a word, eight years since he'd been outside, four years since he'd stood on two feet, and since then, he's been confined to a bed asides from when the nurses would take him out and set him at a table with the other speechless old men. In this sense of decay it is with great relief that his story has finally come to an end. In another sense its impossible to know if he was suffering or what possibly could have been happening inside of his mind during the last ten years. It's comforting to think that with language comes judgment (or is it the other way around?), and without words from which to create categories of self or time, one moment is as good as the next. Or at the very least, that successive moments are not compounded onto each other, i.e. memory; human misery more a product of our relationship to suffering than the suffering itself. Regardless, my father's death has brought an odd mix of sadness and relief.

**

Over the next couple months I plan to write the story of the last three weeks + digressions. Granted I am busy with school and teaching, so it won't be an intensive project like the story I wrote over the summer. One caveat: I'm writing from a single perspective, and do not make any claims that this perspective is shared by others, or that it is the "right" perspective. His official obituary, that my family and I wrote, can be found here. As much as I would like to write a long story about "who" my dad was, the fact is that he has been under the spell of Pick's for my entire adult life, and frankly, I didn't know him as a person. So as, under the cliche directive of "write what you know," the story continues through the strange and ill-defined parameters of blogging. Onward...

(it will actually begin at 8:30 and i think i'll be reading towards the tail end of this thing...come one come all)
(update: due to circumstances i will actually not be reading tonight. bummer. but i hopefully in a month i'll read at the next one)

At the bus stop today I noticed that there were some puddles mingling with the ice on the sidewalk. It rained heavy on Saturday and got cold again. Ten inches of snow due tomorrow evening. But I was wondering how there could be water on the ground when the weather machines tell us the temperature is below freezing. Maybe these numbers are more of an average, and the "real" temperatures are more dynamic, where the sun hits or where the feet and the tires keep coming through. That it might be 26 degrees in one spot, and 34 a few inches away. And then an hour later, maybe this shifts, because the sun moves or traffic gets redirected. All that is to say that maybe the temperature is not a fact, but an approximation, and while it means something to us, paying attention to the moment to moment of where we are and what we are doing is another way to consider the weather. The colored temperature maps on our screens make it look like we're all of one thing, but maybe our sense experience isn't so universal. 

These thoughts vaguely related to the reading I've been doing in post-modern rhetoric, thinking about "modernism" and the almost impossible-to-imagine idea that there was a point in history (pre-modern, pre-Enlightenment) when ideas of universal truths weren't what we were going for. Pre-science, pre-searching for facts and 'better' ways to do things. Books like Stephen Toulmin's Cosmopolis and Heidegger's Parmenides suggesting that it hasn't always been the case that us humans have been looking for answers to questions of why and how. That history hasn't always existed, and we haven't always wondered where we came from or where we are going.

"In a play propelled by macho decision and action, the idea that there is an order of success that can come of knowing the right moment to go with the flow is appealingly counterintuitive—if you can't create the right moment, you'd better be able to recognize it when it comes."

            -Joanna Biggs, writing on Chang-rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea

**

Ugh. School started this week and by started I mean really started, like, work has started to pile up and there's not enough time to do it. A big part of my coping strategy when it comes to this kind of stress is to deflect or "subvert" my energies into existential questions of why am I doing this? Do I really belong here? Should I really be spending my time trying to enter a discipline that, from my perspective here at Purdue, has little regard for what I value? Of course during the break and the early stages of the semester I'm in such a good mood and am so ready to engage with these questions in productive ways. Yet by week three the palpable sense of alienation I feel on a daily basis begins to acquire momentum and push me off of the autonomous base I'd spent the break recovering. Making it through the week becomes the priority and I lose perspective on what it was I came here to do. So as, I seek ways out of this immediate discomfort rather than engaging with the work. I'm not talking about drinking or drugging, but about worrying and blaming others (self-as-other included) for my situation. But I move through, I hope either something will change (as something inevitably always does...for example this semester and prelims and then I'll have more latitude to determine my time) and try to stay ready to take advantage of opportunity when it comes up. 

Or maybe I just need a mommy to feed me and enforce nap times. Maybe we all do. My students this week were feeling it too, as well as many of my colleagues. Last week was so atypical that the grind didn't really start until now. That picture I posted a few posts ago? People flitting round like birds yet anchored to the ground? Anxious importance? Graduate school. Sorry for complaining so much.

**

"...all is not to be thought at one go..."

                                             -Derrida

**

The True Encounter

 "Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

"Wolf! Wolf!"—and up would start
Good neighbours, bringing spade
And pitchfork to my aid.

At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace.

               -Edna St. Vincent Millay

On Tuesday I went swimming. It was the first time since two Monday's ago, which was the first time since the middle of December. That Monday I swam for about ten minutes until the pain in my left should forced me to stop. An old injury, first appearing eighteen years ago during my senior year of high school. An inflamed rotator cuff said the physical therapist at the time, and I bombed out of competitive swimming. The shoulder being one reason, the other being not wanting to swim anymore. But my shoulder, the left one, has always been the "normal" shoulder in comparison to the right one, in that the right shoulder can pop out of its joint. Without any difficulty the right can rotate 360 degrees in a circle, bending backwards like a G.I. Joe or a Barbie until it comes back to its normal position. My left shoulder has always felt pressure to keep up with the right, and it can do the same thing but does so not by popping out of its socket, but by being flexible and flexed for many years. If the right shoulder needed a good stretch, I would clamp my hands together behind my head and give it a good stretch backwards. It felt good, though from what I've been told, looked gross. 

But I think all that spinning and stretching has caught up to it, and these days it just hurts. Last semester I went swimming a lot and I think I aggravated the rotator cuff then. My guess is that the other muscles in my left arm, from being somewhat in shape, made up for this aggravation but now that I'm back in the pool, and not really in shape, I'm feeling the inflammation more. On Tuesday I took a couple ibuprofen and tried it again, mindful of not putting too much pressure on it during the "pushing down motion" (not sure how else to say that, the part of the stroke when swimming the Australian crawl, just after my hand enters the water in front of my head, and pulls down the entire length of my body, exiting just past my hip) and generally the shoulder felt okay. Not throbbing or throwing off sharp pains when pushing down. And I noted a few kinds of pressures that aggravated it, like holding a kick board, and compensated with other motions and positions to keep my body moving through the water. 

I did my usual set, about a mile of swimming and kicking, taking about thirty minutes not including warming up and down. After I was done I got out and stretched on the side of the pool, as usual. First my arms and legs using the tiled pool wall, and then on the ground stretching out my calves and thighs and back. While I was stretching I watched the little kids who where there for swim practice in the evening. Some of their parents were sitting up in the bleachers above the pool watching their children swim laps, talking with other parents or reading books. I thought about going to swim meets and swim practice and how I never wanted anybody in my family to come watch me. I thought about how important it was to me to stay separate from my family when I was a kid and when I was a teenager. I wondered how that distance has carried over into my adult life, and I wondered how responsible I am for the aches and pains I carry. I finished stretching and got up and took a hot shower and put a warm hat on. When I got home I made dinner and watched the President's speech. Today was a full day, and I'm going to get on with some school duties before I get into bed. The intense cold of the last couple days has lifted and tomorrow I'll finally be able to get back on my bike.

This apartment has been so cold lately. It's lovely the other three seasons but when the temperature falls below 20, draftiness begins to constrict functionality. I have to close doors, cover windows, wear blankets, and stay close to the heater. Jinx has been camping out under the bed, where I put another little space heater, and when the covers are draped over the side, makes a little hot box / sauna that he hangs out in most of the day.

Come tomorrow morning it's supposed to drop below zero by six or seven AM, and if you include wind chill, negative 25 or or something, I'm wondering if they're going to cancel school. This possibility seems unlikely because last week, with MLK day, a half day on Tuesday because of the shooting, and all of Wednesday off (to give everyone a moment to catch their breath); it seems unlikely that the powers that be will offer any more days off. Productivity cuts you know? We have to keep things rolling or else the terrorists win. Last night I went and saw the Bucky Badgers play the Purdue Boilermakers, and the Badgers beat them pretty handily. I felt guilty, like it was one more crappy thing that happened last week at Purdue. There were school shootings in Pennsylvania and South Carolina last week as well. Of course what happened at Purdue was not classified as a school shooting, but as a "violent crime" or a "homicide." Categories that make us feel a little bit safer, I guess, but give the impression that there is no institutional connection to this violence. 

In my composition class on Thursday we talked about it, and my students were a little freaked out. There was a vigil on Tuesday evening and a press conference. The school newspaper has been writing stories about the student's reactions. I learned from a professor that the shooter attended a linguistics class and hour and a half previous to his actions. Amongst us teachers we've been discussing what to do in the future, the old barricade the door and turn off the lights trick. Logistically everything has been backed up, but along these same lines, it doesn't seem all that important to try and catch up. That we, students and teachers both, can take our time and get done what we needs to get done when we get to it. It was a strange week last week, and whatever haze we slipped into seems bound to continue. I have a feeling that when the cold goes back to wherever cold comes from we'll begin to unwind from all this. 

**

Mozart, 1935

Poet, be seated at the piano.
Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,
Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,
Its envious cachinnation.

If they throw stones upon the roof
While you practice arepeggios,
It is because they carry down the stairs
A body in rags.
Be seated at the piano.

That lucid souvenier of the past,
The divertimento;
That airy dream of the future,
The unclodued concerto...
The snow is falling.
Strike the piercing chord.

Be thou the voice,
Not you. Be thou, be thou
The voice of angry fear,
The voice of this besieging pain.

Be thou that wintry sound
As of the great wind howling,
By which sorrow is released,
Dismissed, absolved
In a starry placating.

We may return to Mozart.
He was young, and we, we are old.
The snow is falling
And the streets are full of cries.
Be seated, thou.

                        -Wallace Stevens