When I was 19 my father was diagnosed with Pick's disease. At the time I was living in Tokyo as part of a study abroad program. My sister emailed me the news. At first it didn't mean much to me, a possible explanation for the strange and inconsistent behavior that my father had been exhibiting, but mostly it seemed abstract, something to be dealt with later. It was on Christmas day that I received a call from my brother and sister and dad, hanging out, laughing about their experience in Church the prior evening, where a talking Darth Vader pen my brother was carrying broke the staid silence of the Christmas Eve ceremony with "I want them alive!" At first my dad tried to tell the story but his confused ordering of events got in the way. My sister took over and I understood. That spring I received a letter from my father, the first I had ever gotten from him, a single page ending with the line, "I'm so proud of you."

_

Things began making more sense after that, thinking about the past and making the appropriate revisions to my memory and the logic behind events. My dad and I wrote each other emails when I had first left to Japan, until one day when he wrote that if I wasn't going to write back than he wouldn't write anymore. Later, when somebody showed him how to check his in-box, he apologized and continued writing, sometimes strange stories about the dogs and the farm, pouring gasoline down snake holes and his adventures with Susan. At the end of one of these emails, he concluded, "I hope you find something funny everyday."

_

When I came back my brother said I had changed, that I was acting too much like Nate, who my brother thought to be arrogant and aloof. My brother, dad, and I were all staying at a house my sister was taking care of for the summer in DC. My dad's odd behavoir was more pronouced now, and he would burst with non-sequiturs, anger, confusion, and clarity at uneven intervals. While driving back to Wisconsin, I put some music on in the car; Stereolab, a droning rock band with a french singer. He mumbled something in the back seat and then exploded in anger thirty seconds later, mocking the singer's voice, "la la la la la, la la la la la, turn it off or I'll throw the goddamn tape out the window." My brother and I smiled at each other but I felt embarrased.

_

It feels odd to me that I should reflect on these things when I'm not really that far removed from them. My dad is still alive, mute and damaged from the disease; but he's still alive. I'm very much still in a post-college haze in many ways, unsure of my place and how I should spend my time. Is it healthy to dwell on the not so recent past? Have I earned any perspective on the matter? Am I different in any way? My dad always told us to be ourselves but more often than not I'm absolutely confused as to who that is. I've been teaching the last three months and with each class I get more and more lost in other people's expectations of me, how it seems impossible to distinguish what I want from the wants of those around me.

Two Wednesdays ago I asked John three times about the same thing because I didn't believe him when he told me; a debate about a little detail on an ivory piece, a detail that I believed to be a turtle (not a minogame, a kind of mythical turtle like creature). He got angry and said I was stubborn, go away. I left the room and sat back down at my desk. He came after me, yelling, This goes to show your ignorance in Japanese mythology! Later, John conceded that Japanese mythology was maybe not the problem, and instead, our disagreement was simply a matter of buisness judgment. He told me that I was only interested in facts. I am still coming to terms with this assertion.

Poetry Is a Destructive Force

That's what misery is,
Nothing to have at heart.
It is to have or nothing.

It is a thing to have,
A lion, an ox in his breast,
To feel it breathing there.

Corazon, stout dog,
Young ox, bow-legged bear,
He tastes its blood, not spit.

He is like a man
In the body of a violent beast.
Its muscles are his own...

The lion sleeps in the sun.
Its nose is on its paws.
It can kill a man.

-Wallace Stevens, "Parts of a World"

I was invited to stay in Leeds by Molly and Barnaby on my way up to Scotland for a family gathering. On the last day there Molly and I accompanied Barnaby to conference at a local college that Barnaby and his fellow performers were invited to participate (a movement and sound improvisational method) in. While they set up, Molly and I wandered around the massive sculpture garden and park that was located on the campus. It was a nice afternoon talking and playing around. After the performance demonstration, during a question and answer portion, I snuck off the bleachers and found a good spot outdoors while I waited for the event to finish up, laying on a steep slope introspecting or whatever it is one does on a steep slope. Molly and Barnaby came out of the building, along with the other performers and started up the hill towards me. I stood up to greet them, a little nervous as the group approached I began to think about all the things I could possibly say to them, things like "Hello how are you."; "Nice Job"; ask a question; prepare for the question of what I was doing in England; what I do in general; etc. Sensing my unease, I guess, Bob, a larger man with hair almost to his shoulders reached out his hand, palm down, and said softly but pointedly, "you're alright, you're alright" and instantly I fell out of anxiety. We chatted briefly and excepting Barnaby and Molly, the performers got in their cars parked behind us, and left.

That's not the story. The story is video games and isolation, indifference and cynicism. As if spinning around each other we fail to see another's orbit caught up in the impossible perfection of our own. School administrators are not to blame. There is no bureaucratic congress approved solution for your girlfriend breaking up with you nothing so that you'll only kill two people and then go to prison for the rest of your life. A failure of imagination, as if sadness could be prevented. (If you had gotten an email from an anonymous machine telling you not to go to work would you listen? Have you already?) This is not an isolated incident perpetrated by a crazy lonely man with access to relaxed gun laws and a lack of administrative foresight but the extended static portrayals of the human being and entrance exams marking the location of a scared poet hiding in the hubris of language and pretensions so as not to be heard avoiding the responsibility of being understood. Ideally we hope to take risks but not out of habit. Ideally we hope to respond. There was a student in my class who wrote some alarming sentences I asked the administration if I was legally responsible and they said not really. Simply I spoke to him. While standing in Subway today two kids bounced around without any parents they said they were bored. Tonight Amy and I went to a baseball game we stood in the line sat down and ate nachos.

After many adventures, spaceships to marching band uniforms jokingly but earnestly worn, a party at night in a beer garden, somebody else's neighborhood. A talking robot I think, or maybe it was just a dog and momentum spinning me away from the anonymous group of fellas falling through the sky and into the water. A canyon tall and deep and bright, filled with water as clear as anything like a television show or a mind's conception of what clean is, I realized, after sinking to the bottom. Yes I was dreaming and intentionally blinded my senses to protect myself. I fell out of lucidness with a quick decision and returned to my normal sleep pattern.

Twenty minutes from the Yamanote line, the loop of track that surrounds the heart of Tokyo, I would board the packed train and wedge my way to the end of the car. At the next stop a mass of people would disembark to catch the express, and usually the person sitting directly in front of me was one of them. I would quickly fill their empty seat. Lucky as I was, I more often remember the view while standing, the gradual appearance of fences and signage, bicyclists speeding alongside the train as we slowly approached the station.

On Friday Quintin's place almost burnt down I say almost because the ceiling and roof burned but the rest was mostly okay, parts of the ceiling crashed down on parts of the bedroom and hallway. I walked up the back stairwell, and found Amy standing in Q's bedroom, she handed me a computer's hard drive and I walked down the main staircase and gave it to his landlord, who placed it in a bag to keep the ashy smell from smelling up his apartment. I dug through a pile of ash and found a ring, and a black and white picture of what looked like a grandfather. Q's shrine had taken most of the damage, having been hit from pieces of the ceiling falling into it burning, but most everything else, his bed, desk, was okay if covered with a thin coating of ash. We collected a bag of his salvaged and burnt sacred relics, and gave it two his friend Dean, who offered to put Q up until his apartment is livable again. We left with a bag of Q's work clothes, just in case he can't get back in when he gets back from Atlanta. Amy is going to wash them.

Riding the 72r bus up to work on select days of the week where I need to be in North Berkeley for a good part of the day I see a lot of billboards along San Pablo where the bus runs, from down town through a rough neighborhood, through Emoryville and then into Berkeley. Some of these billboards are movie billboards advertising usually a big time action movie or a horror movie, for example that movie called '300', where the advertisement is usually a bare chested man looking very angry and written across his picture is '300' but written in blood. It seemed excessively violent to me. And then there are the horror movie advertisements, a body being dragged across a desert or a freaky doll or something else advertising 'evil'. For a while I thought it was strange, one of those back in my day they didn't advertise those kinds of things so blatantly because we had values, mid-western values or something like the world is going to end soon in a climactic battle brought on by rising indifference, sin, and greed. Biblical kinds of ideas. But all this was tempered as I have been reading about the first Tokugawa shogunate and William Adams, the English sailor who got in close with the most powerful person in japan during the early 17th century (I write 17th century now instead of 1600's because of the job at the Buddha Museum seems to encourage this). Anywho, reading about the crazy violent public spectacles that seemed to of been common place in japan during that time (think mass public burnings where citizens are required to provide the fire wood), before and after that time, and then thinking about other historical information that we've learned like gladiators or public whippings or executions performed by our ancestors, how our respective societies have seem to of made a place for those kinds of activities to be broadcast, and people show up to watch them. The ad across the track in a subway station advertises a movie coming out, i forget its name, but the web site that you can visit is watchthemdielive dot com which a month ago i would of turned and said see, see what I'm talking about?

yesterday a table and chairs came to the apartment sent via shipping route starting in massachusets sometime in february and arriving here much later the men who delivered the items were no so agreeable stating that upon meeting them that they would not take the aforementioned items into the apartment above just one flight of stairs because simply it was not part of the deal and thus the proposed that i pay them fifty dollars extra to do this as could not carry the said items up a flight of stairs standing outside the building we discussed this not a mention of the rules as i didn't know them all i knew was that the delivery was coming and they were to take it all the way so we went to go look at the things in the truck and i called amy and she called the company or maybe called her mother who made the initial deal with the company and found that yes they were supposed to deliver it all the way but somehow this directive got lost on the way to the delivery men so they said dang well we'll just have to come back some other time when you all work this out and i said well this is stupid i'll give you guys a check for fourty dollars and they said okay we'll take it up for forty dollars and they said cash so i agreed to it i had to go to the corner store to do so and called amy on the way and told her the situation i was quite angry and told amy and she called the company and told them about the cash money offer and i got the money and came back they had already moved most of the items into the hallway by the apartment door and i knew that they were going to get a call from their company soon to reprimand them for their dealings and i opened the door and they started to move in the table and chairs and the call came through and then they got mad saying that the deal was between us and i responded that they were trying to "shake me down" from the beginning and it was tense and we argued and they left the furniture here and i didn't pay them any money though i worried that they would retaliate somehow i offered them a small tip on their disgruntled way out and was met with we don't want you money later amy called to make sure that they were paid by their company for their extra services though it freaked me out arguing with large men about money in my living room and really i could of carried the furniture upstairs on my own skip the trouble but instead the payment had already been made so i could pace around and "be in charge" the moral of the story is none sit down and eat dinner

a friday things couldn't be better question mark couldnt be worse question mark these are question marks without answers in the mid afternoon the time is approximately a few minutes past noon usually around this time i'd be starting up a particular class called narrative documentary but instead spring break hooray no work today instead i'll call home home for the afternoon start to get into the notebook that has been getting filled up with mutterings of a guy at work researching odd little deities for pleasure and money but really there is a lot to say about everything and i hope you don't read too closely when i say the man at the used book store asked me to recite a poem he smelled bad i wandered to a bench and read the book it was dark i was asked can you read in the dark and responded a little and a lot of light shone down a string of lights the kind that surrounds the lake at night not internal but the external happenings strictly in my memory a sight for sore eyes don't spend too much time looking at other people's clothes and then your own desires and placement what have you has you random assault on the mediterranean the book i bought was after a day researching this little dutch man you cant find the link here underline trying to find something intelligent and saleable to say about him but only through history i thought could we get somewhere and so to wikipedia and the dutch and japan and william adams and ieyasu shogunate wow what a man what a time imperial japan armies of thousands and thousands maneuvering and killing one another the rest of the people who knows only later did we start to wonder thus we're without the letters only artifacts like the little dutchman carving holding a wind instrument my hand holding the little dutchman

it seems to me that there is something cruel about keeping a pet or more like cruel in the sense that they wait for you to come home not a chance of independence for thier entire lives or maybe cruel to oneself for taking on the responsibility of another creatures life that isn't human i mean a cat like the one sitting on the floor here and who's to say she wouldn't be better off sitting on the floor somewhere else with another cat on a sunny day in june in september i asked a question and pets come to mind a dog walks through the park without a leash and at least i know now that i do have a cat to call my own on loan from amys cousin i guess we keep her shes very nice but why do we want to get all caught up in attachment when the cat already had a home or why even am i living with amy if that's the issue or why even bother at all to eat of course yes this is important to stay out of trouble but to foster a dependence dogs and cats people living with horses and afraid to leave one another a sign that i'm hungry but instead ate an entire roll of cookies after getting home from work no penalty just working but i'd like to come back to this issue that i had thought i was going to start writing about that is city living that is brutal for some reason i find that i'm writing much like the letters of wallace stevens i've been reading on accident while trying to read a biography that i picked up because i couldn't find the book i was actually looking for and i'm frustrated i admit with the rugged pace of things and the cat got up to leave and if you've been reading you will of noticed that i haven't been doing too many postings lately and that's on purpose not really feeling it rarely have i been sitting at the computer and given the urge to write something not depressed but thinking about other things and not that interested in writing emails im sure you understand maybe some other time then i'll see you later

On my way home today I reached into my pocket and found my finger nail clippers. I remembered that I put them there so that I could cut my fingernails on my way to work. John handed me an asian pear today and told me that it had been blessed by the Buddha. For all practical purposes it had, sitting in the show room surrounded by statues in wood and metal and stone of the Buddha and those like him. There was a Chinese New Year party at the space on Saturday. John handed me a red envelope on Monday, my Chinese New Year bonus. There was one dollar inside of the envelope. He also handed delepe an envelope but I don't know how much was in that one. Today as he was handing me a check for three days work I showed him my empty wallet. Do you need some cash he asked me. I think the envelope was supposed to be a joke, the glory of anticipation and the fact that I'm too old for those kind of handouts. Plus I'm his employee, not family. The fruit was placed in the bowl as an offering. It was quite delicious, maybe the best asian pear I had ever had. Lately I had been feeling kind of off, and was thinking that maybe this blessed pear would solve something. I realized that the reason I had been off was that I was fatigued, after a busy weekend and finishing a manuscript for some deadlines, and then back to work and tomorrow I teach. Tonight I am going to take it easy. When I get fatigued I get goofy. This is funny sometimes but it makes me feel a little crazy. I am growing a beard. I wondered if clipping one's nails on the sidewalk was socially acceptable. Setting a pear on the counter at night will increase my chances of eating it the next morning. Come to think of it, I ate a mushy pear this morning. Bosh. Bosch. Whatever they're called.

i had a dream last night where i was watching the simpsons and they were playing basketball the characters from the simpsons like mr burns and lenny and smithers and the police chief and all that and the guest star of the episode was tom sellick if that's how you spell his name and he got hit in the head with a basket ball and fell over and his head was damaged it was bleeding and oozing this green ooze and he was dying obviously and all the characters gathered around him as if this were on tv i was still dreaming that i was watching it though i don't remember watching i just remember the episode and all the characters were standing there on the basketball court standing over him as he was oozing this green fluid and he knew he was dying and was making statements like thank you all for supporting me and more complicated sentiments but as time went on the things he said would get simpler as if the green ooze was his personality and finally he just said stupid things that made no sense and died and i woke up as if that were some kind of nightmare one to watch on television and looked over at amy who was sleeping and thought how could i go back to sleep after that because it was disturbing but i did anyway waking up periodically and reminding myself not to forget and now saturday morning i still remember pacific standard time last night i lost thirty five dollars playing poker

without further ado here is the latest installment of jen and erika's travelling projecto fabuloso moving from blog to blog and now its here enjoy

Don’t you have a map?
A collaborative, traveling essay in letters‘twixt Erika Howsare & Jen Tynes.
Part 12, J to E-

The Student BODY IN CONTRAST

A shine. To you an apple
waiting. A buff brown
collar, around the corner
thing. Will not believe in
G.S. except in slang,
mandatory. A CONTRAST

is like a little bell you break
to remember winter. A bell
you melt down. Tinkling. Slang.
Yellow bus stop
for me, yellow bus stop
stinking. There is no BUTTONS
here, BUT A BLACK BOOT

is to hang-over what art
is to exercise. Monitor it all
weekend. Fill the public air
with persons, site-specific food
aroma and the experience
SHAMS itself. The video
cassette recorder is
JAMMED and full of tape.

RECORDING
It used to be much easier to
speed them up. Not easier
but physical. Not easier but
of childhood. Of childhood
stills? (I made every album
sound / Every album sounded
like The Chipmunks.)

PUT A BOW IN YOUR HAIR
and change the conversation
Red heart of a mouth at the
bus stop doesn't know those
androgynes in plastic dresses,
with flower names. What about
you, in the dusty place one
conversation makes it? What do
we agree on about good and
evil?

E responds to J when and where it's appropriate.
Please visit http://www.horselesspress.com/amap.html for the whole hog.
Email Erika & Jen: editors AT horselesspress DOT com.

presidents day make room for baby i meant to go to work and i did go to work i just didn't make it instead i went to the bus stop and smoked a cigarette looked around with my hands in my pockets listening to smog the kids got heart the kids got heart the kids got heart and looked around and waited the bus didn't come the bus known as seventy two r didn't come the r is for rapid the bus never came so i called in to john and said hey i'm not coming i'm going to go home and do my own work and so i did i walked back around the lake stopping at the mini market asking for printer paper and they had none so i bought a newspaper after standing at the drink coolers and wondering if i wanted any of that and asked the man behind the counter about printer paper and he suggested i go down the street to the ups store and sure enough they had some for the exorbitant price of seven dollars but i bought it anyway lazy of me i guess and came home sat down read the paper and booted up the computer again presidents day saw an article about the big heads carved in virginia the south korean u n head and sports the all star game and product placement and what not jet blue etc but most importantly of all i got an email from jen and her and erikas project that will be posted here in the very near future which is exciting more exciting than presidents day perhaps a day off in the blue sky a windy day in the apartment with its windows closed in california its not so cold anymore and i can see my hands from my perspective amys in santa cruz the apartment feels like its not entirely mine right now the methods of cohabitation and a refrigerator full of food that i didn't buy to eat for lunch a box of something good

The stoplight was green but there were no cars to go. I walked across the intersection.The town is empty because I have my headphones on. Sitting in the cafe window two men with glasses are having breakfast. Intellectuals need their space. The grey cat was scared yesterday. Are typically more reserved. The day was limping along and suddenly it came over me. Bagel and cream cheese. Nate has stopped eating meat. Leeks he said he was buying leeks. Who can blame him? Last night we ate the lamb sausages that Cecil gave us. Who's Cecil? I'm not sure. The sausages were pretty good, full of mediteranian spices, all orange and smelly. The book said lamb is typically better treated than most other meats in this country, due to the fact that the market isn't as big so therefore its more of a niche for small farmers. Is that what they call them? Farmers? To cultivate, pasteurize. This really should of been written in a notebook sitting in the sun, came out today. Herky Jerky. Sentences and Periods. Where's John? Right now I'm having a small fantasy that he is laying dead in the back of the store/office, I mean, what if he is. It's possible. The patio that wraps around our apartment seems like a good platform to break a window on. A shadow passes over the pulled blinds and the motion light comes on. When you have something you worry. What do I have? Something I worry. I really enjoy riding the bus. The last time I did repeatedly was when I lived in Seattle. The Laughing Elephant. Pioneer square. Last night I stayed up late getting ready for class. To do a better job and enjoy oneself.

after some trouble with the stealing connection surfing on the airwaves around the lake and buildings around the lake we finally come to the screen that allows for interface and a waiting and a button pushing a checking of systems and gauges like meters and colors that tell us when to try again like a car's fuel gauge a check the brakes light and the brakes work fine but i better check them and so on and so forth this morning finally making an effort to communicate to you the fact that there is a time in the morning before i go to work and after i get up that is perfect for this kind of thing this running on at the mouth and the day through my small window in this room is half shaded and half light a blue sky with a thin layer of cloud above both and there is little more happening asides from some kind of statement in modern architecture a big blank surface and not a sign of the neighbors or a bird flapping through the frame but this is of no importance we can simply look around the small space i'm in and recount past memories or imagine the future then it was great a picture the scene a fourteen set of pans a small green man with a large heart a winter scene in the orange light of the street lamps that reminds me of swimming at edgewood the entrance to the pool on the back of side of a hill overlooking the lake if it weren't for the trees but in the winter when my hair is wet freezes at its tips fanned out from underneath my hat always asking for a ride home the lake was visible through the lack of leaves and the dotted lights of houses across the lake at least according to the picture i in fact only remember listening to the extremely loud bass of james' car stereo was tired and the orange light reveals itself at the entrance to the back road a street called jefferson named after a president leader of the free world its time to go to work

i haven't wanted to write an email lately the business of moving and starting a new job has rendered my schedule a busy time of year like the holidays where everything is new except for the hours of the day say breakfast starts in the morning and on monday tuesday wednesday i go over the buddha museum where i write the little blurbs and then thursday friday where i teach them writing in various forms so now that leaves saturday and also we have moved in to a gigantic apartment where the space is almost too much to say that things have been busy and the push of different forces have rendered my schedule a work in progress trying to find a way to get everything that needs to be done done say the ocean is a pool of water and on the bottom there are rocks and people have never been to the real bottom but once they have then a postcard and to take holidays there and back earmarked for fun and funny times the push of the teaching makes my buddha musuem time that much more enjoyable due to the fact of sitting alone in an office and writing is much more familiar than standing or sitting in front of a group of writers but standing is certainly more exciting and fear provoking which is nice to say a move towards the center middle road less is more something like that now and again i'll make a push we can talk about it later get back on the horse the bike ride for a while wobble a little pass a test buy a new bike at wal-mart as a reward

Last summer when I was living in Brooklyn I was watching a doccumentary with my brother about Hitler and WWII. It was a doccumentary about Hitler's presence as an orator, and master of his own image. The narrator claimed that Hitler never let himself be photographed with his hands in his pockets. Thinking of this, not Hitler exactly, but where such an idea might of come from, the idea that being seen with hands in your pockets as a sign or weakness or ineptitude. Thinking of this I walked back the street back to my apartment, making sure that my hands and arms were swinging freeley, and trying to fill them with mindfulness, feeling it full on through to my fingers. I felt there was a difference, a way of being part of the city streets when inhabiting some kind of confident pose. Whereas, before, stuffed hands in my pockets and head down, I felt like I was a somehow vulnerable to the many sets of eyes I would walk past, the fact of my not rising to meet them an indicator or respect; for myself and thiers. So I worked on this, coupled with a quote from the Beastie Boys, "What's running through the mind comes through in the walk", thinking that a practiced posture will develop different habits, trying to be a better person. When walking down the street with a friend that summer, I told him what I was doing, thinking about a practice in moving. Telling the story much like the one I just told, his response was "Why do you want to be like Hitler?"

back when not way back but kind of back relatively speaking say almost one forth of my aged years say if i were eighty say a fourth would be twenty years but i'm not eighty and not about to go into age and weight time and place but say lets just say way back when when i had moved to seattle out of college and was visiting amy down in oakland we would come down to oakland and she would come up to seattle say a long distance thing and it worked pretty well for a while but one trip this time we had been over in san francisco for some reason maybe to go as far as the beach or maybe simply to go to a record store i don't know but she liked to walk and still does and we were walking still do through the down town area say walking down market around where its starts to get hairy right past city hall and the other day looking up at the new federal building over looking a carls jr. where there are some sad people milling about in front of at all hours some more busy than other and the man the guy we were walking down the street and we were younger and looked to be in love and people would stop us and say particularly homeless people would stop us and compliment us and then hit us up for money or whatever because not only did we look happy but we looked nice in that nice nice way that naive way that sucker way and maybe we still do turn the frown upside down or maybe we don't maybe just a quick denial a refusal of the question a knowledge to avoid the eye contact in the first place the idea of seeing what's coming of course not nothing how could we know but the man had red hair a beard grown out of proportion he started talking we stopped we couldn't help it to lend an ear maybe i stopped and she stayed with me i don't know but he was talking and we were talking sort of and actually trying to move on down the street we were by large fountain talking about how beautiful she was and yes smiling and nodding and moving away okay nice to meet you a hand shake moving on and he said yes i remember he said how would you like to watch while i fuck your girlfriend while shaking my hand and that was it we left after that didn't say a word about it really asked her the other day if she remembered but not it was gone i don't remember the guy but remember the feeling a bad one a young one

Say the conflict, a conflict, say, is what to call ourselves. What is our ‘thing’ our history? What are the words they will use to describe us, to describe me? Say, modern and post-modern, and now what? This time. This one, where an immense subjectivity couples with the eternal, as in, yes, there are times to make immense declarative statements. Yes, there are times we make immense declarative statements, and times we let it all out or in or standing still or running away. A massive psychology, a massive subjectivity whereas we can be understood, but not all the time.

Instead, no, it is the frame we are looking at, describing. Exists in a bubble and at the same time, supremely talented. Both you and us. I and them. The King and I. Etc. So it is not the thing, no, it is not a matter of right and wrong, not the materials and principles, the backlog of information accessible to us through the Internet, a phone call away, walking through the graveyard on a cell phone, but the groovy eye, the one eye, the shut your eye off once in a while eye. No pictures, no piles of pictures, not an immensity of stored data. I go back and lose it, the train of thought, the interruption a phone call an email, the end of an empire, the idea of an empire to hold and to cherish. Past an idea, past discussion, nobody would believe me anyway if I told them, saw it myself. No, what we’ve become is not a thing. We’re too complicated now. “Of Being Numerous”. George Oppen. But we must have a thinglyness. It must have a thinglyness, but not as a thing derived from a thing, the new model, but a mode a transport. Not the words but the mechanism of delivery, or watching and being watched; that we will understand over the course of time, that our infinite subjective will settle.

It is no longer a fractured world, a waste land of dejected pieces, but a world of infinite connection. And no longer do these connections defy explanation. History and science and economics are cornering the market. We can explain almost everything. A non-sequitor is traceable, not fooling anyone. No, we are left with a wheel of subjectivity, a wheel of experience where everybody is right and everybody is wrong. We have turned back on ourselves, back to our mechanisms of perception. Seen as the media, touched as an advertisement. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes sometimes and never maybe. Always maybe. What does it matter? A man slashes at an already dead fish. Time moves on. This is our next challenge, certain in our uncertainty, the inverse, and one that doesn’t. Plurality. The plural. And to connect that which we need to is to rediscover that which we need. And so what it is is not a thing but the thing’s movement, the machine and what it is doing, where it is taking us. Yes there are many kinds of trees in the forest. Yes, some of them are particularly beautiful yes. And yes we are standing on a path, and yes there is a swath of trees knocked down over there. But the movement. The drawing of lines, connectors, this is our task.

At one point in early adolescence I found myself at church camp, some kind of over night spiritual retreat for kids. I'm not sure why we were there, and am assuming my dad made us go. My brother and I. It was totally awkward, but we managed to have some fun. I remember sitting with some kids who were being read to, some kind of bible story with pictures. I thought about how I wasn't into bible stories but it was nice to be part of this little group, sitting closely and warmly together, somebody else's family. One afternoon we were walking through some grass and my brother spotted a snake in the grass, a small one, a gardener. I reached down to pick it up and it jumped up and bit me on my little finger. My brother then grabbed a stick and wailed on it, killing it. We picked it up holding it from its head and dangling, its body still intact, I proudly told a few people that I got bit by a snake and that my brother had killed it in retaliation. There were two little holes on my pinkie, no venom or swelling, just a simple bite. The snake probably didn't deserve what it got. The little holes stayed on my finger for a long time.

The bench, otherwise known as the lake perch, just down the hill from the apartment, a.k.a. the home. Runners running. Birds doing their bird thing. Not a poem but a simple return to writing on a widening notebook. A skinny green pen. Two pairs of skinny legs moving in the dusk. Pointed away from the sun, say north or a direction resembling north, it was good to see a few of those people who have run past. Some of them look at me, some of them don't. No action, or no result other than the acknowledgement of presence. Not even a nod, but an inclusion into the park scape. Music that was bleating behind me has stopped. Stop smoking, stop blaming your problems on other people. The music has started again. Fragments of conversation. The sounds of traffic passing by, engines and motors. A mother and her teenage son. Neither nor, a thrift store coat. Social responsibility lies with the socially responsible. To see a move end call it a night. A movie with no end. The fading sunlight, a voice rising in its approach, and the sun made of light; not a burning ball but a yellow symbol, abstract as meaning. A Charlie Brown Christmas. A trip to the museum, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. A sigh from a mother walking with her daughter. Anything but made up. Don't forget to call. Don't forget to write and bring pictures, the fading voice and the quiet entrance into a room. A memory of a video game, a half smoked cigarette. Traffic increases and the glances made apparent, to option, out-source, a conversation outward, building a relationship or looking for an answer. Making other plans, but not surprising. I'm not trying to recreate the situation, but interpret with a bias as full as weather, a wind blowing outside of the car. Headlights on, okay if you want it to, but the same pace, the pace of circling the lake. Perhaps a piece or part of it, a gap in conversation, a fraction of it overheard, and though not miscontextualized, misconstrued, no, but recorded as is. Simply and without judgment, to be lead to what is important by a narrowing of options, that importance finds you. A lake in the city's dusk. A small bird diving to the bottom of the pond. The expression on the face of sentiment, not important, but a lasting image. A short legged dog trying to keep up, in good conscious, and a heart beats rapidly, as if the words had caused the race to begin, not the gun but the intention to signal. Pick you head up. A runner's pony tail swishes. Could it be any other way? Not what we see but imagined to have been. A glance at the man sitting on a bench. Taking notes on just that, the notion of looking. Recognition and awareness. A simple meditation, and done so through practice. Not a technique. No ending.

The stock market crash of 1932 was brought on by falling interest rates and bad car loans, the oil industries plight to introduce radios with metallic car frames. Ironically, Henry Ford was the least affected of the industry moguls as he and three others climbed new heights in awareness. Spinning greased up gears always a hit amongst investors, he retained no status like that of the insufferable nagging feeling one stock broker might have to deal with, jumping from roof top to roof top, running from the cops. These stories of grief high up high light the national mood that follows “bad” teachers or trying to avoid the pitfalls of modern medicine, the Ovid and the Odessy “giving back” to a karmic society. Poor values and more highlight the mid 30’s insuperability, placing a man’s palms against the beating chest and sweating forehead of the stock broker’s wife, already at a distance due to long hours at the firm. These hopes and others are reintroduced come the beginning of the mid-eighties.

semi early morning unlike most climates of posting this one comes early on due to the fact of elevated transport concerns say a new day a new work day this time with use of a motor carriage to speed up along the highway in a direction untypically crowded due to flight towards the big buildings no this time instead we move away from them to the low lands north berkeley said right off the highway practically begging to be arrived at via motor car not pool just me alone solo driving concentrating on the road ahead the other cars maybe a turn signal a light but who cares the birds flapping outside an engine passes as she descends the large hill outside the apartment and the blue sky is pale and nondescript to my left i can look into the neighbors apartment them too on top the hill but not in a wealthy way but a small space shared way an apartment for those who bring all their references and one that i happened to move into maybe too big or grand for my ambitions but nice nonetheless if that is a word what will become of it of anything roasting grand avenue letting the mind wander thinking about keith waldrop the opposite of letting the mind wander and his now translation of baudelaires flowers of evil maybe i can trade in a couple items i don't want in order to obtain it but talk is cheap ill probably just buy it put it on my credit card sunshine morning hotel no tell etcetera butter talk just outside below where the window can frame the grill i used last night sits the coals burned out and the catfish i had thrown down on the metal eaten just a few pieces left still stuck the metal cold maybe a prowling cat will eat it yes it is that kind of neighborhood

I remember as a kid having a painting session in my dad's kitchen, painting pictures on a summer day in Mineral Point. No ornamentation or description of those summer days at my dad's house, under the care of Wealthy, a kind old woman who still mystifies me today, her relationship to our family, why she would watch after us kids...because she was paid? Where did she come from? Regardless, we were painting water colors in the kitchen of the old Victorian house down on the corner of the large hill. Not knowing what to paint, I took my cue from a public service announcement alarming the cartoon watchers of the fact of child abuse, how to spot the signs as a poorly painted water color depicting a monster standing by a child's bedside, fangs and blood imagined as the abused psyche of the truth telling child. Taking this cue, I painted this picture, hoping to get some kind of recognition as damaged goods, a deep dark well of emotion justifying my fears and wants. My brother wasn't impressed, probably recognizing the picture for what it was (a fake). My father equally less so. No one brought it up and it escaped the world again.

hi no pretense sunny day in a quiet oakland neighborhood just got back from a little trip or two one to the homeland wisconsin for a family event marked by presents and sugar and the other a brief trip down to sunny southern california desert to meet with friends and both times without live in girlfriend shes off doing her own thing but as i wait i wait await you know the time share holiday that kind of thing waiting and living longer than ordinary education plays a role says the newspaper but as i wait later on today ill go meet with a man who might offer me a job though im not entirely hopefully good timing though since the current means of employment doesnt begin until the next week and i find myself erasing punctuation very much a transitional period while lacking a space amongst other things maybe this is the time to make phone calls to apartments here in this one filled with smoke as something in the oven i think it was a potato pancake from decembers activities filled the apartment with smoke and though the windows are open my eyes still hurt and it looks a little cloudy still but i can't tell if thats just me or the smoke still on its way casually moving towards the exits fresh air still coming into the insides the breaks are few and unforgiving times like these require scooters to send down hills not messages but the messengers themselves in all of their healthy glory hercules and isosceles marathon twenty eight days later the post is filled died at the finish line slipped on the rope the sweat and embroidered on his sweater reads snowflake nineteen hundred and fifty four new year etc option for change et al

Selected Memories

“You know, your bike tire is low on air.” I said. She had stopped and was looking at me. The party was over and she was about to get on her way home. “I don’t have a bike pump.” she said indifferently. “Oh that’s alright. I could leave one in your box. I’ve got a little one that I use for my bike. It works great.” She said, “I’m not a goal oriented person." and rode off.

“I don’t know where I am or who I’m talking to.” I had said to Aric while laying on a clean bed at a cabin somewhere east of Portland Oregon. I really didn’t know at the time. It was a bachelor party and it was the first night. Greg had given me some kind of opiate, and mixed with the absinthe, booze, and pot, it just knocked me out. I went up stairs to give it a rest. Aric came up and started talking to me, as he does sometimes when I am trying to pass out. I was trying to listen but faded out. He reminded me what I had said sometime later.

“No matter how much you exercise you’ll never be healthy.” Greg repeated back to me. “You know Tyler, you just say the most amazing things. All of a sudden, you just spit out these pearls of wisdom. No matter how much I exercise I’ll never be healthy. Wow.” Of course at the time I really thought he meant it. In retrospect I realized that he was being sarcastic, and that he was trying to indicate to me that I should shut my mouth. At the time I felt encouraged.

Three Quotes

*

“I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.” –Ernest Hemingway, from “Moveable Feast”

*

“I doubt that there were precedents for the ceremonies that opened the Master’s last game. Black made a single play and white a single play, followed by a banquet.”-Yasunari Kawabata, from “The Master of Go”

*

"Pac-Man’s character is difficult to explain even to the Japanese—he is an innocent character. He hasn’t been educated to discern between good and evil. He acts more like a small child than a grown-up person. Think of him as a child learning in the course of his daily activities. If some one tells him guns are evil, he would be the type to rush out and eat guns. But he would most probably eat any gun, even the pistols of the policemen who need them." -Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac-Man

“Socio-economic factors are of limited explanatory power.” -NYT 3/26/06

It has come to my attention lately that a question concerning my poetry practice needs to be addressed: I write poetry, or do I write souped up narrative, getting lost in brambles by design. It would seem that largely, as long as I am simply removing chunks of my notebook and reworking them into appropriate forms, forms that look like poetry, borrowed forms and forms half filled, I think an argument would have to be made that I am not writing poetry because I am not engaging in challenging my means of communication, to say something I haven’t said before. There are times that I have done so, and do so, but I think if I err, I err on the side of presenting a mystical narrator rather than writing a poem, in love with myself as I can be.

Perhaps there is some merit in this, this engagement with the self (an idea of the self) that falls outside of narrative, and back into the category of new language, found or noticed or created. I think this is what Liz was known for, challenging these ideas of self specifically through language, as if talking to yourself on the boundary of self. In terms of prose, self appearing in or as or creating a mythic narrator and openly questioning the legitimacy of that myth. Poetic prose, prose poetry: challenging our ideas of narrative. Is this less than or equal to pure poetry? Where does it belong?

Thinking about Tod and Forest, to a degree, their work is very much about the language interaction and intersection with itself, a persons’ idea of the poem. However not everyone can be T.S. Eliot, and as much as I respect his writing, I usually do not choose to engage with poetry on a such a personal level. And by this I mean I usually do not take poetry as the primary “topic” of my poem, or say take poetry as a thing as my motivator for writing. Sometimes yes, but there are stories I need to tell and jokes I want to make. What is unfortunate that my multi-interest in poetry and writing, is not seen as a serious engagement with poetry, and this is true, it’s not a serious engagement with language but an interest in mediating my own personal narrative. Is this poetry? Not always, but sometimes.

So I guess I can’t blame them for not taking my writing seriously. Nor can I blame Jon Kinsella for ripping to shreds “The Revisionist” or Ed’s insistence that she doesn’t understand my poems. After all, the majority of what I write does not qualify as poetry on a literary level, and so many times have I noticed that a person’s interest in my work is tightly bound to a person’s interest in my person. Without that, I’m not sure the majority of my poetry makes any difference to anybody. It’s simply pop music or something that exists for entertainment purposes, and they’ve got to call it like they see it and we don’t mind.

If poets weren’t so intent on impressing their peers and instead were writing for themselves, than maybe more people would read poetry that doesn’t manipulate them in obvious ways. I do believe that the nature of engagement within language is a relative phenomenon in that what is new for some is not new to others. Professionals, I suppose, make it their business to know what is new, and old.

**

The division of labor continues.

Three Occurrences with Birds

Found a dead red tail hawk when I went to pee. Driving with my father out in the country side for some reason, I was about five and needed to releave myself. We saw it and picked it up, putting it into a trash bag and in the trunk. The DNR told us, after affirming that we weren’t the ones who killed it, that they had no use for it, and that maybe a university or school could use it for research. We contacted my grade school, I was in second grade at the time. They told us that they had no use for it unless it was stuffed and we weren’t about to do that. Why was it dead? It was probably killed from the power lines. There were no noticeable injuries to its body. It was warm and loose when we picked it up.

A hawk perched outside a fledgling bookstore. This one could have been a sign. Like a wolf falling from the sky into the arms of a child with a speech impediment. A sign of future glory. The store was in Brooklyn, owned by a friend of mine. I had helped him build the bookshelves and did the walls for him, painting and repair. In the end I had felt somewhat edged out of the operation, not that I had invested anything other than my time, but I had felt that I had helped him and the bookstore a considerable amount and was hoping to be a part of the bookstore’s future, to be included in some of the decision making in the bookstore’s future. It didn’t work out that way but the store is doing well.

An owl flew up from the middle of the road, a long night in a strange town; the key had broken off in the car’s lock. Jake and I had been painting at Pam’s weekend home in the very Southwest corner of Massachusetts, a town called Ashley Falls. One night we were feeling a little stir crazy and went out to a town about thirty miles north, where there was a kind of nightlife. We wandered around, making our longest stop by a group a street musicians. They were just high school kids but sitting with them made us feel as if we were a part of something larger. As we were leaving I turned the key too hard in a lock that was broken anyway. We called Pam and she came with an extra set of keys. Its wings were huge.

october when the weather was reasonable

Instead of wasting our time here on earth why don’t we gather our own merciful point of reference and celebrate instead the undivided likeness of reciprocity, lost in another world the melody of insurrection and divided unto one’s own lawn, a lawn in a development the ugliness of misappropriated wealth: a boat, a dune buggy, a hammock seldom used and all writhing within the constraints of a single yard, forgetting to speak and then resolving to listen more carefully. Mosquitoes in the morning people disturbed in their sleep. Housing development on the outskirts of Madison, the heart of the heart of the housing development.

train through oregon in late august

Over an uncertain number of years I’ve felt my moral compass or certainty of the right thing to do or say degrade to the point where these judgments become murky. It is not that I’m losing any sense or missing anything but simply making other choices, perhaps making choices that had not been presented to me in one form or the other, the best choices when relayed back to my cohorts reckon or reflect in smiles or admiration as if their old compasses have not changed the bend of conservatism the wild things we used to do where if I were a kid I’d steal a pack or gum or how I would never do such a thing through fear now unable or put in a position where there are choices that perhaps my cohorts had come across at earlier periods whereas I having been well protected am functioning as a child awed at the majesty of morals gone awry or of the trouble we begin to make for ourselves when we stop telling people what we’re afraid of and then we wake up unable to tell the person next to us what we were dreaming of as if any judgment were too much to take not a single decision fit the world ended up upended the questions would not come instead of buying paused to think what I have.

two demons riding a severed arm a man with a large oblong head being held and ridden by a laughing child a teacher holding a scroll being mobbed by children two children playing a game of dice a man reclining against a writing table petting a dog a chrysanthemum a fat man holding a large sack two men riding on the back of a large carp a man with a sword heading towards a clump of trees a boy riding the back of an ox while playing the flute a young man kneeling with a shoe next to an old man riding a mule a man dreaming of eleven little people in a word bubble a woman raising her right hand just above her face a large man with a large weapon stroking his beard a family fishes at the shore a man struggles with an octopus a calm look on his face in ivory and in excellent condition

the man in the office wearing designer glasses gave me steroids to fight the hideous eye parasite that had inflamed my sight related skin modules in the city i was sweating when i got there he asked me if i had been running or if it was another symptom no i said and pointed to the yellow puss oozing out of my arm and asked if this was the problem no he said my skin is weeping the entire appointment took about ten minutes and cost two hundred dollars i have no health insurance anna offered some burnable herbs but it seems like the most intense swelling has gone down turning me from scary looking to looking like i've just been beat up now not entirely healthy but on a fast track to recovery meanwhile the truck with said shipment of goods from brooklyn is approaching fast and i wait on the couch in the late afternoon while the sun begins to go down over the colored houses on top the hill the sounds are few and the air is clean california seems like an easy place to live if your health is not a question usually mine is not though i see doctors throughout the years for various aliments and really some health care would be good for my system the skin begging to dry out and chafe around my eyes large dark spots reminding us what might have been but tonight to go out and see a friend perform with his band twelve dollar tickets the most i've paid to see a friend have a drink and a laugh get back go to sleep wake up take steroids make a pie nothing doing the mojo is nogo nothing much to talk about looking for something to do

from the notebook not too distantly the sixth month called june the thirtyith day of this year

"Southeast". After a night at Pam's in MA somewhere in the corner, the southwest corner of MA. I'm here at the train station waiting to catch a ride and head back into town, the city. Nobody has seen me, under complete camouflage, a desire to wait with an exciting reason to not wait as long, the man gave me two and said you'll have to wait an hour. While the other customers mosey around with no indication of ceasing to mosey. Sentence patterns. Mountain shop, type "A" personality, in the burning like I've found a "newer" and better town, the outskirts extend approximately 120 miles north, at least, or at least as far as I know beyond the eye can see. Red hot skillet. It's not like a cat. White hot. It's not like a hole. Everything you see is the moon shine. Stop to think and touch the pen to your lips. Outside dimensions. A simple work ethic means picking up the wheel barrow and moving it back to the garden.

it has been sort of long but not long enough since we've talked last between us and them the other has landed here in california and though that is a forgone conclusion the purpose of this talk is to bring you up to date on the events that have transpired as thus following the last installment has been a real time buckle down on duties and responsibilities namely the making of a life or a place to go outside of the apartment and wait for mail and or email namely the job the teaching job as of last week has been not found but good progress has been made in the form of cover letters and resumes sent out to all prospective employers in the surrounding area and the hills surrounding these areas to make the update shorter than today say cleaned the garage in preparation for the things from new york to arrive and applied for a couple more teaching jobs but nothing doing yet the labor forces force the market etc but nothing doing no updates the life has most been between the two of us another quiet weekend but oh the rash that i acquired last week is still around and maybe we could call it poison oak or ivy but at this point one and a half weeks later with the symptoms still around and now the eye swelling over we ask for the god of infectious reactions to forgive our bodies and uncles for what can only be described as an unrelenting attack on my skin and now my vision no stories no future plans at this date in history twentyith of november two thousand and six

in one sense liberated and in another not ten thousand years from now dinosaurs now wingless learn again to get smaller than the man eating plants that surround the island a peninsula full of ferns by a lake is a city made of people at the grocery twenty dollars too much too soon a can of olives resting in a plastic bag being carried across stoplightless roads and traffic dont get me started about the traffic it seems as if a single person could roast over our story maybe turn it over as a piece of meat deemed done or a cucumber resting on the chin of a gentle apes potential say theyre just like us a single commander of one particular future meeting your neighbors and being invited to a party but just in case the music will be loud on the step in the late morning again on the step in the late morning notes take place the sounds of a stereo a piece of trash carried to the curb men climbing trees and cutting pieces off behind them with ropes and skill enough to risk ones life meanwhile being watched from quiet houses next door the painters hesitate on the ladder not even twice as high that's right coming to conclusion with the information given dinner at seven people walking through doors and at eight their shows come on at nine go off within the conclusions given in the first place self determination self made millionaires wondering why we just cant get with it an angry face while at work im swamped with deadlines peoples choices and childrens stories mutated into the few chosen film makers rarely visited summer homes a sleeping cat a dream of being licked yours truly couchy

We are pressed, pressed on each other,
We will be told at once
Of anything that happens

And the discovery of fact bursts
In a paroxysm of emotion
Now as always. Crusoe

We say was
'Rescued'.
So we have chosen.


--George Oppen, from "Of Being Numerous"

from the vault again sometime maybe six months ago

last night, yesterday, I took a long nap as my work outside of home had ended early. I was tired and decided to sleep during the late afternoon. After about three hours I woke up, had an evening, made dinner, took a shower, did some submissions, talked on the phone. I went to bed after twelve and woke up at seven. I was dreaming that I was comforting on old friend in a grocery store. All of his closest friends had died (and there's more to that story but I forget). We were checking out of the store, and his father was behind the cash register. My friend was crying and I paid for whatever I was buying, and his father gave me the change. One cent, and I turned and gave the cent to my friend and said it was lucky. I really believed that it was.

from the vault again thursday march sixteenth two thousand and six you see im transcribing a note book and have been coming across these things written while in brooklyn

Thursday, March 16th. I think I felt some vibrations from the train that was passing underneath. Although not exactly warm, the weather is at least sunny. I wanted to get outside after being cooped up in the apartment all day. The job search continues but today was different, researching not jobs but ways to get jobs, applying for temp. agencies and what not. I was gong to go to the museum with a., who happened to be in town, passing through as I might describe it to someone else. Unfortunately though she hadn't finished her work and that effectively put a stop to any plans we might of made this afternoon, and I left slowly thinking of the day and what might become of the day. In the cold it seems that much brighter, and this jacket stops all the wind except of the wind getting on my hands. It feels nice to sit in the sun and as I wait I rot but not in the winter and only as the ground beings to thaw. I keep thinking I hear a rumbling train below me, and I think it is all I hear. No boiling blood or basic instinct, no soluble personal struggle in the hillsover looking the anonymous city. I wonder how ad. made out with the land lord? I wonder how much longer I'll sit here. Am I lonely? Thoughts from above. I don't think so, just tired of being in my apartment. I suppose the elevation of this bench is what's causing the the wind to blow. I suppose.

from the vault march eighth two thousand and six entry number one one two zero three nine

Woke up this morning to find myself in a bed positioned on the floor in an apartment in Brooklyn New York. Got up to use the bathroom and found two people named m. and b. sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the living room area. Returned to bed and began making this entry for future record keeping purposes. Have not been able to locate reason why this journal entry exists, who is motivated to write down what they think they are doing, never an indication of what they have done or will be doing. A notebook lends itself to automatic writing as a painter, such as Degas does a study of a ballerina in charcoal, or makes line drawings of the world collapsing before he goes ahead and purchases the paint. Of course I don't mean to indicate that I am a painter but more along the lines that I went to a museum yesterday with my two guests, and had a lovely time, but for some reason by the time it was all over my body and mind had completely left as soon as I sat down. The pressing needs of my hidden physicality weighs heavy or the fluid that keep me alive is slowly draining out into the general working of the universe for no particular reason other than time and gravity, the wonders of osmosis and the principle of searching for new space.

before i left wisconsin i meant to write a posting about the house my parents house that i was staying in but the one time i sat down to write it the network was down and i didn't get another chance before i left for here california oakland city but the post i was going to write that i had kept in my mind for about three days was about when i was a kid like three years old and my mom and biological dad had bought a new house that we were going to move into in madison and the house was empty and i guess we were all walking around it as my memory is somewhat foggy about this but i do remember the incident clearly where i stepped on a bunch of nails sticking up from a nail board like the kind they use with carpet so that when you put down the carpet the nails hold the carpet in place and i was running around the house in barefoot and even though i was warned not to i stepped on the nail board tack board whatever its called and stuck my feet on it and of course i cried where now many years later where my mom and step dad have moved back into this house that we left a long time ago and came back to right around the time i started high school and i have graduated from highschool thank you very much and found myself painting the living room of that house where i had hurt my foot a long time ago and there is really no story or moral to the story or gigantic leap or image complex that i wanted to transfer from that to this other than to say that i've spent a lot of time in that house at different times in my life be it a little kid to highschool to coming back in living there even post graduate school and maybe this is normal say normal in the grand history of world history where people don't ever go far from where they started and then there is the ts eliot line from four quartets where he says home is where you start from and i think maybe this is true as well that is to say that i just moved again and am now here in oakland to stay with a. and well move soon relatively soon to san francisco but i just wanted to let you know that i moved but am still available to answer questions and sign baseballs and i'll write more later but not right now it's late and theres company

lying in the pillows thinking life is good “life is good” after lying in the pillows thinking guiltily “life is good” thinking guiltily about pillows i come to some obscene design that life is good is always obscene and guilty

somebody told me that writing an email is like writing a letter to yourself a letter not sent but projected onto a screen for editing thoughts moving periods erasing clauses like when planes get in or where you left your hat on the train from next mexico into the city where healthy lives live to see one another meander back from versions of events to each other in the rain late fall somebody told me that writing an email is like writing a letter to yourself

went out to cross plains today where i began painting little quarter circles with minimum of paint so as to leave the brush marks on the wall so as to give the impression of something else happening to the wall asides from the color that i painted underneath it so as i made one and then another one and so on and so forth until the wall was full of them and took great care not to make them random or helpless looking but natural as a tree might look growing infront of a super market or maybe natural like an empty plastic bag blowing across the parking lot of this said super market anyway this continued for a while up and down the wall and inbetween the spaces so many times that the spaces filled up so as to not need me to put these little quarter circle gingko leaf looking paint splotches ontop the persimmony wall with some kind of desert super mix glaze and listened to the radio and worried for a while as the wall looked like hell for a while but as more and more of the spaces got filled in after having gone around the room a small room a bathroom a number of times the spaces began to disappear so as each pass made the room look better and then it was just a matter of standing back and spotting and touching where necessary so as the multiple additions of the little gesture eventually began to add up to something larger than itself or my initial intentions and some of course the motion was not exactly mechanical and as more were made my hand got better so as to really beginning to get the hang of this thing it all felt very japanese in a suburban american mid seventies kind of way

oi still trying to get my stuff and junk from the east to the west whereas just got off the phone with one mysterious man trying very hard to convince me that he was in fact trust worthy and willing to do it and do the job and possibly squeeze me for a little more money know i know the sound of a hussle and when and what it feels like to get to know said person on the phone and the fact of effort the convincing voice and the fact of space allowed for conversation the prototypical pressure mounting in the spaces usually reserved for questions and comments like the man on the street in brooklyn who got not one but ten dollars from me dang what a sucker gave me some story quite urgently and manically and maniacally in retrospectacular fashion it was in fact one of those brand new ten dollar bills that i gave him but not as gave him as the time in providence with the kid giving me the deed to his car in panicky fashion on the phone outside of the bar and easily convinced one is against one another human pray the way one walks down the street hands out of the pockets and instead swinging freely and steady eye contact but not too long but briefly steady freely briefly instead of inside hunched over looking quite quiet vulnerable signs perceived from experts grown up hawk like mouths and gigantic galactica thinking in terms of personality unlike say the opposite small town mind that if i were to claim one the big city versus the small town say neither learn from both ideally in the great war some of us got to know our enemy

you better ask yourself why you're reading this or just ask the waiter please say hey waiter ahem i mean ask your waiter your doctor i mean say hey waiter can i have a glass of water please i'm in severe pain from this balsy weather pattern sun rain moon sun shine rain hail snow sun nothing much but the weather where as over there in the city the weather was not much of a feature as other things were likely to change for example the quality of the piece of fruit you might find or buy from a vendor and secretly anointed upon the supper table one quantity plus one knight of simple supple leather furniture made by hand for people who aren't hung up on the price so much as the simple supple elegance of an elephants tusk sticking out of a bail of hay on the seventh day of july nineteen hundred and seventy two the mammals were asking to play baseball with jesus and nobody bothered to keep score alas insects weather bells and southern belles all missed out on the missing mud slinging antics of gorilla man half man half gorilla man half man half gorilla man half man half gorilla man half man half gorilla man half man half gorilla nostril one dash seven one two zero seven eight nine keyboard piano drums and guitar have all made it out tonight lets give a great big round of applause to the one the only thankyou teddy b teddy rux p ecetera excitera excop calcium vitamin b twelve a zinc carbon flame tipped wing bats length and draughtsmen ship superior quality cuts of dweedle dox and lax at acid licks raw raw post proto plucking yeah yeah yeah apostrophe s makes it something wink wink one eye once in a while

i'm not going to mention the day but i'll speak about tonight but only in reference to the events that came previous to this particular moment say the last twelve hours and again not to mention previously on the this show deep male voice or coming next week cut to action screaming big surprise nope no serious work today got up had a meal with a friend cut loose dutch baby with bananas and strawberry piled into the center raw dough and strawberry something past life smoothie etcetera started back cleaned some gutters on a relatives humble home with said breakfast buddy got down off the ladder washed hands got into borrowed car and drove quickly but carefully to destination one compiled list of to do completed list in less than one second amazing wow got going again and went up to juneau to see ill family member sat around for about an hour listened to strange mumblings but managed to smile none the less gave a hug and kiss talked to nurse answered question about the weather statement about smoking and got back in car came back ate dinner withheld information and continues

why not tell our own stories rather head off the flow of information before it gets larger than we could make alone say use names and dates and places and issues of privacy remain in the foreground instead run don't tell anybody if you have anybody any more or even if you never did the voice you might ask questions to once in a long while why not wait for her to come home skip the middle go back over come out back not where you were going wait for the signal and throw your sweater behind a garage and panic run off somewhere unseen unheard for days and in denial of ones friends asked out for breakfast have some money i'm scared omit judgment past lives present personality question mark seriously needing people needing help from ones uncle cousins and misunderstanding no i don't under stand him he see he told us all he told everybody everything all at once and we looked at each other and said huh see we all looked at each other and asked a few questions and left the room days later saved yet again simply by opening his mouth unbelieved as it was at the time two weeks later not a single sign to speak of and we weren't looking and to boot we can record this incident in history as closed now perfect though the real ones the ones outside of jurisdiction will not know either side to pull back in

rain and supposed snow by tomorrow today the job the big job got done on the street off the street with the world famous over priced ice cream shop overrated and pretentious in the words of certain residents but the lady though slightly crazy so i was told and had a house absolutely full of junk and the smell would permeate through the windows even when closed and maybe this is disgusting and it was but sadly as always i got used to it and carry on only seven days no change with the machine and then ladders and sticks we assaulted the three story well being of the quiet neighborhood with a busy street close by and then it started to rain mr. wabbit on the ladder begun to slip and yelled out my name i came running up the ladder and found the supporting structure slipping and the ladder beginning to turn mr. wabbit he held on i said shoot and held the ladder and he said a few more spots and stood in the rain okay we're done got done got cleaned up its been a while since we've spoken and the reason being not a good one instead debauchery and stress and other orders of business but really i'm committed to you i am your little blogger based in the work a day wisconsin think about the weekend personal life and then some more time to lay after work a slight nap and then the schedule begins did you happen to notice the comment posted on the last email what the heck i asked and over the weekend i went to a wedding almost missed it quick change in the street jog across the park solid gold

rain today got up at eight put dirty pants on got in car drove to work site moved cars and big machine sat in car in rain waited for machine to be picked up never came moved machine out moved cars back in machine back in in reverse order got in car drove home reported findings ate breakfast and lunch went back to work site touched house still wet made call to postpone until tomorrow got back in car with working buddy drove around killed time to see if the sun would come back drove through the arboretum made comments about the leaves changing color fall wisconsin colder weather drove home got out went into room got onto computer and onto bed wrote emails poked at work in san francisco posted on craigslist got up ate donut drank milk ate peach watched baseball playoff game ninth inning athletics and twins game two got up went back to computer picked it up and put it on lap on bed onward work tomorrow sun comes back newspaper reads rises again clean weather get done by friday

hi i just erased a post that was rambling on about what not and what have you about the unspeakable untraceable if i could have it my way it wouldn't be about anything to actually say it and not just dance around as if there were no topic but just the empty rhetoric like a political speech or a promise from an unreliable friend and you know who you are you feel guilty about yourself but only on the surface deep down you love yourself and that's cool like movie food like butter on popcorn and a large expensive soda and the film is just about to start and its really really dark in there and your cell phone is turned off and secretly you feel happy about this but outwardly you feel happy about this and secretly the movie ticket taker is quite happy about this and secretly is also outwardly happy about this and takes your ticket and then i started rambling again but i just erased it just in case somebody is keeping track that makes two false starts or one false start and one stop in the middle when i went to write stop i wrote stope like stoop and i'll go sit down now thank you for reading i'm sorry i haven't been truthful today but it's not because i don't want to and it's not because i didn't try but because i just don't know i hope that's enough for you

walking around a town in west virginia at dusk the skies were purple mostly and cloudy not entirely just across the bottom band looking for dinner with some lad much younger maybe in his early twenties with curly hair a native and the traffic wasn't bad driving around what seemed to be a small town what also seemed to be san diego a large bridge a highway overpass hung over most of our walk down from the parking spot which took a while to find and then to the base of an urban hill i asked him what there was to eat around there and said i don't know the closest street with restaurants was up there and we started walking up and on the way i saw two people both sitting at restaurant tables one was wearing a cowboy hat the other was an old man both looked like they lived there and all of a sudden i'm in the shower still light out trying to get the soap out of my eyes feel a nudge from the front and a jump back saying what the hell there's the kid who was trying to show me dinner smirking curly hair and all i woke myself up after that

got stung by a bee today i was like ow i was like swearing and junk i was holding a long pole with a paintbrush taped to the end of it and felt good for a few odd seconds as i wielded this primitive tool like some kind of martial artist and then the bee came and earlier i had set down my blueberry soda and picked it up to take a glug when right at the bottom i guess but right in my mouth the bee swam as i was finishing the soda and i spit it out like some kind of cartoon comic strip spew all over the ground and threw the bottle down where the be was still alive and inside the bottle minus the soda and i came back later that day to find the bottle empty i thought that much soda would have done him in or her but i guess not and maybe must maybe it was the same bee that had stung me right on my big paw i sat on a rock and cried like a baby actually not i kept painting because there was a just a little bit left and usually normally i'm allergic to bees but it has been purteneer um ah ten years or so since i was stung last if i write a book about this time i'll call it in between bee stings and this will be the last paragraph

the sky is after putting my glasses on purple on a sunday evening by my computers watch the time is seven o seven and no change pm it says and i have no reason not to believe it after dinner mysterious chef no names allowed here due to personal liability reasons privacy concerns shishkabob pork and peppers garbonzo beans or something like them white buttery nuggets in a well developed bowl and a bowl of salad no spinach some bread and something else that escapes me at the moment afterwards eating chocolate while looking at mystery number twos pictures from a far away and foreign land slight breeze temperatures in the middle sixties those noises coming from the kitchen clinking dishes have done nothing toward preparation or clean up do you still like me or today was the first day that i've had nothing to do for about a month and a half or maybe longer than that and by nothing to do i mean at a home base like location and having the luxury to stay put or go or play music or dote on my sweetheart but nothing or neither read the paper and ate breakfast sat down to work on a manuscript for submission season but quickly got back up and took a walk through the grave yard to the music store where i browsed without a purpose and came back the skies were threatening all afternoon but held off as long as they needed to for this one sometimes sentences are meaning not what i wanted to say but in the rush of themselves spill out in premeditated chunks of habit and i have to admit that the last line and a half i didn't write straight through but slowed down so that i could say exactly what i wanted to say and thought about it because it was important

late night thursday got back from the office my mothers office where there is a printer and a copier machine where i sent of an application for the macdowell colony that may or may not be on time plus the recommendation that i asked for from a mentor like persona was asked for about three hours ago so maybe all this is too much too late but we'll see speaking at least i tried if nothing else i'll be early for the january deadline and speaking of which i need to write a check for twenty dollars for the processing fee which would probably bother me if i was addicted to heroin and had no job but as it stands right now i have work temporary as it is and am not addicted to heroin so twenty dollars to take a chance a fancy month long residency where i will finally have some concentrated writing time seems like a reasonable thing to do on a thursday in wisconsin where the clouds have cleared up and i can open the windows a bit and hear the insects and airplanes and breath a little bit better than i could while working at elizabeths house with the paint fumes and angry dog and all that and more one more day over there unless something goes wrong and then a big fat weekend to do nothing with my nothing and that will be nice maybe i'll eat ice cream in the hot sun and let it drip all over my tshirt with a big smile last a little while i have nothing really to say right now i'll keep you posted

the dog came back inside today with burrs all over her back and i got mad i said goddamn it violet i just picked a bunch of burrs out of your beard yesterday and then here you are again and commenced pulling little green fresh burrs out of the hair on her back which is much easier than the fur on her face i say fur not hair because that's a better word for it and i apologize for the personification like word i used to describe her fur ie the hair on her back which makes her sound like a hairy human like so many of us with hair on our backs in varying degrees but the point is i got mad and then got to picking burrs out of the fur on her back and the back yard is clear the sun finally came back today just in the last couple hours as i sat eating dinner and reading the paper in this two bedroom and mostly empty of people house in wisconsin i ate dinner and read the paper while watching the cnn news show the situation room which showed lots of bad news and one light hearted story about condi rice that lasted a couple minutes but other than that it was bad news across the board in iraq afganistan and our politicians ragging on each other and on the news services of course i would occasionally flip to fox news just to see what was going on there and it was all car crashes in ohio and not the war which cnn was broadcasting pictures and stories from it was depressing and mind numbing and how much bad news can one person actually take and maybe now i get it when people say i don't watch the news because it depresses me and others who ask if you actually watch or read the news and its all bad including the education report and makes me wonder how it could get better and it could warning political comment really they should cut loose rumsfeld and really the bush administration but that won't happen but rumsfeld seems like a possibility and its freaking crazy how much worse the war is going and the entire middle east but you don't need me to tell you this but what are we going to do about this but anyway whoever works at cnn must be some kind of robot or incredibly tough to stomach so much suffering detail on a daily basis or maybe one gets used to it seemingly not a solution just to endure but a survival technique corporate media to disband the united states somewhere in between exit ramps on the highway frightened midwesterner signing off

i think i just bought a printer that won't actually print the things i would like it to print but will see the man's name was clement as in clement i know no other reference points but i bought the printer for twenty dollars so i would have printing capabilities from here in wisconsin because since i'm earth bound right now i can work on sending out work which may or may not work but at least i will have been able to print it out or so i thought so hard about all of this before hand each piece should fit and when it does i can move on to the next one this piece the printer may only print photos but i don't know why that would be the case hopefully it isn't and hopefully the ink isn't ridiculously expensive the dog is shaking and rubbing against the bed because of what we do not know perhaps a glandular problem oily skin and fur that kind of thing helps ward off evil spirits the dog keeps shaking its collar which signifies something i'm supposed to understand maybe let me out or feed me or hello or maybe something more complicated but how could i know i mean i'm not a mind reader today it was raining all day all day inside no fun but painting busy young mother's house and young daughter must be aware of leaving toxic chemicals out and clean up right nice i will for the young family trying to make lasagna for dinner its almost ready as my mother will be away for the week she prepared me some lasagna to heat up i am twenty seven years old i think the dog is throwing up

also, found this on a website pointed to by the nytimes (watchingtheworldchange.com)

people ask me why i left new york...

dang it louise i just wrote a big long entry and then it all disappeared when i tried to spell check it o who care go dawgs yells the foot ball fan boy howdy its been a while but i wont make excuses instead i'll say after massachusets was a brief trip to kentucky to visit family then back to new york to finish packing my belongings into my brothers apartment and if you feel like you started reading in the middle of a story you probably did but you've done nothing wrong i'm the one who hasn't been keeping up on things or this thing here this program i say with a disdainful expression on my face to symbolize my contempt for technology but really i'm just sad because it rained all day so anyway after packing off to oregon for the bachelor party back to portland to get reacquainted then to oakland to do laundry and walk up a hill short lived to san francisco where i saw them all it was nice went to the beach serpentine bob dylan electric car morning flew to wisconsin for the wedding main even found everybody else even you also working painting back in it then to virginia for one more wedding and now i'm back here for the next month and a half before i go meet california in a formal way universal health care failed nor will i have a car but we might not care see movies get a job that kind of thing i'm happy to be back where the ground is not moving beneath me and will see you soon monday through friday five days a week