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

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

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

**

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

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

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

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

**

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

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

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

flat little gopher ears...







so cute!

shiny matted fur...





how I would like to hold you!

cheeks stuffed with trash...













i could give you so much more!

From this morning's paper:

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

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

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

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

Inspirational Message (mp3)

Heroes (mp3)

Recording (mp3)

accident/direction (mp3)

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

Quietude, 2003 (mp3)

urp ii (mp3)

Berlin, 1945 (mp3)

Johnny's Cabin (mp3)

The Hindenburg (mp3)

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

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

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

Cash is King

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

Poetry is Expensive 2

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

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

I wash. I bring you my notes.

Poetry is Expensive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Workbook

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

Love Poem

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

Talking to Myself

i. Authority

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

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

“Did I say that you didn’t?”
“No.”

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

what I will do.



ii. Café, Tuesday Night

Christ died, I just realized
this is Christian
rock.

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

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



iii. Fable (no moral)

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

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

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

I Bought

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Careerism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Easter

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

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

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

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

Poem on my 30th Birthday

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

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

I wrote poems.
I remember the rain running
down shingles

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

algae on the black
tiles. Evening in Seattle
and nobody

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

Sestina

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mineral Point

Bob.
Susan.
AbbyBen
and Tyler.

April.
Lucy.
SterlingTuck
and Andy.

Tom.
Alpha-Romeo.
Watercress.
Dirt bike.

Ted.
Adam.
Matt.
Cathy.

Tuesday, 4:54 PM

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

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

later
they climb back aboard
and drive away.

Scene

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

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

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

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

California.

Advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

840 Valencia (Part 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

840 Valencia (Part 1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snitznoodle + Neice

Time Life Love Poem

Let’s suppose there’s an unbreakable bond
between us that transcends (supposing
still) space and time, okay?
A psychic connection
like that man who gets on a plane
or doesn’t. The plane crashes
after he hesitates to board:
a feeling out of nowhere, he puts his fingers
to his temples, squinting as if
receiving a transmission.

And then there’s the lady
burning her hand while three
thousand miles away her twin
feels a sharp pain. Let’s say
these kinds of bond exist
instinctively, or we are attuned
to these types of disturbances
in others, or vice versa,
another’s pleasure. Let’s suppose
and I remember
after a long visit we left each other
and listened to the same song
without any premeditation.

The other night I knew
you wanted to call me, and I felt that
twinge, that cosmic foam popping
between us. That pull.
And I called and was right:
you were in love with somebody else
again, and again I too was in love
with all this beyond us.

The woman at the airport security gate asked me if I was "all together." I asked her what she meant ("what do you mean?"), and she made a gesture indicating the person ahead of me: was I traveling with this person?

For a second I thought she meant it like the expression "pulling it together" or "keeping it together," like she knew I was going through a difficult time and was offering support.

tomorrow i leave wisconsin for chicago to have a new year with cole and melissa and molly and barnaby and other who's names i may not remember. it should be fun. it was a nice, mellow/low-key christmas. wisconsin is cold and snowy which is novel and short term so therefore exciting. the last couple days i've been getting in touch with my inner-painter so therefore i'm exhausted. enjoy the following megapixels, and heck, i don't know, have a happy new year.

brother ben made this blanket for niece beatrix

friend joel post village bar when the snow turned into rain and fog (spooky/pooky)father + brother at clearview

whell, it's the end of the semester yet again and whell, that's about it. i'm leaving san francisco for a month and half, the entire winter break, to visit my mother's house for christmas, will stop in chicago for new years, head to d.c. to my sister's for the beginning of january, hopefully stop by new york and also los angeles. it seems ambitious but i like to travel. it relaxes me, even more than playing the tuba. this semester has been another hum dinger and i'm going to take next semester off of teaching, though i will probably keep doing esl work and tutoring. maybe i will go into steamfitting or airplane repair. i sort of forget how to write in this blog but that's probably a good thing. i was perfectly content with having that st. vincent millay poem sit there for the next five years as the last, depressing post of somebody who got bored and abandoned their blog. maybe this will be the last blog post for this blog. recently i've gotten into some music software and it's been where my creative energies have been going, if you can call it creative. mostly i've been making bad techno music. it's pretty fun. once i figure out how to actually write a song, the next frontier, the music might get more interesting. is there a difference between writing a poem and a song? probably, but i figure that the drive needed to carry a poem out to completion is the same as the drive needed to carry a song out to completion. then again, making music on a computer is not exactly like opening a note book. it's confusing with all its bleep and blops and buttons. i've got to give it more time. anyway, it's a null day in san francisco. kind of cloudy, a little cold. sarah's coming by to drop off my hat and i work from three to nine.

The machine rattles and hums like it has a larger purpose in life, its function a part of the whole (the kitchen below, the restaurant's ventilation). Poetry was the first thing that anybody had told me I was good at, that I had a talent for and being in my last year of college having no idea what to do, I pursued it. People ask if I am still writing and I say of course, always. And this is true, but not as the center piece of my day.

I have to work, or rather, want to work in other capacities. The writers whose trajectories I find most appealing were all part-time in a sense: Wallace Stevens the insurance executive and George Oppen the labor organizer. Both had other lives that did not ever directly translate into poetry. Consummate outsiders, never fully beholden to either title, thereby creating a distance in which to write.

Free agents thus free to wander into any dream. The trouble with construction in the early morning is that it prevents free wandering into dreams. Seven thirty is when I first heard the jack hammers. They start early and work fluently until everyone else is awake, the language of breaking up concrete and tank tread.

Forrest asked, sincerely, do you like writing? I like the generation of words but don't like a work that translates into a kind of pyramid scheme: writing for relief, and this relief turning into something to sell. Pure innards, like pig intestines or a gutsy Academy Award winning performance, seem unsustainable in comparison to an on-going relationship with community. i.e. a dialogue with others, a role to play.

A bird landed on the fire escape and chirped in my direction. I looked for it; scanning the ledge and the rusty metal fire escape that climbs over the ledge, the bird frantically chirping over the rumble of machinery. As soon as I made eye contact, it flew away. Was it waiting to be seen? It seemed angry. Maybe it thought I was responsible for the noise and could put and end to it.

The sky is mostly clear, though the smell of construction wafts somewhere near. Unlike yesterday morning the noise is distant. It's possible they're just further down the street and instead, the peace is relative; a whole block or blocks of people experiencing what I did yesterday morning.

Bailout?

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

An alarm clock is one way to wake up. There are others, like gradually, with the sun rising in the East, to be shook awake by your step brother, or by you mother in the early early morning. To be sleepy until one jumps in the water; to sit on the warm grate while the freezing cold festers. Mornings like these.

I could wake up from the sound of a garbage truck, from the need to pee, a dream where I'm looking for the bathroom, an elbow touching mine. I could wake up from voices, a roommate or a couple walking by, a bright afternoon sun and the sudden feeling of sloth. I could wake up because I'm cold, wander through a house looking for blankets until Aric's dad hands me one. I could wake up in a tent, to rain, or wake up on a train going south, on my way to Los Angeles. I could wake up with drool on my pillow, with a boner or with a crick in my neck. I could wake up with the realization I've been sleeping on a wadded up t-shirt, dreaming that a biker had just stabbed me in a ballet studio. I could wake up with a dream in my head or a stereolab song, and listen to it on my way to work.

I could wake up from the a-tonal hum of a tea pot, in a panic, in a sweat of anxiety about teaching and work. I could wake up as a wire strung between fence posts, humming or laughing at a joke in a dream, goofing with friends. I could wake up in a foreign country, in a closet converted into a bedroom, look at the wall and not know where I am. I could wake up to my father trying to read a newspaper headline, or a bird trapped in the stove pipe. I could take a nap and wake up twice in a day, wake up sick, and wonder what it feels like to not feel sick, shake Tony and wake up from a dream. I could wake up to a friend's voice wishing me a good day, wake up to my own voice wishing him good luck.

earlier this evening while eating a dinner of eggs scrambled with spinach and garlic along with some buttered olive bread my roommate mentioned that he had had a dream about barak obama last night, bill clinton was in the dream too. which is funny, because i had a dream about barak obama on saturday night. five months ago i had had a dream about john mccain: we were at some kind of party and mccain kept side hugging me really tightly, too tightly i thought. anyway, about the obama of dreams, i wondered out loud if a lot of people had been having obama dreams, reading about beyonce saying she fell asleep on election night with tears of joy in her eyes. chris, my roommate, matter of factly stated that a mass of barak obama dreams is a sign of an "archetypal paradigm shift." i'm not exactly sure what this means, but it makes sense that we all have experienced something amazing together, and that this experience would show up in our collective unconsciousness, not to get all jungian on you, but you know what i mean. it's that same kind of symbol making that made the trade center attack about more than lost lives;that an image gets imprinted, whether we like it or not. thus, the power of poetry or whatever you call it. the importance of symbols, that we're not entirely in control of the meanings we assign. anyway, we finished talking and the dishes got cleaned.

as i write this i'm listening to the stereolab album "sound dust," one of many stereolab albums that are really easy to find used and for cheap. i hadn't listened to them actively since college but i bought their new album ("chemical cords") after reading an interestingly positive review and have since been working my way backwards through their albums.there's so much to listen to, each album a kind of experiment though each album sounds exactly like a stereolab album. please enjoy. this post is over.

Friday, November 14th

not knowing "what to talk about"

sitting on top a rock

_________________________a man and his child

_________________________shout at the water

_________________________two men
_________________________cuss on the park bench

_________________________eating potato chips
_________________________and making phone calls

_________________________there's not a bird in this park
_________________________that doesn't know

_________________________what to do

on wednesday (i've been away from the computer) i signed up for healthy san francisco, a city wide program that provides health insurance for those who cannot afford it, like me! it was the second time i had gone in to do this, as the first time was foiled by my most recent salary versus my salary over a span of three months, which if you include the fact that in between every semester i have to go on unemployment and the month long lag between my first day teaching and my first pay check, details, etc. means i was more than 300% above the federal poverty level which thereby disqualifies me from the program. whew. so factoring the three months, i'm about 250% above the federal poverty level bank robbery is punishable by twenty years in federal prison phillip glass einstein on the beach.

the lady who helped me sign up was named june, a vietnamese "boat person" so she told me, asking if i know who the boat people were answer the refugees who came over from vietnam during and after the war she hasn't seen her sister for twenty years. without any prompting she said i was "gentle" and commented a number of times on what "good boy" i was. i was comforted but this claim. in other news it's my thirty-ith birthday on saturday. on sunday afternoon i will have a low pressure cake eating tea time on the grass in dolores park. if you would like to join us/me please do. write me an email if you'd like to come. have a good "one."

wow. i mean, wow. first obama wins pennsylvania, then mccain gives a speech that comes out decent, obama comes on with his family, makes us think, joe biden, everybody's waving around and crying and then, on my way home, a massive crowd gathers on the corner and is still going, blocking the streets and spontaneously bursting into joy again and again. the police don't seem to mind and everybody's happy. wow. that's great. i mean, this is great. at times like these i wish i had a good quality digital camera. i'd describe the dude wearing the light display climbing ontop the van while the guy with a crutch leads a chant, or the dance circle that brakes out at the intersection of valencia and 19th. why here? who knows? people on their roofs are lighting off fireworks and throwing toilet paper rolls into the crowd below. a man turns an air raid siren as people take pictures, honk their horns and turn their cars around as they realize that the crowd isn't going anywhere. wave after wave of spontaneous celebration. a dude plays a trumpet badly but we love it. he's playing the star spangled banner and people, hipsters and everybody inbetween is singing the star spangled banner. a girl wearing a green incredible hulk fist is pumping it in the air at no one in particular. maybe at everyone in particular. san fran. cisco.

Attention Alone Accomplishes Little. Well, I've been working on manuscripts and that' s the one I'm still working on. It needs some revision. There are parts in the title poem that need work, the more essay like general address pieces that fail to carry their weight. Cutting or editing so that it stays personal would be best. Then there's the issues of addendum, the strangers and MP16 and Creeley could all fit but I'm not sure how or if it's necessary. And then there's edits to chair and dresser, working the unmet i into the cycle. It...d be a good note to end chair and dresser on but to go on from where it is might be superfluous. As it is, the structure of the manuscript i think is working supremely well. I got turned down for a month at the Vermont studios today. Eeet's a bummer. I'm riding on a train to Oakland using my ears more than my mind. It's a...cool world, raining. I'm going to Bill's to have an evening of it. I spoke to A and it might be weird to be lounging over there an it probably says a lot about myspace or an inability to create it. Caught up in individual poems, failing to move forward like Mt. Eerie's lyrics, which were a little stale. Talk is cheep. And then there's the other manuscript, not nearly as exciting or 'book length poem' like. I think somebody will be interested but I think that every year. Those early poems, I'm not sure if they translate over time. What is this blog for? "The quest for sincerity is like the quest for a perfect lawn." write the editors of Action Yes. Jon Leon is a poet I identify with.

_
i want to build


and raise new
the temples of Theseus and the stadiums
and where Perikles lived



but there's no money, too much spent
today. I had a guest
over _____and we sat together




-Friedrich Holderlin as Translated by Richard Sieburth

hi. it's sunday. been a while since i've written directly in the blog so thought i would write and say hello. it's overcast and has cooled off from the week and the weekend. maybe this means that the winter is coming or more accurately the rain. it would be good for us. i can't remember the last time it rained but after a month of rain i might write the opposite. had a strange dream last night where i had written a list of rules that i kept going over and somehow this transformed into singing one of these rules as a song while i was cleaning snow off the windshield of my old truck. The tune (long forgotten) was so nice i woke up crying warm tears that felt good. strange. otherwise, it's been a day of chatting, with my roommate, a nice conversation that lead into the characteristics of "our" generation, and met bill and erika for a late lunch. school has been steady. i lost thirty five dollars playing poker on friday night. got clobbered playing basketball on saturday morning, witnessed parts of a gigantic corporate sponsored soap box race and went to a bar-b-q with sarah. so, yeah. i'm good. how are you? here is an interview with tim and laetitia of stereolab that i thought was interesting, particularly the second part of the interview (this is a link to the first half), them talking about process and lyrics.

Thoughts: there were some but I can't remember what they were. Some kind of pseudo psychological philosophical political hybrid that would, at first glance inside my head seem to solve every lingering doubt I've ever had and snap into place the mysteries of the universe. Instead I'm sitting here in the Public Meeting Area on the corner of 2nd and Mission, no longer trying to remember and looking around the glass atrium, waiting for a student who I'm supposed to be tutoring for a class called Form Development, an industrial design class where the students are expected to make a fiber glass shell for something like a mouse or a flashlight highly polished and finished.

Tutoring for this class might consist of going over some notes but this student, who doesn't make it to class often or on time or even really attempt assignments and I'm guessing asked for a tutor to prolong the realization or maintain the illusion that yes, no I don't actually care about this subject but will half heartedly attempt OH HEY, SHE'S HERE...We talked about her project, abstractly, the steps she needs to take in the shop and took notes; pieces of foam, ways to second guess ourselves and others, styrene speed forms, running our fingers along contours and away from the smoldering hot iron of all that, but we're moving is what's important.

Moving through and in stepping back we might see the entire picture but for now we'll keep it close to the people coming through the doors; the metal table reflecting light; a group of office women and pairs of workers eating lunch, remembering what we're waiting for. What a tragedy! Matching bent nails with famous painters instead of asking questions, admitting that we really don't know or more simply that we do.

>Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 13:34:29 -0500
>
>
>yeah. word. my voice over the email was different. i'm not sure why but i remember when i was writing it, i thought it was kind of weird. walt whitman said something like...do i contradict myself?...i contain multitudes!...(end) or something like that. fortunately, we all live in three dimentions...

The Molten Sounds of Company (an Essay)

I sat unable to control the bitterness that is the stopper that is the cycling clamp of jaw bone, the look away to avoid intervention of the melding machine. Numbed to avoid trauma and the epilepsy of fidgeting, the master gene...

Press up against the lines or stretch what there is to say if anything to the furthest possible point. Length marked by sheer supposition, nobody knows how to calculate regards such as praise, how much we need or can possibly give out before we ourselves begin to decompose into words we do not know. This is what I would most like to turn from: regret as an instance of past reflection; my hand occupied, folding a piece of paper my mind occupied looking for signs.

Maybe this is devotion, tightly, and out of guilt. The idea that we’ll “pay” for what we’ve done. Somehow. Prison or imprisoners. We may cling to one mind known well enough to invoke out of habit; regardless, like the bones in an old man’s wrist lifting some odd thing to some odd place and by and by we make our shape, we cauterize; we canonize our better instincts (without which, our independence).

As the roof collapses without reason, opinion held right in regard to others seems to matter little as the capital of total thought becomes far more important than its origin or direction. We could ask the time or position of the sun shining through the splintered wood but for now we’ll consider its light inevitable, a fact in the matter and the matter a fact or instance of recognition.

I consider one problem to be all problems or a cigarette, a next one. Things that make sense, or I’m “full” of ideas or shoot to “thrill.” In the end we get to be “The One,” we get the idea that we can or cannot understand growing older in the summer time or a certain kind of intelligence, one that speaks highly of its contemporaries. Or in other words, now that the world has been discovered, we have no other place to go.

Today the financial bailout failed because Congress voted against it. Some blame Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and her speech right before the votes were cast; for persuading a significant number of democrats and republicans to vote against the bill. Here is the speech. It's important. And pardon my french, but it's about time somebody said "No" the greedy fucks that have been misleading the country for the last eight years...those dudes are lost in a world of illusion (and need some help).

Sunday morning I left the apartment a little early to go swimming because my roommate had a friend over and I thought the fact that they had been holed up in their room until almost eleven was an indication of either a) shyness about the visitor and the potential awkwardness of a roommate meeting one's choices or b) having their own morning. I took it upon myself to leave early to "do them a favor" by not being around, so that they could come out and have a private breakfast, something I'd wish for if the circumstance were the other way around.

It is this offer, this suggestion of "putting oneself first," imaging what somebody might want and taking care of this imaginary need that is the flip side of resentment, the "I've done enough [for you]" feeling that I often experience with those I have a particular, familial type relationship with. The trick, if this is a trick, is to recognize the reasoning as it's happening and thus make sense of my reaction to the situation rather than feeling forced into some false moral dichotomy about the right thing to do. If I'm feeling generous, it's no problem to make a necessary or imaginary sacrifice for somebody else, but if not....

Last Monday I tried to explain what resentment meant to a Korean industrial design student who was, like all undergraduates at my school, required to take a course on narrative storytelling. Sans dictionary, I explained resentment as blaming somebody for forcing you into a choice, and gave the example of the guy who resents his friends for borrowing money from him. KJ (the student) asked, "Why would you keep lending them money if you didn't want to?" The swimming pool, this morning, was full of light.

the following are three reviews of local pizza places that i wrote in application for a job as a "pizza reviewer" as found on craigslist:

Arinell Pizza is a quick and delicious New York style slice served by the punkiest of punk rockers along Valencia Street in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission district. The slices are thin and plain, and while most ask for their slices plain in the traditional wide slice style, you are welcome to add toppings. Their oven renders the slices with a hint of carbon that approaches classic thin crust perfection provided that you get your slices fresh, which rarely happens if ordering by the slice. Your best bet is to order a whole or a half pizza for guaranteed excellence. Arinell is perfect for the quick lunch slice or before you hit the bars (if you're into that kind of thing).

Serrano’s Pizza, located on 21st and Valencia in San Francisco’s Mission District, is a richly rewarding pizza nook, perfect for picking up a fresh and hot slice on a Friday after work and you’re just too tired or depressed to worry about making dinner. Though the crust and sauce are nothing special, Serrano’s huge list of California fresh toppings and specialty pizzas keep things interesting. That, and the fact that if you order a slice, they make it from scratch (four dollars for two toppings on a large slice and a fifteen minute wait). Yes!

Cable Car Pizza, located on Valencia, between 16th and 17th streets in San Francisco’s Mission district is your typical Lebanese mediocre pizza heat lamp, one that blares techno at inappropriate volumes to an empty room full of plastic tables. Their slices are large and greasy and completely unremarkable. If you’re in the mood for “pizza,” in as generic a sense as that word could mean, Cable Car Pizza will fit the bill. On the upside, there are plenty of seats and unlike most pizza places on and off Valencia, you would be able to fit more than six people inside the restaurant.

Announcing a new old chapbook as part of the H_NGM_N's Combatives Chapbook series: "The Revisionist". Thank you Nate Pritts and H_NGM_N! This is exciting for a few reasons, one of which is that this old boy is something that I'd wanted to be out there for a while and finally it is. Those who have seen drafts of longer manuscripts in recent years have seen it before! Sorry it's not new to you! The poem (a not all that long long poem) dates back to pregraduate school and is sort of my last gasp of willful naivite before I went and got schooled! It's also the turning point of when I began to think my ideas were more interesting than my being! Boy was I wrong! John Kinsella read a draft of it and correctly inferred that I didn't read much poetry! Things have changed! Thanks for reading!

hi. over the weekend i drove up to fort bragg where i saw massive amounts of hitchhiking neohippy types walking down the road. but that's not why i drove up there. i drove up there to pick up my mom from a horse riding trip that she had been on for a week. on saturday i drove up to fort bragg and observed many a hitchhiker and wondered if that was the way it always was in fort bragg. combine this with "already dead" the denis johnson novel i've been reading that is full of northern california burnout types and i got a creepy feeling about fort bragg but it probably isn't as bad as denis johnson makes it out to be. at the time that was okay because there was cable television at the hotel i was staying at and watched again the movie michael clayton. that is a supremely excellent movie. highly recommended. i wrote a poem about it even. that's how much i like that movie. so satisfying and slightly slightly metaphysical, he walks up the hill to see the horses and his car blows up. but why did he walk up that hill to see the horses? the entire movie serves to answer that question and then resolves with a highly satisfying ending. it reminds me of the same kind of satisfaction i got from watching the virgin suicides where you know how the movie ends sort of but forget about when watching the movie. i just got an email from erkia and she wondered what i was up to because this blog doesn't actually reveal anything.

events continued: i picked up my mother on sunday morning from the horse ranch a sprawling do it oneself bed and breakfast called the howard creek inn built entirely by a man who told my mother and i that he told his wife he was going out to get ice cream when he was twenty eight and had made a lot of money from television and never came back and instead ended up in northern california where nobody was living thirty years ago and you could pretty much just find houses and furniture and wood and build things out of them, such as his sprawling bed and breakfast. try dying and get rich. he recommend being homeless and i suggested we talk about it when my mother isn't around. but today was funny, the museums being closed my mom was really into the "go cars" the little scooters that tourists rent to see the city so after work that's what we did and though i was supremely embarrassed for a little while i got used to it and it was actually kind of fun to ride around in the goofy little machine that people smile at but you're not sure why. tomorrow we're going to alcatraz. yup. living large. turns out that there was some kind of music festival by fort bragg thus explaining all the hitchhikers.

If You

If you were going to get a pet
what kind of animal would you get.

A soft bodied dog, a hen--
feathers and fur to begin it again.

When the sun goes down and it gets dark
I saw an animal in a park.

Bring it home, to give it to you.
I have seen animals break in two.

You were hoping for something soft
and loyal and lean and wondrously careful--

a form of otherwise vicious habit
can have long ears and be called a rabbit.

Dead. Died. Will die. Want.
Morning, midnight. I asked you

if you were going to get a pet
what kind of animal would you get.

___________Robert Creeley, from "For Love" (1963)

wednesday morning the sun continues to climb i have to admit i've been concerned about that super collider that they've been getting ready in europe the seventeen mile loop of vacuum tube (approximately) that took twenty year to build (approximately) where a team of very excited physicists will smash seventeen billion electrons (approximately) against each other in hope of producing something called the higgs particle that might be the little speck that clues us in to how mass/stuff is created and then finally a small group of scientists could say they were right text books would change and we could be one millionth of a degree closer to unlocking the secrets of the universe. great. really. but there is the off chance the slim chance that smashing electrons into each other at speeds that simulate such events as the big bang could in fact reset the universe or create a black hole which we will all be sucked in to end of the world good bye. here are some facts. but always we're predicting the end of the world so this is probably just more of this kind of thinking fear of death personal issues blown up into the political. in other news, last night my shady employer offered baseball tickets which i took them up on to see the giants it was a nice night a beautiful stadium looking out onto the water. my pants smell like urine. beuno.

Last Thursday McCain spoke of the shallowness of self as compared to giving oneself over to a cause greater than oneself. He spoke of his love for his country and not much else. The next morning I wondered what loving your country or giving oneself to a cause has to do with education,the housing crisis, health care, or the war in Iraq. 

During a freewrite towards the end of the summer semester, using the prompt "the world is..." a student wrote: the world is a joke when your school hires an idiot to be your role model, and smirked, looking me directly in the eye as she read it. The class gasped. I looked down, cringed, and kept moving. Later, going over a handout on the fallacies or argument we came to a section on "name calling" and we got a chance to talk about the inability of labels to advance discussion in a productive way. Instead, dead ending it in a binary: no, I'm not / yes, you are, etc. Sarah Palin...

Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani seem like smart people whose imagination has failed them, leaving us with caricatures of people and ideas. It takes a lot of energy to paint a realistic picture. School started today and it will be good to get my mind out of the political gutter. On the bright side I finally got a San Francisco Giants hat for the low low price of one dollar. Finally the guy at the convenience store will get off my case for wearing an Athletics hat. He will be so proud!

back in san francisco and getting ready for the new semester that starts today but don't need to be in class until monday. who am i talking to? the last three days were spent up in oregon for a delightful romp in the woods with old friends say buddies boozing and eating and walking through lakes and up rivers and sinning and laughing maybe chuckling and sleeping in cold cabins protected by fires and morning sun roiling open eyes and bringing mosquitoes and choices. that is to say there is a lot to be done before monday in terms of getting ready for class the most difficult task of switching mind frames from indulging the id to returning to the ego not that either are exlusive or singular but politics, the parts we missed in the woods and on the way to the airport giuliani couldn't help but laugh that obama was a community organizer and this made us angry the blatent disrespect and the absolute insanity that people would be willing to vote for four more years of a republican administration unable to admit failure and the absolute supremacy of media in this country and my mother's comment that she would really have to reconsider "what kind of country we live in" if mccain won and in the newspaper a letter the comment that jesus was a community organizer and that dude giuliani is a seriously ignorant jackass but that's politics they say to project paranoid neurosis onto your brothers and sorry about that but dang it made me angry it's a hot day in san francisco going swimming at five i'll see you there.