Washington DC. It's supposed to get up to ninety-eight degrees today, and humid. It's hot, but the heat is a novelty. For the first time in my life I am rooting for a Texas team. Tomorrow it's back to California, what I've heard has been rainy. Rainy Briggs. Third and Fifth grade and saw him working at a hat store about eight years ago. Feel like we were friends though never spoke or paid attention to each other. Race relations. Lincoln Elementary school, bussed across the city like they do in San Francisco. Forced mingling win the lottery no choice but a chance. Sitting in a cafe just did some copy editing. Twenty-five dollars and hour. Should ask for more. Bagel and egg and cheese and cranberry lemonade out of a bottle. There is no I in team. They didn't charge for the bagel. Stealing is wrong. Stealing is against the law. Bank robbery is punishable by twenty years in a federal prison. Phillip Glass. Mishima.On Monday we went to the beach. My new nephew James is cute. Like a larvae. Not really capable of much but can smile a little and look. Accompanied my niece to music class yesterday. Humiliating. Don't want to talk about it. Personal blog.

Need to get back to work. Am really not into computers these days. Rant: people get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make baubles for iPhones while thousands of teachers are laid off. Really smart and clueless people. Man its hot. What is this world coming to? Save the whales. Know thyself Thales. Tagline at the end of an email. Was going to teach on-line this summer but took too long in getting back to the powers that be. Bummer. Would of freed up my Monday. Three day weekend boyeeee. Georgetown. Look up and out from the window a cafe. Planning on visiting the bookstore that I don't know is still open or not. Internet. Sit at the window with a bag of chips and diet coke. Someone else. Not me. Caffeine free. Caffeine free all natural soda. Caffeine free all natural cherry flavored soda. Keep drinking. Snake it back. Lifeline. Would you like to call a friend? The soda machine was all out of cherry coke. That should be capitalized. Do not turn left in in front of this vehicle. UPS trucks rarely turn left. Recalculating route.

At the beach the Eastern shore of Maryland we stopped for some food before the three hour drive back to DC. The name of the restaurant along the boardwalk was Gus' Fried Chicken and the owners were Greek and they served fried chicken. I've been trying to avoid meat. At the table next to us we were sitting in a booth two over weight ladies and an overweight man sat down. The lady with the blond hair teased out said "I'll just have a cheese burger with bacon." I keep thinking of that, the word "just." And the expression on her face. She looked resigned. On my way here there was a group of little school kids trying to cross. Cars kept whizzing by so one of the teachers went out in the middle of the street to try and stop the cars. They stopped and a man got out of one of the cars and said "what the fuck?" Since I used that opportunity to cross the street as well and was close, I said to the man, "Dude. It's just a bunch of kids. Relax." Just. Back out into the heat I go. See you in California.

Slightly overcast day in Oakland. Later, Amy is coming by with a green couch that her and her husband want to get rid of. I'm excited to have it but it's going to change the complexion of my apartment. Change is hard. Cat island, two uncomfortable orange wedges are going to have to go. In all likelihood. I'm waiting for her call back to check on the dimensions. But the green couch is a nice couch, and with it I will be able to have more than two comfortable seats. I could invite you and your friends over. We could all sit and laugh at the jokes we make. Or talk seriously about our childhoods. Or sit awkwardly. Or spill juice on each other. Or watch the cats sharpen their claws. Or look at pictures of clowns together, all five of us sitting comfortable. I write "clowns" because when I wrote "claws" I mistyped.

It's hard to type because last Wednesday I got hit by a car. Sounds bad right? It wasn't that bad, but the old lady's side mirror gouged my left ring finger deeply (s,w,x on a qwerty keyboard) and I've got a couple of movement restricting bandages on it. Trying to keep it from getting infected and letting it heal. It's going to leave a funky looking scar, like Greg Norman's shark logo in reverse. The old lady pulled in front of me, turning into a parking lot and cutting me off. It was raining, and I think the bike took the brunt of the blow, because it destroyed her side mirror and all I got was this lousy gash on my finger. She held her hands over her face, head slightly bowed, for a good eight seconds and I motioned for her to pull into the parking lot. I said, "It's alright."

Which it was, though I was pissed off, as I saw it coming, that is, saw her coming and saw her not see me and was unable to stop quickly in the rain. She asked me not to call the police and told me that she was close to home. She repeated that she was close to home, and I'm not sure what she was really trying to communicate by that phrase, as if I was concerned that she was going to hit another biker. But I didn't have time to call the police or insurance or anything like that, as I was being picked up at my apartment in a half hour to go up to the meditation course and needed to buy some pants to sit in that were relatively thin. I asked her for a paper towel which she had, and went into Ahn's 1/4 Burger and got some napkins, which I wrapped around my finger and taped with a band-aid and proceeded to the Gap where I got some comfortable pants for ten dollars. The clerks there didn't seem to notice the bloody wad taped around my finger. The end.

Hi. The semester is over. I'm eating an old piece of pizza. Grades are done. In a couple hours I'm leaving for a short meditation retreat. And then when I get back I'll leave for DC to see my sister. I miss you and will see you when I get back.

A little late but still on time. As in before the end of the world which according to the advertisement on the BART is a week from today. "Man Spends Life Savings on Promoting End of World" says the headline. Good for him. At least he didn't invest his money in a tech start up or hedge fund. Next week is the last week of the fifteen week semester. Week fifteen as we call it. The cat keeps yowling. Really annoying. He wants something but I don't know what: cat food? Check. Litter box? Clean. Temperature normal. Maybe he's bored? Such is life in a studio apartment. Maybe he misses women. Or another person. I sometimes feel guilty that I'm not exciting enough for them. Weird displaced projections of self onto animals. "If the lion could talk we would not understand him." Says Wittgenstein. Vit Ghin Stein.

I must admit that I've been a little over extended this semester. Part of it due to the move, and part because I was working more support classes this semester, but the most important part has been the two full sections of the writing class. Last summer I adjusted the number of drafts for the two argument papers from two to three, and up until this semester I've been able to keep up. Not so much this semester. Though I've kept up, it's not been without more stress than called for at my fair University. Talking to a few other instructors, I'm going to make a few adjustments to the schedule and the workshop for next semester, giving myself a little bit more time to read and designating more responsibility to the students. Outwardly, I've been a bit ornery with students, and though I don't mind appearing that way, I would rather feel more relaxed and less pressed for time in class. Just like students, I have to make adjustments to my "drafts" of class. The system that worked a year ago no longer works as well as I want it to, thus its time for a change. No blame.

Yesterday I finished reading "With the Old Breed" by the WWII vet E.B. Sledge. Unbelievable. His account of two campaigns with the Marines during the war with the Japanese: Peleliu and Okinawa. Those who have seen me in recent weeks may have heard me read a passage from the book, hundreds of which are so insanely terrible, and true. Not as an argument for or against "war," but as an argument for luck, and our capacity and incapacity to live in hell. Towards the end there are some pictures of Sledge and a few other Marines after the Okinawa campaign ended. To read into these pictures, into their expressions and postures, the three hundred pages of precisely detailed horror that came before, is like contemplating a sky full of stars: the depth of their experiences so vastly unknowable no wonder most of those who made it back never said much about it. A brief passage near the end of the book:

Among my letters was one from a Mobile acquaintance of many years. He had joined the Marine Corps and was a member of some rear-echelon unit of service troops stationed on northern Okinawa. He insisted that I write him immediately about the location of my unit. He wrote that when he found out where I was, he would visit me at once. I read his words to some of my buddies, and they got a good laugh out of it.

"Don't that guy know there's a war on? What the hell does he think First Marine Division is doin' down here anyway?"

Someone else suggested I insist not only that he come to see me at once, but that he stay and be my replacement if he wanted to be a true friend. I never answered the letter.

Hotter than it used to be and in Oakland. The cats feel like it. They splay in the sun and roll over with their feet in the air. Then get out of the sun for awhile and splay on the wood floor. And then go back to the sun. Jinx is a "Sun Horse". Kitty Girl has a "Cookie Face." Now is the warm part of the year. Come June and July it will get cold. Nobody believes it who doesn't live here, but it's cold during the summer. It's confusing during the summer. Two weeks and a remainder left in the semester which in the last three weeks has really begun to fatigue me. I've been working a ton of hours plus not doing any writing, which has a cumulative effect of bringing me down. BUT I know this happens, and will happen, and I'm ready for it. Over the weekend I got some rest. Didn't play basketball went for a run. Wrote emails and did some planning for the month long break. Saw a movie and went for a walk.

Watched the final three episodes of The Office, cried, checked in with a few others to make sure they cried too, and finished "The Possibility of an Island" a Michel Houellebecq novel that took me forever to read partly because I was tired and partly because it wasn't that good. At least as a social satire. Though as a science fiction novel, it was kind of interesting in the same way that the Dune books were interesting: imagining where ideas + commitment will take us over time. The book ends on two notes: 1) the narrator's language begins to falter ("I would never reach the goal I had been set.", and 2) the narrator spend sixty years lying in a pool of salt water. It's a long, not particularly interesting story about a comedian who becomes part of a growing religious movement, but it did make think, particularly about getting older. On Sunday I began to notice some prominent white hairs not just on the sides of my head (which are pretty much white) but on the top of my head. Add that to hair loss, and it seems likely that in ten years I will be a gray haired bald man.

I started a new book last night: "With the Old Breed" a WWII autobiography by Eugene Sledge, a Marine who fought in the Pacific theater. I saw "The Pacific", an HBO mini-series six months ago and was really amazed at the insane fighting conditions. No wonder those guys didn't say much about it, though this book is by one of those guys who did. What some people go through is impossible to know, but maybe we can come close to at least having an understanding. Speaking of death, reading the paper this morning about the basketball game last night: "... [The Miami] Heat had the crowd sing the national anthem, in recognition of the successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden." And speaking of grotesque cynicism (the book I just finished), what the hell? It's one thing to get closure and share the experience of release, but it's another thing to celebrate another person's death. As Thomas Friedman, renowned NYTimes columnist writes, "We did our part. We killed Bin Laden with a bullet." Lord. As if this will change anything.

Nope. Nothing. Not one thing to say.

On Saturday I was at Trader Joe's. Saturday morning. So I was standing there. I was standing there holding a red basket looking at the crackers: "Sesame Melba." So I was standing there looking at the Sesame Melba crackers and this lady. This old lady was also standing there with me. Standing there with me looking at the Sesame Melba crackers. She spoke. She was standing next to me when she spoke. "They look like pieces of toast." She said they looked like little pieces of toast. Standing next to me in Trader Joe's on Saturday morning the little old lady said the Sesame Melba crackers looked like little pieces of toast. She had a thick accent. She spoke in her thick accent "They look like little pieces of toast." She spoke in her thick eastern European accent "They look like little pieces of toast." I smiled. I smiled and looked at her. I smiled and looked at her and looked back at the crackers. I smiled and looked at her and looked back at the crackers and said "Yes." I smiled and looked at her and looked back at the crackers and said "Yes they do." I smiled and looked at her and then looked back at the Sesame Melba crackers and said, "Yes they do. They look exactly like little pieces of toast."

This morning my sister had her second child. On the kitchen floor. She wasn't aware of the contractions until it was too late, but the dula was there, as well as a grandma, who is an experienced mid-wife. 11:15 AM East Coast Time. On the west coast I was meditating. No trans-continental psychic premonition to report. I haven't actually spoken to my sister about this, as they went to the hospital soon after, but my mom called to tell me the news. She also reported that they didn't have a name for the baby yet, but it's boy, and now I have a nephew. How exciting! I'm totally going to reenforce stereotypical gender roles every chance I get. Somewhere in this conversation my mom also reported that when I was a little child, I was called the baby until one day, one and a half years old, I overheard them talking about me and said my name wasn't baby, but Tyler.

In 1987 Tyler was reported as the number one male baby name. Therefore there are a a lot of 23 year old Tylers running around, and quite a few also have my last name, which I discovered after having to click 'next' six or seven times to find my profile on Facebook via a name search. The anonymity of having a common name is kind of nice, as I can almost pass off some of these embarrassing blog posts as written by somebody else. And it helps that I'm a little bit older than most of the Tylers out there, which explains my first name last name gmail address, and the fact that I get all kinds of email from other people's parents, Honda dealerships, and contact lens suppliers. For a while I was on a mailing list for a church group in the Philippines. It sounded like they were having a lot of fun over there.

Since I don't have any children, and my two cats were pre-named when I got them, I don't really have much experience naming anything asides from poems and songs, and usually, unless the name is self evident, it's really difficult to think through to a good name, though I tend to favor keeping it simple and unsymbolic. For example, instead of naming a poem "Violent Rainbow" I would tend towards "Puke Bucket." The mineral fact of calling it what it is. Anyway. I need to get ready for class. Here is today's birthday horoscope for April 13th, which may or may not apply to a newborn:

You'll make a difference in the lives of others. Over the next six weeks, your glowing smile attracts good fortune. In May, work provides the opportunity to recognize your own power and assert yourself. You'll begin a new regimen in June, and loved ones will follow your lead. You'll give your domestic scene a makeover in July. Aquarius and Virgo people adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 4, 25, 40, 19 and 16.

In second grade we watched a film strip about Europe. In the middle of the strip, while the lights were off, I raised my hand and announced to everyone that I had been to Europe on a family vacation. Mrs. Rocco said "How wonderful!" and asked if I would bring in some pictures, but I told her that my family had forgotten the camera. A couple weeks later, when my friend Aaron's dad came by to pick him up after a sleepover, he asked my mother and I, standing in the doorway about our European vacation. I muttered something and wandered away. I was never asked about it again.

Seven years old, at the Platteville Invitational Swim Meet huddled under blankets with a bunch of other kids, mostly older, I announced that I was gay and had AIDS. 1985. I did not know what either word meant. Encouraged by the attention, later I announced that when a dog pissed, I would stick my hand in the hot stream of urine, and when a dog shit, I would smear the shit with my fingers. Because I went to school in Madison, they had no way of knowing if any of it was true, no context. But in retrospect, maybe they were just amazed somebody would claim such things.

Later that summer, in love with the game Discs of Tron, one afternoon I walked up to the little arcade on main street and quickly lost two or three games. The adults there asked me where my dad was, and when I got back he asked me where I got the quarters. I found them under the couch looking for a lost library book, I said, though I actually got them from the bathroom, quarters falling out of my dad's pants as they always were. I don't know how he knew, but he didn't believe me. I wasn't allowed to ride with him on his motorcycle until I told the truth.

To continue on this dream thing, because I've been dreaming a lot lately or at least have been remembering my dreams a lot lately, two nights ago I had a dream where I met Jesus. I was in an old cabin, that used to belong to Susan, and had found a box of crackers that were pretty old but I thought were still good. I carried it around and looked at the dusty books on a book shelf in the middle of the room like you might find in a book store. When I went outside Jesus was standing there. I was a surprised that I was taller than him, but then thought about it a little bit, how people are generally much taller now due to diets high in protein than we were back in the day, and it made sense. I don't remember what we talked about. He was serious and a little intimidating. During the conversation it seemed to make a lot of sense to become a Christian, but I was a little worried how my friends and family might take the news.

Recently in an issue of the New Yorker there was a long article about a guy who got deep into Scientology and got out, eventually. Apparently one of the tenants is that when you advance to a certain level you are expected to cut off ties with anyone who is not also a Scientologist, including your parents and your children. The logic being that since this is the first generation of Scientolgists, some painful sacrifices will have to be made. During a latter part of the Vipassana Meditation course that I've taken the last two summers, Goenka (the teacher) talks about when you "plant the seed of Dharma" you have to build a fence around it, so the cows milling around don't munch on the growth. A lovely metaphor that practically applied, for me at least, means make time for meditation even if I have to say no to friends. Which is the hard part. Like MF Doom says, "Is he still a fly guy clappin' if nobody can hear it / And can they testify from inner spirit."


Like that crazy dude in the park doing kung-fu moves with headphones on. Last night I dreamt of taking a walk through the woods with an ex-girlfriend, and just like in my waking life, felt insecure. I was not actually in the woords but I did actually feel insecure. Jesus (the one my dream) was just a culturally convenient vehicle. Last night Bill and Erika came over for dinner. At some point, talking about Oakland because they also live in Oakland, talking about the move and all the bad juju that I moved to Oakland with; I said my attitude wasn't about Oakland but about how settled I was in San Francisco, and the fear of leaving that behind. And now settling into Oakland, I'm feeling just as content at I did in SF, and I'm thinking maybe it has nothing to do with the place at all. A cliche I've heard many times, but has taken awhile to prove true in my actual life. It's really easy to get confused about reality. Anyway, Wednesday. Time to get ready for class.

Jinx is laying on his back in the sun. Legs spread. His foot just twitched. It's supposed to get into the seventies today and tomorrow get a little warmer, possibly the low eighties. Back to work this week which has felt good, recharged and properly settled into Oakland, and ready to resume. Though I have been having strange dreams recently. In one a student killed one of my colleagues. In another an old roommate broke all of my dishes. Old news but oddly anxious. To me that's a sign that I should probably get back to writing. Something trying to push forward from the back of my brain so as, I should be ready to catch it when it comes out. Like a bloody tooth laying on the pavement after a street fight. Street Fighter II. Street Fighter II Turbo Edition.

Or maybe it's simpler than that. Since I'm thinking about class on Thursday during my waking hours maybe it's only natural to be dreaming about the (mildly) trouble making student. Since I ran into a colleague of my old roommate at work yesterday and the conversation we had lead me to old thoughts about my old apartment maybe it makes sense to have dreams about all that. Ever since the first meditation course, almost two years ago, the meaning of dreams has been not as interesting. Have not been nearly as mysterious. Sitting all day long, working hard to focus the mind and bring it back and notice its wandering and bring it back and really work that sixth sense, seriously occupying the brain all day the opposite of letting the mind wander; at night I had the craziest dreams. Removing the eyeball of a Saint Bernard and sucking on it for a while, putting it back quickly when the leather jacket wearing owner came back. Eventually the eyeball broke, like an egg, and I stuffed it into the wall mounted garbage shoot. Asides from the familiar feeling of guilt over something I wasn't supposed to do, I do not believe that the specifics of this dream (Saint Bernards, eyeballs, leather jackets) have any more meaning than the items laying on my desk right now (a stack of blank CDs, a stapler, a notepad, a pencil case).

For example about six months ago I had a dream about wires sticking out of an electrical socket in my old apartment. I was worried that I or my roommate might walk by and get shocked. So as I tried to fix the wire that was sticking out from it, with a vauge sense that I was the only one paying attention to this danger. Not in a righteous, nobody else cares kind of way, but in a no-blame, gosh I should fix so I don't get shocked kind of way. Regardless, the dream was a vehicle to communicate this worry that I must of gone to bed with. The outlet was not a symbol for anything. It was completely and totally banal as most of my dreams are, just replays of the day's anxieties. Ted used to have a Saint Bernard when I was kid. And the dream leads me to my vague memories of that, but only because I willingly go there. "It's not like it's a mystery." We know, or at least have a pretty good guess, where our dreams come from, if we first consider our sensations in the dream rather than the semi-random objects and people our dreams are populated with. All that said, I still would like to get back to writing.

Is it just me, or did the United States declare war on Libya over the weekend? Just for the record, and I don't know if this is a left or right idea, but for fuck's sake, can't the U.S. just stay out of it for second? I realize that it's an "international coalition" but it's not exactly clear how much support for the revolution there is within Libya, and besides, if there's five or six countries who are willing to take the initiative to intervene, maybe we should just let them go ahead and do that without us. Nobody likes Ghaddafi. Yes. We get it. But if Libya didn't have major oil resources would we really care all that much? Maybe Al-Qaeda is putting hallucinogenic drugs in our water. (Post Script: Good news. NATO is taking over. Yay.)

Anyway, I'm going to keep this post short because it's Spring Break. It's raining and I have papers to grade. Papers to grade before I can truly relax. Yesterday friend Steven and I went for a hike up Mt. Diablo. I got us a bit lost at the Devil's Elbow but we found our way back to the safety of the parking lot. IN POETRY NEWS, new-er work of mine has just come out in Volt #16, a beautiful print journal that publishes really high quality work. It's printed on extra large paper (9x12) but not awkwardly; emphasizing forms and visual orientation as well as the writing. When I started writing, Volt was one of the magazines I always dreamed of getting published in, so as, dreams come true? I am a goal oriented person? Now what? Celebrate? Grade papers? Put on pants. Do dishes. Relax. Continue.

Somehow the sun has made it through the thick layer of clouds covering the sky for the last five days. A man with a shaved head and a black t-shirt walks by. Spent the morning reading Japan stories and watching videos and interactive NYTimes features, trying to figure out what exactly is happening with the nuclear reactors. This is a pretty helpful graphic explaining what is going on. The good news is that my two remaining friends in Japan with who I'm in contact with are both just fine. Toshiko reported that the earthquake knocked her off her feet but her family is fine and she, in Tokyo, is also fine. Jude reported that his office "shook like fuck" but asides from the inconveniences, nothing much has changed in the big city.

Which is in stark contrast to how it's been reported here, where NPR and the BBC are constantly talking about the possibilities of a nuclear meltdown. Maybe in Japan people are trying to just stay calm in case they actually have to deal with a disaster. Whereas, here, maybe there's no harm in letting a little reckless anxiety guide our interests. I have no idea. Though I have to say the one thing that has made me a little mad has been the story of investors pulling out of the Japanese market. What a bunch of assholes. I realize that the job of investors is to make money but it sort of feels like kicking somebody when they're down, or when Britney Spears shaves her head everybody walks away. Maybe it's not a fair comparison, but isn't it in everybody's best interests, including investors, that Japan be well? That taking one for the (global financial) team is preferable to a shortsighted pursuit of profit?

The photography teacher I support on Tuesdays began the class by acknowledging that Japan's problems make the problems of teachers and students, deadlines and assignments, pale in comparison. A keen observation, that oddly, makes me work just a little bit harder as I feel a little bit of gratitude to sit with a student and talk about the next conceptual photography assignment as opposed to digging through rubble, or hashing out an evacuation plan. To be honest, I'm not often prone to personally identifying with global causes. I don't know if this is due to selfishness, ignorance, or respect for privacy. Regardless, having lived in Japan and still having friends there ups my steak in the whole thing. Same goes for the protests in Wisconsin. However, democracy in Egypt, as much as I like that idea, is more of a reach. Which is a complicated way to say that I identify with Japan more clearly than Egypt. How one sees themselves and what's important. When I see a crazy old man wandering in the middle of the street I feel sad. Same with a happy expression on the face of the developmentally disabled person. We are strange. Now I need to get ready for class. Spring break is next week.

Now I live in Oakland. It's been a couple weeks since we last spoke for a couple reasons. One of which is that my internet has been M.I.A. and finally got it back up and running yesterday, though it took about four hours due to old wiring in the basement ("It'll be another week and a half before you can come back? I'll give you fifty bucks cash if you come by now."), and then the wireless wasn't getting recognized by the computer which lead me to IM-ing with Jaya (India) for a good hour and then another half hour talking to Mario (Texas) on the phone. Yet, it works and is kind of fast and I'm a little afraid of how much the monthly bill will be once taxes and all that stuff is added on but there it sits (looking at my router and imagining the blinking green lights that I can't actually see because I'm not wearing my glasses). My cat threw up four times this morning.

Which was kind of a protest against the Wisconsin union crisis but was also because I wasn't getting up to feed her. It's important to keep the ball rolling and when it stops, one has to take action. If she didn't make a fuss it's possible that she would starve to death. So after I threw her out the apartment, cleaned up the puke and went back to bed, I had the idea that next time maybe I'll run her under some water. I know it sounds cruel and maybe it is, but four pukes is two pukes too many. Not that the transition has not been difficult but "It's been difficult for all of us, Kitty Girl." Yes, I live alone now. Jinx's health has been failing but that's a story for another day.

It's been a big transition. Moving weekend was great. Four great friends helped me move out of the Valencia apartment and into this one. I took Friday off of work, spent the day packing. Spent Saturday moving and then spent Sunday and the next week unpacking. Weekend. A few days and then today, and the shock of leaving SF has largely dissapated and I'm happily settling into my new neighborhood. Which is amazing in it's own ways, for example, empty wide streets filled with beautiful old buildings. Like they built a city and nobody came. Or it turned into Detroit. Or some combination of the two, at least in my immediate vicinity. Then there's China town a block to the south, the lake three blocks to the East, downtown and the BART four blocks to the West, and then there's the North. Home of the mysteriously named "Snow Park." This is my new neighborhood. All for about four hundred dollars less what I would be paying in SF for a similar space.

A couple weeks ago I was talking to a collegue who, along with her boyfriend, were looking for a place. I told her I had just found a good one in Oakland and she said that because she was a life long San Franciscian, she would never consider living here. Which made me wonder, why is that? Beyond the obvious of one person's preference, there's a huge difference between San Francisco and the East Bay. I loved living in San Francisco because it's an amazing city. So much everywhere, full of interesting creative people. There were three books stores within a block of my old apartment, whereas now I have to travel a mile to get to a (non-christian) book store around here. SF is dense with people like me: book reading burrito eating bike riding hipsters (more or less). Whereas in Oakland it's a lot more "diverse." Culturally and economically and socially. It's not just homeless and tech people and artists here, it's them and everybody else as well; families, phone guys, and all those people who teach at Oaksterdam University. Inescapable Buddhist truth: "From all that he loves, man must part." Something like that. Come by when you can. Hope you're well.

The good news is that I've found a place to live and I'm moving on Saturday. So excited and exciting to be leaving this apartment, which as been great, don't get me wrong, but wow, I am so glad to leaving. Great in that it's been awesome living in San Francisco, living on a busy hip street above shops and restaurants, and really, I've always wanted to live in a place like this but now I get to live on my own plus two cats in a really great space over in Oakland. I looked at around twenty five apartments over the last six weeks. Of those twenty five, the one I'm moving into is the only one I got excited about. Yesterday my roommate said moving to Oakland is a good idea. More like a good feeling. Searching searching searching and stressing for a while is a productive process. Like writing a poem or teaching a class. Thank you for your support.

But about that housing search, this city is so crazy. I've lived in five big U.S. cities and I've never had to work as hard to find an acceptable place to live. And I'm no slouch. The story is that the dot com people really changed the landscape as far as affordability in the mid 90's. A huge influx of people with money came to the area and ever since the powers that be have been catering to them as well as the standard corporate interests, which of course, is nothing new. Gavin Newsom did not do nearly as much as he could of in terms of keeping affordable housing in the city, and I've read that the homelessness problem in San Francisco can partly be attributed to Newsom and Brown's development policies. The working class have largely been pushed out of the city. That said, sometimes new comers like me luck into affordable situations like the apartment I've been in. I had no idea how good I had it until trying to find a comparable situation elsewhere. And then there are the people that have always lived here, the family that live on the second floor of this building, Six people in an apartment the same size as the one my roommate and I have shared with two cats.

It's hard not indulge in bitterness or cynicism around this whole process. The stencil on the sidewalk reads: "Sanctuary City for the Rich." And there is some truth in that, but more personally, I want to live in a humane space, i.e. a space with room for everybody, a little sun, a heater. Last Saturday I met the property manager at my new place, walked into the apartment, looked around, thought, wow, this is amazing, and said, wow, this is amazing, I'd love to rent it, and she said okay, send me your stuff, and that was that. There wasn't an involved process, there wasn't twenty desperate people trying to make a good impression, there wasn't a fax machine or rental application or gigantic impersonal landholder involved. So simple! They way it should be. In other news, an old poem was recently published by the journal Bath House, along with an audio version of the poem which is kind of cool. Have a listen.

Two Found Poems from Chinese (Teach Yourself 1991)

Exercise 1.3

1. Mr King invites me to drink Chinese tea.
2. Mr Li greatly dislikes Mr King. (Mr Li can't stand Mr. King.)
3. Mr King doesn't like Mr Li much either.
4. You don't thank me so I don't thank you either.

Exercise 20.3

1. All Chinese like eating Chinese food.
2. Any branch of the Bank of China has the same exchange rate for changing money.
3. Current accounts and deposit accounts have different rates of interest.
4. I have to change my traveller's cheques into US dollars today.
5. When you go abroad you have to take your passport (with you) otherwise you can't leave the __country.
6. Asia and Africa are very different from a historical point of view.
7. Do you still remember her telephone number? Don't forget to give her a call tomorrow whatever __you do.
8. Politically speaking European countries are pretty much the same with a few minor differences.
9. Regardless of whether you've signed (your name) or not, I want to look at your passport.
10. No matter whether the bank clerk had counted the money several times or not, he wanted to (had ___to) count it (once).
11. What you're saying is that you'll only get to know him if you happen to bump into him, is that it?
12. I won't do it like this unless there are regulations.

Yesterday evening I went to look at a studio in the Mission. It was pretty small. Not enough room for my big sweaty body and two full bodied cats. Bodice. Bodie. Broom stick. It's impossible. To find. An affordable apartment in San Francisco. I'm slowly going insane. I also went to look at a studio in the Tenderloin. At 4 o'clock. Yesterday. Sharp. It was a nice place. However it was in the heart of the heart of the heart of the Tenderloin which is quite possibly the nastiest place in all of San Francisco. Not necessarily dangerous though it is, but in my experience the strung out drug addicts generally keep to themselves. San Francisco values or something like it. Tolerance, coupled with an implicit agreement to not cause problems. Shit on the sidewalks. Chinese food and no grocery stores. Three blocks in and three blocks out. Jones street.

Really sorry to keep complainin' but I'm hopin' this folksy turn in mah prose will make this post a lot o fun to read. End. On the bright side of things school and classes are going well. Two large but good groups of 202 students, and the support classes, though a little boring, are nice work (if you can get it). Pronunciation lab has also settled in with a couple groups of steady students. Barak Obama. The stress is on the second syllable of his first name which tells us that it's not a name with English origins. Like Andy. Or Susan. Um. Did I mention that one of my cats has been falling over lately and I had to take him the emergency veterinarian two nights ago? His diagnosis: "lameness on the left back limb." The good doctor provided pain medication, either to treat his sprain or arthritus, but either way nothing is broken and he seems to moving around a little better today than yesterday, so as, it's was just a little injury not a life ending neurological disorder.

Asides from the above I have nothing else to report. Scott Walker is messing up Wisconsin. It's exciting to be reading about what's happening in the middle east and I'm so glad Twitter is no longer part of the discussion. It's been raining here for the last couple days but has stopped as of this morning. My other cat is snoring. Every time I see a car with a for sale sign in it I think to myself, "maybe I could live out of that car." So sorry. Housing is all I can think about. I should go. By this time next week I will have either found a place or really be freaking out. See you later!

Yesterday evening I went to go look at a studio in the Haight. It was pretty nice. Two rooms including huge kitchen and a bathtub that seemed to be dug out of the ground. It was priced at the usual close to a thousand dollars a month that most studios that are somewhat close to downtown are priced at, so as, it was a good deal relatively speaking. Because it was a deal, there were twenty people in and out of the apartment while I was there, filling out the application, and I really doubt it will be offered, which is just as good because I really can't afford to pay that much. Two hours previous to that I rang Kristen's doorbell to discuss renting her room but unfortunately she did not answer. I imagined the other roommates looking down at me from the windows as I rang #25, and deciding not to answer the door based on my appearance. A lady walked by with a dog and I asked her, "Are you Kristen?" No, she was not.

But it's still early in San Francisco March housing match play fantasy playoff round robin sudden death tournament. By next Wednesday I will start to freak out a little bit more noticeably. Ariel is in the same situation, and as we talked about the misery of the search while sitting at the part-time ESL computer terminals, we smiled, but only because it's inappropriate to appear despondant at an education institution. Night termors. Cold sweats. Terrible dreams. Bursting into tears while watching a New York Times video about safe injection clinics in Vancouver, and the line, "I have to get clean so I can be with my family." But really, it's not that bad. I'm exadurrading. Really. I have faith that I'll find a good situation, as I always have before. It's just an unpleasant process, and very time consuming. Like, consuming the entire month February, not to mention packing. Yeah.

After viewing the studio I met up with Steven to attended a "class" at the the Free University of San Francisco on Nietzsche, which was more like a discussion group but it was interesting and worthwhile. A good idea, a free University, one that needs a lot of work, but I'm into the idea of not having to pay for self improvement. Some things, like poetry for example, work better when one's livelihood is not part of the equation. At at at at at at any any any any any any rate rate rate rate rate, the semester has also become insanely busy: nine hours of ESL support on Monday followed by three hours of ESL support and three hours of teaching pronunciation on Tuesday make for a draining two days. I'm glad I have the work and need the money, but I always have to be careful about taking on too much work, as when I start to get drained in a particular social/spiritual way it leads to lapses in self-care. So far so good though. I have to get ready for class now. See you.

I start teaching today. The semester started Monday where I supported an Industrial Design classs called Industrial Processes, a six hour class that let out around ten thirty in the morning because there was nothing to do with the six hours until the students started in on their projects, supporting the argument made by students who don't show up on the first day because "nothing happens on the first day." These were graduate students though, so everybody was there. With the rest of the day off I did some reading and looked for apartments, sat in a chair with a hot water bottle on the small of my back which I tweaked the other day while vacuuming up cat hair. Yes I own a vacuum and yes my life is really that boring or as my aunt put it to me a while back, facetiously I think though one never knows, sometimes not even the speaker, "so you've decided to live a life of the mind." Heart and body too I hope.

On Tuesday I supported a class called The Language of Photography which sounds really exciting but actually seems to be the same stuff I supported last semester in a Digital Photography class. The upshot is again, it's a graduate school class so maybe the content is more interesting. Both of the support classes this semester are taught by seemingly pretty accomplished folks, for example the Photography teacher helped make Sketchers' first ad campaign. Which is not only impressive, but courageous of him to admit. Just kidding. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be snarky. I just wanted to use the word "courageous." Over winter break when I rode up to see Adam with Ted, Ted told me that when somebody would tell my father a really stupid idea, my father would respond that he thought it was courageous of them to attempt it. I'd like to think he was being more earnest than snarky, trying to find a way to stay open to possiblity.

Which brings me to Today, teaching an actual class at three thirty but the morning and early afternoon are clear for this blog, class preparation, and a little writing. On Thursday the schedule is basically the same, with the morning here replaced by a morning at the writing lab. Anyway. This is boring. Which is somewhat intentional because I'm looking for apartments, and I just assume that when I sign my name at the end of an email some potential roommate will run it through Google and end up at this blog. Because it's important to check people out. Sometimes. Which is why I'd like to reiterate if you're new to this blog, that this blog is a kind of journal, but it's also a writing project, and I'm a totally awesome roommate. Would you also like to live with two cats? I have a one nice rug (6x4) and am very clean. Looking for apartments sucks. See you on Craigslist.

11TH SUICIDE POEM IN NOVEMBER

The next child I won't father we will name
Nomathamba. We will call her Thembi for short
She will be exactly like Pharaoh drew her. She
Will smile several hours each day. Her teeth
Will come on like white Christmas. She will crawl
Into bed with us to see if we
Are fucking. She will never be scared. She will
Speak Xhosa. I will buy her a dog named Mardi Gras
And she will learn what it is to lose something
You love. She will grow up.

___________________________-John Ross

Why does this electrical outlet not work? It worked just a minute ago but now it's not working. In the library. Working in the library, my new pseudo office, caused in part because my censored's censored in town for the last ten days, eleven nights in the beautiful Mission district who was really nice to have around, clean respectful a little female energy to cut the stale smell of passive aggression and dirty dishes delete delete delete edit internet skip ahead impending home stay in a low privacy one bedroom summer cottage three days before the eagle landed. Like the moon or Apollo 7. Ocean's 11 and 12. Crime capers starring attractive men who bankroll progressive social causes with Hollywood schlock.

Yep. It's really nice to work in the library. There is something about being amongst the homeless and those like me with homes who want to get out of them or can't be there that makes it easy to focus. A kind of bed of nails to keep my back straight. Last Thursday I sat down at one of these broad oak tables at 11AM and didn't get up until 7PM. Which was totally weird. No water. No bathroom break. No talking no running or spitting or playing ball. Nope. Just sitting there, doing research on Ph.D programs which lead into emails to program people explaining my situation leading into thinking about teaching and the little essay that appeared that evening. It was weird. Not like a demon had possessed me but I knew that if I got up I wouldn't finish, and after about three I stopped being hungry. Is this cruel and unusual?

At any rate at any rate at any rate at any rate at any rate at any rate at any rate at any rate at any rate it's the last week of the six week furlough from teaching. Back at it soon, meetings this week, prepping for the semester, finalizing the schedule, which is a word that I've just recently learned to spell: schedule. Not scheduale. But schedule. No a. This is proof that it's possible to learn stuff, that education does have value. Write your congress person. From this week's New Yorker article about Oprah Winfrey's new television channel, 24 hours a day of continuous programming. Oprah says:

I am very much aware of the energy that the television is transmitting all of the time. That's why I don't allow--up until now, I have never allowed it on in my house, unless there was something specific that I wanted to see, because I don't want all that energy coming into my space.

One of the central questions that has come out of teaching non-traditional students has been how to make writing appeal to a group of people who have typically had little success with writing in the past. A group of people who generally are not strong readers, and generally did not do as well in high school as many of their peers. A group of people where the typical class will range in ages 18 to 35, and contain people from five different countries. They do not have very much in common with each other, much less anything academically in common, such as agreed upon standards or shared skills. Some have written ten page papers and some have trouble with basic grammar. Some read science fiction novels and keep blogs and some get all they need through their friends and television. Some are there to study advertising and some are there to study movie make up; the difference between a fashion designer and a fashion merchandiser or an industrial designer and an illustrator. "Commercial arts" is the banner all these different areas of study fall under, but they each require a particular knowledge and skill set. At the beginning of every course we could not be more different.

As the course moves forward, through introductions, games, lectures and assignments, we begin to get to know each other. This happens through the structure of the class and our shared experiences, as well through all the little asides that come out of being together. I saw a movie last night. Oh me too. What'd you see? Nice shoes what are you eating it smells good and we begin to make friends. Meanwhile something else is happening. We are writing about our lives and what's important to us. Each student takes a risk: what if this isn't good? What if other students laugh at me? What if the instructor fails me? Some risk more and some risk less, but regardless, we are putting ourselves out there in a form that is as unmediated an expression of self as there is: what do you think?

For non-native speakers, this risk involves not just the risk of self expression but the risk of misspeaking.The question stands: what right do you have to be here if you do not even speak the language or understand the culture? While this question is illustrated clearly by the problems that come with mastering a second language (when does one become a master?), its existential root can be found everywhere. For the student who barely survived high school because they were more interested in drawing pictures than preparing for No Child Left Behind, the risk involves years of bad grades and all the memories that come with. What right do you have to be here if you do not even have the most basic of skills? For the student who came back to school after twenty years of office work, leaving stability and self-sufficiency behind for instructors with no time and Facebook obsessed twenty somethings, what right do you have to be here? For the minority student, often the lone representative of their ethnicity in the room, and all the cultural trappings that come with that fact, what right do you have to be with all of these people who don't look like you? For the wealthy who don't have to get jobs but all thier friends do, what right do you have to tell your story when its subsidized by your parents? And for the underpaid teacher who has no idea what he's doing, what right do you have to stand up and lecture? To pass judgment on the quality of work? It goes on and we go through it together.

To come back to the original question, how to make writing matter, is difficult. What motivations would a person have to put into writing when there is so much that surrounds the act of writing before one can begin? It's as if the work load for the non-traditional student is doubled when compared to those who do not have such keenly developed neurosis surrounding the work of writing. Then again, judging by the way professional writers talk about procrastination, it seems like anticipatory dread is part of the act of writing, even for those who have made writing a large part of who they are. Regardless, these students need to work twice as hard to reach their college ready peers. In a more general sense, if writing is an act of self realization, finding words for the thing, the act of naming, like Adam named the animals or parents name their child, this is this, this = this, translating what we feel into words, our most fundamental definition of what it means to be human; it is important work to me. Thus, from here we lift off in hopes that the energy these beliefs provide is enough to push through the doubt.

What is the connection between cats and dogs? People? No, I mean what's the connection between writing whatever and avoiding the question? People? No, I mean what's the connection between writing on a computer and writing in real life like a reality television show or during a war? People? No, I mean what's the connection between being relatively content and the quality of artistic work? Merit? No, I mean cake. Delicious. Like chocolate but not the kind I helped make the other night. Frosting that turned out badly postscript: don't beat whip cream after it has whipped it turns into cheese or butter or chunky liquid. Like toast, how does something change so dramatically with air or temperature or tickets to the circus. Nope. Not really. Trying to write something down but letting the chatter box rule. Not trying too hard to stop it. Where does it come from? Radio in your mind. Legs like dead weight no longer able to swim my lower half bent like the blade of a pocket knife. Jack knife as they say, jack knifed across the highway. Highway to Heaven. Necessary Angel. Okay, back to the mean topic, what's the relationship between contentedness and artistic output? Seems to me that when I'm happy my work gets sloppier, not so worried about quality control. Fine how it is like a poetry student always the idea that it's fine how it is. Original sentiment but the sentiment isn't original. "Pedestrian" was what it was called. Question: Problem: what exactly do I have to show for ten years of working on poetry asides from a few publications? No joy but in the work itself not the world it's for. Double negative stopped to pick my nose. Coherant thought forget it back to work my cat is cute I'm moving out of this apartment at the end of February this is crazy fog is gone whew no to work I go.

San Francisco is no longer warm or beautiful. But if I turn the lamp on the light bulb gets hot and a little heat comes off. The cats figured this out not me. Three weeks until school starts and I have a list of things I'm working on. I'll spare you. Hard earned time to work on projects. And to stay out of trouble. Plan to see many a movie in the coming weeks. Last night I saw Hadewijch at the Roxy. Six Fifty Monday special. Matinees are also a good idea. I really enjoyed that movie. Here, please enjoy these selected clippings:

60 First Graders, 4 Teachers, One Suspect’s Odd Behavior Born or Made?

“Ewww,” squealed a boy named Ethan when he was told that the class would plant a banana tree later that day. Other children began mimicking the sound, which they had been making earlier. “Ethan, stop it,” said his teacher, Pepe Gutierrez. “I don’t know why you are screaming.”

*

Mr. Ali, 26, continued: “He presented a poem to the class that he’d written called ‘Meathead’ that was mostly just about him going to the gym to work out. But it included a line about touching himself in the shower while thinking about girls. He was very enthusiastic when he read the poem out loud.”

*

Dr. Burt found that, among 289 pairs of male twins, all born in the ’70s, those who exhibited lower levels of antisocial behavior at ages 17 and 20 were more likely to be married by age 29. This she sees as evidence of a selection process, in which well-behaved men were winnowed off while their antisocial buddies were left to the bachelor pad.

Back in one piece. San Francisco is warm and beautiful.

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

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

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

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

**

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar Skulls

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

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

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

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

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

Two Dreams I Had While Playing Fallout: New Vegas

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

*

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

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

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

***

DO DO DOOT - DO DOO DOO DOOT
***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We had an extra hour today.

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

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

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

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