Today is my 33rd Birthday. I am 100 years old. I heard Tom Waits say on the radio that when he was young he wanted to be old. My cat just fell off a slippery coffee table. She is getting old. The other cat is already old. He is very wise but not very smart. My sister and brother sent me a frying pan in the mail. It will be awesome. I will make two pancakes at one time. Ratios are old. Like Euclid or Donatello. The one with the triangles and the one with the bo staff, respectively. About me: I am one billion years old. Did you ever read that Dune book, God Emperor of Dune? The one with the sand worm king who lived to be thirty five hundred years old. That's not old. One billion years old is old. Have we been around that long? I don't know. The dinosaurs have all changed into birds. Earlier today we killed off the Neanderthals. Psychosis is one of the oldest professions. When I'm older, I hope to be a professional young person. Like MF Doom says/raps, it's nice to be old. But I guess it's relative. By that I mean some of my relatives are getting old. And some of them are getting young. Can we say that? Is this thing on? Sorry, I'm not good with technology. I need to go eat supper. Goodbye.

I haven't had much to do with the Occupy movement since last Thursday morning, briefly surveying the remnants of Wednesday's general strike. Except for closing my bank account at Chase, which, finally was possible after about two weeks of little steps; opening a new account, dropping direct deposit, and changing a few billing plans. When I went to the bank on Saturday it took about five minutes. The bank's representative asked why I was closing my account (Chase makes me feel bad) and if large bills were okay (yes). Easy. And now I can feel good and and righteous about where I put my money. Cleaning the platform on which I stand, and from which I speak and write. It's an impossible and entirely vain dream to be all of one thing, to be all good (or all bad), but the few moments I gain from not having to enter Chase's ubiquitous corporate temples twice a week, I'm happy to have.

But back to occupy, I was a bit depressed about the whole thing following Wednesday's decent into chaos. In particular, this video that shows somebody (black bloc? paid police instigators?) messing up a Whole Foods (where I occasionally shop) and punching a few protester's who were trying to stop them. If you read the comments attached to the video, most of them suggest that these provocateurs were not part of the movement and were paid by outside forces. Personally I think that's true, but unfortunately it doesn't really matter as whoever did it was successful in taking the focus off of Occupy's message(s). Obviously they need to do a better job in preventing these kinds of small groups, whoever they are, from creating this much havoc, in order to keep the support of those whose are still not sure about the Occupy movement.

Kind of like me when I'm reading the newspaper, which is why I felt a little foolish on Thursday. Did I get swept up in the hype machine? Did I actively support a movement that didn't represent my interests? Was I fooled? Short answer: no. Of course not. Occupy is absolutely correct in their criticisms of our economic systems. Sympathizers in the media at large have been to saying yes, I agree with Occupy but they need to become political in order to be effective. Criticisms closer to home, have been more about the damage that the encampment has been doing to downtown Oakland businesses (though this report contradicts that report. I'm so confused). It's difficult. Making omelets and breaking eggs. Something is going to have to happen soon with the encampments. One idea it to move the occupation to indoor spaces that have been foreclosed on, which makes a lot of sense, not just for occupy but for people who have lost their homes. And is already happening. When there is so much available space and work to be done why does so much of it sit empty? But the best part so far is this, what we did.

Briefly: last night was huge. Ten thousand people? I have no idea but when we arrived at the port, a couple miles walking, I had friends who were just getting started. That many people. Short version is the actions were a success. The port was shut down. Why is that important? To send the message that if we wanted to and were somewhat untied, we control our fate. Or more directly, that we're "producing for an economic system that doesn't produce" for us. And we have a choice in the matter.

The long version, and the one that will be and is being covered in the media (it's unbelievable how wrong places I trusted have been) will focus on the violence, which was carried out by a handful of misguided people and instigated, in part, by the police themselves. For those who say, "you're crazy and paranoid...the police wouldn't do such things." Think about what you would do if you had a week to prepare for an action against your authority. Would you come up with a counter plan? Or just let 'these people' do what they want to do. The police are as smart as any of us, and of course, it's in their interests to overshadow the days' successful actions and in turn, weaken the movement. They just want the occupiers to go home so the streets will be peaceful, and their jobs will be made easier. I can relate.

Anyway, I need to get ready for class. If you're interested, dig around for the real story and skip the The New York Times.

Poetry is a Religious Act

I thought I saw God
in a dark mass of rain
in the puddles on the roof.

I am not prone
to hallucinations or hauntings
but a shape swirled

like a galaxy forming
out of raindrops gathering
on tar paper, bits

of blackened sand
carried by the invisible current
of rain.

Time stopped as I
watched it spin from one darkness
to another.

Yesterday I paid off the rest of my student loan. "Pay Off Account" and I clicked the little circle next to it and then it was done. Eleven and a half years. I wondered when I first started paying my school loan, living in Seattle and writing checks for the first time, where will I be when I pay it off? What will I be doing? Now I know.

**

Tuition at my undergrad has gone up more than ten thousand dollars in the last ten years. Living the wealthiest country in the world; the rate of poverty, education, healthcare, etc. in comparison to other places that have far less than we do, is astounding. Today is Halloween. Tomorrow is November, and Wednesday is the Oakland General Strike. Below is a pretty good primer on the movement:

Yesterday was a big, peaceful protest in Oakland. Lots of people and lots of enthusiasm. Plans made for a general city wide strike on November 2nd, but the more immediate good news to come from the last couple of days, Mayor Quan has said "nonviolent protesters would be allowed to re-occupy the area near City Hall." Wow. I mean, wow, I guess this protesting stuff actually works.

Yesterday evening around six I walked through Snow Park, that for the last couple weeks had been an outpost of the Occupy Oakland protests. It was over spill from the full up Oscar Grant Plaza, but yesterday it was empty. The police must of taken it down, I thought, and when I got back home I looked it up via the Occupy Oakland Twitter Page and saw that yes, the helicopters I had been hearing all day were part of the police effort to evict the occupiers. And I also learned that people were assembling and marching downtown, about four blocks from my apartment so I put on my shoes and locked the door and found my neighbor doing the same thing. And we walked down there together to join the tail end of the march from the plaza down to Snow Park, and then back again.

An hour later, when we arrived back at the plaza it began to get a little tense. Lots of police officers were lined up around the plaza and the march halted, the organizers organized and then proceed another block to the intersection of 14th and Broadway where there was the biggest mass of police officers. I stood and waited and watched with the thousand (at least) or so others for a few minutes before a recorded announcement that told us the assembly had been declared unlawful, and that we had five minutes to leave before they would use force. Five tense minutes went by and then a few more, and then they fired tear gas canisters and most of us hurried down 14th away from the gas.

The march resumed down 14th and then circled back to the plaza, though in-between, I witnessed an over excited kid break a window with his skateboard, and at that point decided to head back to my place. When I turned down a side street there was a line of police in riot gear so I went back the march and went down a different street and made it home. I ate a piece of toast, had my picture taken as I looked out the window by errant marchers walking down my street, and then went back out, this time a little more prepared with a scarf to wear over my face just in case I got gassed, back to the plaza, and found my neighbor again. Occupied the plaza until others suggested we keep moving, occupied 14th and Franklin where my neighbor and I met up with Sarah, and we hung out there, in the middle of the street until they police fired tear gas again into the intersection of 14th of Broadway and we, along with the throngs, went back down 14th away from the trouble.

I went out one more time with Dara, around eleven thirty, and the crowd at 14th and Broadway had shrunk considerably. There was still a large enough mass to hold the intersection but this time we didn't stay around long enough to be gassed, and went back to our respective homes. These are just the facts of my experience. I'm not going to get into the why . But I will say, beginning at six, there's a general assembly (GA) at 14th and Broadway in Oakland. I don't know what exactly is going to happen but I can't imagine things will be any easier for anybody (protesters, police, citizens of Oakland) tonight. Regardless, I'll be there (I live there!), if for no other reason other than to be there.

"It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement."

_____________-Abraham Maslow, from Motivation and Personality

(the image above is the Michelangelo sculpture "Atlas Slave." This is this blog's 500th posting.)

Hi. I want to write something but I'm a little short for time right now. Not super busy but headed to work in a half hour and have a few things to do first (do my hair). Today inbetween classes I'm going to open an account at a credit union, in preparation for pulling my money out of my current bank, which only became my current bank because Chase bought Washington Mutual. Remember that? And then expanded their empire just like that. The national day of closing accounts is November 5th. So as, I have to do some leg work now so I can still write checks. Right? "Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility" if you know what I mean...

(previously there was a sestina here. i have removed it from the blog in order to do some revisions. have a nice day. my apologies for any inconvenience.)

A little preface for this Frank O'Hara poem, it appeared on an episode of Mad Men (which I've been watching and enjoying). From the fourth section of the poem "Mayakovsky":

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Yesterday when I got off the BART, downtown Oakland, I couldn't help but notice the hundreds of people at Occupy Oakland protest taking place at Oscar Grant square (at the 12th Street BART station). Hungry, I got a cheap slice of pizza (Pizza Man) and found a perch to listen to the speakers and soak in the ambiance of the drizzly evening. People spoke, handed out fliers, chatted, ate, made eye contact, clapped, and cited websites. Last Friday I intentionally visited the Occupy San Francisco protests at the corner of Market and Drumm, where the Embarcadero BART lets out, though on Friday I was a little late for the speeches, coming after work. There were still plenty of people hanging around and talking and disseminating information. I have not attended too many formal protests for lack of any strong political convictions (the 2003 Iraq War protests in Portland being the last I intentionally joined. Informal protests is another story, easily confused with passive aggression), however I believe in 'the message' of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Which, from conversations I've had about it, seems to be a sticking point: uncertainty about what exactly the protesters are protesting about. If you read the signs, they're all over the place, from anti-war to anti-bailout to 'tax the rich' to moral messages ('greedy bankers') to support for unions and teachers and nurses. My favorite sign read "Trickle Down Bullshit." Obviously prosperity has not tricked down from the richest of us, and instead, all that we've gotten is bullshit. Not that that needed explaining, but right now, it doesn't really matter what these protests are about, at least as far as a singular message (read: soundbite). The point is not to advocate for a particular political change, but to raise awareness that they way things are, the status quo, is not working for us. To have this fact acknowledged by the media and politicians and ourselves, is important.

The world is complex. Things happen for many reasons. To reduce the complexity of our lives and our ourselves to didactic soundbites is to ignore the contradictions and mysteries that make life interesting. It's hard to understand each other. It's hard to speak, and be heard, and to listen well enough. Our words are such pale imitations of the things we feel and of the things we do. They do not begin to hold what we are capable of. For those who criticize Occupy Wallstreet for having "no common cause," I ask, what is your cause? What do you believe in? Is it something that was given to you? Something that you find yourself a part of? Are we all complicit? Born into it? Or is it something that you came to on your own? Something that you made, through the terrifying work of finding a place in the world. Not to say I know any better, how to live or what to do, but a nuanced message, I believe, is a welcome change of pace.

Social Engineering

Under the controlled conditions of the laboratory
scientists have observed Americans turning to
their rights after exiting the train. The stairway
is to their left. I turned to my right, disoriented
on the platform. [Black bird's shadows
passing overhead] They might observe us
doing or saying the same thing repeatedly, oblivious
to which shoulder we throw our towel over,
which side of our mouth we use to chew.
I believe I am clever but the same fear,
and feeling. No mercy,
no love or compassion in the all seeing eye.
No room for sentiment or preference. Just facts,
cold as glaciers.

"I prefer an unjust peace to a justified war. No matter what the ideals are, if they are going to lead to war, I prefer a corrupt, immoral, unprincipled, unredeemed peace."

__________-Nishihara Wakana
___________from Japan at War: an Oral History

Happy Monday. Here are two poems by Matt Turner, who has recently come back from a four year stint teaching in China. Enjoy.

THE CHEF'S SONG

I'm facing south here,
leaning forward
like a shriveled tree.

Surely here,
yesterday,

I had points to make.
Really?

So, do I
hear pipes

even if I hear
wind?

Sometimes
openings resound

like a terrifying
mountain or forest storm -

hundreds of spans round,
like noses, mouths, ears, sockets -

like a crashing
gong.


**


JUST HOT AIR

Humans eat meat, however
crows will still enjoy
deer.

__"Righteousness

feels like burning deserts &
lightning which can split

clouds and seas."

Sam Told Me This Dream:

She was sitting at a rectangular table in a creative writing class. I was also sitting at this table. The teacher had selected my story to read to the class because it was the best one. Instead of reading the story as a story, some of the other students had scripts to read, and performed the story in front of the rest of the class. The first line, read by another woman in the class went "no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no."

I've been reading an interesting book: "The Art of Cruelty" by Maggie Nelson, a poet and academic who lives in Los Angeles. It's a book about cruelty in the arts, beginning with Artaud's call (you know Artaud!) for a "theater of cruelty" about the need for audiences to be violently pulled from their passive spectator-ness. The book goes about exploring the idea of cruelty in everything from movies to books to performance art, how the avant-garde has run with the idea of using violence to shock, and now, how much a part of the main stream Artaud's idea has become. The book is not about the good or bad of cruelty, but where these specific pieces of art lead us and leave us. So it's nuanced and not really didactic at all, which is a little frustrating as two thirds of the way through it still hasn't really arrived anywhere. Instead it's explored different sub-genres, ideas, and trends with a poet's rhythm; one that has a pace and a way unto itself, and it's beginning to dawn on me that this pace, this way of looking at cruelty is, in fact, the argument.

Which might be kind of frustrating to some readers or radio interviewers who want a straight answer/judgment as to is this particular kind of cruelty good, or bad. But it's made me think about my own work, including writing and teaching and being with other people, some of the habits I have such as "brutal honestly" perhaps aren't as blameless as I've believed. I wonder if I subject my students to forms of cruelty, making them read out loud or answering questions on the spot (short answer: no). Over the summer a student came in an hour late on a day we were work-shopping in small groups. Since all the groups had been formed, to add this student would be to create more work for one of the groups. Pissed as I was, I assigned the student to a group and made the late student distribute the extra work, thereby instead of me giving the group extra work, the late student was the one who did. I felt it was a just penalty, a kind of humiliation with the intent to make the student see how their lateness causes problems. This punishment came from an angry place and in retrospect, I think it was cruel.

My action was intended to teach (as well as harm) and this student did not come late to class again. It worked. But this student also did not participate much in the class discussion, and did not seem to invest much in the class or in their class work. Of course I don't know what this student was thinking, and can't know what motivated them, but my action did close some doors on any opportunities I may have had to get the student more engaged. The lesson for me: that when I lose control, it opens the door on choices governed by emotion. Which, in this case, I feel did more harm than good. In a larger sense, this example also sheds light on the dangers of increasing class sizes and overwhelmed teachers. That cruelty is a kind of tool we teach others how to use. And when times are tough, it can be a fast and easy solution to problems. But in the long run in creates a world we might not be too happy living in (fascism?). All that said, I'm lucky to have choices in the first place, to know that there are alternatives to cruelty.

"Privilege of connecting two things remains privilege of each individual (e.g. I: thirsty: drink a glass of water); but this privilege isn't to be exercised publicly except in emergencies (there are no aesthetic emergencies)."

___-John Cage
____from the essay "Seriously Comma" as found in A Year from Monday

Well, the GRE is over. Done with. It took about four and a half hours, Saturday morning, and overall, I did as well as I needed to do. It asked me to write a couple essays, to answer forty math questions, and sixty English questions. I learned about goosebumps, the imaginary town of West Marin, and the field of musicology. By the last section I began to experience feelings of apathy concerning the correct answer, but I pushed through, and am so glad to be done. Here is a poem by Philip Levine, the new poet laureate. It's a good one about "The Man." Have a good one.

School started last Thursday. Two full classes plus three support classes and ten lab hours. Plus I'm taking the GRE this coming Saturday (in the two-digit number jk, the value of the digit j is twice the value of the digit k), writing sestinas on the typewriter that K the cat sitter is letting me borrow, and trying to figure out exactly where I'm going to be applying this fall. For awhile I was sure that Rhetoric and Composition programs were the place for me, but now I'm thinking Linguistics. Capitalized. It's been difficult to narrow my interests down to one specific field. I guess that's what you get for never specializing, that is, a thousand tentacles of interest that take awhile to corral into a single direction. Like a death ray of intention shooting from the glowing disk on my chest.

But really, the big question right now is which of the following statements are supported by the above passage? Is it A) The majority of insect orders are capable of both advancing and inhibiting human interests; B) The male blue-tailed iguana will chew down some of its spines to appear more masculine; or C) The relationship cannot be determined from the information given. Most of the time I want to answer C, and append the answer with, And not only can we not determine the relationship but we don't even really care to do so. I mean, why can we just let y= (x+3)^2? You know, let bygones be bygones? What harm is there in the value of y when x =1? Why can't we just let the mysteries of the universe be? Let them answer their own questions. Who are we to interfere with the length of segment PQ? 8a + 8b=24? So what?

But sometimes the test can be kind of fun, and this resentment doesn't come up as much in the verbal section, where I feel like I have a fighting chance to get every question correct (of course I never do), and where it seems directly applicable to reading and writing and teaching, say. Whereas in the math section, there are some processes that even though I could learn, I refuse. Strange ideas about violence to the soul, that by learning, really learning/burning certain techniques and ideas into my brain, I will somehow do damage to myself. "Dismiss that which insults your soul" wrote Whitman. Though I have a hard time judging which parts of me are my soul and which parts are my ego.

My sister, an expert on standardized tests sympathized with my tendency to question the premise of the test, but suggested I get over myself, just a little, and deal with the fact of test scores. I can't help but think about my own students, art students, some of which probably feel about writing the same way I feel about the math: it's interesting and deep but these are not the problems I want to spend my time solving. Nothing but respect for those who can honestly come to that conclusion but still, we have to deal with the fact of test scores, so to speak. Though hopefully writing and argument is a little more relevant than if the number of female general surgeon physicians in the under-35 category represented 3.5 percent of all the general surgeon physicians, approximately how many male general surgeon physicians were under 35 years? After all, writing is the act of becoming, of speaking and making ourselves real. Unless we're mute, or a cat. Wish me luck.

my nephew's teeth

Grades are done and it's the first semester in four years that I didn't fail a single student. Yay. Twas a hard working class. Now to pack and be off to the middle west. Please enjoy this picture while I am gone.

In the paper on Sunday was this editorial entitled "What Happened To Obama?" by an academic named Drew Westen, who teaches psychology at Emory University. The editorial is a kind of psychological analysis of Obama's political decisions, and more or less trashes them/him. It's a powerful piece of writing, talking about how Obama has lost his sense of self and is bullied and how his language has lost its poetry, and how all of the above contribute to his failure of leadership. Westen makes this observation regarding the Democrats in general:

In fact, the average American had no idea what Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, "stick."

Which I think is key, making sure there are real world analogs to go along with the sound "reasoning" of the left. That our two wars were launched not on the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans (a fraction of how many Americans die, say, of obesity yearly), but on the image of airplanes crashing into New York City. Or at the very least because of a combination of the two. The importance of poetics, or poetry as a memory aid. Numbers are unreal and unconvincing, and if you want to move people you have to tell a story. At least that is part of Westen's argument.

But who are we to make pronouncements about the person of the president? I guess it's a public office and one puts themselves out there, but if the president were standing in the room with me, of course I wouldn't have the nerve to criticize him on that level. A couple weeks ago I wrote a little about the Women's World Cup Final (Japan won, the US lost) but what I posted here, under my own name, was heavily edited compared to what I posted semi-anonymously on the comments page of the Times. That to call someone out is easy when you're sitting alone with some cats on a sunny morning in Oakland. Regardless, the article is interesting, as is this editorial on Westen's editorial.
**

This Friday I'm off for the glory of Madison Wesconsin in August: crickets, humidity, warm nights, and a relatively empty downtown. Of course there is my mother and step-father, which is really why I'm going, to visit for four days and then, driving down (in my aunt's car) to Indiana (via Chicago) to visit some professors and current graduate students at Purdue's composition and rhetoric program. The one I'm applying to this fall. Then to Kentucky (Ken-tuck) to see uncles and cousins and sister and clan, and then I'll be headed back to 'sconny' for a day and then back here for a week and a half of pre-semester meetings, adjusting curriculum and hanging out in Oakland. That is to say I'm going to be gone for a little bit.

The semester gets over this coming Wednesday and it's been a challenging one. In part because I've been really stressed about money, not having as much work as I need to pay bills. Imagine if your college teachers had to pick up painting jobs on the weekends to make credit card payments. Imagine John Boehner picking up dog shit. Imagine buying a BMW on a whim. Imagine, wait, actually you don't need to imagine any of this. Two comments from the article linked to just a few lines above, Otis writes:

"So sick of these comments about the rich not paying their share. Do folks know that the top 10% of wage earners pay 70% of all the taxes collected? Do you know what percentage the bottom 50% pay in federal taxes? 2%. That's right 2%."

And Kevin responds:

"Do you want to know why they pay 70% of all the taxes? Because they own 85% of all the wealth. Pretty straight forward. What if they own 100% of the wealth and pay 100% of the taxes? Would that still be unfair to them?"

Unbelievable. I was having dinner with Amy last night and naturally, we were talking about debt ceilings and the economy and the turned worm of America's fortunes, and man I wish we let those investment banks fail when we had the chance. Hardship for all, possibly, but from my perspective, I really don't have much to lose. I've been out of college for twelve years, and have been working in two of the least valued fields in the country: education and art. Asides from my two years in graduate school (a full scholarship that was barely enough to live on, but was still a step up from what I was making) I've had one job that provided health insurance, and I'm not even going to talk about my debt. If it's like this for me, a person of relative privilege and very relative talent, what's it like for everybody else?

As our global rank declines in terms of education, income, livings standards, health, and obviously, happiness; where exactly are we headed? In the last couple years I've transitioned from a vaguely optimistic, though cynical perspective on politics and opportunity, to being sullen and bitter and straight up angry at the obliviousness we are invited to marinate ourselves in. The best advice I ever got was from CD (Wright), during a workshop somebody was ripping into somebody else's work, and she said, "Put your anger into your work." I find this advice, and this kind of propellant, to be helpful.

This morning I dropped off the rental car. I pulled it into the garage and a lady came out, and asked, would you like a receipt? I said no, and turned and left. "Was that the right thing to do?" I asked myself. Not about the receipt but about the damage, which occurred just after I left San Francisco, got on the 880 south and hit a scrap of tire that had been ejected from an 18 wheeler. I saw it ahead of me, and looked to go around it but I was blocked in by a car to my right. By the time I looked back to the road and to my left, I was upon it, and it thunked, and immediately a ticking and flapping sound started coming from the car. I slowed down and a mile later took the first exit off the highway, somewhere around Mountain View.

The piece of plastic that protected the undercarriage of the right front portion of the car, including the wheel well, about a square foot of it, had been torn. There was nothing damaged mechanically, but the plastic bolts that held this black piece of plastic to the bottom of the car had been sheered, and the flapping sound was the plastic getting chewed up as it was battered between the road and the rotating tire, like a can being dragged on a string. It was easy to see what had happened and it was a relief that the damage was not more serious. However I did not buy the insurance that covers this kind of damage. What will I say, and will they charge me eight hundred dollars to get it fixed? I don't know but I'd like to get going, and I picked up a couple of sticks from the ground, a little larger than the diameter of the missing bolts, and reconnected the protective piece to the chassis of the car. It held relatively firmly and I got back in the car and continued south.

The jerry-rig held until Sunday, and when it came undone we stopped at a truck stop, bought some duct tape and resecured the plastic in a way that did not show the silver sheen of the tape. I returned it this morning, bringing me back to the original question of reporting the damage or not. On the one hand it's possible that the rigging will hold for a while and nobody will notice it. The rental car company can afford to pay for it, and I cannot without putting it all on a close to maxed out credit card. On the other hand, it's "the right thing to do" to own up to a mistake, and possibly avoid any mishaps for future drivers. Obvioulsy I've made my choice, but there's the question of will they notice? Will they call? Will I end up paying for it anyway? If they ask will I say it was like that when I got it? Will I continue to lie? These questions have followed me around this morning and soon they will make a little nest somewhere in my body. And they will live inside of me until I am held responsible.

The Doppler Effect (Stephen Hawking Poem 2)

"This should not unduly worry us: by that time unless we have colonized beyond the solar system, mankind will long since have died out, extinguished along with our sun!"

Light emits waves. Shuttering
orgasmic pulses
of life. As light moves away from us
a red tint appears. As it moves closer
a dense, sucking blue. ____We find the truth
of these qualities by subtracting
our own experience. Our blazing sun
not in Heaven
but turning in abandon. Like Stephen Hawking
sorrow expands into the distance between us
______ the terminally dense blue
of night's approach.

Ahem. NICE WEATHER WE'RE HAVING ISN'T IT? Yes. It is nice weather. Sunny in Oakland. Temperate. Monday morning. Yesterday I watched the Japan/U.S. women's football match. DID YOU SEE IT? It was the first sporting event to bring tears of joy to my eyes. Maybe I've been strung out or maybe it was that book of Japanese stories during the second world war but I was so happy to see them win. It's been a difficult year in Japan, with the earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear plant, and the Japanese economy falling from the number two position, and the general loss of prestige that Japan has endured. It made me feel sooo happy. As happy as I felt watching Dallas beat Miami in the finals this year, to see the Japanese coach smiling and joking in the shootout huddle when the stakes were high, as if playing football could somehow compare to the life and death situations people find themselves in. “I feel we have given some kind of encouragement and joy to the people back in Japan,” said Ayumi Kaihori, the Japanese goal keeper. Can you imagine a player (or person) in the United States saying the same thing? To include everyone, and not just the people who agree with them? That is all. Have a fine Monday.

Stephen Hawking Poem

"What did god do before he created the universe?"

The universe has a beginning point.
We know this
because the sky does not shine
like stars. Light
travels and if it has been traveling
____ forever?
even the most distant stars
would emerge in the night sky.
(But there would be no
night sky.) Our world is split
because time projects
from a single point.
You could disprove this idea
if we could be here
enough
to prove forever.

Yesterday I got back from work around five thirty. Sat on the couch, took my shoes off, unbuttoned my work shirt and hung it up in the closet. Meanwhile the cats bumped their heads into my hands, walked across my lap, and we all went into the kitchen where I opened a can of food. I then switched into shorts and changed my t-shirt, put on tennis shoes and got my bike out of the closet and rode out to Sunset View Park, the south-western most corner of Oakland, down South Harbor Road past the car junkery, the train yard, and the many shipping operations punctuated by 24 story high great white cranes. A long, wide road with a slight incline and nobody on it.

I locked my bike to a pole and inspected the crane closest the park, watched the boat from Norfolk and the people on it for a while. I read a placard: the crane was built in Shanghai and it's controls were made in Sweden. One of the workers waved at me and I waved back. I walked to the end of the jetty, past the couple hanging out in the tower, pissed behind a bush, took a picture of some grafitti on a trash can and walked back to where my bike was parked. By then the crane had started to unload the cargo from the boat, and I sat down and watched them work.

Oakland dockworkers. It made me think of season 2 of The Wire, of the big military ships I've been reading about, the loud noises and steel and of teaching in comparison, what a different job unloading boats is. It looked fun, satisfying and probably paid well. I smoked a cigarette. Listened and watched and amazed at how accurate the crane operator was, moving rectangles around with such precision. I wondered if a good crane operator is slightly OCD, or develops a little bit of a natural OCD, trying to line things up just right. Drawing cubes in the margins of note pads. After a while I got back on the bike and rode home. Made a couple phone calls, made dinner, took a shower and got into bed. Read for an hour and went to sleep. Wednesday.

Strange dreams. They kind I was happy to wake up from. Not because they were scary, but uncomfortable. And boring. Dreams that seemed familiar, familiar places and scenarios and themes. Plus a heavy feeling like I was being pressed on. Physically. Something heavy was laying on top of me. Which probably relates directly to my body, how I was feeling, the fact that yesterday I walked three miles to class and back, stood for three hours in class, and then walked another three miles to my therapist and the grocery store. In my new work shoes, that are more like heavy boots, and aren't exactly made for walking long distances. Or maybe they are. I don't make boots. But they are heavy. On the last leg of the journey I walked slowly, like a caveman after a long day in the jungle. Sings Bill Callahan: "Peace on your hand / don't be silly. / Peace in my bah-dee / when I'm tired and beaten."

But it could be worse. Always. And actually yesterday was a good day. Just tiring. Though not tiring like the Japanese death march through New Guinea, as I continue to read accounts of the fighting on the Pacific islands during the second world war. Every time I put the book down, to go to sleep or get off the train, I say, either to myself or out loud, "this is the craziest shit I've ever read." And keep reading. One thing I'm learning from the Japanese perspective was how defeated they all were long before their government surrendered. Marching for a year, starving and sick with no food and no ammunition to fight a war, and no choice to surrender. If you refused to charge to your death you were shot anyway by your commanding officer. "My own company broke camp in Pusan with 261 men. I was the only one who boarded a transport ship bound for Japan and home after the war."

From the Marines' perspective, the Japanese were fearsome, self-less warriors, jumping bonzai style into their foxholes at night to stab a few Americans before blowing themselves up. Whereas from the Japanese perspective, those 'fearless' soldiers probably had no food or ammunition, and no option to surrender. A suicide attack was just about the only thing they could do asides from waiting to be killed. In many of the accounts by Japanese soldiers, there is a moment where, after seeing a fleet of American bulldozers or tanks or an airfield built in a day, or from the account of a film maker who spent time in the Hollywood, to witness the wealth and abundance of American resources, that many of these soldiers had the realization that victory was not possible. And not because of bogus ideas of national character or racial whatever, but because the Americans we're rich and could build thirty times as many planes, and can feed and clothe and provide their soldiers with ammunition. "The only one who wept at the actual news of Japan's defeat was the commander."

Happy 4th of July! It's hot in Oakland! Fireworks were canceled! Budget Cuts! So was summer school! At least they didn't shut down the libraries! They are staying open! Of course they're not open today it's a holiday! Independence day! We are free! No work! Last night I played virtual basketball with Bill until past midnight! Whoa! Whoa now hey! Hey now slow down! We sat at the bird sanctuary as it got dark and drank beers! Canada geese climbing out of the water and settling in for the night! A raccoon snuck into the fenced-in area! A dog bit a goose! Pelicans fish in groups! There's probably a name for a group of pelicans other than a "flock"! Sorry about these exclamation points!

Hope it's not annoying! We are free! Free to go watch fireworks somewhere else! Free to buy half priced coupons from the internet! Free to turn down invitations! Free to give up on our relationships! Free to read a book! Free to sit in the park! To watch the drunk couple go stand by the dumpster! Free to draw a cube! Free to have friends over it's my own goddamn apartment I can do whatever I want with it! Freedom! Free to afford freedom! Free to make circular statements! Free to read about enslaved Guatemalans picking flavorless tomatoes in Florida! Free to read the stories told by Japanese Kempeitei during the occupation of parts of China prior to American involvement in WWII! Free to share this quote completely out of context!: "It might sound extreme, but I can almost say that if more than two weeks went by without my taking a head, I didn't feel right."

Free to be like whoa! Free to say messed up things! Free to forgive! Free to forgive if that's at all possible! Free bird! Free to be told by a literate international student that they don't read American books! Free to wonder why! Free to speculate that it has something to do with the amount of insulation from the problems of the world our wealth provides us! Free to consider that a Westerner uses 300% more of the world's resources in a lifetime than a non-westerner! Free to be insulated even from ourselves! Free to commit ourselves to health! To stop smoking! To design iPhone apps that help us rent more movies! To write books about the future of cloud computing! Freedom! Yes! It's true! And it feels good! Most of the time!

On Tuesday it rained. Heavy all day and cleared up at night. My raincoat is good one, picked out specifically so I could ride my bike in the rain and stay perfectly dry. It works; or worked until the cuff of the right sleeve began to turn out. Maybe the glue stopped sticking or maybe it was a loose thread, but the rain runs down my right arm and somehow curls around to get up into the sleeve. By the end of the day, my arm was sopping wet and cold while the rest of me was dry.

I looked up the warranty policy and it sounds like they'll replace it, or fix it. The problem is that it'll take a little while, four weeks at least and I'm not sure how much I'll need it in the next couple months. When it's sunny out like it is today, hot and dry, it's hard to believe that it will ever rain again. It will, I know, but it's hard to imagine anything other than what's right in front of me. I want to send it off but experience tells me I'll be sorry.

**

This morning I came to the realization that the little bell that's been ringing in my head this last month is "morality." At least that's how she put it. Something to keep the clan from splitting apart, to let me know I'm putting the social order at risk. Thanks biology. I'm not going to get specific, but it's funny how things hang around until we notice them. Or are driven to drink. We're out of cat food. It's hot out. End of the second week of school. Is it just me or has the Huffington Post gotten less left and more something else since AOL bought it? Not that it isn't a free country.

On Sunday mornings my father took me and my brother and sister to the congregational church. The "Congo" church as he called it, and I thought of Africa. But everybody was from Wisconsin. So that couldn't be right. I later learned that a congregational church is a church with no denomination. Anyone is welcome, and you don't have to be a part of a particular group, or believe in a particular way. I didn't like going. This I believed; that it was boring, and so I met the requirement. Instead of sitting in the pews with my father and siblings, I opted for Sunday school, an opportunity to hang out with other kids.

Because Sunday school started an hour before church, I never got to see the last ten minutes of Jem and the Holograms. I also didn't get to eat Pillsbury biscuits and eggs. Instead I sat at the two low tables pushed together with the other kids. The Sunday School teacher talked about the bible for forty-five minutes, and then we went up stairs to a little room above the main chapel and sang. I didn't know anybody, and they didn't know me. I just tried to get through the hour and a half without attracting attention so I could be done with it. Had I chosen to go to real church, my dad would of made me interact. On my own, mingling was not an issue.

One morning I wore a Gumby basketball sweatshirt I had gotten from my aunt. I thought it was pretty cool, especially since the small town kids weren't hip to Gumby. I had a snotty cold that morning, and when I sneezed a wad of yellow sticky snot came out of my nose and stuck to my fingers. Too shy to get up or ask the teacher to get a tissue, I wiped the snot in the armpit of the shirt and tucked my arm in like a chicken wing. I assumed nobody saw me because I assumed everybody was in the same boat as me, just trying to get through. We continued singing but I heard some of the kids laugh. One of them said, "Gumby got gummed." I pretended they were talking about something else.

Grace standing on the corner talking about refusing to work for peanuts. Me in a short sleeve with the wind blowing. Shivering. Her private teaching practice earns her five times what she makes working for our school. Suzie Orman and the virtue of not selling yourself for less than you're worth. I left the street corner and descended into the BART, wondering if I got it wrong. If my ideas of what's important are a perfect example of the Nietzscheian "slave mentality," to put off dignity because, as Sarah Palin put it, "your reward is in heaven."

Or as Cannibal Ox put it, "the meek shall inherit the earth / why not? / we can sell it to the frail / and feed em fairy tales." Being taken advantage builds character. And according to Grace, eventually some of us learn this lesson well enough to take advantage of the situation ourselves. The wisdom of misery. A former teacher wrote me back about the recommendation request: hard up for time but if you send me a bio I'll write you one. One draws the line. Time is precious. Joel says to me on the phone, "I wasn't asking for your permission to bring the dog."

In conversation with one of the department heads last week I talked about streamlining my methods to keep up with the work load: no more than ten minutes a student paper. The kind of gains in efficiency politicians dream of when they cut budgets. I mentioned this in the context of teaching full time, that I'd love to but couldn't keep up with the work load. In response she said that full timers get by because they don't agonize over one student or another. And again, this strange desire to suffer comes back into the conversation. No answers.

Semester started yesterday. One rhetoric class that meets on Tuesdays and Friday. Today I have writing lab and the 'special' pronunciation group where we read dialogues. I'm not really sure if it helps improve pronunciation but it probably doesn't hurt. Plus it's kind of fun. I found a copy of Raymond Carver's short stories called What We Talk About When We Talk About Love that I've been reading on the BART train, and was thinking of using it for the pronunciation group. Pretty amazing, and also pretty bleak. Spare and unadorned. I started to write out a line from the book but then erased it thinking it wouldn't make any sense outside of the context of the story, and might make me seem like a violent misogynist. Knowing nothing about Raymond Carver other than a lot of writing is described as "Carver-esque", it's very possible that he was just that, but I refuse to read a wikipedia entry about him right now so if you know better please, with grace, allow this sentence to pass.

But mostly the stories are about sadness and relationships falling apart: affairs, sickness, disappointment, booze, violence, fathers, mothers, and divorcees. The kind of short stories, really short stories that thud with the last line and make you want to go back and re-read the details. I have to admit that it's a little hard to write at this moment. Like squeezing toothpaste out of a mangled tube. The last ten days of the break I didn't do any writing at all. On Sunday I went to see The Tree of Life, the new Terrance Malick movie that happens to have Brad Pitt in it. When I spell check Malick it suggest Metallica. Ride the lightning. But it was kind of an amazing movie. The rare movie that when somebody asks, was it good? The question doesn't really apply, because it's not really a movie. At least not in a narrative sense, though there is a narrative, but it's not really what the two some hours in the theater are about. I hate to say it but it's more like a poem than a movie.

The first five minutes are worth the price of admission and if you throw in the scene with the dinosaurs (!) you're already in the bonus land of speculative pleasure. In other movie news I also saw the movie Super 8 during the last couple weeks of the break, and I can't remember three things about it. Though I can remember two things: train crash, alien eyeball. More than that I remember how delicious the nectarine was that I ate while watching it. I'll stop there because I need to get some things together and put my socks on. The best part about this semester is that unlike last semester I have a lot of time to write. Looking forward to remembering why I do all this in the first place.

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.