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

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

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

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

The Student BODY IN CONTRAST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Selected Memories

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

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

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