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

_

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

_

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

_

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

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

Poetry Is a Destructive Force

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

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

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

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

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

-Wallace Stevens, "Parts of a World"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Student BODY IN CONTRAST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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