the last day of the year and i spent it working with j and damien on an old victorian on the east side of madison mixed sand in with primer and prepared new walls to match the old walls while they installed a floor where a bathtub will one day sit it was exhausting having not done a day like that for a while afterwords i napped had a cup of tea and will go out and have dinner with an old friend and some new ones at a sushi restaurant but may not go out with the crew for the gigantic count down not because its a bummer but because of todays work and have secretly been hoping to not celebrate new years waiting for an excuse for a number of years which is funny as it used to be my favorite holiday going out with friends and most certainly getting drunk and doing funny drunk things but those guys aren't here tonight and really what else is there to do once all that has been done not that there's a reason to move on but i just don't feel like it and that will have to be okay and i'll see what it feels like to not celebrate new years in grand fashion and then we can compare draw up some charts take notes and consult the experts i mean stars for how next year will turn out if next year will turn out not to rub anything in but i did see that movie i am legend and that movie no country for old men and that movie blade runner on the other hand i did see that movie juno and somebody asked me what i do for fun the other day and i answered that i watch movies which makes my answer half true more like something to do and when noticing this and then in choosing not to noticing a thud like a sack of old letters falling to the bottom of an elevator shaft, listening, and then reporting back

It's awesome: sitting in the guestroom of my parents' house, reading and writing under the warmth of a wool blanket. It snowed all day yesterday but today its just overcast. It. The weather. Things happening. Last night I went out with some old friends and a new one, and drank more than I meant to. It wasn't bad, but the same thing happened two night previous. Today I got a pair of shoes with my brother and a friend, and we ate lunch near the shoe store and talked about things German, a few movies, and sort of watched the Badger game on television. They won. Hooray. There is a month and a couple weeks between classes and I'll be here until the 15th, working with my step-dad and crew on an old Victorian house on the east side. I'll start Monday, and then New Years and then a couple weeks work and then back to Oakland. I'm thinking too much about what is okay to write and what isn't. Sticking to one topic or writing tangentially. Forgetting how to write, or how I wrote previously for this blog. What worked. Have been writing a lot in notebooks, but maybe that is a different kind of writing. Forgetting. Always a beginning. Tomorrow I'll drive up to Menasha to see and old friend and his new baby. Yesterday I dropped Amy off at the bus station.

Sitting at work is this work I'm thinking speaking lab speaking lab speaking lab where the students come and sit and we talk maybe work on pronunciation issues or simply work on fluency or work hardly at all just talk just practice talking and this is helpful we think they think somebody thinks this is helpful who keeps coming here but nobody thinks this is helpful right now as I am here alone not lonely because I have you but am alone no appointment: a ticking clock that reads 3:58. A Korean fan pinned on the wall. A hot room, an open door, a hallway. A restroom door that people come and go from. We are on the first floor but there are no windows. In a half hour a student will come give me a presentation and I will give them feedback. I received a note on my door today. It reads: Hi Tyler. This is A____ who used to attend your conversation group 6:30 on Monday! I just wanted to say Thank you and Merry Christmas!! (I can't come today group cause I have an appointment). End of note.

Earlier this year I met a Marine and we talked about weakness. That the boot camp instructors’ job is not to teach specifics, but to weed the weak out of the group, those who can’t be counted on when the situation intensifies. It made me think if I would be weeded out, and just now, it makes me think of teaching: how a portion of students will decide a given subject is not for them, and the teacher might decide a given student isn’t going to make it. No hard feelings. One of the loneliest things I’ve ever heard were the long-distance phone conversations of an old roommate, a Marine, speaking in loud, halting English to a Filipino woman he hoped to marry. She couldn’t understand a word he was saying.

On my way back from the corner store a man stopped me to say that hands in pockets are a sign of sexual frustration. I took my hands out of my pockets and continued walking down the street. He walked with me, telling me that despite the fact that we was in his late thirties, young girls were still attracted to him. And he was tired of it. I looked at him. A clean dark sweater and some jeans. His eyes were yellowed and his breath stank. He asked to see my hands. “Yep,” he said, “stay off the…”

“drugs?” I suggested. “The Internet.” he finished, and we parted.

border="0", is what it says every time I open a window for a new post. I've been deleting it but I wanted to show you, my friend, that it says border= "0" and what this feels like exactly. Do you have the feeling? Good. It's a sunny but kind of a chilly day in Oakland, and I say that knowing that California has made me weak. I no longer understand what cold means. I was working on things I found in my notebook this morning and had posted a couple but then removed them because it didn't feel quite right. Plus, the person who commented anonymously three postings ago kind of freaked me out due to my inability to receive compliments and my trouble with the word 'genius' so instead of rising to that challenge I'll just ramble on to fill the space so that posting gets far away from the first thing as possible. These are the kinds of problems that come up once the empire gets established: maintaining its borders. Of course I could just erase the compliment but that seems unfair. "One confides in what has no concealed creator" writes Wallace Stevens, and that seems like a reasonable policy to me. In other news I had a good if unusual weekend hanging out with two factions of friends, and spending most of Sunday doing absolutely nothing. It was different and feel like I'm in some kind of alternative head space in that it doesn't feel muddled like it usually does on Monday. I'm thinking of eating a can of chili. This is the kind clarity that comes with striking out of the usual. Also, we got a Christmas tree that is still alive I mean growing in a pot. It's nice and small. A fir but I'm not sure what kind of fir. Maybe its a spruce and they lied to us, but I think its a fir. I'm coming to realize that its a good idea to set aside time to do what I want to do, and sticking to that schedule. In the past I've believed myself to be enormously flexible and okay with whatever. Unfortunately this wasn't true at all. Amy compared my lack of plant watering to a boy who got bored with his pet turtle. Charles Schultz is quoted as saying "It took me a long time to become a human being."

One day lighting off bottle rockets with my brother, we went back inside to watch to TV to be alerted by our baby sitter that the field behind the house was on fire. Luckily she knew what to do, and equipped us with wet rags and a bucket filled with water. We ran out and wapped the flames down. This was one time. Another time we lit a field on fire on accident and scorched fifteen feet of fence. Another time we accidentally burnt down the large hollow tree adjacent to our house. Fireworks are wasted in the day.

I am consciously shutting off my mechanisms of openness because I find it difficult to depend on others to support me. That, and it’s not working, especially now when I’ve lost my rudder and am starting to notice real world manifestations of my own passivity.

I worry that some person who I used to be is dying, some sweet open guy having a difficult time finding his way. Maybe if his luck had been better he would have found the necessary community to embrace him and take care of him in a meaningful way.

Instead we get bitterness the outcome of failed expectations but there is more to it than that, that a construct of some aspect of personality, once uncovered, must be changed in order to avoid excessive self-consciousness; in the name of perseverance and adaptation.

If what is really there is unchanging, some idea of movement or the sudden stillness that attention brings, ideas of who and what don’t matter. That willful naivete is actually harmful past a certain point, and though we like to be reminded of children

and the unspoiled mind, it’s important to consider that time goes on. In eastern philosophy this seems to be one aspect of life that is portrayed much more successfully than in western philosophy; the spring pond and the moon rising, the long winter in a single sentence.

Can you believe I spend my time doing this stuff? It's hard to believe November anything. A true voice like a true conviction calling and maybe calling back when I get a moment can you hold this please? Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and this is hardly bearable with the turkey and all that stuff. If everybody had a Thanksgiving could we change the world one thanksgiving at a household per capita millions? Tomorrow we'll go down to Joel's down there in San Luis I'm afraid to spell Obispo wrong but will go ahead. Amy is making some kind of c/kale? dish and I'm making a key lime pie. Maybe two. They're good. My mom makes them. Yesterday I bought plane tickets to go to Wisconsin for my/our families central holiday. It's a big deal. Sometimes I think I'd like to get out of it but know if that happened I'd regret it. Something Cheer. But its been a busy semester and am glad for the break, even if it's just a couple days. Finally we are done with the argumentative essay so we can move on to less judgmental kinds of works. If the glove doesn't fit you must acquit. These kinds of messages. But instead we move on to the "feature story" which is a little bit more wide open to interpretation as long as its interesting to read. Who am I to be the judge of that. In other news, the cats are laid out by the radiator. Kitty Girl is sick with something (keeps throwing up, coughing) and I'm going to take her in to the vet today. Plagued by guilt, the other one has been acting strangely, barging onto our pillows at ungodly hours and meowing loudly. I've been waking up really early for some reason. Had a dream about the cat eating a cockroach two nights ago. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Lotus Rhizome

I look for an authority and find none. A true conviction, as if writing is your middle name, contentment, and leaving behind old habits. Still, we insist that I work. Floating just above the water, above the unpotable murk; lotus seeds, or nuts, can be eaten raw or popped like corn, boiled down in a paste and when combined with sugar made into delicious pastries.

Canada

Where is your family? On the porch
talking.
The neighbors, they said
it’ll rain tonight. We
sat and had drinks, all of us
free.

On the edge of the bed
the day is getting on. It hasn’t yet
rained, but it will
I believe, and soon it will be
time for dinner.

Since the days of my middle life
I was deeply devoted to Tao.
Recently I came to live
in the mountains of Chung-nan.
Oftentimes--with joy in my heart--
Alone, I roam here and there.
It is a wonderful thing
That I am aware of myself.
When the streamlet ends my trip
I settle down and catch
The moment of rising mists.
Now and then I meet
A furrowed dweller of the woods.
We chat and laugh;
Never do we want to go home.

-Wang Wei

**

When it was dark, I reached the village of Shih-hao.
Late at night an officer came to recruit men.
The old man in the house climbed over the wall and fled.
The old woman opened the door.
How the angry officer was raging!
How bitterly the woman was crying!
I heard what the old woman said:
"I had three sons for the defense of the City of Yeh.
Only one of them sent me a letter.
The other two boys were killed in battle.
The one who remained may not live long.
The dead are gone forever.
There are no more men in the house
Except my grandson who is still fed on milk.
Because of him his mother stays with us.
However, she has no whole skirt to go out.
Although I am old and have no strength,
Let me go with you, officer,
To immediately answer the urgent call from Ho-yang.
At least I can do some cooking for the soldiers."
Later in the night their conversation stopped.
What I heard was something like sobbing.
At daybreak I started out again on my journey.
I could only say "Good-bye" to the old man.

-Tu Fu


**
These poems were taken from "Creativity and Taoism" by Chang Chung-yuan

earlier in the day cats recognized dogs as heroic figures matter put into their own hands like chefs at a rodeo wandering between fences and dirt ball clowns trying to pull one over the bull riders and friends of the bull riders otherwise known as the blue riders in german expressionist talk the wiggle puppies or the fun buddies a lamp with no light bulb as good as a grey goose a hedge fund prepaid and ready to matriculate and ten other way to name your baby circa field 1937 the plains spread out before the paupers and home rehabilitation projects as seen on tv the teeth puncturing an already raw wound no money to brittney spears commercial clad all wheel drive muck a luck tee pee wendigo tank track but a rolled out new line of far superior soap stone products a massive surge of energy building and bludgeoning the work release program circa cricket teams massively over wrought metal sculptures and our dreams yes our dreams to be corporate sculptors making large aluminum waste products for us to walk around and seemingly to bother us not to make sense but pulmonary fibrosis circumstantial message to god reads if he did it hello of course he hates me hats off to the victor and motorolla deluxe reference book editions of limited leather bound tooth detectors and detective wandering between missile silos looking for monographed copies of not one weasel court but four seventy three hoboken avenue nobody saw us pick a new renegade cop blaster give it some time he'll come around said the most of the hosts brain wave usually after so much blah blah i'll come around and say something some clarification of perspective and where the meteorite originated from but instead halle bop i waited on the roof for aliens in the summer of eighty three barely old enough to talk or formulate thoughts like mostly we've lost our nerve and other barely legible wanton plus weight hold overs um yeah i'm just tired barely keeping me eyes open but will sit up a little for a drink water

Today I got a text message asking "why no blog, dog?" and I replied "time and materials" which maybe seems like a very text messagey kind of exchange but I think the question is a good one and not that I'm going to attempt to explain anything because that would be a strike against our good judgment but for the last fifteen minutes my thumb has been twitching. Have you ever had a twitching thumb? I don't know what it means but I'll proceed to diagram my day spent morning early got up at seven put on shirt/shoes/packed bag and went to get into the car pool which worked it's quite remarkable I think the carpool system here in the bay area where strangers will drive you free of charge over the bridge which is faster and cheaper than any other form of transportation and they do it because it's much much faster like today where the highway was backed up for miles and the carpool lane was kind of backed up but not nearly as bad as the rest of the lanes regardless we got there alright and was dropped off at the curb of 1st and Harrison from an Audi A5 the man was listening to some kind of christian music which wasn't as bad as it sounds, probably, regardless I went and spent the next three hours in the speaking lab helping some international students mostly Koreans mind their upcoming presentations and talked about cats and dogs and then took a break where I ate a bag of chips then onto the writing lab where I helped more international students with some writing issues, two essays and an autobiography three hours later I waited an hour then met with the philosophy study group where I helped one student from Jordan work on his essay and then that was it I came home. It's been a while since I've touched the blog because I like to think I've been so busy but I'm not sure that's it. After all those little story posts I sort of got confused as to why I was writing thinking that my job was to write little stories and when I didn't have any little stories to tell I didn't have a job to do but that's not true I'll just post whatever no pressure but really I've been quite stressed out with school that is teaching this semester which is strange because you'd think that after a couple semesters it would get easier and maybe it has but instead it feels harder the ties that bind solidifying and this is what is difficult for me staying on one thing and instead of expanding horizontally from place to place getting a little bit of everything instead its concentrating on one thing and sticking with it that is difficult I think that is maybe what has happened this semester the long term possibility manifesting itself in the form of relationships with co-workers and students that necessarily move past the passing through stage and the conversations need to progress I mean you can only ask someone where they're from a couple times before its necessary to talk about something else like the increasingly complex web of expectations built up from repeated interactions and alarmingly enough the possibility that people can know you.