Two Poems in the New Year

Quixote

My image is like that of a movie projected onto a screen in front of an audience. Behind the screen you might find a few old chairs, a mouse, and some dust. But if you watch from the front, walking towards you, admiring the distance as it closes, you might fall in love if you are a lover of movies.

**

What is the opposite of sitting in a church?

Sitting in a church
Sitting in a bar drinking a beer
Sitting in hell
Flying through hell
Sitting in a fountain eating a bird raw
Sitting in a patch of flowers

hello. long time no post. it's been busy. what is "it"? that's what i ask students in the writing lab. sometimes it's hard to tell. sometime it's the weather. it is raining. what is raining? it. it is raining. or, it has been raining here in san francisco. not hard but on and off for the last week or so. it's been cold for san francisco, dropping to the low forties at night and last week there was a few reports of a few flurries in noe valley. yours truly has been moderately warm, but it was an adjustment the first couple weeks of cold air and in addition to the feeling that i've become a weather wuss living in california. next monday i'll go to wisconsin to spend christmas with family where from what i'm told, there is a lot of snow and cold. i'm looking forward to it, for at the very least, when i get back here in late december it will feel warm.

it's been a pretty busy semester and even though i'm not going to apologize for not posting more frequently i just haven't had much time or impetus. maybe these are the waning days of this blog. maybe this will be the last post. no, but i've been busy with other things. what can i say. teaching has been relatively peaceful this semester, i've been out of town the last couple weekends seeing friends, i've also been working diligently on a kind of new manuscript for most of the semester that given the in-between semester time of january i should be able to finish and send out. i just killed a bug on my computer screen...it was about to be run over by these letters so i squashed it instead. i'm not proud of this.

over this last weekend i saw rosemary waldrop give the george oppen memorial lecture. it was fascinating! i've also been kind of morbidly fascinated by the tiger woods business, mostly because every day there is a new porn star or waitress claiming they were in love. there is a kind of interesting chit chat about the inner-lives of athletes in today's internet paper. but really, there is so much going on news wise with Afghanistan (i support more troops in the hopes of getting the Afgan government on their own feet. however, in the paper on sunday Scott Atran's dry but really interesting/helpful editorial suggests that doing less would actually do more. He writes: "In fact, it is the United States that holds today’s Taliban together." and goes on to explain this. Here is the full article.).

shamefully i admit that the nytimes is one of my only news sources asides from huffington post which i read during down time in the writing lab and the local daily and weekly newspapers here in san francisco. it's hard work to keep up on these things and if i didn't, well, i wouldn't. but i write shamefully, because yeah, the nytimes has its problems too. last week during the opening days of the Copenhagen talks when the authorities there seized a bunch of shields, steps, wirecutters (and other tools protesters were planning to use,) from a building that was specifically set aside by the authorities for the protesters to use, the times ran a picture of the stolen goods but said nothing more about it.

outside of mainstream media and whatever other tangent i was about to go off on, most of all, and the reason for writing this post, right now, today, is that i wanted to post a link to Jack Foley's radio show that he did last week about Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" (one of my favorite books). He did the show not about the movie that is has recently come out and gotten okay reviews, and i have not seen it and do not plan to, but about the book, specifically he does a Freudian analysis of it in a pretty interesting way, explains the Freudian concept of paranoia, and then read a couple passages. In a way it begins to address why popular culture is so obsessed with the end of the world these days. Here is the link, and by the way, I think it will expire in the next couple weeks so if you're interested don't delay. Have a good day and if I don't talk to you soon merry christmas or have good day off.

While preparing dinner last night (eggs with spinach, garlic, some pumpkin gnocchi that I got from Rainbow grocery) I listened to Karen Armstrong, a writer on religion, speaking on the local public radio's City Arts & Lectures series, and was supremely riveted; listening to her speak about the history of religion, laterally moving between topics such as Brahmans, printing presses, politics, and Nazis. She has a new book about that is a kind of counter argument or response to the Christopher Hitchens anti-religion writings, and after finishing dinner,and doing the dishes I sat in the dark kitchen listening while the cats did laps around my legs looking for pets.

Today on Wikipedia I gathered that she's a popular writer on religion, and there was all kinds of discussion on the back end of the article about her particular biases, tunnel vision, selective facting, and the her self-educated-ness suggesting that she is a kind of huckster. Malcolm Gladwell, similarly and more obviously a kind of huckster, on the same program about six months go was asked about the differences between popular and academic writing. He said that academic writing presents both sides of an issue with an intentions towards fairness, while popular writing has no responsibility or claim on presenting the truth. I recommend listening to this Karen Armstrong interview, not the one I heard (unfortunately City Arts & Lectures is not archived) but she touches on many of the same ideas.

In other news, a couple announcements: about twenty pages of sort of new work is out in Essays & Fictions # five. There are a couple of short essays, and a long memoir-ish piece, made up quite of few things that originally appeared on this blog, granted, they have been worked and reworked over the last couple years. The issue is available on-line for free, but I recommend the print version because the pages are bigger and is a little easier to read. Also, on the topic of me, I've added arras.net to the links on the right, Brian Kim-Stefans' site, which is chock full of just about every media you could imagine, all in the name of poetry. If you click on the video link, you will find some movies starring yours truly as well as my roommate (he's in the "vex" series). Along with lots of other funny/weird/interesting video pieces. My favorite is the one about the raviolis.

When I was in fifth grade I had a crush on another fifth grader named Erin. She had blond hair cut short, covering her ears not quite down to her neck. She was not in my class but in the one next door and I would catch glimpses of her during recess, or when our class used the computers. One day towards the end of the year, when all the fifth grade classrooms were having an open "party," I saw her dancing to the Salt n' Pepa song "Push It" and felt unsure of my affection. I actually had a crush on her since the second grade.

Soon after, in my mother's basement, I looked up her number in the phone book, finding the listing under her mother's name with the help of my friend Aric. He was more advanced than me when it came to romance, having "gone out" with multiple girls and generally, was a little more street smart. It was tense; picking up the phone, putting it back down, trying to back out, laying on the bed, hoping my mom didn't come in, pleading a little, thinking twice, doubting. Aric kept me on task.

I dialed and her mother answered. I asked for "Erin" with an E, though, having a best friend named "Aaron" with an A, I was always a little unsure how to pronounce Erin with an E, and pronounced the E with a little bit more nasally sound, as in the word "See." Whereas, normally, when pronouncing Aaron's name, I would pronounce it with an A, as in "fat." Ehir-rin vs. Air-ron. I asked: is Ehir-rin there? Her mother said yes, hold on, and in her walk to find her daughter, she jokingly proclaimed to somebody else in the room, "Is Ehir-rin here?" emphasizing the high nasally sound. I imagined a divorced mother with a single child speaking and joking with her girlfriends about the little boys calling her daughter. I imagined I was not the first to do so, and imagined a nest of women rolling their eyes at my transparent little boy-ness. When Erin came on the line, without introducing myself, I said, "You probably don't know who this is...." Aric burst out laughing and I hung up.

how Danneil Tammet (who has autism) visualizes some numbers ...seems right to me...

The Truth About The Swine Flu

I don't know the truth about the swine flu. However, I do know that last Sunday I came down with a flu that lasted throughout the week, and like most flues, there was a fever, a sweaty body, a sweaty forehead, an "ache", a sore throat, a generalized terrible feeling, one that was both existential and physical (if there's a difference), followed by low energy, a cough, green snot, and a few piles of work that were not gotten to. From what I understand, if it was the swine flu, the problem is not the flu itself but right afterwords, as one begins to feel better and resume normal activities, BAM! it hits you: bacterial infection in your upper respiratory track! And then you die and will go to either heaven, or to hell.

Part of the confusion about what that/this was, is because I did not see a doctor. A year or so ago I signed up for Healthy San Francisco, but after going to a couple appointments with what was supposed to be a steady doctor and instead was a couple disjointed appointments with interns who were leaving in six weeks, I stopped paying my premium of fifty dollars a month because, as Amy informed me, all the services that Healthy SF provides we already available to me through clinics. The only difference is that if enrolled in the program, one gets a "primary care physician", which was not working out...anyway, to make a long story short, I didn't go to see a doctor, Bought cans of soup, slept, "took care", went to work, rode the BART, and worked with students. They tell you to stay home, but I don't think too many people have that option.

Yesterday morning after taking a trip to grocery store, able enough to be out about, I spoke to my mother. She said that she had a flu a couple months ago that came and went, and came and went with other members of our family in Wisconsin, and that was that. Friend Bill had a flu about three weeks ago. My therapist told me he was going to wipe the door knob after I left his office. Friends Thom and Corrie, who I hadn't seen for a year and a half spontaneously came into town for lunch yesterday but no hugs or handshakes were exchanged. Friend Anna who just got back from a ten day meditation experienced flu like symptoms but didn't pay them much attention. She recommended that I get a neti pot to clean out my sinuses. Roommate Chris wonders out loud if he will get sick. Cats seemed to enjoy my apparent transition from human into cat, sleeping as much as possible.

This morning beginning around six the cast and crew for the television show Trauma began to appear in the park next to my apartment. By nine everybody was in their places: the camera crew, the table full of donuts, the police officer waving cars around and people through, the director and his assistant in a little black tent decked out with monitors, the rails for the camera dollies to run accross, the lights, the key grip, the sound boom, the mic director, the actors playing the heroin junkies, the actors playing the soccer players, the actors playing the homeless people, the actors playing the doctors, and the actors playing the none of the above people. Ironically, they have to kick the real heroin junkies, soccer players, and homeless people out of the park to film. One the one hand yes, the film guild people get paid, which is always good. On the other hand, somebody is getting paid to dress up a shopping cart to look like its been pushed around by a homeless can collector while there is a shopping cart of a homeless can collector just around the corner. That slight sheen of fakery we recognize while watching the television and the people in the background? Now I think I understand a little better.

For example the soccer players in the background were kicking a ball back and forth from about nine until I left for work today around one. They looked tired and a little bored. As did the actors playing chess, although they weren't actually playing chess, just sitting across from each other with a chess board in between them. Again, for four hours. Probably more. Eventually the director yelled action and the important characters (the doctors) blew through the scene, something about warning all the addicts that there's some bad heroin on the streets. My roommate and his girlfriend spent the better part of the morning throwing paper airplanes out of the window at the cast and crew. Easy targets from our apartment window. We were all a little troubled by the scene.

My roommate described it as a kind of scorched earth policy, why one needs a hundred or so highly trained professionals to shoot a totally forgettable scene for a totally forgettable medical drama. That with all those people, money and resources, we no longer have any option to fail, and in place of uncertainty we get mediocrity, pushing the creative rock half way up the hill for the imagined expectations of the imagined public and their imagined living rooms which are probably being foreclosed on as we speak. Anyway. Medical drama. Sheesh. Sorry to be ornery. I'm a bit sick, some kind of flu. Since Sunday. Halloween cometh. Today a student told me that she thought once people get married then they don't celebrate halloween. I told her it was the devil's holiday.

This morning in the news computer there was this article about the dreaded Hadron Collider that will inevitably destroy the world in late December of 2012. This is an article about a theory about why it keeps breaking down and how a couple of physicists have speculated that somehow the higgs particle is going back in time to kill the possibility of it's own existance. Here is a link to Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks" as performed on Conan O'Brien. Here is a link to Cole's "disorientation, excerpt" and thus you've now experienced the three most interesting pieces of media that I've experienced in the later half of this morning.

Earlier this morning I woke up to two doors blowing open from the wind and rain, which I've been told is a storm leftover from the Typhoon that hit Japan a couple weeks ago? It's come all the way over to California! Wow! so, it's raining and blowing outside which is nice if you're inside. It's also doing something else out there, like little gooey chunks of white ribbon but those might just be big raindrops, the kind that accumulate under eves. Anyway. Tuesday morning. Just writing to say hello.

Been reading a lot lately which has been nice. Three J.M. Coetzee books, "Elizabeth Costello", "Disgrace" and "Waiting for the Barbarians", a book of essay's by Eula Biss called "Notes from No Man's Land" which are pretty interesting essay's about race, reread "No Country For Old Men" over the weekend which I still have to say is not my favorite Cormac McCarthy book, but it was interesting to read after seeing the movie. The sherrif's monologues I couldn't help but hear Tommy Lee Jones' (why do I know all these movie stars?) voice. And finally I started the 8th part of the Language Poet's Grand Piano books but I'm pretty sure I'm only reading it because I've read the previous seven. Okay. I've got to go. Hope you're well.

This morning I noticed a large black shard in the middle of my chest. On Monday it was a deep indigo and there have been times in the past when its been an off-white. I think its made by thoughts repeating, muscles tensing in the same way in the same place, the same feeling over and over how one carries their body tension built into the shoulders or how the same part of your shoe wears out no matter what kind of shoe you wear. (In my case its the back right heel that wears from the left outside corner to the inside.)

Yesterday was the last time I will meet with editing concepts study group. Which made me a little sad and gave me the feeling that I was abandoning them, a good group a graduate students. The feeling of leaving in the middle that felt wrong, the feeling of giving up on something before it was done. The feeling that I could in fact have kept supporting the students in the class if I was a harder worker. But this is an idea I want to get away from. I dropped the support class because it met from 7 to 10 at night and was leading to a highly irregular and busy schedule. One where I had to cut out my own work in order to keep up with teaching and other duties. All that is to say when I don't get to my own work shards of various colors begin to calcify in my chest.

Sometimes I have to rely on outside sources to confidently come to conclusions and commit to a course of action. Say, when I begin to feel like I "deserve" things like a bubble bath or a punch in the nose is a sure sign that something is out of wack. If one has to go to extremes of pleasure to balance out stress, like renting a jet ski, this is one way, but I'd rather arrange the day so that it doesn't come to this point. Easier said then done but going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting to my own work is one way to do it. Another name for this kind of thinking about behavior is: MANAGEMENT

Kitty Girl and Jinx ______________________________1.3 Megapixels

...from the preface of the book "In The Blink Of An Eye", a film editing book (that I am reading for one of my support classes) by the film editor Walter Murch:

Igor Stravinsky loved expressing himself and wrote a good deal on interpretation. As he bore a volcano within him, he urged restraint. Those without even a the vestige of a volcano within them nodded in agreement, raised their baton, and observed restraint, while Stravinsky himself conducted his own Apollon Musagete [a ballet] as if it were Tchaikovsky. We who had read him listened and were astonished.
The Magic Lantern by Ingmar Bergman

Most of us are searching--consciously or unconsciously--for a degree of internal balance and harmony between ourselves and the outside world, and if we happen to become aware--like Stravinsky--of a volcano within us, we will compensate by urging restarint. By the same token, someone who bore a glacier within him might urge passionate abandon. The danger is, as Bergman points out, that a glacial personality in need of passionate abandon may read Stravinsky and apply restraint instead."

Teaching the Humanities

i.
Build a house.
Even if it's the ugliest house
you've ever seen,
build it. Later, you can tear out the windows
repaint the walls, the entrance
way, tear out the wires
and the plumbing along with
some walls to expand
the kitchen into the dining room, or
refurbish the basement with a nice
airport carpet and a
dehumidifier. You might also
haul the junk out of your yard
and fix the hail damage. Roofers
finally have time. Third,
and this is only a suggestion,
get rid of that gigantic
concrete block of a front step and replace it
with something a little more
modest, something wooden.
Stain the deck and patch the pool.
Repave the driveway.
Turn the screen porch
into a bedroom and rent
the attic out to a college student.
Install a new sink in the first
floor half bath. Modular
flooring is popular these days.
Wood burning stoves and
solar panels!!! Anyway,
Fix it up when you have time.
What's important is that you have a place
to sleep. What's important
is the space has been cleared.
a foundation poured.
What's important is that it's there, an idea
any idea, has been made
real. That the process
yields.





ii.
Not all emptiness is equal.
Some space takes work to clear and some clearings
appear, blown over
by a storm or a
flash flood, a forest fire
or tornado. Maybe a glacier melts
and the promised land emerges,
or the previous squatters
get arrested, or die
or burn the house down. It's possible
for a herd of goats
or locusts to swarm and eat every sapling,
bush, and tree branch within a forty foot radius.
Or for a mole to gnaw
at the roots of a thistle blocking the path
of a few pebbles, blocking the path
of a few rocks, blocking the path
of some large stones, so that a boulder hurtles down
the mountain leveling everything
in its path.
Volcanoes are possible.
Meteorites can raze entire
continents. Paul
Bunyan drug his axe down the gut of America
leaving us the Mississippi. In the beginning
there was but a single crow
fighting with an eagle
on a post
rising from the sea.
It's possible
to find the most perfect place
you never imagined, stoned, eating a carrot
change rattling in your pocket cell phone
set on vibrate, but who
would have the heart to start digging here?
Who would have the money to lay forty miles of pavement?
Who would have the fortitude to be so isolated?





iii.
Demolition
is fun, until you have to vacuum up
the glass and find
a dumpster big enough to hold
the spent 2x4s and bent nails.
Not to mention your mud
pit of a yard littered
with Caterpillar tracks and Hardee's cups.
It's going to take a while
for the grass seed to take root and if it keeps on raining
like this it will all just wash
down the hill. It might be a good idea
after leveling out the soil
to cover it with hay and pound
in some silt fencing
at the crease of the decline.
And hey, if you're not going to re-use
those beams, I know a guy
who could take them away tomorrow,
no problem. Same with
the front doors and the kitchen
windows. Construction waste
is as American
as drywall. The good news
is that you don't need to dig
a new well, or re-pave
the driveway. The phone book already knows
you exist. Besides, it's nearly impossible
to bang nails into air
or hike forty miles with a wheel barrow
full of concrete. It might take
a long time but
you're going to have to deal with
the fact of work. Sorry.
I'll come back
when you're done.

...have been enjoying Pitchfork's reviews (9/8 & 9/9 & 9/10) of the recently re-released/re-mastered (whatever) Beatles' albums that are being hyped in accord with the new Rock Band Video Game (no comment)...The reviews are interesting! They're more like mini-essays! Reminds me that I still haven't ever really listened to the Beatles asides from the fact that pretty much every single one of their songs has been played in movies and television and on my father's and friend's stereo throughout my entire lifespan. There was a mix tape that my dad always used to play driving us around in a boxy eighties Camry that had "Eleanor Rigby" (a.k.a. all the lonely people) on it, and as a little kid I didn't really get the lyrics but I did like the song, the strings. In retrospect it seems odd that this mix tape had this and other perfectly lovely but love troubled songs on it such as Diana Ross and the Supreames' "Someday We'll Be Together" and that Roy Orbison song where he sings (in his big beautiful voice) i'm lonely, I'm Lonely, I'M LONEEEEE-LY. Using my 2009 analytical mind I would classify this tape as a break-up sad song mix tape. Why did he keep playing this when we were in the car? Don't get me wrong, I love all that music, but if I were to make a break-up sad song mix tape I'd probably keep it mostly to myself. But I guess that's one way my dad and I are different. Anyway,

All that is to say, it's interesting to read about the Beatles' music, rather than their personalities or fans or as figureheads of an American counter-cultural movement. It's interesting to read about their albums and song writing. It's interesting to put all those familiar songs into a different context. It's kind of like putting a cat into a laundry basket, or a marble into a guitar. Have a wonderful day. I'm back on the Internet after a month off. The semester started last week.

good news. new rat discovered. reported to have "no fear of humans."

was pointed to this via pitchfork. whoa. seriously. or on the other hand...all is well in san francisco. last class is monday and school lets out wednesday. off to l.a. this weekend for johnathan's play and then to wisconsin next friday for most of the month. class has been busy but so has summer been busy too. whew.

Last Saturday on the way home from the beach we stopped at cafe just south of the De Young around 9th Ave. From the outside table we were sitting at I had a view of the a video rental store across the street. Something about it reminded me of the video rental store across from Nakoma Plaza that my Mom would take me to in middleschool to rent videogames.

I hadn't ever really remembered this common occruance before, probably because there wasn't much to remember. The store was lit overhead with flourescents and movies were displayed in rows and around the room. Pretty typical. While I would select a game my Mom sat out in the car waiting. Doing what I don't know. Sometimes, I remembered, I would take an extraordinarily long time to select a game and I imagined that my mother must of been proud of my throuroughness because she never said anything to me about taking too long. What a wondeful and patient mother I have, feeling proud in my cafe chair.

Today I called her in part to confirm this memory. I asked about the waiting but she didn't remember. In fact, the only thing she remembered was how quick I was to select a game, that "with all those video game magazines, you seemed to always know what you wanted."

**

The assistant teacher said to me, "Intelligence is like the camel's nose under the tentNo (a brief pause in thought) no. Intelligence is like the thin edge of a wedge, it pries the door open but that's just a start."

**me and the boys

the image on the far right is BEES. that was a grammatically correct sentence. it's hot out, saturday. pride weekend in san francisco. its the first weekend i've had off for about a month, enabling me to catch up on things like this blog, eating an omlet, making computer music, sweeping, talking on the phone, going over student work, watching a semi-corny but amazingly drawn/gestured anime called "the place promised in our early days", taking a shower, hanging out with bill in the secret kaiser garden roof top, watching cats sleep, listening to bill callahan and the second to last song on the david pajo covers misfits songs album, renting bolt but not actually watching it yet. so far so good.

the second week of school ends and the third begins. three hours is just a little bit too long for an english class. "pad it" johnathan suggests. its nice to come back to work and to have work for all of july, not enough at the moment with 15 hours in class and needing 22~ at the academy's pay rate to really make ends meet, to preserve my luxurious lifestyle. one dollar and eighty cents a can for all tuna cat food. would like to go see the movie named moon.niece beatrix on the left. on the right the beautiful boats my brother built for the wedding. a marvelous time, busy for most of it but got time to relax. the back of the uhaul with knight standing in the center. brother and i drove that sucker to brooklyn. 18 ft. it was hard to park. hard to drive sort of, big to drive more like it. we also loaded the docks into the uhaul .rained on the wedding day. am told this is good luck. more like torrential down pore on the wedding day, or at least during the ceremony. cleared up at night. on sunday people took boat rides. buttermilk falls...kind of yellow. saw all family, many of brother's friends, met some of lindsay's friends and family. sister and i gave a toast, we were nervous; aunt gave a really nice toast, very smart and moving, honest. much love at the wedding. did not make me want to get married or have a wedding. bill callahan sings: if...if...if you...if you could...if i could only...if you could only stop...if you could only stop your...if you could only stop your heart...if you could only stop your heart beat...if you could only stop your heart beat for...if you could only stop your heart beat for one heart...if you could only stop your heart beat for one heart beat. strings. end of song. too many birds. okay. now off to school work. see you around.