"Idea City" 2005, acrylic on wood and then some Photoshop. Click to enlarge.

In the Fall of 2005 I was working on a house that sat across from Van Hise Elementery and Middle school. Everyday at around 7:30 the little children would line up to be let in. Soon they would be bored to tears and looking forward to recess. Meanwhile, I painted the house. The above painting is made out of the negative shapes cut from primer applied just above the garage. I took a picture of each square, so as , , x38. Then took Photoshop and got rid of the white and then began to play around with the shaggy red squares. I wasn't about to write any of this before my roommate walked in and said:"you should tell the story of how you made it."

Yesterday the MacArthur grant winners were revealed. David Simon, the guy who made The Wire and Treme, amongst other things, got one. If you follow the link you'll find a little video interview with each winner. Mr. Simon's is particularly interesting to me because The Wire taught me more about how the world (or at least the US) works than most anything. In the video he speaks about moving from journalism into TV producing (when newspapers started to go bad in the mid 90's), and that he basically does the same thing in television that he used to do in op-ed journalism, that is, making arguments. Which is a helpful way to think of The Wire; as an argument rather than a drama. That the "Dickensian" nature of the characters was actually a side effect of the ideas in play. By that I mean each season targets a particular area and makes a case for how, in general, the US is no longer concerned with dreaming and progressing as a unified group, and instead is splintering into factions of small groups out for themselves. "The end of empire," as Mr. Simon calls it, and we're steeling ourselves for famine.

On a sad note, RIP Michael Gizzi, a poet and one of my teachers in graduate school, has died. He was one of the warmest parts of a particularly cold two years in Rhode Island. He stood in for CD a few times in workshop, and I took a class on improvisational writing with him. He was always supportive of me and my work, and was one of my favorite people at Brown. He will be missed.

It's hot in San Francisco. It's been hot in San Francisco, since Thursday. In class on Thursday the thermostat read 83 degrees. Each student wore a unique expression of misery as we talked about "On the Function of the Line" an essay by Denise Levertov, an amazingly useful piece of theory, explaining what line breaks do for our reading of poetry and discussing closed and open forms. If that doesn't sound exciting to you than imagine talking about those things in a hot and stuffy tiny room. It didn't work. Misery in the body does not lead to much. We moved to another room.

I read some memoirs for the persuasive writing class on Saturday morning, which is unusual because I try to put off reading papers for as long as possible, a job that doesn't take that long but the constant judgment (do more of this, do less of this) is draining in a particular way. It would be nice if teaching didn't require that the teachers evaluate the students but I'm not sure it's called teaching if you take that part of out of it. That's more like an after school club. "There are no wrong answers." Nobody likes to hear that from a teacher. Anyway, it's hot. The cats are really slow. Slow hot cats baking in the sun. Later on Saturday I helped C move for the second time in six weeks. The upshot of that is that six weeks isn't a lot of time to acquire much stuff, like a leather couch or an entertainment center.

At night we to see Mt. Kimbie play with Bill and three hundred other people that I had never seen before in my life. It was strange. Maybe walking down Valencia, sitting in Dolores, biking downtown, tooling around the city, people generally look familiar, like, mission hipsters or business downtowners. At da club I didn't recognize anybody. Of course it was fun. Mt. Kimbie was a little dissapointing as the sound was all booty bass, but the Brit DJ Mary Anne Hobbs that played before them played records that sounded really good. Real deal dub-step and goofy noisy reggae and hip-hop from the UK. Really loud. It's supposed to be hot all week. Happy Fall.

See It Say It

We wandered around the parking lot driving around pop cans and donut boxes. If you're good at your job you can kick the bottom of the door or bang the top of the VCR. The earth spins in silence. Another reason why we won't worry ourselves to sleep or rock the vote or nothing or just forget it. The void of voidness through indiscretion. We're always wandering around slapping each other on the back collars wider than ever we walk around the gap slowly, replacing batteries and new shoes with mud and raindrops, running through channels and grooves. No puddles, but a red bell of fire reflected in mud.

Self-Love

One thing I like about myself
is that I'm lonely.
It allows for a particular distance,
an industry insider whose views
are shared, nodding around the conference table
or a poet's poet. Each
idea, when I'm alone, is singular
and perfect.

Yesterday I learned a couple things. Number 1: a "bit" is in reference to the number of shades that a computer is capable of displaying color in. For example if you have "red" being displayed in 16-bit there are 65, 536 shades of that red available. If it's 8-bit, there are only 256 shades of that red available. Why is this important to me? Because growing up my brother and I played the Sega Genesis and in raised silvery letters on the surface of the console was the mysterious phrase: 16-Bit. I've wondered what that meant for twenty years and now I know. So now when that skinny guy in a tunic kicks the stones and a blue orb floats out and he eats it and turns into a werewolf capable of shooting fireballs at the undead rising from ruins of ancient Greece, I know that there are 65, 536 possibilities to render the color of his eyes, and the whites of his eyes.

I could of looked the information up on Wikipedia but as you can see it's not all that helpful. People talking is helpful. You can see their lips moving and things come out of their mouths and bodies. Their hands move, they erase things with their fingers and when a students ask questions things come out like spit and sound and heat and words. So, 16-Bit and more, from supporting a digital photography class on Tuesday mornings. I also learned things like what the f-stop is on a camera, ISO, shutter speed, depth of field, "opening up", "closing down", and how this stuff actually impacts what a shot looks like. It made me want to take out my dad's old camera and put some film in it and there lies the problem: what would I take pictures of?

The second thing I learned yesterday I can't remember. But, something I learned last week about dyslexia, how research done in the last ten years has determined that dyslexia might actually be rooted in how our auditory systems processes sound, that certain people have trouble hearing certain sounds, and therefore the spelling and reading of words comes off as an unsolvable mystery, one where there aren't enough clues to make a confident guess. For some a big old psychological block pops up, where it seems like written language is magic, a logic beyond comprehension that leads to a certain hopelessness and a diagnosis, at the very best. All this because yesterday I lead three pronunciation workshops where we work on pulling apart how English and the American accent works. It's pretty interesting. Like how the most common vowel sound in American English is the 'uh' as in 'bus', or more commonly, "Uhhh. I don't know."

Where were we? In bed my brother called me in the morning no my sister called me no Emily called me in the late morning we were sleeping. I wasn't sleeping I was awake, getting up to go to work on the tip the steady tip of BCT Printing the business card delivery place a good summer but it was fall I was dating Toshiko and woke up at her apartment the sick sweaty sleep that we were so fond of but I secretly despised a smell that was unusual a smell that I have never smelled before and never smelled since but it was the combination of our flesh the combination of our sweat and we were sleeping through. If the planes hit at 9 o'clock it was six o'clock in Seattle and there was no wake up call she was not from around there or here but at least she had a television and at least she had a good time in Seattle before she went back to Japan I miss her, but alas time is short I write but not enough the world is a short course timing meter jump shot course and I was awake by nine thirty and oblivious to the pull of the world in that apartment and Emily she called and I answered the call a great sweeping gesture the greatest love of all and I scrambled to listen to the radio in my dingy apartment and tune in and called her and turned her on and called her to tell her to turn on the television and the weight of a thousand dollops and the third generation of whiners and the beginning and the end and the start of the news coverage and the war on terror and the president speaking and the wails of people and that evening I went over to Joel's apartment to watch the footage on television and even on that day we were complaining about how often they showed it over and over again and over again.

From Today's Paper. Happy Ramadan.

Sitting down at my desk after a long nap. Usually on Tuesdays I'll support a digital photography class in the morning, eat lunch, do a shift in the speaking lab, maybe run a study group, and go home. A full day, but today it was a half day. After the support class I wandered over to the new ESL building, or set up, or get up, which is now located in an office that used to be a start up, so it's all nice and new and open and fancy and is totally consolidated, along with student services and tutoring. It's kind of awesome to have everybody in one place, which is unusual for a school that is spread out across the city, the biggest private land holder in the city of San Francisco yet not one of the buildings is next to another and the dream of a centralized campus and the community it would instantly create is a long ways off. At least a few of the departments are together.

I wandered up to see where the writing lab was for my shifts starting on Thursday, randomly ran into Scott who taught me easy grade pro, saw Sarah, Bob, George, etc. half of everybody who works there and ended up spending an hour an a half at "work." Which before everybody was in the same place was physically impossible. Though now that it's a wide open office I wonder if the social-ness will get in the way of work. I long for any office or a similar set up in the Liberal Arts department but that's not going to happen so never mind. It's windy out. Summer is over according to the calender and the weather and the media. It's kind of a confusing time for me at the moment, coming back from travels and not in any kind of creative rhythm, social rhythm, work rhythm etc. and in addition I'm falling into somebody so that also takes me away from this kind of thing, sitting in front of my computer and thinking out loud. Plus it's just confusing, trying to keep track of myself and be charming at the same time. "Just be yourself." Exactly. Excitement as a smoke machine and being happy on my own. It's much much easier. Case in point.

This summer was pretty great. Very productive and relaxing. I wrote a chapbook that given a little more revision and adding in a few more pieces will mean I actually have something to show for it. By it I mean summer. Which is over. Begin again. The lamp post shaking in the wind. Kitty girl has been insane since I got back from traveling, puking and full of anxiety. I finished the second book of The Hunger Games and am trying to figure out a way to get the third one for cheap. In technology news I have been given access to Google's new App creation software so I'm excited to get it working and start in on a few ideas I've had. That, writing, music projects to finish but the second main event this Fall is going to be residency and grant applications. I'd like to take next year off. A sabbatical. I say that every year. Every ear. Nary a dry eye in the house. Shaky trees and the kind out side. I've quit smoking habitually though not situationally which maybe means I haven't quit smoking. I like ice cream.

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Happy Labor Day! Every store I walked past today was open. Happy Labor Day!

Does what we put inside of us affect what comes out? Is it e-ffect as opposed to a-ffect? I will not indulge my second guesser. I'm stalling. The plan was to write a list of everything I can remember from the last seven days, three in Kentucky four in Madison, but I ate at the A & W in the Minneapolis airport and am wondering if my recall will be colored by cheeseburger. One of the best things about airports, fast food restaurants, and combinations of airports and fast food restaurants is their guaranteed anonymity. The lack of context and expectations that come with context. I don't feel bad about eating fast food in airports because nobody I know will see me: no expectations. Unlike a trip to see family and old friends, old palaces and old restaurants. For the first time I wondered if the squash curry I love at the Vientiane Palace in Madison contains MSG.

In Kentucky spent a lot of time with Uncle Jim. Do I capitalize Uncle? He gave me two hats and cousin David let me take a third. After a day with Jim the rest of my family sans elders came: brother, in-law, sister, niece and we stayed at my great Aunt Jean's house who died last last January but the house hasn't sold yet. My two point five year old nicece fell in the pool behind the house by accident, was quickly scooped out, but she had a nightmare that night and told her dad when she woke up, "swimming pools are for grown-ups." Three days of donuts, second cousin Emily's soccer game, chicken salad, a trip to Wal-Mart, swimming, heat, crossword puzzles, Jim's eye, a mammoth's tooth, napping w/my brother, time-zone adjustment, Ebay, that chair made out of horns, a picture of Peanut, and Beatrix and Zane squealing together on the sideline.

On Friday I flew out of Lexington to Detroit, and then on to Madison. J made Pizza. On Saturday I went with my mom up to the horse ranch and brushed her horse Oliver. Also learned how to walk behind a horse before I left and went up to visit my dad at Clearview, where he was sitting in a chair. I spoke with one of the younger caretakers. She was cute but her heavy eye make-up scared me a little. She asked if my dad was a photographer. I said yes, back in the day. I told her about his history in Southern Wisconsin care facilities over the last seven years. It was her fourth month on the job. I wanted to speak to the head nurse about his fever two weeks ago but she wasn't there. I told my dad I would come back on Tuesday, which is kind of like telling myself. I left to go pick up my mom from the horse ranch.

I was depressed the rest of the day. That night I sat with Anna and Kwame by the lake. At this point this blog posting is getting a little long so I will speed it up. On Sunday I went out to Mineral Point to visit Ted as well as Joe and Christy, who were firing the kiln (i'm in the blue hat looking into a fiery little hole). That was probably the most exciting part of my trip. Went to bed early and did school work on Monday, saw my step-brother, and hung out with Nate and Megan in their last pre-Phd moments. There's more but I need to go to bed because I have to get up and finish planning for tomorrow's class. In transit I started reading "The Hunger Games" trilogy which is pretty fun to read, if you're looking for young adult science fiction. to read on an airplane and at your parents house. I will leave you with this image from today's edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Back home after an insane weekend with old friends a couple hours north in a rented house on a Point Reyes ranch. I can't stop crying, not from sadness but as a result of my depressed and abused system. Twenty minutes after leaving the ranch I vomited four times out the left passenger door. Relapse and recovery. On the brighter side, friend Cole came in early last week and we toured the city on bike. We looked at art and ate burritos, talked about music and went to a Kurosawa movie, met up with friends and went grocery shopping. On Thursday more friends came in then on Friday we went up to the ranch. So beautiful and calm. Sheep and a swampy pond. Home to the Strauss creamery, which happens to make my favorite yogurt and we ate dinner. Joked and made jokes, smoked cigarettes and drank. On Saturday we went hiking up to Bass lake and beyond to a water fall by the beach. Followed by drinking. Followed by multiple layers of hangover. I wouldn't have it any other way, but only once a year.

Tomorrow I leave for Kentucky to see my uncle, cousins, second cousins, brother, sister, brother-in-law, and niece. On Friday I leave from Kentucky to go up to Wisconsin to see mother, step-father, aunt, aunt's wife, step-brother, old friends, and my dad. I'll have four full days so it's not much time but enough. I come back here a week from Wednesday and start school on Thursday. Much to do today to get ready to go and be gone and be ready to come back. Unlike last week I will have my computer and will be in touch. In the meantime, here's a Kimiko Hahn poem from the June issue of Harper's. I found it on a scrap torn from the magazine while cleaning out my bag this morning:

Xenicus Longipes

The four known species of bush wren in New Zealand
are, by now, endangered or extinct.
Possessing trifling tails and wings, none fly far—
instead they hop and dart
in whatever undergrowth scrapes the landscape.
Those on Cook Strait's margin of rock
entirely lost the capacity for flight
and in 1894 were destroyed not by farmers,
hunters, pet traders, rats, disease,
natural disaster or want of food—
but by Tibble, the lighthouse keeper's cat.
Oh, what we think we need to survive kills others:
I have consuming need for my beloved, he knows—
and I hope he is not sorry.

3 Reasons to Write

Missing hearing the sound of English and reading, sitting up in the room drawing, but more importantly the realization that my Japanese professors didn't read the papers I wrote, I started writing about ridiculous things, Haiku and moon men for poetry class, urinating in the alleyways for a class on Japanese law. It was so easy to write what I was interested in, rather than force my words into imagined expectations. Wow. It blew my mind, the idea to write whatever I want to write, and the discovery that there lots of things to write.

__"In the first half of the poem, I said that our school had the finest teachers there ever were. And in the latter half, I said our class was the greatest class ever graduated. So at graduation, when I read the poem, naturally everybody applauded loudly."
__"That was the way I began to write poetry." Langston Hughes,
_____________________________________-The Big Sea

Morning in San Francisco. I've been dreaming of acid reflux, the feeling I get when failure appears. Dreaming dreaming dreaming. I dreamt I had no Christmas presents to give. I dreamt of fighting with students. For a while, two weeks ago I dreamt of things bigger than myself I dreamt I kept moving, not giving up like Senator Joe Biden or the McCain campaign.

Update on Sunday's post / sick and dying news: they gave him anti-biotics and attribute these to knocking out the bacterial infection, thereby the fever and thereby he's able to ingest liquids and food again because he is able to swallow. It is relieving to hear this though it only puts off the inevitable. "Of two minds," whether to keep him going or let him go. I feel relieved because I don't have to think about it anymore today. I feel embarrassed, amongst some, because I was so upset over the weekend.

One of the hard to explain realities about Pick's disease is the on-going, non-finite nature of disintegration, and his now, 5 year long stasis in a vegetable like state. It's been almost twelve years since diagnosis. On average, when a person is diagnosed with a form of dementia they live seven more years. It's been almost twelve since he was diagnosed. How does one die from dementia? Usually from a bacterial infection, like pneumonia, which the body is unable to fight off because parts of the immune system have shut down. Or the brain eventually loses its basic motor functions, like that of swallowing. Because he was relatively young upon diagnosis, and because of the nature of Pick's disease, attacking some different parts of the brain than say, Alzheimer's, he manages to keep going.

Part of me is proud of this kind of fortitude, the idea that I'm descended from these genes, the kind that fight with other patients and try to escape from institutions. The rebellious and difficult kind. Another part of me would like for the ambiguity of his situation to be over. It's a sunny day in SF. It's been getting incrementally warmer over the last four days. On Saturday I saw the movie "Inception" alone, at ten in morning. I highly recommend this as a way to see movies. I thought it was pretty good. Smart and well made and beautiful. In the afternoon I spent time with a friend who has gone though similar situations as the one with my dad. Nothing feels better than being understood.

On Friday morning my sister called and told me that that the care facility in central Wisconsin had called to tell her that my father had gotten a fever and had lost his ability to swallow. How the two problems relate to each other I don't know. The question my sister had for me, and my brother who she called just before, was the question of giving approval or disapproval for a feeder tube. We unanimously said "No. There's no point to keeping him alive in the condition he's in." His main nurse was off for the weekend so they said let's wait and see. Maybe the fever will pass and he'll get his swallow back. On Saturday night my sister wrote an email reporting that my dad had swallowed around 340 ccs of liquid. We'll know more on Monday when the nurse comes back. It's been a difficult weekend.

Karma

I sat with my brain dead father in the crazy ward, and got up to leave not wanting to be there any longer. I asked my mother if she hurt herself.

I went to Sunday School to get out of church.

Jerry and I picked Kurt up from the bottom of the stairs and set him in a chair.

I let the student fail.

"I'm tired of feeling superior to other people."

One student gave a proposal presentation yesterday that involved distributing a Whopper and speaking in front of a giant American flag. He advocated handing out MREs (meals ready to eat, standard military issue) instead of welfare payments that could be abused. Another student used pictures of the class, including me, from our visit to the SF Public Library, and placed thought bubbles coming out of our mouths with captions such as "Weed!" and "300! Go Spartans!" My caption had me referring to my students as my "sons." She also included a picture of herself in her power point presentation, and bullet points listing her traits including "worked in the video game industry" and "beautiful." It was one of the better presentations.

This 202 section has been great, very laid back and fun to be with. Even better, all of them noticeably improved as writers, or at least improved as far as writing the way I advocate. Thier papers and arguments came out: maybe Esperanto is the only second language anybody needs to learn. Maybe I will support Prop. 18. Maybe we should put a finger print reader on video game consoles. Maybe we should have a mandatory two year conscription policy. Maybe vocational programs in high school should be prioritized. Maybe we should promote morally responsible television programming. Maybe this experience off sets the terrible section I had over the spring semester. Maybe I'll put off grading papers and doing final grades.

*

It's difficult to say goodbye. The end of a class always makes me a little bit sad, and a because I'm holding back; a little bit awkward. This awkwardness leads to paranoia, and all of a sudden I'm interpreting the statement "the child's face is pure but in fact they are lying to their mother" and its accompanying visual argument to be about my secret life as a scuz bucket. Sad feelings mutating into strange, self-centered thoughts. The question is to embrace the sentimentality or avoid it. Either way, the end of class is an odd mix of relief and apologies. Maybe it's just difficult to accept the end of anything. And yet, I'm still here, regardless of whether I accept it or not. "It's always the same damn day." And I mean that in a good way.

This weekend I helped C the subletter move some of her things into her new place in preperation for C the roommate's return this evening. The cats have been confused all summer long. It's been cold. They're used to it. Bothways. All the moving around inspired me to reorganize my room, which makes it sound like I'm thirteen, so maybe I'll call it my space which is a little bit more sophisticated but again takes us back to something else. It's not my apartment so I can't call it that. I got it: my bedroom, which isn't exactly true, since my bed is in the closet, but it's close enough. My office / sitting room / cat palace. Who cares. Anyway, I moved stuff around from four in the afternoon on Saturday until two o'clock in the afternoon the next day.

It was a total waste of time. Friend S suggested that it was theraputic in the sense that it fulfilled a need to destroy something. Mm. Maybe. But I pretty much put everything back where I found it, coming to the realization that it had gotten it right the first time around. Anyway, in the process I did some mega cleaning and found this piece of paper, written when I was nineteen and fresh off the plane in Japan (click to enlarge to read):

In more current discoveries, I've been really enjoying the new Mount Kimbie album "Crooks & Lovers." This song is my favorite thus far but it's all nice. That, and the new Joanna Newsom album, which came out four or five months ago, where it's taken me this long to listen to the three discs enough to get to know it as something other than homework. Such an amazing writer she is. Okay. The sun is out and I need to go where they pay me. Tomorrow is the last day of the semester. Ya.