Happy New Year. I'll be back in January.

My focus group has just been canceled. Seriously. They were going to pay me to talk about cigarettes. Say what you mean to say. Super Ego ID Ego Etc. Cat sits on desk while authentic blues play on record player. Monday morning still need to finish grades. Going to see Tron this afternoon will be stoned by Disney. Today's Chautauqua is about this blog. Is that boring? Feedback. Authentic blues. Scratched record repeating on unintelligible fragment. Simply: if there is no risk involved in the project forget it. Do something else that is more interesting. Watch a movie. Make out. This semester the project has been a simple one: consistency. To stick to a schedule. In the past there have been more interesting projects, memoir projects or projects where the posts themselves I was not sure of. There have been plenty of those in the last four months: things that I'm not sure I should put up for all to see. This fear of saying too much, something stupid or embarrassing; the presence of this feeling tells me I'm doing something right. Fear equals risk imagined or real who cares nobody will remember anyway. East Saint Louis. But one poor lousy dime. What an imagined reader might think of anything is impossible to know or predict. Following one's own sense. Hard to know what one's own sense is, what direction attention leans. Requires health. Quiet. Some space. Two weekends ago Steven told me about a dream he had: sitting on some jagged rocks and it suddenly it occurred to him that the secret to sitting on the rocks was "balance and triangulation." His waking self didn't know what this meant but was amazed by its specificity. Be specific. As if our dreams can be kept secret. Make me a pallet on your floor.

The semester is over! Six weeks of (unpaid) furlough! Filing for unemployment! Final grading! Christmas shopping! Wisconsin! Christmas! New Years! Chicago! It's raining! Thank you! Good afternoon!

Sorry about all the political stuffs as of late but wait a minute one more thing: an interesting little editorial from Sunday's paper about the Obama tax cuts. Instead of politics, Ishmael Reed uses sociology and race to explain Obama's compromise. "What Progressives Don't Understand About Obama." Psychology and class are useful ways to talk about politics, don't you think?

**

Tomorrow morning will be the end of the digital photography class where there were three students who needed my help. Five actually, but by the three quarter point two of them mysteriously disappeared. Like Batman. Feedback and critique is mostly what will take place on the last class, but like a lot of critiques, it's mostly the teacher who does the talking. In my experience with writing workshops, a helpful critique depends mostly on if the other people in the room are interested in each other, and by extension, each others work. In a studio class (as opposed to a seminar) where everybody is just trying to keep up, it doesn't leave much time for developing group dynamics. Then again, like the current incarnation of my creative writing class, even though we've had plenty of time to 'bond' the workshop hasn't exactly gelled. There are too many variables to possibly understand why some groups work and some don't. Maybe it's a time issue or an effort issue or a homework issue or a confidence issue or a scheduling issue or an economic issue or a personal issue or a teacher issue or an attendance issue or a classroom issue or not. I'd be lying if I said I didn't take it personally, and there lies the problem. And the solution.

One of the students that I've been supporting in the digital photography class has been having trouble with the instructor's critiques, not exactly satisfied with the idea of talking about possible interpretations rather than hard line direction as to what she should or should not include in the photograph. The idea that our creative decisions are our own rather than the jurisdiction of larger governing aesthetic bodies; idea of classics, and canons, and way that things should be. Rather, with this instructors critique, the road to justified creative decisions begins with the awareness of possible interpretations. That you can't control something if you don't know it exists. An approach I tend to favor but for many students coming from East Asia, this is strange way to go about education. "It's the American style!" Freedom to figure things out on our own. And the freedom to fail if we don't have enough time and/or money to do so.

Whew. Back to normal a gray day in San Francisco it's the last week of the semester. Today I'll go to my story boarding support class and watch final projects. I probably will not be needed to reiterate whatever feedback comes up from American English into International English but it will be fun to see the culmination of the students' work this semester, short films shot with a Super 8 camera. Come home and do laundry. Finish reading the Sunday paper. Tuesday afternoon I'll finish the pronunciation classes I've been running, and on Thursday and Friday I'll finish in the writing lab. As the main even,on Thursday and Friday I'll finish my creative writing and rhetoric classes. Mucho change coming very soon. "Preparing for the dive is always a tense time." samples the Boards of Canada. It's been a pretty good semester. I'll be sad to see it go.

"if self can be compared to a raccoon" (click to enlarge)

How disappointing Obama's presidency has been. For a while, compromises on bailouts, health care, wars, etc. were like, "okay, the benefit of the doubt for you Mr. community organizer Chicago pragmatic first African-American academic liberal sympathizer President" but the extension of the Bush tax cuts is kind of 'it', as far as my faith in the guy. It must be difficult to be in charge of running the entire world! Bombarded by one thing after another I don't know how anybody could possibly keep up with all that, much less keep in touch with their own beliefs. Jon Stewart made the observation that since the World Trade Center attacks the media has been on a 24 hour breaking news cycle, and we've been collectively stuck in that gear ever since. This makes sense to me. And though it doesn't excuse the president's misguided decisions, it gives them cause.

Another collaborative poem as written by my current section of Creative Writing. This one is an exquisite corpse, lightly edited.

Sugar Skulls

Old grapes are sour but sweet.
____"Hella deep man." The cold cat said
smoking his own brain.

Meanwhile another weed tends the garden
____until its hands are bloody. Its glass eye
rolls lazily around its skull.

People tend to like sugar skulls but why?
____Too many questions and not enough answers
that don't always lead back

to the questions of life, a stream of endless heartaches
____cured with pills, for its better to taste mud
than to get it in your eye, a

deep dark hole into the soul where love or hate
____can be found at its most desperate
state and religion will both burn when the volcano
________erupts.

Two Dreams I Had While Playing Fallout: New Vegas

I am somewhere but at the end of its path, standing in a corner in front of a pair of window frames that extend from the height of my waist to a couple feet above my head. There is no glass in the window frames and I can see outside: a tree, some hedges, and a bird feeder. What feels like a mid-western backyard. Instead of stepping through the window I have to retrace my steps. These are the rules. But even before I can do this, I have to finish the conversation I am having with the person on the other side of the window. There are dialogue options. What I am about to say is yellow. What I could say is orange, and I'm moving quickly through the conversation, trying to finish so I can get out of here.

*

I am walking down a hallway and there are doors on either side like an apartment building. I open each door and talk to people. I do not know who these people are, but cannot move forward until I talk to all of them. One person in each room, standing just inside the room to receive me as the doors swing inward. At the end of the hallway there is another hallway, bending almost 180 degrees so that the next wing is almost parallel with the first one. Same deal, doors on either side and I have to talk to everybody before I can leave.

Yesterday after work S and I wandered through the MOMA partly because we wanted to, and partly because with our school IDs we get in free. Downtown was cold and dark and its much more fun to go into a museum when there's no pressure to make the most of your money. As if I have to justify going to a museum. Who am I talking to? Anyway, up on the fifth floor there was a little shop set up by the Miranda July exhibit selling little art stuffs, and on one little shelf was a cat drawing. "This reminds me of something I heard on the radio," S said, about cats falling from buildings, that they can survive falling five stories and higher than eight stories, but in-between five and eight the extra time and wind resistance screws up their landing gear and they tend to not survive. Meow. Kitty Girl (KG) one of my cats I was told fell out of her old owners apartment, three stories, to the ground below and seems to be fine. Jinx, the other one, walks around like he's made out of old sticks, creeky and stiff. It looks painful for him to hop down off the bed or descend steps.

KG on the other hand is just as old but still pretty spry. She's a 'ragdoll'

***

DO DO DOOT - DO DOO DOO DOOT
***

I have to interrupt this regularly scheduled blog posting about my cats to talk about all the recent Wikileaks stuff. After typing in the word 'ragdoll' I went to Google images to confirm that KG was in fact a 'ragdoll' (yep) and then clicked on the wikipedia link for 'ragdoll' and then clicked on the message "Please read: A personal appeal from the author Joan Goma" (?) which lead me to this page where I donated thirty five dollars to Wikipedia because after using it for as long as it's been around, for personal reasons as well as work, I thought maybe now that I have a little extra money from working tirelessly and heroically this semester I would donate to them, seeing as even places like NPR are getting attacked in the media and having their funding threatened maybe I'll donate. Sorry about that last sentence. Anyway. That lead me to check my bank account which reminded me that rent was due so I wrote a check to my roommate and handed it to him, sat back down and then, with all these Wikipedia thoughts wondered if Wikileaks was part of Wikipedia (it's not) and wondered if Wikileaks would come up as the first hit on Google and it does, once you get past the news. Which brings me to the present moment, sort of, and the question, well, what's the news?

The news about Wikileaks is this: Julian Assange, the guy who runs it is being followed by the British secret police, the site has been censored in China, Hillary Clinton says the U.S. is taking 'aggressive steps against' Wikileaks, Assange has been accused of rape, thier site is being bombarded with by cyber attacks, Amazon 'ousted' their servers, and most interesting to me, Wikileaks is about to release a bunch of classified information about The Bank of America. All that is to say that the powers that be really don't like what Wikileaks is doing, i.e. the fact that they are releasing all kinds of information that is supposed to be kept secret. I don't know about you, but the fact that banks have been making records profits in the last two year, the U.S. is engaged in two insanely stupid wars, our economy is shit, out politics is so screwed up Obama has been rendered a wet noodle, our corrupt politicians have assured us that nothing important is going to get done for at least another two years (like, say, environmental issues), and locally, teacher layoffs, tuition, general malise and hopelessness that...you know what I'm saying. Anyway, an organization devoted to transparency is under attack from the most powerful governments in the world and the corporations that benefit from things continuing as they are. Please read more about about Wikileaks, their mission, and continue to observe the corporate and governmental reaction to this organization. Have a nice day. I'll finish my cat story later.

hi nice to see you sun's out but it's brisk not cold but cool wear gloves and a scarf gives me an excuse not to reach into my pocket to pull out change was sick the whole weekend not uncomfortably so not dying of flu but mild discomfort a sore throat and congestion, a fogginess that didn't lift for five days but now its gone i'm back to health full health asides from a little cough and a little congestion which will be good proof of my illness in case anybody asks what i did over the break i can just say i was sick and that will be the end of it but it wasn't i consumed eighteen cups of tea i accomplished two things over the break the first was to catch up on school work and i did that graded evaluation arguments, read and commented on work for the creative writing class then calculated progress grades and that was that one night played cribbage with Q lost again goddamn its strange to consistently lose at a game that i've been consistently competitive in and the next night played chess with S and lost again played videogame basketball with B on thanksgiving evening and come to think of it lost that too hmm a weekend of losing maybe but more like a weekend of playing anyway when i wasn't playing games or school work it was reading and the music machine though its hard to compose when my head is full of sand. IT WAS NICE AND RELAXING. that goddamn videogame had taken over my life for a little while but i had made a decision to lay off it for the TG break and that's exactly what happened feels good to be free feels free to be good without periods like erma from a sit com that got canceled i've officially decided that Fallout: New Vegas is evil no doubt about it something that consuming should be encased in concrete and buried underground or shot into the sun i think my mom said to me five years ago i forget the context "we shouldn't of let you play so many videogames when you were growing up" and i didn't think much about that statement until recently playing Fallout when i thought to myself "i shouldn't let myself play so many videogames"

I've taken on a mild cold and went home early from work yesterday. Which is something that I didn't used to do. Instead, if I was feeling sick I would make huge efforts to be 'at' work. At some point in the last couple years I realized that 1) It's not actually that important for me to be there 2) My system gets better much faster if I make a serious effort to take it easy and 3) Sick pay. Sick pay might be the deciding factor. What a concept. Before teaching I always had to be there to get paid. If I didn't get paid, then I was in some kind of trouble in my mind. Sitting around at home being sick produces a weird, existential "what am I doing with my life" kind of feeling, and sometimes it's easier to be at work to avoid this feeling. Kind of the like the dilemma of the upcoming winter break: a month and a half off (unpaid but I collect unemployment) is a ton of time. Enough time to run out of 'things to do', get knocked unhappy, moan, get a hold of myself, plan, do, acclimate to the new schedule, get busy, and by that time school starts again and the whole cycle starts again.

Change is difficult. Which is why I like to go away as soon as the semester gets out. Being ramped up, especially as the semester climaxes, and then suddenly having nothing to put all that energy into is a weird let down. So as, dislocation and confusion pops me out of my schedule. This year, school lets out on the 18th of December and I don't leave for Wisconsin for Christmas until the 23rd. There's a little extra time, but not too much. Thus I try to regulate my emotions but controlling the situations I find myself in. It's like controlling a character in a video game. Speaking of which, I have been playing a video game pretty steadily for the last three weeks. The game machine tells me I've logged 48 hours playing the game. That's a long time to be in a fantasy world. After about three hours I begin to feel parts of my brain beginning to atrophy. Parts of my body. I successfully stop sometimes. Sometimes not.

On Sunday in the newspaper there was this article about the effects of technology on young people and their education/future. That fact that technology is addictive is not exactly news, nor is the idea that people have shorter attention spans these days. What is news is that now we have some data to prove it. For example, studies have shown that video games destroy your vocabulary and sleep patterns. I can attest both of these. Both my roommate, who has been watching me play, and I, have been having weird and terrible dreams. In one of my dreams, while talking to a real (dream) person I had 'dialogue options', choosing what to say from a list of options like I was in the game. Ugh. Anyway, I have some errands to run before I go off to work today so I'm going to go. Happy Thanksgiving. Hopefully you get to spend it with family, or if your family makes you feel weird, hopefully you get to spend it with friends. Thank you for reading.

It's gotten cold and rainy in San Francisco. Which is in stark contrast to the warm border line hotness that we were experiencing a couple weeks ago. It's a little bit of a relief that November isn't going to feel like August, which would make August feel like May, May would have to switch places with December and June might have to get its weather imported from Vietnam or wherever the oversees weather shipping rates are low, which is hard to predict. But a cold rain has been visiting on and off since Friday, for example five minutes ago it was raining but now the sun is shining. One of my co-workers who lived in Ireland for a long time told me that the Irish, when greeting each other, often complain about the weather, but it doesn't come off as whiny. More like small talk. Whereas here, somebody who always complains about the weather might come off as a bummer. So as, "I love the cold moist air in my lungs." I've missed it.

I had a busier than usual weekend. On Friday was the Encyclopedia reading, which, though I was increasingly nervous for for a couple weeks, was really fun. About sixteen people read/performed/played a video/showed drawings, which initially I was dreading as long readings can be not much fun, but the diversity of projects and quality of work/entertainment was really high, and it was a totally energizing two and a half hours. Totee. There were a lot of people there, co-workers and writing friends and even some students came out. It was cool to be out. It had been a while. Saturday afternoon I went to see some friends stage a reading of a co-workers play, and on the way home got caught in Saturday evening's rain. I have a good rain jacket but nothing for my bottom half. It was kind of fun to get miserably wet but only because a warm shower was waiting.

Saturday night I played poker with my politician friends. Elections being over people have more time. Doc helped Malia win district 10. Q is on a paid furlough. Ranked choice voting is not all that great when there are twenty candidates to choose from. Apple and the Beatles are making a lot of money. People from Marin have better manners than people from San Francisco. But the best part of the weekend in a long term sense is that I finally figured out the latency issues that I had been having with my music machine, where because of the sound system that Windows uses, all the music/sound that I've been playing with for the last couple years has been without steady tones and resonance because I didn't realize switching to an ASIO sound driver was really really easy. For example, this song. Please note the steady and warm tones. That's new. Plus, my sister and brother pitched in to help me update my version of Ableton Live, so as, I'm no longer limited to eight tracks and four effects. Right? You know what I'm saying? My throat is feeling a little scratchy I'm going to go swallow some zinc.

Lately there has been a little ripple about the term 'hipster' because of this book or more concisely, this essay about what the term actually means, and its oddly derogatory use. The essay is pretty helpful for putting the phenomenon into a context beyond who is and who isn't a hipster. In reference to all of the above, I can't help but think the rootless desire for space is related to whatever desires I have to be cool. And that the desire to be cool has a lot to do with not having a firm idea of what I actually want to be. The more I identify with being a teacher, with being something based in my own experience, the less I care about what I'm not. A quote from the book Laura Warholic by Alexander Theroux, that I've been trying to find a context for for years:

I decided at one point in my life that I never wanted to be anything that would not allow me to be anything else I wanted to be…I ended up being nothing that I can currently identify, which I suppose means I got my wish.

In other news, this Friday I am reading, with 14 other people, as part of the Encyclopedia Volume 2 release. If you're in the big city, here's the flyer. It's the first time I've read anything in public (not including student readings) for four years. Wow.

In the laundry mat tonight I did laundry. Nothing amazing happened. I didn't have any funny conversations or experience anything profound. I put seventeen quarters into the washing machine, turned it to 'permanent press' and got a slice of pizza (garden). I spoke with my step-dad about possible work in Wisconsin over the winter break in teaching. Got back and pulled the wet laundry into a rolly cart, pushed it around the banks of washers, and loaded two dryers, one with t-shirts, socks, and underwear, and the other with towels and dish towels. It was weird that I dried the dish towels separately, and wondered for a few instants what the professional laundry ladies I was standing next to might say about it.

I read last weeks New Yorker, picking up where I left off in an article about Rory Stewart, an interesting British politician who walked across Afghanistan, amongst other things. My favorite excerpt:

He recently described the concepts of counter-insurgency and failed states as fragments of "metaphysical structures" no more real than the parallel universes filled with demons and bodhisattvas imagined by eighteenth-century Mahayana Buddhists.

I love that one day, people will look back, maybe, and see a gigantic blind spot where we thought we were being smart and insightful; that all our great ideas about how the world works are anchored to our time and place, and don't last. It makes me wonder what it is that I'm doing terribly wrong that I don't know about yet...the Internet? Facebook? Cellphones? Laundry? Pizza? Step-dads? Winter? Magazines? Quarters? But really I just like thinking of policy analysts as religous zealouts.

I folded my laundry and went home. The most significant part of doing laundry was running into Liz on the way up and talking about the semester. I then went to the grocery and picked up some fruit. I talked to Nate about PhD. programs on the way. This is one of those blog postings where if you read it you might get an idea of what my life is like, so as, you don't have to call or write emails. But this isn't true. Even if you read this you should still call or write. I don't know how many hours there are in a week but I usually only spend two or three of them writing in this blog. Speaking of which, I've added a new on-going list of songs I like, forget about, and then remember and find on Youtube; and have added links to them to the right. Scroll down. It's on going. Hope you're well. It's been a pretty hot November, so far which is totally weird. California.

last night the good year blimp passed over just as I got off work

Found this in the Moma yesterday. With many other museum goers. The European guy got a phone call and when he walked out I noticed his pants were acid washed (?) in the back to the point of being completely white. It looked very European and I judged him harshly with my lizard brain because his cell phone was loud and everybody knows you don't start talking on your phone in a crowded gallery! I then wondered if I was homophobic, turned the word over a few times, concluded nothing, and kept looking at the Henri Cartier-Bresson photos that were hanging up. Really great!

Photography is a medium that I had never been too interested in until these last couple semesters. Before supporting the ESL students and their awesome instructors in conceptual photography and digital photography, and going to a museum with someone with which I might need to negotiate with in terms of how our time is spent together, I might say things like, "You know, photography has never really been that interesting to me." because paintings or whatever were more my thing. Generalizations so broad they mean nothing. "Politics have never really been that interesting to me." "Country music has never really been that interesting to me." And then we learn something and are given a lens to look through...a personal context/stake from which to instill meaning!!! Meaning!!

The quote was interesting to me for two reasons: 1) because I've been into 'life' lately, and 2) because I've been playing a new video game (I won't say which one but it involves hit points and dialogue options if you know what I mean) where I walk around a little world. The point of the game, or fun of the game, is to 'discover' this little world. So as, if by discovering myself...than I am discovering the world...and my self is a pixelated woman with a mohawk and a shotgun who walks around with a guy wearing a space suit in a closed post-apocalyptic world designed by a group of well paid designers then I... don't know what that quote means. Just what am I discovering by exploring this world? Oh video games! You're so easy to criticize!

Today is my birthday. I am 32 years old. What's it like to celebrate a birthday on the Internet? It's like nothing on Earth. Only my fingers, wrists, and language functions (?) get worked. Not like a bath or a sun beam on a cat's belly. More like receiving a text message or hearing the Parks and City workers weed wacking the park next door. One of my favorite birthdays was when I lived in Portland, 2002, and Aric, Joel, and Dave came down and we had a night of it. I drank whiskey until I threw up. Last year I went hiking in a new pair of shoes with a girlfriend. Two years ago I went camping. Three years ago I went camping. This year I have dinner plans on Wednesday and a full work schedule.

I have to be honest though: I get sad on my birthday. Not sure why. Something about being 7 years old. Questions like what kind "what kind of cake would you like?" still throw me. If I really got what I wanted, my favorite cake would be decided for me and it would be delicious. Red velvet cake? Chocolate? Angel Food? It all tastes good. I even like the grocery store cakes and their lard frosting. Vegan cakes are good too. That is to say, it's not cake that I want, but reassurance I am understood. C pointed out the other day that I like to bring her little gifts, a sign of affection that is just as much a demonstration of how I want to be loved.Through reciprocation we come to an agreement, learning over time how to be with another person. What I really want for my birthday is to hang out in a womb. Just for a day. To be all of one thing.

But, obviously, it's too late for that. We are condemned to freedom. Sartre said this, at least according to the international student who wanted my feedback on his essay about Sartre. His grammar was excellent! In other news, my brother ran the New York marathon yesterday for the 3rd or 4th time (I forget ) and broke three hours. There were 45,000 people who ran it and he was in the top 2%. Not bad. There is a street in Spain named after the Super Mario Brothers and my niece started the first year (preschool) of her academic career. My sister sent me six cupcakes and three candles in the mail. My mom bought me a coat. Here is a link to the Mu-ziq song "Green Crumble". Happy birthday.

We had an extra hour today.

It's difficult to know where to start. On Saturday was Halloween. I mean Sunday. I mean both Saturday and Sunday. On Monday the Giants won the World Series and then on Tuesday we voted. And also celebrated Día de los Muertos. Wednesday was the victory parade. Tomorrow I think everything will go back to normal. It's abnormally warm right now. In the seventies today. Very nice temperature! One of the guys I was standing next to, under the hot sun, outside of city hall with 100,000 others (as it was reported), dumped a cup of his piss on the ground. At that point it had been an hour and a half of waiting and I'm not actually that into the Giants. I mean I'm happy for them and their fans, and apparently there are a lot of them, like, enough to cover every square inch of the entire down town, but personally I don't have much of a relationship with the Giants.

Except for this t-shirt that I'm wearing. Once I invest money into something I feel compelled to take it more seriously. Like when I got an Athletics hat I felt like I should know a little bit about the Athletics, so as not to appear as a fraud. Wanting to be on the inside. Authenticity, or the appearance of it, is important to me. It's why I value my frayed and ripped hooded sweatshirt. Who knows why. Today's analysis is OVER. Last Saturday I went to go sell some books and wandered into the local science-fiction book store and found this guy giving a really interesting talk about "cognitive dissonance", aliens, and military secrets. I sat down and listened. It was kind of crazy but pretty interesting. The most interesting thing he said was about Milwaukee, where he lives: "The culture of Milwaukee is really interesting because Milwaukee doesn't know it has a culture." Which kind of makes sense to me, being not too far from there, that people who live in Wisconsin aren't all that conscious about living in "Wisconsin." Unlike, say, San Francisco, where I'm constantly reminded that I live in "San Francisco."

Not that that's bad. I love living in San Francisco. But it seems like an urban thing, to be conscious of where you're living. Maybe we can blame sports teams. And those who riot after sports teams claim victory over the other urban sports teams. Maybe the trick is to remain unconscious for as long as possible, like a baby, a cat, or a newborn foal, unfurling its little legs and wobbling up to its mother. And then bleeting a little. Or maybe that's a newborn lamb, actually. Regardless, the guy in the bookstore said its a comfortable thing to live in a place that isn't so aware of itself. It was more of an aside than a main point, but for some reason the thought stayed with me. In other news, two black birds on Saturday afternoon flew around Valencia, as I watched them from the room, with nuts in their mouth. Looking for a place to crack them, drop them on the pavement and eat the inside. Saturday afternoon is a busy time: a lot of people and traffic. They circled for a while and then flew off. November.