I helped out at my neighbor’s financial seminar the other month. During a portion of it the speaker discussed “givers” and “takers”, their qualities and traits, how they make you feel when in action. At one point, he clarified: we are not givers or takers, but giving and taking, constantly becoming or being, we are not static or set.

I might go outside and feel cold, wish the weather were warmer. I might visualize myself being comfortable in a T-shirt. In the summer I might visualize the fall or winter. Cole pointed out that the problem with The Secret, the self-help phenomenon based on positive visualization is that the complexity of a given situation can get lost in the push of what a situation could be (rather than what it is).

I’ve been sitting on a bus for the last four hours. There was an interesting conversation in the back of the bus about racism, between an attractive Puerto Rican woman, an African American man and a Caucasian man. It made me think of the kid I’m sitting next to, afraid to speak to me and maybe vice versa, but our hips are pressed up against each other. The smell of a black boy.

When I graduated from college my father gave me a small gold coin, stamped with an Indian head and the date ‘1853’. He said his dad had given it to him when he graduated from college. I kept it in a safe place. Last year I looked it up on-line, and found out that it was a reproduction made sometime in the fifties or sixties, having little “numismatic value”. His dad ran off when he was a kid. I affixed the coin to the wall of my office with a bit of blue putty.

To its right is a picture of a Barry Bonds cut out from a newspaper about three years ago, beginning to yellow. In it, all eyes look in the same direction: the catcher just risen from a crouch, the umpire taking off his mask, and Barry Bonds looking at what is probably a home run. The bat floats an arms length in front of Barry, captured in mid flight almost perpendicular to the ground. You get the sense that the blurry crowd in the background are all watching the ball as well, ten of thousands of people looking in the exact same direction.

Hanging from the trunk of wires that runs from floor to ceiling in my office is a half-inch think piece of blue and white rope. My step-brother asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him rope, which I didn’t really want, but liked the sound of saying; a kind of test to see if anyone’s listening. I’ll ask for things like a tooth brush or a bowl of cereal and end up with a wallet and a nice pen. I’m not complaining, I think it’s funny. It’s a nice piece of rope.

all of a sudden back in oakland went to molly and barnaby's wedding over the weekend just outside of portland and enjoyed it communally good time slept in bunk beds with groups of others it was different quiet like whispering couples at eight in the morning do you want to get up etc. those kinds of things got back late last night slept a long time school started last week taught two classes on friday and tomorrow i'm due in the writing lab the classes seemed invested one very tiny the other average size no action just the first day played extended ice breakers and talked about reasoning kind of loosely getting ready for the memoir then on to research like projects but anyway a monday simply updating with no periods or commas feeling somewhat on fire with things to do mostly to just maintain my empire been thinking too much about what goes into this blog so maybe its time to give it a rest in terms of thinking about what goes into this blog met people at the wedding told them to find me here and maybe they will hey on the way to the wedding the cab driver was drunk on the way back home met up with aric for twenty minutes hung out in the cell phone waiting area the plane rides were mostly smooth but unworry some these are the light weight happenings during yet another sunny day in oakland now on to next messages revamping an old manuscript feeding cats and returning student work

hi. the following excerpt is from a George Oppen essay written in the Spring of 1962 titled "The Mind's Own Place" and can be found in his "Selected Poems" published by New Directions Press.
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Modern American poetry begins with the determination to find the image, the thing encountered, the thing seen each day whose meaning has become the meaning and color of our lives. Verse, which had become a rhetoric of exaggeration, of inflation, was to the modernists a skill of accuracy, of precision, a test of truth. Such an art has always to be defended against a furious and bitter Bohemia whose passion it is to assist, in the highest of spirits, at the razing of that art which is the last intrusion on an onanism which they believe to be artistic. In these circles is elaborated a mock-admiration of the artist as a sort of superannuated infant, and it is the nightmare of the poet or the artist to find himself wandering between the grim grey lines of the Philistines and the ramshackle emplacements of Bohemia. If he ceases to believe in the validity of his insights--the truth of what he is saying--he becomes the casualty, the only possible casualty, of that engagement. Philistia and Bohemia, never endangered by the contest, remain precisely what they were. This is the Bohemia that churns and worries the idea of the poet-not-of-this-world, the dissociated poet, the ghostly bard. If the poet is an island, this is the sea which most lovingly and intimately grinds him to sand.

in order to get to the wedding in east hampton from our hotel in montauk we relied on Lindy's Transportation

Briefly about Larry E. Craig, the Senator who recently resigned due to a sex scandal (his suspected homosexuality), I find it disheartening that the Minneapolis Police department spends its time battling public sex in airport bathrooms. That, and the fact that this guy resigned in about a week, whereas the former Attorney General Gonzales lasted about seven months. I guess I’m just confused as to why sex amongst consenting adults is a more serious crime than lying under oath about one’s unchecked tinkering with the American legal system.

"Maybe the grass is the mirror," Erika said in response to my comment that it was different to be brushing my teeth in a bathroom without a mirror, not seeing yourself first thing in the morning. Instead I looked out the window, the sun risen just below the tree line and shining a muddled light on the rural lawn.

Speak and Spell

Say newspaper.
Newspaper.
Good. Now try angel.
Angel.
Good.

came accross some notes (written on pink paper) on the weather in Providence while going through boxes today in Oakland

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Today is a strange weather day. Quick alternations between sunny warm skies and a forceful wind, along with a diagonal rain. Right now is the wind part, a day that hasn't been able to make up its mind.

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To say that I've been overwhelmed would be a true statement. Any color looks good, writing on pink paper. Not so much fun as different...fun as difference? The chimney clicks with its usual sounds.

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Dreamed last night but don't know what. Laid awake for a while trying to resolve the meeting F. and I had, walking away due to time constraints, or lack of anything to talk about asides from gossip, a billion other people to talk about.

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But I'm not interested in my own thoughts. I met with F. and read a list of things that bothered me, in the past tense, as there was nothing bothering me at that moment. Met G. for pool last night.

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Questions asked, brief synopsis shared. Now it seems like it could snow. Rory asked how it was outside and I responded "nice". F. asked what I had read and recently loved. I responded that I "don't generally love reading". A poor thing to say to the director of a writing program. Have been completely self-absorbed last few months and know it.

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Now it is snowing. Large white flakes going in all directions, confusing and chaotic but full of possibilities like a hat blowing off your head and landing on somebody else's head. Or snow blowing in your ear.

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Things were also said. He spoke of his recent difficulties of not having written for the last couple years. I wonder why? Time, it seems doesn't limit writing, just changes it. There must be something else going on, I think and would like to ask him.

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Phone call. The large snow wads are now blowing horizontally. I've realized that no one will ever read these notebooks. But still the hand writing remains consistent, the sounds of a mid-sized city just outside my window.

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Read from a chapbook by Liz yesterday and it moved me a in good way, how occasionally we find the right thing, or poem or person at the right moment and things make sense. I for one believe in misunderstanding until a certain point in time where understanding comes suddenly and without warning.

Back in Oakland getting ready for the coming semester but mostly cleaning house and hanging pictures. Another shipment of my things, the last shipment, came courtesy of my sister's friend who brought the boxes and bags in exchange for my sister agreeing to take care of her snakes, which are now living in my sister's house in D.C. Last Tuesday I finally made it to D.C. and witnessed Knight, my sister's husband, dethawing a frozen rat (hot water) and feeding to one of the snakes, who lunged at it and then took its time trying to fit it into its mouth. But to recap the trip: flew from Oakland to Chicago, met up with Cole stayed at his place for the night then to Indiana for a nights camping and then up to Madison where to most significant event was getting a chance to read the last Harry Potter book which was exciting enough to keep me up very late most nights and then the train to Kentucky where I stayed at my Uncle's for a couple days with brother and sister and Knight and then to Virginia where I was able to see Erika and John's work in progress house, had a day and two nights and then to D.C. for one night and then home. Those are just the facts. It's good to travel and see my people, but also I read and write a lot when I'm moving for some reason. This is also good, to take a break from daily happenings. I feel like I've been neglecting the blog so I'll stop writing this update and post something a little more interesting. Oakland is quiet.