Jobless in Seattle, I frequented a coffee shop named Solistice, not because I liked their coffee but because of its front porch like sitting section, slightly elevated but exposed to the flow of traffic. One night while reading a Harper's Magazine an older man sat down at my table and asked me if I was an intellectual. We talked but he was hostile, taking me for someone I had no idea I was.

_

He told me he was a genius and a playwright, busy staging a major production in Seattle but stuck outside for the night, a day too early to start his residency. He told me about what it meant to be a writer, reading Shakespeare, and writing everyday. Hard work, and I asked questions. At one point, after passive-aggressively challenging his genius status, he snapped at me: "You're the one who wanted to play chess."

_

As it got late I offered him the couch of where I was living. I didn't like him, but enjoyed the attention and adventure of meeting a stranger at a coffee shop. We walked back and I asked him to read a chapbook that I had put together. Shaking his head, he said I needed a lot of work. He was tired and grumpy, and I suggested sleep. He let himself out in the morning.

I jumped onto the pier and tried to keep the boat's momentum from slamming into the concrete. It didn't work too well, but Brian and the other's got off okay. I was standing on the handle of a concrete fork of a pier, with a rusty and unused warehouse occupying the middle space. Two guys were laughing on an adjacent pier, and I guessed why: the pier I had just jumped onto was not connected to the shore in a friendly way. The wood was rotted on one side and the seagulls were swooping at my head. I asked the guys how to get off the dock and they gave me shitty advice, so I walked to the other side where another man, wearing a captain's hat, laughed at the situation. I could see a fence down at the end, and there I was met by a representative of the Coast Guard who also laughed at the situation. I asked him if I was doing anything illegal, and he said I was trespassing. There fence was high and unsuitable for climbing, but there was a way around the fence by going along the outer edge. I threw my back pack over the fence and climbed along the edge onto the wooden dock. I said thank you the Coast Guard and walked to the train.

This morning I got up at seven and went running. Near the end of my route, the route around the lake where I get off the path and run through the grassy area where the Canada Geese like to congregate and eat/poop, a man pulls up next to me in his van, driving slowly and shouts, do you agree with all those environmentalists? At first I thought maybe there was some mistake and continued to run but after he shouted his question a couple more times I asked him (still running) to clarify his question, which environmentalists did he mean exactly, and he rephrased it: do you agree with all those environmentalists claiming that the sky is falling. I took this to mean the climate change business and I said yes, but it depends. I said (still running, at this point, maybe a hundred yards he'd been driving along side me), I think they're right about climate change coming but we're not really going to feel the effects for another fifty years, that maybe he didn't have anything to worry about (he was older, maybe in his fifties) but I might, and ran behind his van across the street to make the final half block home. He shouted out his window, "You don't know how long I'm going to live, and you could die tomorrow. Only god knows that." I made a gesture of acknowledgment (hands together in a kind of prayer raised slightly over my head) and ran across the street.

this isn't the exact one year anniversary and what is a year anyway but the earth revolving around the sun a couple birthdays a wedding and a christmas party but it is close enough and on a lovely holiday day in july i thought that maybe this was the time to asses the state of this blog through a little free associative meandering forward that is to say writing forward and concentrating about the purpose of why i'm doing this which lately has become a chore in the sense of its been a while since i've posted anything why don't i post something and then remembering that i have other projects that i need to do such as the chapbook i'm putting together in time for the reading at unnameable and preparing for class and feeding the cat and thinking about seeing the transformer movie because the fireworks are supposedly canceled in jack london square but that's unconfirmed as yet and i don't feel like going into the city because this apartment is totally awesome and amy's gone away for the rest of the week and stuff and junk but all this is to say that the blog has at some times become semi serious in the sense of thought out and worked on postings mostly expanding my comfort level in terms of what i'm willing to show but anonymously and sometimes its this tippy tap writing including everything until a good resting point comes or the cat wakes up or whichever comes first but really truly it's something of a project one that goes on and the challenge of keeping it interesting to myself is foremost and i apologize for letting those down who are looking for something but just when those somethings begin to crystallize is when it becomes pointless to keep going they don't need us and maybe the lesson learned is a process and the refusal of abandonment i wish it was enough to say i try but we all know that's not enough we need results to make investments to make it worth it but the ideas keep coming see adam's and erika's and john's and cole's blogs they keep coming a commitment to testimony and new spaces for our memory to inhabit more later

My sister called me from JFK airport today. She was waiting for her flight to leave for Ireland, which was supposed to leave from O'hare, which was where she was going to meet my Mom, and they were going to fly together for their horse riding trip. She wanted to tell me that she loved me, because she was about to get on a fourteen hour international flight.

_

I sat on the bed and sat on the bed. A little heavy from the frozen pizza I had eaten for dinner, I thought about what I could be doing, something active like shooting baskets or going for a bike ride. I continued to sit and my thoughts drifted to teaching, and the chapbook I have been working to assemble. I got up and smoked a cigarette and sat back down on the bed with Brian's "Before Starting Over", taking particular interest in his writing about Silliman's blog.

_

Adam had brought up the issue, seemingly in passing, that I "wanted to be a poet", during whatever conversation what were having. Which strikes a nerve in the sense that if this is my ambition, I'm sorry that my ambition is so naked. The assertion implying that I'm not one already, that I'm trying to become.

_

It strikes the same kind of nerve as the nerve that gets struck when the issue of "working hard" comes up amongst my old group of friends. Inductively, again, the insecurity leads me to conclude that I'm not working hard enough. Jake had told me that I was the slowest and laziest painter he had ever worked with. I responded that that was

impossible.

i'm not kidding: here's an article by Frank Herbert, author of Dune, published in 1980: http://www.dunenovels.com/news/genesis.html

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these blog things are great, you can post whatever you want. here's a picture of a

_

i waste no time

to kick my line

i said how you doing she said

hey i'm doing fine

steady as she goes who goes amy goes out of town i'm about to start back up teaching for the summer one creative writing class and then esl support for a screen writing class and then there are speaking and writing lab appointments but that's my summer who knows how it will be busy i hope and lucrative so that i can afford to move amongst the upper echelon of people's and place funny faces and dogs and cats and mice and men but wednesdays are off right now now work and its possible that i'll go crawling back to the buddha museum where i spent so many days writing the copy in my earlier east bay days but we'll see i need to talk to john in addition to calling kelly the therapist who i think i'm going to break ties off with i kind of feel drained after i leave like i'm the one who actually helping him and that's amore when the moon hits your eye and then there are the decisions should i stay or should i go right now i'm not particularly happy kind of lonely actually too much time off and not enough peeps to spend time with at least the cat is happy and aggressively so sitting in my lap with her paws on the computer its all very cute but there's more to life than being cute isn't there maybe clever maybe its time to go back to my studies preparing the syllabus and meditating on my first impressions this weekend i'm going canoe-ing up north with old friends and am very much looking forward to it nothing smells better than memory a ten foot man feeding me lunch

We found a place to drink, a small German themed pub not too far from the Shinjuku station, and sat at the bar. It was empty asides from a middle aged couple sitting at the corner table, and a gray haired man sitting at the bar. We each had a couple of beers and ate bar snacks out of the little glass dishes placed on the bar. We talked to the gray haired man, an architect, about cardboard houses. After not too long we decided to go and the bill came, something like one hundred twenty thousand yen, which was something like one hundred dollars at that time, and I said what? and the bartender explained she had to charge us extra for sitting at the bar and eating snacks.

_

This morning in the Travel section of the New York Times there is an article about the tiny, back alley bars becoming increasingly popular in Japan. The article quotes a bar owner in Japan named Mark Dykman: "If you are intruding on a close-knit scene, the proprietor will ignore you and maybe over charge you. You won't be asked to leave, but you will want to leave."

In my middle teens I asked my father, kind of tongue in cheek but interested in the answer: "what did you want to be when you grew up?", and he answered that he still didn't know what he wanted to be. One morning, post-college, when I came to stay at the farm to help Susantake care of him, he borrowed my truck to drive down to the mechanic and check on the status of his vehicle. It was early and I kept sleeping until the phone rang, the mechanic asking me to bring the fire chief's truck back. I said huh? and looked out the window to see my dad pulling up in tan ford truck. After returning the truck and bringing back my own, I scolded him and barred him from driving my truck again.

There is a trail of events within the dream, passing through many friends and places, uniforms and roles, but these didn’t stick in my mind. Instead it’s the falling through the sky, away from everyone, into a canyon; quarry like and filled with water so clear it did not distort the odd, almost fluorescent light that filled the canyon. I had no problems breathing, and in looking around I saw jagged rock outcroppings ascending high up the sides, in addition to smaller, six to eight foot high boulders. There were aquarium like plants, floaty leafy greens swaying, and I was standing on the white sandy bottom. Amazed that I was still upright after the fall I looked around and felt fear. Not at the rocks but what was behind them.

The most significant part of the dream was my reaction to the fear. I simply decided to wake up. In recognizing that my vision was completely unclouded in this place, I got the feeling I would see things I was not ready to see. Not because they would be horrible, but because seeing these things would bring a forced responsibility, one that I would have to take ownership for. To avoid this, I woke myself up, a knowing return to the comfortable muddle.

Recently I’ve been reading a kind of autobiography by Carl Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections), and in it he goes into intense depths of analysis within his own dreams, his interpretations almost acting as plot points within his story. In the prologue he writes:

“Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience. Therefore my life has been singularly poor in outward happenings. I cannot tell much about them, for it would strike me as hollow and insubstantial. I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and with these my autobiography deals.”

My parents were divorced when I was four, and the arrangement made between them was to split the time, so that my sister, brother, and I would spend our weekends and summers with my father in Mineral Point, and the rest of the time we would go to school in Madison. Completely out of my control, it made it difficult to see school friends on the weekends, or develop relationships with small town friends without being in school with them. On the upside it enabled me to take credit for importing big city fashions into the small town, and get out of doing things I didn’t want to do with the city kids.
_
One Sunday before Sunday school, I decided to wear one of my black Reebok high tops along with a white Reebok high top; a style that I had seen some kids wearing at Lincoln (Elementary School) around the time when Criss-Cross, the twin kid-rappers were popular, wearing their clothes backwards and all that. So I wore them and we sang, bided our time until we were let out. No one had said a word to me about the shoes, but that was not unusual as most Sundays I passed through as quietly as possible.
_
Last fall I attended the wedding of an old friend from Mineral Point. At the wedding I talked to Troy, an acquaintance while growing up, about our shared experiences, and he mentioned the mismatched shoes as something that he had always wondered about. I explained myself in the same way that I had been prepared to explain myself back then, that I couldn’t find the other shoe. In writing this I realize I haven’t really earned much perspective on this phenomenon.

By neither acting nor choosing not to act, that knowing a situation is often enough and this process is action. How can I answer the question? Speaking what I know to be true, a meeting between the known and what is shown to be otherwise. Not to set up a dialectic, not to simplify things into two categories as inner and outer, but to use conflict as a stepping stone. That by standing up my lap vanishes.
_
And I would be wrong if I thought this were true, these words. Surely someone or something disagrees, and even if they are not here to dispute it, consider it done. A cat snores. The question of meaning is the answer leading by example, by risking one’s own conventions. By risking more. There are many ways to fail and be unsure but pushing forward regardless is conviction, an acceptance of the inevitable uncertainties and the limits of dualism: that one or the other or the distance in-between; the location, is just a mark on a map, a bird’s eye view. Those eyes, the small ones, and why courage fails us to stay with ourselves.

Earlier this week I went swimming in a fifty meter pool in Pasadena California. The water was not warm but refractions of the sun covered the floor in flakes of light. Though originally a ball of burning gas, a man sings along to the radio and a dog barks. These kinds of energies. I got out of the pool and sat down on the concrete to stretch, touching my toes and flexing my groin. A tick bit into my arm and I spent the next forty five minutes dealing with the repercussions: why me?

Late July, I was walking up the gravel driveway in the middle of the day, ten years old. The driveway followed along a ridge that lined a steep descent into a narrow valley; Christmas trees planted perpendicular to the incline, rows as far down the hill as the tractor could go without tipping. On the other side, across the tiny creek, an opposing hill rose not as steep, but higher, also marked with Christmas trees planted with the grade of the incline; chest high Frasier Firs and six foot Pines. The sky was blue and cloudless, hot and humid. Grasshoppers jumped out the way with each step and there was a perpetual call of insects buzzing and clicking. I looked out from ridge, the view, taking a break from the climb. I thought: "This is beautiful," or at least, I thought, "Folks older than me would probably consider this 'beautiful', but I don't know that word means. Maybe one day I will." I miss the summers on the farm.

The cat basks in the window but is mostly afraid to come out and explore. I bask in the shadows of the surrounding plants, also afraid of what might eat me. We learn from experience, and she was found in an alley. I was found in a family in Wisconsin.

_

The blue sky is perfectly clear but it has been windy. Maybe it comes in off the lake or maybe it just makes itself up. In the distance trees bend with unseen forces and I'm forced to figure they're the same forces I feel.

_

A phone rings from the inside. As an outdoor patio, I feel it is my responsibility to make it as inviting as possible. Amy walks into the apartment and greets the cat. I hear of all of this through the open window.

_

I've been losing my hair lately, or always. The good news is that my older brother is affected by the same spirit, and can see how it will manifest. Then again, maybe my pace of loss will accelerate and lap his. This way I'll be able to claim the loss as a pioneer.

_

There are buildings, mostly square, that make the view into a kind of artificial hillside. The patio is a valley, as most of the buildings in the near distance are taller. There are shorter ones, houses just below the view, but can only be seen while standing up.

_

I don't know the names of these plants: ficus, palm root, and frilly thing. We've planted tomato and Cale, a Timoteo plant starting to bloom. Most of the plants we've salvaged and assembled from the edges of the patio, the culmination resulting in a faintly glowing cluster of half-dead cast-offs. But they seem happy together now that they're finally getting some light and water, that someone has noticed.

"Your upstairs neighbor is moving back to Indiana", John the property manager said while helping me get rid of the old mattress. The first thing I thought was video games and instant messaging, the two constant sounds we hear coming from the floor above, starting sometime in the evening and lasting until midnight. At eight he wakes up to an alarm clock set not quite on a talk radio station so that we hear blaring words too staticky to make out. He quickly gets up to shut it off. He has an orange cat that looks down from the window above the patio.

_
Amy occasionally expresses disdain for his audible hobbies, and I feel, as someone who enjoys video games, that I could relate to him, the sounds of foot steps and a scampering cat adding to the confusion of rumbles and machine gun fire. When Monique had come to visit, she got the floors mixed up on her way down from the roof, and tried to enter his apartment, finding it locked. She knocked and was surprised to see him open the door, a beard and hairy chest. Amy saw him drop his sandwich on his way down the stairs.

_

Recently it seems like he's had friends over, maybe a woman. There was a loud thumping sound in the middle of the night, Amy claims, but I didn't wake up to hear it. Going back to Indiana, huh? I might say were I to meet him and be familiar enough to ask meaningfully about his future. I think of him as being lonely but I don't have any idea. I wonder if he hears Amy I calling the cat, or arguing. I wonder if our moving in had any impact on his decision to leave, the before and after contrast a reminder of stagnation. John is moving into his place at the beginning of June. Carolyn might move into John's old place. We're staying here for the time being.

Monday, almost. Sitting and listening to the radio, a program interviewing "Bobby Fisher", the boy chess champion who became a Tai Chi champion. He wrote a book on learning, the creative process as interchangeable between mediums and fields, applying the same self-knowledge in whatever one does. Now it's a pledge drive though. One more week of classes and then a three week break. What I'm gong to do for work is unclear. Always a problem, but always learning. Reading is most important, according to Bobby Fisher. Feeling disconnected from the methods of success and leaving those methods behind as furniture. A long term learning process or reaching out from what you know, a self knowledge as important as anything. And in the study of eastern philosophy one finds the study of eastern philosophy, and are not particularly prone to sharing it. Bits of a day and thoughts about what happened previously, the study of meditation, and aching backs and books of knowledge doesn't make for smart. Chicago carbon climate exchange. These kinds of entries and to focus on the process, to learn the mechanics without a second thought, and to slow it down. When washing the car, the same skills transfer to circular motions. A wealthy old man. Pledge drive. Not a very large bag, but to pick your head up from a certain kind of meditation, one unique to one's self. A page requirement, or here's what I do, practice being a kind of mother. One o'clock. Animal cruelty. And first the news, near the top of the hour. Perhaps it doesn't "do" any good, but that's not the point, a recognition of one's own skills and the careerist path once removed, how to "put together" a life instead of living the one most readily available. Having a neighbor over for dinner. Resisting temptations you've engaged in before. Restrict learning to what you don't know. The basic membership level, the joy of a given. A premium subscription.

Amy and I bought a new mattress after much debate. The old one sagged dramatically in the middle, bending our bodies in unnatural ways. The new one is flat or "firm", and with the mattress pad it's lovely, a good feeling after waking up sitting up and opening the window. But today after getting out of bed my upper back hurt, between the shoulder blades. I stretched and complained to Amy. She showed me some exercises she had learned from a tall ex-boyfriend, but to no effect. I think about how I slept: maybe it was the angle of the pillow bending my neck and my back, or maybe its the way we sleep together, contorting to match one another even in our unconscious movements. Tonight I'll be mindful of spreading out comfortably, evenly, and keep to my side of the bed.

Getting in the way of one's immediate sense through the elongation of personal style is a problem, something I worry about getting caught up in the echo of memory rather than the actual what is around us now pick you head up and speak look your neighbor directly in the eye and open your jacket offer them a stick of gum get out the right amount of change at the bus stop prepare your day at work get busy fade out come back walk down the street recognize those who commonly ask for change think to yourself that Oakland is a tough town maybe very unlike other places I have lived the easier versions of white liberal cities or fragile utopias like New York or San Francisco where a couple bad days of product supply failures can create major sustainability problems then again who knows people adapt like the rose is a rose is a rose complex take a nap get off work early contemplate never coming back what you would say to your boss if you could the other options we might have the trace of a life through the moods of the weeks and the push against what is working or will not and coming to an awareness and changing like the spehx wasp moving a grub close to the nest but first checking on its young and when it goes back outside to grab the food the scientists have moved it and so it moves the grub back into place by the entrance and goes back inside to check on its babies and then out and the scientists have moved it etc. the man said this is creative process recognizing patterns but who knows I do my best school is coming to a close thankfully only two more weeks and instead of a grand finale its more like a deflating hot air balloon the view was great but how am I going to get to my car from here and where am I anyway?

There is a connection between when I started to write poetry, or at least had come to an awareness that I could wholeheartedly apply myself to writing, and my father's illness. How this connection can be made explicit is difficult to summarize. There were times during my sophomore year of college, before the diagnoses, where he would call to chat at five in the morning, or suddenly appear at my dorm room (a two hour drive into Iowa from Wisconsin) on a Tuesday afternoon with the full expectation of going out to lunch. Later, watching him fold laundry, each item, be it a t-shirt or a pair of socks would be placed into a separate pile, the last pile seemingly forgotten about so that the laundry room was completely covered in a single layer of neatly folded clothes. "That's a good way of explaining it," my mother told me during dinner.

_

I signed up for a poetry writing class during the second block of my senior year. At first I was stunned by the idea that you could write whatever you wanted to write. I followed some step by step exercises: a line about a person's hands, what they were doing with their hands, a metaphor involving a place, a question to ask this person and the person's answer. I thought of my friend Aric and our later high school summers spent together in the graveyard, sitting across from each other in a freshly landscaped gully passing a dirty metal pipe and making jokes. The last line of the poem read, "Because I need that as much as you, could I get that back?"

_

After the first time I ever wrote a poem, unprompted, from start to finish, I had the most lucid dream I had ever had. It was large and perverse, moving through different places, brick walkways and houses; I saw everyone I ever knew and it went on and on. Eventually I ended up on a darkened suburban street, dark houses and a fear to go inside. I found a friend, Tony, and asked him to let me out of the dream. I grabbed him and shook him, and there I woke myself up. I got up, turned on the light and called Amy. She humored my excitement and listened. The next day I met with Liz, my poetry teacher, and told her that I wanted to be a writer, firmly convinced that the dream was a newly discovered sense exercising itself while I slept. Three years later I took some morphine pills and felt amazingly light, like I was gliding across the ground. A couple weeks after that I dreamt of floating through the rafters of a white adobe dome.

The story goes that red boy was born as a lump of meat, which was cut open with a sword by his father, and from which the child emerged wearing red silk trousers which glowed with light and a magic golden bracelet on his right wrist. He was an incarnation of Ling Chu-Tzu, “the Intelligent Pearl” and when he was seven years old he was already six feet tall. He performed many miraculous deeds and defeated the dragon king’s son, for which he was shamed by his father. Red Boy responded by cutting the flesh from his body in remorse until he was reduced to nothing. Seeing the suffering of Red Boy, Guanyin appeared and covered his remains with lotus leaves, which revived him and reconstituted his body. From that moment he became a dharmapala, a fierce protector of the faith.

When I was 19 my father was diagnosed with Pick's disease. At the time I was living in Tokyo as part of a study abroad program. My sister emailed me the news. At first it didn't mean much to me, a possible explanation for the strange and inconsistent behavior that my father had been exhibiting, but mostly it seemed abstract, something to be dealt with later. It was on Christmas day that I received a call from my brother and sister and dad, hanging out, laughing about their experience in Church the prior evening, where a talking Darth Vader pen my brother was carrying broke the staid silence of the Christmas Eve ceremony with "I want them alive!" At first my dad tried to tell the story but his confused ordering of events got in the way. My sister took over and I understood. That spring I received a letter from my father, the first I had ever gotten from him, a single page ending with the line, "I'm so proud of you."

_

Things began making more sense after that, thinking about the past and making the appropriate revisions to my memory and the logic behind events. My dad and I wrote each other emails when I had first left to Japan, until one day when he wrote that if I wasn't going to write back than he wouldn't write anymore. Later, when somebody showed him how to check his in-box, he apologized and continued writing, sometimes strange stories about the dogs and the farm, pouring gasoline down snake holes and his adventures with Susan. At the end of one of these emails, he concluded, "I hope you find something funny everyday."

_

When I came back my brother said I had changed, that I was acting too much like Nate, who my brother thought to be arrogant and aloof. My brother, dad, and I were all staying at a house my sister was taking care of for the summer in DC. My dad's odd behavoir was more pronouced now, and he would burst with non-sequiturs, anger, confusion, and clarity at uneven intervals. While driving back to Wisconsin, I put some music on in the car; Stereolab, a droning rock band with a french singer. He mumbled something in the back seat and then exploded in anger thirty seconds later, mocking the singer's voice, "la la la la la, la la la la la, turn it off or I'll throw the goddamn tape out the window." My brother and I smiled at each other but I felt embarrased.

_

It feels odd to me that I should reflect on these things when I'm not really that far removed from them. My dad is still alive, mute and damaged from the disease; but he's still alive. I'm very much still in a post-college haze in many ways, unsure of my place and how I should spend my time. Is it healthy to dwell on the not so recent past? Have I earned any perspective on the matter? Am I different in any way? My dad always told us to be ourselves but more often than not I'm absolutely confused as to who that is. I've been teaching the last three months and with each class I get more and more lost in other people's expectations of me, how it seems impossible to distinguish what I want from the wants of those around me.

Two Wednesdays ago I asked John three times about the same thing because I didn't believe him when he told me; a debate about a little detail on an ivory piece, a detail that I believed to be a turtle (not a minogame, a kind of mythical turtle like creature). He got angry and said I was stubborn, go away. I left the room and sat back down at my desk. He came after me, yelling, This goes to show your ignorance in Japanese mythology! Later, John conceded that Japanese mythology was maybe not the problem, and instead, our disagreement was simply a matter of buisness judgment. He told me that I was only interested in facts. I am still coming to terms with this assertion.

Poetry Is a Destructive Force

That's what misery is,
Nothing to have at heart.
It is to have or nothing.

It is a thing to have,
A lion, an ox in his breast,
To feel it breathing there.

Corazon, stout dog,
Young ox, bow-legged bear,
He tastes its blood, not spit.

He is like a man
In the body of a violent beast.
Its muscles are his own...

The lion sleeps in the sun.
Its nose is on its paws.
It can kill a man.

-Wallace Stevens, "Parts of a World"

I was invited to stay in Leeds by Molly and Barnaby on my way up to Scotland for a family gathering. On the last day there Molly and I accompanied Barnaby to conference at a local college that Barnaby and his fellow performers were invited to participate (a movement and sound improvisational method) in. While they set up, Molly and I wandered around the massive sculpture garden and park that was located on the campus. It was a nice afternoon talking and playing around. After the performance demonstration, during a question and answer portion, I snuck off the bleachers and found a good spot outdoors while I waited for the event to finish up, laying on a steep slope introspecting or whatever it is one does on a steep slope. Molly and Barnaby came out of the building, along with the other performers and started up the hill towards me. I stood up to greet them, a little nervous as the group approached I began to think about all the things I could possibly say to them, things like "Hello how are you."; "Nice Job"; ask a question; prepare for the question of what I was doing in England; what I do in general; etc. Sensing my unease, I guess, Bob, a larger man with hair almost to his shoulders reached out his hand, palm down, and said softly but pointedly, "you're alright, you're alright" and instantly I fell out of anxiety. We chatted briefly and excepting Barnaby and Molly, the performers got in their cars parked behind us, and left.

That's not the story. The story is video games and isolation, indifference and cynicism. As if spinning around each other we fail to see another's orbit caught up in the impossible perfection of our own. School administrators are not to blame. There is no bureaucratic congress approved solution for your girlfriend breaking up with you nothing so that you'll only kill two people and then go to prison for the rest of your life. A failure of imagination, as if sadness could be prevented. (If you had gotten an email from an anonymous machine telling you not to go to work would you listen? Have you already?) This is not an isolated incident perpetrated by a crazy lonely man with access to relaxed gun laws and a lack of administrative foresight but the extended static portrayals of the human being and entrance exams marking the location of a scared poet hiding in the hubris of language and pretensions so as not to be heard avoiding the responsibility of being understood. Ideally we hope to take risks but not out of habit. Ideally we hope to respond. There was a student in my class who wrote some alarming sentences I asked the administration if I was legally responsible and they said not really. Simply I spoke to him. While standing in Subway today two kids bounced around without any parents they said they were bored. Tonight Amy and I went to a baseball game we stood in the line sat down and ate nachos.

After many adventures, spaceships to marching band uniforms jokingly but earnestly worn, a party at night in a beer garden, somebody else's neighborhood. A talking robot I think, or maybe it was just a dog and momentum spinning me away from the anonymous group of fellas falling through the sky and into the water. A canyon tall and deep and bright, filled with water as clear as anything like a television show or a mind's conception of what clean is, I realized, after sinking to the bottom. Yes I was dreaming and intentionally blinded my senses to protect myself. I fell out of lucidness with a quick decision and returned to my normal sleep pattern.

Twenty minutes from the Yamanote line, the loop of track that surrounds the heart of Tokyo, I would board the packed train and wedge my way to the end of the car. At the next stop a mass of people would disembark to catch the express, and usually the person sitting directly in front of me was one of them. I would quickly fill their empty seat. Lucky as I was, I more often remember the view while standing, the gradual appearance of fences and signage, bicyclists speeding alongside the train as we slowly approached the station.

On Friday Quintin's place almost burnt down I say almost because the ceiling and roof burned but the rest was mostly okay, parts of the ceiling crashed down on parts of the bedroom and hallway. I walked up the back stairwell, and found Amy standing in Q's bedroom, she handed me a computer's hard drive and I walked down the main staircase and gave it to his landlord, who placed it in a bag to keep the ashy smell from smelling up his apartment. I dug through a pile of ash and found a ring, and a black and white picture of what looked like a grandfather. Q's shrine had taken most of the damage, having been hit from pieces of the ceiling falling into it burning, but most everything else, his bed, desk, was okay if covered with a thin coating of ash. We collected a bag of his salvaged and burnt sacred relics, and gave it two his friend Dean, who offered to put Q up until his apartment is livable again. We left with a bag of Q's work clothes, just in case he can't get back in when he gets back from Atlanta. Amy is going to wash them.

Riding the 72r bus up to work on select days of the week where I need to be in North Berkeley for a good part of the day I see a lot of billboards along San Pablo where the bus runs, from down town through a rough neighborhood, through Emoryville and then into Berkeley. Some of these billboards are movie billboards advertising usually a big time action movie or a horror movie, for example that movie called '300', where the advertisement is usually a bare chested man looking very angry and written across his picture is '300' but written in blood. It seemed excessively violent to me. And then there are the horror movie advertisements, a body being dragged across a desert or a freaky doll or something else advertising 'evil'. For a while I thought it was strange, one of those back in my day they didn't advertise those kinds of things so blatantly because we had values, mid-western values or something like the world is going to end soon in a climactic battle brought on by rising indifference, sin, and greed. Biblical kinds of ideas. But all this was tempered as I have been reading about the first Tokugawa shogunate and William Adams, the English sailor who got in close with the most powerful person in japan during the early 17th century (I write 17th century now instead of 1600's because of the job at the Buddha Museum seems to encourage this). Anywho, reading about the crazy violent public spectacles that seemed to of been common place in japan during that time (think mass public burnings where citizens are required to provide the fire wood), before and after that time, and then thinking about other historical information that we've learned like gladiators or public whippings or executions performed by our ancestors, how our respective societies have seem to of made a place for those kinds of activities to be broadcast, and people show up to watch them. The ad across the track in a subway station advertises a movie coming out, i forget its name, but the web site that you can visit is watchthemdielive dot com which a month ago i would of turned and said see, see what I'm talking about?

yesterday a table and chairs came to the apartment sent via shipping route starting in massachusets sometime in february and arriving here much later the men who delivered the items were no so agreeable stating that upon meeting them that they would not take the aforementioned items into the apartment above just one flight of stairs because simply it was not part of the deal and thus the proposed that i pay them fifty dollars extra to do this as could not carry the said items up a flight of stairs standing outside the building we discussed this not a mention of the rules as i didn't know them all i knew was that the delivery was coming and they were to take it all the way so we went to go look at the things in the truck and i called amy and she called the company or maybe called her mother who made the initial deal with the company and found that yes they were supposed to deliver it all the way but somehow this directive got lost on the way to the delivery men so they said dang well we'll just have to come back some other time when you all work this out and i said well this is stupid i'll give you guys a check for fourty dollars and they said okay we'll take it up for forty dollars and they said cash so i agreed to it i had to go to the corner store to do so and called amy on the way and told her the situation i was quite angry and told amy and she called the company and told them about the cash money offer and i got the money and came back they had already moved most of the items into the hallway by the apartment door and i knew that they were going to get a call from their company soon to reprimand them for their dealings and i opened the door and they started to move in the table and chairs and the call came through and then they got mad saying that the deal was between us and i responded that they were trying to "shake me down" from the beginning and it was tense and we argued and they left the furniture here and i didn't pay them any money though i worried that they would retaliate somehow i offered them a small tip on their disgruntled way out and was met with we don't want you money later amy called to make sure that they were paid by their company for their extra services though it freaked me out arguing with large men about money in my living room and really i could of carried the furniture upstairs on my own skip the trouble but instead the payment had already been made so i could pace around and "be in charge" the moral of the story is none sit down and eat dinner

a friday things couldn't be better question mark couldnt be worse question mark these are question marks without answers in the mid afternoon the time is approximately a few minutes past noon usually around this time i'd be starting up a particular class called narrative documentary but instead spring break hooray no work today instead i'll call home home for the afternoon start to get into the notebook that has been getting filled up with mutterings of a guy at work researching odd little deities for pleasure and money but really there is a lot to say about everything and i hope you don't read too closely when i say the man at the used book store asked me to recite a poem he smelled bad i wandered to a bench and read the book it was dark i was asked can you read in the dark and responded a little and a lot of light shone down a string of lights the kind that surrounds the lake at night not internal but the external happenings strictly in my memory a sight for sore eyes don't spend too much time looking at other people's clothes and then your own desires and placement what have you has you random assault on the mediterranean the book i bought was after a day researching this little dutch man you cant find the link here underline trying to find something intelligent and saleable to say about him but only through history i thought could we get somewhere and so to wikipedia and the dutch and japan and william adams and ieyasu shogunate wow what a man what a time imperial japan armies of thousands and thousands maneuvering and killing one another the rest of the people who knows only later did we start to wonder thus we're without the letters only artifacts like the little dutchman carving holding a wind instrument my hand holding the little dutchman

it seems to me that there is something cruel about keeping a pet or more like cruel in the sense that they wait for you to come home not a chance of independence for thier entire lives or maybe cruel to oneself for taking on the responsibility of another creatures life that isn't human i mean a cat like the one sitting on the floor here and who's to say she wouldn't be better off sitting on the floor somewhere else with another cat on a sunny day in june in september i asked a question and pets come to mind a dog walks through the park without a leash and at least i know now that i do have a cat to call my own on loan from amys cousin i guess we keep her shes very nice but why do we want to get all caught up in attachment when the cat already had a home or why even am i living with amy if that's the issue or why even bother at all to eat of course yes this is important to stay out of trouble but to foster a dependence dogs and cats people living with horses and afraid to leave one another a sign that i'm hungry but instead ate an entire roll of cookies after getting home from work no penalty just working but i'd like to come back to this issue that i had thought i was going to start writing about that is city living that is brutal for some reason i find that i'm writing much like the letters of wallace stevens i've been reading on accident while trying to read a biography that i picked up because i couldn't find the book i was actually looking for and i'm frustrated i admit with the rugged pace of things and the cat got up to leave and if you've been reading you will of noticed that i haven't been doing too many postings lately and that's on purpose not really feeling it rarely have i been sitting at the computer and given the urge to write something not depressed but thinking about other things and not that interested in writing emails im sure you understand maybe some other time then i'll see you later

On my way home today I reached into my pocket and found my finger nail clippers. I remembered that I put them there so that I could cut my fingernails on my way to work. John handed me an asian pear today and told me that it had been blessed by the Buddha. For all practical purposes it had, sitting in the show room surrounded by statues in wood and metal and stone of the Buddha and those like him. There was a Chinese New Year party at the space on Saturday. John handed me a red envelope on Monday, my Chinese New Year bonus. There was one dollar inside of the envelope. He also handed delepe an envelope but I don't know how much was in that one. Today as he was handing me a check for three days work I showed him my empty wallet. Do you need some cash he asked me. I think the envelope was supposed to be a joke, the glory of anticipation and the fact that I'm too old for those kind of handouts. Plus I'm his employee, not family. The fruit was placed in the bowl as an offering. It was quite delicious, maybe the best asian pear I had ever had. Lately I had been feeling kind of off, and was thinking that maybe this blessed pear would solve something. I realized that the reason I had been off was that I was fatigued, after a busy weekend and finishing a manuscript for some deadlines, and then back to work and tomorrow I teach. Tonight I am going to take it easy. When I get fatigued I get goofy. This is funny sometimes but it makes me feel a little crazy. I am growing a beard. I wondered if clipping one's nails on the sidewalk was socially acceptable. Setting a pear on the counter at night will increase my chances of eating it the next morning. Come to think of it, I ate a mushy pear this morning. Bosh. Bosch. Whatever they're called.

i had a dream last night where i was watching the simpsons and they were playing basketball the characters from the simpsons like mr burns and lenny and smithers and the police chief and all that and the guest star of the episode was tom sellick if that's how you spell his name and he got hit in the head with a basket ball and fell over and his head was damaged it was bleeding and oozing this green ooze and he was dying obviously and all the characters gathered around him as if this were on tv i was still dreaming that i was watching it though i don't remember watching i just remember the episode and all the characters were standing there on the basketball court standing over him as he was oozing this green fluid and he knew he was dying and was making statements like thank you all for supporting me and more complicated sentiments but as time went on the things he said would get simpler as if the green ooze was his personality and finally he just said stupid things that made no sense and died and i woke up as if that were some kind of nightmare one to watch on television and looked over at amy who was sleeping and thought how could i go back to sleep after that because it was disturbing but i did anyway waking up periodically and reminding myself not to forget and now saturday morning i still remember pacific standard time last night i lost thirty five dollars playing poker

without further ado here is the latest installment of jen and erika's travelling projecto fabuloso moving from blog to blog and now its here enjoy

Don’t you have a map?
A collaborative, traveling essay in letters‘twixt Erika Howsare & Jen Tynes.
Part 12, J to E-

The Student BODY IN CONTRAST

A shine. To you an apple
waiting. A buff brown
collar, around the corner
thing. Will not believe in
G.S. except in slang,
mandatory. A CONTRAST

is like a little bell you break
to remember winter. A bell
you melt down. Tinkling. Slang.
Yellow bus stop
for me, yellow bus stop
stinking. There is no BUTTONS
here, BUT A BLACK BOOT

is to hang-over what art
is to exercise. Monitor it all
weekend. Fill the public air
with persons, site-specific food
aroma and the experience
SHAMS itself. The video
cassette recorder is
JAMMED and full of tape.

RECORDING
It used to be much easier to
speed them up. Not easier
but physical. Not easier but
of childhood. Of childhood
stills? (I made every album
sound / Every album sounded
like The Chipmunks.)

PUT A BOW IN YOUR HAIR
and change the conversation
Red heart of a mouth at the
bus stop doesn't know those
androgynes in plastic dresses,
with flower names. What about
you, in the dusty place one
conversation makes it? What do
we agree on about good and
evil?

E responds to J when and where it's appropriate.
Please visit http://www.horselesspress.com/amap.html for the whole hog.
Email Erika & Jen: editors AT horselesspress DOT com.

presidents day make room for baby i meant to go to work and i did go to work i just didn't make it instead i went to the bus stop and smoked a cigarette looked around with my hands in my pockets listening to smog the kids got heart the kids got heart the kids got heart and looked around and waited the bus didn't come the bus known as seventy two r didn't come the r is for rapid the bus never came so i called in to john and said hey i'm not coming i'm going to go home and do my own work and so i did i walked back around the lake stopping at the mini market asking for printer paper and they had none so i bought a newspaper after standing at the drink coolers and wondering if i wanted any of that and asked the man behind the counter about printer paper and he suggested i go down the street to the ups store and sure enough they had some for the exorbitant price of seven dollars but i bought it anyway lazy of me i guess and came home sat down read the paper and booted up the computer again presidents day saw an article about the big heads carved in virginia the south korean u n head and sports the all star game and product placement and what not jet blue etc but most importantly of all i got an email from jen and her and erikas project that will be posted here in the very near future which is exciting more exciting than presidents day perhaps a day off in the blue sky a windy day in the apartment with its windows closed in california its not so cold anymore and i can see my hands from my perspective amys in santa cruz the apartment feels like its not entirely mine right now the methods of cohabitation and a refrigerator full of food that i didn't buy to eat for lunch a box of something good

The stoplight was green but there were no cars to go. I walked across the intersection.The town is empty because I have my headphones on. Sitting in the cafe window two men with glasses are having breakfast. Intellectuals need their space. The grey cat was scared yesterday. Are typically more reserved. The day was limping along and suddenly it came over me. Bagel and cream cheese. Nate has stopped eating meat. Leeks he said he was buying leeks. Who can blame him? Last night we ate the lamb sausages that Cecil gave us. Who's Cecil? I'm not sure. The sausages were pretty good, full of mediteranian spices, all orange and smelly. The book said lamb is typically better treated than most other meats in this country, due to the fact that the market isn't as big so therefore its more of a niche for small farmers. Is that what they call them? Farmers? To cultivate, pasteurize. This really should of been written in a notebook sitting in the sun, came out today. Herky Jerky. Sentences and Periods. Where's John? Right now I'm having a small fantasy that he is laying dead in the back of the store/office, I mean, what if he is. It's possible. The patio that wraps around our apartment seems like a good platform to break a window on. A shadow passes over the pulled blinds and the motion light comes on. When you have something you worry. What do I have? Something I worry. I really enjoy riding the bus. The last time I did repeatedly was when I lived in Seattle. The Laughing Elephant. Pioneer square. Last night I stayed up late getting ready for class. To do a better job and enjoy oneself.

after some trouble with the stealing connection surfing on the airwaves around the lake and buildings around the lake we finally come to the screen that allows for interface and a waiting and a button pushing a checking of systems and gauges like meters and colors that tell us when to try again like a car's fuel gauge a check the brakes light and the brakes work fine but i better check them and so on and so forth this morning finally making an effort to communicate to you the fact that there is a time in the morning before i go to work and after i get up that is perfect for this kind of thing this running on at the mouth and the day through my small window in this room is half shaded and half light a blue sky with a thin layer of cloud above both and there is little more happening asides from some kind of statement in modern architecture a big blank surface and not a sign of the neighbors or a bird flapping through the frame but this is of no importance we can simply look around the small space i'm in and recount past memories or imagine the future then it was great a picture the scene a fourteen set of pans a small green man with a large heart a winter scene in the orange light of the street lamps that reminds me of swimming at edgewood the entrance to the pool on the back of side of a hill overlooking the lake if it weren't for the trees but in the winter when my hair is wet freezes at its tips fanned out from underneath my hat always asking for a ride home the lake was visible through the lack of leaves and the dotted lights of houses across the lake at least according to the picture i in fact only remember listening to the extremely loud bass of james' car stereo was tired and the orange light reveals itself at the entrance to the back road a street called jefferson named after a president leader of the free world its time to go to work

i haven't wanted to write an email lately the business of moving and starting a new job has rendered my schedule a busy time of year like the holidays where everything is new except for the hours of the day say breakfast starts in the morning and on monday tuesday wednesday i go over the buddha museum where i write the little blurbs and then thursday friday where i teach them writing in various forms so now that leaves saturday and also we have moved in to a gigantic apartment where the space is almost too much to say that things have been busy and the push of different forces have rendered my schedule a work in progress trying to find a way to get everything that needs to be done done say the ocean is a pool of water and on the bottom there are rocks and people have never been to the real bottom but once they have then a postcard and to take holidays there and back earmarked for fun and funny times the push of the teaching makes my buddha musuem time that much more enjoyable due to the fact of sitting alone in an office and writing is much more familiar than standing or sitting in front of a group of writers but standing is certainly more exciting and fear provoking which is nice to say a move towards the center middle road less is more something like that now and again i'll make a push we can talk about it later get back on the horse the bike ride for a while wobble a little pass a test buy a new bike at wal-mart as a reward

Last summer when I was living in Brooklyn I was watching a doccumentary with my brother about Hitler and WWII. It was a doccumentary about Hitler's presence as an orator, and master of his own image. The narrator claimed that Hitler never let himself be photographed with his hands in his pockets. Thinking of this, not Hitler exactly, but where such an idea might of come from, the idea that being seen with hands in your pockets as a sign or weakness or ineptitude. Thinking of this I walked back the street back to my apartment, making sure that my hands and arms were swinging freeley, and trying to fill them with mindfulness, feeling it full on through to my fingers. I felt there was a difference, a way of being part of the city streets when inhabiting some kind of confident pose. Whereas, before, stuffed hands in my pockets and head down, I felt like I was a somehow vulnerable to the many sets of eyes I would walk past, the fact of my not rising to meet them an indicator or respect; for myself and thiers. So I worked on this, coupled with a quote from the Beastie Boys, "What's running through the mind comes through in the walk", thinking that a practiced posture will develop different habits, trying to be a better person. When walking down the street with a friend that summer, I told him what I was doing, thinking about a practice in moving. Telling the story much like the one I just told, his response was "Why do you want to be like Hitler?"

back when not way back but kind of back relatively speaking say almost one forth of my aged years say if i were eighty say a fourth would be twenty years but i'm not eighty and not about to go into age and weight time and place but say lets just say way back when when i had moved to seattle out of college and was visiting amy down in oakland we would come down to oakland and she would come up to seattle say a long distance thing and it worked pretty well for a while but one trip this time we had been over in san francisco for some reason maybe to go as far as the beach or maybe simply to go to a record store i don't know but she liked to walk and still does and we were walking still do through the down town area say walking down market around where its starts to get hairy right past city hall and the other day looking up at the new federal building over looking a carls jr. where there are some sad people milling about in front of at all hours some more busy than other and the man the guy we were walking down the street and we were younger and looked to be in love and people would stop us and say particularly homeless people would stop us and compliment us and then hit us up for money or whatever because not only did we look happy but we looked nice in that nice nice way that naive way that sucker way and maybe we still do turn the frown upside down or maybe we don't maybe just a quick denial a refusal of the question a knowledge to avoid the eye contact in the first place the idea of seeing what's coming of course not nothing how could we know but the man had red hair a beard grown out of proportion he started talking we stopped we couldn't help it to lend an ear maybe i stopped and she stayed with me i don't know but he was talking and we were talking sort of and actually trying to move on down the street we were by large fountain talking about how beautiful she was and yes smiling and nodding and moving away okay nice to meet you a hand shake moving on and he said yes i remember he said how would you like to watch while i fuck your girlfriend while shaking my hand and that was it we left after that didn't say a word about it really asked her the other day if she remembered but not it was gone i don't remember the guy but remember the feeling a bad one a young one

Say the conflict, a conflict, say, is what to call ourselves. What is our ‘thing’ our history? What are the words they will use to describe us, to describe me? Say, modern and post-modern, and now what? This time. This one, where an immense subjectivity couples with the eternal, as in, yes, there are times to make immense declarative statements. Yes, there are times we make immense declarative statements, and times we let it all out or in or standing still or running away. A massive psychology, a massive subjectivity whereas we can be understood, but not all the time.

Instead, no, it is the frame we are looking at, describing. Exists in a bubble and at the same time, supremely talented. Both you and us. I and them. The King and I. Etc. So it is not the thing, no, it is not a matter of right and wrong, not the materials and principles, the backlog of information accessible to us through the Internet, a phone call away, walking through the graveyard on a cell phone, but the groovy eye, the one eye, the shut your eye off once in a while eye. No pictures, no piles of pictures, not an immensity of stored data. I go back and lose it, the train of thought, the interruption a phone call an email, the end of an empire, the idea of an empire to hold and to cherish. Past an idea, past discussion, nobody would believe me anyway if I told them, saw it myself. No, what we’ve become is not a thing. We’re too complicated now. “Of Being Numerous”. George Oppen. But we must have a thinglyness. It must have a thinglyness, but not as a thing derived from a thing, the new model, but a mode a transport. Not the words but the mechanism of delivery, or watching and being watched; that we will understand over the course of time, that our infinite subjective will settle.

It is no longer a fractured world, a waste land of dejected pieces, but a world of infinite connection. And no longer do these connections defy explanation. History and science and economics are cornering the market. We can explain almost everything. A non-sequitor is traceable, not fooling anyone. No, we are left with a wheel of subjectivity, a wheel of experience where everybody is right and everybody is wrong. We have turned back on ourselves, back to our mechanisms of perception. Seen as the media, touched as an advertisement. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes sometimes and never maybe. Always maybe. What does it matter? A man slashes at an already dead fish. Time moves on. This is our next challenge, certain in our uncertainty, the inverse, and one that doesn’t. Plurality. The plural. And to connect that which we need to is to rediscover that which we need. And so what it is is not a thing but the thing’s movement, the machine and what it is doing, where it is taking us. Yes there are many kinds of trees in the forest. Yes, some of them are particularly beautiful yes. And yes we are standing on a path, and yes there is a swath of trees knocked down over there. But the movement. The drawing of lines, connectors, this is our task.

At one point in early adolescence I found myself at church camp, some kind of over night spiritual retreat for kids. I'm not sure why we were there, and am assuming my dad made us go. My brother and I. It was totally awkward, but we managed to have some fun. I remember sitting with some kids who were being read to, some kind of bible story with pictures. I thought about how I wasn't into bible stories but it was nice to be part of this little group, sitting closely and warmly together, somebody else's family. One afternoon we were walking through some grass and my brother spotted a snake in the grass, a small one, a gardener. I reached down to pick it up and it jumped up and bit me on my little finger. My brother then grabbed a stick and wailed on it, killing it. We picked it up holding it from its head and dangling, its body still intact, I proudly told a few people that I got bit by a snake and that my brother had killed it in retaliation. There were two little holes on my pinkie, no venom or swelling, just a simple bite. The snake probably didn't deserve what it got. The little holes stayed on my finger for a long time.

The bench, otherwise known as the lake perch, just down the hill from the apartment, a.k.a. the home. Runners running. Birds doing their bird thing. Not a poem but a simple return to writing on a widening notebook. A skinny green pen. Two pairs of skinny legs moving in the dusk. Pointed away from the sun, say north or a direction resembling north, it was good to see a few of those people who have run past. Some of them look at me, some of them don't. No action, or no result other than the acknowledgement of presence. Not even a nod, but an inclusion into the park scape. Music that was bleating behind me has stopped. Stop smoking, stop blaming your problems on other people. The music has started again. Fragments of conversation. The sounds of traffic passing by, engines and motors. A mother and her teenage son. Neither nor, a thrift store coat. Social responsibility lies with the socially responsible. To see a move end call it a night. A movie with no end. The fading sunlight, a voice rising in its approach, and the sun made of light; not a burning ball but a yellow symbol, abstract as meaning. A Charlie Brown Christmas. A trip to the museum, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. A sigh from a mother walking with her daughter. Anything but made up. Don't forget to call. Don't forget to write and bring pictures, the fading voice and the quiet entrance into a room. A memory of a video game, a half smoked cigarette. Traffic increases and the glances made apparent, to option, out-source, a conversation outward, building a relationship or looking for an answer. Making other plans, but not surprising. I'm not trying to recreate the situation, but interpret with a bias as full as weather, a wind blowing outside of the car. Headlights on, okay if you want it to, but the same pace, the pace of circling the lake. Perhaps a piece or part of it, a gap in conversation, a fraction of it overheard, and though not miscontextualized, misconstrued, no, but recorded as is. Simply and without judgment, to be lead to what is important by a narrowing of options, that importance finds you. A lake in the city's dusk. A small bird diving to the bottom of the pond. The expression on the face of sentiment, not important, but a lasting image. A short legged dog trying to keep up, in good conscious, and a heart beats rapidly, as if the words had caused the race to begin, not the gun but the intention to signal. Pick you head up. A runner's pony tail swishes. Could it be any other way? Not what we see but imagined to have been. A glance at the man sitting on a bench. Taking notes on just that, the notion of looking. Recognition and awareness. A simple meditation, and done so through practice. Not a technique. No ending.

The stock market crash of 1932 was brought on by falling interest rates and bad car loans, the oil industries plight to introduce radios with metallic car frames. Ironically, Henry Ford was the least affected of the industry moguls as he and three others climbed new heights in awareness. Spinning greased up gears always a hit amongst investors, he retained no status like that of the insufferable nagging feeling one stock broker might have to deal with, jumping from roof top to roof top, running from the cops. These stories of grief high up high light the national mood that follows “bad” teachers or trying to avoid the pitfalls of modern medicine, the Ovid and the Odessy “giving back” to a karmic society. Poor values and more highlight the mid 30’s insuperability, placing a man’s palms against the beating chest and sweating forehead of the stock broker’s wife, already at a distance due to long hours at the firm. These hopes and others are reintroduced come the beginning of the mid-eighties.

semi early morning unlike most climates of posting this one comes early on due to the fact of elevated transport concerns say a new day a new work day this time with use of a motor carriage to speed up along the highway in a direction untypically crowded due to flight towards the big buildings no this time instead we move away from them to the low lands north berkeley said right off the highway practically begging to be arrived at via motor car not pool just me alone solo driving concentrating on the road ahead the other cars maybe a turn signal a light but who cares the birds flapping outside an engine passes as she descends the large hill outside the apartment and the blue sky is pale and nondescript to my left i can look into the neighbors apartment them too on top the hill but not in a wealthy way but a small space shared way an apartment for those who bring all their references and one that i happened to move into maybe too big or grand for my ambitions but nice nonetheless if that is a word what will become of it of anything roasting grand avenue letting the mind wander thinking about keith waldrop the opposite of letting the mind wander and his now translation of baudelaires flowers of evil maybe i can trade in a couple items i don't want in order to obtain it but talk is cheap ill probably just buy it put it on my credit card sunshine morning hotel no tell etcetera butter talk just outside below where the window can frame the grill i used last night sits the coals burned out and the catfish i had thrown down on the metal eaten just a few pieces left still stuck the metal cold maybe a prowling cat will eat it yes it is that kind of neighborhood

I remember as a kid having a painting session in my dad's kitchen, painting pictures on a summer day in Mineral Point. No ornamentation or description of those summer days at my dad's house, under the care of Wealthy, a kind old woman who still mystifies me today, her relationship to our family, why she would watch after us kids...because she was paid? Where did she come from? Regardless, we were painting water colors in the kitchen of the old Victorian house down on the corner of the large hill. Not knowing what to paint, I took my cue from a public service announcement alarming the cartoon watchers of the fact of child abuse, how to spot the signs as a poorly painted water color depicting a monster standing by a child's bedside, fangs and blood imagined as the abused psyche of the truth telling child. Taking this cue, I painted this picture, hoping to get some kind of recognition as damaged goods, a deep dark well of emotion justifying my fears and wants. My brother wasn't impressed, probably recognizing the picture for what it was (a fake). My father equally less so. No one brought it up and it escaped the world again.

hi no pretense sunny day in a quiet oakland neighborhood just got back from a little trip or two one to the homeland wisconsin for a family event marked by presents and sugar and the other a brief trip down to sunny southern california desert to meet with friends and both times without live in girlfriend shes off doing her own thing but as i wait i wait await you know the time share holiday that kind of thing waiting and living longer than ordinary education plays a role says the newspaper but as i wait later on today ill go meet with a man who might offer me a job though im not entirely hopefully good timing though since the current means of employment doesnt begin until the next week and i find myself erasing punctuation very much a transitional period while lacking a space amongst other things maybe this is the time to make phone calls to apartments here in this one filled with smoke as something in the oven i think it was a potato pancake from decembers activities filled the apartment with smoke and though the windows are open my eyes still hurt and it looks a little cloudy still but i can't tell if thats just me or the smoke still on its way casually moving towards the exits fresh air still coming into the insides the breaks are few and unforgiving times like these require scooters to send down hills not messages but the messengers themselves in all of their healthy glory hercules and isosceles marathon twenty eight days later the post is filled died at the finish line slipped on the rope the sweat and embroidered on his sweater reads snowflake nineteen hundred and fifty four new year etc option for change et al

Selected Memories

“You know, your bike tire is low on air.” I said. She had stopped and was looking at me. The party was over and she was about to get on her way home. “I don’t have a bike pump.” she said indifferently. “Oh that’s alright. I could leave one in your box. I’ve got a little one that I use for my bike. It works great.” She said, “I’m not a goal oriented person." and rode off.

“I don’t know where I am or who I’m talking to.” I had said to Aric while laying on a clean bed at a cabin somewhere east of Portland Oregon. I really didn’t know at the time. It was a bachelor party and it was the first night. Greg had given me some kind of opiate, and mixed with the absinthe, booze, and pot, it just knocked me out. I went up stairs to give it a rest. Aric came up and started talking to me, as he does sometimes when I am trying to pass out. I was trying to listen but faded out. He reminded me what I had said sometime later.

“No matter how much you exercise you’ll never be healthy.” Greg repeated back to me. “You know Tyler, you just say the most amazing things. All of a sudden, you just spit out these pearls of wisdom. No matter how much I exercise I’ll never be healthy. Wow.” Of course at the time I really thought he meant it. In retrospect I realized that he was being sarcastic, and that he was trying to indicate to me that I should shut my mouth. At the time I felt encouraged.

Three Quotes

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“I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.” –Ernest Hemingway, from “Moveable Feast”

*

“I doubt that there were precedents for the ceremonies that opened the Master’s last game. Black made a single play and white a single play, followed by a banquet.”-Yasunari Kawabata, from “The Master of Go”

*

"Pac-Man’s character is difficult to explain even to the Japanese—he is an innocent character. He hasn’t been educated to discern between good and evil. He acts more like a small child than a grown-up person. Think of him as a child learning in the course of his daily activities. If some one tells him guns are evil, he would be the type to rush out and eat guns. But he would most probably eat any gun, even the pistols of the policemen who need them." -Toru Iwatani, creator of Pac-Man

“Socio-economic factors are of limited explanatory power.” -NYT 3/26/06

It has come to my attention lately that a question concerning my poetry practice needs to be addressed: I write poetry, or do I write souped up narrative, getting lost in brambles by design. It would seem that largely, as long as I am simply removing chunks of my notebook and reworking them into appropriate forms, forms that look like poetry, borrowed forms and forms half filled, I think an argument would have to be made that I am not writing poetry because I am not engaging in challenging my means of communication, to say something I haven’t said before. There are times that I have done so, and do so, but I think if I err, I err on the side of presenting a mystical narrator rather than writing a poem, in love with myself as I can be.

Perhaps there is some merit in this, this engagement with the self (an idea of the self) that falls outside of narrative, and back into the category of new language, found or noticed or created. I think this is what Liz was known for, challenging these ideas of self specifically through language, as if talking to yourself on the boundary of self. In terms of prose, self appearing in or as or creating a mythic narrator and openly questioning the legitimacy of that myth. Poetic prose, prose poetry: challenging our ideas of narrative. Is this less than or equal to pure poetry? Where does it belong?

Thinking about Tod and Forest, to a degree, their work is very much about the language interaction and intersection with itself, a persons’ idea of the poem. However not everyone can be T.S. Eliot, and as much as I respect his writing, I usually do not choose to engage with poetry on a such a personal level. And by this I mean I usually do not take poetry as the primary “topic” of my poem, or say take poetry as a thing as my motivator for writing. Sometimes yes, but there are stories I need to tell and jokes I want to make. What is unfortunate that my multi-interest in poetry and writing, is not seen as a serious engagement with poetry, and this is true, it’s not a serious engagement with language but an interest in mediating my own personal narrative. Is this poetry? Not always, but sometimes.

So I guess I can’t blame them for not taking my writing seriously. Nor can I blame Jon Kinsella for ripping to shreds “The Revisionist” or Ed’s insistence that she doesn’t understand my poems. After all, the majority of what I write does not qualify as poetry on a literary level, and so many times have I noticed that a person’s interest in my work is tightly bound to a person’s interest in my person. Without that, I’m not sure the majority of my poetry makes any difference to anybody. It’s simply pop music or something that exists for entertainment purposes, and they’ve got to call it like they see it and we don’t mind.

If poets weren’t so intent on impressing their peers and instead were writing for themselves, than maybe more people would read poetry that doesn’t manipulate them in obvious ways. I do believe that the nature of engagement within language is a relative phenomenon in that what is new for some is not new to others. Professionals, I suppose, make it their business to know what is new, and old.

**

The division of labor continues.

Three Occurrences with Birds

Found a dead red tail hawk when I went to pee. Driving with my father out in the country side for some reason, I was about five and needed to releave myself. We saw it and picked it up, putting it into a trash bag and in the trunk. The DNR told us, after affirming that we weren’t the ones who killed it, that they had no use for it, and that maybe a university or school could use it for research. We contacted my grade school, I was in second grade at the time. They told us that they had no use for it unless it was stuffed and we weren’t about to do that. Why was it dead? It was probably killed from the power lines. There were no noticeable injuries to its body. It was warm and loose when we picked it up.

A hawk perched outside a fledgling bookstore. This one could have been a sign. Like a wolf falling from the sky into the arms of a child with a speech impediment. A sign of future glory. The store was in Brooklyn, owned by a friend of mine. I had helped him build the bookshelves and did the walls for him, painting and repair. In the end I had felt somewhat edged out of the operation, not that I had invested anything other than my time, but I had felt that I had helped him and the bookstore a considerable amount and was hoping to be a part of the bookstore’s future, to be included in some of the decision making in the bookstore’s future. It didn’t work out that way but the store is doing well.

An owl flew up from the middle of the road, a long night in a strange town; the key had broken off in the car’s lock. Jake and I had been painting at Pam’s weekend home in the very Southwest corner of Massachusetts, a town called Ashley Falls. One night we were feeling a little stir crazy and went out to a town about thirty miles north, where there was a kind of nightlife. We wandered around, making our longest stop by a group a street musicians. They were just high school kids but sitting with them made us feel as if we were a part of something larger. As we were leaving I turned the key too hard in a lock that was broken anyway. We called Pam and she came with an extra set of keys. Its wings were huge.

october when the weather was reasonable

Instead of wasting our time here on earth why don’t we gather our own merciful point of reference and celebrate instead the undivided likeness of reciprocity, lost in another world the melody of insurrection and divided unto one’s own lawn, a lawn in a development the ugliness of misappropriated wealth: a boat, a dune buggy, a hammock seldom used and all writhing within the constraints of a single yard, forgetting to speak and then resolving to listen more carefully. Mosquitoes in the morning people disturbed in their sleep. Housing development on the outskirts of Madison, the heart of the heart of the housing development.

train through oregon in late august

Over an uncertain number of years I’ve felt my moral compass or certainty of the right thing to do or say degrade to the point where these judgments become murky. It is not that I’m losing any sense or missing anything but simply making other choices, perhaps making choices that had not been presented to me in one form or the other, the best choices when relayed back to my cohorts reckon or reflect in smiles or admiration as if their old compasses have not changed the bend of conservatism the wild things we used to do where if I were a kid I’d steal a pack or gum or how I would never do such a thing through fear now unable or put in a position where there are choices that perhaps my cohorts had come across at earlier periods whereas I having been well protected am functioning as a child awed at the majesty of morals gone awry or of the trouble we begin to make for ourselves when we stop telling people what we’re afraid of and then we wake up unable to tell the person next to us what we were dreaming of as if any judgment were too much to take not a single decision fit the world ended up upended the questions would not come instead of buying paused to think what I have.

two demons riding a severed arm a man with a large oblong head being held and ridden by a laughing child a teacher holding a scroll being mobbed by children two children playing a game of dice a man reclining against a writing table petting a dog a chrysanthemum a fat man holding a large sack two men riding on the back of a large carp a man with a sword heading towards a clump of trees a boy riding the back of an ox while playing the flute a young man kneeling with a shoe next to an old man riding a mule a man dreaming of eleven little people in a word bubble a woman raising her right hand just above her face a large man with a large weapon stroking his beard a family fishes at the shore a man struggles with an octopus a calm look on his face in ivory and in excellent condition