840 Valencia (Part 2)

The ambiguity of who was going to stay coupled with personal allegiances made for a particular mix of entitlement. I, on the one hand, felt entitled because I was better friends with Chris (a friend from graduate school) than Casey was, and so it made more sense that I stay on in the apartment if Amy left. On the other hand Casey's rental agreement was with Amy and not Chris. If Amy decided not to come back (and Chris did) then Casey could stay in Amy's room and it would be an easy transition. There were two ways to argue and both were fair, depending on who you knew.

What Casey and I didn't know, but soon learned, was that Amy and Chris' communication about all of the above was less than fluent. Amy might talk to Casey on the phone about her plans, Casey would relay the information to me, now taking the form of gossip, and in turn I would pass it on to Chris. Or I would hear something from Liz (a mutual friend of Amy and I), I would pass the information on the Casey, etc. It became apparent that Amy and Chris weren't speaking to each other and to be fair, they tried, but both being absorbed in two different worlds / time zones made things difficult. Maybe this is how information gets spread (selectively) when nobody is in the same place at the same time. Anyway, the effect of all this was four different ideas of the future.

Meanwhile, Casey and I lived relatively peacefully in the apartment, neither of us unable to unpack our boxes or settle. This lasted for six months until Casey volunteered to leave. I write this as a post-script in the apartment, Friday morning San Francisco rain and finally at a (make shift) desk. Not because the story is finished, but because over the winter vacation I had trouble getting to sleep thinking that I had been screwed over after Casey had left. When I got back yesterday I was still angry, the flip flopping and positioning and how leaving the apartment seemed like a better option than to be caught up in some weird drama with people that I apparently didn't know very well. Anyway, I might get into trouble writing like this, so I have to be careful to not spill my angst in a way that does more harm than good. My hope is that I can tell the story in a way that everybody can agree on. It is probably this instinct that keeps the conflict open.

My brother and I listened to Obama's inauguration address on the radio of a Mazda 3 in the hills of West Virginia. We were on our way back from our great aunt's memorial service that we had left for on Sunday morning. An eleven hour car ride from New York, we passed the time on our way there playing silly road games and a long discussion that hinged on the assertion that in reading our brain pays attention to every letter in a word and processes it subconsciously while our conscious mind handles the meaning making portion of reading. Regardless, we got to our uncle's around eight, sister and husband and baby and dogs got in from D.C. at nine. The next morning along with cousins and cousin's children, we set aunt Jean's coffin on a wooden palette and the grave diggers did the rest. Aunt Jean didn't want any services and her wishes were respected.

She was the youngest of three sisters, my father's mother the middle sister, and all three were buried next to each other. She was the grandparent that would come with us to Dollywood, take us to the pool, and in general, make efforts to meet us kids wherever we were at; probably our only grandparent to do this, the fun one. She was also incredibly stubborn and had a reputation for constant criticism spilling out of her mouth, quick to tell you that your haircut is terrible and that your hand writing sucks. Just as quick to love, a squeeze or to give some sugar (her word for a kiss), this honesty, if that is what we call it, was also what made her endearing and there was no doubt how much she loved her sister's children, and their children (us).

After a pizza wake we all went over to her house and began the process of figuring out what to do with her stuff. My sister claimed some light fixtures, I got some end tables and some pans, my brother took with him an eight pack of twelve ounce bottles of Coke, cousin David joking/asking if he could drink my brother's inheritance. I found in an old box of jewelry, the names of my grandmother's children, my brother sister and I and our two cousins, etched on bracelet and a locket containing an old picture of aunt Jean and grandmother Anderson, what looked like a high school picture of them both, fresh faced and smiling in the sun. I sat down thinking that I would write about Obama's speech, reacting to the silliness of pundits talking for six hours about a twenty minute speech, instantly analyzing what might be better left to simmer, but never mind about that. My brother and I made it back to New York last night, and I leave for home (is where one starts from, T.S. Eliot) tomorrow.

840 Valencia (Part 1)

Last march I moved out of the Oakland apartment into a two bedroom San Francisco sublet on Valencia in the Mission district. I was going to take over Chris' room until the end of May while he was away in France doing some movement related studies. He got back in June but was again headed away to teach in El Salvador and a residency out in New York (state), so it made more sense for me to stay until he got back from the second trip, extending the sublet until the end of October.

Concurrently, Chris' roommate Amy was also going to be out of town, working on a Sol LeWitt installation at Mass MoCA until the end of August. Amy found Casey to sublet her room. Since Amy was leaving a month before Chris, I moved into Amy's room in the month of March, the plan being that when Chris left at the beginning of April I would move into Chris' room and Casey would move into Amy's room. In theory I was subletting from Chris and Casey was subletting from Amy, and both Chris and Amy would deal with any subletting issues that came up based on this division.

The trouble, or ambiguity of who is where until when, began when instead of me moving out of Amy's room in April when Chris left and Casey came, I stayed in Amy's room and Casey moved into Chris' room. Though this didn't create any immediate problems for Casey and I, or Chris and Amy, it mucked up the clear cut lines of communication and division of responsibilities.

Originally Amy was due back at the end of August, but having met and fell in love with Nobu out in Massachusets, her plans changed. Instead of coming back immediately, she and Nobu decided to come back to San Francisco and live together. This meant that Amy would be moving out of the Valencia apartment for a number a reasons, the most important being that the apartment was not big enough for three people (Amy, Nobu, and Chris). Thus raising the question: who was going to take Amy's place?

But let's back up a little bit. Casey and I had been living together since April and were getting along just fine. We weren't the best of friends but were both semi-reasonable people, relatively clean, respectful of each other's space, etc. and happy to be in the apartment. At some point early in the summer the possibility was raised that Amy might not be coming back and we talked a little bit about who would stay. Around that same time Chris was in between trips and was around the apartment to pick up some things. He was frustrated at not being able to find what he was looking for through the hubris of Casey's things, and offhandedly, walking down Valencia after lunch, told me that if Amy moved out he would rather live with me than Casey.

A couple days latter, fueled by the idea that if I know what I want I have every right to pursue it (as opposed to passively hoping that things and people will work out in my favor), I mentioned to Casey Chris' remark and the bad blood began to flow.

Brief shout out to Tim DeChristopher the environmental activist / graduate student who mucked up an oil-lease auction in Utah. Civil disobedience at its 21st century best! Here is today's Washington Post article that reasonably summarizes his actions (it requires creating a washington post account which only takes a second...sorry. Newspapers are hard up anyway these days).

Dreaming, in college (will I ever leave?) that part my my final assignment was that I was going to burn down the library. I got it cleared with everybody in the library, and nobody seemed to be bothered by my ambition, so I picked a time right before it closed and wadded up some newspaper and sticks, set fire to it around the computer station and left. Soon I found out that the fire didn't catch and I out one final project. I was disappointed and a little embarrassed that I had failed. What am I going to tell all those people who find out that I didn't burn it down?

Anyway, dreaming in DC, at my sisters and husband's house. I've been in nanny mode feeding the baby mangoes while sister is at work and husband is working on finishing the kitchen. This weekend I am off to Virginia to see friends Erika and John.

Snitznoodle + Neice

Time Life Love Poem

Let’s suppose there’s an unbreakable bond
between us that transcends (supposing
still) space and time, okay?
A psychic connection
like that man who gets on a plane
or doesn’t. The plane crashes
after he hesitates to board:
a feeling out of nowhere, he puts his fingers
to his temples, squinting as if
receiving a transmission.

And then there’s the lady
burning her hand while three
thousand miles away her twin
feels a sharp pain. Let’s say
these kinds of bond exist
instinctively, or we are attuned
to these types of disturbances
in others, or vice versa,
another’s pleasure. Let’s suppose
and I remember
after a long visit we left each other
and listened to the same song
without any premeditation.

The other night I knew
you wanted to call me, and I felt that
twinge, that cosmic foam popping
between us. That pull.
And I called and was right:
you were in love with somebody else
again, and again I too was in love
with all this beyond us.

The woman at the airport security gate asked me if I was "all together." I asked her what she meant ("what do you mean?"), and she made a gesture indicating the person ahead of me: was I traveling with this person?

For a second I thought she meant it like the expression "pulling it together" or "keeping it together," like she knew I was going through a difficult time and was offering support.

tomorrow i leave wisconsin for chicago to have a new year with cole and melissa and molly and barnaby and other who's names i may not remember. it should be fun. it was a nice, mellow/low-key christmas. wisconsin is cold and snowy which is novel and short term so therefore exciting. the last couple days i've been getting in touch with my inner-painter so therefore i'm exhausted. enjoy the following megapixels, and heck, i don't know, have a happy new year.

brother ben made this blanket for niece beatrix

friend joel post village bar when the snow turned into rain and fog (spooky/pooky)father + brother at clearview

whell, it's the end of the semester yet again and whell, that's about it. i'm leaving san francisco for a month and half, the entire winter break, to visit my mother's house for christmas, will stop in chicago for new years, head to d.c. to my sister's for the beginning of january, hopefully stop by new york and also los angeles. it seems ambitious but i like to travel. it relaxes me, even more than playing the tuba. this semester has been another hum dinger and i'm going to take next semester off of teaching, though i will probably keep doing esl work and tutoring. maybe i will go into steamfitting or airplane repair. i sort of forget how to write in this blog but that's probably a good thing. i was perfectly content with having that st. vincent millay poem sit there for the next five years as the last, depressing post of somebody who got bored and abandoned their blog. maybe this will be the last blog post for this blog. recently i've gotten into some music software and it's been where my creative energies have been going, if you can call it creative. mostly i've been making bad techno music. it's pretty fun. once i figure out how to actually write a song, the next frontier, the music might get more interesting. is there a difference between writing a poem and a song? probably, but i figure that the drive needed to carry a poem out to completion is the same as the drive needed to carry a song out to completion. then again, making music on a computer is not exactly like opening a note book. it's confusing with all its bleep and blops and buttons. i've got to give it more time. anyway, it's a null day in san francisco. kind of cloudy, a little cold. sarah's coming by to drop off my hat and i work from three to nine.

The machine rattles and hums like it has a larger purpose in life, its function a part of the whole (the kitchen below, the restaurant's ventilation). Poetry was the first thing that anybody had told me I was good at, that I had a talent for and being in my last year of college having no idea what to do, I pursued it. People ask if I am still writing and I say of course, always. And this is true, but not as the center piece of my day.

I have to work, or rather, want to work in other capacities. The writers whose trajectories I find most appealing were all part-time in a sense: Wallace Stevens the insurance executive and George Oppen the labor organizer. Both had other lives that did not ever directly translate into poetry. Consummate outsiders, never fully beholden to either title, thereby creating a distance in which to write.

Free agents thus free to wander into any dream. The trouble with construction in the early morning is that it prevents free wandering into dreams. Seven thirty is when I first heard the jack hammers. They start early and work fluently until everyone else is awake, the language of breaking up concrete and tank tread.

Forrest asked, sincerely, do you like writing? I like the generation of words but don't like a work that translates into a kind of pyramid scheme: writing for relief, and this relief turning into something to sell. Pure innards, like pig intestines or a gutsy Academy Award winning performance, seem unsustainable in comparison to an on-going relationship with community. i.e. a dialogue with others, a role to play.

A bird landed on the fire escape and chirped in my direction. I looked for it; scanning the ledge and the rusty metal fire escape that climbs over the ledge, the bird frantically chirping over the rumble of machinery. As soon as I made eye contact, it flew away. Was it waiting to be seen? It seemed angry. Maybe it thought I was responsible for the noise and could put and end to it.

The sky is mostly clear, though the smell of construction wafts somewhere near. Unlike yesterday morning the noise is distant. It's possible they're just further down the street and instead, the peace is relative; a whole block or blocks of people experiencing what I did yesterday morning.

Bailout?

The True Encounter

"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

"Wolf! Wolf!"-and up would start
Good neighbours, bringing spade
And pitchfork to my aid.

At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace.

___-Edna St. Vincent Millay

An alarm clock is one way to wake up. There are others, like gradually, with the sun rising in the East, to be shook awake by your step brother, or by you mother in the early early morning. To be sleepy until one jumps in the water; to sit on the warm grate while the freezing cold festers. Mornings like these.

I could wake up from the sound of a garbage truck, from the need to pee, a dream where I'm looking for the bathroom, an elbow touching mine. I could wake up from voices, a roommate or a couple walking by, a bright afternoon sun and the sudden feeling of sloth. I could wake up because I'm cold, wander through a house looking for blankets until Aric's dad hands me one. I could wake up in a tent, to rain, or wake up on a train going south, on my way to Los Angeles. I could wake up with drool on my pillow, with a boner or with a crick in my neck. I could wake up with the realization I've been sleeping on a wadded up t-shirt, dreaming that a biker had just stabbed me in a ballet studio. I could wake up with a dream in my head or a stereolab song, and listen to it on my way to work.

I could wake up from the a-tonal hum of a tea pot, in a panic, in a sweat of anxiety about teaching and work. I could wake up as a wire strung between fence posts, humming or laughing at a joke in a dream, goofing with friends. I could wake up in a foreign country, in a closet converted into a bedroom, look at the wall and not know where I am. I could wake up to my father trying to read a newspaper headline, or a bird trapped in the stove pipe. I could take a nap and wake up twice in a day, wake up sick, and wonder what it feels like to not feel sick, shake Tony and wake up from a dream. I could wake up to a friend's voice wishing me a good day, wake up to my own voice wishing him good luck.

earlier this evening while eating a dinner of eggs scrambled with spinach and garlic along with some buttered olive bread my roommate mentioned that he had had a dream about barak obama last night, bill clinton was in the dream too. which is funny, because i had a dream about barak obama on saturday night. five months ago i had had a dream about john mccain: we were at some kind of party and mccain kept side hugging me really tightly, too tightly i thought. anyway, about the obama of dreams, i wondered out loud if a lot of people had been having obama dreams, reading about beyonce saying she fell asleep on election night with tears of joy in her eyes. chris, my roommate, matter of factly stated that a mass of barak obama dreams is a sign of an "archetypal paradigm shift." i'm not exactly sure what this means, but it makes sense that we all have experienced something amazing together, and that this experience would show up in our collective unconsciousness, not to get all jungian on you, but you know what i mean. it's that same kind of symbol making that made the trade center attack about more than lost lives;that an image gets imprinted, whether we like it or not. thus, the power of poetry or whatever you call it. the importance of symbols, that we're not entirely in control of the meanings we assign. anyway, we finished talking and the dishes got cleaned.

as i write this i'm listening to the stereolab album "sound dust," one of many stereolab albums that are really easy to find used and for cheap. i hadn't listened to them actively since college but i bought their new album ("chemical cords") after reading an interestingly positive review and have since been working my way backwards through their albums.there's so much to listen to, each album a kind of experiment though each album sounds exactly like a stereolab album. please enjoy. this post is over.

Friday, November 14th

not knowing "what to talk about"

sitting on top a rock

_________________________a man and his child

_________________________shout at the water

_________________________two men
_________________________cuss on the park bench

_________________________eating potato chips
_________________________and making phone calls

_________________________there's not a bird in this park
_________________________that doesn't know

_________________________what to do

on wednesday (i've been away from the computer) i signed up for healthy san francisco, a city wide program that provides health insurance for those who cannot afford it, like me! it was the second time i had gone in to do this, as the first time was foiled by my most recent salary versus my salary over a span of three months, which if you include the fact that in between every semester i have to go on unemployment and the month long lag between my first day teaching and my first pay check, details, etc. means i was more than 300% above the federal poverty level which thereby disqualifies me from the program. whew. so factoring the three months, i'm about 250% above the federal poverty level bank robbery is punishable by twenty years in federal prison phillip glass einstein on the beach.

the lady who helped me sign up was named june, a vietnamese "boat person" so she told me, asking if i know who the boat people were answer the refugees who came over from vietnam during and after the war she hasn't seen her sister for twenty years. without any prompting she said i was "gentle" and commented a number of times on what "good boy" i was. i was comforted but this claim. in other news it's my thirty-ith birthday on saturday. on sunday afternoon i will have a low pressure cake eating tea time on the grass in dolores park. if you would like to join us/me please do. write me an email if you'd like to come. have a good "one."

wow. i mean, wow. first obama wins pennsylvania, then mccain gives a speech that comes out decent, obama comes on with his family, makes us think, joe biden, everybody's waving around and crying and then, on my way home, a massive crowd gathers on the corner and is still going, blocking the streets and spontaneously bursting into joy again and again. the police don't seem to mind and everybody's happy. wow. that's great. i mean, this is great. at times like these i wish i had a good quality digital camera. i'd describe the dude wearing the light display climbing ontop the van while the guy with a crutch leads a chant, or the dance circle that brakes out at the intersection of valencia and 19th. why here? who knows? people on their roofs are lighting off fireworks and throwing toilet paper rolls into the crowd below. a man turns an air raid siren as people take pictures, honk their horns and turn their cars around as they realize that the crowd isn't going anywhere. wave after wave of spontaneous celebration. a dude plays a trumpet badly but we love it. he's playing the star spangled banner and people, hipsters and everybody inbetween is singing the star spangled banner. a girl wearing a green incredible hulk fist is pumping it in the air at no one in particular. maybe at everyone in particular. san fran. cisco.

Attention Alone Accomplishes Little. Well, I've been working on manuscripts and that' s the one I'm still working on. It needs some revision. There are parts in the title poem that need work, the more essay like general address pieces that fail to carry their weight. Cutting or editing so that it stays personal would be best. Then there's the issues of addendum, the strangers and MP16 and Creeley could all fit but I'm not sure how or if it's necessary. And then there's edits to chair and dresser, working the unmet i into the cycle. It...d be a good note to end chair and dresser on but to go on from where it is might be superfluous. As it is, the structure of the manuscript i think is working supremely well. I got turned down for a month at the Vermont studios today. Eeet's a bummer. I'm riding on a train to Oakland using my ears more than my mind. It's a...cool world, raining. I'm going to Bill's to have an evening of it. I spoke to A and it might be weird to be lounging over there an it probably says a lot about myspace or an inability to create it. Caught up in individual poems, failing to move forward like Mt. Eerie's lyrics, which were a little stale. Talk is cheep. And then there's the other manuscript, not nearly as exciting or 'book length poem' like. I think somebody will be interested but I think that every year. Those early poems, I'm not sure if they translate over time. What is this blog for? "The quest for sincerity is like the quest for a perfect lawn." write the editors of Action Yes. Jon Leon is a poet I identify with.

_
i want to build


and raise new
the temples of Theseus and the stadiums
and where Perikles lived



but there's no money, too much spent
today. I had a guest
over _____and we sat together




-Friedrich Holderlin as Translated by Richard Sieburth

hi. it's sunday. been a while since i've written directly in the blog so thought i would write and say hello. it's overcast and has cooled off from the week and the weekend. maybe this means that the winter is coming or more accurately the rain. it would be good for us. i can't remember the last time it rained but after a month of rain i might write the opposite. had a strange dream last night where i had written a list of rules that i kept going over and somehow this transformed into singing one of these rules as a song while i was cleaning snow off the windshield of my old truck. The tune (long forgotten) was so nice i woke up crying warm tears that felt good. strange. otherwise, it's been a day of chatting, with my roommate, a nice conversation that lead into the characteristics of "our" generation, and met bill and erika for a late lunch. school has been steady. i lost thirty five dollars playing poker on friday night. got clobbered playing basketball on saturday morning, witnessed parts of a gigantic corporate sponsored soap box race and went to a bar-b-q with sarah. so, yeah. i'm good. how are you? here is an interview with tim and laetitia of stereolab that i thought was interesting, particularly the second part of the interview (this is a link to the first half), them talking about process and lyrics.

Thoughts: there were some but I can't remember what they were. Some kind of pseudo psychological philosophical political hybrid that would, at first glance inside my head seem to solve every lingering doubt I've ever had and snap into place the mysteries of the universe. Instead I'm sitting here in the Public Meeting Area on the corner of 2nd and Mission, no longer trying to remember and looking around the glass atrium, waiting for a student who I'm supposed to be tutoring for a class called Form Development, an industrial design class where the students are expected to make a fiber glass shell for something like a mouse or a flashlight highly polished and finished.

Tutoring for this class might consist of going over some notes but this student, who doesn't make it to class often or on time or even really attempt assignments and I'm guessing asked for a tutor to prolong the realization or maintain the illusion that yes, no I don't actually care about this subject but will half heartedly attempt OH HEY, SHE'S HERE...We talked about her project, abstractly, the steps she needs to take in the shop and took notes; pieces of foam, ways to second guess ourselves and others, styrene speed forms, running our fingers along contours and away from the smoldering hot iron of all that, but we're moving is what's important.

Moving through and in stepping back we might see the entire picture but for now we'll keep it close to the people coming through the doors; the metal table reflecting light; a group of office women and pairs of workers eating lunch, remembering what we're waiting for. What a tragedy! Matching bent nails with famous painters instead of asking questions, admitting that we really don't know or more simply that we do.

>Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 13:34:29 -0500
>
>
>yeah. word. my voice over the email was different. i'm not sure why but i remember when i was writing it, i thought it was kind of weird. walt whitman said something like...do i contradict myself?...i contain multitudes!...(end) or something like that. fortunately, we all live in three dimentions...

The Molten Sounds of Company (an Essay)

I sat unable to control the bitterness that is the stopper that is the cycling clamp of jaw bone, the look away to avoid intervention of the melding machine. Numbed to avoid trauma and the epilepsy of fidgeting, the master gene...

Press up against the lines or stretch what there is to say if anything to the furthest possible point. Length marked by sheer supposition, nobody knows how to calculate regards such as praise, how much we need or can possibly give out before we ourselves begin to decompose into words we do not know. This is what I would most like to turn from: regret as an instance of past reflection; my hand occupied, folding a piece of paper my mind occupied looking for signs.

Maybe this is devotion, tightly, and out of guilt. The idea that we’ll “pay” for what we’ve done. Somehow. Prison or imprisoners. We may cling to one mind known well enough to invoke out of habit; regardless, like the bones in an old man’s wrist lifting some odd thing to some odd place and by and by we make our shape, we cauterize; we canonize our better instincts (without which, our independence).

As the roof collapses without reason, opinion held right in regard to others seems to matter little as the capital of total thought becomes far more important than its origin or direction. We could ask the time or position of the sun shining through the splintered wood but for now we’ll consider its light inevitable, a fact in the matter and the matter a fact or instance of recognition.

I consider one problem to be all problems or a cigarette, a next one. Things that make sense, or I’m “full” of ideas or shoot to “thrill.” In the end we get to be “The One,” we get the idea that we can or cannot understand growing older in the summer time or a certain kind of intelligence, one that speaks highly of its contemporaries. Or in other words, now that the world has been discovered, we have no other place to go.

Today the financial bailout failed because Congress voted against it. Some blame Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and her speech right before the votes were cast; for persuading a significant number of democrats and republicans to vote against the bill. Here is the speech. It's important. And pardon my french, but it's about time somebody said "No" the greedy fucks that have been misleading the country for the last eight years...those dudes are lost in a world of illusion (and need some help).

Sunday morning I left the apartment a little early to go swimming because my roommate had a friend over and I thought the fact that they had been holed up in their room until almost eleven was an indication of either a) shyness about the visitor and the potential awkwardness of a roommate meeting one's choices or b) having their own morning. I took it upon myself to leave early to "do them a favor" by not being around, so that they could come out and have a private breakfast, something I'd wish for if the circumstance were the other way around.

It is this offer, this suggestion of "putting oneself first," imaging what somebody might want and taking care of this imaginary need that is the flip side of resentment, the "I've done enough [for you]" feeling that I often experience with those I have a particular, familial type relationship with. The trick, if this is a trick, is to recognize the reasoning as it's happening and thus make sense of my reaction to the situation rather than feeling forced into some false moral dichotomy about the right thing to do. If I'm feeling generous, it's no problem to make a necessary or imaginary sacrifice for somebody else, but if not....

Last Monday I tried to explain what resentment meant to a Korean industrial design student who was, like all undergraduates at my school, required to take a course on narrative storytelling. Sans dictionary, I explained resentment as blaming somebody for forcing you into a choice, and gave the example of the guy who resents his friends for borrowing money from him. KJ (the student) asked, "Why would you keep lending them money if you didn't want to?" The swimming pool, this morning, was full of light.

the following are three reviews of local pizza places that i wrote in application for a job as a "pizza reviewer" as found on craigslist:

Arinell Pizza is a quick and delicious New York style slice served by the punkiest of punk rockers along Valencia Street in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission district. The slices are thin and plain, and while most ask for their slices plain in the traditional wide slice style, you are welcome to add toppings. Their oven renders the slices with a hint of carbon that approaches classic thin crust perfection provided that you get your slices fresh, which rarely happens if ordering by the slice. Your best bet is to order a whole or a half pizza for guaranteed excellence. Arinell is perfect for the quick lunch slice or before you hit the bars (if you're into that kind of thing).

Serrano’s Pizza, located on 21st and Valencia in San Francisco’s Mission District, is a richly rewarding pizza nook, perfect for picking up a fresh and hot slice on a Friday after work and you’re just too tired or depressed to worry about making dinner. Though the crust and sauce are nothing special, Serrano’s huge list of California fresh toppings and specialty pizzas keep things interesting. That, and the fact that if you order a slice, they make it from scratch (four dollars for two toppings on a large slice and a fifteen minute wait). Yes!

Cable Car Pizza, located on Valencia, between 16th and 17th streets in San Francisco’s Mission district is your typical Lebanese mediocre pizza heat lamp, one that blares techno at inappropriate volumes to an empty room full of plastic tables. Their slices are large and greasy and completely unremarkable. If you’re in the mood for “pizza,” in as generic a sense as that word could mean, Cable Car Pizza will fit the bill. On the upside, there are plenty of seats and unlike most pizza places on and off Valencia, you would be able to fit more than six people inside the restaurant.

Announcing a new old chapbook as part of the H_NGM_N's Combatives Chapbook series: "The Revisionist". Thank you Nate Pritts and H_NGM_N! This is exciting for a few reasons, one of which is that this old boy is something that I'd wanted to be out there for a while and finally it is. Those who have seen drafts of longer manuscripts in recent years have seen it before! Sorry it's not new to you! The poem (a not all that long long poem) dates back to pregraduate school and is sort of my last gasp of willful naivite before I went and got schooled! It's also the turning point of when I began to think my ideas were more interesting than my being! Boy was I wrong! John Kinsella read a draft of it and correctly inferred that I didn't read much poetry! Things have changed! Thanks for reading!

hi. over the weekend i drove up to fort bragg where i saw massive amounts of hitchhiking neohippy types walking down the road. but that's not why i drove up there. i drove up there to pick up my mom from a horse riding trip that she had been on for a week. on saturday i drove up to fort bragg and observed many a hitchhiker and wondered if that was the way it always was in fort bragg. combine this with "already dead" the denis johnson novel i've been reading that is full of northern california burnout types and i got a creepy feeling about fort bragg but it probably isn't as bad as denis johnson makes it out to be. at the time that was okay because there was cable television at the hotel i was staying at and watched again the movie michael clayton. that is a supremely excellent movie. highly recommended. i wrote a poem about it even. that's how much i like that movie. so satisfying and slightly slightly metaphysical, he walks up the hill to see the horses and his car blows up. but why did he walk up that hill to see the horses? the entire movie serves to answer that question and then resolves with a highly satisfying ending. it reminds me of the same kind of satisfaction i got from watching the virgin suicides where you know how the movie ends sort of but forget about when watching the movie. i just got an email from erkia and she wondered what i was up to because this blog doesn't actually reveal anything.

events continued: i picked up my mother on sunday morning from the horse ranch a sprawling do it oneself bed and breakfast called the howard creek inn built entirely by a man who told my mother and i that he told his wife he was going out to get ice cream when he was twenty eight and had made a lot of money from television and never came back and instead ended up in northern california where nobody was living thirty years ago and you could pretty much just find houses and furniture and wood and build things out of them, such as his sprawling bed and breakfast. try dying and get rich. he recommend being homeless and i suggested we talk about it when my mother isn't around. but today was funny, the museums being closed my mom was really into the "go cars" the little scooters that tourists rent to see the city so after work that's what we did and though i was supremely embarrassed for a little while i got used to it and it was actually kind of fun to ride around in the goofy little machine that people smile at but you're not sure why. tomorrow we're going to alcatraz. yup. living large. turns out that there was some kind of music festival by fort bragg thus explaining all the hitchhikers.

If You

If you were going to get a pet
what kind of animal would you get.

A soft bodied dog, a hen--
feathers and fur to begin it again.

When the sun goes down and it gets dark
I saw an animal in a park.

Bring it home, to give it to you.
I have seen animals break in two.

You were hoping for something soft
and loyal and lean and wondrously careful--

a form of otherwise vicious habit
can have long ears and be called a rabbit.

Dead. Died. Will die. Want.
Morning, midnight. I asked you

if you were going to get a pet
what kind of animal would you get.

___________Robert Creeley, from "For Love" (1963)

wednesday morning the sun continues to climb i have to admit i've been concerned about that super collider that they've been getting ready in europe the seventeen mile loop of vacuum tube (approximately) that took twenty year to build (approximately) where a team of very excited physicists will smash seventeen billion electrons (approximately) against each other in hope of producing something called the higgs particle that might be the little speck that clues us in to how mass/stuff is created and then finally a small group of scientists could say they were right text books would change and we could be one millionth of a degree closer to unlocking the secrets of the universe. great. really. but there is the off chance the slim chance that smashing electrons into each other at speeds that simulate such events as the big bang could in fact reset the universe or create a black hole which we will all be sucked in to end of the world good bye. here are some facts. but always we're predicting the end of the world so this is probably just more of this kind of thinking fear of death personal issues blown up into the political. in other news, last night my shady employer offered baseball tickets which i took them up on to see the giants it was a nice night a beautiful stadium looking out onto the water. my pants smell like urine. beuno.

Last Thursday McCain spoke of the shallowness of self as compared to giving oneself over to a cause greater than oneself. He spoke of his love for his country and not much else. The next morning I wondered what loving your country or giving oneself to a cause has to do with education,the housing crisis, health care, or the war in Iraq. 

During a freewrite towards the end of the summer semester, using the prompt "the world is..." a student wrote: the world is a joke when your school hires an idiot to be your role model, and smirked, looking me directly in the eye as she read it. The class gasped. I looked down, cringed, and kept moving. Later, going over a handout on the fallacies or argument we came to a section on "name calling" and we got a chance to talk about the inability of labels to advance discussion in a productive way. Instead, dead ending it in a binary: no, I'm not / yes, you are, etc. Sarah Palin...

Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani seem like smart people whose imagination has failed them, leaving us with caricatures of people and ideas. It takes a lot of energy to paint a realistic picture. School started today and it will be good to get my mind out of the political gutter. On the bright side I finally got a San Francisco Giants hat for the low low price of one dollar. Finally the guy at the convenience store will get off my case for wearing an Athletics hat. He will be so proud!

back in san francisco and getting ready for the new semester that starts today but don't need to be in class until monday. who am i talking to? the last three days were spent up in oregon for a delightful romp in the woods with old friends say buddies boozing and eating and walking through lakes and up rivers and sinning and laughing maybe chuckling and sleeping in cold cabins protected by fires and morning sun roiling open eyes and bringing mosquitoes and choices. that is to say there is a lot to be done before monday in terms of getting ready for class the most difficult task of switching mind frames from indulging the id to returning to the ego not that either are exlusive or singular but politics, the parts we missed in the woods and on the way to the airport giuliani couldn't help but laugh that obama was a community organizer and this made us angry the blatent disrespect and the absolute insanity that people would be willing to vote for four more years of a republican administration unable to admit failure and the absolute supremacy of media in this country and my mother's comment that she would really have to reconsider "what kind of country we live in" if mccain won and in the newspaper a letter the comment that jesus was a community organizer and that dude giuliani is a seriously ignorant jackass but that's politics they say to project paranoid neurosis onto your brothers and sorry about that but dang it made me angry it's a hot day in san francisco going swimming at five i'll see you there.

Palo Alto is filled with helium balloons floating up above the heads of its celebrating citizens. Last night Obama talked about "...an economy that honors the dignity of work." Wouldn't that be nice? Watch the speech here. It's important. And have a most excellent day. Friend Liz is coming down from the city and to go swimming, the last days of summer break...

Palo Alto is filled with cars and streets. It is also filled with hot weather. I went to the pool yesterday to stretch my swimming muscles and found hundreds of children who had already found the pool. Last night I watched Joe Biden offer an amazing speech an amazing account of his life, what needs to change, Obama etc. My favorite part of the speech was the beginning, after his son's introduction, how proud he is of his son, and what his father had told him,that if your children come out better than you than you've done a good job. Or what his mother told him after his first wife and daughter were killed in a car crash: god gives you no cross that you cannot bear, which is probably a religious cliche but it made sense to me last night. These are the bits that moved me and the rest was mostly politics, justified attacks on the current Bush administration and the likelihood, based on McCain's record, that he would be continuing the current administrations policies. Then it got weird, the convention, Obama accepting the nomination a day early, and then appearing on the stage as a "surprise guest" like some kind of reality show where the contestants get their next assignment from Hulk Hogan or Marissa Tormey. But it must be kind of strange for Obama, with everybody around him and supporting him significantly more experienced. I don't mean to bring that up, the experience issue, but after all that Clinton and Biden speech making and conviction and confidence, Obama's stage appearance made him seem like the junior senator he is. I guess we'll see tonight, through his speech, what exactly he has`to offer because even though he was out and about in the`spring, it feels like it's been a long time since I heard him speak. I write this with one hand, the other holding a warm compress to my eye which seems to be going through some kind of sty, a side effect of swimming and goggles. Thus with one hand and one finger, this was typed s.lo...w..ly. Don't forget about w.yo..min..g

Personality Test

Do you pay your debts and keep out of trouble
Do you admire beauty in others you have loaned to
Can you accept defeat easily in an emotional situation
Do you throw things away only by looking
Do you speedily recover from it is too late
Do you often feel for no apparent reason
Do you find you make yourself nervous
Do you work and work against you
Do you consider the disagreement
Do you browse through behavior
Are your opinions projects
Do you turn up about you
Hear the wind or you
Do you belong to you
Do you turn unreal
Are you an effect
Are you involved
Is your life a fear
Do you consider
Are you aware
Are you original
Can you easily imitate
Can you accept
Can you trust
Do you often
Are you always
Would you like to
Work against you
Do you throw things
Do you have few
Do you refrain
Do you find it easy
Do you feel
To express your
That people are
That the speaker is
Do you turn off
Do you turn unreal
Would you admire
Would you prefer
Is your life
Do you find
Do you keep
Can you stop
Would you give
Do you have
Do you resent
Are you readily
Is it normally
Would you usually
Have you any
Are you so
Is it too
Do you not
Do you speak
Do you work
Do you tend
Do you try
Did you ever
Were you ever
Will you ever
Know?

Moving to New York in January (circa 2006)

Adam was the first person I spoke to in New York.
Rain was the first weather I experienced in New York.
A Honda Civic was the first car I rode in in New York.
An apple was the first thing I ate in New York.
My brother is the first person I called in New York.
“Turkish Kitchen” was the first restaurant I ate at in New York.
Barbara is the first person to not call me back in New York.
Johnathan is the first person I wrote and email to in New York.
The L was the first train I took in New York.
Grape Juice was the first thing I bought in New York.
The first meal I made in New York consisted of sausage, cheese, and horse radish.
My first breakfast was waffles and tea in New York.
Barbara was the first person who called me back in New York.
Union square was the first place I met someone in New York.
“The Cellar” was the first bar I went to in New York.
Talking about pulling skin off my lip was the first time I felt awkward in New York.
To buy fabric with my brother was my first outing in New York.
“American Ape” was the first book title I misread in New York.
Adam's black hat was the first thing I borrowed in New York.
Janet was the first person who referred to me as a poet in New York.
My brother was the first person to tell me their dream in New York.
The first snack I ate in New York was peanut butter and crackers.
“Who gets to call it Art?” was the first movie I went to in New York.
The “Foxy” was the first gallery I went to in New York.
B. was the first person to tell me “We're not getting back together” in New York.
14th and 1st was the first corner I tried to change somebody's mind in New York.
Adam's apartment was the first place I was bummed out in New York.
Molly was the first person I called for comfort in New York.
Adam's desk was the first place I wanted to cry but couldn't in New York.
Adam's sublet was the first apartment I rearranged in New York.
Adam's sublet was the first place I wished I had a television in New York.
My zipper was the first thing to break in New York.
The 19th was the first time I didn't care that I was in New York.
Fort Greene was the first place I went jogging in New York.
H_NGM_N was the first journal to accept my poems in New York.
“Kafka on the Shore” was the first book I finished in New York.
Nate was the my first visitor in New York.

The train rolls by the tram. I'm laying in the grass of the ever so popular Dolores park. "I see her walking down the street and just feel like she doesn't belong." A young guy with an orange beard and no shirt gets stoned just up the hill and makes a phone call. Yesterday, same spot, I watched a different young guy with a beard get stoned and make a phone call. What's with this place? Eventually I relent and give into the plot, the sun attacks my back and the voices and grasses. Swimming changes music into deep exhales or cubes of sleep that one brushes their foot against, waking up periodically throughout the night. It's taken me forever to realize I'm lazy, much less liberate myself from this spoiled state, a willingness to capsize the boat to meet a girl. I am thinking of breaking up with myself. After talking to Chris briefly, I spoke about the difficult semester and he said two things: nobody died (at least we have our health), and maybe you've learned something for next time. I told him about the anxiety dreams, and the fact that I'm still having them two weeks after the semester ended, of students upset and complaining about the class and then it became obvious: I put all of myself out there for the three twelve and wasn't prepared to deal with a few choice assholes. My brother tells me to "toughen up."

I smoke cigarettes because I am addicted to nicotine.
I smoke cigarettes because I have time to spare.
I smoke cigarettes because my wife is giving birth.
I smoke cigarettes because it's midterms.
I smoke cigarettes because I've been drinking.
I smoke cigarettes because I am on vacation in Italy.
I smoke cigarettes because I am a metal worker.
I smoke cigarettes on a hill in a park.
I smoke cigarettes habitually.
I smoke cigarettes because I don't know what else to do.
I smoke cigarettes to be controlled.
I smoke cigarettes because my imagination fails me.
I smoke cigarettes because I don't like to hang out in bars or cafes.
I smoke cigarettes because my wife isn't pregnant.
I smoke cigarettes because I'm single.
I smoke cigarettes because I like them.
I smoke cigarettes because my parents did and they seem alright.
I smoke cigarettes to take a break.
I smoke cigarettes because the fifties weren't that bad.
I smoke cigarettes to reward myself.
I smoke cigarettes to signal that I don't care.
I smoke cigarettes to have a reason to get out of certain situations.
I smoke cigarettes to suppress sexual desire.
I smoke cigarettes because I'm lonely.
I smoke cigarettes because it reminds me of old friends.
I smoke cigarettes because I don't have any better ideas.
I smoke cigarettes to breathe.
I smoke cigarettes to slow down.
I smoke cigarettes because I do not believe I can stop.
I smoke cigarettes because the sky is falling.
I smoke cigarettes to take care of baby.
I smoke cigarettes to rebel.
I smoke cigarettes because I think I am cold and they are hot.

The world is a tiny tiny place.

The world is a food processor.
The world is a mouse fart.
The world is a rich text document.
The world is a fine toothed comb.
The world is a mushroom.
The world is a bag of mushrooms.
The world is a gravy train.
The world is a grape fruit squeezer.
The world is a small handsaw.
The world is a busy airport.
The world is a recalcitrant chair.
The world is a jumping jack.
The world is a metaphysical conundrum.
The world is a rich text format.
The world is windows.
The world is a shelf covered in dust.
The world is a famous writer.
The world is a recent memory of a faun being birthed.
The world is a handsome beast.
The world is a muddy cup of river water.
The world is a leaf.
The world is a deep pond.
The world is a gravity bong.
The world is shameless.
The world is sadness.
The world is suffering.
The world is a greatest hits album.
The world is a recent acquisition.
The world is a greasy spoon.
The world is a western civilization.
The world is an industrial coal mine.
The world is a treatment program, in and out.
The world is barely old enough.
The world is a shopping cart filled with cans being taken to the
recycling center.
The world is a busy beaver.
The world is a soft and fuzzy place.
The world is an axe handle.
The world is a model.
The world is an ingenious invention.
The world is a can of peas.
The world is an oily fish.
The world is a list of things to do.
The world is a recent history deleted.
The world is a tuna fish sandwich toasted, and with cheese.
The world is overpriced but of good quality.
The world is a ham fisted soliloquy.
The world is a radioactive hamster.
The world is a mutant star.
The world is a returnable and reusable ink cartridge.
The world is Ellise coming to pick up the table.
The world is a quick conversation with your roommate.
The world is an apology.
The world is a wedding announcement.
The world is an unreadable penmanship.
The world is an expert marksman.
The world is a shaky arrow.
The world is a nameless hay bale.
The world is a really upscale laundry mat.
The world is a wire mesh box filled with bees.
The world in a minute a mess of fruit flies.
The world is for fruit flies too.
The world is a warm beach clogged with jelly fish.
The world is a reasonably priced four door sedan with a "moon roof."
The world is ice cream.
The world is your entire crew.
etc.

On a train in-between San Luis Obispo and Oakland, reading "The Emperor's Children" by Claire Messud that I had wanted to read for awhile and then not at all, and then suddenly again this afternoon while at the book store, looking for something for the train. Jen wrote a brief review of the book, and to paraphrase, "what a disappointment," but I'm only on page ninety three so I can't confirm or deny this.

The book is about people in their early thirties who went to Brown as undergraduates and aren't finding their way exactly, living in New York. The conversation between Marina and her father, the expression of parental disappointment when Marina confesses that she is lost and her father's thoughts of entitlement and a spoiled child. The bit about Julius wondering what it is that successful people posses and setting his sights on a relationship with his boss.

The conversation from a week ago, the unabashed yes, I want to be involved with a person who outwardly pursues what I find attractive so that I don't have to. The excerpt from "Alive in Necropolis" in the book review about the yuppie party full of two types of people, and to paraphrase again, those who are living their parent's lives and those still living their college lives, a false dichotomy but it makes me think.

The day I turned in the summer grades I ran into Katie and Jim and we had lunch at a small breakfast place in a not too bad at two in the afternoon block of the Tenderloin, happy to finally spontaneously go out with people who I didn't feel any obligation to sleep with. Back to the book, another hundred pages in, themes so far about privilege and disappointment, and like me on a foggy day, a group of people who feel their only choices are to try for eight gold medals or smoke hashish.

The question of what we want or at least the question of admitting this insecurity as the question: do we admit these times of doubt or wait until they pass? Do I keep posting through the muddled time or leave a record of where I am? In Portland, my roommate Craig had a nervous breakdown during his first year teaching high school. He told everybody about what was going on immediately: his family, his roommates, his bosses, his co-workers; took a week off and got himself together enough to finish the year. I attributed his quick recovery to the fact that he was comfortable enough where he was to ask for help.

This could keep going, these paragraphs, but I'm going to stop now. The last two weeks have been vacation like, seeing friends Johnathan and Anna and Bill, entertaining and day tripping around San Francisco. The past weekend was in San Luis Obispo helping paint Joel and Jesse's house. I have a week of intentional grounding here at the apartment on Valencia and then I'm doing a tiny house sit in Palo Alto, followed by Buddyfest up in Portland. Then school starts. Let me know if you have any questions. See you later.

today was the last day of the summer semester a full class of presentations of proposal arguments that i will attempt to topically summarize in the following story: walking through an alley on my way to class today i noticed a stray cat unable to defend itself because it was missing its claws so i stopped to take it to the animal shelter but realized the shelter will most likely euthinize this cat or sell it to the animal circus where the circus trainers will negatively reenforce it to learn tricks like carry the babies of other cats for money or smoke cigarettes or force it to take standardized tests that obviously it will not pass because cats can't read so i took a picture of it with my digital camera, adjusting the colors to give it that 'natural light look' and brought the picture home to my roommate who is always stoned from pot he buys illegally from people who buy legally from cannabis clubs but it's his choice so i don't say much and instead focus on the vast knowledge and many opportunities he gained from his global education and he looks at me and says dude, why are you so concerned about a cat when we've passed peak oil and our institutions are deeply discriminatory against women and by the way, this picture looks like shit. and i so i said how would you like to walk around on your knuckles? or be forced to walk on your hands because your feet are too burnt? if we had a symbol for this cat crisis or the environmental crisis like a man on the moon or two buildings collapsing in the middle of new york would we take it more seriously? urgently? just because the streets of san francisco have an open enrollment policy doesn't mean they're a lesser institution than a gated community. and with that, i returned to the alley, found the cat, and enrolled it in a chinese cooperative institution after a lengthy and frustrating financial aid application process. currently, this cat is being positively reinforced and rehabilitated with snacks.

Fin

by the same token (conversation with self continued), this two o two class has almost single handedly restored my faith that this teaching is a job worth doing. seeing the proposal arguments come together and having some students genuinely engaging with research, reading, and putting it all together reminds me of the enthusiasm i had when i was an undergraduate studying sociology with professor peterson, his enthusiasm and passion for trying to make sense of the world, its structure and abstraction and why people make the choices they make. that is to say, some of these papers are really good and wow, i actually helped teach someone! so, not to project that it's all doom and gloom but after next week, the end of the semester, i will be looking for other work while living off the government dole (adjunct teachers are entitled to unemployment). ideally i'd like to find a part time research/writing job and combine it with teaching part-time. the academy pays for shit, but sometimes it's almost sort of worth it. welcome to august.

(from today's three twelve class) I'm totally and absolutely flustered, coming in from supporting Rene's class once again, trying to pull my thoughts and myself...in. Not that it's dramatic, or too dramatic, but this morning I focused my breathing for a good length of time, trying to locate the big white ball of stress caught up in the in the middle of my diaphragm. I actually got somewhere and it would be a mistake to say things have gotten out of control. Vibrating phone and world comes back. If there was a way into the chapter, I could play the location game with confidence. Instead it's the grind, as the say, another day another dollar. The beatings will continue until moral improves. I entered Rene's class in a good spot, but after all this pushing and shoving about trying to understand the student's final projects, I've ended up back inside my chest. No location or locution. An awkward position and coming in late, men with no conscience and the women who love them. Tonight at eleven. I'm looking forward to doing some gardening on Saturday.

Two on the War

i.
Perhaps the way to implode radical Islamic militants is to legitimize their authority and presence. Give them something to lose. As an organization or bureaucracy grows so does its ineffectiveness on the street; the strength and seeming root of fundamentalist belief. Fat cat unioneering and giving everybody what they want. The middle class: some thing to love.

ii.
Insects hatch while they can, all at once. Red ants and flying ones, within hours they were all gone. I would've liked to have told you. I would've liked for you to have seen it. They were swarming up the banister out of the concrete, thick and of one mind. Why did I forget to to tell you? Why is the answer to the question always the same? A semi-circle of mushrooms grows undisturbed. If only I had thought to bring this up, the beginnings of a radical script.

Relevant Employment

Free Lance Painting, WI, WA, OR, RI, NY.................................................2000-Present
Painter, Four Square Painting and Home Repair, Madison, WI........................Fall 2005 & 2006
Maintenance, The Perry Center for Children, Portland, OR.................................2002-2003
Painter, River Bend Youth Center, Oregon City, OR........................................2002-2003
Tom Naue Painting, Madison, WI.........................................................Summer 1999
Factory Work, American Pine, Prineville, OR...........................................Summer 1998
Landscaper/Laborer, Midland Builders, Madison, WI............................Summers 1995, 1996
Laborer, Merry Christmas Tree Farm, Mineral Point, WI (family business) .............1985-2000

Relevant Skills

Painting
Oil Painting
Faux Painting
Removing Paint
Prepping Walls for Painting
Plastering
Sanding
Taping
Drywalling
Basic Carpentry including knowledge of tools, and ability to read blueprints
Wall Paper Removal
Water Damage Repair
Driving heavy machinery including tractors and Bobcats
Lawn maintenance
Construction site maintenance
Putting up Barbwire Fencing
Using a chainsaw
Brush Burning (Fire Safety)
Wood Staining
Rock Work
Hay Bailing
Weed Wacking
Tree Trimming
Tree Planting
Field Mowing
Vehicle maintenance
Sewing

consumption as a break from desking, i went out to amoeba records yesterday afternoon, riding the thirty three over and down the hill to the upper haight. i had a list of records i was interested in, and found most of them, took them over to the listening station, previewed and picked a few, went back to the stacks, founds some more etc. but in the end, unable to decided amongst the multitude of options, i put them all down and got back on the thirty three. i'm not made out of money you know. today's sunday paper had yet another five articles about how we're all headed for economic/spiritual doom once the lenders come calling for their money, and by lenders i mean foreign countries who are invested in these big (morally) bankrupt companies such as fannie mae. apparently the only way that we can save our selves is to keep spending money. but if we are using all our money to pay off debt, we don't have much to spend on ipods, or rims or whatever. um, (say something smart say something smart,) i think it would be best if we all got some rest. this morning i woke in a panic prompted by dreams of class (school class, not economic). it's been quite busy lately. my mind is a ball of mud.

on the bright side, today i went to burger king and felt extremely lethargic for about two hours afterwords. it was totally worth it, but you would think a wax paper cup full of ice cold coca cola would burn through that bloated salty feeling. there was something wrong with the straw. when i was ordering i almost (almost) said to the cashier as she told me my total of six dollars and seventy something cents, you know, when i was in high school, whoppers were only ninety nine cents. for two dollars you could feel totally bloated and blob through your fifth period psychology class, repressing farts while listening to the funny psychology teacher talk about pavlov's dogs while waving around a diet coke. or that time cole and i thought it would be a good idea, while we were living in prineville and working at a lumber mill during some weirdo summer between our sophomore and junior year of college, to buy a bag full of thirty nine cent hamburgers from mcdonalds to take advantage of their sunday special, and eat them all throughout the week. that lasted three days maybe. the hamburgers began to not taste so good after awhile. it's possible that they never tasted good. god is good. it's a beautiful night.

(notes from class today)

Today is muddled. Today the barometric pressure has dropped. Today not all that many students came to class. Today is cloudy. Today is a mud ball. Today is a plate of beans. Today is the color green leaking slowly from low hanging clouds. Today is the expression on my face. Today is not my first language. Today is a grease trap. Today is a pound of bacon. Today is a glass of water sitting on the counter collecting dust. Today is a wide mouth pop top. Today is a wool sweater. Today is a low quality sausage with just enough pepper for it to taste good. Today is a clown snack. Today is an extremely large glass eye.

What is this arguing for? The world in a minute? The world is a vampire? The world is a cold and barren place? Damn I need a sandwich. Damn. Damn I'm hungry. Damn you're hungry. Damn. Damn. Damn.

There's a poet named Vernonica Forrest-Thomson, or, rather, there was a poet named Veronica Forrest-Thomson, who published a book of literary criticism named Poetic Artifice posthumously, following her suicide at the age of twenty-eight. Bummer. I woke up thinking of this, not her exactly but one of the ideas from this book, a book that I read while living in Brooklyn a book that was at the New York Public library and is considered a rare book because not many were published, thus you can't usually just order one on-line. You have to find it in a University collection (if you're lucky. Anyway...). The idea that as readers we have a tendency for "external naturalization" when we read a story or a poem; a tendency to try to create a comparable meaning outside of the writing that we can compare the two with, for example "this poem is about the writer's relationship with his father" or "this story is about living in Israel as a Palestinian"... something like that. We do it all the time: remove whatever it is from its context and put it into a context that is easier to understand and explain. Think 'soundbite', or your friends in the avant-garde explaining how a particular piece of dissonant music was made.

This isn't a bad thing, our tendency to relate, and in fact it's why we're able to make sense of things: because in our readings or listenings we relate what is being said to ourselves and our own experiences. In reading a poem or listening to a song, we'll go back and forth between paying rapt attention to the thing, and rattling around in our own minds. Like a pop song, think verse chorus verse, and the chorus is when our ears take a break and we sing along, or inhabit the persona of the hip-hopper, or whatever. She writes:

"Our reading must work through the level of meaning into the external world and then, via the non-semantic levels of artifice, back into the poem, enriched by the external contexts of reference in which it found itself momentarily merged. This is what continuity in poetic language means."

Or in other words, every time we go into our heads we bring back something new to the poem or piece that we're interacting with, and with that new information or memory, we go back into the poem's structure, thereby setting up new and fresh comparisons until we are once again sent out into our own heads...back and forth back and forth etc. I write all this because I woke up thinking of what we were going to do for today's 'freewrite', where at the start of every class we spend about ten minutes writing and then sharing what we wrote. My question (or topic) is not who was Veronica Forrest-Thomson, but does everything we write or say or do have a comparable external meaning?

friend cole emailed a particular youtube clip that i want to share with you all. it is truly amazing. while i'm at it, here is another one. have a good weekend if you have weekends.

It's weird: the more I write in the blog the more comments come back. Not that I'm trying to write anymore, but anyway, I've been listening to the self titled crystal castles album and really enjoying it in a kind of dance floor disco kind of way, like when certain songs come on I can't help but walk by placing one foot in front of the other in a slightly aggressive manner, like the way I imagine models do, which is embarrassing so I stop. It also makes me think of a particular ex and imagine she would be into it, the music, because it feels like its made for/by people just a little bit cooler than me, the dance punk wave that began just as the warp era electronic music that i so dearly love petered out and with it my need to keep up on what's new. Cole wrote a couple comments ago that sometimes I blog like I'm on cocaine and wasn't sure if this was good or bad. The magazine Casey brought back from work has an article on David Berman where the subheading speaks of his "path to usefulness." That sounds nice. Before bed I've been reading the The Inner Chapters by Chuang Tzu, he writes: "A mole drinking at the river needs but a single bellyful. Go home and rule through idleness." Clearly I have more work to do.

Last night I dreamt that there were two bees living in my shoes, a pair of Reeboks my brother had given me, with 'Hexalite' webbing in the heel. The window was on the inside of the right shoe, but it was damaged somehow, so the two bees could come in and out. I was worried about getting stung on my heel. I tried to squash the bees with a chisel like tool but the bees had already flown away. I woke up and opened the curtain, and sat in the window letting the sun onto my shoulders. They say it's going to be "a hot one" today.

I consider myself to be a relatively lucky person, though I’m not sure what this means. It’s one of those latent ideas or feelings that operates underneath, and ties to some large, mysterious mass of psychology if we want to think of it that way.

Or, that luck is more of the power of attraction, the secret and other self help remedies that fail to hold weight when pressed. I guess that’s why luck isn’t considered a religion, because it’s random: the alligator makes its move but snaps a twig. A bird flies away.

Somehow this makes the most sense; that things happen, but it’s easy to stray from chance to fate, as if some thing is in control. We make notes of all this to keep track. But what is it? Circumstance? If I run into my friend at the grocery store should I be surprised?

Luck seems to me like a perspective, that how we look at something determines if it’s lucky. I think this is an idea that’s easy to understand:

A moon was found in the sky, entire and singular.

I believe this is the perspective required for luck. On the other hand, sixteen year old, my friend Aric and his string of crashed cars: I think it’s bad luck, he said. I believed him.

tuesday yep and class starts at twelve but i got done a little early preparing for the incredibly awesome and awe inspiring day where we look at and talk about the nuts and bolts of argument which is kind of funny since i'm probably the last person you'd want teaching you how to argue but after teaching this class five times previous i've learned a few things but my point is i got done early because i woke up early somewhere around six for some unknown reason the orange light of the sunrise coming in to my feng shui situated head pointed north as i sleep and woke up thinking of yesterday's class, to be there and wondering why i was in charge and forgetting to have fun or at least follow one's own agenda rather than the imaginary expectations of the imaginary masses reminding myself it was just a mood left over from the weekend the party on saturday where i met a person who worked at a sandwhich shop that i would occasionaly frequent growing up which he informed me was a place where people dealt cocaine he was from milwaukee curse word curse word etc. etc. and after this story he proceeded to the bathroom to do cocaine which made me thank my dorky shirts for not being cool enough to be invited to backrooms and bathrooms to talk frantically to strangers i turned to joel thinking the guy was just quirky and was informed otherwise that no those were the drugs talking

the eye of my mini-disc shut itself today. it was tired. tired of playing songs so that i might take a break from the racket, or abridge the gap in my head, or listen. it happened on the train, hanging from two steel poles on the rush hour train. nobody knew. my headphones stayed in but the music stopped. the music came back. i fiddled with it. ejected the disc, put it back in, skipped tracks, came back to the one i wanted...my mini-disc is tired. i'm tired. every time a student tells me a i look tired i feel tired. my mini-disc has a laser beam for an eye, whereas, i have brown. they take in whatever is in front of them, though recently bright lights have been hurting i'm glancing at the white apartment building across the street. it makes blinky spots whenever i look at it. resolution: don't look. nap time.