I am consciously shutting off my mechanisms of openness because I find it difficult to depend on others to support me. That, and it’s not working, especially now when I’ve lost my rudder and am starting to notice real world manifestations of my own passivity.

I worry that some person who I used to be is dying, some sweet open guy having a difficult time finding his way. Maybe if his luck had been better he would have found the necessary community to embrace him and take care of him in a meaningful way.

Instead we get bitterness the outcome of failed expectations but there is more to it than that, that a construct of some aspect of personality, once uncovered, must be changed in order to avoid excessive self-consciousness; in the name of perseverance and adaptation.

If what is really there is unchanging, some idea of movement or the sudden stillness that attention brings, ideas of who and what don’t matter. That willful naivete is actually harmful past a certain point, and though we like to be reminded of children

and the unspoiled mind, it’s important to consider that time goes on. In eastern philosophy this seems to be one aspect of life that is portrayed much more successfully than in western philosophy; the spring pond and the moon rising, the long winter in a single sentence.

Can you believe I spend my time doing this stuff? It's hard to believe November anything. A true voice like a true conviction calling and maybe calling back when I get a moment can you hold this please? Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and this is hardly bearable with the turkey and all that stuff. If everybody had a Thanksgiving could we change the world one thanksgiving at a household per capita millions? Tomorrow we'll go down to Joel's down there in San Luis I'm afraid to spell Obispo wrong but will go ahead. Amy is making some kind of c/kale? dish and I'm making a key lime pie. Maybe two. They're good. My mom makes them. Yesterday I bought plane tickets to go to Wisconsin for my/our families central holiday. It's a big deal. Sometimes I think I'd like to get out of it but know if that happened I'd regret it. Something Cheer. But its been a busy semester and am glad for the break, even if it's just a couple days. Finally we are done with the argumentative essay so we can move on to less judgmental kinds of works. If the glove doesn't fit you must acquit. These kinds of messages. But instead we move on to the "feature story" which is a little bit more wide open to interpretation as long as its interesting to read. Who am I to be the judge of that. In other news, the cats are laid out by the radiator. Kitty Girl is sick with something (keeps throwing up, coughing) and I'm going to take her in to the vet today. Plagued by guilt, the other one has been acting strangely, barging onto our pillows at ungodly hours and meowing loudly. I've been waking up really early for some reason. Had a dream about the cat eating a cockroach two nights ago. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Lotus Rhizome

I look for an authority and find none. A true conviction, as if writing is your middle name, contentment, and leaving behind old habits. Still, we insist that I work. Floating just above the water, above the unpotable murk; lotus seeds, or nuts, can be eaten raw or popped like corn, boiled down in a paste and when combined with sugar made into delicious pastries.

Canada

Where is your family? On the porch
talking.
The neighbors, they said
it’ll rain tonight. We
sat and had drinks, all of us
free.

On the edge of the bed
the day is getting on. It hasn’t yet
rained, but it will
I believe, and soon it will be
time for dinner.

Since the days of my middle life
I was deeply devoted to Tao.
Recently I came to live
in the mountains of Chung-nan.
Oftentimes--with joy in my heart--
Alone, I roam here and there.
It is a wonderful thing
That I am aware of myself.
When the streamlet ends my trip
I settle down and catch
The moment of rising mists.
Now and then I meet
A furrowed dweller of the woods.
We chat and laugh;
Never do we want to go home.

-Wang Wei

**

When it was dark, I reached the village of Shih-hao.
Late at night an officer came to recruit men.
The old man in the house climbed over the wall and fled.
The old woman opened the door.
How the angry officer was raging!
How bitterly the woman was crying!
I heard what the old woman said:
"I had three sons for the defense of the City of Yeh.
Only one of them sent me a letter.
The other two boys were killed in battle.
The one who remained may not live long.
The dead are gone forever.
There are no more men in the house
Except my grandson who is still fed on milk.
Because of him his mother stays with us.
However, she has no whole skirt to go out.
Although I am old and have no strength,
Let me go with you, officer,
To immediately answer the urgent call from Ho-yang.
At least I can do some cooking for the soldiers."
Later in the night their conversation stopped.
What I heard was something like sobbing.
At daybreak I started out again on my journey.
I could only say "Good-bye" to the old man.

-Tu Fu


**
These poems were taken from "Creativity and Taoism" by Chang Chung-yuan

earlier in the day cats recognized dogs as heroic figures matter put into their own hands like chefs at a rodeo wandering between fences and dirt ball clowns trying to pull one over the bull riders and friends of the bull riders otherwise known as the blue riders in german expressionist talk the wiggle puppies or the fun buddies a lamp with no light bulb as good as a grey goose a hedge fund prepaid and ready to matriculate and ten other way to name your baby circa field 1937 the plains spread out before the paupers and home rehabilitation projects as seen on tv the teeth puncturing an already raw wound no money to brittney spears commercial clad all wheel drive muck a luck tee pee wendigo tank track but a rolled out new line of far superior soap stone products a massive surge of energy building and bludgeoning the work release program circa cricket teams massively over wrought metal sculptures and our dreams yes our dreams to be corporate sculptors making large aluminum waste products for us to walk around and seemingly to bother us not to make sense but pulmonary fibrosis circumstantial message to god reads if he did it hello of course he hates me hats off to the victor and motorolla deluxe reference book editions of limited leather bound tooth detectors and detective wandering between missile silos looking for monographed copies of not one weasel court but four seventy three hoboken avenue nobody saw us pick a new renegade cop blaster give it some time he'll come around said the most of the hosts brain wave usually after so much blah blah i'll come around and say something some clarification of perspective and where the meteorite originated from but instead halle bop i waited on the roof for aliens in the summer of eighty three barely old enough to talk or formulate thoughts like mostly we've lost our nerve and other barely legible wanton plus weight hold overs um yeah i'm just tired barely keeping me eyes open but will sit up a little for a drink water

Today I got a text message asking "why no blog, dog?" and I replied "time and materials" which maybe seems like a very text messagey kind of exchange but I think the question is a good one and not that I'm going to attempt to explain anything because that would be a strike against our good judgment but for the last fifteen minutes my thumb has been twitching. Have you ever had a twitching thumb? I don't know what it means but I'll proceed to diagram my day spent morning early got up at seven put on shirt/shoes/packed bag and went to get into the car pool which worked it's quite remarkable I think the carpool system here in the bay area where strangers will drive you free of charge over the bridge which is faster and cheaper than any other form of transportation and they do it because it's much much faster like today where the highway was backed up for miles and the carpool lane was kind of backed up but not nearly as bad as the rest of the lanes regardless we got there alright and was dropped off at the curb of 1st and Harrison from an Audi A5 the man was listening to some kind of christian music which wasn't as bad as it sounds, probably, regardless I went and spent the next three hours in the speaking lab helping some international students mostly Koreans mind their upcoming presentations and talked about cats and dogs and then took a break where I ate a bag of chips then onto the writing lab where I helped more international students with some writing issues, two essays and an autobiography three hours later I waited an hour then met with the philosophy study group where I helped one student from Jordan work on his essay and then that was it I came home. It's been a while since I've touched the blog because I like to think I've been so busy but I'm not sure that's it. After all those little story posts I sort of got confused as to why I was writing thinking that my job was to write little stories and when I didn't have any little stories to tell I didn't have a job to do but that's not true I'll just post whatever no pressure but really I've been quite stressed out with school that is teaching this semester which is strange because you'd think that after a couple semesters it would get easier and maybe it has but instead it feels harder the ties that bind solidifying and this is what is difficult for me staying on one thing and instead of expanding horizontally from place to place getting a little bit of everything instead its concentrating on one thing and sticking with it that is difficult I think that is maybe what has happened this semester the long term possibility manifesting itself in the form of relationships with co-workers and students that necessarily move past the passing through stage and the conversations need to progress I mean you can only ask someone where they're from a couple times before its necessary to talk about something else like the increasingly complex web of expectations built up from repeated interactions and alarmingly enough the possibility that people can know you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hi. the following excerpt is from a George Oppen essay written in the Spring of 1962 titled "The Mind's Own Place" and can be found in his "Selected Poems" published by New Directions Press.
_

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

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

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

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