Oracular Ocularities

Satya

2012-01-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

I've never much understood what Keats meant by Truth or what truth means in a religious context, but just came across something describing Satya, which states that Truth is a form of constancy and unchangeability, and I understand that better. Merely avoiding lies seems annoying and pointless, everyone lies randomly - it doesn't seem to be a great spiritual thing to not do that, like white lies or lies from not thinking clearly. But to be constant in a larger way does seem so. If you love something or someone, then to always love it/them, that sort of mental stability, that kind of "decision," is great and spiritual it seems, and yes one of the 8 limbs...

2012-01-26T20:33:00.000-08:00

Tried to go to this, but it was so packed I left shortly. Long walk for not much!

He is going to be speaking at the Occupy Move-in Day Rally Saturday (someone gave me a flyer) - maybe I will go. Haven't been to a single Occupy thing yet, what kind of intellectual am I?!

I want to get his book Debt, but $32.
Standing near the Surrealism wall, I also want Women in Dada: essays on sex, gender, and identity, and In the Shadow of its Shadow: Surrealist Writings on the Cinema. Funny how I prefer reading books about Surrealism to reading Surrealist works themselves, with a few exceptions...

2012-01-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

Did a two-hour arm balancing workshop this weekend and neither my arms nor my wrists are sore in the least. Boo. But my hips are killling me and I have a gigantic black bruise on my right hip from "bouncing" from koundinyasana to eka pada koundinyasana I, my new trick kind of. Or what ashtangayoga.info calls kaundinyasana a to kaundinyasnan b.

then a fun little bounce to:

Sort of ouch.

So I learned that, and I learned to get one foot off the wall in my pincha mayurasana. Which I just recently am able at all to get both feet on the wall for.

I cannot do the jump throughs or backs still forever.

But did realize, in Bhuja Pidasana that I can lift my feet off the ground, by just lifting my feet off the ground. Not ready to put the head forward though, but wanted to try it in primary series this morning but could not go because I could not sleep last night, because I acted in my first Poets Theater tonight. Nerve wracking, but once I was up there, it was much much less nerve wracking than giving a poetry reading because all the people up there with you, your energy is diverted into them or something...

Went to acupuncture before-hand, and she gave me some "calming pills" Thank You. And then I had rum in my coke, and then we did tequila shots so even though I flubbed a line, I still felt calm about it and it didn't lead to a catastrophe of flubbings.

Three One-line Friend Facebook updates in a row all together

2012-01-18T22:23:00.000-08:00

I wish it were otherwise

you'll find my truth in the relentless mid.sentence, listen close . . .

my former residence is essentially on rent strike. sad i missed the party.

2012-01-16T15:19:00.000-08:00

Have been, I think, meditating too much, an hour a day, sometimes almost two hours. Think sometimes too much is too much, it brings up darknesses, buried emotional stuff from long ago I didn't know was still in me. But realized today as I bought this Krishnamurti book, that, unlike P. Jois' view of yoga, you really can't or shouldn't do meditation without theory, remembering these ideas - say, like all problems come about because of the conception of time. So realizing that in my little miseries, I can come out of it. And what mediation does really is increase your energy, life force, kundalini, but how do you use it? If you let it, it will attach itself to the dark stuff swirling around in you, but if you use that extra energy - using your thoughts in these ways - then I don't think necessarily the dark stuff will come up.

This has happened to me so much in my life that I thought it was a part of meditation, and maybe it is. But I never quite know what to do with it and I wonder if just diverting the energy away is the answer, or is that repressing? I do remember thich nhat hanh, i believe, in his book on anger, saying giving energy to anger as it rises only makes it worse, and you should transform it. So I think he is right because he doesn't seem repressed or like he is harboring unresolved issues. The issues are there to see for a moment and then dissolve.

Chardonnay Enlightenment!

December 2011

2012-01-04T22:04:00.000-08:00

PROACTIV $49.90
BART $180
EATING OUT $142.60

HEALTH COSTS - ACUPUNCTURE/HERBS $84
DENTIST $174.34
PRESECRIPTIONS $130.59

WALGREENS-$105.81

GROCERIES=$196.30:

PUBLISHING COSTS $135.08

MUSIC/BOOKS/CLOTHES:$250.50 (OOPS)

ATM WD:$160

BILL PAYMENTS: $481.54

RENT: $900

$2,990.66 spent, NOT INCLUDING AIR TRAVEL RELATED, or CHRISTMAS PRESENTS (december only)

TAKE-HOME PAY $2,122.56

$868.10 IN THE RED

Would be almost OK if I bought NO music/books/clothes, quit all publishing endeavors, and ignored my health entirely.

Will try again next month... Feel like I'm always making the biggest mistake eating out/shopping at Bi-rite, but doesn't appear to be the big issue...

Also did not include yoga which I only pay for every four months but is $105 a month...

Just cut my own bangs, so don't need a haircut. But I do need shampoo.

2012

2012-01-01T21:56:00.000-08:00

Thinking through a very complicated math problem during corpse pose tonight, my first night back at Asta after over a week. And after corpse pose, Rene talks to us, and brings up math, synchronously. As a parallel to ask us why we are doing yoga, what is it for... and always it is always for spirituality for me. Not necessarily mastering the asanas. Have been wondering though, as I am starting to get pincha mayarasana, what is a parallel in real life to gaining that pose, which is strength based almost entirely (also fear issues), and it finally occurred to me that "strength" in real life would be self-confidence. So that plus more extroversion are my new years resolutions.

I think an alternative to black eyed peas on New Years Day might be red velvet cake flavored ice cream?

Also as I am reading the Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer, I want to start writing a poem a night, dictation style. A series called Dictation? Also to combine my long time desire to write a project of project-less poems (ever since reading Poetry is not a Project).

Also doing another budget to see how far off I am. Will do another at end of January since I lowered 401K contribution and am no longer getting a commuter check so will have a little more cash flow... Budget Blog Post coming soon.

The math problem I was trying to do was, as someone once said, for every day you are off of yoga, you have to do yoga twice that amount to get back your practice. So I had my last SF yoga class of 2011 Thursday the 23rd, then I took a Power Yoga class in Austin on Tuesday, then a Baptiste class in Ft. Worth on Friday, then tonight's class which is Sunday. So that is four days off, one day on, two days off, one day on, one day off, and then I am back. So, 4 days means I need 8, then I took one day, so I'm at 7, then two days off, so I'mm at 11, then one day on, so I'm at 10, then one day off again, and I am at 12, then today I'm back, so won't be back to normal until January 12. Although I'm not doing 12 days in a row...

The Texas yoga was OK, as far as exercise goes, but there was no chanting, no meditation, no pranayama, no bandhas. Kind of Methodist yoga... I think they all already have a religion so they ignore that part? Or maybe I just picked the wrong studios. The other Really Weird Texas Yoga Moment, was this girl was wearing a bandolier with bullets on it, though she took it off before class started, and placed it in one of the cubbyholes, which was right by where I was, and I stared and stared, are those bullets!? Namaste! The light in me salutes the lightning in you.

2011-12-03T00:13:00.000-08:00

Angels / bad signs / near misses / hit and runs

2011-12-02T23:37:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me about my angel chapbook at the poetry reading, and then on the ride home, I'm listening to my IPOD alphabetical by song, and I get to the series of Angel songs, 12 total. Although I first counted 11 and that felt mystical. Two of the McLachlan ones are identical, so maybe 11.

Angel-Belly
Angel-Eurythmics
Four different versions of Sarah McLachlan's Angel
Angel Bell - Cranes
Angel, Angel, Down we go Together- Morrissey
Angelene - P.J. Harvey
Angeles - Enya
Angeline-Faithless
Angel's Weep-Mythos

Then I made Dana Teen Lomax cry, talking about her father's death, but I don't think it was in a bad way, but it is recent.

Then walking home, right at my intersection, I saw a very bad car crash, the car was upside down, hit and run, but I heard they caught the guy.

The guy who'd been in the upside down car, was fine sitting on the sidewalk, someone was telling him tomorrow your ankle is going to hurt a lot you have a lot of adrenaline right now.

There were all these boxes all over the place, like he'd been moving, in the process.

There is not much you can do about bad signs, but just know it is coming.

Cool! I'm a revolutionary!

2011-11-12T21:49:00.000-08:00

Devoting one’s life to an activity with little chance of bringing any sort of significant cash reward is a revolutionary act within the virulent capitalism we inhabit.

Completely harmless — no threat — and so completely allowed. But my power, I think, comes from the fact of not buying in to the competition, the market place, somehow creating peace and art in a sphere outside the sphere of power is itself a power. I may not be noticed much, but I am outside their power structure, which may make them slightly nervous, but not so much since I am broke so what can I do (until I start Occupying some street or other). Also thinking being in a sphere outside the power-marketplace sphere, in my space they cannot hurt me. The safety of not playing the game.

2011-11-12T15:21:00.000-08:00

Eleven Eleven Reading on 11/11/11 with 11 poets.

Really liked Eric Selland, but he is very academic type, a little unconscious of anything outside of that, and went way over his time limit. He asked rather late, am I over my time? And a woman in the audience said Yes! But he went on like he didn't hear her, and then Hugh finally got up and went over towards the end of the aisle and started clapping at the end of the next poem, so everyone else clapped and the poor guy realized he was done.

I liked what he was reading a lot. Lots of translations of Japanese haiku, which he says originally was one line, it was only through English translation that they became 3 lines, to fit with the english language. He wrote in the kindof abstract poetic style I love. "Self as grammatical formality" "To confront interpretation" a lot of lines with that device - "To..." "To..." is that called something? "The body, geology of the unimagined" (not sure if I'm remembering that one right). I'm not sure if that is him or the Japanese poets originally but I'm going to look for his books...

Also liked Rusty Morrison, she is always deep, mostly talking about death. I was thinking during her reading how there is so much pain in everyone, in all of us, and how at the same time, we make this stuff, this poetry. What are we doing? The life force attempts itself. Loved seeing Jessica Wickens again, who I read with a while back, does Twitter poems. She has a book too I need to find.

Regretted not making the Black Surrealism thing at Poetry Center at the same time, and MISSING Will Alexander! How could I? But got my cool African-american poetry fix through Amaud Jamaul Johnson, who I'd not heard of and want to look up his books now. He read in a very slow paced way, which made me feel spiritual, sat up straighter, aligned my bandhas. Felt focused. "It's all pie-chart & phylum."

The rest of the people were the prose writers so I really have nothing to say but they were funny.

2011-11-06T21:40:00.000-08:00

Have been wondering the place for yogis in the Occupy movement. Haven't heard any teachers mention anything in regards to it until Marie today says The Silent Revolution begins, or something to that effect, which is only a reference by inference. Wondering if there are many churches or spiritual group directly involved? Haven't heard of it but I am really an outsider to it. Maybe not this:

http://www.facebook.com/occupychurch

I'm not part of it mostly because of no time. Work + Commutes=12 hours every day. Also yoga will always take precedence to a march, usually even to a poetry reading, or socializing. I can't go without, so really there is really no time. And I think also perhaps a slight aversion to going, although I agree with everything in spirit, don't think I actually want to be there in the midst of all those people, rubber bullets, and tear gas. I will just be meditating over here.

Also even though it is mostly non-violent on the activist's parts, it seems not quite; received a pamplet at the poetry reading last night, and there seems to be a discussion about whether non-violence or violence is the way to go. Yikes. From that I understand my aversion. How to Occupy while honoring ahimsa. An essay on ahimsa in activism would be very interesting to read.

2011-10-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

Yoga teacher, Rene, said you should be able to balance in Tree pose or Utthita Hasta Padangustasana, even during an earthquake! I never can balance. I used to be so good when we would do everything all in a row, my ankles were so strong. Tree, then Utthita, then dancers pose, then Ardha Baddha, then warrior 3. Whew! I should try and do that sequence on my own some time, 5 breaths each.

Did Garbha Pindasana for the first time in full lotus, but now with the arms through the legs. It is kind of easier. My hips are finally starting to open up, but only on Sundays. Craving more Primary Series'. ironically, because we do the second/third series mixed all together Rocket series usually, when we do the primary series, I feel like this is so wacky and wild, but it is the most traditional series there is.

Rene said "notice the fluctuations of the mind" and I felt so happy because that is SO Patanjali. And how breathing calms the mind, and to notice how it does, and something about the way we control what our body does, so we can control what our mind does. And finally feeling free of my emotional problems of last week. But it will probably start all over again tomorrow.

Probably the best poetry reading I've given to date, I mean the one I felt the calmest, and most serene, was the one at Loretta Clodfelter's house in Oakland. sitting on the floor, barefoot, wine glass bedside me. But I'd had a major acupuncture for nerves treatment a day or so earlier, for anxiety. Need to remember to do that again. I though my recent readings were just horrible. But I didn't do acupuncture beforehand.

Read Derrida all weekend, but it wasn't that great. This essay all on Heidegger's Hand, which really seems to me a silly subject. But it is Derrida so it is kind of cool. There was a lot of German so I may not have understood it all. Also a lot of Derrida, so I many not have understood it all.

Taking this Chinese herb for my congestion problems plus fatigue, and woke up at 7am this morning HYPER, didn't know what to do that was quiet and wouldn't wake my roommate, so I rearranged my to read pile, I made it worse seemingly (much longer), but instead of having all these different categories of to read books,(different small piles) I put them all in a linear pile (very big), and the plan is to only ever read one book at a time. I think I will feel less frazzled. This thing leftover from grad school, where I want to read every book in its entirety, but maybe I don't have to, if I'm not feeling it, and fell like I want to switch to something else, maybe I just will put it in the bookshelf, and never read from it again. Until such time that I am dying for it.

John Taggart and C.S. Giscombe

2011-10-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

Grooving out on the bus reading this poem from New World Journal that David Highsmith let us take, much more so than I was feeling about him in the reading, I think it might be his masculinst reading style that makes me feel incapable of paying an ounce of attention to him. But the poetry is actually nice with this repetitive lyricism thing.

From "That This May Be":

"As if no one no one were seated beside you no one beside you as if you were alone yourself completely alone in a room a room without Ezekiel as if you were completely alone in a room in a finite room as if no one were seated beside you when a tongue when a tongue feeds a train when a violet tongue feeds a violet train into a violet room when a tongue feeds a train into a room made all violet in waves of a wide wave on wide wave of a as in father mist of a thousand waves over you ...."

He talked so much in his reading it felt almost more like a lecture which was nice, albeit also masculinist stance-ish. He mentioned Robert Duncan and Oppen as two of his major influences, and then later on after reading a poem with the line "walls do not fall" he started to talk about a third influence, and I knew, just knew, it was H.D. But then he said it was Zukofsky. Oh, just Zukofsky. I felt SO disappointed in him.

Then he spoke of a 70 page poem that couldn't make it into Is Music, so it went into There are Birds, called "Unveiling/Marianne Moore." I frowned.

C.S. Gisocombe, I can't remember as much because he didn't upset me. I liked how he had a project about trains. Trains as sexual and trains as racial. Want to read more of him.

2011-10-04T22:41:00.000-07:00

Love a 2 hour beginning yoga class where we do handstands, but I didn't get home in time to make it to the grocery store. Had three fails, with random stuff in the pantry. The German potato pancakes with applesauce seemed great until I realized I followed the directions wrong, mixed the egg with the package and then added water, should have mixed the egg and water together first, then put the package in, totally not mixing and disgusting so I threw it out and made a bowl of baked beans, which seemed great with my twist off french wine, until I realized it tasted wierd and looked at the can and it expired over 6 months ago. Third try spiral noodles with butter, and wine. Hard night except have discovered James Blake on Spotify and Love Him. It's like ambient experimental R&B? Totally headphones in bed kind of music.

My scoliosis spot is screaming and my rotator cuff is acting up again, and my left knee is hurting. Maybe its the rain. I feel I should stay in bed for a week but I have to work a 6 day work week.

The difference between exhaustion and fatigue. One is kind of funny, the other, utter despair. I want the funny kind where its alright because it is temporary.

2011-10-03T21:13:00.001-07:00

Destroyed myself this weekend trying to do vinyasas in half lotus - I kind of did it, but now. Right arm is spazzing and left knee ham string, probably not related to that actually, but also doing yoga utterly fatigued. Slept 11 hours Friday, couldn't believe I slept so much, so set my alarm to get up at 9 on Sunday (more than 3 hours later than my usual time) and I was sound asleep. Think I'm getting CFS. And I have to work a 6 day work week this week, and I have no sick or personal time left.

I have all these texts just waiting for me to put them together, and so in a month, with only rewriting and obsessing over forms, I have a second full-length manuscript ready, sent it out to an open reading submissions period, but even if that doesn't pan out just cool having it and can send out to other places... So now I'm working on my third manuscript.

Blogs

2011-08-29T22:12:00.000-07:00

Reading blogs again, having figured out Google reader, and wow, I feel so satisfied reading words. That become paragraphs, how odd!

I want to learn the history of my street.

There is a war on teachers?

I love this project of Michelle Detorie's.

Love reading these on facebook, had no idea they came with pictures!

Not going to yoga, is somehow relaxing, I'm "being" tonight more than doing. Ironically.

Incisor teeth

2011-07-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

Re: Amy Winehouse. We need good drugs, and we need them to not kill us. Don't we have scientists?

I asked God for an epiphany about my life while I was lying in the dentists chair, and all I got was Life is suffering and misery, try to stay stoned as much as possible.

Nitrous breathing meditation: around breath 12 I started to feel really good, around breath 30, really horny.

I'm not going to have any juice in the morning, I am drinking it all right now, and having a little fear of no juice in the morning thing going on.

Told my boss I couldn't work overtime on Saturday because I am being interviewed for a radio program, and she didn't respond and I realized she thinks its a job interview!

Thinking of getting back into mudras.

Is it because of twitter that I actually think in snippets now?

After the procedure, they asked me to rinse, and I spit, and I spit out a screw, a very small screw, and I asked is that a screw, and the dental assistant looked at it and said yes but I think its from the sink.

And I think now, it feels sort of deja vu, like maybe I've spit out a screw before, but I can't remember, and why am I spitting out screws, and second of all, why are there screws in my mouth at all!

I know I'm exhausted this week because I haven't been able to move my kundalini at all. But a few weeks ago (maybe I was ovulating) I was splitting it in two, not splitting apart, but splitting like branching off, growing. I guess that is good, I think eventually my whole body would just be kundalini fire, or could be, but not sure I'll ever have that energy.

Also wanting to get back into sahaj marg, i need a cleaning very bad. I don't know any of those people anymore though.

For me that split second that changes everything, lasts so long.

And finally, guitar music, with the lead singer singing "C'Mon" over and over again, is just not proper dentist office music, is it?

ADVENTURE STORY

2011-05-13T15:27:00.000-07:00

I called in sick, I am sick. Because it is Friday and I leave my cell phone charger at work during the week, to play Pandora all day, I now have no cell phone charger all weekend. so clearly I have to buy one. I would think that I need to. But I feel awful. So, adamantly refusing to go downtown where it would be pretty easy to find I think, I wander through Mission, dizzily. First I went into Community Thrift, got a great yoghurt maker there once. I don't find any that fit, but am trying them all in this crate located under the regular phones. Then this guy brings this small tv over and asks me do I think it is black & white, or color? I don't have any idea, I say. I have no idea. He wanders off, a little later he comes back, do you want to watch a black & white movie with me? I do my Tenderloin-learned I cannot hear anything you say and have no consciousness that you are even speaking to me thing. He wanders off.

Then I walk down thinking to try the T-Mobile store -- why, in a neighborhood that refuses to let in american apparel and apparently starbucks, and even peets, is there every single cell phone company in existence? And why is there a Chase? Is there any Mission Community Bank or Credit Union?

Although I am the only customer in the store, the T-Mobile people don't help me, seemingly not noticing me, wrapped up in their own conversation, and it looks like their chargers are for their phones, as far as I can tell, so I wander out.

Then I think, Mission street. I go down and try the Goodwill. Taking a number 8 for my bags, and remembering to slip my cell phone in my pocket, I try all their cell phone chargers, but none of them work. I almost buy a wall clock that looks like a disco ball. 99 cents. This whole time I am dizzy, slightly naseous, and pretty sure I am going to faint at any minute.

Then I go over to the dollar store, they may have elctronic something. They have a phone section, but only old school phone type things.

Then I'm walking along Mission street, thinking to give up and go home, and I see actually there are a lot of stores on Mission street that have the word Electronics on the outside. I go in one but he says no, we don't have those. There is mostly DVDs. Then I see a pawn shop, maybe, who knows. They don't, but the guy is magically informative, this guy has answers. What a relief. He says go down to Giant Value, and there is a guy with a table outside, he sells phone chargers. I go three blocks down to Giant Value, and there he is. I ask, doubtfully, do you have cell phone chargers? It all looks like car phone chargers. Yes, he does. I show him my phone, it is the kind it looks all usb-like, he says no problem. He takes one out of the box, plugs it in, plugs it into my phone, and magical red lights pop up. Yay! Then, oh, how much? He probably does not take credit and I am wary of how much cash I have on me. He says $10. I look and don't think I have enough, but then find a hidden $5, which means I have exactly $10. Magical Story! All True.

2011-04-17T18:03:00.000-07:00

The awful, new commute, to Pleasanton, for my job (50 minutes each way) is exhausting, but great for getting some reading done, and, I've been writing a poem every day between Castro Valley, and West Dublin, perfect with the rolling hills, and 9 minutes without a stop. So was websearching to find any history of the area, for a title, and came up this, it is a census designated area, being, not an actual town, and the citizens, actually voted against it becoming one, considered "unincorporated" and I thought, oh cool, I'll name it Unincorporated, or Unincorporated Community, but then I just realized Craig Santos Perez, totally beat me to it, and how much more hip, his Guam, vs. my um, Castro Valley? Nerd. So now I don't know what to call it, still.

Like how film directors, but themselves in one shot of the movie, I put the words to my secret texts in my poems. Like a secret hint, otherwise un-alluded to.

Feel annoyed with too many days in a row at yoga, and everyone who is beautiful and perfect, and have these seemingly beautiful social lives partying out with each other all the time. I'm now craving people with defects, so back to the poets I go. No yoga today, just writing. Want to feel unhealthy actually, cookies and coffee all day long. Bad posture in the darkest (very dark) corner of the cafe.

Reading Agamben's Profanations, after Laura Woltag's recommendation:

"Linguistically visible"

"Every woman has her Juno."

"Every true celebration — an abolition of time."

2011-03-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

"There is no thing that with a twist of the imagination cannot be something else." WCW, Kora in Hell

Printing my Dusie chaps finally; Have printed 14 copies, need to do 100-150... it is legal sized and they keep falling off the printer because they are too long and I lost the printer extension piece.

two separate distinct naps today.

Did my taxes, pretty sure the lady made a Blatant Error; I'm going to have to look it up, pretty sure she was incompetent, or lazy. Why don't I just do them myself!!

Feel destroyed all weekend, in a no more ardha baddha stuff kind of way, with a limp. I kind of like because it means I did something, but don't like it so much because I can't do too much more at the moment...

2011-03-25T21:22:00.000-07:00

Listening to Catching up with Depeche Mode on vinyl and drinking a Racer 5.

My favorite Asta class right now is Fridays 6:30-8:00, never a lot of people and really really intense. Had the heart pounding through the entire body reverberating thing, which I haven't felt in a while...I got to the area early tonight so I went into Four Barrel Coffee, had a coffee, read Baudrillard, "Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?" and wrote deep stuff about duality and the real in a notebook. So went to yoga kind of caffeinated. Thought I'd be falling over left and right because of it, but only did in utthita pada hastasana, which was kind of falling over for fun... but the standing split series I was on it, for some reason, totally focused.

Have been doing 20 minutes of yoga everyday at lunch in the exercise room at the new work site, no one is ever in there, and Wednesday I think it was I did marichyasana c with the bind for the first time, that is a weird awkward feeling, could only do the left though. now I can't do it so I don't know why I could then. The pose is teasing me. But think 20 minutes a day in addition to my nighttime yoga practice is really improving things?

In the middle of printing or about to print 3 different chapbooks. Need to just order mass quantities of paper online so I don't have to carry it all, but do want to go to Kelly's paper tomorrow to get peach legal sized cover stock, also cuz I really need to see it. The text papers and white cover stocks I think I can just order.

Our bathroom window just fell out, onto the porch, fell out...broken everywhere, and now cold in there.

I kind of think that everyone that works at Bi-Rite is "good people." I don't even feel offended when they double charge me.

Reading also E. Tracy Grinnell's "Leucadia" and I wrote down "landscape as voice," not sure if truly applicable to the book or not but I like the possibility.

2011-03-19T18:46:00.000-07:00

Everytime I go into the Big room, start thinking, I start crying. Maybe its the SuperMoon.

Sort of freaks me out that I had psychic yoga dreams the whole weekend Larry died.

Dream 1: I'm coming to class and another teacher of mine, not Larry, is leaving the earlier class, but he is exhausted laying out on this old red couch completely wiped out.

Dream 2: I'm at yoga to the people, and I'm randomly out of nowhere doing handstands in the middle of the room, over and over I do it, just floating there in mid-air.

And finally an epiphany; the way yoga is supposed to mean union, or to yoke together... I've always felt these disparities between my yoga life and my poetry life, like the body vs the mind and they are fighting each other. But I realized when one of my teachers called me out (in front of everyone!) to name the sanskrit of the pose we were doing, and I didn't know because it is the hardest one to know, triang mukhaikapada paschimottanasana, and felt sad I failed my teacher, but its ok, because now it really fired me up to learn all the sankrit names now, I know that one, and then this weekend I spent several hours learning the opening chant to patanjali and I know it now. Intellectual side of yoga! And funny, went to a poetry reading and two of my poetry friends are apparently studying sankrit, just because they love dead languages I guess, and i realized that is the fulcrum that unites my two worlds! I think a truth is there is no duality, really, but it is yoga that strips away the masks and boundaries that cover that truth. If we think there are disparities it is only because we haven't looked deeply enough.

OM
vande gurunam caranaravinde
sandarsita svatmasukhava bodhe
nishreyase jangalikayamane
samsara halahala mohasantyai

abahu purusakaram
sankhacakrasi dharinam
sahasra sirasam svetam
pranamami patanjalim
OM

2011-01-15T09:40:00.000-08:00

Reading on Buddha's teaching on co-arising.

This weekend I'm doing proofreading, working on a project called Autobiography (not mine), actually it is two projects, parallels of each other. Also need to get my Dusie chap done. It's so still in process, takes forever!

Counted all my writing projects, and there are 9 chapbooks and 7 book books.

I'm saying project, not intuitions or simply poems a la Lasky, because, I realized, they are not really poems. Its a hybrid form that you just wouldn't call poems in the same way that Lasky writes individual poems. I don't know what the word is but writing project seems to cover it.

I don't have any music in my head right now, but because of the stupid easy listening station we listen to at work, I had a dream I was at a 1970's-esque Rod Stewart concert.

Period. So I may only go to yoga to the people this weekend, because they don't do inversions, although Amma said we shouldn't at all for the first three days. But I know, I think that would wreck my body.

2011-01-07T21:58:00.000-08:00

Dreamt Jared Hayes was in a rock band, and I'd just bought his CD to cheer up my mom, but it was a little too rock n roll for me. My mom's husband had just died, who is dead in real life, and I was like didn't he already die once before? Also the poodle died. Lots of sadness and clutter everywhere.

Been sick off and on for 6 weeks or so, ever since that stupid never again flu shot. But its ok, I'm processing. Stuff. I have a thing I'm thinking about that would solve all my problems, almost all, but I would have to make some concessions.

Very little yoga practice this week; some home practice, but too much phlegm, which is entirely disconcerting when upside down. Did use the neti pot maybe 83 times this week. There is a lot, a lot of my phelgm floating through the pipes at the credit union.

Also, including the day job, worked 13 hours on Wednesday and 12 hours on Thursday. $$$$

So tonight I am staring at the ceiling and watching Vertigo. I've kind of been watching it for 5-7 days. Searching for a youtube of either the psychedelic dream sequence scene, or when she says something like, only one can wander, two together are always going somewhere.

Searching for vintage clothes fashion blogs. Dreaming of money.

Disturbed by the birds and the fish, how is no one mentioning BP?

2010-12-08T07:42:00.001-08:00

Enjoying the new focus on the primary series at Asta lately. Realizing how focusing the series is, compared with the Rocket series, which seems to be more about increasing kundalini, firing you up. But too much Rocket leaves you with too much energy just going everywhere. Nice to be able to come back to the primary in order to put all that energy into a specific direction. Was having the whole I have 18 writing projects at once thing, but that doesn't lead anywhere. Picking one to focus on at a time. Also, reading, I currently have 27 books checked out of the library. So I made a reading plan too.

All quoted words from the forthcoming The Incompossible from Black Radish books

2010-11-21T15:44:00.000-08:00

“Opinions”
“All tropes are clouds.”
“it”
“it”
“the general?”
“pre-existence”
“among.”
“if.”
“Being”
“He wouldn’t actually drive the saucer.”
“without.”
“pretend”
“Nightmare-Heaven.”
“See, she’s a witch.”
“natural”
“left”
“two.”
“Apprehend”
“Temporary Ravine”
“I feel like I’m in a movie.”
“beginning.”
“I know she’s lying.”
"You must change the form of your practice."

2010-11-20T16:32:00.000-08:00

Thinking about how if the life force comes from mulabhanda, and when on our periods, our energy is completely churning away in that area, then maybe it is not a curse at all, but makes us luckier? So I've been trying to turn my cramp pain into kundalini bliss all day. It kind of works if I concentrate really, really hard. But I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it up. Definitely need a nap. Also, finally agree not to do inversions, because my period has been lasting 7 days instead of 5 lately, and ew. I guess they're right about that.

2010-11-14T20:05:00.000-08:00

Reading the third translation of Patanjali that I've read. The first one was translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, one of my teachers was reading it so I read it, the second one was translated by Chip Hartranft, I don't think I liked this one because I thought it was "too easy" and "armchair enlightenment." (This is what I said on goodreads.)So now I am reading Sri S. Satchidananda's translation. This is the one, the cover I see most people have if I see people with a Patanjali. I also checked out the Mircea Eliade book on Patanjali, a more historical study.

Had the thought in the middle of a rather intense yoga class, or regular yoga class, but I was doing it intensely, that Ashtanga is a form of shamanism. Like we are out in the desert on a vision quest, haven't slept for 36 hours, are tripping on some weird-ass drug, and there is some nut there trying to lead us through it. Funny, people who are drawn to meditation and yoga because of the "relaxation" thing, they don't know, and I think I was one of them initially, that it has to take you through hell first. It is not ease, confronting the self. And even if you don't think that is what you are doing, it tricks it out of you, and it becomes what you are doing. The people who can't handle it are the ones that drop out, or go sporadically. I don't know that I am actually confronting the self, I think I am starting to, and in the past the confronting the self thing made me evasive within my own practice. I am still evasive but becoming more aware of what I am doing, and so evading less, I think.

2010-11-11T15:22:00.000-08:00

When I'm feeling "unglamorous" sweater totally lopsided and no possibility to ever right it, scoliosis apparent, like I'm the hunchback of notre dame, right foot dragging behind me, I remember I'm a poet, I'm supposed to be fucked up, and I feel better.

Bought a book from a former classmate at new college on the $1 rack outside modern times. Should I tell him or not??? I'd read it from the library so I'm actually happy I actually own it now. also bought some 70's paperback for the cover. (Something about her wicked wicked ways) Thinking of my upcycling next and last dusie chap. Not sure if it will match the project I'm thinking of though.

Tea is cheaper than coffee, generally nowadays. Poets are all going to become tea drinkers. Coffee is for yuppies.

Confused about kundalini vs chi. Are they working at cross purposes? I'm not sure but I think kundalini coming up from the sex, at least in women, is inner inner even more inside than inside, whereas chi moments in acupuncture, seem to be entirely on the surface of the skin, or even hovering slightly outside, like an aura. So maybe they are complementary. Though I realize one comes from China and one from India...?

Thank you Veterans for giving me a day off.

2010-11-09T21:23:00.000-08:00

I realized that I'm so uninterested in this construct continually dug up by other people in which "lyric" is split off and set up against "experiment." I can't even be bothered to protest it, for protest would just give it credence, in a way. I am interested in the signature and the mouth and throat. I am interested in how ear and throat receive language.

--Erin Moure

2010-10-24T22:51:00.000-07:00

Every time I walk down Oakwood street I have a beautiful moment. Every single time.

Had a very writerly day. After walking around for an hour in the rain with my skirt inside out, I came home and mostly haven't left since (except for a stroll on Oakwood). Finished making the layout for Jill Stengal's new chap "and i would open", that I am doing. Settled on a cover design and a color. Then I got the proof for my Book-Book The Incompossible. So I printed the whole thing out to reread, read it, and then sent off my comments and then now I am writing a blog entry. Drank two glasses of white zinfandel but strawberry flavored that my coworker gave me. I also spent some time "categorizing."

I have not read every single poem Poetry Foundation has on its website, but maybe 60%? Well actually, not that I look, they have over 9000 poems, so probably not even 10%! Anyway, here are two good ones.

Alice Notley

Spicer

2010-10-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

This weather, first cold day, makes me feel spiritual and pure. Like I want to only drink water and eat very little. But it might be the medicine.

2010-10-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

Anyone who couldn't afford (or didn't want to afford) my arrow as aarow chapbook A Musics, can read an excerpt at Little Red Leaves. A slightly different, earlier version is on the LRL webzine.

My yoga practice is becoming terrifying, but that is the only place left to go if I don't want to stagnate.

Learned about the Dum Dum Girls at the hairdresser.

Getting over a silly little illness, trying to figure out correct dosages.

Reading Kevin Killian, Leland Hickman, Nietzsche, Olson, Vendler on Dickinson, The Power of Now, Zibechi and Brian Teare.

Went to a few Litquake readings. Sweated. Matt Hart freaked me out. Really loud, like a male Dorthea Lasky. Thinking about how Bay Area poets maybe need to use emotion as part of our poetics a little more. We are so repressed and embarrassed. Maybe we are too "cool."

Watched Bluebeard. I think she maybe changed the ending.

2010-10-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe giving up netflix and greencine, in favor of Faye's. Great deals, and a block away. They have a thing called Pick 12, that has a theme and changes every week. This week's theme was Rebel With a Cause, and you can get one free with another video.

I did pincha mayurasana, with Teacher's help, lots of help, terrifying, but I'm hoping he'll keep helping me up there and keep holding my legs up! I don't know how I'll ever be able to do that on my own.

Poetry Book is in it's finalizing stages. I think the cover is really super cool, and am really excited to see it, eventually.

Been home sick for 4 days, including weekend, and what I really want to do is just read in bed, but I haven't really, though I slept a lot, and sweat a lot, and watched some movies, from Faye's, and drank a lot of syrupy things. I think I have too much to read, and the pile is too big, and I'm overwhelmed and I just look at it.

Third Day of Autumn

2010-09-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

sundress, leggings, flats

or

tennis shoes, rolled up jeans, tank top

or

a-line skirt, clogs, tank top

or

shorts, baggy tank top, sandals

or

shorts, flip flops, t-shirt

or

tank, jeans, flip flops

2010-09-17T23:42:00.000-07:00

Rene said "Pain is not pain, pain is tapas." I looked it up and tapas does not actually mean pain, but something like right effort. So OK. I had pain but it was cool. The difference between neurotic pain and pain through effort. I totally get that.

And I learned the name to my favorite pose and I didn't know it had a name:

Upavistha Konasana Uth Pluthi.

Do a google search and you will get nothing, but it is real.

Reading the Power of Now and doing the thing where you stop thinking and just being in the now, and everytime I relax so much I fall over and I don't think I should do it while walking. But then for the first time in months I had a moment where I was like OMG I'm happy, and there is no reason for it. So nice, I think it works.

2010-08-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

I liked today how Rene says Ashtanga may be one of the hardest yoga practices there are, but it corresponds to how hard the world is. Such a satisfying sentence to hear. Not like some other yoga teachers who say bliss bliss and everyone is happy and all is good. Um, no, look outside! I don't think so.

Realized if I push on my foot in the hurt tendon place in my foot while in half lotus, that totally makes my painful lotus hip issues relax relax, and are they connected?

Reading tonight at a house reading in Oakland, my first house reading. I hope I don't get in a fight. and then Tuesday in SF at the Idiolexicon series. It's like I'm just passing through the bay area on a reading tour and getting in both side of the bay. I'm thinking tonight will be more lyrical and deep stuff and Tuesday more funny, just because Elliot Harmon is funny.

The cafe I am in is playing Si Se. I think.

Going to acupuncture in a moment, which I just learned I can pay for with my FSA card. So maybe my nervous will not be so bad tonight! 4 people so pressure is off somewhat...

2010-08-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

Was thinking I'm trying to do two forms of healing simultaneously, that might be counteracting each other. One - ashtanga heals through fire - burning it out of you- raising your frequency, and the other - massage/acupuncture heals through extreme relaxation but really opening up the spaces through a quietness. Not sure if they work against each other or with each other, but in class today Rene says that yoga is for opening you up also, so maybe both are different way of opening. I think all stress and bad mental states comes from too much body tightness, which leads to mental tightness, restriction, constriction, nothing can flow, and the life force can't get to any of the places. Open open open is relaxing relaxing is healing.

Newest fetishes:

2010-07-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

Guys with topknots

straight guys who carry book satchels

asian guys walking alone with their bicycles

every fluffy dog in the universe

seaweed

bok choy

going back full time to an ashtanga studio (I'll save money when I'm dead)

replacing my sweets fetish with a salty fetish

2010-07-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

Me and mom looking for water.

Mom: Bushes like this, they grow by the water.
Me: I see a glistening!

Mom teaching me to fish.

MOM: You take the salmon egg and put it on the hook, you push in on the bobber. Carrie, you're going to have to move. You reel it in like this, when you go to cast it in you push this in so the line will go out. I don't think there's any fish here. Rainbow trout looks just like a rainbow but there is a trout that looks just like these rocks. Next time I'm going to buy some waders.

Me: Look that tree fell over there, halfway, but the other tree caught it.

Mom: OK just one more time then we're going to move.

A beach with other peoples shoes. I want to follow the path because its safer.

Me: Let's keep catching rocks.

MOM: It's too shallow.

ME: Let's go eat some trout & I'll pretend you caught it.

(Year of the Hailstorm)

ME: There's a fisherman.

MOM: He's flyfishing.

ME: See how he's standing up elevated away from the water. You should do that.

MOM: Carrie, I'm not taking you fishing with me again.

ME: I really don't like the wilderness, mom. Why don't you ask the fisherman for advice?

MOM:I don't need no man for nothing.

Places I peed today

2010-07-10T19:18:00.000-07:00

My house
Asta Yoga
La Cumbre
Mission Creek Cafe
Jubilee Hair Studio
Safeway

2010-07-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

Kinda glad I'm out of Oakland tonight, but kinda wish I was in Oakland tonight. I want to be where the action is. Hard to know what to say but it isn't right. Too bad you always have to fight so hard against the world.

Was talking to someone in the cafe today, and she was a library activist, or something. On the board of directors for the library? Is that a thing? She saw a library book in my bag and started asking me which library and how do I like it! I said SF Main, better than Oakland, because the selection is better, and they have Link +. She didn't know what Link + was so I told her and she asked me if I was "in research"! I said no, I'm a poet, I have to. So then she was impressed and told me I must have a great command of the English language and I said "yeah." That is all we get. Then it occurred to me how most of us or a lot of us do work equivalent to someone "in research," but I bet they get paid. And why do we do it we are insane.

Have to say, despite Silliman's views on W.S. Merwin, I like him. He may be conservative, but I don't feel like "school of quietude." There is a spirituality in him that I dig. I connect school of quietude with like backyard barbecues and mundanity, domesticity, but he is never mundane. I like all the spaces that the lack of punctuation creates. I checked out The Lice tonight and Sorry, Tree. The insides look similar except Myles uses more periods.

Also played my records tonight. The first song was Power Station, then Katrina and the Waves, then Bonnie Tyler. Roommate didn't seem to be annoyed and told me to be as loud as I want! She can sleep through anything. Sweet. I'm in the big room, stealing internet from someone, our is *pending.*

2010-06-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

To get the key we had to get past the dog, wade through the river, wake up an old angry woman, return to the under room, place buckets over our heads, send a bunch of text messages, get into a dead man's email account, win over the one-armed bandits, engross ourselves in a particular historical period, hunt down the serial numbers, sing the song off-key, pay a lot of money, present our identification cards, live our whole lives in Germany.

I kind of hate EMI because they won't let me make my blog pretty.

Totally silent!

2010-05-06T06:54:00.000-07:00

The cheap acupuncture is great and I am almost healed, but completely out of cash, even though only $15, its $15 and I went 6 times. I'm trying not to live on credit so that means I'm really hungry. Rice and beans, rice and eggs, quinoa and okra. It's like that. Had a great day being poor the day before payday though. Went to the SF Library, (I still can not get into the Oakland library, they don't even have Link +) and checked out TEN books, I guess I hadn't been in a while and they got a lot in. Totally got my I need to fill the void consumption fix without spending any money. Bhanil Khapil's Incubation A Space for Monsters, Deleuze and The Fold: A Critical Reader (haven't read The Fold, but whatevs), Zachary Schomburg's Scary, No Scary, Sarah Menefee's I'm not thousandfurs, Sheila E Murphy's Incessant Seeds, Tony Tost's Complex Sleep, Ish Klein's Union!, Steve Benson's Blue Book, Niedecker's Harpsichord & Salt Fish, and Mac Low's Bloomsday. I'm having a four days off vacation, two of which will be in airports/airplanes. I will try to read them all, but also have so much poetry transcribing work I want to do. I still can't do everything I want even on vacation. I also want to eat A LOT of food.

Reading

2010-04-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

Forgot to mention:

A New Cadence Poetry Series

Presents

Carrie Hunter
and
Nicole Mauro

reading from their works

Saturday, April 24th
@ 7:30
Felix Kulpa Gallery
107 Elm Street, Santa Cruz, CA
Free

I'll be reading from A Musics, and the new Dusie 4 chapbook, Diary, as well as from my forthcoming! book from Black Radish Books, The Incompossible, and some new stuff. All very quickly. And on pink paper, because I forgot I used all the white...

2010-04-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

Have been writing at poetry readings either a keepsake momento, poetry notes, or a textual bootleg... At the Dunagan, Morris, Grabowski reading last week, in my notes all three made references to either teleportaion, telepathy or ghosts. It's all in my notes! I want to say so new college, but only one of them went to new college. But so our group, someone name us.

Went to another acupuncture on Thursday, it is funny because I am not totally aware that it is a bad area,it seems ok, but working class, but I am so the only white chick on the bus and the only reason I notice is because everyone is looking at me oddly, not badly, but curiously. By Fruitvale something or other. I think the acupuncture hurts me because I am in so much pain in general it just hurts no matter what. There was one spot to the side of my shin, it felt like it was hitting a nerve or something, stinging. I should have told her so she could adjust it but that seemed to entail a lot of energy that I didn't have. After a while it went away so I think it was a chi thing. But even now when I touch that spot and massage it I feel it in my feet, and I've been feeling random weird sensations in my shins area, something is going on. I guess it's good. I told her the last time after the acupuncture I was wiped out I napped twice that day and was so lethargic all week, so she said she had a feeling it wouldn't be that way this time, but that acupuncture takes away the energy style you put over your real energy style (not verbatim) and your real energy or the energy your supposed to be comes in to effect. So apparently I'm supposed to have the energy of a tree stump. That actually sort of rings true, because sitting in like a 6 hour meditation for me seems so so doable. Some people could never sit still that long, but I feel like no problem (except for peeing). But I don't know how to have that kind of lifestyle and also pay rent. Fantasizing about quitting my job and sleeping in the park for 3 months straight. (Not really, bosses who are reading this, I LOVE my job! Really I don't think there is anyone more qualified to interpret IRS language than someone who has studied obscure language poetry.)

Last night my gmail got hacked, sorry people who I haven't talked to in years that don't want to hear from me, then all my electricity went out - I had the IPOD playing, the heater on, and the microwave, and then I couldn't find the fuse box. So after eating dinner in the dark, I called the landlord, and texted him, and he called me back at 10PM on a Friday night, so 5 stars on yelp for that! Then I found it and kept flipping it but nothing happened. So he said he'll have someone come out in the morning. So what else to do but go to sleep. So I put my headphones in and IPODed for a while and slept. Then he calls at 8:46 am to ask if it is still not working and so i go out barefoot and crazy haired and it is still not working. He says he can't get a hold of the contractor and is stuck in the city but will come by later but he is not sure what time. So OK. I go back to sleep and have a weird memory/dream of having to hit the reset button first, a childhood memory when I used to have to fix the braker, breaker? So I go back out there and there is another switch that is on the off position. So I flip it and everything comes on, magic. Then there is a burning smell. But it is ok. Just the heater flipped out I think. And magically the hall light that I thought had been burned out for months that I just ignore, is now on. Weird. Why do I write out strange narratives like this, I think it is metaphoric of my exhaustion somehow. I need to find the braker switch on my body.

Then because I hadn't wanted to shower in darkness, I'd decided to come to the city all dirty to go do yoga at Crunch, and then shower there where they have light. So even though the light was now on, I stuck with my plan. Everyone was smiling at me and it took me a while to realize I look like I'd come from a one night stand in last night clothes or something, greasy hair, with a frizzed out tuft sticking up in the back...

An Oakland vs Mission story:

Walking home on Telegraph last night and this guy says hi so I say hi, then he says Bitch, then he says it over and over again with different variations. Ok. I don't understand. Should I be a bitch and then he will think I'm nice? Or he just wanted to call me a bitch from the beginning and there is nothing I could do to change his mind.

Came out of BART 24th St station, and this guy says you should smile more often, like he is aware of how I do not often smile, so of course I smile, I can't help it, and then we have a chatty friendly conversation.

Although there is now a bike argument in the cafe. Arguing because he is a regular and dude has never said it to him before. No bikes in the cafe. On weekends. But weekdays are ok. I love this cafe because it is incredibly spacious and I can always get a seat, but the owners are a little uptight and unfriendly.

I think/hope writing on my laptop for hours in a Mission cafe is as restful as sleeping and napping all day. Maybe more so, going to finish (maybe) up my Delueze-Guattarian new age-music poems. I think maybe writing might be the only thing to give me an energy...

2010-04-03T21:52:00.000-07:00

Acupuncturist said: What your pulse is telling me is that you're worn out.

I know I know. Then I realized I really really am. Went for foot pain (plantar fasciitis) on my right foot. She started on the top of my head (please don't pierce my brain!) then the wrists, then the shins, and several in the feet. They say it doesn't hurt but it did kindof. A few piercing jolty things, I may have gasped once, also was hungover and think it may have me swollenish and so overreacting. Maybe it won't happen next time. She kept telling me to breathe while she was doing it because I'm so nervous. I'm sorry I'm like that, world. Every situation.

Even though it was all about my right foot, strangely when the needles were in for a bit, my left hip started hurting, right where I used to have a pain that happened being drug across a garden holding on to a pit bull's collar (trying to protect my 16 year old collie), then my whole left leg started tingling in a weird way. Kind of reminded me of that tension I felt in my body the one time I took a yin yoga class and I thought I was going to scream and pull out all my hair. Please let me move! I guess it is an anxiety tension releasing? I guess I shouldn't do things hungover, because I thought I had enough money but I didn't and it is sliding scale cash only, that you slip in an envelope, so I didn't pay enough! I feel awful and hope they will let me come back if I pay up! Then I came home and took the best nap of my life. Woke up and had that yummy happy muscles feeling like after yoga. But I haven't had yoga. Then I went to walgreens, and came home, and took another nap, how can anyone sleep so much! I'm still so exhausted. Maybe now another nap I will call regular sleep.

New Chapbook!

2010-03-21T12:26:00.001-07:00

Cute, right? Music poems, poems written to music, with a little Adorno thrown in, for fun. Shaped like a 45!

LINK to CLICK

2010-02-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

Not my favorite Glove song, but there is not much. Got a remastered version CD that has the demo's, and all the songs she sings, he is singing, but differently. I like it a lot better.

Getting a little bored with my recent penchant for nostalgia though. I think for a while the past was the only "new" I could afford, but I want some real "new" now I think. Not that I can afford it much, maybe a little...

I think I am back to blogging every Sunday. It is a nice device, but I have SO many Sunday devices.

Was working on the computer all day, and had a weird computer exhaustion, plus PMS exhaustion. I took a very powerful 15 minute nap. It was so deep, right as I was falling asleep I heard this sound, like a dream sound, but mechanical, and maybe reminiscent of twilight zone or something. Which is where I think I may have gone. Then a dream voice, the kind of dream voice that wakes you up startled, startled that it might be real, says to me, and I only heard the end of the sentence: "...every piece of you." I don't know if it is a request, a demand, or a promise.

2010-02-07T21:24:00.001-08:00

I bought a novel today for a dollar. Completely shocking to even me. But this is what the back says:

The disheveled girl with the transfusion came to join the group.

"Waiting for birds?"

"They already passed," answered the frail man on the bench with a smile that outlined the tiny wrinkles in the corners of his eyes and around his lips.

"A sand storm?"

"No: the light is healing. Today we can see all of its seven colors. The sky is brimming with the same strength that we've come to lack."

SPD has it so it must be cool~ (clickable)

Carrying around three different types of cough syrup but I don't have a cough. I have a cold though but it is ok. At least I'm not coughing, may stay home from work and sleep tomorrow. The licorice tea is great when you have this particular type of illness. My ear is doing the phlegm-poppy thing. Didn't want to go to yoga because it makes people mad when you go to yoga sick, so I went to the yoga to the people near berkeley campus, students are supposed to be miserable, so I think its ok. Also they haven't formed too many opinions yet, seemingly. I don't want to eat anything but a bowl of jasmine rice with licorice tea.

Publishing news:

My chapbook is now an e-chapbook, The Unicorns. All about the Tenderloin. Kind of scabby, cracked out unicorns. There was a sighting at Jones and O'Farrell. I swear. Also a river of vomit so voluminous it had a current. Almost magical vomit.

And second thing is House Press is putting out a chapbook of my music poems, A Musics, I hear it will be shaped like a 45. Can't wait to see it!

2010-01-28T23:32:00.000-08:00

My feet are killing me again. I should've taken the 1 back to my house from the post office. I want a car. I never wanted a car in years. Today was a vacation day but I'm back at work tomorrow. I got up 10 minutes later and left the house at 8:30 instead of 8:20, to go to Berkeley and talk to someone at UC Berkeley Extension about adult teaching certification. It seems cool but mom doesn't want me to spend all that money and still not get a teaching job, like what happened with my TESOL cert. I don't know either but part of the program is a required 4 semesters of teaching, so I imagine if you are in the program, people know you need to be hired, and maybe want to hire you? I have no idea. The woman said they do not have job placement, but the teachers can help, they've been in the business for years, etc, and she gave me a list of Adult Schools in the area. I should call some and see how the job market is, probably bad right now. Their classes are all on the weekend so it'd be pretty easy.

Then I went to eat a muffin and drink decaf. People look at me like I'm insane when I order decaf before noon. I want to simulate awakeness. I like not shaking all the time, so I don't really want to go back. I did a layout for the next ypolita book, still need to print it out though, because I'm not sure about the spacing, this book is a very space conscious book. Then I transcribed 11 Word pages worth of poetry bootlegs, as I'm calling them (4 different readings). Started writing a play. Created a new folder in My Documents called Oakland poems. Then I went and ate some Thai vegetarian. Then I called my mom and walked around. Then I ate some plain frozen yogurt with bananas, and I ordered all my Diary pages for my Dusie 4 book. Then I went to Kinkos and made a go-by 1 sided to 2 sided, with images. Now I have to make sure I like it and then print off or copy I mean how many copies? 50? Then I went to the post office and mailed off some chaps and picked up my package - which was The Concher, yes I bought it more for the chocolate. Then I walked way too long with a huge load on my shoulder, no wait first I went to Walgreens, bought scouring pads, eyebrow pencil (my eyebrows are driving me insane!) contact lens case (I lost mine at crunch I think) bagel chips (craving salt) and a Coke (BAD). Then I walked miserably home. Then I did something for 30 minutes I don't know what. Very important I'm sure. Reorganized my bags, and took out my laptop, got the big stupid marc jacobs bag I bought for my '08 poetry readings, put my other two bags in it, and headed to the city. I took back the stupid bag and even though I bought it on my Nordstroms card I said can you put it back to my debit card, so now my rent check won't bounce yay. Then I went to Asta Yoga, took Nicole's class and felt the yoga bliss like only halfway through. Then I tried to go to Azteca, used to be my favorite enchiladas anywhere, but it doesn't exist anymore, it is a Please Wait to be Seated place now. Horrors! I stood in front of it like a few pauses too long going huh. So instead I went to Casa Mexicana, which is ok, pretty good actually, mole sauce. Then I went to Books & Bookshelves for the Kelsey St Press reading. A lot a lot of people. Very long reading, standing room only, lasted until 10. I wrote more poetry bootlegs. A lot. Wrote 10 pages in my itsy bitsy palm sized notebook. It got very very tiring, writing so much and thinking so much, but I kept at it, obsessively. Traded David H three of Logan's chaps for three chaps (Dusie '06 (OMG!) In Fortune-Levin/Stanley/Theis, Rachel Levitsky-Cartographies of Error, Rob Halpern-Weak Link). Bought two book books (Dolores Dorantes-Sexopurosexoveloz and Septiembre, and Susan Gevertz-Black Box Cutaway (Kelsey st press!)) and tried to buy his Your Wilderness & Mine, but he wouldn't let me pay. David! Heard another good line on Bart for the Play. Now I'm going to sleep that was a hectic vacation!

2010-01-27T07:46:00.001-08:00

Three days of head splitting headaches, morning, noon and night, and then I remember my nose spray, and it instantly dissipates. I missed two of my favorite classes because of it. Also, a possibly related exhaustion. Had a quad pain, a upper right arm pain, and then I walked so much Friday night that I feel that the bottoms of my feet are bruised. Then I went to a very crowded heat vinyasa class yesterday I had to switch my mat perpendicular to the others and kept getting kicked on one side, and this girl's fluffy hair all over my other side (why couldn't she move back - top of the mat doesn't have to be literal!)

I'm out of licorice tea and I can't think of any random health food store in Oakland besides Whole Foods. I'm really much more into going to the no name places - support the locals and all, but there might not be any around here. Joined ANOTHER credit union, instead of using ING for savings, was thinking why use any bank at all when I can go to a credit union. I'm surprised anyone still has their money in those bad banks; chase, b of a, wells. Why? Take it out! I think its similar to how there is a line to the door at Starbucks, and then the no name cafe two doors down, no line ever, plus they are totally nicer. No one knows about it.

One of my yoga teachers said a quote from Deepak Chopra and I liked it so I went and checked out a DC book, I am such a dork, but it has a nice heart meditation in it that I've been doing. It is very easy to feel heart sensations as you meditate, much more than third eye, or the kundalini thing. Then he said people who are commitment phobic and often fall for unavailable men (my favorite story), the real reason is they feel that there is no possibility of a connection to God (or Spirit=whatever), that it is unreachable. Oh, and that love is hopeless. Hmmm.

Goodreads reviews 2009

2010-01-22T07:11:00.000-08:00

"I wonder how many of us realize that ours is the only country to have ever actually used WMD." I'm pretty sure I thoroughly enjoyed this, but that was over a week ago. Blushing on BART... This was one of the most amazing, beautiful poetries on grief I've ever read. Plan on reading this one over and over. I like how these poems about art look like visual arts in themselves... I like the subject matter- viewing Dickinson through a buddhist lens - but the way he writes it is really annoying, cloyingly sappy, etc. "she saw him as a stoic of what is left out" Absolutely terrifying. This shit is whack/wack(y)- I kept reading the blurbs over and over but I don't think I understand. The secret, I suspect, is you must find the lavender bedroom, and maybe go into the closet where the unicorn is (like narnia,) and then everything will be revealed. Where is the lavender bedroom and who is this rude girl?verging on philosophy, piecharts of "reality" = deep there are moments that seem, personal, personal moments of isolation or alienation, mixed with this sort of professional or jargony language that also reeks of alienation, also a good bit of I don't understand but I love it, also the word "eyelets"Really cool subject matter, I would never have thought about this subject matter as a subject matter, and even cooler is at the center of the subject matter is a mystery, and so you aren't even sure what you are reading about exactly. The beginning of a study, so much untapped into, although also, rather anglo-centric. Maybe some new academic will expand (or maybe has?)this study to include african or asian systems of memory...This might be about to go into a very special bookshelf called books that have fallen into the bath and are too sopping wet to read. I was still trying to figure out what expedient means means when it expediently, or unexpediently, fell. Oddly, the cover is curling up so it looks like a scroll...hmmmm, mystical. Kind of like those 2 almost identical pictures on the comics page where it says Can you find 8 things that are different? I think I found maybe 4. I like how this book starts out very linear and straightforward, and then slowly becomes more and more unreadable or at least very difficult. Kind of like my life. So genius! One of those - why didn't I think of this - kinds of things... I checked this out entirely based on the author photo. poems after the dali lamas (all of them, I think) really strange and normal at the same time. Mine is blue, and backwards. On my very last day of yoga at the yoga studio that I just broke up with, I propped this book up behind my mat, and used it as a point of focus, and kept repeating like the native tongue the vanquished like the native tongue the vanquished like the native tongue the vanquished like the native tongue the vanquished like the native tongue the vanquished until I sort of understood what it meant. My favorite is #10. Very addictive. Total cliffhanger ending. When is the sequel? sped read in 30 minutes, which probably means I didn't really like it, yes? Its like a story, is my problem. When I'm expecting something poetry like but instead get a story, it is horrifying. I am so conservative in my desire for poetry to just be poetry. I should move back to Texas.Much more specific than the last dali lama book I read which was sort of pop psychology or something, this is very specific explanation of the buddhist belief and the steps laid out to enlightenment. Geniuses. in the genre of that sort of abstract-ish, static, opaque, bunch of one-syllable words all in a row, type poetic styles, but then occasionally all the sudden a very lyrical and human human line arises. Seems to be about an intersection between nature and technology and maybe an absence of the human but just occasionally a glimpse of the human (still here a little). Hmmm, a literary Behind the Green Door? Less stars for the gnoetry. I just can't get into computer generated... Loved Julia Drescher, Erica Lewis, and CJ Martin. Also really liked the Editor's note about the etymology of "pelican." Very 90's, alien abductions, Trust No One! I had a nightmare after reading this. mystical sad sweet and erotic. I prolonged finishing this one as long as possible... Hijacking my own comment for a review: Kind of not poetry, but not really prose. Kind of a narrative but not really. And the subject matter, which I thought might depress me, has so far only intrigued. But as I read further it got sadder, which is weird as its in reverse chronological order, like a blog, and so things technically get better as you go along, but maybe it is sadder when you are starting to lose your memory than when you have totally lost it. This book made me want to go rearrange my books and put all my elizabeth treadwell books together so I can just go over take them all out and like rub them all in my hair or something. post modern neo romanticism. A revisioning of the past of the old of the passed. Micah's got a musciality you don't see much anymore. I think he's figured out a way to write in a way that is pre-postmodern without being not post modern. Very cool. Definitely too short, and I still don't understand boys. So weird!

total 165 books read, only 9 of which were prose...

2010-01-16T22:02:00.000-08:00

I did yoga four days in a row and I don't even feel anything. Not tired, not blissed. I think I could go again today. But I should probably do an errand. But last night, at Asta yoga I did the tripod headstand transition to bakasana without putting my feet down first. Although I kind of cheated and I really do balasana not bakasana, because I think of my abnormally long legs (compared to my short short torso) I have to have the knees sticking out or there is too much leg to put behind me. I also got help on the handstand but it didn't really work out, I wish the middle part of my body was not so heavy. I think I'm too fat for this pose. But I really love how Asta has super mushy carpet, it actually feels safer than It's Yoga, and I think I'm just barely afraid. I think it will get me over my fears.

Watched this movie seemingly all about annoying people getting in your personal space.

I think my aesthetics are not to make things more ugly, aren't they ugly enough? Saw the last half of an Andy Warhol documentary at the museum and feel more inspired by him. He never showed a wrinkle on anyone, etc. Like also how he was always working but it was art. Wish my life was that. Instead of always working but its work.

My new year's resolution was not to stop blogging. I kept talking all December long how I couldn't wait for my January flu, because last year I got a flu and it was wonderful, but then I got sick but it wasn't the flu and it wasn't wonderful. asthma and a painful cough that never becomes "productive" - weird illness. I didn't make any resolutions really but I made a list of nostalgias. Dyed my hair cherry chocolate mousse. It is already fading out though. My plot to return to Mission. Asta Yoga in the old style I love. Reading an Anne Rice book until the middle of the night, except I fell asleep. Vintage clothes shopping at Clothes Contact. Was looking at all the old weird 60's and 70's outfits, and how I used to wear psychedelic outfits as my everyday outfit. Don't think I have the nerve anymore! I love that place though because it is by the pound, I bought two very light things and it was around $3.

Dreamt of an old friend who I used to have a crush on, but he always had a girlfriend. He was a Scorpio, I think they like to have secrets. So it was like almost dating when we would hang out, but not. It was confusing. He would talk about how he was in a loveless relationship, and I never understood or understand why people like that never leave. Fear I think. I wanted him to break up with her and date me and I think he wanted us to hook up first and feel safe before breaking up. But I never would have felt comfortable with that. Then it was like a two confused people standoff, and we just wandered off. I'm always alone and it is not horrible, so I don't understand that fear. Funny. The fear of being in a relationship is probably more. When would I write! Or blog. I like all the "things" I do, but I think I developed them to fill the void.

Oh, maybe 4 days of yoga did do something, who is blogging in the 7 AM hour?

2009-12-28T23:45:00.000-08:00

For some reason the whole time my mom was here this week, I kept thinking we were like in Grey Gardens. My middle-aged spinster ass in weird outfits and her widowed, and oddly talkative. But Southern. We kept having all these long conversations about things neither one of us can quite remember.

Everytime I walk past my refrigerator I start laughing:

"Give me something to give in to.
It will be weird. It will be so weird." --Mike Young

Reza's class must have been really good because I can't even finish half my butternut squash raviolis. There is always something really creative in his class that I would never have thought of. We were climbing/leaning against the side of a wall in half moon pose and it helped a lot to get my shoulder back, which never wants to move. It is weird that Crunch yoga is more creative than studio yoga. Silvie too, once had us doing lunges but with the top of our back foot on the ground - it looked hard but wasn't and felt great. Also, opposite of my studio yoga experiences, where the longer I went there the more invisible I seemed to become, at Crunch, the more they see me, the more the more I get adjustments! Which is really the only reason to ever even go to yoga...

Seems like the old studio is mostly dead, but a few of the former teachers started a new studio in the same style I hear. Looks like even with carpet. I want to go but then I'm suspicious for some reason, that weird harshness - now that I'm away from it, I can see it more clearly, they are so tough. Also since I left The City I just see SF as really tough and harsh too (except Mission!) but I do miss the funky poses, and I guess the funkiness of the city, I miss that too (but not the funky smell).

I was just reading from a book with this quote:

"The fact is, I have been dead so long & it has been simply such a grim shoving of the hours behind me as I faced a ceaseless possible horror, since that hideous summer of '78, when I went down to the deep sea, its dark waters closed over me & I knew neither hope nor peace; that now it's only the shrivelling of an empty pea pod that has to be completed." Too bad I'm not depressed this winter, or good thing!

Dreamt I was eating a peanut butter jelly sandwich in Tom Clark's house and it wasn't very good but I kept eating it out of politeness, and then this girl with a huge white cat in her arms called up to Tom can she come in with her cat, and he said no.

I'm also reading Sheila E Murphy's 600 page book of poems called "Collected Chapbooks". The concept itself or the very fact that this exists is worth the price.

From My Sister's Blue Accordion:

All my life she has been simple, cheerful and athletic
as I slaved over the yellowed texts of Garibaldi,
Boehm and Hindemith.
I rehearsed in steamy practice rooms
as she stood effortlessly in yards of beer and hotdogs,
performing personality like a habit
smiling past my smiles.

Makes me sad and happy at the same time. Like what a twisty perfect way to describe the bittersweet path of poetry...

2009-12-23T12:02:00.000-08:00

Took a class at the gym called Absolution, (I first typed Abomination-they should rename it) - and it is so not yoga. The guy was like a marine yelling out stuff, and faster faster, at 15 minutes I felt done, but that was only half-way. Then at the end we did something called "Throw downs" where I was lying down, and dude made me hold on to his ankles and I would left up my legs and he would grab my ankles and then he would throw them down, and I had to use my abs to bring them back up, I did 7 and then I was shaking so much it was hard to do 10 but I did them anyway. It was gross too because his socks were wet. Why was he sweating that much!

It took me like an hour to get out of bed today. But I look FLAT STOMACH! And its weird because its the top that hurts, but that makes me pull it in far and so the bottom part which is usually pouffy is not because of the top being pulled in so much. Maybe that is the secret. Also, we did some plank stuff which I didn't think was too bad, but I woke up in the middle of the night with this awful pain in my left hand and it was like this orange glowing line of pain that went all the way up my arm to my shoulder. I rubbed it for a while and it went away and then it came back and I rubbed it again, and then I fell asleep. If you google search "cardiac arrest" the first thing that comes up is Brittany Murphy. I think it was either the plank poses, or maybe the abs stuff was a little too much and i was using my neck. Bad Bad, I know.

I dreamt I had to do proofreading that was due on Christmas, so I was in a panic. But I don't have to do anything. My mom is here and we are going to walk around Berkeley, or Temescal, or Piedmont Ave, or Lake Merritt. Christmas Eve (tomorrow?) we will go to Grace Cathedral, she says there is poetry...

2009-12-20T22:42:00.000-08:00

It was sunny and bright and blue skies, and then it rained and rained and I think it might be my fault because I have been listening to Sisters of Mercy all day.

I think I had some sort of creepy guy crush on him in high school. I don't know what was wrong with me. He seems like he probably has a lot of issues.

I did three loads of laundry and printed about 70 copies of Logan's book. Met my neighbor "Scott." Came back in and realized I had my skirt on inside out. I still haven't turned it right-side out. A very domestic day. But busy printing, and sorting, and folding, etc. Spent some time at vector magic, was having vector problems, but it looks cool, kind of like when Professional sites try to look DIY, but it really is DIY, so it is DIY trying to look like a Professional who is trying to do the DIY look. Um. Logan's book is the first where I have transitioned from using a real ink stamp pad for my Y logo, to having scanned it in, and so it is a scan of a real ink stamp. How selling out am I? Also I couldn't find green ink, like off the cuff, so this is easier.

Read AnnMarie Eldon's Some2; is there a place where her genre and Will Alexander's genre intersect. I think, maybe. Sciency surrealism stuff... Do I just want to write the word Loxodrome? Yes.

Had an epiphany about my anger and my sexuality, not sure if it is a happy thought, but I think anger is sexuality. And when I'm stopping my anger I'm stopping my sex drive, and that is why I have all these blocks... But then I started thinking about how rape is supposedly "not about sex" but it is sex, and so, then, isn't it? Maybe passion isn't anger but energetically its cousin, and sometimes people get confused by it. Reading Dalai Lama in the bathroom. I really dig the antidote stuff, he says letting out anger is really never good, but that also anger will increase if you never "implement the antidote." Certain people that anger seeps out of, and are seemingly unconscious about the fact that they are angry, it is because they are not applying the antidote. I suppose consciousness has to come first though, then the antidote can be applied. The only thing I am not too keen on in his philosophy (so far) is he is entirely against euthanasia, and I've been told by my mother that I have to pull the plug if it ever comes to that. Not necessarily euthanasia, but still, it seems if you are relieving suffering, how is that bad? For him, he says all suffering is the result of previous bad karmas, and you have to live it out. Seems a little arbitrary, medicine is OK, he says relieve suffering as much as possible, but this next step of relieving suffering is not OK. Hmmm.

2009-12-17T08:18:00.000-08:00

My favorite lifestyle choice is eating by myself in a restaurant with a really difficult book. You would see a lot of women eating by themselves in Mission, but in East Bay I am always the only one. Or I'm the only one in the restaurant. I felt like maybe I should acquiesce to the culture here and take to go, but then maybe East Bay needs to acquiesce to me! Maybe women secretly want to eat alone, but are afraid, and maybe seeing me will empower them.

There are two stores walking distance from my place that are totally cool to just wander through on my way past:

East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse

and

Sagrada

I did all my holiday shopping at Sagrada. Yule-tide shopping I guess I should say. I want to just wander through some weekend day and read about chakras. They had a bunch of chakra books. I think I feel them lately, I feel them moving, and I feel all this yoga energy moving up and down too. mostly moving up.

Maybe I'll move to Japan and teach ESL, maybe I'll move to Dubai, I think I could make a shitload teaching ESL in Dubai, I've heard. I guess its not exactly like SF there... I wonder how it is for a woman, I heard its a party city, which sounds fun, but I'm not sure how well ESL teaching and partying it up really go together. I probably would prefer a more intellectual city. Like Berkeley, or Buffalo. Maybe I'll finally apply to Phd school, maybe I'll read Guattari and Deleuze. Right after I finish the Spicer bio.

I'm thinking of going to a chiropractor, still having a tingly thing in the middle of my back. It is better, and we did scapula exercises in yoga last night, which helped but didn't fix entirely. I know my hips are out of alignment and something is off in my neck, I can tell because every time I do a backbend something in my neck like falls into place.

I wanted to be surreptitious today, but I can't find my black bra.

2009-12-12T01:17:00.000-08:00

Missing so many poetry readings lately. But am not missing the Rosmarie Waldrop reading tomorrow night, except I guess its not really a Rosmarie Waldrop reading, but an Oppen lecture. But at any rate, should be cool. And in celebration, a Waldrop/Oppen mash-up:

Well except not, I totally don't have time for that. But in my dreams of my perfect life - I do.

There will be no merit increases this year. So I put lipstick on. For like 30 minutes. Then I ate a candy cane, apple flavored, which exactly did not match my lavender lipstick.

Speaking of John Wieners, I'm having problems with my nerves. And I mean the pinchy kind. (I'm bizarrely calm this week in my headspace, I think maybe just exhaustion?) My whole left leg went numb for a minute today while sitting on my knees and twisting after camel pose. I don't think that is a good way to twist...I have a tendency to want to try and do everything I'm told, in yoga at least, but I was like no no no, and sat differently.

I cam home in the pouring rain, and there was a very long line of ants in my apartment leading straight to the garbage can. I poured Brita water all over the kitchen, and am glad I have tile floors.

OK I am waiting for something to print so I do have time.

How wonderfully the air is laid down on shadows.
It brightens up into the branches
A sort of empty number

Give back what disappears

and the beds of the defeated,
Scattering earth in the strange woods.

ART!

2009-12-06T21:01:00.000-08:00

I spent a lot of time painstakingly collecting every postcard/card possible from this art party thingy last night; in the order in which they came out of my purse:

Steve Javiel

Colin Harris

Angela Scrivani

Michael Murphy

Rubyspam

Ian Ross

Erin Schroeder

Reb Peters Press

Megan Fister

Kiss dude

Kelly Page

Slava Likhatchev

Henry H. Barbero

Red Rabbit 7

Rosemarie V. Castillo

Christie Newman

Debbie Cain

Laura Browning

and best for last:

Eve Shen

2009-12-05T00:20:00.000-08:00

The way they always want to make you have an "intention" before class. But every time I do that - it comes out completely something other - and I don't really see the point. Pre-defining something seems sort of anti-yoga? I'm having a spastic pain on my scoliosis place pretty bad so my "intention" was to relax it, but that didn't happen at all. But the yoga teacher was really cool and loving, like she has this universal love vibe, and I think that affected me more than anything. And as I was waiting at BART after class, I was totally just feeling love for humanity. I think the yoga teacher's intention (or personality?) affects things much more than my intention. Similarly, I wish they wouldn't ask "any requests" before class, but half-way into class, once you are feeling your body, then seems the time to ask what we need or are feeling... because every class is different, and what you think in your head you need might not be what you need when you get into it.

The reason all I talk about is yoga on here is that is ALL I'm ever doing, besides working the two jobs. And I'm working two jobs. I'm not making ANY poetry readings, and I hate it, but I can't do everything. The two jobs and yoga (to counteract the two jobs) are it. But also reading a lot thanks to BART. I really liked Rachel Levitsky's "Neighbor," who doesn't obsess about their neighbors? There's a part in there that is seemingly or possibly an homage to Lisa Robertson's The Weather, with the litany of names, was that in "Thursday"? I think Thursday. I always wanted to write something in response to that which may be my favorite poem by a living writer ever, but could never think of anything that's not straight up copying.

And the Jack Spicer bio was my airplane book but I didn't finish it, and it is hard to take on BART, it is hardcover, and I guess that it would be a good Kindle book if i ever got a kindle. The good thing about those seems to be not needing to turn pages, which if you are stuck standing up on a contraption upon which you must balance, would be a good thing. Sometimes every time I turn a page I fall down, and I'm one of those annoying unbalanced people, but that won't keep me from reading. But I prefer thin books I can fold over.

There is no music in my life this week. Except for my neighbors.

2009-12-02T20:51:00.000-08:00

Other people have a lot of pain too so its not like I'm different Reading Poet Be Like God, the Spicer bio, and there is a sad story about this guy that had strep and his doctor didn't pay attention to it, and he died, he was (probably) in so much pain he just drank and drank and he died of suffocation. That's what I'm doing! Hopefully I will live.

All 5 nights in Texas I did a yoga practice, I am so proud of my discipline, but I still ended up with all this awful back pain, from watching too much CSI I guess, I can't even stand the show but there is nothing to do. I should have begged my mom to let me scrub her floors or something. And so I have this awful sitting too much lower back pain. I can't get rid of it and it is awful. I went to two Yoga to the People classes today and it didn't work, but my skin looks nice. Maybe tomorrow I will feel great... sometimes it takes a while to take effect.

My relaxation techniques worked well up to a point. Up until my back started hurting and then I couldn't relax because I was in so much pain. I wonder if all the forced relaxation just forced everything to finally collapse? I just think vacations are evil. I want to always be working but at a really slow relaxed pace.

The last day in Austin my dad took me to this awful hole in the wall in East Austin, I think he thinks obscure hole in the wall places are cool, but to me, now, after my californiacation, i just want healthy. I ate this enchilada, and maybe it almost killed me, two nights in a row up with horrible indigestion. Awful, I thought I was going to die. I got one cheese enchilada: "for our vegetarian friends," so what was all the grease it was swimming in? Grease. Liesse said maybe its from the tomato sauce. I think they poured meat grease on my vegetarian enchilada. I knew with the first bite I shouldn't keep going but I did. What else was I going to do! Not eat right before my flight? I had to eat.

I did manage to quit coffee though. Worked great on vacation, I just felt kind of stoned all the time. We will see what happens at work tomorrow though. I might start crying and run to starbucks in a panic.

2009-11-25T22:17:00.000-08:00

I keep meaning to take this album off my Ipod.

Realizing I probably need a teacher-teacher for yoga and I don't push myself very much; I stay away from issues areas, and I probably just need to be pushed there. Kind of like I need a shrink to push me into issues area and I don't go there. I probably won't. But I think, I have a theory, I can do more healing through meditation and yoga and breathing etc and allowing my body to relax, than ever talking about things... I think tension in the body is the root of all the problems, all shyness, all anxiety, all anger, um depression? maybe too. I don't know but will try it with the family this week and see if it helps. Everytime I start to get tense I will will my body to relax and see what happens. If I remember.

Was practicing drinking in preparation for Texas and it just put me under. Had two Death and Taxes' at the Burroughs celebration Naked Lunch reading, and I couldn't move the next day. Now I realize also PMS which does that too. So it is doubled.

But a cute sort of darkness.

I'm packing sort of in my mind right now, but not really actually yet.

Too tired to go to yoga tonight and told myself I'll do a home practice and I tell myself that a lot and then I don't do it, so I was determined and I moved a big huge space for it, and I did it: 5 A's and 5B's, the standing series with dolphins, the standing split series, regular splits with the lift ups into astavikrasana, then parsva bakasana (kicked a table) then dandasana, seated tree a and b, marichasana a and c; some abs (go me) and then butterfly (supta) and peacock which I can never do but... and then a corpse pose.

This was my playlist mostly. My Ipod is on alphabetical by song title and it is on B. The Lunar Drive song was actually Brrds and Bugs, there was a song called Closer I Get by Hayden, I can't find anywhere (thanks Suzanne) and this song called Bumper by Elecktronauts that I can't find either. Corpse pose song was Burn it Blue which seemed really good but maybe too emotional and lyric heavy, I tend to follow along in my head with the lyrics which is not so good for letting go...

2009-11-19T21:05:00.000-08:00

So exhausted but trying to be exhausted in a relaxed non-stressed manner. I was really stressed all day from it and then for some reason after work something switched in my head and I decided to be nice to myself. So I went and got some Thai food instead of like eating scraps off the floor, and instead of reading intensely, hecticly on BART I even stared out the window a bit. Exhaustion is ok. You can get used to anything including no heat and no sleep.

A homeless man told me I was his favorite, I was going to say and you're mine, but thought that might not be wise... I'm a regular. On the sidewalk. I guess.

My horoscope is always a horoscope of the past.

circles and circles

Also was thinking not about that homeless man, but a different homeless man, or not homeless, just one of those guys that hangs out in cafes a lot, maybe gets disability checks or something, who knows how he makes ends meet. Jealous though. And maybe he doesn't get enough food, etc., shelter but somehow is still alive, and is reading, and I am jealous, and maybe I should just let the debt accumulate until I reach the top of the debt mountain, and then I don't know by then I will have read all the books. And thinking of the wild parrot guy and how he choose poverty over selling out to the working grind type life. Hmmm. Also, the art students near my work, I am jealous of them, but then I overheard a girl on the phone saying her class was "tedious"! She has no idea.

2009-11-16T22:34:00.000-08:00

Sort of a geniusly engineered new moon yoga class tonight. Never had a good yoga class on a new moon, that I recall, I always feel like crap and continue to feel like crap. And I felt like crap today, but going really slow holding the poses longer, and no abs, seems to work great. Some weird new poses that I could do too and I don't know why I could do them, but that alone made me feel better. The new moon is a good day for working off bad karma. Someone was farting next to me all class long but I remember classes where I've farted all class long. Sometimes you have issues. And not giving the busker a dollar means I am overprocessing.

E. says sfyoga.com and I could live there for $600, she is on a mission to get me to move to her neighborhood... I do miss SF like crazy like it hurts. Don't think I'm quite an eastbayer. I should give it more time though. I do like the friendly and the trees. Sivananda yoga may be not my thing, but could be, I do want to do more meditation, but rarely seem to have time, but I think you get up at 5:30... If I did that now I would have time! But eventually you do have to sleep some. Wish I could just have yoga around me constantly though. Not sure what's wrong with garlic and onions? And mushrooms?

Perfect: via a.tieger's facebook post. Which was maybe a Private Facebook Situation, and I should not reveal publicly, but.

Am painting my nails a color called "Call Your Mother"

Horizontal thought encompassing more than vertical thought, versus my avoidance of taking up space.

the ecstematic unity of the horizon

2009-11-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

The problem with doing a yoga practice twice in one day is that later and any time you are not doing yoga you are absolutely miserable. Also, I'm over-pigeoned. I don't even like pigeons, why am I always trying to be one. (And missing every poetry reading but never yoga!)

Also, something about obstacles and mandalas, and how things are placed.

A radio station for this blog post because I cannot find shrinkwrapped by sleeper on imeem. Maybe it will accidentally play it.

Dreams of trying to get people to splash me, and eating rose petals.

Read KSMohammad's Breathylyzer last week. I love the swan poem:

"In our culture many people choose to use pairs of swans
to create an undetectable total mind-controlled slave"

I hate that. Stay away from people with swans. I guess all those Lake Merritt people? Mind controllers.

Because I am perplexed and indecisive lately, wrote a really long pro/con list about what to do Saturday night and then didn't do either thing. Got lost in Berkeley, and just gave up and came home and watched this awful, awful William Burroughs film, I really think he was so awful. Not a gentle soul at all. But I liked Naked Lunch. I think in the new age, geniuses will be geniuses of nice, as well as creative geniuses too. I don't know why the nice has to be subverted when someone is highly creative. It's almost that creativity should be in the DSM? Remembering, or think I remember, my massage therapist last week was actually maybe my customer back when I was a bank teller, and we always talked about how nice she was, so nice! And it struck me how important it is for nice people to be nice, be nice be nice!!

I don't know why my body is either in so much pain from sitting too long, or in so much pain from walking too much, and why can't I ever feel ok in my body - very rarely do I reach that equilibrium. Trying to remember how I felt in my body when I was 12, no memory. I guess when there is an absence of memory, there is an absence of pain, and why we don't remember equilibriums?

If Being is an aspect of time?

2009-11-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

I need an unorthodox idea. Daydreams are shit. This is what my horoscope says. I can only think of orthodox ideas at the moment...

Every time yoga teacher says OK now we'll do handstands, I feel like Woody Allen hands in hair Oh My God are you crazy, I am not doing that! Maybe I'm too neurotic for yoga, but I guess yoga doesn't mind... I have tons of fantasies about all the things I cannot do, they say if you can imagine it in your mind's eye one day you will be able to do it, but I'm not sure, there may be some things I can never do, because of my weird personality, my scoliosis, my bad hips...

I remember some yoga teacher once, who was also a massage therapist, said that massage is a part of your yoga practice, and I thought, oh he just wants my money, that is frivolous, and just for lazy people, and I just want to do work! Well I'm the type of lazy person that wants to work in order to prove I am not lazy! Not sure why I did it, but I knew I had today off so I called for a massage. It was so good! The whole time yelling (in a relaxed manner) at myself NO DAYDREAMING! Obsessed about being in the present moment. I didn't want to miss anything. And I did realize something about yoga. She would put like a pressure point and hold it, I could barely feel it, but it reminded me of the retention of breath thing in yoga. Then the thing I've been wondering about about, how if yoga is about relaxation, how come it seems holding the bandhas is a sort of tension? Seems contradictory, but it occurred to me maybe holding the bandhas is not a tension, but more like a retention of breath, a pause, not in time but in physicality.

Things that made me cry today after my massage:

To Write Love on Her Arms

And something else, but I can't link to a thought I had.

Also, I don't know if the public health care option actually means I can quit my crappy job, but it does mean I don't have to keep the job just for the benefits. Which is a tricky tricky way to be enslaved. Thinking about the ways I am free today and the ways I am not.

Another missed opportunity

2009-11-09T23:12:00.000-08:00

"Parlez-vous francais?"

"Sorry."

"I'm from Africa."

"Oh."

2009-11-08T22:58:00.000-08:00

Reviews of The Unicorns

2009-11-07T12:44:00.000-08:00

Since I know you are google searching it, Mom:

Mike Young

Sommer Browning

That's all there is, but that is more than any other chapbook got... so yay. Thanks to Mike & Sommer. You're cool.

And since I'm feeling advertising-ish; Here are the collected links to the poems from my FORTHCOMING BOOK, The Incompossible, which will be out from the *much-hyped* Black Radish Books, in 2010.

Sous Rature,
Sir!,
Cannot Exist,
String of Small Machines

also Try! had some poems, but they are way too cool to ever have a link...

2009-11-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

glowing golden eyes staring at me spookily.

The reason my socks are always mismatched is because all my other socks are mismatched.

My horoscope always says something about creativity lately, but I have no time.

I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing. I miss writing.

Started reading Stephen Ratcliffe's Idea's Mirror, and love the genre, a series of comma'ed phrases put together, kind of related in him, slightly narrative even as there is a "he" - but in my idea they would be totally unrelated fragments collaged, in my style. I have all these different short projects that really need to be collaged together. By themselves they are not enough. Overheard on the street series, work scrap series, NPR fragments, extra movie lines that didn't make it into Kine(sta)sis, the continuing diary project which is over but not over, random facebook updates, weird phrases from technical proofreading, I think that is it. Felt these things are parts of a big whole, but wasn't sure how, really. I like linking them through commas, he puts two blank lines between each line, not sure if that would work, or if it should have an appearance of prose...

Maybe my horoscope is right after all.

alpha and omega - boards of canada

Nightshift

2009-11-03T21:53:00.000-08:00

2009-11-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

Read so much I thought I was turning into stone.

How to continue a project when you've finished a project - there are all these hangover project poems. You can't stop and it is meaningless because to fit it into a new project it has to become something else and you must just stop and wait.

The bottoms of my feet are blue because the blue hair color washed out and I was standing in it.

Was thinking of turning the fragments from the diary into a daily one sentence entry, but then its just twittering? And I can just update facebook?

Maybe I should just write straight up poems like normal poets do.

Watch Dead Can Dance - Cantara.divx in Music | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

2009-11-01T11:53:00.000-08:00

Not sure if its yoga or the aging process, but I can't eat lactose stuff anymore, can't eat gluten, can't eat sugar, can't drink alcohol without feeling disgusting, can't eat meat, I guess all that's left is quitting coffee, and I'm shaking all the time lately, so it probably does mean that. Or I'm not eating enough. All I'm eating lately is soup for lunch, and quinoa and broccoli for dinner. Yogurt and granola for breakfast. I'm still eating chocolate, a little, in small doses, but too much doesn't do well for me either...

That weird yoga studio owner where I used to go used to say something like yoga will make your dreams come true. And I think that's silly, no one's dreams ever come true, it's propaganda for the rich I think. I always wanted to ask Why does suffering make us lucky? I don't think most yoga people think about darknesses as a sort of luck. Maybe that's what zombie pose was all about yesterday! The difference between yoga studios that cater to the rich and those (few) to the working class.

Proofreading work all weekend makes me think too much. I don't know how to get out of thinking overthinking brain mode when I'm sitting in front of the laptop and I just have to be there... I think listening to The Cure's Pornography helps a LOT though.

The Figurehead - The Cure

maybe I'll be me for halloween

2009-10-28T23:36:00.000-07:00

(right click my big hair)

More me 20+ years ago here

Little mini-visions all day yesterday but nothing coelesced, except little rainbow lines everywhere in the air

2009-10-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

Blog Post in the Traditional Style

2009-10-20T20:01:00.000-07:00

Had a nice post sushiplus nap and now I am proofreading. Oddly nice just coming straight home as all last week I went to yoga after work. Every day I think. Have been doing the agni sara and could oddly touch my chest to my knee in pyramid pose. Not sure if it is the sucking in the belly or the fact that we went bottom up instead of top to bottom. If my chest is already low to the ground, it is easy to just turn. My body randomly started doing the retention of breath thing at work today. It is kind of mysterious but cool. Instead of blogging for a proofreading break I should do some crunches or something, but... Think I did too much yoga last week and I am feeling tired. Or maybe it was walking from Oakland to Berkeley Saturday. I don't know why I did that, but I wanted to see things. There are so many neighborhoods to explore in my new city. I am still missing being a San Franciscan like crazy, and don't know if I will last longer than my lease. But at least I can explore. Also, it is cleaner here, and people smile at you, so that is nice.

Saturday I walked up to Temescal looking for a chilaquile; pico paco taqueria does not have this, they are salvadorean I think. She squinted at me. The other place La Calaca has them, but only until 1, I will try next weekend. Then I walked up trying to find BookZoo. I walked from 51st to Alcatraz. I didn't know how far a walk that is. Also it was hot, and I was carrying my laptop on my shoulder. I bought a Camille Roy and a Stephen Ratcliffe, and almost a Vanessa Place but it was $15 and I don't think I quite understand the genre. Probably if I started reading it the process would teach it to me, but $15... I also had a long conversation with the daughter of the bookseller, she had a cinderella bike and was telling me all about cinderella and showing me all the different ways to ride the bike, some worked better than others. I didn't know Cinderella had friends, but there were a bunch of other people on the bike picture, slowly days later I realize they are the stepsisters. Duh. I find talking to children one of the most bizarre ways to pass time. But after that I was feeling friendly and asked the bookseller where I could get some wifi. So he pointed me in the direction of nomad cafe. It was ok, there was a very strange east bay cultural situation where I was standing by the bathroom, thinking I'm next, but no the girl sitting at the table was next, and then the girl at the other table sitting was after her, and then there was a guy sitting at another table. How do you sit at a table and still be in "a line"? Students maybe. Have unusual ways of communicating. But I worked on my manuscript for a good 2 1/2 hours or so. Black Radisher,David Wolach gave me tons of intricate notes, so I went through one by one. It took a while. I got so into it I was late leaving to go to the city, meet up with an old new college friend (blogless friend how do I link to you), and I missed his friend's reading, but made it to the next one, the CIIS reading, and the next one, the SPD reading, where I abandoned the CIIS group and went off on my own, but saw Kaya, Barbara, and Cedar, and some other cute 20 year olds. I may have stumbled across my next book idea, which will be called Poetry Reading, and is sort of a third cousin to Flarf, zlarf? Because I had to write a poem to get the free book, and of course I had to have a free book if there was a free book to be had, so I wrote lines from each of the poets, kind of collaged together. I think it came out kind of cool. My free book was a bio of Alice James.

Then Sunday I tried to go to the noon yoga to the people class but was late, I just missed the BART when I got there, and this 20 year old boy kept asking me questions: did we just miss the BART, yes we did. He likes my socks. Oh. Do I go to Berkeley. No. What am I reading. What I wrote. Maybe it was the kneesocks that made me look like I was a college student? Then I couldn't get in to the yoga class because I was 5 minutes late and they lock the door. So I went to the half price books and found an Elise Ficarra book and was carrying it around until someone asked me Do I go to State. What is up with this day? Then I went to Royal Cafe for a bit and worked on my other manuscript for a while, until it was almost time to go catch a BART again. I stopped in crossroads, and found a cool 3/4 inch sleeve MTV shirt, so 80's, but didn't buy it because the only time I wear printed shirts is for yoga - actually my favorite yoga outfit is the printed T-shirt outfit, I sometimes start to think tank tops are kind of "traditional" and I like to be different, but has to be short sleeves or I would probably die.

Then I went to Ashby, Ashby is a very exciting BART station. I found David and Sarah's place, and almost felt too shy to go in, the house reading terror, but then I heard familiar voices talking and I felt comforted. I went in and me and Sarah are the only women, and I thought that was odd. The end count was 7 women. I didn't count the men. Ending up leaving with the latest Try!, Sara's latest chap, and Julia Drescher gave me a beautifully made Lulu perfect bound called The Islands. And also CJ's Delete press chap. Beautifully made, and a weird title. I need to start making ypolita chaps again because I don't like not having something to give people. I almost wanted to get up and get my notebook to writ zlarf during the reading, but didn't, but should have because 4 people were writing in notebooks during the readings... Thought I'd try and remember but all i remember is a Julia Drescher line: "Here is an impossibility." I think I remember it right. She writes about land a lot.

Then I left and for some reason, maybe all the sitting, listening, I walked from Ashby Bart area up to Downtown Berkeley BART area, at this point my hip was starting to hurt, and also my feet. I did make it to the 5 o'clock YTTP class, thank god, but my practice was kind of rickety. I also forgot to pay. I feel bad about it. But I love that place because it is ok to forget. Then what did I do? I did not call my mother as I should have. I had A LOT to do on the computer, is how I always feel. I did not watch the movie I've had for two weeks either. I did not go grocery shopping. My feet were hurting. Thinking I really want to just quit netflix, I never watch them, and maybe I could just go to a video store when the mood hits. Sometimes watching movies alone makes me sad, or I only want to if I have an art project or book binding type things to do while I watch. But the only one semi in my neighborhood seems to be here. Not sure what kind of walk that is.

This is kind of like a John Sakkis post but without all the beautiful people. Kind of without any people.

2009-10-14T23:17:00.000-07:00

2009-09-20T18:22:00.000-07:00

During Paschimottanasana yesterday I was having a mulabhanda freakout, and I knew, even though I wasn't in an ashtanga class, ashtanga wanted me to try the mulabhanda checkup, lift up, which I can't find a picture of, but you lift up with your hands by your thighs, and your butt and your feet are supposed to all lift up, and the only thing touching the ground is your hands, never have I been able to do this one, and get my feet off the ground, but I did it yesterday!!!

She came up, though, I don't know why... maybe her bandhas are engaged.

Anubis

2009-08-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

Creeley/Halou

2009-08-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

Massachusetts

What gentle echoes,
half heard sounds
there are around here.

*

You place yourself in
such relation, you hear
everything that's said.

Take it or leave it.
Return it to a particular
condition.

Think
slowly. See
the things around you,

taking place.

*

I began wanting a sense
of melody, e.g., following
the tune, became somehow
an image, then several,
and I was watching those things
becoming in front of me.

*

The you imagined locates
the response. Like turning
a tv dial. The message,
as one says, is information,
a form of energy. The wisdom
of the ages is "electrical" imulse.

Lap of water
to the hand, lifting
up, slaps
the side of the dock --

Darkening air, heavy
feeling in the air.

*

A PLAN

On some summer day
when we are far away
and there is impulse and time,
we will talk about all this.

Oceanwide - Halou

Goodbye

Now I recognize
it was always me
like a camera
set to expose

itself to a picture
or a pipe
through which the water
might run

or a chicken
dead for dinner
or a plan
inside the head

of a dead man.
Nothing so wrong
when one considered
how it all began.

It was Zukofsky's
Born very young into a world
already very old...
The century was well along

when i came in
and now that it's ending,
I realize it won't
be long.

But couldn't it all have been
a little nicer,
as my mother'd say. Did it
have to kill everything in sight,

did right always have to be so wrong?
I know this body is impatient.
I know I constitute only a meager voice and mind.
Yet I loved, I love.

I want no sentimentality.
I want no more than home.

2009-08-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

Meditation sometimes feels like I'm boiling a pot of water, with the top on. Where is the steam coming out? My ears? No, instead it is prana/kundalini or whatever that energy thing is, coming out of my crown chakra!

In vinyasas, it is easy to breathe in going from push up to upward facing dog, but always so hard to breathe out as you are going down into push up; I always tend to hold my breath.

Did a handstand today with the help of Michelle at Namaste Yoga in Rockridge! Love a class with lots of arm balances. Was about to quit because it is not ashtanga, but Michelle is great! I have the fear issue with handstand, so bad, and I talked to her about it, and she says it is just practice, and it took her 5 years. With all fear issues; I am reminded how true it is - you just keep putting yourself in the situation that causes fear, and eventually it dissipates, because eventually everything becomes ho-hum. You can't stay in that state forever. The problem with me tho is, I haven't gone fully into the fear, or the pose, on my own. I trepidate on the outside of it, and so I never fully experience it, and it never dissipates, because I am AVOIDING it. I'm not quite sure how to solve this issue since the fear in my body prevents me from ever entering the pose...

2009-07-26T10:49:00.001-07:00

For those who want more pictures. Hi Dad. Obviously, pre-move, more forthcoming, with stuff, later. Maybe much later.

Not sure why I though going to a yoga class would be invigorating and give me energy for unpacking, cuz now my abs hurt like mad, and my knee hurts, too much with the hurdler pose I think. so I just want to get back in bed!

Took the class here - good class but very yuppie area. Then across the street, lo and behold, was a library! -not the best selection, but I got my new library card. Doesn't seem the Oakland is connected to Link + though, so that is a bit of a quandry. Bookstores here though.

Then I ate here Was "OK," not the best. I'd say 3 and a half stars. I miss Tofu Huarapa Krob, I'll never find that anywhere else. :(

Then I took maybe 3 naps all in a row.

Plan on going here soon. Almost, like next door. Honey ginger coffee?? WOW.

And off to the Temescal Farmer's Market. Hungry. I need food.

My new digs!

2009-07-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

2009-07-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

The weirdest thing about having quit It's Yoga, I thought I'd miss parsva bakasana, astavakrasana, my almost peacock, but I don't for some reason, the weirdest thing is my ankles are constantly throbbing in disuse pain. I think it was their really long standing on one foot thing: tree, toehold, warrior 3, dinkasana, standing splits, half moon, revolving half moon, arda baddha. I must have had amazing ankle strength and that is what I miss. We seem to do enough vinyasa pushups that my arms don't crave for anything, totally satisfied. Also, happy to not have to attempt to do handstands, and elbow stands which I can't do. It is sort of a relief. Also though, I occasionally feel like I'm losing my bandhas, and they give us much less meditation time at the end, but I've been going home and having a more consistent home meditation practice. And when I'm bored at work I try to engage the bandhas, it is something to do... so. They are also, at the gym, oddly into crescent pose, i don't understand this pose! It's weird that they like it so much but I don't know why. Also, lunges, they like the lunges, and they don't seem to *do* anything.

Two epiphanies

2009-03-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

My first epiphany being (ha!) that the body does not exist. While looking at my nose dristi, where it sort of disappears, yet can still see it also, I realized I seemingly and simultaneously do and do not exist. After this epiphany, where every time I look at my nose, I remind myself that my body does not exist, I realized that strength poses are not about strength, it is an illusion, the trick is to make your body disappear, slowly, sort of. It is through extreme relaxation, simultaneously with using your bandhas to pull everything in, and up, or whatever, and so partially you don't exist, and then you can fly.

2009-03-07T18:01:00.000-08:00

Whenever I get very, very quiet, have my eyes closed, meditating and am really in a happy happy place but very quiet and like almost in the void, a song comes up out of that voidy happiness, and that songs seems to be this.

Six Different Ways (2006 Remastered LP Version) - The Cure

Conceptual Praise Song for the Day

2009-01-25T14:32:00.000-08:00

After Caroline Bergvall's many Dante translations in a row: The many lineations of Elizabeth Alexander's Inaugural Poem:

Original Transcript from New York Times (seemingly no longer available unlineated)

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Joseph Harrington's excised version, or if Pound had been her editor:

Praise the Day

We walk past, catching each other’s
eyes, or not, about to speak –
All about us is

noise and bramble, thorn and din.
Someone is repairing things that need it.
Someone makes music:

a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum,
cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
We encounter each other in words

spiny or smooth, whispered, declaimed,
words to re-consider.
We want to find a place

where we will be safe.
Say it plain: many died for this day:
Sing the names of them that brought us here,

picked the cotton, or lettuce –
praise for every hand-lettered sign
under widening light at kitchen tables.

In today’s sharp sparkling winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun,
on the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

The Beat Diaspora version with the subject title: cello, boom box, harmonica, voice

Praise Song for the Day
Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business
walking past each other,
catching each others’ eyes
or not,
about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise.
All about us is noise and bramble,
thorn and din,
each one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform,
patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden
spoons
on an oil drum.
With cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words,
Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone
and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side.
I know there’s something better down the road.”
We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
who laid the train tracks,
raised the bridges,
picked the cotton and the lettuce,
built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep
clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle. Praise song for the day. Praise song for
every hand-lettered sign.
The figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial,
national?
Love that casts a widening pool of light.
Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any
sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp – praise song for walking
forward in that light.

A shoe blogger's version

Praise Song for the Day by Elizabeth Alexander

Praise song for the day.

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other,
catching each others’ eyes
or not,
about to speak
or speaking.

All about us is noise.

All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din,
each one of our ancestors on our tongues.
Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching
a tire,
repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden
spoons on an oil drum.
With cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky.

A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words,
words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider,
reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and
then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side;

I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe.
We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train
tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built
brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and
work inside of.

Praise song for struggle,
praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
the figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”
Others by,"First do no harm,"
or, "Take no more than you need."

What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital,
filial,
national.
Love that casts a widening pool of light.
Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle,
this winter air,
anything can be made,
any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking
forward in that light.

And a Novelist's version (my favorite)

Praise Song for the Day
by Elizabeth Alexander

Each day we go about our business
Walking past each other
Catching each others' eyes or not
About to speak or speaking
All about us is noise
All about us is noise and bramble thorn and din
Each one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem
Darning a hole in a uniform
Patching a tire
Repairing the things in need of repair
Someone is trying to make music somewhere
With a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum
With cello, boombox, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus
A farmer considers the changing sky
A teacher says, Take out your pencils. Begin.

We encounter each other in words
Words spiny or smooth
Whispered or declaimed
Words to consider, reconsider
We cross dirt roads and highways
That mark the will of someone and then others who said
I need to see what’s on the other side
I know there’s something better down the road
We need to find a place where we are safe
We walk into that which we cannot yet see

Say it plain
That many have died for this day
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here
Who laid the train tracks
Raised the bridges
Picked the cotton and the lettuce
Built brick by brick the glittering edifices
They would then keep clean and work inside of

Praise song for struggle
Praise song for the day
Praise song for every hand lettered sign
The figuring it out at kitchen tables

Some live by “love thy neighbor as thyself”
Others by “first do no harm” or “take no more than you need”
What if the mightiest word is love
Love beyond marital filial national
Love that casts a widening pool of light
Love with no need to preempt grievance

In today’s sharp sparkle
This winter air
Any thing can be made
Any sentence begun
On the brink
on the brim
on the cusp
Praise song for walking forward in that light.

Buddhism is Pro-Art!

2009-01-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

from The Lotus Sutra:

If there are persons who for the sake of the Buddha
fashion and set up images,
carving them with many distinguishing characteristics,
then all have attained the Buddha way.
Or if they make things out of the seven kinds of gems,
of copper, red or white copper,
pewter, lead, tin,
iron, wood, or clay,
or use cloth soaked in lacquer or resin
to adorn and fashion Buddha images,
then persons such as these
have all attained the Buddha way.
If the employ pigments to paint Buddha images,
endowing them with the characteristics of hundredfold merit,
if they make them themselves or have others make them,
they have all attained the Buddha way.
Even if little boys in play
should use a piece of grass or wood or a brush,
or perhaps a fingernail
to draw an image of the Buddha,
such persons as these
bit by bit will pile up merit
and will become fully endowed with a mind of great compassion;
they all have attained the Buddha way.

My affinity with the crucifixion

2008-12-24T16:52:00.001-08:00

How I feel what Christ felt, but in my ethereal body. I feel pain in my palms and feet from time to time. I think there is something like chakras or bandhas there because I feel it, sometimes the pain is so intense it is like it is glowing. I feel it in my heart sometimes too. I guess everyone feels that from time to time. And then when I've been meditating a lot I feel a prickly circle thing around my head. The only thing I can't account for is the spear in the side, I never have an ethereal body pain there. Maybe the spear really went into his heart.

Wrong holiday I know, but I have nothing to say about virgin births, or babies being born who are sons of some god or other...

Goodreads Review: A Poetics?

2008-11-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

Gross stuff, but maybe that is the Herodotus. Better read all in one sitting I think. Wasn't "getting it" at all at first, but the latter part I totally got in a I think I had a dream that was this exact context kind of way. Collies are not included, although the petting of them is. A narrative of narrative itself? Chapters as characters. Characters as ideas. I had to look up insel in the dictionary, it wasn't in the dictionary, but inselberg was, from which I can kind of figure it out...Something about multiple palimpsests, two centers to the book, and to see vs to sea... vispo and fairytales. I wanted to say I read this on the plane 30,000 feet in the air, which would have been closer to the subject matter, but I finished it before we took off, due to a huge delay because of a missing oxygen "something" in the cockpit... The real subject is its subjectlessness. I don't really understand the "sample poems" and what are they samples of but I kind of, maybe realized that they are not Keith's poems but Jacob's and then it kind of makes sense. I read the whole thing waiting to get change at Thai Stick. I am often, often forgotten about but I get more reading done than people who are noticed. Incidentally, the Tofu Huarapa Krob is much much better than the Pad Huarapa. I've not barfed since 1995. Is that weird? I like the lyrical, but I don't like war. Read this in its entirety in the honey honey cafe, which is really expensive, but if you sit there long enough they give you free coffee refills and it has a sign that reads "Please let others enjoy reading." Really dug Joanne's hilarious piece revisioning Descartes! I think I really liked this but I kept daydreaming...probably just a personal defect on my part, or my period... I'm a sucker for prose poems. With illustrations. Helps to have read a "normal" translation perhaps, because it actually makes no sense. But it is a brilliant not making sense. I liked the idea of knowing the original somewhat as a sort of palimpsest. Where can i get some ayahuasca? I was so enraptured that when a homeless man asked me if he could sit down at my table, I confusedly said yes! This book will make you less uptight with smelly people. He put his backpack on the other chair, and then spread his stuff all over the table barely leaving any room for my peanut butter cookie. So then I looked up and noticed there were three empty tables... I don't really like his newer work but this old school stuff rocks the house with a UHF antenna! A rare instance where the movie is a million times better. Good day for mixed-southern nostalgia and eating an oatmeal raisin cookie at a table not meant "for one" while trying to call my friend who's been told to evacuate and not being able to get in touch w him. H.D.'s ghost everywhere and the beginning of the Drafts. Goes great with some 90's ethereal goth. Atmospheric, never quite sure where you are, but you kind of like it there - kind of poetry. I think these poems are better read than heard (in contrast to something else I just reviewed). I read every poem 12 times in a row, more or less, and want to read them 12 more times! Deceptively simple but really really complex. This book is a great laxative. I'd been constipated all week, and then was reading this in the bathroom at the yoga studio, and voila! Although the cover scares me a bit, the poetry is not scary at all. Totally wonderment and truth and beauty and so forth. Also if I ever have an "author photo," I'm totally going to wear a big, big hat and a tube top! Did this win an award? Very human, gut wrenching sequences mixed with porn searches, mixed with a very beautifully constructed aesthetic - a sort of architectural grammatics... Better in person, but still pretty vibrant on the page. I guess I'll be reading some Bob Kaufman now. I felt confused reading this and wished someone would read it to me instead of me reading it. I think it would work better for me "performed." Probably more genius than I can understand. What about the poetics of the studio apartment? But loving the chapter on mollusks! Victorian-age Language Poetry? Very weird, I'll have to read this a few more times... very easy reading, armchair enlightenment. Apparently, all you need to do is realize that awareness and consciousness are separate. Although I may have missed something. I can't do the beat stream of consciousness thing right now. Poets! I Implore You! Write Poetry not novels! Sigh... I can see how it would have been really cool, if only it were all poetry, instead of just moments. But I admire, intellectually, the genre twistingness. I admire also that it might have had a plot, although I am not sure what it was... Totally postmodern, but like in reality. It is like a sort of nostalgia, although not. Best book written ever for children or adults. I made my mom check this out every single week for months and months until she finally bought it for me! Not really up on the Traherne criticism, but was thoroughly enjoyable. He is apparently more metaphysical than the metaphysicals. And possibly buddhist. Next, or sometime, I will read Eckhart, Boehme, Plotinus, Plato, Pelagius, St Theresa, Augustine, Herbert, Vaughan. I tried to read this once. I just couldn't. Nothingness *is* sexy. I like the font. Perfect for the after TESOL certification blues. Is this flarf? Not sure why anyone is white, this book does not clear that up at all. He is just silly. I should've just reread that simulacra thing. "Wonders" confused me, as things that leave the mystical and enter into religion tend to do. Chapters and chapters on her interest in Fungi! OMG what am I doing! 4 stars for not being actual poetry, but I liked the writing about writing bits... I think I am starting to kind of understand the infinitive used as a noun thing. Maybe... The bear kind of freaked me out but I liked the dolphin parts. Not as good as I thought it would be for lifting depressions... This is not like I expected at all. I would give it 5 stars if this were the 70's. Liked him better in person than on the page... this is SO riveting; it is my kitchen book, while I am cooking, and I keep overboiling things... A lot of blood. I didn't read this but I saw the movie, I mean I went to the reading. Really funny! So funny I felt confused because I am really not used to laughing. The last bit, the title bit, with the sound motif, was really awesome. So instead of moving, I kind of use the book as armor, holding it up between us so I don't have to feel his weird erratic energy, ironically, keeping us from being face to face. I learned that I am supposed to read this book from right to left, but not until I was half way through reading it, apparently, backwards! Dear Surrealism, I love "the little house," the character, so much, I think I am her. Her story is my story. This book is devastatingly, brutally heartbreaking, possibly really disturbing. Don't read this during your menses, before, or after. Maybe that one week where everything is kind of in equilibrium, but be careful. It simultaneously made me think and was a balm for thinking too much. I learned about enclosures. After reading so many of these nature poems, after a while, it stops being about "about" since every poem seems to be saying the same thing, and seems more about different conglomerations of word clusters. I think this is his "humor" phase. If it is the end of the world and people want you to go to the top of a roof, but there are perhaps better, other things you should be doing, maybe don't go to the top of the roof, do those other things, and maybe I should start thinking now about what those other things are that I should be doing, so that when the end of the world does come, I will know exactly what I should be doing. I learnt it is not okay to drink the aftermilk. I kind of feel like I am at work reading this. I'm definitely going to quit my job. What do you read after Patanjali? This book scared the crap out of me! I learned some Italian phrases and (possibly) what it is like to have a broken leg in a foreign country. I learned about graphemes and prime numbers, and why the number one is not a prime number. I liked it better before I realized about the homonymic translation thing. Not for those who need "meaning" but lots of cool lines: "Come up and almonds are nomads." kind of like how when some one says something they think is witty and you can kind of see how it is witty, but you don't think that kind of witty is witty.

"with our
meth among the late lilacs & snow --"

Random pictures from Mom's camera

2008-09-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

was trying for the good posture!

writing in the woods (Muir)=bad for posture

need to do more pilates clearly.

Most of his reading Slosek just stood there like this looking pretty

Me and Slosek after his (last SF) reading

My chap in Books and Bookshelves

Me and Paulo

One of those awful California cliffs

Me taking a picture of mom taking a picture of me (wait until i find my uploading cord)

2008-06-28T15:54:00.001-07:00

The more I meditate the more technology seems to fail around me.

2008-06-24T19:36:00.001-07:00

A shepherd narrative.

2008-06-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

Funny that while meditating, one's posture spontaneously improves. Is it like a body reaction to relaxation? I suppose slumping over is an expression of extreme stress and once you start relaxing everything naturally straightens up. Also interesting is the more yoga I am doing the more my bones will pop, which I always thought was an expression of stress, but when I am not doing yoga very little pops. No yoga=stasis? Popping=life!

Also had a dream while halfway listening to NPR, there was a story that all the infrastructures of the nation have gone to shit, bridges are collapsing left and right, and we need to start coming up with a plan (not verbatim, possibly only in the dream) because the longer you wait the more expensive it will be to fix. The word infrastructures invariably makes me start thinking of my spine and the frame of my body, which brings me back to my posture. I suppose meditation is a sort of repair work. (Lame compositional device, I know, but it just seemed to spontaneously come about, like improved posture during meditation, oh there I go again!)

2008-05-18T11:29:00.000-07:00

I'd been wondering why when you do a lot of sitting meditation, it always brings up horrible latent emotions, that I suppose is good, because they are repressed, and you should look at them, but it is horribly painful, yet yoga just seems to clear all the icky emotions away and leave you clear, and how come it is so easy? Apparently, I just wasn't doing enough yoga. I went to yoga 3 days in a row last week, took the fourth day off, and then went again on the fifth day and got a horrible injury doing my first push-up pose. I think yoga pushes all the icky emotions stuff into your body somehow. I don't know which one is worse, but I think I'd rather be physically incapacitated more than emotionally... I guess it's got to come out one way or another. Or you could just keep it repressed, but then you become a politician or something.

2008-04-05T17:33:00.000-07:00

Fatigue

2008-01-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

A dream about a black dog with the cutest black nose ever, and I hugged him, I love black dogs, and then all the sudden he is ginger colored, but not Ginger, and I'm like But you were a black dog a minute ago, and the dog was like No, I've always been ginger colored.

2008-01-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

The thing where you think you see someone you know, but then they are not that person at all, over and over again, and that other thing where you expect to be doing that with someone, but for some reason don't.