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."

"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...

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.

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

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.

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?

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

“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."

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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...

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:

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

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

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

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.*

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!

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

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...

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...

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!

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

LINK to CLICK

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.

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!

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!

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

"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...

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?

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...

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...

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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?

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

"Parlez-vous francais?"

"Sorry."

"I'm from Africa."

"Oh."

Reviews of The Unicorns

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...

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

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

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