apple of the earth

How to Heal with the World in Shambles: Lynda Barry and Spaghetti Art

2011-02-25T07:14:00.005-05:00

It has taken me a really long time to write this essay. I've had a few drafts, and at times, I've been too scared to even try to write. But after reading essays about Ira Glass and Lynda Barry, and reading her books and thinking about her and why I like her, I figured out why. I like her because it seems like she's doing okay. To me, she is like John Cage. Barry and Cage are two of the few artists I can name whose work I admire and is/was doing okay, or seems rather happy. I've always said John Cage seems so content because he convinced himself the entire world was playing his music. (The story goes, basically, that he hated radios, so he decided to start using them in his work, so after that every time he heard someone playing the radio, he figured they were just listening to a song of his). Pretty amazing way to cope with something that drives you absolutely crazy, or makes you depressed, or anxious, or angry, or feel like you're unable to live.

Living can be really hard sometimes, and that's a thing that Lynda Barry has talked about before. I heard her speak at the 2010 Comic Book Fest here in Brooklyn and she told this story about how when she was a kid she'd cut out pictures of food from "women's" magazines, then cut slits into those, and then also cut out pictures of her favorite comic book characters. This is where the genius comes in -- then she'd slowly put the characters through the plate of spaghetti or whatever and so they'd be popping out. She'd make them disappear, and then pop back out again, and just laugh. Not only can living be hard, but it can be absurd. From what I gather, Barry had a pretty rough childhood, which is what the comic about Ira Glass was also about -- repeating those cycles. She says her mother would berate her for doing this -- for doing something she enjoyed, even if it seemed stupid or pointless or absurd. And it is absurd. Why would this help someone? Why would it matter? Now, Lynda Barry says she still does this, but with cut-outs of political figures. And as she says, she just laughs and laughs and laughs.

Sometimes I find it hard to laugh. I feel distant and sometimes I can't even read the news. It hurts to much to even try. Or I find it hard to concentrate because I really can't focus on how bad it really is. I had a dream the world ended, and I was certain that it had, but when I checked the New York Times that morning, it actually did seem sort of close. I am upset about the cuts to funding, obviously. I am upset that they want to redefine rape and call rape victims "accusers", but not anyone else. I am upset about the conditions in Haiti and about hate crimes, and racism, and all the big stuff that makes the news in stories but is really just the condition of living in this world, and sometimes I have no idea what to do about it. Because sometimes there isn't a rally. Sometimes no one wants to go out into the street and scream with me, so screaming doesn't feel as good. Although sometimes it feels really good. Sometimes playing the drums works. Sometimes it doesn't. But there is one thing that never seems to fail for me, and that's art. After hearing Lynda Barry talk I realized once again why art was in my life and what I had to do with it and it makes sense why I find it difficult to not have my politics in my work anymore. How else will I heal from them? Sometimes I write to get it out, but other times I paint. Painting seems to be the most helpful because I love to draw monsters. I see a lot of monsters in this world, but by painting them as harmless or with funny looking teeth, it doesn't seem so bad. I still think I need to find the thing that is like my plate of spaghetti. I still need to think about the absurdity of it sometimes. But that's the thing about Lynda Barry, she is all about not giving up. About not giving up drawing (she continually asks in all of her books why people doodle while on the phone but say they don't draw, or only draw with kids around.) People are scared of the things they have been told not to do (what if Barry had listened to her mom? What would she have to help her to heal?) We need to tell ourselves we're going to do these things anyway, and not listen to the voices inside or outside of our head because the world at large doesn't want us to heal. Most of the time it feels like it wants to keep us silent. I could go on a whole tirade, but I won't, because I don't want to, because this is about art, and healing, and that it's okay sometimes to just laugh. Because you have to.

Delayed

2011-02-15T06:20:00.002-05:00

So, it is taking me much much longer to write out those essays than I thought, but I know at least one person is excited / looking forward to reading them, so please hang on as I finish a few other projects.

Right now I am also doing the Fun-A-Day project, which unsurprisingly takes up a bit of time, along with teaching, my volunteer work, my other job, and a zine I just finished about redefining the romantic. If you're interested in that, contact fistingandroses@gmail.com

There are a few other projects in the works, related to doom and tiny houses (separate projects) and also reading, which is my life project, I guess. And staying on top of the litter box, laundry, and making my bed. Basically, it makes me wish there were a few more of me to go around.

I am also thinking that these essays might turn into a zine / chapbook project, so I am also debating if I should wait to post them, and if I post them, if I should do so here or at my tumblr. Either way, stay tuned for something.

kl

Poetics of Politics and the Politics of Poetics

2011-01-24T17:09:00.003-05:00

I try to remember what I remember. Like, why do I remember these things I remember, like why I remember a friend of the family telling me not to wear shirts with pockets. Because hey, those are for boys, apparently. I should have asked why, but so few of us are taught that skill when we're young. Mostly, we're told to listen (this reminds me, I want to write about the politics of silence). But this stuff was explored pretty well in the 1970's. & it isn't really what I wanted to say. I wanted to talk about two things I remember fellow poets telling me while I was earning my M.F.A. at Brooklyn College. 1) C.R., on what I think was the first day of class, said she gave up poetry because she found it to be incredibly selfish and instead wanted to concentrate on activism, but then she came back to it. I don't remember why she said she came back to poetry, or how she realized that was what she wanted to do. I could fill in the gaps, but I think I'd only be giving my own reasons. 2) J.C. once told me (while we walked around a somewhat suburban neighborhood of Brooklyn after teaching poetry to high school students) that she thought experimental/avant-garde poets didn't think Langston Hughes was legitimate because he is the voice of a strong black man, telling his story clearly, and loudly. Oh, and people liked him. I remember being resistant at the time. I didn't want to imagine that the poetics I was developing had anything to do with racism. But, now I know she's right. Otherwise we wouldn't have separate books -- the "Norton Anthology of Literature" (very few women, hardly anything queer, and certainly only a few poets who were people of color) & things like "The Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry."

Something fishy is going on here.

Another memory: Right when I started to come out I went to a conference about feminism and poetics. I saw Eileen Myles give a talk & she began to complain about Language poetry, but she didn't say the stuff I was used to hearing. Instead she asked a question: "How could an entire movement, who identified themselves with radical politics, who were also writing during the 1980's, never write about AIDS?" I wasn't well versed in Language poetics, but I was shocked. She was right, of course. She said how alone she felt -- writing politically narrative work. There are still people who I talk to who don't want to take Eileen Myles seriously. I'm all about having different tastes, but why was she being discredited so much? Why was there so much animosity, so much venom? I'll take a guess. 1) She identifies as a woman. 2) She is also a lesbian. 3) People fear stories.

Not just any stories, of course. Certain stories. That come from certain people. I begin to think about the Bechdel test. Do you know it? Alison Bechdel (creator of Fun Home) made it and it asks you to find a movie that 1)Has at least two women in it 2) Who talk to each other and 3) About something besides a man. This test has also been applied to race, and pretty much every group who isn't on the white cis-gendered male spectrum (but we could also talk about masculinity narrative there). So, maybe when the avant-garde & experimental poets go on about the importance of "deconstructing language" because hey, "gender is just a construct" (also, I totally get down with this, but seriously, gender is important to some people, and usually seems very important to the guys who tell me this) and so like, we should totally be over language by now, right?

Easy for some to say. What if certain people's stories are not being told in mainstream media, or even in less mainstream locations, such as the poetry scene I've been mentioning here? What if in certain circles slam poetry is not seen as "legitimate" art? The question becomes what is "good art" and "bad art" and why do you think that? Not to say if you just don't like Langston Hughes that you're a racist. It's much more complicated than that -- I don't want to question personal taste, but how taste becomes a movement. How so many people agree to one way of writing is "legitimate" while another is not. What's going on here? So, it is my goal this week to write once a day, focusing in on avant-garde/experimental poetry and politics, and how the work of an activist (which I see as being incredibly present -- think how hard it is to be a social worker, for example) and an artist (being elsewhere & observant, reflective). & of course this is for obvious selfish reasons, as I try to navigate the space between these two things.

Later this week:
1) George Oppen, Lorine Neidecker & the Objectivists
2)1980's, Language Poetry, and Eileen Myles
3) Mac Wellman and play writing as activism, collectives
4) Using art to heal from the state of the world (Lynda Barry)
5) Lisa Jarnot
6) When artists have "bad" politics
7) Wanda Coleman, CA Conrad -- and the importance of being loud
8) Cecilia Vicuna

Portable Boog City Reader

2011-01-05T17:41:00.001-05:00

The New Boog City Reader features one of my poems (Untitled) and also the work of many of my friends & other writers I admire. Totally worth reading.

READ

2011-01-05T11:03:00.001-05:00

Serious: Entering the Assange Discussion

2010-08-23T10:38:00.006-04:00

“Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.”
-Michel Foucault

As a person who loves the written word, especially when it comes with a well formulated argument, I just want to say that while reading through the news about Julian Assange yesterday and today I found some of his supporters to be a little ready to jump to conclusions. This particularly really sticks in my craw. (There's some really nasty stuff if you scroll down to the bottom.)

I wouldn't think that I would need to say this, but rape and molestation charges are both very serious things. They certainly aren't "sexy", and to say that rapists can't be physically attractive people, well, this should be obvious, but, what?! Oh, Assange is so pleasing to my eyeballs (what hair! what great suits!)--he doesn't "need" to rape! Clearly the argument at "Fuck Yeah, Julian Assange" is that only dumb and ugly people rape. What logic skills you have! Next you're going to tell me it's only strangers at night in dark alleys or scary men in cars with candy. You know what else? People still tend to blame the victim, and this leads, obviously to victims not wanting to report their claim. We're working under a very complicated system here and I think trying to oversimplify to save the image of a hero can be incredibly problematic because you end up with arguments like these at "Fuck Yeah, Julian Assange."

I am not saying that this isn't, as so many have claimed a "smear campaign." I am saying I don't know, but that I will not and cannot jump to any assumption as of yet because rape and abuse is still not taken seriously, which is made VERY clear by comments like the ones I cited. I can say that I have an issue with trust in the first place, which stems from a history of abuse, and not just from my first boyfriend when I was 15, but from the world at large. Patriarchy works as a system of power, and my ex probably felt he could have a say over my body and my emotions because the government has had a say for so long over people's bodies, lives, and emotions.

Point being, I don't trust the Pentagon not to frame Assange with rape, but on the other side of this, I know that just because someone is fighting for the lives of so many people abroad, it doesn't mean that this person is not capable of raping or molesting women. I have known so many sexist radicals and other like-minded deviants. Radclyffe Hall, although a pioneer for gender-queer people, was a fascist. People have said Amiri Baraka is homophobic. Charles Olson, although heavily involved in politics, was said to be sexist (I tend to believe it, from what I've seen of his poetry). Sometimes people don't apply the rights of one group (usually their own) with the rights of another. I don't want the accusations to be true, but I have known for a long time that sometimes you don't get what you want. This makes me incredibly sad, because as a friend of mine said "I really need a hero right now."

But there's other issues here. To quote The Guardian: "It seems an unusual time to embark on a career of multiple rape" (although it seems this article has been removed?) The time being right before the release of 15,000 more documents on to the wikileaks website. and the Pentagon and Obama Administration keeps pleading, because, hey! wikileaks is making them look bad! So when I said I don't trust the Pentagon, I hope you got the fact that I just don't put it past a system so invested in having power over its people that it would use women's bodies as a mode to get back at someone who is the spokesperson for a group making efforts to give power back to people without it, because as the "collateral murder" video made perfectly clear, there's a lot at stake for soldiers and civilians of all countries involved in the war.

I will repeat, rape and sexual harassment are serious, but so is war. Not to say the two are separate either, because they most certainly are not. In the youtube video "Assange arrest warrent 'no mistake' the interviewer asks, "It's quite normal to accuse someone of rape and then two hours later to say, 'No, that's not the case'?" False accusations happen, for a lot of reasons, and sometimes those reasons still have to do with patriarchy and sometimes it is because the person making the accusations feels it is the only way s/he will be heard (although I guess we are told to yell fire, not rape, because otherwise our cries could be seen as a joke, and thus ignored) or it's s/he could be a horrible person. To further this point, here's something worthwhile from the SFGate: "Charging someone with rape is a serious issue. What's more troubling is that it was done at a time when Wikileaks and Julian Assange are the focus of the U.S Governments anger. Anyone who abuses the legal process to make a false claim should be punished." As well they should be, but who would be at fault here, the people who encouraged these women to make false claims, the women themselves, or both? Also, we must not forget that sometimes women are encouraged to settle out of court to make it so a high profile person doesn't have to look bad. This whole thing is incredibly complicated.

The timing is the issue. The rape case (at this point) has been dropped, and possibly the molestation charges, but we need to remember that Assange is not Wikileaks. He doesn't speak for all of the people who do the every day work of the organization, but that also doesn't mean these accusations should be ignored. And for that matter, that the person beating their spouse next door should be ignored. Or the Pentagon funding a war where people are raped and murdered and soldiers are taught hateful , racist language to distant them from an "enemy" who may not be as easily identified as some may want them to think should be ignored. Because as it seems to me, the enemy is everywhere, and for the most part, isn't where we're being told to look. This includes inside ourselves, our friends, and family.

I repeat: this is serious.

"The goal is justice"
-Julian Assange

2010-07-08T20:25:00.003-04:00

"Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating."

--John Cage from Silence

He mostly talks about car horns, air conditioners, static, but what about every disturbing thing we ignore, and what would happen if there were an outcry: listen!

2010-06-16T15:17:00.005-04:00

Tiger Beatdown, where have you been all my life?! No, I don't really like the Crystal Light add in the corner of the website, but I do love the women-only blogroll attached to it. So, I guess, like that lovely television jingle "You take the good / You take the bad/ and there you have / the facts of life".

But, TB, you're the Bitch, Bust, and Venus I always wanted. You're the Sassy magazine I wanted when I was 12, or I guess the Sassy I didn't know I always wanted? Most of the time I was distracted by the copy of Empire Records playing in the VCR anyway. The best part about you is that you're not even a magazine! No glossy photos of women advertising organic lipstick! You're sleek and simple -- it's nice to see a little minimalism in this day of saran-wrapped vegetables at the bodega and Sabra individually wrapped hummus/pretzel combos.

Oh! and you're witty, intelligent, and all of your writers are familiar with the rules of grammar. My heart is be-stilled! I am so happy you exist, TB, because I need more radical (still?!) feminism in my life, especially when the writers are just as confused as I am as to why these ideas are still radical and not just common sense.

passing it on

2010-05-27T17:33:00.004-04:00

Here's a great post posted from another post about the Tea Party.

I've taught Tim Wise before in my English 1 course, and it always goes over well because he's making points that no one else seems to say. I started to read a book on race and he begins the book by telling a story about a time when race came up at a party and how the issue ended up being dropped, the room went silent because of the fear that comes with talking about race. Tim Wise isn't afraid, and I like that.

2010-05-27T13:34:00.002-04:00

Summer has hit and I have found myself not quite as focused as I had been in winter months. I could blame this on the sun, but more likely it would be appropriate to blame my blaming the sun instead of taking my mind by the reigns and galloping about amongst the daffodils, instead of attempting to grab the horse by its flanks and see where that gets me. Mostly, nowhere and in pain. That probably seems obvious.

But, when my mind wanders I do tend to let the internet take control of me and I came across these photos by Sophia Wallace that feature some masculine females. This seems to be a sort of trend in fashion and in art right now (at least in circles I run in, I guess) but I think what interested me about this is that of female masculinity being en-vogue over in Berlin. Now, I've always had a thing for female masculinity ever since I cut off all of my hair for the very first time(I think I was in 1st grade?). I remember hating my curls and wanting to feel liberated from the washing, brushing, etc. On top of all this I was closer to what I had desired (and seems to be a popular desire of young girls), which is that of wanting to be a boy. They got to ride lawnmowers and wear cool shirts, ones with pockets and Wolverine on them. I was a stealer of my brother's clothes, which also seems to be a common theme among the gender-bending youth I have read about. And yes, my brother was angry about it.

So, it wasn't a popular thing to do. That Le Tigre chorus runs in my head: "Are you a boy or a girl/Are you a girl or a boy?" A common question before breast development, I assure you, and still a running theme afterwards.

Either way, it made me want to live in Berlin, and excited to live in an (almost) gender ambiguous mecca such as New York City, although it isn't as if I haven't had my problems here (mostly with hairdressers and salespeople). But I do worry about those less progressive areas and although it is great that female masculinity is being celebrated in popular culture and art, I just wonder to what end. I wonder about how politics and art work together a lot lately -- finding the only successful artist doing this sort of work being the great Erik Ehn, and I've seen work by Jess Barbagallo & I'd say it's doing political work as well. I'm not sure why political art is hard, maybe because the language around it can seem like one giant cliche and can't really effectively communicate the severity of political situations like apartheid, homophobia, and Virginia Tech true. It can only try to simulate, or recreate the real world, when maybe the real world is exactly the problem.

This all makes me wonder why I am a poet. If being a poet among poets (because, let's be honest, who else reads poetry?) am I just preaching to a "choir", so to speak. It makes work seem silly, but also always the only work I am able to do. This has been a theme in many conversations in my life recently and I have yet to find any answers. Maybe that's where the best work comes from -- when you find that you can't find any solutions and you have to work in that space where language fails because you haven't found the words for it either.

Feeling Good about Feeling Small: Individual Talents and the Sea of Greatness

2010-05-13T14:34:00.006-04:00

"I'd rather talk about turnips" - James Joyce (when asked what he thought of talking about literature)

(*I switch pronouns in this b/c that's the best I can think of, while still being true to rules of pluralization)

A new mantra recently crept its way into my (often repetitive) inner monologue. "Not Better, but different." Needless to say, it's a helpful one to tell oneself, because unlike telling oneself "I'm happy. I'm happy. I'm happy", it doesn't feel like such a blatant lie. In a world of complex and paradoxical systems(modes?) of thought, this one seem very close to a truth. It is important to explain here that I don't mean "different" should be read as "original", because the way that word is used is often translated into "better", "individual", or "unique", and I'm just not convinced these things exist. That, obviously, is the point of the mantra.

In an (American) world where individual trumps community, it seems we are now caught in a constant disease of comparison. How is this person smarter than I? More attractive? More creative? Better this/that/other? It's hard to break, and it is all something one has to realize on one's own, which is difficult, I know. But I think the problem with this mode of thought doesn't just do a disservice to the individual, but to the community said individual works/plays in. I will use the example of intellect here, because after recently coming out of academia as a master's student, it feels the most familiar, and perhaps the least questioned in those circles. Obviously, this concept can be applied to every craft we find important and defines who we are as people.

Why is the intellect seen as the end-all-be-all to the expansion of the self? Why, when someone mispronounces a word, doesn't know a word/theorist/philosopher/author/artist, can't explain the relationship between time/space, can't explain her thoughts, etc!, is he seen as "below" the other, who must obviously be aware of these things.

Isn't there a lot of other things to know? Isn't that person probably not aware of something that person may know (say, how to tie boat knots, do bird cards, fix a bicycle, float in a lake, cook a pesto, bake cake, caulk, double-dutch, dance, feel wind on one's face, recall dreams, !, & obviously !!!) All really important things that I think are sort of forgotten in the "world of the mind". I just don't think it's healthy to focus on one thing only (gym rats have a lot in common to the hyper intellectual, in my mind). Not to say that these people are BAD or SHOULD REALIZE THE ERRORS OF THEIR WAYS!!! That's against what I'm saying. All I'm saying is, I don't think it's healthy for anyone to compare when it comes to people. We're multitudinous! (Not that I want to celebrate over population, but hopefully you get what I mean).

Comparing seems counter-intuitive to community values, and I mean real community, not the "birds of a feather" mentality, because I hope that we can care enough about ourselves to give everyone else some breathing room.

Oh, and I think turnips could actually be a rather thrilling topic of conversation. I bet a farmer would think so too.

The Statement of Facts

2010-05-12T14:34:00.004-04:00

Not so recently, a colleague sent me The Theater of Good Intentions , by Mac Wellman. I agreed with the arguments and the essay made me question my own passive appreciation of certain media outputs. Encouraged to appeal to our own consumptive emotions and expectations we coddle ourselves into the heated blanket of ho-hum "realistic" story-lines, chain stores, office jobs, marriage, and the list goes on. Anything that comforts us from the lawless hullabaloo of events. Thus, anything that disrupts these routines disrupts our reality, or perception of the world (think: break up, mugging, shortage of scones at the local beanery). So, in my own way of thinking, Mac Wellman encourages a heartbreak be imposed upon the theater. That there is no way to portray "reality" in the theater and that Our Town should probably be put to rest. Along with some of Albee's work, in my opinion.

But, my problems are (1) this essay feels awfully close to an artist's statement (and I get a bit uneasy when anyone plans to say what art is/should be) and (2) how do we even begin to guess at the expectations of theater goers, since they are a rather varied lot.

I think there are people who are shocked at things. I taught high schoolers poetry last weekend and they were pretty blown away by Robert Grenier's poem "B BOOM". I am sure the usual patrons of something like Our Town would be shocked as well. But, as a guy in a study group brought up, how do we challenge the group of artists who have already read Samuel Beckett, Mina Loy, James Joyce? I do think those people still have expectations and try to avoid chaos just like everyone one of us does. Many of them probably own apartments, stop at Starbucks when tired, have committed relationships. We can't live entirely in chaos, unless we want to not have the pleasures of this world and enter another. Which might make more sense anyway. But that seems like a different argument, anyway.

Back to the question. How do we challenge those who can already sit through a play with a stage filled with sand? They aren't shocked. What are the expectations of these people? and has the surreal now become cliched in some circles? (I think so. I've seen so many plays where something like a black-hole speaks in a German accent about chaos) What do these people need to wake up from? and why? and what will do that, if it's not speaking black holes, because I don't think it is.

And, as I said in number 1, I don't like artists statements. If I had one, it would be don't make one. How can we say what art needs (invariably, the statement usually just says what art needs is that particular artist)? So I won't answer these questions, and maybe I'm just being a commitaphobe, but I don't like to pretend I have facts. But it is something to think about. Mostly because I don't want a passive society and I want to see plays I like, instead of yet another whimsical misadventure of a singing troupe of bats. But, I guess if done "well", that could be pretty good.

Raving to be continued...?

New Blog: Attention

2010-05-05T10:52:00.004-04:00

Fellow poet and dear friend, Andrew Reynolds, recently started his own blog. He has been celebrating the work of Ronald H. Bayes for the past few weeks. Andrew introduced me to Bayes' work when I first met him, back in the fall of 2008(?), when we were only young students of poetry -- toting our editions of The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetics and celebrating the work of our heros, who we would, later on, have to learn to work past if we were to do any poems we could consider to be our own.

Ronald Bayes is a fantastic poet and one I think should be more well known than he already is, and perhaps the fact that he isn't heralded along with the other greats of his age is just because he wasn't in a big city, reading and pushing through the intricate web that is the poetry scene. No matter.

Read and be amazed. His line breaks, as Andrew says, have "Eliot-like control" and his use of language is somehow familiar, but made strange just from the power of his intellect and howling imagination. How he moves from idea to the next seems fluid in only the way one remembers something they forgot, but is unsure where the reminder even came from. Like yes, obviously, this is where we go from here -- return for your forgotten books! Backtracks are sometimes necessary.

I'm not sure what Andrew will write about after the "Ronathon", but it will be amazing, which is made clear just from what he has chosen to show of Ron's work. They are strong poems and encourage the active reader to read on.

Please, If you Like to Party, do so

2010-04-13T23:55:00.004-04:00

THE BRIDGE
A READING / A RELEASING PARTY
@UNNAMEABLE BOOKS
(600 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, NY)

SUNDAY, April 25th
4:00PM

---->with<-----

Alex Cuff
Barry Denny
Will Edmiston
David Ellis
Jessica Fiorini
Curtis Jensen
David Miller
Abraham Nowitz
Douglas Piccinnini
Helen Rubinstein
+TBA?

PALMER

2010-04-11T20:40:00.002-04:00

keys disease

2010-04-04T17:59:00.000-04:00

THE BRIDGE

2010-02-26T14:51:00.003-05:00

The Bridge came in the mail today! Another box for me to move to my new apartment, but totally stoked.

$8 from me, $10ppd

email k2ginger@gmail.com for more info/paypal info

2010-02-08T22:40:00.001-05:00

Freud meets the Ratman

2010-02-01T15:28:00.002-05:00

Room with a view

2010-02-01T13:54:00.002-05:00

house on your head

2010-01-29T11:10:00.000-05:00

almost

2010-01-28T13:55:00.001-05:00

http://thebridgejournals.blogspot.com/

Check it out for a picture of the cover.

Coming in February, 2010.

turtle trouble

2010-01-26T11:11:00.001-05:00

Undertoe

2010-01-17T23:36:00.002-05:00

2010-01-05T21:32:00.001-05:00

estranged stranger

On Its Way

2010-01-04T15:32:00.002-05:00

apathetic

2009-12-23T21:04:00.001-05:00

I had this thing published, or whatever.

ON APATHY

taking life seriously

2009-12-21T01:47:00.004-05:00

I finally started on some very simple puppets. Next up: paper mache.

Exciting puppet related news: Paul Klee has some great puppets at MOMA's Bauhaus exhibit.

& of course, thank you very much to Megan for much help and encouragement on my current puppetry phase.

the best zombies song

2009-12-19T03:21:00.002-05:00

READING

2009-12-16T15:22:00.003-05:00

I will be reading (for 2 min during the time btwn. 11-12am) at the Poetry Project's New Years Day Marathon. This is a very great day and there are many reasons you should come (just see the list of poets below). Also, the money goes to the PP and there is also food and books you can buy to help support the PP.

ADMISSION: $17 general, $13 students & seniors, $10 members.

Poets and performers this year include Ammiel Alcalay, Bruce Andrews & Sally Silvers, Penny Arcade, Arthur’s Landing, Ari Banias, Jim Berhle, Charles Bernstein, Anselm Berrigan, Edmund Berrigan, Ana Bozicevic, Donna Brook, Michael Brownstein, Franklin Bruno, Tyler Burba, Peter Bushyeager, Reuben Butchart, Callers, Yoshiko Chuma, Church Of Betty, Michael Cirelli, Todd Colby, John Coletti, CAConrad, Brenda Coultas, Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle, Mónica de la Torre, Mina Pam Dick, Steve Dalachinsky, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Maggie Dubris, Douglas Dunn, Marcella Durand, Steve Earle, Will Edmiston, Joe Elliot, Christine Elmo, Laura Elrick, Maggie Estep, Avram Fefer, Jess Fiorini, Corrine Fitzpatick, Foamola, David Freeman, Ed Friedman, Greg Fuchs, Joanna Furhman, Cliff Fyman, Kelly Ginger, Pepi Ginsberg, John Giorno, Philip Glass, John Godfrey, Toby Goodshank, Nada Gordon & Gary Sullivan, Stephanie Gray, Ted Greenwald, Tim Griffin, Miguel Gutierrez, John S. Hall, Janet Hamill, Robert Hershon, Tony Hoffman, Lisa Jarnot, Paolo Javier, Patricia Spears Jones, Pierre Joris, Adeena Karasick, Erica Kaufman, Lenny Kaye, John Kelly, Aaron Kiely, David Kirschenbaum, Bill Kushner & Merle Lister, Susan Landers, Joan Larkin, Dorothea Lasky, Denizé Lauture, Joel Lewis, Brendan Lorber, Michael Lydon, Kim Lyons, Dan Machlin & Serena Jost, Filip Marinovich, Chris Martin, Gillian McCain, Legs McNeil, Tracey McTague, Taylor Mead, Jonas Mekas, Sharon Mesmer, David Mills, Rebecca Moore, Tracie Morris, Will Morris, Eileen Myles, Elinor Nauen, Murat Nemat-Nejat, Jim Neu, Geoffrey Olsen, Dael Orlandersmith, Richard O’Russa, Yuko Otomo, Gary Parrish, Simon Pettet, Nicole Peyrafitte & Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Kristin Prevallet, Brett Price, Arlo Quint, Elizabeth Reddin, Evelyn Reilly, Citizen Reno, Bob Rosenthal, Douglas Rothschild, Tom Savage, Michael Scharf, David Shapiro, Frank Sherlock, Elliott Sharp, Nathaniel Siegel, Christopher Stackhouse, Stacy Szymaszek, Anne Tardos, Susie Timmons, Edwin Torres, Rodrigo Toscano, Tony Towle, David Vogen, Nicole Wallace, Lewis Warsh, Phyllis Wat, Karen Weiser, Simone White, Emily XYZ, Don Yorty, Rachel Zolf & more t.b.a.

Delayed

2009-12-14T13:16:00.006-05:00

I don't know why, but I never posted that I was asked to do a reading report for the Poetry Project. I was pretty nervous writing this one and very flattered to have been asked.

Robert Gluck & Eileen Myles at PP

Upcoming articles for Vol1:
On Apathy
Review of Not Not Fun's My Estrogeneration, a comp. of all female artists (NNF's first ever)

Lately I've been working on The Bridge. Release date estimated for February. Be on the look out for a reading.

Also, a manuscript is in the works. I've made a deadline for myself of "late summer".
Draft of one poem/drawing for the book:

2009-12-01T22:48:00.001-05:00

metaphor

2009-11-22T20:58:00.004-05:00

nuzzle this muzzle

2009-11-05T19:25:00.002-05:00

reaching for knitting needles,
he finds his toothbrush

these barrels are blank
and come the breech,
darkness

this human body
is my structure

and after the tongue
darkness

for his shirt sleeve,
blankets

one little two little three little jungians

2009-11-03T01:26:00.009-05:00

or anima-ted or gender gear

had a dream & you should hear about it. jung was there. jung was there. and jung was there. they told me that in order to climb that mountain, i had to be a woman. i got to the top and found myself a man. on the top of this mountain there were things i could see and valleys were among the most prominent. this made absolutely perfect sense in the dream, because dreams are very easy to understand. then my alarm clock didn't go off but my body knew it was time for work so i went to the office and i had a dream that i was a man on top of a mountain looking down at a woman on top of a valley. i was also that woman looking up at a man on top of a mountain looking down at a woman on top of a valley.

i even went out to dinner. and i was still that mountain man viewing that valley woman viewing that mountain man. i told you this but what you heard was that i didn't believe in eternity. miss-communication is important, so i didn't correct you, although maybe i should have.

Memory Lapse

2009-10-10T03:20:00.000-04:00

Is it just me?

2009-10-04T02:22:00.003-04:00

Or did Lady Gaga totally reference Beckett's Happy Days?

le genre nerveux

2009-09-13T15:07:00.006-04:00

Review of Stacy Szymaszek's book Hyperglossia

2009-09-12T16:15:00.004-04:00

I recently reviewed my favorite book of 2009:

Stacy Szymaszek's Hyperglossia

2009-09-01T01:45:00.003-04:00

I am working on a magazine. It is called THE BRIDGE.

please submit.

"This is the spirit never born,
the consciousness of life...
the bridge that keeps the worlds apart"
- Brihad Upanishad

I used to subscribe in junior high

2009-08-13T23:15:00.007-04:00

CAT FANCY TOO

CAT FANCY ONE

great lakes

2009-08-07T00:36:00.003-04:00

2009-08-06T22:44:00.000-04:00

Review of Transfigurations on Lap Steel Guitar

2009-08-01T01:32:00.004-04:00

This has been a long time coming.

Hopefully there will be more reviews in a week or so.

Work is cleansing. Working on allowing work.

2009-06-12T01:15:00.000-04:00

breaking news do do dododododo

2009-06-11T01:12:00.001-04:00

we decided it was best to throw out the individually wrapped soy sauce

2009-06-09T23:11:00.001-04:00

Watch for snakes.
Watch your step.
Watch for falling ice.
If you see something, say something.
I'll see you later.
After awhile, Crocodile.

2009-06-09T13:06:00.000-04:00

raincheck.com

2009-06-08T23:30:00.001-04:00

animals in brooklyn make strange noises outside of my window

High Places Interview

2009-04-20T23:57:00.004-04:00

I interviewed High Places.

Go read it here.

After reading their response to my questions, I almost wished I could change them, to ask more. These are the faults of the internet, I guess. It made me miss them more than I already do. Their responses are just so positive and I suppose I just felt really excited about a lot of things, about people again.

key deer

2009-04-18T19:17:00.004-04:00

vacation over

song: "Johdattaja-Joleen" by Lau Nau
key deer brought to you by the forest of key west

Grouper Review

2009-03-28T02:53:00.005-04:00

I'm officially writing for Hex Ed - a journal started by my friend Jason Diamond, whose name is just as good as mine. My first order of (completed) business being a review of Grouper's album Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill.

http://hexedjournal.com/2009/03/27/a-shot-in-the-dark/

Extra Solar, or, Murmur

2009-03-27T00:22:00.004-04:00

Listening to the mutter-clang of a bus. Chick-Chick-Braan. The fastest speed to run, faster than, run it. Two people laugh, walk and huh huh; ha, yeah. How should I think them, now that I’ve seen them? I feel like something is off putting. I’m putting something off.

fub, fub, puh,uh. fub, puh, fub puh, uh. Even without aid the pulse is audible. Mawkish, in a way. The hard chestial knock, who may I ask is calling?

What does it mean to ‘look-forward’ in the sense that one says, “I am anticipating.”

fub. fub.

Malcom, you put that down. Don’t touch it, don’t touch it. Voice, far right. Malcom has in his hand a golden figure with a basketball at its hip, the top to someone’s discarded trophy. How should I think them, now that I’ve seen them?

fu, puh, uh

Just because I’m not going anywhere specific, does this deny me the opportunity to wait?
Sense is a gift, we give it to ourselves. Or maybe you feel differently. I’d like to ask, but, you have the wrong the answer.

Must some destination be in mind?

And if so, where do I find it in there?

Stories

2009-03-24T01:01:00.003-04:00

My favorite story I tell a man when I really start to like him, and I want him to know that I like him, is the story of my childhood sweetheart. A young boy who delivered newspapers. The Lafayette Journal and Courier. I would be sure to tell him the name of the paper. I would really set this up. I’d say, “I grew up in Indiana, I told you that before, haven’t I?”

Where I’m from is very important.

He would usually say yes, or maybe sometimes shake his head, no no. “Oh, okay, well I was from a small town. And I would read out on the porch swing every day in the summer. I was an avid fan of mystery novels. It didn’t matter what kind. But I would ride my red bicycle to the library and back with all these good mystery novels in my bag and just plop myself right back on down where I had been.”

and I would go on with all that. Being as quaint and folksy as I could be. This was how I usually was, when telling these stories. These were the stories I kept company. Stories about jumping off the barn roof. Of bare feet and riding lawn mowers. Of watching my father falling out of the tree with a chainsaw, trying to make room for the above-ground pool. These were my stories.

“Well, every day, as I would sit there reading, the paperboy would throw The Lafyette right on to the porch steps. I would pick it up, and sometimes I would wave, and sometimes I wouldn’t.”

It hardly mattered.

“but one day he came up on the porch and he asked me what I was reading. His black rusted single speed bicycle thrown to the side, no kick stand.

His eyes were blue, like two hatching robin’s eggs. His hair was brown, like a peach pit in the sun. Everything about him was like something else, and I showed him the book, and he kissed me.”

and that would be it. The story of my first love. I had more stories about this boy. And the guy I was into would get to learn his name. About his mother, the smoker whose wrinkles mesmerized me, birthing him at thirty.

His name.

How he smelled the night I lost him in the corn field, and sat crying, begging God to let me see him one last time. One last time.

His name.

But, that, too, hardly mattered.

It is true, that sometimes, crying is only for crying’s sake. And I told all the boys that part too. To let them know there was more. That I had more to me since this boy, and that they were just like this boy, delivering papers to my doorstep, asking me questions. Losing me. Finding me.

huh?

2009-03-08T00:43:00.002-05:00

Have you ever cleaned a fish?

2009-03-03T12:59:00.004-05:00

It is rare, I think, to find someone who knows how to do landscapes. It isn't important to merely capture the scene, but to capture the emotion of that scene. Or, at least, to be able to evoke one. My friend Lance started a photo blog and I think it's pretty amazing. Seems like I've been advertising for a lot of blogs lately, but they all should be read. So here's another.

http://shutteringatthethought.blogspot.com/

are you awake?

2009-02-27T03:18:00.004-05:00

I thought then that heaven wouldn’t be some abstract cloudy lounge in the sky,
it would be a grocery store where you don’t have to pay for anything.
Only the person who says “hello”
would be much more attractive,
and would be wearing a much more soothing color scheme.
-Joseph

Heaven

What a place.

Why would anyone
want to be
anywhere?

Here is a shoe.
Wear it.

You have walking to do.

Jean Paul Sartre chose non-monogomy

2009-02-21T23:04:00.008-05:00

and so does Kendra Malone, and I think she does a good job getting her point across. She got me thinking enough to at least write this, to help connect what she means to what it means to me. Why I publish it, no idea. Publishing is something I should think more about, I guess.

"For me it is a mutually positive relationship. Unfortunately these are some of the first people to over simplify my occasional unhappiness with the situation. Like people in relationships often are, I from time to time am unsatisfied with the outcome of an affair in an emotional way."

This, I think, is one of the most important examples. In every choice there is always unhappiness, but we are more willing to point fingers when someone else is sad if they do not share our personal views, merely because we cannot understand theirs. This can also be said for people I know who participate in non-monogamy, or any other deviant life style. An honest thing to say would be to say "I don't understand it" and leave it at that, unless you have tried to understand it. Really tried. This would involve not pointing fingers, or hating/judging a person whose act you find to be disagreeable. I guess, you should be pointing fingers at the act, not the person, and the only way to do this is, perhaps, to merely live in a way you see fit, then also choosing this act for everyone. At least there is conviction.

"In choosing myself, I choose man."
-Sartre

2009-02-19T03:22:00.000-05:00

no,

it cannot be
that I have never mastered

mastery.

how is it
you do not see my asking

you do not wonder why
you are holding hands

with complexity

Another reading

2009-02-17T23:25:00.006-05:00

Sunday, February 22nd
Bar 169
169 East Broadway
6:30pm

featuring
myself, David Miller, CJ Hauser, Nick Henderson, Don Brown,
Leah Schnelbach, & others.

New habit: Staying up until 3am talking to Woody Allen movies.

book release & reading - tonight

2009-02-10T16:39:00.003-05:00

Book Release/Poetry Reading/Slide Show
Tuesday, February 10th
8:30- ?? (Reading at approx: 8:45-9:00)
Think Coffee - Bowery Location
1 Bleecker St - take 6/B/D/F/V to Bleecker or Broadway/Lafyette stop

for Low Level Clouds - a little black book (made by me) with poems and art based off of the work of Diane Arbus

It being what it is

2009-02-06T03:54:00.011-05:00

for my students

Simply put,
I have tried to mention
what it means to come from desk

to chair,

where we are hardly
an indication

of where it is we go

speech
is only evidence
effaced

white,
and then black

the dust of the room
on loan
waiting in the tense
of present.

things you could be doing right now

2009-02-06T03:09:00.003-05:00

Reading my friend's blog. "A Long Way" is about Joseph. Understanding is an understatement.

Thinking about Maine. Joseph reflects on Maine in his blog. I had a dream about Maine once. I hope to go there this summer. I think Joseph is right about Maine.

Reading this Oppen poem.

Whatever else is fine.

short list of some things on my mind

2009-02-03T02:08:00.003-05:00

please comment with things on your mind

- where is "on" the mind located?
-facial expressions, mirrors, lack of being able to see my own response in social situations and only being able to estimate based on responses from other facial expressions
-memory, time - the relation of the two
-what it means to lose something, someone - identity - how someone can seem dead because the person you knew that person as no longer relates to a person in existence now
- how this is harder than i initially thought, and wonder if id get tired of writing down a note to myself every time i thought something
- mammals

i rarely ever question what will happen when i die

2009-01-27T01:30:00.007-05:00

I am glad I have people I can return home to, who really want to know what the hills looked like.

I read the entire collected George Oppen. I read the San Francisco poem in San Francisco and read the New York poems at a coffee shop in Echo Park.

LOW LEVEL CLOUDS

2009-01-11T23:39:00.004-05:00

LOW LEVEL CLOUDS!
OUT NOW
BLACK & WHITE W/VELLUM
13 PAGES OF ART WORK & POETRY BASED OFF DIANE ARBUS PHOTOS
E-MAIL ME YOUR ADDRESS
K2GINGER@GMAIL.COM

RELEASE PARTY/READING
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10TH
8:30PM
THINK COFFEE - BOWERY LOCATION

WRITER'S BLOCK

2009-01-11T23:29:00.004-05:00

Someone asked me what I "do."
"Write, I guess."
"Oh, like, fiction?"
"No. Poetry."

His eyes blinked slowly, cocky, sure they would open again.

As I write this I get flashes of all the things I have heard people say in regards to other people's writing.

"Trying too hard"
"Too much something"
"Not enough something else"
"Boring, Meaningless, Stupid"

They opened to no resonance - two stones skipping in a drained pond.

juicy

2009-01-05T11:35:00.003-05:00

juice: kale, cucumber, celery
side of clementine

Recently I flipped through some book David Lynch wrote about meditation. He was talking about going "down deep" to catch "the really big fish." I thought this was a kind of cheesy way of talking about taking care of yourself in order to create, but it made sense to me. Bell Hooks talks of something sort of similar in Teaching to Transgress, in that a teacher must be self-aware in order to teach - not prone to power trips due to inferiority complexes. I think artists need to live as simply as possible (and I see good teachers as artists). They need to live as close to the earth as possible, with minor digressions into space. Or maybe space counts as earth. Dali Llama talks about everyone being the center of the universe, because to you, that is where it starts from. There needs to be spirituality, or something similar to it, whatever you find it to be. I do not want to tell people how to live, only make an example through myself. Sartre talks about this as well. And I guess I talk about these people because they have helped me form how I see the world, and I'm always seeing it somewhere different. My friend Mary says that books are important, because they help you think in new ways. Maybe that's what I'm trying to say here. Or maybe I'm trying to say to make sure you know what you want, what your body wants, and what's good for you, because then maybe that will transfer into what is good for other people, or something. Maybe I don't know. Maybe I just feel good.

PRODUCTIVITY IS UP, AND UPPING

2009-01-03T03:12:00.003-05:00

NEW ZINE LOW LEVEL CLOUDS FORTH COMING. JANUARY, 2009.

THREE GERTS ON ONE SHIRT.

WE MADE JUICE, AND THEN WE BAKED USING THE PULP.

finally finished

2009-01-02T14:35:00.005-05:00

Sometimes the words are hardly words at all - almost words - almost what I want to say. Sometimes I feel like I'm speaking something foreign - inhospitable and unkind. My mouth moving, unjustly related to my eyes. My tongue sunbathing, lazy at the roof of my mouth. So much of communication is hardly cognizant. What did I mean, and how did you mean what I meant? Everything lost in some sort of odd translation, the dictionary unable to calculate the individual's past.

No truth. Or something.

I finally finished this piece. I have been working on this since the summer. It says something to me and I am happy. I want to hug my friend Joseph. Sometimes I don't write him back for weeks at a time. My actions. My mind. My mouth.

A Long Way

All I have are the letters.
My memory of the drives we would take only that, only memory. Which never seems enough.
Now, I have his letters.

Remember that time we followed the ducks?

Like a hallucination, I watched the road as if in a fever, sweating out the trip from Ypsilanti back to Kalamazoo.

I looked over at him. His profile a flickering fire. This is why they call silence heavy. The aftermath of voice. Of clutter and murmur. I could feel the system at work within my body – the nerves shooting off, blood, and matter. In silence it is all you have, your body, and it is hard to know what to do with it.

I had a dream about Joseph last August. He asked me to sit in his lap, an intimate gesture, a trust. I held his head in my hands and stared.

I got a snorkeling set and I swam around looking at schools of fish and everything else that’s underwater. It’s like another world that I’ve never really explored or saw before.

He wanted me to follow him. And I did. It was night, there was fog, and it seemed like a movie. He asked me to get on a bus with him. And I did. I looked out the window, and it ended.

…the pressure was too much for me to handle, I couldn’t go down far.

His death smothered my morning. A divination. I could call him, and his roommate would answer, and there the news would be. There it would be.

I would sort my emotions.
Pair them up.
See how it felt to tie two together.

I couldn't handle his mortality.

I’m trying to stay on track.
I’ve also decided not to ever second-guess things I initially think.

Handling my own mortality is easy. Or, at least, I can say it is. I thought about my plans for the beach, and hoped the sun would dry me, eliminate the water weight, and as I floated in the ocean, I couldn't help but think of Joseph snorkeling in his very own Atlantic.

So much different than my own.

I could see him there, below the water, solitary and observant.

These are the three ghosts I saw that one night in May.

A lot of times buildings or houses are haunted but I think that people are also haunted too. I think that’s what I am.

It made sense, for him to like something like that.

I didn't want to cry, not the beach. I swam as fast as I could until I couldn't keep my breath.

How loud living can be.

We are made mostly of air and water. I thought, we are the ocean.
Expansive, salty, prone to unpredictable undertow.

I need to always be expanding outwards, but I find myself stuck somewhere in between most of the time.

I called him on my way to work.
To make sure.

He answered.

His voice, the pensive "hello."

There, on the other line.

A very long way away.

I need to always be expanding outwards…
To be forever expanding outwards.

Construction. I had to drive on the shoulder; it awoke the gravity within us. We pulled over to get gas, neon lights and red vine licorice. Sugary details of the Midwestern landscape, we grew chatty away from the cowless fields, the shopping centers.

I can remember music. I remember this. But, what we said is lost somewhere. The cause of our breath, insistent on not committing to anything.

Remember when we went to the John Cage performance at that Catholic Church in the woods? That organ was the best. I remember driving back with all that snow falling…

I remember.

I wish I had more.
The dream. The car ride.
I want everything.
I want to be back in Michigan, back at his door. Back in the snow.

What is it, to have?

and the same thing happened last winter when we came into each others lives so randomly. I like to believe that there’s something more than random chaos and someday we’ll see how everything is connected and let out a long meaningful AWE…

I ruined a batch of cookies that night.
I remember.

What is it to have not?

I like to believe, too.
I like to believe a lot of things.

I feel like I’m trying to build a life out of scrap paper and when I step back and look at it, it looks interesting and fun but living it doesn’t feel completely real.

I don’t know.

I guess relationships are only important if you want them to be.

Maybe that was it, Joseph.

I don’t know.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I want to expand onto everything and be everything.

It makes perfect sense if you say it that way.

Right?

family family family

2009-01-02T11:33:00.010-05:00

folly

2008-12-31T00:38:00.001-05:00

How do we know when a limit has been reached?
And how should we expect to reach out?

lacquered bemusement

2008-12-20T20:05:00.004-05:00

untitled

I'm a really big fan of Megan Murtha - and this is just adding yet another "log to the fire," as they say. So, check out the link at the bottom there and enjoy her art work! I've been enjoying it for months, and now the world has joined in, and the world is thankful. The world is rejoicing! The world says thank you, Megan, thanks a lot!

lacquered bemusement

arbus pt. 2

2008-12-18T02:59:00.003-05:00

this is the text
to a secret

Letter to Diane Arbus

2008-12-17T13:13:00.008-05:00

Staring at the face of Blonde girl with shiny lipstick, I can see where her eyebrows are starting to grow back. Too long since last plucking.

"...we tend while living here and now to perceive only what is random and barren and formless about it. While we regret that the present is not like the past and despair of its ever becoming the future, its innumerable inscrutable habits lie in wait for their meaning."

I can't say I regret that the past isn't the present.
But, that isn't to say there isn't one.

High School. Two (three?) semesters of photography. Mostly, I have stopped taking pictures. The idea of a manual camera gives me a feeling of loss, like a language I can't remember. A verb I am no longer able to conjugate. There is a roll of 120 film in my desk drawer. It awaits development. A chance to re-see the seen, to remember.

"I really believe there are things that nobody would see unless I photographed them."

I feel jealousy toward you. I want to be able to do everything I imagine. You lived on the Bowery, I think. I hardly remember that book I read about you two summers ago. The pain that comes with reading. But, I want to be there, in your apartment. An entire space filled with artists. I think Mary Frank, Robert Frank's wife, she lived there. So different. Did you wonder, how it ending up ended up like that?

You were schooled well, growing up, well-off near Central Park. But, the 60's and 70's were different, of course they were, but why lament for something I've never even known? A woman I've never known? The obsessions with mad women, but only the dead ones.

"We stand on a precipice, then before a chasm, and as we wait it becomes higher, wider, deeper, but I am crazy enough to think it doesn't matter which way we leap because when we leap we will have learned to fly. Is that blasphemy or faith?"

You gave me a reason, or, your story did, for being in New York. For not fearing. Because why, anyway? What for? No reason but fear of death, but that will come anyway. Nothing to be done. And of course, I knew not to be stupid about where I travelled, naive, but you weren't those things. Not the you I created. And that's the Arbus I need. Perhaps, when you're famous, people creates the you they need, in order to continue. I read somewhere, sometime, by someone, that our urge to live is entirely too strong. Like The Bell Jar, Esther on the edge of her bed, broken silk cord around her neck.

"Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize."

So, I take your words to my writing. I guess, that's what I do now. A purpose, of sorts. Recently, I wrote about my relationship to reading and writing. I mentioned that all three of us are in this together now. I cannot exist without writing, I am unsure of what else to do, and one must read in order to write. So that's what I have to do. For now. Until later.

*all quotes pulled from various texts printed in Revelations by Diane Arbus

something > nothing

2008-12-16T08:57:00.002-05:00

doing what he was doing

PS: POCAHAUNTED LP CHAINS

2008-12-03T11:35:00.001-05:00

do not tend

2008-12-03T09:40:00.003-05:00

do not tend to the garden, it is tending to itself, there is sun, and there is dirt, and things are growing there. many different things are growing there, green things, happy things. there is photosynthesis in the garden! the garden, the garden, the garden! miraculous nature! treats among mankind! spending its own time among root rot and insects, spider webs and worms. how could it need you there? or me, for that matter? how could it need anyone to be around? if it grows long enough and loud enough there would be no reason for a hoe, a scythe, a shovel, what would be the point, then? just to sit in the middle of it looking up and over, redwood trees are still growing, growing still. growing, growing, growing! the birds are over head. do you see them? can you see them? they are there, chirping as loudly as ever. sometimes cooing, sometimes moaning. how silly! how cute! a garden unattended to and growing, faster still, growing growing no cutting - heaven sent! what a garden, with nothing to do but what doing must be done. what, in reality, must be, and cannot not be done, as growing does, as growing should do. as it must.

2008-11-27T00:30:00.002-05:00

inexhaustible, universal
"life force"
induce spiritual
healing energy

access
attunement

negativity

2008-11-19T12:46:00.002-05:00

In a past life, your friends were once your enemies and your enemies were once your friends. This could be uplifting, meaning, it is important to treat everyone equally. More specifically, to love everyone equally. There is no difference. Everyone wants to reduce pain and suffering and increase happiness. This is a fact. So, like me, everyone wants to feel really good. Everyone wants Sunday afternoon. Everyone wants Friday night. Everyone wants a new t-shirt and someone to hold hands with.

This could also mean to hate everyone equally, friends included. Acquaintances included. Neighbor with the dog that barks all the time included. Guy playing the keyboard in the train station included. It is possible to have enough hatred for all of these people. It is probably less work than having love for all these people. Buddha was probably exhausted. I am sure Jesus was exhausted. But statues of saints always look so peaceful. They hardly seem tired from all of that loving. Maybe they didn’t have to love as hard, or as much, or maybe they just liked everyone the same amount. They certainly had to feel one way or the other about everyone, as I am sure saints were held to the same standards. Or maybe they were more human. I haven’t read the Bible in years. Only the book on Buddhism. Yes, it is true, in a past life, your friends were once your enemies and your enemies were once your friends.

In a past life I knew no one, I had to hate and love no one, except myself, so perhaps I loved everyone as a person alone must love herself. I spent most of my time putting small objects into my mouth and then spitting them out. I was skilled at doing nothing, all on my own. If someone were to cross my path I would not notice him. I could not notice him, as then I would have to feel one way or the other, and knew I was better off feeling neither emotion, except towards myself, and in regards to that, I usually chose love. It was easier to live simply this way, ingesting, digesting, spitting as I so chose. Watermelon was a favorite of mine, as this involved all three activities. I was my only friend. I have done this through all of my lifetimes. I have spit things at many different now extinct animals. I now spit things at animals that I will know will become extinct in the future. I have used chewing tobacco. And in a past life, I have always made sure to remind myself that my friends were once my enemies and my enemies were once my friends, as I have been everything, and we have walked through it all together, spitting, digesting, loving, and finding it quite easy not to hate.

2008-11-06T00:39:00.007-05:00

I am always happy to be a mammal.
Everyone seems to be preparing. Storing and secluding themselves from the weather.
Summer is over, and no one seems to be too depressed about it. I turn on my sunshine light bulb and move my plants near it and just feel like I am a part of something I have created here, in my room.
It feels so good to just think about really long books and green tea.
About finishing that Colette book I started last winter and maybe start doing all the things I said I would on my "list to become a better person." Maybe starting A Swann's Way.
I wrote today and it felt so good. I'm still trying to decide what to put in here now that I've decided not to post poems so I can try to get work published. Maybe winter will bring more writing. A professor asked me if I was excited about the fact that I've been basically writing two poems a week, and I didn't think so. I feel like I could write something I really liked every day and it wouldn't be enough. There would still be more to say. I guess this is why I started taking pictures again - immediate reaction to something beautiful.

I wrote a friend and said that I couldn't live in this world if it wasn't beautiful. And I think that is probably the only statement I have said that will remain true no matter my mood. This is important to me. To have one stable idea. Something to count on, to look forward to.

2008-11-04T12:18:00.003-05:00

If I am a writer, am I only a writer only at my desk, or am I also a writer outside of my desk?

Art is theft and my mind is filled with the ideas of others. Am I a thief?

2008-11-03T08:46:00.003-05:00

You should just watch this. Don't listen to me babble.

FUCK

2008-10-28T15:22:00.003-04:00

expletives are vague, yet somehow evoke emotion.
sometimes, they are seen as 'cheap' in a poem or song.
sometimes, they seem 'fitting'.

I sit down and think 'FUCK' daily.
I try not to swear too much, vocally speaking.

I desperately want to say something 'true' and 'honest',
like Hemingway. like Gertrude Stein. like Lydia Davis. or Mary Ruefle.

FUCK.

I can not write it.

So how to evoke it?

Witchcraft.

my week

2008-10-25T15:18:00.011-04:00

"How was your week?"
"What did you do today?"
"How have you been?"
"What have you been up to lately?"

I have never really thought of myself as socially awkward, but I can be when it comes to questions like these, because I don't know what the other person is searching for.

Those questions are so big, or would at least require a very big answer in order for me to feel satisfied, this is what I'd want to say. But, I get the feeling this isn't what people are searching for.

+MONDAY

Knowing I can find contentment in apple-carrot-ginger juice.

+TUESDAY

W.B. Yeats' "Collar-Bone of a Hare"

I would find by the edge of that water
The collar-bone of a hare
Worn thin by the lapping of water,
And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare

+WEDNESDAY

+THURSDAY
Matthew Rohrer's "Rise Up" & the excitement that comes from mixing different "registers" of language

A decision to "participate" as much as I "encounter"

An Audrey Hepburn influenced ensemble.

+FRIDAY

(taken from NYSOG blog)

image: what we see: how we see it

+SATURDAY

Staying in, making dinner with my roommate, building a bookshelf: how we create space & then enjoy it, and how space can be an indicator of emotional well-being.

+SUNDAY

May, 2005

NOVEMBER 2008!?!?!?!

the truth

2008-10-19T01:11:00.002-04:00

I have been sitting on the internet for the last half hour and about 90% of the things I have decided to look at have made me feel really angry, or passive-aggressive, or lonely.

hubba

2008-10-17T14:20:00.004-04:00

hubba

I think when we are sick, it is our desire to be coddled. To have someone bring us soup from a can, I do not think most of us would require that someone make us soup from scratch, because that would be being greedy and we are sick already, and if they had to make a soup, it would take away their time and what if we needed water? they wouldn't be around to make sure we were hydrated, and that's just way too scary and lonely. I have a weird problem with my throat, and I called in sick to work, but always feel like people think I'm faking it, even when I'm not.

I get the same feeling every time I walk through a security device at a department store or airport.

I did ask my roommate to pick me up twizzlers. It felt good when she said she would, but usually, when I am sick, I want someone to just sit in my bed and I can close my eyes and they can read to me out of a long novel, or a short story, and I can just listen and sort of forget about my body for awhile.

2008-10-12T21:30:00.000-04:00

I think I should go outside.
I think I should stay inside.
I think I should go outside.
I think I should stay inside.
I think I should go outside.
I think I should stay inside.
I think I should go outside.
I think I should stay inside.
I think I should go outside.
I think I should stay inside.

famous

2008-09-19T12:18:00.001-04:00

the dog in my heart howls continiously at you

2008-09-13T09:54:00.001-04:00

there is real pain in not having poetry (jack spicer, reading)

untitled: morning poem: little sleep and more beer.

2008-09-09T08:18:00.003-04:00

there is sweat from glass jars
and it isn't even hot outside
but the faces are burning
red, orange, some sort of magenta.

like a vision,
I see their faces floating
merging together like angels.

I wiped the sweat from the table top
and wrote a letter,
turned on the fan,
and imagined myself among them,
a little bit angry,
thrown in with all those sinners.

new york city

2008-09-05T19:25:00.004-04:00

I need to profess my undying love more often.

I have a lot of really intense feelings for strangers almost every day.
I wonder how other people deal with this, because I am sure they are struggling, too.

Cat calls bother me, and I don't think it is an appropriate response.
But I should profess my undying love more often.

sleepy

2008-09-03T00:28:00.002-04:00

Thinking about it now, if I were to lose my ability to remember, it makes me sort of sad and lonely. But, if it actually did happen, I wouldn't know any better anyway, because there wouldn't be a past and there wouldn't be a future. There would just be the present, and it would probably feel like time travel, or something similar to a feeling that might feel like time travel. It might even be mystical.

Katie

2008-08-30T10:20:00.005-04:00

My friend Katie has a blog, you should read it.

Katie used to eat alone wearing a Le Tigre shirt in the cafeteria. I wanted to be her friend so badly. I saw her and imagined what it would be like to be friends with a girl like that. Sometimes I would see her eating with a few other people. But, never in a large group. I almost always ate alone, reading a book.

I can't remember how we started to talk. It might have been I saw her profile on Make Out Club. I wish it was a better story than that. Maybe because my memory is so shaky, I could make one up. I think Katie would like that.

Katie was the one who told me to read Sylvia Plath. She would read over my poems and I would read over her poems. Her poems were beautiful and covered with a simple imagery. She never force fed you a line, each one came as easy and soundless, breathless, as the next. We both really liked the Robert Hass (He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl-she must have swept the corners of her studio-was full of dead bees.

Sometimes we would sit in the PS section of Waldo library and look at books. I switched my major from English-Teaching to Creative Writing. I knew I wanted to do nothing else, and Katie encouraged me. She has always been a poet that I knew I liked. I knew made sense to me. I looked up to her a lot then, and I still do now, especially as she starts applying to the twenty-something different graduate schools. She seems stronger now. We both do. There was one summer I went a little crazy, and we both ended up dating the same boy, only I dated him after she did, and she didn't even get too angry with me. I sort of can't believe it.

I don't think I ever feel bored

2008-08-20T23:06:00.002-04:00

but I usually feel unproductive and antsy.

I feel like this is very heavily influenced by the videos of Zachary German and Ellen Kennedy, whose blogs I check on a daily basis. I sometimes feel guilty when I check Ellen Kennedy's blog because I don't really know her, and I feel like I should only read the blogs of people I know. Like, I wouldn't want to invade their personal space or something. I made one of these videos and you could see my cat's tail, but it didn't turn out the way I wanted.

ps: I really loved Kendra's last few poems she has posted on her blog. Especially the newest one.

secret #1

2008-08-19T03:31:00.003-04:00

I always really wanted to be a dancer. I still wish it could have been something I pursued. Since I have moved to New York, I have been asked several times if I was a dancer. I felt really excited that I might look like a dancer. I guess, really, I wouldn't want to rely so heavily on my body to do what I loved to do. I feel like if something happened to your body and you couldn't dance anymore, life would be really confusing. You would also probably walk around really aware of your body, probably too aware, because you would have to be conscious of movement. I think, for me, writing is escaping so you can continue living. Lynda Barry talks about this. Other writers have talked about this. I think even in that Philip Glass documentary, Glass talks about this. I like the idea of being able to leave the physical realm. But maybe, when a dancer is really dancing, they leave the physical realm just like a writer does. They enter some other space, yet are still able to operate their body somehow. I don't know. I'd like to hear a dancer talk about dancing, I guess.

guest comic

2008-08-18T11:41:00.003-04:00

Recently, my friend Mike asked me to do a guest comic for his website.

I was perplexed about what to write about and thought about all of the other guest webcomics I have seen in my life. I thought I wasn't going to be able to give Mike something worthy of himself, but, luckily, I was able to do it.

There is a little section from me about the process of making the comic, and the fact that I really felt nervous about making it, and having it on the internet for everyone to see. Mike has been so wonderful and encouraging. Also, his comics are really really funny and unlike other readers of his site, I never thought his word bubbles looked like little wangs. But, it is because of him that I get really impatient for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Also, Octopus Pie doesn't help this situation, but he told me about that, so I can still blame him for making me hate weekends. TGIM, I guess.

Also, there are two pictures of me where I look completely different in both of them. I forgot I ever even had a Vagina Monologues shirt. I really used to love that play (?). I have seen it quite a few times. I read a part from it to my class last semester. They clapped. Also, I've been trying to figure out what band shirt I'm wearing in the second, but kind of glad it doesn't say. I have a feeling it might embarrass me.

the something

2008-08-18T01:37:00.003-04:00

an unmentionable something came into mind and it seemed easier to have a something rather than a nothing, or a nothing rather than a something because it made relationships seem easier. to have nothing or something. a binary transaction with emotions. and I so much want things to be easier. to be able to say "oh, i don't know. they just have a something" unexplainable but still reliable. people trust it. people will trust things you say more often when it comes to love.

I am a mammal.

2008-08-10T02:23:00.001-04:00

Hot blooded
and burning
for a little attention.

I am reading a book and it explains that the difference between mammals and reptiles, is that mammals care about things (their young, their mates) while reptiles could really care less. Mammals then created language to alert when they want more or less attention, or, in the case of the young, are in distress. Birds also have a language. Vultures have a language, I am pretty sure. This has not been covered. They have not said anything about vultures in this book yet.

watch out.

2008-08-09T02:15:00.002-04:00

don't worry, it is just friendly fire.