Info Desk Blogging

My schedule is of such montonous sameness (indistinguishably montonous regularity even!) that I don't expect variation. It took me weeks to get in the habit of a Tuesday 11-12 Info Desk. Now that my Info Desk hour is 2-3 Friday ...

At 2:05 my desk phone rang. Sam: "Are you supposed to be on the Info Desk?"

One reminder later, I am, sir, reporting for duty.

A few of today's Qs: What is the phone number for the Library Board of Trustees (the board's last meeting seemed to have moved without notice)? Do we have internet access? Can't find The Poisonwood Bible on the shelf. I would like a library card. Eric Clapton CDs?

It's not been too busy. My Info Desk partner told me last week I'm going to be on my own for the next month. And it was really busy with her around. I expected craziness. Turns out there's not much to blog about.

deleting

From a book of short stories that the library is discarding: "They operated and got the glass out of me, and I ended up in a nice bed with clean sheets and my own radio to listen to. They fed good, too, for a hospital." A patron has added a note in pencil in the margin: "Tampa General Hospital? I used to work there."

comments on "Our Two Trees", version 1

Time for a new poem. This one is from a 1991 notebook. I was still living in my mother's house in Sebastopol, CA. We had two trees in the yard, a trident maple and an apple.

"Our Two Trees"

How nice it is to see spring unsheathing from the apple’s
hard buds. The maple starts with seeds,
red, joined at the head, their membranous wings
hanging like sleeves; behind them the trident leaves
hang back, their tips like an animal’s capillary
bundle, precious and fresh, sipping at the changeable
weather. The apples bursts out. Leaves and blossoms
tumbling as from a tight back – somewhat difficult
to unpack everything, but once the first present themselves
the rest hurl softly into air.

an old lady

My task this week has been deletions. I sit in my cubicle in the Technical Services division of the library and pluck a book from a loaded cart. I zap the barcode under the frog scanner on my desk. I hit "D" for delete. Twice. So the computer knows I'm serious. If it's the last copy of the book I suppress the record so if you look up the title in the publicly accessible catalog there's no evidence the library ever owned it. (But if we get a new copy somewhere down the line the book can be reinstated without having to create a catalog record from scratch.)

I don't choose what goes. Librarians do that. Many of the books are falling apart. Some are just fine. Many are old and irrelevant. Some I'd keep anyway. Do I succumb to my reluctance to see treasures being thrown away? There's a stack on my desk of those I can't yet bear to toss. Or was that five stacks?

From Conversations: Portraits of Age by Virginia Bonnici, (1985), pub Exposition Press of Florida:

"Her given name is Emma but she prefers 'Em.' ... ninety-some years ... 'There are dark and gloomy days but poetry will satisfy you.'

She recalls the years she taught in a country school and eating biscuits and jam, wearing boots to her hips and the rattlesnake and the horse -- stories enough for a lifetime. She doesn't want to write them down though."

we get mail

I'm all a-dither. Somehow Loren Cameron found the little posting about him that I wrote last December.

This is the email that came today:

subject line: pansy little dog

Hey Glen. Nobody talks shit about my dog, Bix. Especially now that he's dead.
- Loren Cameron (That's MISTER to you).

The Evolution of "Interoceptor"

If you'd like to trace the progress of "Interoceptor" from the day it was first posted on this blog (4/23/04) to the 10th and final version (7/18/04), here are the links:

10 ... 9 ... 8 ... 7 ... 6? ... 5 ... 4 ... 3 ... 2 ... 1

Naturally, I wonder what you, dear reader, have been thinking about this construction project.

FMA

The level of debate over the amending of the US Constitution to prevent two people from marrying has been pathetic. The people who want to amend the Constitution build their arguments on a basis of fallacy, their favorite being slippery-slope, a fallacy so popular and pervasive it's a wonder we don't all slide right off this slanted earth. If I eat that muffin what's to stop the next person from eating all the muffins in the world? Would that be a good thing? Hell, no! Put it in the Constitution!

comments on version 10

Feels like the final version? Yes. At the moment it does. There aren't any squeaky boards. The ending is ambiguous but in a way that, right now at least, I rather like. Could be I'm tired. Yes. I am that. On the other hand I'm also not all thrilled by my achievement, which feeling tends to form a perspective that the weary eye disagrees with. Also, I'm rather tired of the poem. Must say though, when I can skim a poem all the way to the end and still feel it, feel a thing, even when tired, when tired of the poem, when there's yet that odd breeze blowing through it that, for the moment at least, seems to wake me up, it feels there. Feels full and open. Feels done.

Interoceptor, version 10

When the wind, cold with sea,
puffed no striped umbrella,
cooled no glisten of sunscreen on a shoulder,

when, yellow foam crackling,
wave after wave rolled kelp heads and their ropes,
and seagrapes hissed,

when, between washes, sand flea burrows
bubbled open, and, carried over them,
not one gull cut the white with her gray,

when no dog unhooked from leather leash
heaved himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge,

when, brown bottles broken in the coals,
old fires’ only motions in log-hid holes
were the falling-in of new sand,

when, in the dark spaces of dunes
no one turned to touch, and there were grasses
sliding merely against grasses, I

stretched out my arms,
eyes tearing,
left ear aching under the wind’s battering. I,

the one in stiff cotton standing up,
the one in hard shoes,
open,

the one
chilly, damp, squinting, breath
by breath moved

white, water, wind, sand

comments on version 9

Hm. Comments. Comments, comments. In the original the "I" was "a certain great smallness" and "felt large ... big enough to take in this section of shore." In this 9th version the "I" seems rather more humble, not even showing up until the 7th stanza. The "I" gets an eye-drawing enjambment at that point, so it's not like the poem has given up on the "I"'s importance altogether. The poem is occupied with absences in both versions. Many of the details are the same or similar -- dog, frisbee, broken bottles --, sometimes changes even echo the original -- sunscreen bottle v. sunscreen on shoulder, grapefruit juice vs. seagrapes. The original insists on the speaker's place, the role as "interoceptor" (that which passes on inner body sensations), the human being nerve, perhaps, nerve that allows the earth to perceive itself? Some of the original's metaphors are muddled, what with "bricks of the wall of air" and "the elbows of the ocean." Are there any metaphors in version 9? I don't see any. The "one / chilly, damp, squinting" -- that's a humble depiction, isn't it? -- moves "nothing but" -- but everything? What is left out of the last four words? Seagrapes, grass ... The "I" seems still to feel small though not so great, yet the claim remains the same, eh?

Interoceptor, version 9

When the wind, cold with sea,
puffed no striped umbrella,
cooled no glisten of sunscreen on a shoulder,

and the sand hadn’t been piled into castle
nor dredged from surf-fed moat,

when, yellow foam crackling,
wave after wave rolled kelp heads and their ropes,
and seagrapes hissed,

when, between washes, sand flea burrows
bubbled open, and, carried over them,
not one gull cut the white with her gray,

when no dog unhooked from leather leash
heaved himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge,

when, brown bottles broken in the coals,
old fires’ only motions in log-hid holes
were the falling-in of new sand,

when, in the dark spaces of dunes
no one turned to touch, and there were grasses
sliding merely against grasses, I

stretched out my arms,
my left ear aching under the wind’s battering,
eyes tearing. I,

the one in stiff cotton standing up,
the one in hard shoes,
open,

the one
chilly, damp, squinting, moved
breath by breath nothing but

white, water, wind, sand

Laurel Canyon

Watched Laurel Canyon a few nights ago. The DVD. I liked it. A relationship movie. Written & directed by a woman. The last few scenes I thought particularly well written. A man and a woman in his psych program are mutually attracted; some nice dialogue in the car where he's trying to say he's sticking with his girlfriend and the woman asks him if he dreams about her, if he thinks about her when he's masturbating. I didn't remember in the press about the film reading that the two main female characters have a couple scenes of hot kissing. The same-sex affection is treated respectfully if a bit exotically. Nobody says anything disapproving. Except that the girlfriend and her sexy not-yet-mother-in-law doing the kissing might not be, the older woman acknowledges, the most appropriate interaction, considering.

There are, however, a couple lines of dialogue that stuck in my mind as unfortunate. The son, who is doing a psych internship, he's going to be a psychiatrist, tells his girlfriend he had to treat a patient who had a psychotic break as a result of taking the drug Ecstacy. This abstract suggests that it does happen, though they say "twelve cases of acute psychotic episodes after ecstasy have been ... in the [medical] literature." Considering the huge numbers who've ingested the drug that seems a number almost vanishingly small. The menace of Ecstasy is mainly the menace of drug war hysteria, not the chemical itself. As the young man in the movie who had the "psychotic break" was in all sorts of un-Ecstasy-related trouble it seemed facile and inappropriately fashion-conscious to blame Ecstasy.

The other line ... girlfriend says to boyfriend of her father, "He's a Puritan. He quotes Proust."

Come again? Proust? The definition of sensualist? Quoted by a Puritan? Isn't that like saying, "He's a Homophobe. He quotes Wilde."

Info Desk Blogging

My usual Tuesday 11-12 Info Desk hour is no more. The library now does not open until noon on Tuesdays.

Today I'm doing someone else's hour (4-5), while she's on vacation.

I'll also be filling in for my supervisor while she's on vacation (Wednesday?) ... and I'll be doing my new regular hour, Friday 2-3.

... Already the hour is half over ... My Info Desk partner, one of the children's librarians, intercepted a little boy who seemed to be leaving the library unaccompanied by an adult. And very upset. So he's standing at her end of the desk while she tries to find his adult. ... Just as I wrote the last sentence the mother (?) popped in the front door looking all stern. "Come along," she commanded. The librarian asked her if she'd left the children alone. Addressing one of the children (there were now two) the woman said, "I told you four times to come along." The child protested, "But I was getting off the computer!" When the librarian tried again to talk to the woman about leaving children unattended she was talking to her back as the woman led the children out.

The librarian tells me the woman was a babysitter, not the mother. The woman left the kids because she told them four times she was leaving and they didn't come?

comments on version 8

What I always say: Better.

I've fiddled with this line, "when no new towel darkened with loose sand," but haven't come up with a new version that pleases. I tried excising it entirely. Haven't decided. I've again reached the point further changes seem arbitrary, aren't improvements.

Interoceptor, version 8

When the wind, cold with sea,
puffed no striped umbrella,
cooled no glisten of sunscreen on a shoulder,

and the sand hadn’t been piled into castle
nor been dredged from surf-fed moat,

when, yellow foam crackling,
wave after wave rolled kelp heads and their ropes,
and seagrapes hissed,

when, between washes, sand flea burrows
bubbled open, and, carried over them,
not one gull cut the white with her gray,

when no dog unhooked from leather leash
heaved himself at the frisbee with the chewed edge,
when no new towel darkened with loose sand,

when, brown bottles broken in the coals,
old fires’ only motions in log-hid holes
were the falling-in of new sand,

when, in the dark spaces of dunes
no one turned to touch, and there were grasses
sliding merely against grasses, I

stretched out my arms,
my left ear pierced by the wind’s cold holler,
my eyes tearing, I

the one in stiff cotton standing,
the one in hard shoes,
open,

the one who was the one the wind left
colder, dampened, squinting, breath
by breath moved

water, white, wind, sand

elsewhere

An Iraqi police officer on the treatment of prisoners taken during a raid in Baghdad: "The American [MP] asked me why we had beaten the prisoners. I said we beat the prisoners because they are all bad people. But I told him we didn't strip them naked, photograph them or fuck them like you did." (via Digby)

*

SFGate is posting photos of the gay couples wedded at San Francisco City Hall.