ASL poetry

I've thought before that the web would be a great way to disseminate American Sign Language in the form of little movies. In the context of a controversy over the new president of the nation's only liberal arts university for the Deaf, Gallaudet, I followed some links (good diary at DailyKos) through to a collection of ASL poetry performances. Nice to see. It's been awhile since I've been around Deaf people and sign language. I'm no better reading ASL than I've ever been at picking out the meaning of what people say when they speak Spanish or Portuguese (the two other nonEnglish languages I've studied) but the forms language takes fascinates me in a different (but complementary?) way from the denotative meaning of what's being said. I like to hear the sounds, see the shapes chosen to represent them in written form, or (as with ASL) watch the construction in air of meaning. And, yes, I do catch a few words.

capacity

At APE I picked up an advertising postcard for Theo Ellworth's Capacity. Now I've visited his website. And I like it.

teabag bed

At the ACCI gallery on Shattuck there was a window installation that I wanted to get a picture of. It consisted of stacks of books hanging by wires. There were five, I think, each stack about 3 feet tall. The wire passed through the center of the books and concluded in a rusted railroad spike. Beneath the dangling spike was an open book on a pedestal. All the hanging books were mass market paperbacks. The open books were large size hardcovers, art books, I believe, though none was open to a color illustration.

When I got there, however, I found that the installation had been taken down. The ACCI gallery website does not include a photo of the piece. However, there is another sculpture by Clayton Bain that did not appear at the gallery though it is similar in that it also consists of a stack of books. I find his artist statement annoying. "I use mostly found objects, so they inherently have their own meaning. It is your experience that is reflected in the meaning, not mine. I focus more on form and spatial qualities instead. The physical space is so important to any sculpture. Any connection to the content is prejudiced by your own viewpoint. You create the artwork from that point onward. You are the artist, not me."

The statement strikes me as passive aggressive. If you don't like it, it's because you're "prejudiced." Plus I've never been a fan of the observer-collaborates-in-the-meaning-of-the-art pose. Culture is a collaborative construction. Is this insight not banal?

The pierced books bothered me because they were ruined. There were perfectly good well-written books in solid readable condition in those strings. And perhaps it's aggression I see here, too. Someone else's art was destroyed in order to make this person's art. The books were the sort of thing you see in yard sales and over & over on the used book clearance shelves. These weren't limited editions. These weren't unique items. These items were mass produced and many a book is destroyed by its own publisher when it becomes uneconomic. Maybe these were "saved" from the recycle bin, in any case. The piece intrigued me. I can't say as I liked it or that I carried away from it a meaning. The books in the strings interested me more than the presentation they made, rather like scanning the bookshelves in the house of a new acquaintance.



The show of which Bain's work was a part featured artists who link themselves as The Edge Group. Since the installation I'd come to photograph was no longer in the gallery window I stepped inside. Some of the Edge works were still on display, including a small bed covered with teabags. It's fun and clever and I liked looking at it. (Being an artist who can store all his work on a compact disc I always worry a bit about where bulky art lives.) Of her teabag textiles Ruth Trabancay writes, "The hand-stitched surfaces recall visions of vast epithelial sheets and cell cultures. [Trabancay used to be a biologist.] The teabags themselves represent the intimacy and ritual of sipping a cup of tea with family and friends and the finished sculpture, a gesture of warmth."



I don't like it when an artist claims that one thing "represents" another. (Can you say "objective correlative"?) But I do approve of Trabancay's description of her own associations: intimacy, ritual, family & friends, warmth.

elephant

This elephant overlooks the sidewalk as you pass Dara, a Thai/Lao restaurant on the corner. It came back, I suspect, from one of the family's jaunts back to Southeast Asia. I walked about the neighborhood this afternoon snapping pics. When the elephant originally appeared it had a twin and both elephants had tusks. The tusks were the first to disappear. Then one of the elephant's trunks broke. Then the one with a nonbroken trunk disappeared. In this photo you can't see the break but, poor thing, the tip of its trunk is missing.

Poetry & Pizza tonight

I finally got some work done on the Poetry & Pizza website. For a long time I was shut out -- my login was not logging me in. Finally I wrote to the hosting company and somebody there reactivated the username & password.

I had agreed to make a postcard to advertise this week's & next month's readings. But I didn't get it made. Yeah, feel bad about that. Did manage to get online and improve the website and post announcements on events calendars like craig's list and laughing squid.

Even though I've heard her read her work many times since moving to Berkeley I still look forward to Julia Vinograd. She's smart and gently mocking, not so much the Berkeley radical as the radical's sympathetic but skeptical sister. She's always tented in a black dress, has the same tassled cap on her head, and wears eyeball rings on her fingers. She presents weird. (She long wore a pin on her cap that declared, "Weird and proud.")

"We're a tribe, we move in mystic circles,
like the drunk said when the cop
told him to walk a straight line."

-- from "Anniversary Party at People's Park"
(the link takes you to a tribute in the local homeless advocacy paper; there are some poems at the bottom of the page)

comments on "inevitable spraying", version 3

In version 2 the first two lines do not flow, no, they're a bit ugly and jerky and they annoy. I thought the poem might be better for losing them. But I liked them for their presumptuous infacility. Maybe the poem would be more interesting with more of their like. So I created duplicates (with variations) and distributed them through the poem from top to bottom. I wanted stumbles to interrupt the flow. What the heck, eh? It's an old poem that otherwise would've remained in an old journal unread. It's not like messing with it would ruin a thing.

Version 3 amuses me from top to bottom. This is something.

Time for a title.

"inevitable spraying", version 3

     disarming qualities of imprecise

     figurement whence medication unmended



concerns all whom’re comers, quarters

hind and head, and the spinning

of the silver coquettes on a long trust

breached occasionally by a dazzle

of fluke or the tipping of smoked glass



     rearming equalities to concise

     configurement hence dedicated upended



on a titter of nose, the disguise as
 
see-thru as the lacquered taboo, thin as
 
the hopes inevitable in a dish, success genially

underlying Project W’s tender rigging,

some jury, some jerry, jugs swung on bristly ropes,



     harming discontinuities pupa’d
 
     in a fat blue fig or quince in a sense



and the pricks of firm black rubber

stood up to tongues, all wet attention,

brutal vigor, the hair trail from her navel

to the indistinct fusion of celebration,

breath, and fish, a left-leaning bother



     alarming vanity’s cicatrice

     prefigured on a dented sentiment



all told, a nakedness projected on a

conjoined word, the men and their

holes presenting frilled migration, arms

folded along factory creases, a pet

or parapet known for the dissimulate wag



     strong-arming qua extra nice
 
     consent, calculated viz. per and cent

comments on "inevitable spraying", version 2

It is, of course, hard to say whether this is the same poem as version 1. I say, "of course," not just because every line has been changed but because the original was an improvisation, the starting point the first line, "two words said in conjunction", the second line an act of bravado, "like an inevitable spraying of vigor", the third line ready to concede failure, "lost all hope of underlying success", the fourth line finally stepping away from the set-up and working on the "project". Need I tell you that the sexual shenanigans that follow are purely imaginary?

In making a new version I started with the lines that seemed to me most interesting in an assonance/alliteration/word mash/non-meaning sort of way, "disarming qualities of imprecise / calculation where quantum medication" ... I eliminated "quantum" after I decided it was too faddish a word, like "surreal" used by people when they want to use a fancier word than "weird". But I continue to like "disarming qualities of imprecise calculation"; as the poem's new set up, it declares the forthcoming to be ingratiatingly vague. Then "calculation" turned into "figurement", which isn't in my dictionary (though "disfigurement" is), a word which suggests the figures of numbers & persons (& guesses?) ... whether the very next word redirects one from a possible reading to impossible reading or whether one could continue trying let's just say I recommend not straining but enjoying the way "all whom're comers" rolls about in the mouth and the following rapid fragments of image.

Many words recur from version 1. But version 1 has become less the foundation for the poem (as it asserts itself in version 2) but a box of objects that can be propped in new poses.

I'm made a bit uncomfortable by "fish" in "the indistinct fusion of celebration, / breath, and fish" as I've heard "fish" used derogatorily among gay men to refer to the smell of the vagina. Is the word objectionable in this context?

"inevitable spraying", version 2

disarming qualities of imprecise
figurement whence medication unmended
concerns all whom’re comers, quarters
hind and head, and the spinning
of the silver coquettes on a long trust
breached occasionally by a dazzle
of fluke or the tipping of smoked glass
on a titter of nose, the disguise as
see-thru as a dogma-lacquered taboo, thin as
the hopes inevitable in a dish, success genially
underlying Project W’s tender rigging,
some jury, some jerry, jugs swung on bristly ropes,
and the pricks of firm black rubber
stood up to tongues, all wet attention,
brutal vigor, the hair trail from her navel
to the indistinct fusion of celebration,
breath, and fish, a left-leaning bother
all told, a nakedness projected on a
conjoined word, the men and their
called bets under a flowered alarm

Oops

Phone rang this morning a little after nine. Kent got it.

Where's Glenn?

Huh? But I thought on Saturday I didn't show up until 2 o'clock. That I worked from 2 to 6.

Nine o'clock.

Oh. So I had it backwards. It's 9 to 1.

Dang.

I hopped in the shower, gobbled a bowl of cereal, then Kent zipped me to the library in the Jeep. I was an hour late so stayed till 2.

Turned out okay, right?

Yeah. Turned out okay.

migraine day

Laurel endured a 3-day migraine this week. When I said I, too, get migraines. She asked what triggers them.

This is what I posted in her comments:

"It's rare for mine to go for more than one day ... Used to be I could say I'd never had one last more than one day ... alas, 's no longer the case.

My migraines may be very powerful tension headaches tho they come with furious nausea and sensitivity to light & sound & smell & touch ... & probably taste, but with the nausea eating's not happening anyway ... When I had a checkup last year my new doctor looked at my back, dropped a word I didn't quite catch, and said that would be why I have so many headaches. What does that word mean? I asked ... Said he, Curved back.

For more'n ten years now I've been working through yoga & weights to stretch my spine and loosen my tight tight muscles/tendons/everything. Big progress. But it brings on migraines. If I've gotten in a fierce batch of stretches I can almost feel the reactive tightening -- and in the morning I can have a migraine that incapacitates me for the day. Lots of great progress, really. Range I never thought I'd have. ... And I've paid for it all along the way. Strange to think pain so brutal all I want to do is drive nails into my head is price worth paying. But I figure I'm going to have the migraines anyway; might as well suffer toward improvement than merely suffer in decline."

Last night I did some stretches. I wouldn't have have called them "a fierce batch," really. It was sitting. To stretch my hips so when I can sit cross-legged on the floor for an extended period. Sitting cross-legged on the floor can get very tiring, even painful. So I do some stretches I picked up in yoga class and these stretches have improved my sitting. I also did down-dog, which is named after the stretch a dog does when it sticks its butt in the air and lengthens its spine down to the outstretched forepaws. Anything else? Oh yeah. A very brief boat pose. That one is probably the one that puts the most stress on my upper back. You sit on the floor, legs straight out in front and lean back, then you lift your legs so you're balancing in a V-shape on your butt.

Nothing seemed painful last night. I had to do a lot of head and shoulder shaking to integrate the moves. I lay down. I felt okay.

This morning I woke with a migraine. I took medicine for it, hoping I could head it off before it became incapacitating. Didn't quite work. Finally I had to call work and say I wouldn't be able to make it in. It's mid-afternoon now and my head is feeling kind of light and wobbly, my neck stiff, and my body generally fragile. But I'm hungy! A nice change from the nausea that had me hunched over the toilet at 8 a.m.

kisses

Until Sundy I never would have believed I could ask a cat to kiss me. We'd been playing with one of Kent's weaving reeds. I was lying on my belly on the floor, propping myself up on my elbows and Sundy was poking at the reed where it lay between us. I said, "Give me a kiss." I made kissy sounds with my lips. Kent was watching and started giving Sundy lines, "I'm a cat. You're embarrassing me."

Sundy arched his back, rubbing against the couch. He dipped his head. "Kiss kiss," I said, my lips softly popping. Finally Sundy lowered his face to my mouth and sniffed. I felt the soft hairs around his mouth on my lips and his breath. That counts as a kiss. He's done it uninvited. But it feels extra special when I ask and he obliges.

comments on "inevitable spraying", version 1

At a party in SF Sunday I was making a new acquaintance. Rachel, her name was. Her husband was sitting to my left and he & I each had a plate of food in his lap. When David offered to fetch her her own plate Rachel insisted she wasn't hungry. The three of us had shared a few of those what-do-you-do generalities ... David is an architect, Rachel works in PR. I work at the library. Rachel & David were related to the party's hosts by marriage, I think, one of them the sibling of the host's sister's husband, something like that. Rachel had decided to mingle a bit and was rising from her chair when I had an inkling her face, which had seemed familiar in a she looks like someone I know but isn't sort of way, actually was a face I knew, somehow. Abruptly I said, "Rachel, what's your last name?" "Dacus," she said. That would be Rachel Dacus the poet. So I dropped my full name and she recognized it from our online poetry interactions. And she sat back down and we talked shop. Poetry, that is.

Among other things we talked about revision and workshopping and I said I will now & then post a poem on LoveSettlement from one of my old notebooks. Then I will comment on it and post revisions, which I will comment on, noting what changes I like, what still isn't working, hopes for improvements, dismay over lack of progress. I haven't done that in awhile. Last night I started reading through Tales of the Blue & Yellow Sun / Work Journal, Part Two, a notebook from 1982 & 1984 which I've mined for other poems I've revised here. Apropos to what Rachel said yesterday about poems that would detract from one's carefully-cultivated reputation, poems which should be burned in order to prevent their being posthumously discovered, I paged past "I walk a night of solitary lights. / Follow the candles as they bob, / the lines singing Ave Maria." (from the "Ave Maria" sequence in Disney's Fantasia?) and "Ghosts close-up / reveal their intentions / unlike politicians on talk shows / who hide behind polyester ties when cornered" ... These weren't offering the potential I was looking for. As I said to Rachel, however, when I was a baby poet I had to give myself permission to try things, just to write, to commit failure to the permanence of the bound notebook.

When I decide on a poem to post here I want a poem that has interesting things going on in it. I also want to have no idea or no clear idea how those interesting things could join up to make an interesting whole. I want the process to be a challenge. I don't want to pick a poem that with a tweak or two would be finished. I want something to look back at me with some defiance, to resist when I try to push it one way or another.

"Inevitable spraying" -- the title is merely a phrase from the poem -- was written in July or August 1984.

"inevitable spraying"

Two words said in conjunction
like an inevitable spraying of vigor
lost all hope of underlying success
while the men of project W
performed fellatio on the other wives’
three dildoes encountered for
men of distinction alarming
disarming qualities of imprecise
calculation where quantum medication
is concerned in all quarters
and related conquettries.
The breach of trust in infilitrated
relationships she viewed from afar
like thinly disguised sunglasses
seldom removes taboos unknown
to Mr. Squid’s third left lung
Unbother Mrs. Torrid’s left pet
called King Fisher who telltales
four-wished call beckoners
Unassumed by revealing naked
celebrationists.

cat battles

Sundy and Sutra are brothers. They like wrassling with each other. They charge across the house, one in pursuit of the other. One lunges from behind the couch or out from under the table when the other is passing.

Sutra likes to lie on his back, his big fluffy belly making him look extra big, while Sundy pounces on him from above. Sometimes Sutra makes small mao sounds, usually when Sundy seems to be on top or in control. Sundy is always silent. Neither ever hisses.

I was watching one of these tussles this morning ... the two cats were facing each other, sitting up. Each was resting on a left forepaw so he could raise his right. Whap! went Sundy's paw on Sutra's face. Swat! went Sutra's paw on Sundy's face. Whap! Swat! Whap! Swat!

I had to laugh, which made Sutra look at me and broke up that particular interaction.

would've made a nice picture

Sundy poked his nose into the bathroom. He must've come from poking around under the porch. The whiskers that jut up above his eyes had acquired some dust/dead moss/leaves, some sort of lightweight detritus affixed to the whisker by spiderweb and nicely symmetrical, the longest whisker over each eye so enhanced. He looked like he had antennas.

it is so raining

I ate lunch at a cafe and walking home it rained so hard my socks got wet through my shoes. Fortunately the clothes were done drying so I could take out my floppy wool socks and put them on. That felt good. It is cold here.

I read in one of last year's New Yorkers that with the rising water due to global warming the Netherlands are (is?) going to get flooded really bad. Most of the county is lower than sea level and they can't just keep building higher dikes. I hope Michael's baby saves the world when he grows up. Save Holland, baby!

My APE

The weather report has rain all this week. Rain! Damn. It's only sprinkled so far today. Dunno 'f them clouds currently blotching up my view are going to let loose or just drift by.

Yesterday I went to APE, the Alternative Press Expo. Over at DIR I listed what I bought.

Being as I was there by myself it was nice running into a few familiar faces. Tara, the head of North Branch ... Rory, the owner of Comic Relief ... Jennifer Joseph, publisher of Manic D Press ... and chatting briefly with some of the creators at their booths.

In past years I've always had trouble carrying around my booty because these folks aren't retailers, really, so they don't have a big stock of bags to drop the wares into. So I brought along a plastic grocery bag (plastic cuz of the rain), but when I grabbed it from the cache at home I thought, well, since the vendors don't tend to have bags I could bring some extras to offer them. So I brought a wad. Whenever I bought something I asked if the vendor "could use any bags, because I brought extra." "You're providing a service," said Justin Hall. It felt a little goofy but in a cute way.

I gave one to Tara when she said she'd had to make two trips to her car to offload her purchases.

I forgot all about the panels and just wandered the hall until exhaustion set in.

Mark States

Mark States has transformed himself from mild-mannered coffeeshop poet of the 90s to fierce slam poet of the 00s. He's still a skinny little dude and he doesn't look scary even with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low on his forehead, his wet eyes gleaming in their cave.

But Mark's connected with some rough personal material -- growing up on the mean streets, getting beat up, drugs in the family, being so poor he had to skip meals, etc -- and he's upped his performance chops. He's got most of his pieces memorized and he even makes some illustrative gestures. That upthrust fist still doesn't look like it's going to sock it to the Man but it does help keep your attention.

Poets just don't put the work into performance that they oughta. I don't. I muse to myself about doing a few slams, enough to see what happens to my presentation, to my work. Enough to see if I connect with the crowd.

Mark's example sure demonstrates how distinct the coffeeshop is from the slam, genrewise. Mark says he's got a good chance of making this year's Berkeley Slam Team. Judging by his performance at last night's Poetry & Pizza I can believe it. Mark's put in the work.

Info Desk Blogging

I'm happily ensconced now at the Claremont Branch. Not that things haven't gone wrong or weird. Our computers have gone down a couple times, which is harried making. But the problems are different problems than the ones in Technical Services, so, you know, the novelty is good.

Right now I'm seated at the Information Desk where I answer reference questions. While sitting here I glance around. Nearby are racks of uncataloged paperbacks. By "uncataloged" I mean you can't search the library's catalog and find these paperbacks listed; it's purely a browsing collection. I remember glancing at one of the books and thinking, "Lethem. He's supposed to be good. Maybe I'll check that one out."

About fifteen minutes ago a patron came to the desk -- my first reference question of the day -- and asked if I could help him find a book. The catalog says the book is on the shelf, but he went to the shelf and it wasn't there. The title? "Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem" ... My eyes probably dilated. I turned my head to the left and stared for a beat at "Motherless Brooklyn", the very book I'd been considering taking home. "Would you like a paperback copy?" I said. The patron shrugged. I walked over to the paperback rack and lifted "Motherless Brooklyn" from its place and handed it to him.

I can see clearly the titles of 12 or 13 books on the paperback racks. The coincidence was so odd I almost felt like I'd been set up.

weather

ah. some blue sky. blue sky good.

how hard

How hard is it to write something no one else has ever written anywhere? It sounds like a bit of a challenge, doesn't it? Am I so original that I can concoct a phrase that no one ever anywhere has rigged up just that way, the words in an order perfectly comprehensible but as yet utterly unattempted? I don't know.

Maybe it's easy. Really easy.

What with the recent noise about the Washington Post hiring a rightwinger to be their "conversative voice" in the blogosphere, a blogger who turned out to be a serial plagiarist, I became curious again about how often we (let's say, I) say the same shit as ever'body else.

So I went to my featured poems page and started grabbing phrases that it seemed unlikely anybody else would say. I would put these phrases into Google in quotes and Google would give me back one page. Mine. For instance:

"its distaste for his wrinkled kidneys"

"a thumb you want to plumb him with"

"the mechanical lung and a bathing cutie"

...

Well then. I could try other phrases, phrases that were sure to have been said by others, phrases I maybe even stole from others.

What about:

"does it matter whether john is walking"

"Go and when you come back let me know."

"even the grass bowed."

...

Hm. It's not until I choose really generic language that I start coming up with other pages.

"The picture of three men"

"many roads cross"

"It's okay, he whispers"

... in all three of these searches I found my own poems easily (only for "many roads cross" did I have to scan past the first page of results).

4/12 Update: Funny. When you click on the links above, this blog entry shows up alongside the original poem. Sometimes the blog outranks the poem.

tow

The Berkeley Police are good at getting their car.

Yesterday Kent went to hop in his car and toodle off to work. Only there was a blockage. Someone had parked across the driveway. Every so often someone does this.

We always wonder what's going on with them. It's pretty easy to tell you've parked across a driveway. The red paint on the curb is worn murky. And the curb is kinda low anyway. But the weeds are getting high in the dirt strip between the sidewalk and the curb so it's obvious when the weeds stop and the driveway begins. I mean, it's obvious to us. Must be obvious to most people because impacted as parking gets around here there's seldom a car parked across the driveway.

Then there's yesterday morning. Kent came in, "Where's the police number?" Groggily, still abed, I said, "Look in the phone book." Kent found the nonemergency number, dialed, read the dispatcher the car's make and license.

This was 8:15 or 8:30. By 9 the towtruck was rumbling away with its prey. Unless you're in a big hurry a half hour to 45 minutes isn't a traumatic inconvenience. The police officers are always friendly, though calling a tow truck must seem kind of a dumb duty. And the towtruck operators are efficient and courteous. I suppose the city gets a bit of change off the business.

When last I came home to find a car parked across the drive I was walking and Kent hadn't yet driven in. I made the call and the process took about 30-40 minutes. It's a good service. When Kent got home that evening I told him, "Ten minutes earlier and you wouldn't have been able to get in the driveway."

I remember Mom would get irked by people parking across her drive. I don't remember her calling the police to have any cars removed. But I do remember on Apple Blossom weekend in Sebastopol parking would get bad so Mom would haul sawhorses out to the curb and set them up in front of the drive, red rags hanging off them, and a NO PARKING sign. Nobody ever moved the sawhorses in order to park there.

Back to yesterday. Kent is gone. It's 9:20. I'm lying in bed. Still feeling groggy from a thrashy sort of night (man, this bug I caught has been a bear) and I hear a heavy knocking on the front door. I lie there wondering about getting up to answer. Voices. Can't make out them out, 'cept for something about "parking" ... Uh huh. Parking. Pound pound pound goes the caller. I lie there in the dim room trying to think what getting involved in this story would do for me. Would I offer them use of our phone to call the towing company? If my car had disappeared I figure I'd call the police. "My car is missing!" They'd happily tell me, as Kent says, "the good guys got it." There's a grocery store a two minute walk from here; there are pay phones there. But doesn't everybody have a cell phone these days?

And would they be upset, would they want to tell me their story? Would they be upset with me? What's with the angry pounding? I didn't get up. They went away.

Sure, once in awhile you make a dumb mistake. It was obvious you shouldn't have. But you did. Didn't stop Kent & me from musing over it last night. When did they realize they'd parked in a driveway? When they got back and their car was missing? Oh. Look. A driveway. When we were parked there we couldn't see it.

Each time I think yeah they knew but they were in a hurry. Park there two minutes, ten tops, rush to the store or to the friend's house and be right back. Surely I couldn't be so unlucky as to have my car towed in that time. The car yesterday was sitting there at least an hour before the owners returned.

We used to think, you know, if they left a note on their dashboard what house they were visiting we could go roust 'em to move their damn car. They'd get an earful but save the impound lot charges. But then we discovered how efficient the city towing service is.

a second job

Man, being sick is hard work!

I'm feeling better today, 'spect I'll go to work tomorrow. All eight hours? Oh. Yeah. Sure. I think I'll be able to remain upright.

I went out for lunch. Had a pizza & a small coffee at Bel Forno, a cafe around the corner that's pleasant to hang out in. They tend to have the classical or light jazz station playing, both of which are (except for commercials) easy to tune out. The food is good and not too expensive. And there are windows all around. The view is mostly streets and parking lots (Long's, Safeway) but the natural light is the best.

I wrote & read. Finished Bitter Fame, the biography of Sylvia Plath. I've begun reading Plath's Collected. Rather dark, isn't she? I added another line to my one-line-a-day poem. The restriction is amusing me. Sometimes the line I write today is pretty much the line I would have written yesterday but mostly it isn't.

Should I burn a new mix CD? Maybe I ought to hold off till we buy a new stack of recordable CDs, as we're quite low.

title swap

I sent Steve Mueske three prospective poem titles. He sent me three.

These are three I sent him:

Crossing the Water with My Rubber Ducky
The Monument to the Empty-faced Girl
Night is the Mother of Bad Laughter

These are the three Steve sent me:

Weapons of Minutiae
Light Fuse and Get Away
This Morning, Over

... I've been mulling the last of those three. Have written versions in my head. This is what I've committed to the page:


This Morning, Over


We see clouds. We see clouds, over.

Yes, clouds. What we see are clouds, over.

Can we describe them? No. They are white, over.

They are frequently white. Sometimes they are not white, over.

Yes, sometimes they are walking, over.

Yes, I said, they are walking. We cannot see the earth, over.

Are we on the shoulders of clouds? How could we tell that? over

I understand. Repeat, I understand, over.

We don’t know how far we have to go. Do you have any idea where we are? over

Repeat, do you have any fix on our location? Can you make a guess? over

We see clouds, yes. That’s what we see, over.

ugh

A scratchy throat, fever coming on yesterday. So I've been home all day today ... I've already called in sick for tomorrow. It's been ugly stormy out. If it'd been cozy sunny I probably would've taken a book out to the lawn chair in the back yard. Instead I've been trying to keep warm. Is cold!

what to say

You don't have anything to say, right? So you look at the space available for a castle or a hut and you think, I could speak any sort of structure into existence, then walk inside and look around, spy on the people who live there, sniff what's cooking on the stove, scoop up the cat and rub its head, then lie down on the bed and wait for him or her or them or it -- who lives in this house -- to step in and lie down. Lie right down beside.

But ... neh ... that's kinda creepy. Kinda creepy, yeh? Walking into an imaginary house, poking around, ending up on the bed where something unmentionable could happen.

Something you wouldn't want to talk about if you could, tongue all tied up with a leather strap and buckles or numb with novacaine, the room spinning like a vinyl single at 12 rpm. There are all sorts of things not to talk about.

It's better that way. Holding your tongue. Submissive tongue. Yours a language with no word for that anyway, no word for what you don't want to say so can't think, can't think about anyway, a notion you can't entertain because you have no place to do entertaining. The revolution is the turning of the room. Just when you thought the door was available, a door you could get to if you could get off the bed, a door you step through to begin the journey, the journey ready to take you to the new land, the land where words for what you can't say are waiting ready on shelves in haberdasheries and drugstores.

Just when you thought you saw it, already open a crack, the door has rotated away and all you face is wall. Maybe there's a picture on the wall. But what of?

Sutra in a curl

photo credit: KLM

a line a day

Jack has been working a poem, adding only a line or two a day. I'm not sure he's still keeping up the one I'm referring to. While he was going I took his first line then riffed on his subsequent lines, posting them as replies to his poem as it lengthened. This is the last bit I posted at Jack's blog:

Trees don't get confused.
Although I have known trees confused.
Birds unfold wind and sky and distance
grows smaller, the sky next to your mouth.
This road goes here & there, distancing
itself from leaves. The hand at the end
of the mind looms, an elm woven
over its knowns, a shuttle zooming
into focus the means of ends.

*

I've never done a poem only writing one line per day. Seems awful restrictive. Unnecessarily so. But I haven't been pumping out poems lately either. So a few days ago I wrote a line that's a bit of collage from the titles of the books in my bedside pile. In subsequent days I've added one line, using essentially the same method. I'll see it goes.

first day

I started the day reading books to a first grade class at Washington School. Dem kids was kewt! There was a low chair set up for me. And they'd all signed their names to a "Welcome, Mr Ingersoll!" sign which included a snapshot of the class standing at attention. Yes, I brought that home.

The children all gathered on the floor before the reading chair and I did my best to hold the book open wide and often found myself reading the text from the side or upside down.

I started with The Eye of the Needle. They really got into it. The Eskimo boy goes out to find food for himself and his grandmother but he is "SO hungry" that whenever he comes upon a piece of meat -- whether a tiny fish, a salmon, a seal, or a walrus -- he gobbles it up and promises himself he will find something bigger for grandmother. At last he swallows an entire whale and slakes his thirst by sucking down a river. When he goes home to grandmother she rescues the bounty her grandson has swallowed by making him pass through the magic eye of her sewing needle, which releases the fish, the seal, the walrus and the whale.

Then I read And Tango Makes Three, the gay penguin story. The male penguin couple Silo & Roy build their own rocky nest, just like all the het penguins. But they have no egg. One finds an egg-shaped rock but brooding it produces no chick. "Why do you think that was so?" the first grade teacher asked. One of the boys tsked, "Because it's a rock!"

Some kids seemed a bit dubious about penguin boys in love but nobody protested when the zookeeper introduced an egg into Silo & Roy's nest and the two raised a chick the keeper named Tango. When I got to the page that showed the family swimming together among all the other penguins, one child cried out, "There they are!"

So that was fun. A good Drop Everything And Read Day, eh? Maybe I'll do it again next year.

I then caught the bus to the Claremont branch. I was at the Circulation Desk all day (though in the future I will split my time between it and the Information Desk). My only real beef with the RFID self-checkout machines was their whirring fans. Except shortly after noon all the computers started fritzing. Hassle! Curiously the self-checkout machines seemed to be available more often than the staff machines.

Still, I was glad to be out in the world again, away from the closed-in cubicle life.

Somewhat to my horror I see the break room has a television!

who notices

The months go by and you're convinced you have three readers (occasional). Then you get an email from somebody you've written about. And maybe it wasn't even anything recent. In Val Gerstle's case I mentioned her poem in a post from January 05.

To my surprise (as I noted in my last post) a Google search for "Val Gerstle" presents LoveSettement as the first result. Curious about Val's lack of web presence and LoveSettlement's relative prominence I tried other search engines, yahoo and dogpile. Though dogpile claims it includes search results from Google neither it nor yahoo found the LuvSet mention. That's what I'd expect if not for Google. I mean, technorati, which says it restricts its searches to blogs, will sometimes overlook mine.

I don't even have a stats service these days so I'm not obsessing about my web presence. It's just curious.

My brother once posted a list on his blog of all the old high school friends he wondered about. He thought, if they google themselves maybe they'll find that I want to know what they're up to and will drop me a line.

I suppose, too, if you want a search engine to discover what you write you should write about subjects that few others are writing about. Don't bother bemoaning the evils of Halliburton or cooing over Brad Pitt. Natter on about someone who is only known to himself or to an exclusive subsubsubset of the technically challenged. It probably helps if their (salty grain of) fame crystalized at least several years before the internet age.

Val Gerstle

I got an email from Val Gerstle:

Hi Glenn,

Who are you? I'm flattered you like my poem.

Val Gerstle

And I thought, Who is Val Gerstle? Lately the only comments on poems I've posted online have been at other poets' blogs and I didn't recall visiting a blog run by a Val Gerstle. So I ran a search in Google for Val Gerstle. And to my surprise this here blog was the first search result. Go ahead, hit the link, I bet it's still true.

a glass of wine with dinner

So I'm feeling kind of groggy. Not in a bad way.

We had a nice meal at a nice place. Haven't been there in awhile.

A little bit of a celebration. Only two more days in Technical Service. I start at Claremont next Tuesday.

I get the feeling I'm the only person who's ever voluntarily reduced his work hours. Are most parttimers at the library clamoring for fulltime? As the preponderance of jobs at the library are parttime I suppose most people who are unhappy about the number of hours they work are going to be people who work parttime. And maybe since I have one of those few so coveted parttime jobs others think it strange I'd give it up.

This is a very expensive place to live. Can I make it without fulltime work?

You can't buy time. And I could sure use some.

Info Desk Blogging

OK. Only so many times I can stand blogging about people asking me where the bathrooms are or where the videos are shelved or how to get a library card.

Then there's rain. We had some today. I did bring my umbrella. It's not raining now. Maybe it will be raining by the time I get to go home. Saw on the weather report last night that we're to have a series of rainstorms through the week, each colder than the last.

While I was writing a pretty young woman appeared who started signing. Naturally I broke out my rusty ASL and fumbled along. She was surprised and pleased, which made me self-conscious of course, my mind getting blanker all the time. I had to ask her to fingerspell two & three times before I got a word. She seemed more amused than perturbed by my denseness.

Sundy occupies a favored roost

Oh. Hey. What's that? A dangling camera strap? Or a mouse tail? Did you say "mouse tail"?

photos by KLM

I'm outta here

photo credit: nga's blog


I've been working with these folks for the past four years. I'm in the lower right, eyes closed, showing teeth.

I have a volunteer

I will link to stanza VI of the Open Source Poem when it has been posted.

Update: You may now chase the Open Source poem as it skitters away.

please volunteer!

Please volunteer to write stanza VI of the open source poem. I think it's a fun idea and I don't think it's at all relevant whether the stanza is good, great, or lousy. I don't want to tag anyone, as I've been doing lately with blog memes. I want somebody to volunteer!

open source poem V

first review the earlier stanzas

Consider the medium before you, the dusky
moment continued in the mind, a shadow the heart
throws over reason, its little mystery squeamish
at angles, at cowbells, at trousers, at veal
and its reveal, at game rules on boxtops on lazy
hazy Sundays. Whose innertube turns in foam below
the treatment plant?

then follow this link to stanza 6

one less record store

It was overcast and a few sprinkles had dampened the street. We were thinking about where to go to get a bite to eat, get a little out of the house time before tackling chores. Up the hill to Euclid to the burrito place? Get in the car and drive down to Gilman for the Gilman Grill? Usually going to that end of town means shopping at Target or buying pet supplies.

Since I spend five days a week downtown I usually don't suggest going there on the weekends. But we liked the Mediterranean place in its latest incarnation and it's a block too far to fit comfortably in my lunch hour (half hour, that is). Plus there are a couple interesting stores to poke around in nearby if you're in that mood.

I grabbed my umbrella and Kent put on a baseball cap and we strolled down Shattuck, the rain beginning a steadier patter. As I chomped my chicken shawarma sandwich and Kent forked hummus onto a wedge of pita the rain got heavier. The food was good and, full, I felt stronger, my wobbly head settled. How about Mod Lang? I said. I haven't been in there in awhile.

Last I was in I bought some two-dollar sampler CDs to listen to at my desk at work.

But the storefront was empty. One less record store in Berkeley. Seems they've moved to El Cerrito.

We stepped over next door to Eudemonia because I've only been in there maybe once and am always curious about it. Up front there are shelves of board games for sale and videogame fuel (Hostess cupcakes, candybars, etc). The second third of the room is computer terminals about half of which were taken up by young guys playing videogames. The ones I saw were mostly first person shooters. The back of the room is tables for board and card game play (Magic the Gathering, not poker). There was one group of four or five twenty-somethings hunched over colorful cards.

I guess none of this hooked Kent or me so we ducked back out into the rain and walked home.

I got what I wanted

After all that.

I got what I wanted.

I can't believe it.

I wanted a 20 hour position at one of the branches of the Berkeley Public Library.

This past Thursday I got a call from the head of the Claremont branch. She offered me the very 20 hour job I'd been pining for.

It's not like it came out of the blue. I followed up clues, showing up at Claremont when I heard there was a possibility, asking questions, offering up hopefully relevant employment history & personal facts, gleaming with enthusiasm. And I got friendly, receptive response, it seemed. At no point did I decide I had it in the bag. Even when I got very encouraging intimations. What else can I say? I'd think to myself. What more is there to do?

Now I'm thinking, What do I need to do to prepare?

A different question. An excellent question. I'm so excited. Whee!

What's on my desk right now

Having been tagged with the 5 Weird Habits meme Laurel tagged me back with What's On My Desk Right Now.

What's on my desk right now

The iPod mini which is charging via a cable hooked up to the computer (a Mac)

The dock for K's new camera

another gray cable with a twist tie keeping it from sprawling ... is that the one for the other camera?

a wooden clothespin

three pens -- two ballpoint, one red felt tip

various scraps of paper which I'm not going to rifle through ... the top one is a checkout receipt for the last two DVDs I brought home from the library (La Cage aux Folles ... eh ... and Bear Cub, a Spanish movie about a gay man who unexpectedly becomes guardian of his sister's young son ... and yet isn't a saint, my god; I liked it)

biz cards: one for something called ArcSource (?), purity (that's a line of juices, I think), a big eyeball (for a glass blower?)

a five dollar bill with an apology written on it, a curiosity we can't bear to spend I guess

a slender blue flashlight

the speakers for the computer

on another scrap an url for a description of a roadtrip thru Indian lands

some phone numbers but the names disappear under papers

the True Love DVD which I blogged about recently

...

Since I discovered Pam had tagged me with the Weird Habits meme by reading her blog she'll have to discover I've tagged her with the Desk meme by reading it here.

comments on "The Baker/Bread & Fish", version four

What to say, what to say ... Question marks. We have two of them now. And contractions. One more than last time. 6 stanzas, 4 lines per stanza. All the lines look about the same length. Several instances of enjambment. Last two lines a rhyming couplet. Don't ask me about stresses.

I went back to the very first version, the poem as written in my notebook (then copied to the computer). It's called The Townspeople and the speaker has a much sharper tongue about the message "you" are imparting. Hm. I think if I'd started by reading my first version rather than the later revision I chose as seed for revision here I would have gone in another direction. I suppose I still could ...

The Townspeople


Everybody of consequence in the unincorporated town
had gathered at the low hill's broad foot, their faces turned
slightly up, to see you. Your words swam over their heads,
silvery and quick and nobody could quite grasp them. The townspeople had come
together gradually, drawn first by the moist fragrance of baking bread,
then by the sight of their friends and relations in a group,
and stayed under the sound of rushing water that filled the trees and into which
your words leapt, tails flicking, jaws agape. Their faces shone
in the light of your wisdom like stones in a hurried, clean stream,
you thought, and so let your words get bigger and more muscular,
kinglike in the splendor of their gleam, grandfatherly in their nostalgia
for the golden age. At the table afterwards you buttered a thick slice
for every one of them as they waited patiently in a long line,
and finally each exclaimed to you as to their neighbors
over the nutty heartiness of the bread, the crust that was not too tough
but really wonderfully chewy. A few even went ahead and bought
a loaf. And one bought three but said you needed something
more than butter. You needed thin slices of salted fish; and juicy,
aromatic onions, which he had in quantity, the blessing of a harvest
so generous it was wasteful, but now, he could see, was
a miracle, really. You were just the person God had sent in answer to his prayers.

"The Baker/Bread & Fish", version four

Bread and Fish


In air, silver and sudden, but its weight lasts,
fish vanished into water. The word?
A word’s like that, flashing against what force
always pushes forward, its hurry its pace

to everywhere, carrying everything one way,
even mountains. A word’s weight’s its sense,
yes, but mostly weightless, all air and water
and wriggle. At the broad foot of the hill

they bunched up, your listeners, those
seeing others gathered came too, gathering
for what you were giving, a story or stories.
What you said got to them, moved, invisible,

the light bending as in water, bending around
the object. The bread on your truck was warm still
from the morning baking, then words weren’t all
that filled the air. Their faces caught the ordinary light

not like stones in the waterfall’s pool,
shimmering and jeweled. So what? Ripples
hide them anyway. When you finally served
and the people spread out, a line that grew

longer as they talked among themselves, you
got your first unselfconscious smiles from
mouths chewing. “I know,” one man said,
“I don’t know much. But this is good. This bread.”

Sutra bites Sundy

Brotherly love.

photo credit: KLM

Kent bought a new extra thin digital camera. This is one of his first pictures.

missing post?

I've read about others having their blog posts "eaten by blogger". Seems to have happened to me now. I posted my Five Weird Habits on Friday but the post seems to be gone.

Only it isn't quite. It's not on my front page. It's not listed in the archive.

But it still exists. I know because I posted links to it in the comments of the bloggers I tagged. And the links still lead to the post. Here it is. Wherever "here" is.

Sundy in sun

photo credit: KLM

brr

Just got the cat weather report. Must be raining/misting outside as when Sutra presented for strokes his fur had a dewing of tiny drops.

Is cold! Plus which I'm feeling achy and tired. Hope it's not another cold/flu. Should I take a nice hot bath?

Watched La Cage aux Folles last night. First time. The original French movie. I can see how someone could look at it and say, hey, there's lotsa places we could add singing & dancing. And it's not like there are a lot of scene changes so it wouldn't be hard to adapt it for the stage. (Wikipedia entry says it was originally a play.) But I haven't seen the stage version. And I haven't seen the American movie version with Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, The Birdcage. La Cage is a cute, slight movie, both sweet and filled with homophobia. I laughed, was bored, was uncomfortable. It's not a film I'd recommend against seeing, but not worth moving heaven & earth for.

comments on "The Baker/Bread & Fish", version three

This poem is reminding me of a poem I wrote years ago, "The Crane in Flight". "Crane" was my most revised poem. Back when I was living in my mother's house and there was no computer in the house I remember crossing things out & writing new words then recopying everything by hand when the draft started to become hard to read. I filled page after page after page. "Crane" was about something being said, a something that wasn't revealed, and the word was likened to a bird in air.

This time it's fish.

When I posted version two I asked myself if it mattered what was being said. Doesn't it?

In the gospel according to Mark Jesus fed the people, but the gospel doesn't say he said anything -- other than, "How many loaves you got? Well, guess we can make do."

The words of the eating man at the end, then, become the only quoted words. Doesn't this give them a great weight? I'm trying to decide how artificial he sounds. Is it just cute to make him ... dumb? humble? what if he thought the bread bad?

When I read something written in the second person I tend to read it as though the writer were speaking about me. Thus I judge, as I read, whether I really would be doing these things.

The baker is never described, not even gendered. The second person allows that.

Last night when I was working this one over it was really annoying me. It's not bugging me tonight. It's not set, I'm seeing places to fiddle. The mixed metaphor of water & grain has been unmixed, except "gathered up" doesn't sound all that much like water.

Version one caused me trouble because ... because it looked like I was trying to make a Robert Hass poem, maybe, Hass having been my teacher at about this time ... and I'm not Robert Hass ... The people gathering because people were gathering echoes a poem I copied out by William Matthews ... There were words in version one I just would not use unless I'm goofing ... "aromatic", for instance ... "the blessing of a harvest so generous" ... "the fragrance of bread still warm after the baking" ... I might like them in someone else's poem ... but in my own poem? No. Why? They sound affected? They seem to be saying something but aren't? Hm. "aromatic", "fragrance" ... how do you describe a smell? Bready smelling!

"The Baker/Bread & Fish", version three

A weight in air, silver and sudden, the fish gone back
into water. A word’s like that, flashing
against the force always pushing back, which rushes,
indifferent, in a hurry that is its pace, as it carries

everything, even mountains, its way.
A word will get through, its weight
its sense, but weightless mostly,
every word water and air and wriggle.

At the broad foot of the low hill they bunched up,
your listeners, those who had seen others gathered
so gathered themselves up for the story or stories
that flickered through as they turned an ear,

them the body water forms standing, and whatever
you said seemed larger, the light bending around.
What you said moved through them and
went on, homeward. The bread on your truck was

warm from the morning baking, so words weren’t all
that got them, were not all that filled the air. Their faces shone
in ordinary light, not jeweled up like colored stones
in the waterfall’s sink, neither polished nor glimmering.

When you finally served, and the people spread out,
a line that grew longer as they talked among
themselves, you got your first unselfconscious smiles
from mouths chewing. “I don’t know,” one man said

as he bit into the butter and the crust, “I don’t know
things like you. This, you know, is good. This bread.”

Info Desk Blogging

We've got a sunny day, but the air is chill. Feels like it's thinking about snow.

Here I am again. Second time this week. Subbing this time for someone else. It's been steady, not hectic.

If you're ever in the Berkeley Public Library there are no restrooms on the first floor. Don't ask me why. We have restrooms on the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th floors. There are restrooms on the 4th floor, too, you know, but we don't tell the adults that because those 'strooms are kidling only.

The electronic resources training today was about newspapers, newspapers online. Not the newspaper's website. No, these are articles from newspapers. Here's one from the Oakland Tribune. If you don't have a Berkeley library card you may not be able to follow that link. So I'll tell you what it is. It's an article about drinking in Russia. "Perhaps as many as 30 percent of all Russian deaths are caused, in one way or another, by an addiction to the bottle." Sounds bad, right? "It's become a vicious cycle: When it gets unbearably cold (and that's saying something in such chilly environs as Moscow and St. Petersburg), some turn to drink in an attempt to ward off the pain. Too much firewater causes some inebriates to pass out in the snow. They then freeze to death. It's not pretty. Makes you ever-thankful for our relatively mild winters here in the Bay Area." Thankful for the lack of drunkcicles? The not-frozen-solid kind are easier to scrape off the sidewalk?

Info Desk Blogging

Lovely warm day here in Berkeley.

Steve Mueske, who runs the ezine Three Candles, is starting to publish physical books now. Being as I work in a library he wondered if I had any hints on how to market to libraries. I didn't. Curious, no?

However, I asked the head of acquisitions and she said, "Reviews. Librarians buy in response to reviews." She said she would put together a list of likely places for me. She is very busy. I'll wait a few days and ask again. In the meantime this American Library Association fact sheet might be useful. The ALA notes, "Individual libraries are responsible for their own collections." There is no central source for disseminating marketing materials to libraries. If it's your hometown public library it'd probably behoove you to walk in yourself or ring up and present yourself as a local author, as libraries like to stock what the locals are writing.

comments on "The Baker", version two

Title change to "Bread and Fish" ... I recall now that when I previously titled this piece I didn't want to refer that baldly to the loaves & fishes & Jesus story. Oh, what the heck. I've looked back at last to the first version; it was titled "The Townspeople".

Yes, I realize the water with fish swimming in it suddenly becomes a sheaf of grain and that that's a mixed metaphor. It prefigures the bread? You gotta water the grain in the fields, too, right?

What is the content of the speech? The sermon? ... The poem is making the claim that the specifics aren't relevant? I've always been suspicious of such a stance in poetry.

But I do like the words as fish. That they swim through us.

"The Baker", version two

Bread and Fish


The fish leaping leaves a weight in air, silver and sudden.
A word will do that. Yours.
A flashing against the force that pushes back, that rushes,
indifferent, in a hurry that is no hurry but which carries

everything, even mountains, its own way.
A word will hurry homeward through, hurry carrying
its burden of sense, wriggling as it dashes off water,
every word water and air and idea.

At the broad foot of the low hill they bunched up,
your listeners, those who had seen others gathered
so gathered themselves up in a sheaf lightly bound
by what you were saying, your story or stories

and them the river, the lake, the body the water
forms standing. Or it went over their heads
like waterfowl, too lately left earth to set down yet,
going on over. The bread on your truck

warm from the morning baking, so it wasn’t just
words that caught the attention. Their faces shone
in ordinary light, not jeweled up like colored stones
in the waterfall’s sink, neither polished nor glimmering.

When you finally served, and the people spread out,
a line that grew longer as they talked among
themselves, you got your first unselfconscious smiles
from mouths chewing. “I don’t know,” one man said

as he bit into the butter and the crust, “I don’t know
nothing about that. But this. This bread is good.”

John Cleese

Kent and I saw John Cleese Thursday night at Zellerbach. The show was a mix of autobiography and vaudeville. The best thing for a comedian? A boring childhood. His evidence? All the Pythons were from boring towns. The only American of the group? From Minnesota.

Cleese is proud to have a lemur named after him. He had a giant picture of it on the stage. It was accompanied by giant pictures of his mother, his father, one of his seventeen cats, and himself in his first starring role.

His mother died in 2001, I think. Having been born in the last year of the 19th Century, she lived all the way through the 20th. Of all the big events of that century, he said, she only noticed one. World War II. And that was because the Germans bombed her town. Why did the Germans bomb this boring no-account little town? Cleese said, Maybe they had a sense of humor?

He stuck around after the show and took a few questions. "Can you still do those silly walks?" "Not since the hip replacement surgery. I can't imagine how I ever did those silly walks. It must have been I was so skinny and had so little muscle structure."

Cleese's father's name was Cheese but he got so tired of being teased that when he joined the army he changed the H to an L. Son John says his parents each pronounced it differently, his father rhyming it with Cheese, his mother rhyming it with Peace.

Don't call it a gay cowboy movie

Call it a gay shepherd movie.

Anyway, it's GAY. It's not a love story that happens to be about two men. It's a GAY story. Because it is a love story that happens to be about two men. That's what GAY is. That's GAY.

At the New York Review of Books Daniel Mendelssohn makes the point at length.

Info Desk Blogging

There's a quarter sitting in front of me on the desk. I accepted it from a patron who was trying to buy a paperback from the self-service Friends of the Library book sale shelves on the second floor. I told her there is a strongbox cable-locked to the top of the bookcase, and she wrinkled up her brow. "I ... didn't see anything ... like that." Then she turned pleading, "Would you mind ..?"

There's a cart in the hall near the Technical Services Dept that's filled up with books. These are books that didn't sell in the Friends bookstore and employees are invited to make off with them. There was a new batch this morning and I saw two or three I liked. But I have too many books! So I am leaving these alone for now. If someone else decides to take 'em -- great! If they're still sitting on the cart next week then I'll either have talked myself out of them or no longer be able to resist.

comments on "The Baker", version one

Ye Gods. I can't even bring myself to read this one clear through.

Yes, it's challenge time again at the ol' LoveSettlement.

Glenn plucks a poem from his poetry files (year 1989!) and throws it up on his blog. Throws it right on up there. Doesn't change a thing. (Though, actually, this is the fourth version of the poem in the files, so, no, this is not really truly "version one".)

I'm not sure why this one makes me cringe. It's not the bad writing -- the writing I can get myself to read isn't bad bad. I mean, it might even be good. It's hard to tell when your eyes keep flinching. But that reaction is a good sign, right? It means there's a fever in the poem, a shivering, a dis-ease (or maybe a plain ol' Disease), that has power, that gives the poem a strength. Better a shudder than a shrug, right?

"The Baker", version one

Your words leapt. Brilliant, shimmering leaping, as though throwing off scales of light,
the weight the silvery fish leaves in air, held there by its suddenness.
Your words grew into the insistence of home, a place far from where
many of us have ended up. Your words held in them rooms long since closed, and as you spoke
it was easy to see them open. No wonder everybody came.
Everybody of consequence in the town. And everybody who was nobody. At the broad
foot of the low hill they bunched up and only sometimes spoke amongst themselves.
It's true your words swam over their heads, distant as silver and quick and nobody
entirely got them. Drawn first by the fragrance of bread still warm after the baking,
then by the sight of their friends and relations in a group, the townspeople
stayed under the rushing of the river that was the wind through the trees, the river which took on your words as they leapt upward, turned toward a place you, the townspeople,
the words themselves knew well but had not been to in an age none had realized was so long.
The faces of the townspeople shone in the day's ordinary light. Still and bright as stones in a clear stream, you thought.
So you closed your eyes and opened them to the sky.
At the table afterwards the women and men waited in a long line laughing
and pushing each other. Each exclaimed to you and to their neighbors over the glory
of the bread, the crust chewy but not tough, the center moist but not heavy,
every slice redolent of memory. A few even went ahead and bought a loaf.
And one man bought three but he said, as he helped himself to your butter, that you needed something
more than butter. You needed salted fish sliced thin as a fin;
and juicy, aromatic onions, which he had quantity, the blessing of a harvest
so generous he had been certain much would go to waste, but now, he could see, was
a miracle, really. He understood that God had sent you, the answer to his prayers.

what I said to Seth

In response to Seth's post about improving his life I posted the following:

I wish my anger were a better motivator. Too often it turns back on me and gnaws.

At first I used my blog as a diary, but then after talking about someone I found I'd hurt his feelings. That made me stop blogging for a few months. I started up again to respond to another poet who'd slagged me. I figured I could post my version of the story and could direct anyone there who was curious.

My main blog, LoveSettlement, is a mild mix of my diary, my poetry notebook, and a photo blog. I don't lay out really personal stuff but I do like to note major activities -- new job, big vacation, floods. I started my book blog because for years I've kept records of my reading and I don't think the result is really publishable but do think it's interesting. The blogs are informal writing. I try things out. But I know I have a reader or two so I make sure what I post isn't sloppy or tedious.

We are traveling. Even sitting still we are traveling because all throughout our bodies & minds there is motion and time is the traverse of space, the earth turns on its axis and turns about the sun and the sun travels through this galaxy and the galaxy too is moving. A wind of particles is constantly blowing through us and striking us and changing us. And we change merely by sitting or lying down, we tense or relax, the mind wanders or fixates or seems to vanish, the breath comes in, the breath goes out, having been invited, having been asked to leave. And the inviter, the one asking the breath to go -- me?

Let's say

the news coming out of your two by four is of a piece with the raunchy silhouette of a laddish gal from out back yonder, her hair done up in the latest tulips, her lips like a long song you're stuck searching out the words for, words you'd be able to find if you weren't so dog burned crazy with the truckle, if this & that weren't rubbing up in a misty manger, inn lights dancing on the lambs. And let's say you had a map to the nether regions of the lumber yard, where warm sawdust yet tumbles in close sheds, and the blades' fresh oil is sweet enough to slip into like a lip balm, tongue battering the teeth to get them to move, and a tremulous fly opens the way to another corner, his buzz the only noise drying.

Sundy smiling

photo credit -- KLM

cold & rainy

Sutra is licking the rain from his back. As he is on my lap I have to reach around him to type. He doesn't like that.

Jack's blog

is called immaculate conniption.

Info Desk Blogging

Whenever I sit down at the Info Desk I adjust the chair. Chair adjusting is an important skill for the modern office worker. There should be trainings so we can all adjust the various brands of office chair, each one being differently adjustable. You shouldn't settle for an ill fitting chair.

That said, I must say I always forget how to adjust the Info Desk chair and have to fiddle around with the levers, lowering my seat when I mean to shift the angle of the seat back and vice versa.

Last week I emailed a link to this site to one of the librarians. I'd talked to her about my "being a writer" then followed up with the email. I only realized after she replied (with nice words) that I'd intended to send her to my homestead page. This blog is such a miscellany. My homestead page organizes things a bit -- poetry, musings, book talk. Now you know.

T for wa er

waTer

water for tea

heating water for tea

Info Desk Blogging

Every so often someone asks if we have a certain textbook, high school, college, and I say, "We usually don't carry textbooks. And when we have one it's often an old edition."

When a young man found a calculus text today he said, "So I can't keep this out a whole semester, right?"

Um ... No. But that would be why we don't carry many textbooks, I guess. It would be terribly tempting for one person to hang onto it as long as he needed it. Plus which them things are darn expensive.

3 piece suit

I bought a suit. Kent has been needing clothes so we went to a discount clothing store called the Clothing Broker, partly because we couldn't think of any decent department stores nearby. Kent found a suit jacket that he liked but they were all out of shoes his size. I found a dark three piece suit for less than two hundred dollars. I don't have a suit. When we went to the bat mitzvah of one of K's nieces Kent dressed me in one of his old suits. It's too small for him these days and still too big for me. Baggy but not falling off. I looked dressed up. Not having a suit otherwise has not interfered with my life. Still, it seems like I ought to have one. For that businessman look. I like looking all manly normal, however I feel inside. Not saying I don't feel normal, just not manly normal, y'dig?

When one of the salesman saw me wearing the suit he said, "You're not one who puts on weight easily? Add ten pounds and that won't fit."

Nov 1999

I don't know whether it was the very first Poetry & Pizza, but I was throwing away some old papers and came across the notation on the calendar page for November 1999. The first Friday. November 5th.

So P&P has been at it for -- as of last November -- at least six years.

Throwing away papers for me always feels a little bit like throwing away history, like I have some obligation to the future to keep records of the past. But who's going to look at these dry notations? Really. Even if I were to become (posthumously?) a famous person (for what? my poetry?) is there anyone who would go through my old calendars in order to learn about me?

I do find material evidence interesting. You know, how many times did I call in sick that year? when was the last time I went to court for jury duty (1996 -- and I was dismissed after sitting all morning listening to the loud television in the jury pool room and people yakking on cell phones)? It's not like I write EVERYTHING in my journal. There's lots I don't bother to (or forget to) write about.

Kent had filled a grocery bag with old papers to shred. When I got home from work today I sat down and shredded everything in the bag. God, I hope that was okay. All that shredding inspired me to grab a few of my own papers -- the calendars, some old utililty bills -- and shred or discard them, too. Like I said though, it still feels weird.

Info Desk Blogging

My regular Info Desk hour is 4-5 on Monday. What with holidays taking up the past couple Mondays I haven't been Info-ing in awhile.

Busy today! A video that was supposed to be on the hold shelf for a patron isn't. For a disabled patron I quick ran back to the sorting area to check on a video that has been "recently returned" so hasn't made it to the shelf yet -- couldn't find it either. It's so much more satisfying to flourish the very thing they want!

A boy of eight? nine? asked, "Could you direct me to where you have books on astronomy?" His mother standing attentively behind him the boy carefully wrote my answer on his notepaper, "4th floor".

Hey, nobody's asked me where the restrooms are!

True Love addendum

In the post below I talk about a movie a friend is in. But I don't mention the friend's name. Not like it's a secret. His name is Gregg Richardson. There's even a picture of him in a review at Film Monthly. Gregg is the one with glasses.

True Love

A friend is in a movie, a tiny independent movie, that's now available on DVD. True Love is only 72 minutes but it includes seven brief stories. My friend's segment, "Sunday", was filmed at his own house in the Berkeley hills. Two middle aged men are in bed together on a Sunday morning. One wakes to find a Happy Anniversary card on the bedside table. He turns to his lover and mimes making love to him, in order not to wake him. It's sexy, not pornographic.

The movie is pretty good overall. "Staying Together" was my favorite story, I think. The actors are playing a couple that's been together awhile and they seem comfortable with each other; they touch, kiss, embrace, as though there were no danger in the act.

It's worth a see, if you can find it.

no worries

With a loud Wow Sundy popped onto my chest at 2:45 am last night. I woke Kent by dancing kitty on his shoulder. Startled, Kent gazed out of sleep daze, "Oh. He's back."

Sundy smelled of old dirt, not quite under the house dirt. Maybe somebody else's toolshed? Maybe they heard him yowling in the quiet of the night and set him free.

worried

If worry could move mountains a mountain would be creaking at its bolts right now.

Sundy wasn't here when I got home, which is very unlike him. He's a people cat. He's always here. He's almost as needy as a dog. His brother, Sutra, is around. When I went out in the backyard looking for Sundy there was Sutra, walking away from me. That's Sutra. The walking away from you cat. When Sutra came in while we were watching TV I told Kent to send Sutra back out to fetch his brother.

happy new year!

Rain rain rain.

Naturally the Russian River is flooding. I grew up in Sebastopol, which is near the Russian River and every time there was a serious storm you'd hear how high the river had risen with flood crest predicted. Every few years the river floods and once a decade or so it really floods.

Meanwhile in Berkeley we've stayed around home. Went out for sandwiches and coffee drinks around one. Did some laundry, dishes, watched a movie on tape. Got the year started.

Tomorrow I'm promoted. New pay scale, window, smaller cubicle, different supervisor, new work, same library, same department. Whee!

cute cat picks from Laurel's blog

isn't this our old couch?



cute Xmas

Happy Birthday, Kent!

Today is Kent's Birthday. Happy Birthday, Kent!

We spent last night on the coast, a place called Steep Ravine, in a rustic cabin a stone's throw from the surf.



photo credit: GI

It was raining and fogged in. But there was hardly any wind and the wood stove in the cabin warmed the place up nicely. We ate dinner and read by candlelight.



photo credit: KLM

Today dawned sunny, despite a morning mist the air warming quickly. We took this trail for a walk along the cliffs.

quilt

photo credit: GI

This is a quilt my mother made. It is most extraordinarily ugly. I got it out of the cupboard as K & I need a temporary curtain to shut out the glare and I thought this quilt might be the right thing to tack up. But I started harshing on it so much Kent has been trying to think of ways to defend it. "Don't these shapes look like buttes?" And, "She really figured out how to join odd-shaped pieces!"

Really, there is nothing about it that works. The colors and patterns are at war. Even the materials don't fit together ... when the quilt came out of the wash some materials shrank and some didn't. The quilt never will stretch out flat again. And the backing is an unpleasant pink. I used it many times because Mom made it and because we just didn't have that many quilt options. It's been in the cupboard unused since I moved in with Kent. I think I will throw it away.

merrry xxxmas

or Happy Ancient Pagan Holiday Renamed for the Convenience of the Holy Roman Empire

Sundy

photo by GI

comments on "House Overlook", version 5

It's been almost a month since I last did a version of "House Overlook". That title has always been a placeholder. The poem didn't really have a title. The first version was written in 1995. Not long before I'd written a series of poems that used houses in semi-personified fashion and I would title them "House of ...", as in "House of Rescue" and "House of Escape" and "House of Dimensions" and so on. "House Overlook" was a late edition to the series. It probably works better as a part of a series than as a stand-alone. But I like it well enough by itself.

With this version the poem now has a title, "All the Time Now". I like it as a phrase. As the title? I don't know. I'll let it sit there awhile and see how it settles in.

The changes from version 4 are mainly in the arrangement of lines. Stanzas 2 and 3 swapped places, for instance. I adjusted the perspective of the speaker slightly, emphasizing his being one who looks, a commonality with the house and a difference. The house overlooks. To overlook means to fail to notice and to supervise, to get a good view, to be prominent. The house is stationary, as a house is. The speaker moves about, even to moving to another country. Although in this other country, the houses aren't stationary? The speaker was not busy in the country of the overlooking house? That's implied by the last line. Was his lack of busy-ness somehow caused by the house's overlooking? Is "the house" another way of saying "I"?

House Overlook, version 5

All the Time Now


The house on top of the hill overlooked everything.
It overlooked my house and me and my dog as she squatted and peed,
and it overlooked the street where a few drops of rain fell.

The house overlooked the wind carrying dust.
The wind blew and I turned my head to watch it go.
The house overlooked trees and the birds in trees and the leaves
and the colors of the leaves.

The house overlooked what passed,
and what never came near.
There were mountains that stood on clouds.
The house overlooked them, too.

I moved to another country where the houses rise at first light like farmers
and seem to get a lot of work done.
I pull back the curtains to see the dark go.
I am busy all the time now.

Info Desk Blogging

There's a large gap in the ceiling above the Info Desk. Whenever someone asks me about using the internet without having a library card I point up through this gap and say, "See that line of chairs around the railing? They lead to the 15 minute computers. You don't need a library card to use a 15 minute computer."

I don't know why but I always like pointing up at the hole in the ceiling.

I would support the Death Penalty if it killed State Senator R. Edward Houck of Virginia

From an article about a lesbian couple who decide they must quit Virginia, their home of 17 years, out of fear of the state's new Official Family Destruction law:

"State Sen. R. Edward Houck, a Democrat who has represented the Fredericksburg area for 21 years, says he felt conflicted about the votes he'd cast for the [Official Family Destruction] law and the [Official Family Destruction] constitutional amendment, but felt obliged to represent his 175,000 constituents. Most of them, he believes, support restrictions on ... marriage and [civil] rights. 'I can't always just vote my conscience and my convictions,' he says. Houck also insists that Barbara and Tibby [the lesbian couple he's helping chase from the state], whom he doesn't know, don't have to leave Fredericksburg, that the law refers not to wills and medical directives, but 'the rights and responsibilities of marriage.' But what are those? 'I can't answer that,' he says. 'I don't know all these things.'"

"I don't know these things," he repeated as he pushed the baby's face under the water and held it till it stopped struggling. He shrugged. "What do I look like? A lawyer?"

When Iraqis stand up, we'll stand down

Cheney's surprise visit to Iraq:

"U.S. forces guarded Cheney with weapons at the ready while Iraqi soldiers, who had no weapons, held their arms out as if they were carrying imaginary guns."

Because, you know, if it hadn't been a surprise and the Iraqi government knew ahead of time, Cheney would fear for his life. That is, he'd fear for his life more than, it seems obvious, he already does.

stem the rose

OK. We saw Brokeback Mountain. K & I walked down to the theatre and bought tickets then went over to a cafe to eat. I didn't know whether it would sell out as was happening in San Francisco opening weekend. On our way back rain was falling and the air was chill. So it was nice to be able to duck right into the building.

The theatre was showing Brokeback on three screens. If they hadn't been I suppose it would have been crowded. As it was I'd say the fill up in our theatre was above average for a matinee. Anyway. Was it good?

It was good. I liked it. I would see it again. I'm sure I will see it again, on DVD if not in the theatre. Beautiful landscapes. And the leads, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, are easy on the eyes. I was expecting more doom, the typical tragic queer story. Lots of angst and not much touching. Thankfully those expectations were disappointed. It's a secret love. And the sadness comes from its being hidden in the mountains, away from every day life, not allowing the lovers to live full lives. But at least they get to love each other. Gee, it seems so little to ask. And it's way too much, isn't it?

day off

Nice day.

Day off.

Nice.

Nice to have a day off.

Nice day off.

Nice to have.

Have a day.

A day off.

Having the day.

The day off.

Nice to have.

Albany Bulb

photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

We walked around the Albany Bulb this afternoon. The tide was out so we got right down next to the mudflats, stepping from one barnacle-encrusted, seaweed-slippery concrete hunk to another.

There are sculptures and paintings in a few places around the bulb, which is an old construction materials landfill that extends into the SF bay. The sculptures pictured have spinning parts.

Pat

On my morning break I scurry out of the library and get me a cup of coffee (short) and a plain (butter) croissant at Starbucks, eat and sip and scan whatever paper happens to be lying around. This morning the tall young fellow who has been working there a little while now looked right at me and said, "Good morning, Pat! What can we get for you today?"

"Did you call me 'Pat'?" I asked.

Flustered he said, "What's your name? What's your name?"

When I told him, he rolled it on his tongue, puzzled. "You should meet Pat," he said, turning to pour the coffee.

"We probably have a lot in common," I said.

As he handed me the cup he said, "How does it feel to have had a different name for the last six months?"

I shrugged. "This is only the second time I've heard you use a name with me." Usually he emphasizes SIR, as in "Can I get a drink started for you, SIR!"

Was it yesterday I first heard "Pat"? There were people in line and I wasn't really sure what he'd said so I just took my drink and smiled. But when he said it so clearly today ... "What's your name?" I asked.

He said, "Chris."

"Thanks, Chris," I said. (I've seen him holding hands with his Asian boyfriend. I like to see that sort of thing.)

Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain is the new gay cowboy movie significant mostly for being a big budget Hollywood production in which the same sex lovers live happily ever after.

Just kidding.

Of course they are miserable, unable to embrace the happiness they've found together because society forbids it, keep away from each other, and die of broken hearts ... or backs ... unless that's the mountain. On the other hand if you like yearning and frustration I understand this is your film.

No, I haven't seen it. Yes, I would like to because the leads are hot and they do get a little snogging in. That the only gay love story acceptable to the money men of Hollywood still has to be a tragic one ... well ... that's tragic, too. But maybe it's one of those films just crying out for a fan reedit.

Let's say

a new antelope has been uploaded from the front side of the blue century, its glimmering prongs relit with garish tinsel and ice.

Let's say further that this antelope, rather than being one of the placid antelopes of Earthen Springs, that farm from which we have grown accustomed to seeing the to-be-uploaded antelopes led, kind-eyed and stepping with an elegant fragility, is instead but secretly an Antarctic antelope bred in harsh conditions outside an experimental facility.

Info Desk Blogging

My supervisor asked me to take her Info Desk hour today. When last I was here rain was threatening. Rain has come through on its threat. Cool, breezy, but the rain's only been intermittent. Not too bad.

A caller just told me West branch isn't answering their phone. West is supposed to have been open for ten minutes already. I called West, too, and got their "we're closed" message. Wake up, guys!

Patron just said he was planning a road trip and he wanted to stay at some "haunted hotels." I didn't find any books with the words "haunted hotels" in the catalog description so I sent him up to the reference desk on the second floor. Sounds like the sort of information you might find in a magazine article.

Cassandra, one of the workers at North branch, just came in. She traveled to Brazil last year, knowing no Portuguese, spent six months there, and now chatters away at me. I catch a word here & there. I'd sure like to get one of my other-than-English languages up to real communicational fluency. But I'll probably die monolingual. Face down in a puddle on an empty street, late Sunday afternoon, surrounded by sparrows.