Thousand: Fourteen

on the list of things to do. There are always so many things to do. No matter how many of them you’ve done! You go to the door. It’s the foremost thing on today’s agenda, it seems, though you’d been thinking earlier that riding the new slide down from the highest turret at the Castle of Nowundaid with the kids from the Knitting Club or putting in your application for tusk polisher at the Mega Large Elephant Array could fill that ungainly space between the usual chores, the cats needing to be watered, for instance, or the heads of the

Thousand: Thirteen

your hands inside the launch car, and loose articles under the seat. Besides, who cares if it’s your name. Your name could be anywhere, could go anywhere, could be living a life separated from you by miles and attitude. You realize your brow is wrinkled. That is what happens when you concentrate or when you’re upset, and when the botulism injections have been neutralized by your immune system. If I had allergies, I would take something for my allergies, you say to yourself. The latch is almost off the trapdoor to heaven, you note, as you look up. Put that

Thousand: Twelve

loaded? And what about that one? It’s heavy enough. OK. Shark hat, octopus gloves, dragon breath, supersonic goggles, DNA-disruptors. Check, check, and, oh, no more breath in the dragon breath bottle. You listen again. Yes, the knocking is still going on, and the shouting. It might even be your name. But your name sounds like all sorts of common noises; you’ve heard your name in the sounds of subway trains, the troubling through underbrush of ground animals, and the squeaks of the clouds rubbing against the sky. So you’ve learned to be cautious, not to jump to conclusions without putting

Thousand: Eleven

the mother of presidents? Presidents stand for something. It would be nice to be able to stand. Later, after a good night’s rest, you are rinsing your mouth with detergent and alcohol when there is a knock at the door. You think, “I’m not going to get that. It’s way too early to see humans.” But again there’s the knocking and this time a voice seems to accompany it. You stop swishing and spit, then cock an ear. That voice is familiar? If so, she’ll just have to wait a minute while you strap on your weapons. Is that thing

Thousand: Ten

achieve its beauty, unmarked, unmarred, made. Now, having flexed, it cracked your skull open, pulled itself, wet and purposeful, from the chrysalis. Which it leaves on the accent rug. Next to a curl of hairs and dust beside the shower stall. How does it feel to be emerged from? To be left by your inner child? For starters maybe you’re wondering what’s left of you. It’s all rather sudden. One must take a moment. You blink your eyes. Yes, your eyes blink. You remember who the president is, then decide, no, you’d rather remember who your mother is. Was she

Thousand: Nine

sort of idea one clings to in the face of contrary evidence? Then you remember: you haven’t taken any. So the leprechaun business—you’re facing it straight. “It might be a dream,” offers the gnome. No. It wasn’t the gnome. Its eyes are closed, its breathing slow and even. Maybe the cat? The cat who lives in the dell? It is time to be naked and empty so the butterfly within you breaks out via your forehead, sloughing the material that held it back, but which held it safe so it could grow, restrained it in order that it could

Thousand: Eight

gnome on the leprechaun which is face down on the toilet's lid. The day is looking up. A new dawn is already crawling into the sky. You draw the curtains. A cold wind is blowing. It gets in through cracks in the walls. Soon something mythical will begin its dark rounds. The leprechaun and gnome, despite being mythical, don’t look like they’d be up to dark rounds. The gnome groans and squirms atop the leprechaun, then, with a long sigh, seems to fall back into unconsciousness. The idea of taking drugs in order to improve one’s situation—is it the

Thousand: Seven

door open, as the reveal takes place, the chemistry constructed for your mental construction, for the relief of your aches and cooling of your cough. You didn’t expect the leprechaun. He’s not dead, but the signs of life are few. You consider CPR, which suddenly makes you think it’s an abbreviation of coprolite or, even worse, coprophile. Well, can’t have any of that. So you put the leprechaun aside and move on to the red-capped gnome who also is looking unwell. Were they at each other’s throats? Or at your drugs! You don’t even have good drugs. You stack the

Thousand: Six

pink kitties? Who wants pink kitties? You can’t sell them. You can’t get money for them. You put them in a box by the supermarket and they squall and roll their bloodshot little eyes and the cute little girls bend over the box only to jump back and begin to wail, clutching their mothers’ legs. So you take a tranquilizer. That’s really your only choice. Faced with a preventable accident like pinkness in cats so freshly laundered. You go to the medicine cabinet, you don’t even let yourself meet your blue eyes in the warped mirror as you pull the

Thousand: Five

and mouth to mouth and sea to shining sea. Grandma, you know what I’m talking about! Meanwhile, in the laundry, one red sock turns every fucking white cat pink. You throw them all in together, hold the lid down, maybe you have to put a few bricks on top to keep the lid on, and when you go to put them in the dryer, they’re pink because some shithead left a red sock from the last load down there in the bottom of the tub. You wanna kill him. Cuz what are you going to do with a passel of

Thousand: Four

be dropped off on a nearby doorstep. We can pilfer that. The stars will need to be replenished from the bucket out back. A rare religious exception will be made for the rinderpest to recede to its original hosts without exacting divine punishment from the wicked. Why? Don’t ask why. The reasons are among the stars, I mean the way they are distributed. It’s a pattern. A completely random and arbitrary pattern meaning nothing, but a pattern nonetheless, one you can read by, the future, the past, and certain recipes, the ones that have been passed from hand to hand

Thousand: Three

apologize again. That’s what’s going to happen between now and November, more frequently than either of us would prefer. This means I’m going to insult you repeatedly? That’s not the plan. But things I don’t think bad will turn out bad and I will come to see the error of my ways and, all things being equal, will search my drawers for an apology as sincere as any other, clean and uncreased, and I will offer that to you. I promise. OK? That out of the way, let’s look at the inventory of celestial items. I understand fresh produce will

Thousand: Two

know by now, being familiar with the experience of humanity. A bug is a bug, or so they say. Once one was wonderful. Then one became wretched, and after looking the body over, one was amazed by the miracle of misery, what perfect drama it created, or if not perfect, then meticulously crafted. Someone is going to write your story up. I have a lead or two. I will get it out of my supernal box then swoop it over your nose—swoop swoop—while the angels of hootenany repose in their ordnance. I’m sorry I’m going to have to

Thousand explained

I'm starting a new long piece. It is called "Thousand." The plan is to write one hundred words at a sitting, stopping as soon as I've hit 100 -- with Microsoft Word doing the counting for me. That means stopping in the middle of a sentence, like as not.

The plan is to write one thousand of these 100-word pieces. Each takes off from where the other left off? I guess so. We'll see. A thousand pieces sounds like a lot. If I write one per day "Thousand" will take less than three years. But let's just say three years, it will take three years. And end up being 100,000 words. That also sounds like a lot. It sounds like a good deal more than a thousand.

There is, so far, no plot. A plot of some sort may begin to accrue. I suspect it will. In my writing I tend to pull all the parts together, even if I am also trying to push them apart.

Thousand: One

Thousand thousand. You don’t have to be happy, mon ami. The happier, the crueler, I used to say, until the boom got lowered and I had to crawl around on all fours and I discovered the necessity of reserving words for torturing small animals and children. The wind blows, the air shakes sand out of its skirts, and a legless lizard disappears into the downslope. You never know what is going to happen. You’ll hear that a lot. Frequently you know what is going to happen. What is going to happen has happened to someone else who you ought to

written at the Info Desk

row by
row he
reviews
the shel
ves until
he's bow
ing deep
ly



I don't know what language
she's using with her child
except for, "No," and "No."



it ought to be simple --
explaining why it's not
is not easy

written at the Info Desk

in a library full of books
books full of words
I find nothing to say



tree the wind sets all aquiver
you haven't died to make a book



newest newspapers bound to sticks
the man and woman each
shielding their faces behind events



she puts on her glasses
turns to face
the wall of mysteries



he puts on his glasses
to examine the piece
that fell off them



judging by the clock
how much hunger I'll have to fill

written in a cafe

ah, I see who got the last
chocolate chip cookie



dotted streaks
raindrops hitting the dry window



chair tipped so it rests against the table
the rain can't sit there



almost done with that book
true for weeks

written at the Info Desk

my boss walks by
I try to make thinking
look busy



he flips through the first several pages
then puts the book back



people in caps and jackets
umbrellas dripping
so sunny yesterday!



a book by Edward Lear
it belongs to another library
How Pleasant to Know!

written in radiation oncology waiting room

"AUTOMATIC
CAUTION,"
says the
"DOOR"



sit facing the clock
or
sit facing the television



"How are you?"
"All right."
"Good for you," the tired patient says.



on the bulletin board
the smiling faces --
pushpins in their heads



these eyes wouldn't be able to read
that sign
in English either

written on back porch

seeing my thoughts
not the grass



sitting
the cat going under my legs
a tunnel



the floaters in my eyes swirl
turning to look at the cat



cat, tasting something under a porchrail, shakes its head



the mouth of the hose is dry
the ground below still wet



watering can on its side in the grass
gathering spider webs



a white calla lily
its neighbors curling into fists



yup, cat loves my lap when it's his choice

written at the table

I opened the window
because the outside
needed more room



tree, a tiny breeze will make you shiver so



a stack of CDs --
so much sound
sitting silently




feeling slighted by the neighbor
-- this moment's old resentment

written in a cafe

having cleaned my plate
food in my teeth



the handsome dyke
just look at her
the world is better



the farther away the easier to see
the haze on the hills



after naming all the stores
she's shopped at
she & her friend sit quietly

written in the bakery cafe

anxious, tired
not always, I remind myself



Buson on the white board
I squint to see who he's missing this year



snickerdoodle, choclatine, macaroon
this time a muffin



is there more wakefulness
in the bottom third of the coffee cup?



she sticks out her tongue
rushes to add sugar to her cup



last swallow more bitter than sweet
sticky crumbs on the muffin paper

written at the table, listening to music

all of a sudden
a lot of light
but look at those rainclouds!



now the table's shining
we need curtains



this page has a freckle



no more sun
it was too much, really
for this mood



what if the next song makes me feel like dancing?
oh, it doesn't

written in the break room

startled to find
the glass vase waiting
shiny, clean and broken



metal book ends
arches lining up a passage
tongues overlapping for a path



the unopened fortune cookie
who here didn't need to know?



a yellowed old donation
hey, I'm reading that book



the mending supplies
what a messy jumble

written in a cafe

he shaves his whole head every day?



ceramic duck in the window,
peoplewatching?



shaking his mother's keys,
he waits for the intersection to clear
completely



at least one in every crosswalk



sky bending across windshields

written on back porch

my notebook
sun on the page
I filled last night



digging them up
cutting them back
living with plants



crows now and jays
the songbirds taking a break



surprised at having set the bin a-rocking,
the squirrel hops off



upside down, clinging to eaves
by your toes, bird,
great place for a bug?



past the hairs on my ankle
the ant makes good time
across my foot

working at the library

"good morning, baby"
croons a child's voice
"tuh woo! tuh woo! tuh woo!"



tic a tac
closing out the cash register
did we break a hundred?



returning her DVDs
the woman gasps
a case -- empty!

written on the back porch

inside -- Kent's TV
outside -- the neighbor's



the cats are listening
to birds
not the market report



noises: traffic, airplanes, newscast
I came outside to commune
with the visible



the yellow trumpets of oxalis
are tooting toward the underworld



do you want anybody to pity you, cat?
me neither!



quieter, cooler, darker
what next?



my hand likes the feel of you, too,
orange cat

written in a cafe

dead weather constellations
psychedelic horseshit rubbersidedown
-- playing tonight



under a green umbrella
the blond reads the pink pages



guidebooks for Spain and Andalucia
the traveler fetching a latte



another one of my little burps
I take a sip of water
to fill the gap



his yellow t-shirt
likes his body



two little girls --
this one in two colors
this one in six



he carries his skateboard
its black surface sparkling

written in the taqueria

tree shadow aquiver
faded parking cross



the man in reflective orange
rests against a white fire plug



even upside down
pineapple pulp and ice cube
not shaking loose



police officer on a bike
another officer
and they're off!



one big sneeze
my eyes open
world's about the same

written on the bed before dinner

the things piled in this room
are patient



unfolded shirts
rest on a pillow



hearing noises upstairs,
the cat takes his purr away

written in doctor's exam room

I haven't had a physical in 2 or 3 years. I've had it on my to-do list for months. Finally, I scheduled one. As usual it was loads of fun! What I wrote in the exam room:



the nurse having gone
I'm alone with
more waiting



doctor's exam room --
on the white walls
fliers of many colors



a model heart
a model tailbone
imagining myself a model patient



how many ahs
in the jar of
tongue depressors?



picking at a thread
not ready to come free



I have higher blood pressure than I ought to. It's short of a diagnosis of disease, but when I said my dad had bypass surgery doctor looked concerned and gave me the spiel about eating right. At the pharmacy I bought a bottle of vitamin D - "It's the latest miracle supplement," the doctor said, with a twinkle.

written on couch, listening to music

"You need somebody to reach behind your neck,"
says Kent, giving the cat in his arms a vigorous scratch.



how can I write with all these distractions?
the distractions are more important
so neglect them and write badly



this music is really rock & roll!
Kent cleans the litter pan
this music is really rock & roll!



am I hungry
or just tense
-- belly things!



adjusting my body
to be more comfortable

the next tiny itch - where will it be?

written at the dining table

a proud vermilion cock
construction cranes against a manila sky
-- two poetry anthologies



salt cellar
peppercorns with grinder top
-- two towers



asking for something
nervous because I think he doesn't want to do it



the heater has come on
yes, it does look cold outside

new books in the Claremont collection

Life in Rewind
Back to Life
How Not to Die



7-day Energy Surge
So Stressed
Rest



Secrets of Happy Families
Happy at Work, Happy at Home
At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream



The Wild Marsh
The Pecan Orchard
The Wolf in the Parlor

written at the library information desk

the reflected 8
a little top-heavy



my heart is working –
too hard?



under the chair
nothing
but some dark



do I have to like
what I write?



embarrassed by something I said
… uh … sorry, interrupted, what?

written in radiation oncology waiting room

"I will recognize you next time,"
the patient apologizing to the nurse



I start to count waiting room chairs,
lose interest

number of people: 2



taking a breath -
I've been holding it
listening to strangers' voices



They should have treadmills in waiting rooms.



----
This is the 1,001st post at LoveSettlement.

written at the bakery cafe

pressing warm coffee cup
to my forehead



his long curly blond hair held with a barrette
hers straight and loose



the bakers are talking business
my coffee break's almost over



having loaded folded laundry
in his car, the baker
comes to work



eye on the pastries,
Rosemary passes right by my "Hi!"

written in the attic

in the attic, hearing
how hard the rain
wants down



roar of airplane above rainclouds
thrumming of construction tools next door



third pen this morning balking
like my thoughts

written at dining table

I can see rain
but only when it passes
shadows



the wind whistles
going about its business



I won't see you in sequins
when the sun's out,
neighbor house



mouth still sweet from the cookie
drinking glass still white from the milk

written at the Albany Bulb

On April 1st I started a haiku project. My husband has been diagnosed with colon cancer and he's trying to live in the now, pausing to meditate and appreciate, so I'm following his example. While at the hospital last week I wrote some haiku (or haiku-like poems, depending on how pernsnickety you are about definitions). And I thought they were pretty good. So I set myself the goal of stopping somewhere each day and writing at least 3 haiku, preferably at one sitting or in a short space of time.

Today K & I went to the Albany Bulb, a former dump for construction materials that nature has reclaimed. It's a park now. It extends into the SF Bay in the shape of a bulb. Lots of people take their dogs. Shortly after we arrived I saw one dog that, for a split second, I thought had only three legs. As we were leaving a real three-legged dog bopped by - one forelimb, two back.

As we rounded the bend to the flattest, most exposed part of the park, where it's just slightly above the water, we saw a young woman in white, baring her shoulders to sunlight just beginning to warm as the high fog burned away. She had two companions - young men in faded green or blue jackets. They were all quiet, and at first I thought the boys must be photographers and the girl a model. But when we came upon them, the woman returned my smile and I said, "Here on a photo shoot?" She said, "Just enjoying it."

As K & I left we looked back to see the woman had walked out in her long white dress and white fur to the point, while the young men shared one chunk of concrete some distance away. One of the men was smoking.

People paint or sculpt the old rubble so there's often something new to see.

As we neared the paved drive a tall young black man in baggy clothes passed us telling his cell phone, "Chemotherapy will fuck you up."



faces of bright yellow
painted on the rubble



four diving birds on the water
no diving birds on the water



surf so sleepy
it doesn't even turn over



time to go?
just a little more breeze
for our backs



the sound of
stepping stones
rocking



on a tree
naked but for hanging shoes
Kent hangs the shoe



ahead Kent
fords the puddle



the puddles are blue now too



grand plume of tail
on that dog
I'd be proud of it

while on the new couch upstairs

I watch myself on the turned-off TV:
he looks tired



through old glass
a tree's a little warped
but the white sky -
perfectly smooth



a plastic bag
stored between spokes of the bike
that doesn't go anywhere

written at cafe

dark glasses on the table
bicycle seat in the backpack
he sits down again


leaving the Laundry
red jeans spread to dry
over the wheeled basket


she holds her reading glasses against her nose
when she lets go, they don't fall


a borrowed pencil
the back of a receipt
otherwise: thoughts only

Saturday at the library

I walked to work this morning. On Saturdays I take the bus. Except today. I guess I just wanted to be moving. It takes me about 40 minutes to make the trek. The bus, frankly, isn't much faster, especially once you add in the time waiting for it and the ten minutes it takes to walk to the bus stop.

The morning fog kept me cool though I shed my overshirt just after crossing campus.

When it's quiet on the Information Desk I will shelve DVDs or new books or clear away a pile of books abandoned on a table. Saturday can be crazy. It's not been bad at the Info Desk but I think the circulation desk got slammed, as usual. When the delivery arrived - boxes of books from other BPL branches - I brought a couple boxes over to the Info Desk to check in.

My boss this week sent an email reminder to those of us who staff Info. No cell phone conversations at the Info Desk. No online shopping. No homework.

Hm. What about poems?

Fante, etc

I processed 12 more paperbacks. Tuesday, March 9. The batch prior I solicited guesses on which would go first, right? But one of the other things I was curious about was how long it would take for the first to go out. It took ten days.

That batch was made up of the sort of popular fiction you see by the supermarket checkout counter. There are readers for it here, but not a lot.

So what about the 12 I put out this week? It's been three days and already three have been checked out:

Ehud Havazelet - Bearing the Body
Ursula Hegi - Stones from the River
John Fante - The Road to Los Angeles

The Hegi book was an Oprah book club selection from a few years ago. But the John Fante? Fante was a writer long out of print until the small press Black Sparrow took notice (presumably at the urging of Black Sparrow house writer & Fante fan Charles Bukowski) - Black Sparrow Press was acquired by a New York publisher, so Fante now has a New York publisher. I don't know Ehud Havazelet.

Margolin goes first

So two weeks ago I added a batch of paperbacks to the browsing collection.

I made a couple guesses and David (in comments) left a guess, and Kent (offline) made a guess. None of us were right.

The first book from the batch that got checked out was:
Phillip Margolin - Executive Privilege

The next day another went out:
Amanda Quick - The Third Circle

And two days later:
Daniel Silva - The Mark of the Assassin

3 copies of P&P

I think we're shorthanded today. That wouldn't be unusual. I've already had my lunch - I ate at House of Curries, a chicken tikka masala with rice. This afternoon's break I will eat homemade chocolate chip cookies as I slurp my coffee. I am looking forward to it.

No hassles at the Claremont branch so far. I haven't smelled any homeless people. Maybe the sunshine has them out wandering.

The Info Desk is near the corner where we keep the DVDs and new books. If nobody needs reference help I'm often shelving in that corner.

The DVDs come in & out so quickly - I wonder how long we had them before I realized there are three copies of the 2005 movie version of "Pride and Prejudice"? Two are on the shelf right now. One is out.

I just fetched another batch of new books from the circulation desk. Are there any that I'd like to read? Not Now, Voyager has a clever title. It's by Lynn Sharon Schwartz, says it's a memoir. Seems to be a series of essays on travels - to Rome, to Jamaica. Chapter titles like "Hotels and Soap" and "Borders or Cabo Tormentoso".

"One day our doorbell in Rome rang," writes Schwartz, "and we discovered two strangers, an American couple in their fifties who introduced themselves as neighbors of my parents. They were vacationing in Rome and my mother had asked them to look in on us. ... My parents knew we had a furnished apartment but couldn't quite picture the details. So they sent this couple. ... [After a tour of the apartment they could] reassure my mother that we were living in some semblance of decency."

Looks okay. But I think I won't add it to my current pile.

goodbye Chinese books, hello cafe

Last Tuesday I put 14 new paperbacks onto the browsing racks. They're not new, as in brand new from the publisher; being as they were all donated, they are pre-read, but they are new to our collection. Last post I asked for guesses on which of these 14 would first be checked out. In the week since, not one has been checked out. Hm. That's not what I usually see. Usually one of the new items goes right out. The 14 books are just about all by bestselling authors of the supermarket wire rack variety. The readers here don't seem to go for that sort of bestseller. Dunno why. Anyway, you can still guess which will go first! If anybody gets it right, they'll get a prize! Or maybe a no-prize. An air kiss? We'll see.

The Claremont branch library is facing renovation. It's looking like there will actually be less shelving in the library after renovation than we have now. That's not making me happy. Even though I'm all into weeding and everything. Speaking of weeding - the Chinese books are out of here. We no longer have an employee who speaks (or reads) Chinese so we don't have anyone who can review the collection for currency and quality; the books are getting old and aren't often checked out. So we're deleting them. It's not a big collection. Six or seven shelves. Down to two. I spent an hour earlier today deleting.

When it rains we put a big roll of paper towels out on the returns desk next to a sign: "Please dry your books! Thank you!" If people bringing their books back don't use the towels, we certainly do.

There's a new cafe in the neighborhood. Just what the neighborhood needed? It's only been open a few days and already it's busy. The cafe takes over what used to be a soda fountain in a drug store. The rest of the old drug store has been taken over by the expansion of the independent bookstore, Mrs Dalloway's. Yes, an independent bookstore successful enough to expand. Who'd thunk?

any bets?

Patricia Cornwell - Predator
Anne River Siddons - Fox's Earth
James Baldwin - Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin - If Beale Street Could Talk
Amanda Quick - The Third Circle
Daniel Silva - The Mark of the Assassin
Eric Van Lustbader - Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Sanction
Haywood Smith - The Red Hat Club
James Patterson - Sail
Phillip Margolin - Executive Privilege
Robert B. Parker - Stranger in Paradise
Clive Cussler w/Paul Kemprecos - Polar Shift
Clive Cussler w/Paul Kemprecos - The Navigator
Clive Cussler & Dirk Cussler - Black Wind

The above are books I added to the browsing paperbacks collection here at the Claremont branch. I added the books on Tuesday, so it's been a couple days and none have yet been checked out. Any guesses as to which will walk out the door first?

I'm going to guess:
Robert B. Parker's Stranger in Paradise

Since there are so many I'm going to give a second guess. If not Stranger then Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin.

Info Desk!

One of my duties is waking sleeping people. It's not like I tour the library looking for them. But if I hear snoring I get up from the Info Desk and look for the snorer and wake them. Sometimes it's a homeless person, sometimes it's an old lady. I have seen a college student or two with head down but I've not yet felt I had to wake one. I mean, if you sit out of sight of the Info Desk and sleep quietly there's probably not much risk anyone will bother you. That is, unless we see you stretched out in a bedroll.

Nick was busy trying to finish shelving the holds. As usual we've got a lot of them. Each book (or DVD or whatever) has wrapped around it a printed slip showing the name of the patron for which it is on hold. We don't really have room for all the holds. Currently, I see, Nick has not been able to get them all onto the shelves so there are two book trucks poking out into the aisle with holds on them. Anyway, while Nick was working on the holds I helped out a bit on the Circulation Desk. So I was running back & forth - handing out a library card application here, helping with the balking self-checkout machine there.

Now I'm back at the Info Desk. A patron said he couldn't get access to our wireless network; he said he'd never had any trouble before. He waited a few minutes and is in. "Don't know what happened," he says.

My last reference question: a woman is putting together a short course (6 two-hour lectures) on the history of photography. So I helped go through the catalog in search of books & DVDs on the topic.

Julian Bond of the NAACP speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

I watched this speech by Julian Bond spring of '09. I saved the code to embed it here, then didn't. Playing it again I like it again.

So reasonable. So soft-spoken. Such a mensch.

back to the Info Desk at the Claremont Library

I see someone spinning the browsing paperback racks. Looks like she's going for a PD James - plus 2 others I can't make out.

I did a batch of nonfiction paperbacks yesterday. Nobody's checked out any of those yet. It always encourages me when something I've processed gets checked out, especially if somebody pounces on it as soon as it's available.

A woman just asked if we had any books by a writer, "Last name - Robert." She double-checks her note to herself. "Roberts," she corrects.

Roberts? Uh. "Nora Roberts?" I guess.

"No." She thinks. "David Roberts."

I put that into the search box and come up with five different "David Roberts" author entries. The woman is holding a book of mystery short stories. I ask if David Roberts writes mysteries. There is a David Roberts in the catalog with mysteries to his name. I read off a few of the titles. None are in this branch; all are held at Central. The woman says she will go by Central this weekend.

We have four computer terminals for accessing the internet. Used to be one was set aside for drop-ins. We had a waiting list people would sign. As of this week you have to make a reservation via one of the catalog terminals in the lobby. No more waiting list. One of the usual questions we get is: "I just need to get on the internet for 2 minutes to check my email." Sadly, we do not have a 2 minute internet terminal.

An older man tells me, after having trouble with the newly installed catalog interface, "When you get to be 80, all change is bad."

“progress in understanding one’s self”

My mother died more than five years ago. When I cleared out the house in Sebastopol I threw away lots of stuff. But I kept as much writing or handmade work as I could. I brought it back in boxes and crates to the house in Berkeley. There was really no place to put it all so it stacked up in corners.

Now that the upstairs renovation is done, Kent and I are trying to find places for all the things we really want to keep. And if we don’t really want to keep it? Move it on out into the world. This weekend Kent took boxes of books and clothes to Out of the Closet, an AIDS charity thrift store.

One pile gone, umpteen to go.

In her last years Mom found a friend in Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher. In going through a box just now I came across Old Path White Clouds: walking in the footsteps of the Buddha, a fat book of teachings and stories (legends?) about the Buddha. Mom marked pages 146 & 147 which give a thumbnail of the Buddha’s central teaching. “The Buddha began serenely … ‘The path I have discovered is the Middle Way, which avoids both extremes and has the capacity to lead one to understanding, liberation, and peace.’” (Mom’s emphasis)

On the inside back cover Mom’s handwriting notes, “Humility and open-mindedness are necessary for making progress.”

Then, dated 8/27/00 Sunday, Mom questions the preceding, “Where did I find? This statement is not complete. I’m sure that ‘progress’ refers to progress in understanding one’s self -- Not ‘progress’ in mechanical, non-feeling technology.’”

She adds two book recommendations. “Books I like – by David Darling Soul Search and Zen Physics.”

comments on “I Fell into a Kingdom of Falling”, version 4

New title. I edited down what had been the first three lines to a title. I decided the old title was merely the spark and didn’t need to stay. I grew to dislike the word “kingdom”, especially. Lopping off the beginning of a poem in revision was a lesson learned from my first poet-teachers. The beginning is also often the hardest bit to part with, as it was what got the poem going and can seem like the poem entire. The new first line is better, though.

Some other changes, but I won’t itemize.

My opinion of the poem over the course of its versioning has gone from I-love-it to I-hate-it and back. I’m in an I-love-it mood right now. Or I was when I started writing these comments. Now? Oh, now I’m just sorta tired.

“I Fell into a Kingdom of Falling”, version 4

House on Foundation of Cloud


In the hall my heart stopped.
The wind dragged past to the bath.
And I had to tear loose some fear,
some little of it
that caught in the hinge,
that had stopped things up.

To one of the tongues of flame
that searched the walls for words
already eaten, I was sure,
eaten and digested,
smudge now across a watery way between
white monuments,
I pressed it.
To one of the fatter
I pressed it.

Wasn’t it falling?
Wasn’t I?

I reviewed my expertise in falling,
tested the latch and release of the heart.
The wind dragged off in the other direction
toward one of the dark rooms
far back.

With cold fingers I tore from my fear what would come.
Put it in your ears, I told myself.
They burn, too.

comments on “I Fell into a Kingdom of Falling”, version 3

When I started this version I thought I was maybe just fiddling. I don’t know. At the moment the rather minor changes feel important.

I note a lack of agreement in the phrase, “the words that had been eaten … that was smudge now”. “Words” is plural, “was smudge” should be “were smudge”? Yet I prefer “was”. Words a singular like team or language. Then there’s getting rid of “was” … “eaten and digested, / smudge now across a watery way …” Hm.

Paul Mariah’s workshop, I recall, was the place I learned to look at the tiniest words, like “it” or “was” or “the”. One tends to overlook them. Then the question, if overlooked, truly needed? I can see other places that might profitably lose small words. “I had to tear loose some fear, / some little of it / caught in the hinge …”

Fiddling.

I Fell into a Kingdom of Falling, version 3

The house, on foundations of cloud,
replenished smoke tapestries
from the burning of fear.
In the hall my heart stopped suddenly,
the wind on the way to the bath dragging past.

I had to tear loose some of that fear,
some little of it
that caught in the hinge,
that brought things to a halt.
And to one of the tongues of flame

that searched the walls for the words
that had been eaten already, I was sure,
eaten and digested,
that was smudge now across a watery way between
white monuments,

to one of the fatter
I pressed it.

Wasn’t I falling anyway?

I explored my expertise in falling,
tested the latch and release of the heart.
The wind dragged off in the other direction
toward one of the dark rooms
far back.

With cold fingers I tore from my fear what would come.
Put it in your ears, I told myself.
Keep them burning.

comments on “I Fell into a Kingdom of Falling” version 2

I used to avoid melodramatic language. Didn’t I? Well, I’ve always used it. But I tend to edit it down cuz people find it objectionable. I think I’m camping anyway. Exaggerating, dressing emotion in gaudy excess. I think that’s one of the things that poetry does – excess. Non-poets turn to poetry in extremis. When the heart hurts, when they feel an agonizing grief, a flaring rage, a deep calm. Ordinary, daily emotion isn’t what poetry is for. It’s also for an excess of language strategies – sound, pun, structure, destruction. Excess doesn’t mean not serious. But serious doesn’t mean fun-hating.

Used to be the dedicated poet soaked in agonies and spewed ecstasies, too. But fashions changed. Restraint. A cool intellectualism. These became the acceptable poetry. All that panting and moaning and running through the streets – even if only safe on the page and bound – ugh – the sophisticated reader recoiled. And I’m not saying I don’t share the reaction. Poems of centuries past that wordily roved about the poet’s oh-so-important sentiment remain anachronistic.

But I like passions. If my poetry is sometimes more WWF than street brawl, okay. I like capes and shouting. A poem is not a fist in the face. Not really. It’s display, not attack. Not that the two aren’t frequently confused.

When I showed the poem to Kent he said it was familiar. Yeah. I knew when I was writing it I was revisiting a dream that’s found it’s way into many an earlier poem. There’s a terrain that I wander through that a reader used to my work could begin to anticipate. It’s not that we refrain from repeating ourselves; it’s that we’re trying out variations.

I Fell into a Kingdom of Falling, version 2

The house, from foundations of cloud,
replenished smoke tapestries
with the burning of fear.
In the hall my heart stopped.
The wind dragged past to the bath.
And I had to tear loose some of that fear,
some little of it
that had caught in the hinge,
that had brought things to a halt.
And to one of the tongues of flame
that searched the walls for the words
that had been eaten already, I was sure,
eaten and digested,
that was smudge now across a watery way between
white monuments,
to one of the fatter
I pressed it.
Wasn’t I going to fall anyway?
I explored my skills in falling,
tested the latch and release of the heart.
The wind dragged off in the other direction
toward one of the dark rooms
far back.
With cold fingers I tore from my fear what would come.
Put it in your ears, I told myself.
Keep them burning.

poem I bought a book with

“I Fell into a Kingdom of Falling” is the poem I bought a book with. Today was Small Press Distribution’s annual open house and in a nook of one of the office cubicles they’d set out yellow writing tablets. If you brought a poem or story you could fill out a voucher form, then hand over your writing and choose from several shelves of books. If you hadn’t had the foresight to bring anything you could sit down and write something on one of the yellow pads. I liked that. So I sat down, cast my gaze about the walls at posters, at the bookshelves, nothing grabbed me. I turned to the page and wrote down a phrase that has visited me now & again for decades – “I fell into a kingdom of falling.”

They say they will publish a selection of the poems. The young woman who stapled my poem to the voucher asked if she could read the poem. I said yes; once she’d read it she didn’t say anything. If she’d loved it I suppose she would have said something, but who knows.

I saw one familiar poet waiting for the scheduled reading to begin, Dale Jensen. He showed me a couple books he’d plucked from the boxes of books being offered for a dollar per. After the reading (which was good; I really have to sit down with that Andrew Joron book I bought years ago) I applied myself to the task of spending $10. There were about fifteen full boxes – poetry, novels, essays, literary magazines. Did I succeed? I did. I will list them all at DIR.

A big storm is coming in. It rained a bit on the car on the drive over to SPD, and maybe it rained while I was safely inside the warehouse poring diligently over the dollar books. Having bought them I was asked repeatedly if I was sure I didn’t need a bag. No, I said. Somebody took a picture of me holding them against my chest.

I Fell into a Kingdom of Falling

The house, its foundation of cloud,
replenished smoke tapestries
with the burning of fear.
My heart stopped in the hall
as the wind dragged past to the bath
and I tore loose some of the fear,
some little of it
that had caught in the hinge,
and pressed it to one of the tongues of flame
that searched the walls for the words
that had been eaten already, I was sure,
eaten and digested,
now smudge across a watery way between
white monuments.
I was going to fall anyway.
I explored my falling skills,
tested the opening and closing of the heart,
the wind dragging past my mouth
toward one of the dark rooms
at the back of the house.
I tore at my fear with cold fingers.
I should put them in my ears, which
are burning.

Finding Fowl

Here I am at the Info Desk again. I helped a woman (mother?) find the 3rd & 4th novels of the Artemis Fowl series - the books don't feature a number on the cover, and our online catalog doesn't tell you. There are tricks - like sorting search results by publication date - #3 in a series is never published before #2, right?

I haven't had many live people asking for help. And most of the phone calls make me feel like a receptionist - "Let me transfer you to her office."

A preteen girl wanted the Dear America series. A friend had recommended them. I found the series in the catalog, then set her up at a catalog terminal so she could scroll down the list until she found one she liked. She found two. Neither was on the shelf. One was checked out. The other? Who knows. While we were looking for the Dear America books the girl started spinning a rack of paperbacks and said she was okay with not finding the Dear America books as she was finding other things of interest.

I don't do the children's paperbacks. I will help with the processing of them - entering the titles into the system, slapping on a barcode, whatever. But I don't choose any. So if there's great stuff there I can't take the credit.

Info Desk Blogging

Quiet night. I'm usually not on Info Desk the last two hours of a Thursday. I guess I got plunked here cuz the head of the branch is taking part in a public meeting to gather input on the renovation of the branch. I just got a phone call: "Are there many people at the meeting?" Being as I can't see the meeting room from the Info Desk I tried encouraging the caller to come and have his say. "We welcome the input," I said. But the caller wasn't right nearby. It would take him fifteen minutes to get here. He didn't want to come unless nobody else was here. So I put him on hold and went to see. "Looks like there are five people at the meeting," I told him as I got back on the line. "Oh dear," he said, "I'll be there as soon as I can."

Tonight is also our day of the month to host Lawyers in the Library, a volunteer service of the Alameda County Bar Association. There's only one lawyer. So it's Lawyer in the Library. Rather than Lawyers ... donchano.

The Lawyer night brings more anxiety than usual into the library. I don't hear any of the stories that lead people to need lawyers, but worried faces come up to the desk wondering if the lawyer is in, how long does the lawyer see each person, what's the order people are seen, and so on.

One of the slightly weird things about our Lawyer night is this: "In-person sign-ups only; sign-ups begin at 5pm. Names pulled by lottery at 6pm." You are not seen in the order in which you show up. You are seen in a random order. This seems to change somewhat according to who is at the Info Desk. Some Info Deskers give people a place in line. This changeability is kind of annoying. The Berkeley Information Network page (linked above) has the rules; I read the rules to anybody who asks and whenever they tell me someone else told them something different I tell the questioner all I know is what's written. If the policy has been changed the written version needs to be changed so we all can give out the same information. Blah blah blah. I try to say it nicely.

I try to say everything nicely. Nobody likes attitude. Frankly, attitude just makes the job harder. Of course, part of the job is enforcing rules and that's not always happy-making.

Ooh. Is cold out. The door opens and chill air pours in. Just think, at home now we have central heating! It's cheering me up.

pre-Thanksgiving thoughts

The renovation project drags on. It’s stressful. Working on our fourth* month. I’m sure other people have had it worse. Do you ever actually feel better when you hear how much worse other people have it? Better, in a relative way, maybe. It doesn’t make you feel good, right? It just puts your misery into perspective. At least I’m not in prison or wandering homeless in the desert. My hands are cold – but I could be starving!

Really, I don’t get the could-be-worse strategy for bucking oneself up.

Last night in bed I was counting my blessings. Most of them came with a yeah-but (“Praise be for two orange kitties. … Yeah, but it would be better if they didn’t pee in the house, and if that big fluffy one didn’t act like we were just this side of enemies and run away from our affections.”); I tried to quiet the yeah-buts and came up with a pretty good list.

We don’t have concrete plans for Thanksgiving. … uh … Cooking in the new kitchen?

----

* actually, we're working on our fifth month!

a haiku sequence written at sunset Nov 8, 2009

too chilly to sit
on the porch, have to pee
write about that



white apartments sunset pink
cherry tree porchlight yellow



two old toilets under a tarp
chimney now a pile of bricks
grass green again



cat circling me
hunting a chin scratch



the mop propped outside
gets wet with each rain
but not clean



all right, daylight
leave the page
to my imagination

Info Desk Blogging

Don't have the approval to clear the weeding shelves yet. So. Not doing that.

And I did a heckuva lot of paperbacks last month so I want to wait till people adjust to the new stuff before processing any more. And I kinda don't want to kill off any older paperbacks right now.

On lunches & breaks I choose a book from among the deleted paperbacks (yes, I hang onto those that look interesting). Last week I finished The Boys and Their Baby by Larry Wolff. I started The Good Conscience by Carlos Fuentes at lunch today. I ate a veggie sandwich at Nabolom Bakery and in two chapters worked my way through two generations of a Mexican family.

Weather is nice. The front door is propped open.

Browsing paperbacks that have been checked out today so far:

Karen Joy Fowler - The Jane Austen Book Club
Emily Griffin - Baby Proof
Anne River Siddons - Sweetwater Creek
Anna Quindlen - Black and Blue
Robert B. Parker - High Profile
PD James - Shroud for a Nightingale
Adrienne Brodeur - Man Camp
Jane Smiley - Ten Days in the Hills
Cecelia Ahern - P.S. I Love You
Anne Tyler - Digging to America
Velma Wallis - Two Old Women: an Alaska legend

Info Desk Blogging

I've completed the weeding project. That doesn't mean it's finished, tied with a bow, put away, all done. After all, we're still getting in new books and the new books have to go on the old shelves. Even though I've removed many books from the old shelves, the new books will fill them up and more weeding will need to be done. Plus there are small collections that I haven't worked on yet - the Chinese books, the oversized books.

A couple years ago I took on the weeding when I was annoyed by the book trucks in the meeting room that had been set aside for overflow, that is, all those books there was no room for in the stacks. I was sitting here at the Info Desk, you know, looking over at the crowded Fiction thinking, "I bet no one checks that one out, or that one." There was a period not long ago when I had made enough room on the shelves to clear the books trucks. That was satisfying. Unfortunately the most popular collection, the Mysteries, is full again. The DVDs are crowded, too. And the area set aside for them was small to start with. I haven't attempted to weed those. I suspect the best way to weed them would be for condition - do they play? But we don't have a DVD player here.

Actually I'm waiting on my boss to approve for deletion that last batch of weeding. Once she gives the OK that'll be the work of a couple hours.

morning jackhammer

Let’s see. A jackhammer is beating away at the concrete that was just laid last week? That would be under the house. I think that’s what’s happening. I haven’t actually gone to look. Or asked. I just get to hear it. That was a hammer wielded by hand, that was. Thunk thunk thunk. Felt that one through the floor boards.

Living in a construction project. Fun? Or not fun?

Ambient temperature outside: 59 degrees fahrenheit
Inside: 61 degrees
I got the first number from Weather Underground. The second was the last number I saw on the thermometer upstairs. The one on the downstairs thermostat is less precise but looks about the same.

There are still holes in the roof. These will be filled by skylights. Sometime. Not by tomorrow, though. Tomorrow a big storm is supposed to be coming in. Supposedly the holes will be covered enough to keep the rain out.

The project is a kitchen remodel. It keeps being other things. The jackhammering is related to the structural deficiencies our contractor discovered upon tearing out walls that were holding the kitchen in. He wants to make sure the house rides out the next big quake. Which is overdue, he insists. Earthquakes are not library books, I almost say.

Angry

Angry that we have to fight and fight and fight.

Watching the fight to keep Maine’s new marriage law with a feeling of dread.

Just as important is the fight in Washington state to keep marriage-in-all-but-name.

Angry that we have to spend lots of money to run these expensive campaigns so we can live out our boring, normal lives.

Angry that we lose these fights over and over.

Nobody wins anything when we lose. Nobody’s life is easier. No one is protected from anything. Nothing is served except pain.

Walk?

I feel like going for a walk. I wonder if I am going to go for a walk. It's getting late-ish, toward dinner time. I feel somewhat less like going for a walk than I did a couple hours ago, time I've spent reading, mostly, also eating the cold, sweet watermelon Kent cut. Drifting around the house.

Part of what's stayed me from a stroll is lack of destination, but all the routes have been traveled, too. If Black Oak Books hadn't closed, I said to myself earlier, I would probably walk over there, a mere two blocks, and while away an hour picking up books and trying to talk myself out of buying them. But today is Labor Day; even if Black Oak were still there wouldn't it have shut for the holday?

Kent & I ate lunch at Bel Forno, a North Berkeley cafe, then took advantage of $10-off coupons to buy some stuff at CVS Pharmacy (formerly Long's). Kent got new earbuds for his iPod. I got toilet paper.

That was our walking for the day. Which didn't seem quite enough. But if I were to step out the door now, where would I go? Half Price Books is open as is, I believe, Comic Relief - and Half Price is even offering 20% off on everything - but we poked around there yesterday and I managed not to buy anything.

I could walk up to the Rose Garden. The sun's getting low so maybe I'd be in time for sunset. (Timeanddate.com says sunset is at 7:29, so I can dally and still make it.) Views of the bay and the Golden Gate are good from there.

I've seen 'em so I know. Plus a walk up that way would be good exercise.

If I walk north I end up at Solano Ave. Which is of interest. But I was there just last week. And what would be open?

If I walk west, what? The Ohlone Greenway? It's okay, a long stretch of urban park. Kids on monkey bars, dogs in the fenced-in off-leash zone, homeless people.

Sometimes I like looking at houses or imagining myself living in different neighborhoods. I could do that in any direction.

It would be fun to have a friend (or three) that's also a neighbor who doesn't mind an occasional visitor dropping by. You know, for a chat, a cup of tea, a game of checkers. Whatever. But I don't have any quite like that these days.

I guess I'm a little bored. Not frustratingly so. I've banned myself for the rest of the day from the political blogs because I was just leaving angry comments that weren't doing me a lick of good, really.

Walk. Or no. Having written about it I'm sleepy. Perhaps I'll take a nap.

Info Desk Blogging

It's quiet here at the Claremont Branch. I can hear over at the circulation desk an older woman is being told she returned a DVD case without the DVD inside. "I found that at home. I was wondering about it. If you really want it, I can get it back today," she says.

Thursday nights we stay open until 8pm. And when the light lasts people linger. During winter by 8 it's been dark for two or three hours. Few people hang around.

A warm day. The front door is propped open.

A man just asked me what our wifi security protocols are. We have security protocols? The Wireless FAQ page on the BPL website says, "Your information is not protected while using wireless." So I guess there aren't any.

Another man asks me if he can talk to me about a missing book. It seems he got a notice saying a book he checked out had not yet been returned. "But I know I returned it," he says. "I know because I opened the door to the drop box and looked in to make sure it had fallen all the way in."

I took the library card, scanned it under the laser frog scanner. The patron's library account popped up. He had exactly zero books checked out currently and had no fines. "No need to worry any more," I said.

I've been working away at the weeding project, book by book reviewing the collection for damage and for books that just don't go out the door. The section I've been going through just lately used to be very tight and has been weeded in the recent past. So mostly I'm carrying books from the shelf to the Info Desk then, a few minutes later, carrying them back. Still, a few things have been put aside: Chinatown, USA: a history and guide (1965), a 17 year old collection of George Will columns, superceded editions (a Suze Orman book, a Nolo book on 401(k)s, a J.K. Lasser Income Tax guide).

poem

The mouth opens black
under an inaccessible sky.
You look at the mouth,
black and open like that,
no way into it.
You're considering the ways
you might get away from it.
There’s left
and right
and back the way you came.
You could walk under it, too,
duck right under its big black gape,
those two broad teeth poised to bite,
one tooth to each stiff jaw.
You could stop,
and with an open palm,
whack that mouth -
whang!
Then on into the unfenced field,
leave the road stopped before the mouth
that’s going to bite, looks like,
going to bite a piece off and swallow it.
You’d be brave,
marching down the throat of that future,
past where any road’s allowed.





photo by Art Durkee
found on blog post by Jim Murdoch
in which he talks about writing poems in response to artwork

Winkie report?

Winkie good. Compliments to David Maxine for putting together a solid program. Um. Nice drive down with John Bell who was visiting from Boston; I picked him up in Oakland and we chatted (or I chattered?) all the way down. I asked him once on the way down & once on the way back what sort of music he liked – I’d intended to bring a batch of the playlist CDs I’d burned, but had forgotten them at home, the music preference question being not just idle curiosity but checking to see whether he would hate what I was going to slip into the car’s CD player – except, of course, I didn’t have the CDs with me. Still, John said he liked “American Standards.”

American Standard?

Sinatra, Rita Hayworth, Eloise McGraw. Um. No? I didn’t put on the radio because I was talking, plus I was driving, so why distract from the moment?

I liked John. Smart guy. Personable. Didn’t interrupt me.

Anything else about Winkies? The old regulars. They are getting older. I guess that was a surprise. We youngsters of the 70s & 80s? Middle aged. Anybody coming up behind us? Um. Anthony? The 15 year old local? I liked him. Bouncy. He was puzzled by the lack of attention to the MGM movie. “That’s what I really like,” he said. “I haven’t read the books.”

Meanwhile David Maxine was saying we really need to get people to join the club who are into the Oz books. The books!

There is only one MGM Wizard of Oz. There are 14 sequels to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. And many sequels by subsequent authors. I run out of things to say about the MGM movie rather quickly.

But I don’t know. I got one thing at the auction, an early edition of The Giant Horse of Oz. The other night Kent asked me if it was a book I really liked. After he noted that I wasn’t answering that question I furrowed my little brow and said, “I’ve never thought of it that way. I’m going to have all 40 books in the Oz series, and, yes, there are some I like better than others … but the issue of whether to buy something has little to do with whether that particular book is a favorite. Some editions of the books have more illustrations. I’d like the ones with all the illustrations.”

videotape

"On a recent night, [diver Shanda] Magill watched ... a dozen squid with doleful, expressive eyes circle her group, tapping and patting the divers and gently bumping them before dashing away.

"One especially large squid suspended itself motionless in the water about three feet away and peered at her closely, its eyes rolling, before it vanished into the black. A shimmering incandescence rippled along its body ...

"Other divers have reported squid pulling at their masks and gear and roughing them up.

"Roger Uzun, a veteran scuba diver and amateur underwater videographer, ... said ... The animals taste with their tentacles ... 'As soon as we went underwater and turned on the video lights, there they were. They would ram into you, they kept hitting the back of my head,' he said. 'One got ahold of the video light head and yanked on it for two or three seconds ... trying to take the video light with him.'"

more

*

"[A] huge search [of NASA archives] that began three years ago for the old moon tapes led to the 'inescapable conclusion' that 45 tapes of Apollo 11 [moon walk] video were erased and reused. ... The original videos beamed to Earth were stored on giant reels of tape that each contained 15 minutes of video, along with other data from the moon. In the 1970s and '80s, NASA had a shortage of the tapes, so it erased about 200,000 of them and reused them.

"[NASA senior engineer Dick] Nafzger, who was in charge of the live TV recordings back in the Apollo years, said they were mostly thought of as data tapes. It wasn't his job to preserve history, he said, just to make sure the footage worked."

more

life in Berkeley

Banging upstairs as our contractor & his assistant tear up the floor. New kitchen on the way. We had walls taken out and the ceiling is gone.

Weather is nice. So if I’m driven from the house by the noise I won’t be wandering in the rain or fog.

I’m off to Monterey this weekend, the Winkie Convention. Looks like I’m giving a lift to another conventioneer who’s making his first Winkie appearance.

Kent will be helping a law school buddy celebrate his 50th birthday. So we’ll be in different place this weekend.

The cats seem to be handling the renovation okay. They make themselves scarce during the day then show up once the strange destructors take their leave. Sundy goes upstairs and cautiously investigates the changes. I don’t know if Sutra has gotten past a frightened glance.

Couple nights ago Sundy came down – his face black! I knew he’d poked his nose into some new hole. I grabbed him up to show Kent. Kent delicately removed the spider web black with dust that had neatly framed his orange eyes.

Try This at Home

I like to pick up cheap sampler CDs. I’ve found lots of great music that way. At Half Price Books this week I found a sampler from Shut Eye Records, “Wrapped in Plastic”. The names of the songs, the bands, even the engineers and studios come together into fascinating tiny stories.

Catholic School Girls “Meat Wrench” (from the new album “Emily’s Basement”). Recorded at Smegma Studios.

Female Chauvinist Pigs “You Lied” (from the debut cd “So You Think You’re a Man”). Recorded at Spock’s Brain Studios.

Public Safety “Need a Reason” (from the album, “Try This at Home”)

Happy Campers “Things Could Be Worse” (previously unreleased). Recorded at Bombshelter. Engineered by Adam Bomb. Produced by Happy Campers. Mastered by Alien Audio.

I haven’t listened to the music yet. It would be nice if I liked it at least as much as the liner notes.

Lt Dan Choi

I feel encouraged and inspired by Lt Dan Choi, a man living his principles, his hopes, his love, and wagering his life's work that those really matter to our government, to our military, that America is not just a word but meaning.

I added the above to a Courage Campaign letter of support they will be sending along with Dan:

"On Tuesday," Dan says, "I will face a panel of colonels who will decide whether or not to fire me -- to discharge me for 'moral and professional dereliction' under the military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy.

On Tuesday, I will try to prove that it's not immoral to tell the truth."

Dan Choi is one of the West Point graduates who have founded Knights Out, an organization devoted to overturning the military's anti-gay rules.

Dan will be one of the grand marshals for this Sunday's SF Pride. Kent says he read that Knights Out will be riding with Dykes on Bikes at the head of the parade.

Marriage or Don't-Call-It-Marriage?

Tuesday the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, deciding that an amendment to the California constitution approved in the last election makes the word "marriage" off limits to same sex couples. However, the court seems also to have decided that same sex couples cannot be denied equal protection of the laws, thus the don't-call-it-marriages (in California currently it's Domestic Partnership?) must be precisely the same as dual-sex "marriage" (minus the name).

Today I posted a diary at DailyKos:

Don't like "Marriage"? Here's your chance!

Which dual-sex couples are going to challenge their exclusion from Domestic Partnership in California?

The California Supreme Court just ruled that same sex couples are entitled to all the rights of marriage but for the word. If we are all now equal, what is a Domestic Partnership? (In other jurisdictions the don’t-call-it-marriage equivalent is termed Civil Unions. In California it’s domestic partnership.)

There are many Kossacks who demand the government get out of the marriage business. At least, say they, the government should have all the rights of marriage available under a different name. According to the California Supreme Court, now it does (or must?). At this time you can’t file a domestic partnership if you are a dual-sex couple*.

So you’re a young het couple who doesn’t think the government should be using a loaded religious word like “marriage”, right? Here’s your opportunity to get don’t-call-it-married, ie., Domestic Partnered. In the eyes of the state (the California Supreme Court, anyway) a domestic partnership and a marriage are identical. What’s the justification for denying a het couple freedom from the word “marriage”, just like their gay brothers & lesbian sisters?

Looking down the road a bit, you’re safely dp’d, now you can ask the feds to recognize your Domestic Partnership as a Marriage. After all, it’s just a name. The California Supreme Court says there isn’t (or must not be) any difference whatsoever. Why shouldn’t the federal government recognize a het domestic partnership as marriage? Is there an argument against it?

The more people choose against “marriage” and for marriage-by-another-name the less power the word “marriage” will have? Isn’t that the golden key to this locked up argument? That’s the assertion I keep hearing. Here is your opportunity to test it! Who will step up?

(By the way, can anybody source the “18,000 same sex marriages” figure? I can’t seem to find the authority.)

*There is an exception to the current het exclusion to Domestic Partnership. If you are over 62 you can get dp’d because the federal government won’t consider you married, thus you won’t lose benefits – many of the widowed old rely on pension benefits from their dead spouse, benefits which evaporate upon remarriage. It’s another issue but WTF? Why do you lose pension benefits?

B.H. Fairchild v. David Mills

today’s Poetry Daily poem battles today’s Verse Daily poem:


My memory crowds weeds and flowers onto its shoulders
so the old gray guy & I, shambling in our shackles,
dust in our drawers, and darkness on our scythes,
sandwiches of mincemeat, cockleshell and inebriation
in our iron pocketbooks, our boss’s jaundiced eye

a yellow pall so vile you must’ve puked it out
on the mad ball’s wilful architecture last night late, or maybe
it’s the stout shit the Portuguese left spinning in the bowl
still spinning with each piss swipe, or perhaps
despair in orbit, stripped of ghost, ready to shoulder

harmattan messages. Who knows! Do you know?
Spit! Where was I? Shuffling in chains under a looking
glass sky, water aching from my skin canteen,
poor wounded fruit, weeds all around me like letters
from collectors asking politely, like letters lizards

ape, contorted in sun-smashed meaning, a sea
of slippery clouds and cutting jokes, gold and dull
as fishermen missing their yanks and sighing with
enemy love, the drowned tears diligently drifting
out of childish knots, harried by ferries fetching ancient

promises for fresh plantation and quick twilight.
Wasn’t I going to cut something with this black blade?
Why’s it a spoon now, its yellow stripe a property line
divvying snowing from skipping, sleeping from rowing.

Talking to God

Hello, God?

Yes?

Just making sure you’re there.

Always.

Yeah. Always. Then why don’t you ever talk to me?

What is this?

This? This is an interview. You never just talk to me. You know: God here. Loving you. Nearby if you need me.

What you said.

Gah!

God here. Loving you. Nearby if you need me.

You just said that cuz I said you never said it.

Is this an argument?

Is it?

What is it you would like?

Why do I feel shitty? I would like not to feel shitty. I want just to feel good and happy and content and easy.

You feel that sometimes.

Not very often! I feel shitty way lots more than that other stuff.

Oh.

So. I’m appealing to you, oh Author of the Universe, All Powerful, Omnipresent, help me out here.

No.

No? Fuck you! You can do anything! Anything! And you don’t want to allow me a smidgen of good feeling?

OK. If you insist. Peace.

Huh? I don’t feel any better.

No? Let me try again.

It’s not working.

Oh? One more try.

… Yes? … This is just frustrating.

That’s not a good emotion?

I’m asking you to make me feel better and you’re making me feel frustrated?

I tried. What more can I do?

You’re not God! If you were God you could fucking do anything! My happiness could effected without the slightest effort.

I see.

Is God out there? Helllloooooooo!

What is it?

Are you God?

As ever.

Are you the same guy who’s been yanking my chain, claiming he can help me out with my mood then doing nothing? Or are you really God, the Author of the Universe, etc?

Both.

Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!

Do you feel better?

No!

Come on. You know you feel a teensy bit better. I can tell.

Don’t you have a volcano to belch?

NaPoWriMo Project Thoughts, part 5

I didn’t expect any reaction. I get so few comments on this blog. But, you now, I’m ever hopeful! No good at publicizing myself or my poems but it’d be nice if somebody read!

When I see other people answer the question: Why Do You Write? – they usually say something about how people reading them gives them incentive. Well. People don’t read me. (Except, OK, two or three people. I know, it’s like when someone walks into a concert hall and looks around and there are five or six seats taken and the person who just walked in says, “Nobody’s here!”) So I’ve gotten accustomed to putting a bunch of effort into writing that, so far as I can tell, goes unnoticed. Why would my April project be any different?

I did wonder if using the names of the people killed would make LuvSet show up in searches for those people. I didn’t think LuvSet had a high enough profile to bring attention, though. And I was right. For 29 out of 30 days, that is. Where else you gonna get a prediction 97% accurate?

During the month, the site’s stats bounced around as the search engines briefly brought visitors looking for information about person X or Y or Z. Just about all these visitors quickly moved on. K says the poems didn’t strike him as much different from a news report. They were all pretty bare.

So what about that one day somebody noticed? On April 2nd I edited down a news item about an elderly man strangling his ex-wife. I got two comments – both hating on the piece. One scolded me for not knowing whether the dead woman “loved flowers, or that she loved babies, or that she gave her whole heart to her family.”

I didn’t know anything about the dead woman. That was so. I didn’t know anything about any of the people I was writing about. Learning biographies was not part of the project.

This commenter accused me of making the dead woman “an irreverency.” I hadn’t thought of the series as irreverent, but rather a form of prayer. A meditation on transience. A daily pause to reflect on unexpected death.

Should I have used the real names? If I hadn’t I doubt anyone would have found their way to LuvSet looking to find out about the stories I appropriated. It’s not like I was looking to build an audience that way, anyhow. It did make me uncomfortable – the thought that someone might come across a loved one’s name in this peculiar context. I figured I’d let that play out, though. Probably nobody would, right?

I don’t know whether the commenter knew the dead woman. She doesn’t say. She’s offended for the dead woman or for her relatives or for the very idea of talking about this woman in this manner. Something like that.

A day or two later another commenter showed up, somebody claiming expertise in Death. Her scolding was more sophisticated than commenter #1 and more vicious (& started out with an hors d’oeuvre of self-promotion). Commenter #2 called me (in a particularly clumsy coinage) a “Death Vulture” and accused me of “prey[ing] on celebrity … for personal financial gain.” As she herself quickly acknowledged, there isn’t any money in poetry blogs so the “financial gain” accusation had no traction. And far as I could tell the only celebrity the dead woman had was conferred by the sensational nature of her death – that is, that she was an old woman strangled to death by an old man. The police lieutenant said such a death was “somewhat unusual.” So my exploiting her celebrity? Seems a bit of a stretch.

On the other hand, it hardly came as a surprise that some people were upset by a death. Nor did it surprise that those people would scold me. Commenter #2 did something commenter #1 hadn’t. Commenter #2 (after slagging me) asked me to remove the post.

I didn’t remove the post but I redacted the names? I took out the names because the names were bringing a lot of visitors and I decided LuvSet being a destination for people looking for information about this killing was not what I wanted. I may return the names to the poem in another version. I may redact all the names in the series. We’ll see.

Don L. Emblen, 1918 – 2009

My English teacher from Santa Rosa Junior College died last month. “Of heart failure on April 24th, at the age of 90,” says the latest issue of The Reader’s Rejoinder, a monthly newsletter/zine Don has been putting together for about the last 20 years. He added me to the mailing list a couple years ago after he proposed doing a chapbook for me on the fine letterpress he kept in his garage-studio. I was delighted. The chapbook never happened, either because he wasn’t able to get to it, or because I was a lousy correspondent (I blame myself).

Friends are going to publish one more issue of The Rejoinder, a memorial to Don.

Visit an earlier post to see Don Emblen at Petaluma Poetry Walk 2006

NaPoWriMo Project Thoughts, part 4

What can I say about death? Nothing new, I’m sure.

Does one have to say something new in order to have justification for saying anything? It’s a cultural thing. Originality just messes up the great patterns handed down from wiser ancestors. Some would say.

I don’t know. Does everybody get a unique life, let alone a special death? Are we archetypes recapitulating ageless patterns? If we think we’re doing something new, we’re fooling ourselves?

Considering that rockets don’t go to the moon every year and when I was a kid old ladies weren’t flipping open their Star Trek communicator-look-alikes to make sure the nephew was coming by to switch out all the light bulbs to those energy saving compact flourescents, I guess everything doesn’t repeat itself exactly as it always has. Those thousands of years of hunting-gathering? They probably were pretty uniform - from the perspective of living memory, anyway.

So what’s news? That an elderly man strangled his ex-wife? That another suicide bomber blew herself up in an Iraqi café? That a lightning bolt took out a biker on his way home from a charity event? That an earthquake in Italy killed kids in classrooms?

NaPoWriMo Project Thoughts, part 3

From a story by Julio Cortazar:

“… a writer can argue that if his inspiration comes from reality, and even from the crime news, what he is capable of doing with it raises it to another dimension, gives it a different value.”

NaPoWriMo Project Thoughts, part 2

Was it plagiarism?

Did I write them?

I didn’t add much. Mostly I edited down the original news article. I would rearrange. One of the things a news writer tries to do is put the most important facts in the lede – the first sentence even. That deemed most important comes highest in the article. Partly this is so readers can get all they need without reading to the bottom, partly this is so editors can snip off the last few paragraphs when they have space limitations. The space limitations problem is less salient with news on the internet, though brevity, punchiness, is probably more important than ever.

So did I steal or did I write?

NaPoWriMo Project Thoughts, part 1

I’ve long wanted to do a project based on the news. I’ve thought about working with a front page – whether the front page of a physical newspaper or what’s on the home page of newspaper’s website or newspaper equivalent like Google News.

On April 1st I decided to do that. Rather than work with the welter of information on a news site’s front page I chose to limit the resource. Going with a wish to notice deaths, to bring them out of the ordinary news feed, I went to Google News and typed “killed” into the search box. I copied the first story that came up into MS Word and edited it down, four words to a line, four lines to a stanza. When the story didn’t fit perfectly, I looked back at the source page to see what other (unrelated) story I could use to fill up the form – reintroducing some of the context of the original “ordinary” news feed.

After I posted the first poem I saw that I’d used five words in the line that mentioned the number of persons killed, so I thought that was an interesting addition and tried to retain that in future poems.

Is a compound word one word? “A five-year-old child” – three words or five? Usually I decided that would be five or edited to avoid compounds.

K says the form was invisible to him. He didn’t see that there were a particular number of words per line.

whew

April was National Poetry Month. April was National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). During NaPoWriMo poets commit to writing a poem a day. Been there, done that, I thought. I learned some things from it; one of the things I learned was that pushing myself to produce a poem every day meant not enjoying the writing of bad poems. Now it’s true that pushing myself to write has produced good or interesting results, but day after day? Best not.

Then the last day of March I got an invite to join a NaPoWriMo group. The morning of April 1st I wrote a piece based on a news article. That piece became the template for a piece I would write (or craft or edit) each day of April.

Was this a successful project? Did it do anything?

I’m going to be thinking on the blog for the next few days about the April series.

Three

Three people are dead
after a vehicle went
out of control and
slammed into a utility

pole in southeast Missouri.
Randy Williams, the driver,
was 55; the passengers
were Larry McKinney, 65,

and Cynthia Hall, 48. All
died at the scene,
four miles east of
Doniphan. Save on Craftsman.


#

Source: Associated Press, April 30, 2009

Five

Five


A bus carrying a
group of tourists skidded
onto its side, ejecting
several, and killing at

least four instantly. The
crash occurred around 3:20
p.m. on U.S. 101.
The bus hit a

center divider on the
four-lane highway in
Soledad, perhaps on an
overpass? Responding to the

accident were more than
a dozen ambulances and
eight helicopters. Without cafeteria
trays, colleges find savings.


#


source: The New York Times, April 29, 2009
Jesse McKinley, reporting

One

Charles Morrow II, 23,
and two other men
were standing near a
taco truck at the

corner of 48th Avenue
and International Boulevard when
someone in a car
opened fire on them

shortly after midnight. The
three were taken by
car to Oakland’s Highland
Hospital, where Morrow was

pronounced dead. Sacramento has
2 more swine flu
Cases, raising the count
in California to 13.

#


Source: SFGate.com, April 28, 2009
Henry K. Lee, reporting

Three

In order to thwart
possible May Day attacks
police conducted at least
60 raids across Istanbul.

In one early morning
raid on an apartment
block in the Bostanci
area shooting broke out.

A leader of the
“Revolutionary Headquarters” was killed.
A civilian and a
police officer also died.

Some officers were wounded
when the “leftist, separatist,
radicals” threw bombs in
response. A television cameraman

is among the injured.
In Iceland prime minister
Johanna Sigurdardottir claims
victory for leftist coalition.


#


source: Al Jazeera, April 27, 2009

One

Six members of Topeka-
based Bikers Against Child
Abuse of Northeast Kansas
were returning home after

visiting children they had
helped (earlier in the
day they had participated
in a ride to

benefit the cause) when
one of the members
was hit by lightning.
The victim, 44, was

alone on his motorcycle.
“Strangest thing,” said Jefferson
County Sheriff Jeff Herrig.
Tokepa Dillons to close.


#


source: Topeka Capital-Journal, April 26, 2009
Kevin Elliott, reporting

Three

Joshua Cartwright, 28, of
Fort Walton Beach, Florida,
was being sought for
possible involvement in domestic

abuse. Okaloosa County Sheriff’s
Deputies acted on a
tip that he was
at the Shoal River

Gun Club. When confronted,
Cartwright engaged officers in
a shootout. Deputy Warren
“Skip” York and Deputy

Burt Lopez were both
shot and airlifted to
a trauma center where
they died. Fleeing in

his truck, Cartwright veered
off the highway to
avoid spikes. The truck
flipped over. After more

gunfire, Cartwright was killed
at the scene. In Jackson
County 30 tubers rescued
from flooding Chipola River.


#


source: WMBB News Dept, Panama City, Florida, April 25, 2009

One

Just after 3 p.m.
Wednesday in a field
near Camp Creek Lake
a gas well blew.

A length of pipe
hit Robert Jost, 38,
in the chest. He
died at St. Joseph

Regional Health Center in
Bryan, Texas. Jost worked
for Express Energy, under
contract to Encana which

owned the well. To
deter camera-shy robbers,
some Houston banks ask
customers to doff hats.


#


source: Associated Press, April 24, 2009

Seventy-Five

At least 75 people were
killed and 120 wounded
in two explosions in
Iraq on Thursday. In

the bombing in Baghdad’s
Karada district, a woman
wearing a suicide belt
exploded herself as dozens

of people lined up
at a food giveaway,
killing 28, including 12
police officers, and wounding

50. The food was
being distributed by members
of the Iraqi police
and the Red Crescent

charity in front of
an apartment building. In
the blast’s aftermath, the
street was littered with

bags of flour and red
apples, and pieces of
human flesh attracted masses
of flies. In the

attack in Muqdadiya in
Diyala Province, a bomb
went off inside a
restaurant where a group

of Iranian tourists were
eating lunch, killing 47 and
wounding 70. Of the
dead all but five

appeared to be Iranians.
Evidence for a suicide
bombing was not clear.
Slump lessens American mobility.


#


source: The New York Times, April 23, 2009
Timothy Williams, reporting

One

Sharon Kelley, 51, of
Kansas City, Kansas, was
killed in Tuesday morning’s
rush-hour crash with

a pickup truck. The
truck, headed north on
North 99th, attempted to
turn left onto Donahoo,

and collided with the
motorcycle headed south on
North. The rider died
at the scene. The

driver of the truck
was unharmed. Vehicle sale
fees in Missouri to
be kept under $200.


#

source: Kansas City Star, April 22, 2009

Five

Five


Christopher Wood, 34, discussed
his family's financial problems
in six notes he left
behind after he killed

himself, his wife, and
their three children Friday.
The 5 were discovered by
a relative a day

later. The sheriff of
Frederickson County, Maryland, said
the man struggled with
depression and was $450,000

in debt. After killing
them the man nearly
decaptitated the three children
using a kitchen knife

and saw. A second
home in Florida was
not selling. 24 hour
towing hotline, all makes.


#


Source: Associated Press, April 21, 2009

One

A standoff with Michael
Batchelor began just before
9 p.m., the Utah County
Sheriff's Office reported. When

called to the scene
officers were told Batchelor
was possibly suicidal and
may have shot himself.

They entered the home
after hearing a crash,
yet Batchelor remained hidden,
calling out threats. A

SWAT team arrived and
began trying to talk,
to convince him to
surrender. They said, instead

he brandished a gun, so
they shot him. Little
Cottonwood Canyon Road reopens
after avalanche debris cleared.


#


source: The Salt Lake Tribune, April 20, 2009
Jason Bergreen, reporting