and if you haven't had the pleasure, seek it

things in the world part iv
a brief [confused] overview of neonomadism, unpaid labor, chaimaking, candy, and a study in interwoven discourse on learning (unarticulated but rife).

enjoy and
let's make another one soon!

my favorite part of spring is jumping.

snippets of the bäohaus now available on the interwebz! share with friends, family, and remember the state of our house from faraway.

in other news,
today was my first day of school. (sounds of my life)
it was dumb and also interesting--"global warming" and "environmental history of the earth."
in the semcoop today i stood at the counter talking to dana and seeing hannah and someone said, do you have any books to buy?
i put down the book i'd accidentally picked up
and replied, "no, i have a lot of books. probably if i could take all the words they contain and scramble them up enough, i'd have all the books here. so i don't think i need any more."

this past weekorso has been like crawling through a brightly-lit tunnel,
keeping my peripheral vision open and my blinders put away,
this refrain of not-getting-back-to-something-old, i'm doing-this-a-new-way,
and neonomads and buddies and
sometimes searching searching for lost objects in a house that is an organized, sparkling disaster zone.
(i mean disaster in a good way, like "catastrophes" like ice dams opening up and creating the channeled scablands. like close calls that make you realize how much you stand to lose. like catastrophic departures that put enough distance between you&you that the missing starts to hurt and then watching your love grow as independence flourishes and autonomy learns to coexist with codependence like gabe and vlad asleep with their paws wrapped around each others' disastrously furry bodies.)

today this happened to me:
i was walking by the sem co-op, on the phone with z, and boarded over the curb and almost went sprawling. dana was walking by and paused-laughed and i yelled "oh shit." ten feet later, i heard,
"you just cursed in front of a church!"
me: uh...(looking around for a church and all i see is the sem co-op but okay)...oops.
he: want to be friends?
me: sure. what's your name?
he: here. (offers me the piece of paper he's holding) do you have an email address?
me: yes...but can we be friends without email?
he: just read it. all my info is there.
me: okay. what's your name?
he: just read it.
me: i'm eliot.
he: bye!

friendship is complicated these days,
complicated like the scablands and globalization and kissing,
a crumpled-typed note addressed to "nice ones,"
pink soup.
complicated like dreams i'm not sure i want to share in case they come true
photographs that i'm not in because i remember the feeling of a body behind a camera
and check-ins and sometimes honesty that hurts
like face wash that stings and you know it's doing something
(unless it turns out it's bleach and acne is not as bad as corroded flesh)
and anyway, what is that makes one shiny?
in the end, no one wants to be alone but we're so good at being lonely.
as soon as i say, "i don't know you," we are something to each other and
i have been taking pleasure in the weaving and woving and wivening of threads and stories,
delighting in the doing-being-becoming-brilliance of my buddies
because if i am enlightening myself, it is because i am surrounded by sources of light.
and in these days which are waxing and waning by the hour,
my hunger for artifacts is checked by a growing taste for kombucha
or if those things aren't causal,
they're correlated by event C, the walls and floors and bruises and glittery eyebrows and earfuls of facepaint and long breakfasts and cowboy coffee
and these bits of being here and also not-here. mostly here.

my bike is sad today, but i am not.

oh and,
skillshare/potluck/d.i.y.seder at the bäo tonight! if you weren't invited and are on this blog, you're invited
now.

should we kill sorokin if he was born feet first?

?????????????????'?""?????????????-------*?-??-*??? ?

yeah its a foaming sea they (they, up there are)'re multiplying prolifecreeping inside out those seven most suggestive dark crevices... well if Truth resists and the shepherds can't knot squarely, then the goats will keep circuwinding their ropes around the native trees and we'll never get any milk out of the enterprise!

a word to the wise

found on yahoo's home page today


I can't quite decipher where i fit in

woo! we're going to ibiza

certain squids shall be embarking on a rollicking road trip for all the guns, glory, gore and garbage you can shake a stick at. i wish bao+squid alike the best+more, and I close with my own poetry:

Embarkation is the day of gravelly steps on a buttery wharf,
and a twinkly sky.
So then we left on a burning ship.
We walked on our hands to extinguish the testy flames.
The brocade masthead led our weariness to sea,
and the captain spake in rhymes to the crew:
"Don't lose heart, my weary squids,
for heart is a rare sea shell,
and men may rule over salty waves,
but catfish rein in hell."

ps i've been promised a guestpost by heather the one and only T+G! somebody better remind her.
pps my hair is even more like tankgirl's than before.
ppps much love
lelz

a history of ivory violence (nearly forgotten)

we are not without historical precedent...

just found this article about the 1968-69 student occupations (and tent-in! and hunger strike) at uchicago. it was the most brutally repressed student occupation of the 60s--62 students were suspended and 37 expelled. paul sally, the pirate-esque current head of the math department, tried to defend students against one of the many disciplinary committees which sprung up.

it's an interesting story -- read here. (http://thecore.uchicago.edu/winter2010/which-side.shtml)

sounds like the maroon was a lot better back then.

also, some of the protesters' claims still ring eerily true--
"'How can an unbiased judgment be expected from a committee formed from a University which claims to be a bastion of pure, value-free, uncorrupted, ivory tower thought, yet which allies itself with the war machine and acts as an agent of social repression to the black ghetto?' Steve Rothkrug, X’70, wrote in the Maroon."
racism, sexism...

i love the parts of the article about the "chickenshit theatre brigade" and the WITCHes (Women’s International Terror Conspiracy from Hell).

apparently after the repression of the '69 occupation, the university got a lot of bad press and enrollment dropped; it took until the 80s or so for the university's "reputation" to "recover."

cool shit!
enjoy.
(this story should totally be told on admissions tours. and taught in classes.)

acaveaspringaleakawell

sh0ved apples up it was the

time chili sauce stayed thirteen days 0n the c0rner of their lips we

nestled up there we made pest0-mascara c0ld sunlight

burrowed

all the way up (hair grows fast down

that way) up

infinite lovingkindness beads breezily uhhhh

p!

Reg Induced Insanity: RIIaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiaia - a portrait of getting out of school lickety-split

guys,
i think my eyes are open wider than usual
i mean i think i have a larger visual field than normal
a non-human level of awakeness pries open my eyes
and i have the tiny eyes of a shrew
the tiniest, lies lies from tiny eyes
sprints up and down the corridor of the faculty (foucaulty) offices
coffee coffee coffee coffeeeeeee (baileys - sassayossie) [dear last year of college thank you for helping me develop a deeper relationship with balzac's killer]
i wondered if helene cixous got drunk in libraries
the internet is a cesspool
protracted portraits of co-dependence, gchatting people sitting next to you
disoriented-dizzy
cool-awesome, spew spew vomit vomit, can we get this over fourty pages?
do you like the music of pivot?
take for instance the fact that they sound like a distillation of a clockwork orange
take for instance the fact that they smell like Beethoven
transgressive noises on the fourth floor: music leaking from head phones, wrappers, phones on vibrate, giggles, whispers, pages flipping, books clacking to the ground, someone typing too loudly, coughing/sneezing, snicking combination locks in oddly sideways lockers, packing and unpacking, (someone farts), scuffing feet along the floor, a gently clicking clock, can you hear the thoughts screaming inside peoples' heads
i'm talking about the shift from collecting to editing
let's edit this collection
it's got too many pieces, too many notes Mozart, the royal ear can only take so many
buzz buzz buzz
my phone's on vibrate just for you (hey dad thanks for calling to check on me, when did you get power back, what kind of wind storm are we talking?)
are you excited or apathetic?
is that our version of how are you?
how's it going, tik hei, tuto bem
my phone keeps buzzing
certain people who are usually on my mind are not on my mind (but they do pop up - do you bite your thumb, i do but not at you)
that's funny - i've forgotten (and i'm writing about memory and mimesis and journeys through learning and unity of time and monologues and direct address, but i have forgotten a vital thing/person/experience already so here are my inherent contradictions)
bright shining clarity does not necessarily equate to paginas on the computer
speed speed speed of thought, but too fast to steer
and my face feels dirty
or at least oozy (gross? nuh uh) and rough
before the sprints in the back corridors
i pretend not to notice i person who i know
i pretend again
this like a walk-by social snub
not really
i just don't want to have a conversation
oh reggle
joey reg
i love you
do i though?
she says to me "he said a word to me, a word that i can't even say out loud, and i think you're with me on this one, you know, like now is not the time, he said a word to me"
but see that was from another time, let's pack up and go
pack up to go the library
and home again
then to home home
bags in and out of books, bags in and out of books
books in bags,
baguettes on your head salvador
keep the ants from crawling into your eyes
SO HEY
i'm glad we can say - fuck you, i love you

I've been having dreams about Canada. I know nothing about Canada and I always have a sense that the whole country is exactly like Portland - which is unequivocally wrong. I've been thinking about going to Canada and finding myself there exactly as I was before, totally unchanged. I've been thinking about going to Canada and finding myself there exactly as I was before and moving there only to discover it is just Chicago or just Stamford or just New York or just Iowa City/Sioux Falls/Cedar Rapids or JUST BOISE. I think, "What's the difference between Toronto and Montreal?"

And my attention slips.

I'm interested in chewing on my fingers - as an academic discipline. Naming differences between tastes of certain fingers, textures of certain nails, cataloging hangers-on or little pockets of pus. Taxonomy of tearing at my cuticles. Families and subtypes. Breaking it down to a very specific science - how many categories could I think of in all? Hundreds on an okay day filled with sleepy eyes and thousands if I pushed it. Of other people's fingers I cannot muster the courage to ask.

I'm bored. And boring. I tire of my own sentences half-way through (imagine for a minute how many words I have already deleted). I just want to hear other people talk and ask questions that lead them to rambling monologues. I want to wear a shirt that says, "Ask me no more questions, tell me no more lies." Is it acceptable in this day and age to hold off on talking for a little while? Try a day or two days, see how it goes, if it saves me any trouble in the waiting out of whatever this is.

Dear-oh-dear, as my grandmother might say. Go have a cigarette.

what is a half-twin? what is a step-twin?*

hi adele,
welcome to this city of squids (or inksters)
(or foxes, bats, raptors, rollypollys, flies, etc.)...
comment, write anything and anytime (we love it when you do),
prolificate
& enjoy

*we're not sure. nor are we sure the point. the point is, when animals go bad.

screaming in the tunnel under the metra is a beautiful thing

it is so good to be home.
last night, z shared a thought, something like
relationships are getting comfortable in the routine of someone else's patterns.
(this idea extracted from her actual words, which are alonso's words revoiced: "and perhaps you never know anyone as much as you know the rhythms you fall into when you're around them.")
stambam said, yeah, like comfort.

i love missing things,
leaving in order to return
("the return makes the leaving less nervewracking")

but also, when i would sit by the river and make necklaces or paint gourds or think or cry, i wondered whether i was missing being comfortable (rhythms of synchrony), or people (sparks of connection), or a culture of bäo (in which i am something which elsewhere it becomes hard to sustain)...
i concluded that my feelings of saudade were all and none of these things,
and one night over caipirinhas and candlelight az and i articulated our wonder and pleasure at what the bäohaus has become for us (in part)--
(i speak for myself now, my voice inspired by others,)--
a place where we've allowed and pushed ourselves open,
to transform each other, ourselves, allowed ourselves to be(come) transformed,
and celebrated (and respected--maybe respect is not so far from celebration?) community, togetherness, and the benefits reaped from breaking down walls and norms,
and seeking seeking finding building autonomy from codependence, independence and self-reliance through safe-sane-consensual-communicative relationships,
an alternative (to) education (born in the midst of a sometimes-suffocating academia),
(and of course a refrain of
fostering playfulness,
opposing racism, sexism, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia, structures and institutions which keep people so bound up that they can't see their ropes and our teeth become too dull to chew-spit-talk a way out,
making music, art of all kinds, encouraging self-expression,
care)

these things, i think, are awesome.
and we (i, i think we) marveled at how these things have also inspired-empowered-educated us, and perhaps other bäos, to build-create-question-challenge elsewhere (or perhaps this is what brought us together--it's hard to say exactly.)

anyway,
it's good to be back here,
but it's not the place i left, exactly, not just slipping back into rhythms of comfort
(although good hugs are good and knowing how the stove works is a nice perk and having a bed that doesn't get rained on...is different)
i think there's something about returning to this space
that makes me want to rip my skin off,
spit on my best friends,
apply and translate and stay awake late and get up early,
bomb the world and rebuild it (using principles of anarchist permaculture this time)
and learning learning listening listening changing always.
to me, the bäo is not static. not closed. never the same. never dead. somehow still home.

for a long time i defined home as a place to return to,
but it's funny to find my definition shifting--
realizing that i've taken the bäo with me, and that it's spread like seeds
created like a collage, modeled on junkheaps, collectives, birdsnests, and sidewalks.

thanks for a fab potluck last night...i'm thrilled in this moment and looking forward to taking chicago (the world?) by glitterheatdirtstorm, again and again and again.

(and i would love to hear your words-thoughts-images,
in life or internet,
about what this house is, has been, could be for you,
since these walls have been built, lived in, pierced, and patched together by all of you.)

"um guys i have a bit of a family announcement or something"

(four little bears, sitting at a table around the remains of beans and rice,
pan-latin-american-style,
and one little bear speaks up, something like)
so, you know what transgender means? i'm that.

(this is a prelude to a conversation loosely recorded in squidink and
carved-out moments of precarity,
proximity to trembling
which is proximity to tears of liminal confusion)

my dad said,
"yes, sexuality is really something that pervades everyday life
like i read this article in the new york times"
(yes! he's read something! he's gotten the nyt's view on the matter!)
"about this female soldier
who told her commanding chief that she was gay
and he asked, why do you have to say anything?
and she said, well, it's something that comes up all the time
people are always talking about what they did on the weekend
how they went out with their spouse or if not
their girlfriend
or boyfriend or
whatever
and she just couldn't say anything,
she had to either lie or stay silent,
and she just couldn't do it anymore.
it was like,
if you had to take off your wedding ring
and pretend all the time."
(a good point, this, about silence,
despite the fact that i'm not in the army
and i'm not talking about being gay. still, a good point. thanks, new york times.)

so i said,
yeah,
i wish i had come out as gay in a more graceful way.
(my mom said, yeah really.)
and i think gender is like that too,
maybe even more so,
like every time i have to choose a bathroom
or every time i go shopping
or whenever someone says "oh, you guys," "you girls,"
(do i need more examples or do they get it?
how sensitive is the average to these divisions, these separations?)
even though we live in a society where men and women are pretty equal,
you know, like,
that division is always made,
men and women are treated differently,
and it's always she or he.

my mom said,
"why didn't you tell me this earlier?
i asked you if you were feeling more male or female"
(about why i like wearing shorts like the rio boys)
um...i don't know, things change.
"but i asked you. three weeks ago. why didn't you give me a straight answer?"
(like she was asking why i hadn't warned them? or why i don't give straight answers?
i hate straight answers.
i think all answers should have nice bends.
it makes for much better conversation.
and much more room to slide around in your answer later,
when it's a different day and suddenly,
you find yourself a little different. three weeks is, in the life of a bat, a long time.)

my mom's eyes (red) didn't match her tone (angry),
"look, alison,"
(i haven't been alison since i was 7)
"i know you think of yourself as a boy,
but i don't think you are.
i mean, you're not a boy.
i know."
(because she stripped me down and gave me birdbaths when i was 3?
i liked birdbaths. better than baths. better than showers.
i didn't realize they would come back to bite me.)
"so how can i call you he?
you're not a he.
how can i call you eliot?
no one will know who i'm talking about."

"it's like me asking you to call me sally,
when you've called me mom for twenty-two years
(um, i'm 21)
and it's not my name, it doesn't even have
anything to do with my name."
my sister stepped in,
"uh,"
(thank you thank you thank you i see your eyes are red and mine are too i don't trust my voice right now thank you thank you)
"i think that's pretty different.
eliot's talking about"
(the only time tonight i've heard my newname, my eliotname)
"their identity, and i think we should respect that."
(thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you for making me feel not alone in this moment, "there is a simple comfort in not being alone"...thank you thank you)

i talked a lot about
how much we all talk about gender
and yet how people respond so differently to trans people and their trans kids,
and just to let you know, m&d,
i have this awesome community in chicago
where i am supported and loved
and i know lots of genderfuckers and trans kids
and their parents have responded in all different kinds of ways,
some are really close to their parents
and some left their parents' houses
or were kicked out,
and those different models have helped me to figure out where i stand.
and i hope you can be supportive,
and i'm here telling you this because i want to be open
and honest
and i think you might support me
and regardless, this is important to me.
being honest, being myself.
(whatever that is, may become, may desire.)

(the big issue was)
"what about my mother's birthday?
it would be inappropriate for you to get up
in front of all these people
and make this announcement about your being 'transgender'"
(or whatever it is, the words are still being worked out--as much for me as you, i wanted to say,
but sometimes it's best to keep things kind of simple,
get out the basics,
my ambiguity has delayed this conversation a long time)
"i mean,
i don't go to work
and talk about my sexuality
or my intimate, well, sexual details
or whatever
i talk about physics!"
(mmyeah. different.)
setting the record straight--
(for once, this facile division between
sexuality
gender
becomes useful.)
and yet,
you talk about your wife,
your kids, your family,
and your gender--everyone recognizes you as a man
(is this the first time i've called my dad a man to his face? strange feeling)
everyone knows you're a man
and every time we describe someone
(you have two female students and one male, two indian and one chinese, my mother had a meeting with a woman today, we are all in all one son one daughter and one me)
the first thing we say is whether they are
male
or
female.

later,
my sister hugged me.
"i'm glad you said that."
i said,
i almost didn't.
(i almost thought it wasn't necessary,
that somehow the hints would add up and that would be enough,
casual mentions and back three years ago when i got my first pair of h&m boys jeans
and they were the best best best clothes i ever had and i wore them until they became holes.)
thanks for your support,
and then i texted some squids,
and the lovetentacles felt better than the cigarette
which felt better than the cold air
which was better than the inside
where words drift through
"it's so weird the thought that we'll have to psdsdsdsdssssptsdtt"
"i just don't know what to think about bsssspspbssddsdf"
"what are we going to do about fieieieeeiffsdspspssssssssspsdfff"

then my mom (sally?) helped me put lettuce, coriander, beet seeds in bags
and my dad and i talked about what is reasonable and what is respectful
and what is selfish
and what is not selfish
and of course (we're liberal) we all have to agree on everything,
a hint of opposition
is reconciled as a misinterpretation
until we're all saying the same thing
("i'm transgender." "me too!")
or something more like,
respect
love
life goes on,
same but different,
this one is an intentional change, an articulated change,
unlike many.

my brother said,
"oh yeah,
i know what transgender is."
where did you find out?
"around."
i mean, there are lots of ways to find out...friends, books, porn, the dictionary, wikipedia, a movie, mom and dad...around...
"around.
everyone knows."
(duh)
so yeah, i'm that.
"ah okay."
but you know, i just wanted you to know.
i feel like we've been bros for a long time.
"yeah."
okay.
well.
goodnight.
"good night."
i love you.
"yeah. you too."



ready to come home,
again.

going through drafts of emails

love it love it... what funny little moments in time that have a distinctly different quality than the "sent" box.

&found this one from my last week in port angeles

Draft saved at Wednesday, September 16, 2009
From: e.s.b.
To: smelly
Subject: songs i have been singing

i was lying in my bed last night
staring
at a ceiling full of stars
when it suddenly hit me
i just have to let you know
how i feel...

we lived together in a photograph of time
and i look into your eyes
and a sea is opened unto me.
i tell you i love you
and i always will,
and i know you can't tell me.
i know
that you can't tell me.

so i'm left to pick up
the hints that are symbols of your devotion.
and so i'm left to pick up the hints that are symbols of your devotion.
and i feel your fist
and i know it's out of love.
and i feel the wind (?)
and i know it's out of love
and i feel your burning eyes
oh
burning holes straight to my heart
it's out love
out of love

and i accept and i collect upon my body
the memories of your devotion
i accept and i collect upon my body the memories of your devotion
and i feel your fist
and i know it's out of love
===============================================

hands down
i'm too proud for love,
but with eyes shut,
it's you i'm thinkin' of.
but how we move from a to b
it can't be up to me
cause i don't know.
eye to eye,
thigh to thigh,
i let go

think i'm a little bit little bit
a little bit in love with you
but only if you're a little bit little bit
little bit in luh luh luh luh love with me

and for you i keep my legs apart
and forget about my tainted heart.
and i will never ever be the first
to say it
but still i
yeah you know i
i i i
i will do it
push a button
pull the trigger
climb a mountain
jump off a cliff
cause you know baby i love you love you a little bit
i would do it
you would say it
you would mean it
and we could do it
it was you and i
now only ah hm!

think i'm a little bit little bit
a little bit in love with you
but only if you're a little bit little bit
little bit in love with me

come here
stay with me
stroke/struck me by the hair/head (??)
cause i would give anything
anything
to have you as my man
=========================================================

on the hogwarts express with crabbe goyle pansy,
chillin out maxin compartment 3D,
no it was too much to expect privacy,
especially with a reject like our friend harry.
that's when i started talking about voldemort...

as i was explaining my sweet new posish
i saw a shoe or a small piece of fish.
no it was a shoe that my two eyes did see
under a cloak of invisibility.
that's when thoughts started creeping up on me,
i knew exactly what i'd do.
make you wish you'd act more quickly
and that i never saw your shoe

i'm gonna kick you in the face
i might do it twenty-seven times just in case
i know nothing could ever replace
the picture in my mind of your kicked-in face

after they left i went through with my plan,
i tied two strong knots around both of your hands.
made you listen to striker and enter sandman,
gave you a piece of my duran duran.
you didn't like it what is wrong with you
[there's one or two more lines here...]

i just kicked you in the face
hey harry potter how does your blood taste?
i know nothing could ever replace
the picture in my mind of your kicked-in face.

and I remember actually listening to these songs and typing out the lyrics, it was about that act of "writing" them down instead of finding them and pasting them. which is why i never sent it, 'cause i realized that there's no end-difference between those acts when you're on a computer. the songs are by antony and the johnsons, lykke li, and harry and the potters.