new year says the world.

a forsaken dream.
a single flower is a tomb for the eyes
long i looked
swaying in winter
under a floorboard in a cold room of its spell

i offer this moment up to the sky!
as a chance to say

fuck the numbers
that say how far i am from the beginning
and how close to the end

.death is always.
.never foretold.
.i tip my hat to it but go on living.
.as a life-crazed whatever.

happy winter

Mish mashed raw pumpkin rose thorns

lavender lavender sage healing herbs a positive outlook McDonald's closing down in Bolivia"they're just more into empanadas than big macs down there" christianity the crown of thorns is (just) pagan sun-worshipping

That is Mount Athos, a peninsula in Greece where only monasteries exist, as they have existed since the 4th century. They are self-sufficient, use Byzantine time (where the new day begins at sunset not midnight), no women are allowed, and they pray non-stop, and for 8 hours each day collectively in the church. Long beards, golden icons, and magnificent cliffs over the aegean.

Wow. My brother is there right now. Maybe he will decide to become a monk?

Found a dead seagull today.

Find myself able, this time around, to release judgment... or at least not get emotionally caught up in the ecological/political concerns I have with my family's lifestyle. I feel peaceful... practicing guitar, walking, being present with my parents. I feel also a very slight but very real worry that this release from attachment is allowing me to be too comfortable with what is...?

(refrain: you can't change anyone, you can only inspire through being yourself)

It was great to see many of you recently in Oakland and redwood-land. Ended up the next night at a "naughty Santa" party in Santa cruz with a mostly middle-aged crew, where I felt suddenly very out of wack, like all the things I'd been defending/advocating about the west coast new-agers were suddenly spun round round wrongside down. thankfully music and contact dance always soothe the spirit. grateful for all the different perspectives. grateful for you and you and you and you and you and yous who I didn't see too.

it's a new moon tonight, kiddies, make yer wishes

portland. the eve on the eve on the eve of whatever

the person who is seen across the dark street
revealed in a passing window
between the glare of the screen and
the body bent forward trying to become one
with what will never be.

just when we think the rush of our life
is beautiful
it is not.
just when we think the trash of our life
is beautiful
it is not.
it's about how we do something. not what we do.

how many times have i been caught
thinking i was transcending
when two steps back worth of perspective
i am revealed to be
another fashionable drunk
another reclaimed consumer
another hipster.
hoping this time around i'll
deserve this high.
i deserve this gaud
i am different.
ive been through the fire
ive been on the mountain
ive felt extremes of pleasure of pain
i met death and we made love
im a drug addict's son
i write poetry i make art
i speak with my eyes
what i say matters
because hardly anyone anymore
says something with heart.

mt hood choking river bearded head asymmetrical haircut
says dont worry world, recognize me. i got the right kind of consciousness.
i vomit looking out onto the scene, but nothing
comes out because what i feel has already been felt.
ive seen the names on the shelves, ive been to the museums, ive heard the records.
this is grief.
i dont care if it can be spelled different ways
like s-h-u-t u-p
y-o-u-r-e d-e-p-r-e-s-s-e-d
y-o-u-l-l n-e-v-e-r b-e s-a-t-i-s-f-i-e-d.
this is grief
i'll never be silenced
i reject my possibility.

ooh ooh I wrote a poem last night too

saturday or wednesday
twitching phrases catch an ear
here and there
but the purposeful driver
parked instead.

TO WHAT A1M THE RIGHT OF W4Y?

the prong bent, the plug refused, and yet -
once inside, a torrent.

once a smile, more.

tho this great wizard said to
stifle it if you can

AER4TE YOUR CA8INET

or at least shuffle with a little more deliberation, godamit,

but vulgarity is lossed on me
I’m so big I condense gravitudes
including the gnarls of age
and the horses therein

so, as HOLLYWOOD say,
(spirits these days):

sometimes you eat mary, but sometimes you AVE maria.

carrying the honey in my tummy need to build a home, need to lace a comb race against time finding the sweetness to survive
in this time of salt

yes, what a thrill to be assaulted by your true desires
and yes, to feel. it is beautiful to feel.

and to move from such a life monastic and of doing without
having sacrificed,, the clutter, the confusion, even the glamor, the gold
to bare bones practicality
the structure to keep you walking
please, no frilly thing to distract.
time spent teasing out the knots, tedious and trying
to find those special dew drops
those soft white magnolias
that curl in your palm
to reawaken the grace of your imagination
the beauty of style
and the importance of things called your own

on the occasion of winter solstice

Pain Thinks of Addressing the Body

As you tear down the frozen
stalks, as you rake over the garden,

as you drain the fountain,
and at night, listening for the small

shapes of animals lunging
through snow--

you are not thinking of paradise.
Like you, I endure

as the season you love endures,
radiant and frozen.

- from "the fork without hunger" by laurie lamon

gotta say it gotta say it

oh this song -- "loose lips" by kimya dawson

[so if you wanna burn yourself remember that i love you
and if you wanna cut yourself remember that i love you
and if you wanna kill yourself remember that i love you

call me up before your dead, we can make some plans instead
send me an IM, i'll be your friend]

i have been sitting with the recent suicide of my friend, this beautiful beautiful 18-year old boy i knew who wore funny sweaters and had just alit into flight, hitchhiking across the country from one portland to another to a punk show where he danced hard hard hard and shouted "i need a place to live!" and he went to the library every day and was a feminist and queer ally and hadn't really fallen in love yet and i wanted to kiss him one day when he was a little bit older. i don't have that much to say about it right now. except the realization that of course of all the people i know and love there are probably at least a bunch who walk a line of wanting to fall off the other side and maybe i don't tell people enough that they are hella important and their voices are needed in the world and i love them and i would miss them. so this is the stupidest way to do it perhaps but it's real right now for me.

i just want to begin this crypt by saying that it was a bon-a-fide pleasure seeing many of you just recently in oakland! really really
it fills my heart
having the honor of such sparkly, strange, lovely creatures.
everyone's invited to portland!
until we meet again,
((sooner than we think))
i'm glad we have this touchstone,
love,
fox

~~~~<<*@
AND in our next chapter
WE ADD BINDING TO OUR BOOK.
no more reckless writing
of unhinged desperation
pages we scribbled out of
LUST and LOVE and the
CRAVING FOR MADNESS
ripped and tossed onto the shore.

I TAKE WHAT you've given me NOW
and i can keep it..
not with the frightment of doctrine or scripture,
but just the ENCHANTMENT OF LORE.
---~-~-~~;,..*

the deep dark well is frightening
the deep dark well i chose

from here, i hear my voice
with rich vibrations
the resonance holds me tight

from here, i see the sweetest
s t a r s
they swell into the night

and outside these stone walls
wait my family,
all lovers, all friends
a birthday party without end

the deep dark well is long and lovely
the deep dark well is home.

nailed

and being the last to leave this time, after sacrificing leaving to the great fire at samhain.

that has meant: sticking around to see what happens, fighting my desire to leave prematurely, to make casual exits and smoke a cigarette on the way home, admitting when things feel really good, maybe trading rhizomes or roots or budding fungal networks for beloved light burdens and roadsnaxxx.

right here right now

soon headed to the bay

trading newfound comfort challenge falling-into for pilgrimages in the name of family

to return and to be returned to

and the integration of all selves isn't always comfortable

but i'm convinced there's something important in it.

yesterday i found a cabin in the woods and tried to get in through the chicken coop.

i have admitted that the moon is important.

i have told the sun that i miss it when it's not around.

i have come to remember cold fingers and cold toes and the pleasure of layers.

i am ready for something.

maybe that's all,

the mirrors in my life are shrouded for the moment

i trust that i am doing okay.

i repeat: our community is strong and resilient.

i repeat my prayer for strength and clarity.

i repeat: you are loved and needed

cause what i put out keeps on coming back

so i will collect my things, pull them out of boxes and cracks in the sidewalks

and put a shim in my heart to keep it cracked open

cause that's how the light gets in

And i'll take all the world's poems

and undress them

to their

blush

(no more metaphor, no more simile!)

give me the truth

show me your eyes

----------------------their ancient strain for the love of god

And for this i'll cry.

the truth of the flower bloomed within this skull.

to the creature who takes on the pleasure
takes on what is given
takes on what is there.
go off and enjoy it.
tell no one what it felt like
beyond those involved.
truth, once sold,
wanes and wastes
along with the small grip it once gave.

could i disappear into the wood pile
as a mouse?
deep into leaf bark litter
tunnels
as a home against it all.
i know what it is i live for:
a little pile of seeds
a bed of needles
dirty paws.
a full heart.
my home is an expansion
of a tiny self, which is
just enough
until i am done
and something else.

i mean it.
moon and sun
witness this longing
to be released from
being human
caring in the human way
dark orb of mind

what folks fail to notice about my light
is that it comes from having given up.
i want nothing
because i used to want everything.
i used to want you.
that is the truth of me.
but we know what this means.
give it away, fade away.

mouse skull, seed husks, snow flakes in bed
in my place.

bumble

oh that privileged minute of space where i get to say
"i have nothing to do! i don't know what's going on yet!"
and projects and ideas spring out of the wet sidewalk.
portland has left quite a series of first impressions...
wet socks
wet tops of thighs pants
yellow leaves! red leaves!
more energy than i've ever had in my life i think!
local beers! soft kind of fuzzy widespread liberalism!
("hating our kind of people just isn't politically correct here.")
buzzing magic energy clean houses mild anger small-town city
or maybe the opposite and bridges out the wazoo
i build little structures of layered wicker to smile out of while i ride my bike
because--this thing of cities--how you can't see everyone all at once, how there are too many stories, how that makes me sad sometimes, how that brings such richness and possibility too.
i had put out this desire to be a clown-theatre-maker and it is happening here,
good folks doing that work
skipping biking stretching singing simple but absurd...
manifestos forthcoming.

okay, okay, i haven't been writing for a while. i have yet to think about writing a story of my time with the fairies and still figuring out how to speak in a language resonant with where i'm making decisions and feeling the world in my body these days. (today, my stomach, mostly.) i am not sure i am always right. i feel like i'm balancing on a couple tightropes. but also that the world around is generally soft and wet and alive. so i think i will live here for a while, find a house and start fermenting.

check

i made a wreath for the first time in thirteen years.

dinner.
grey words float from one
to the other.
spectres of things better not said at all

this fall the faeries seem to take me back reluctantly
and i feel generally forsaken.
i can pick up the twisted
pulse of hungry ghosts in a few
hollow eyes.
conversations live in shadows.
distrust rents the heart.
blackberry ruins.

the garden asked
can you take my vines.
and i did.
more, i took
grapes for wine.
and so this lovely waltz began
visiting dying plants and asking for their bodies
this dance went down,
down into the ditch
where the old water is.

a monster lives there
who thought the wreath
was beautifully wrought.
as a joke it now sits on my head all day.
i dont come back because
he is teaching me to unspeak.
i am learning how to disappear into the trees.
he has me in this way but it's okay.
i ran from my mother
i ran from my father
ive been here before
and ill come out of it
alight.

Thoughts?

Why did I ever stop listening to Linkin Park?

bay area, october

when wine is my blood
i can wake.
"ahh, now this, finally,
will do"
---------------------------------------
sf october summer
im out in the streets: wigs!
dancing! vulgarity!
at some man's house right now who is asleep on pain meds
he thought i was cute
he made me wash my feet and cut my nails
he made me a small bottle of cologne
he asked if i was bored
i ask what's the point of your beauty,
keep what you have or give it away

ive a new pink bob wig
i live under its pink bangs
with folks asking
"is there anything good in there?"
yes! there's me
AND who is touching my neck?

when i grow up i want to be beautiful
and have beautiful things and
say things like "yes"
dragging my fingertips through the store
chest throbbing
this outfit
this outfit could be it

the beautiful are getting ugly
the ugly are getting beautiful

here's to all the anyone's who felt an instance
of feeling not good enough
and who fed it
like a pet
that became bigger and bigger
in secret.

i sat beheld in the light of a doubly dying sun
looking for something that cannot be seen
while the masses cover the hillside
hushed in noise + jabber
waiting
a little wine a little dope
usher in the
stillborn moment.

then all go home
to wait some more.
waiting to be better
and working oh so hard at it.

when man wakes up
ill say "look at me".
it takes this one look
this one spell to
break the masks
that hide our scrambling selves.

the chaos of a youthful fridge (its too many items packed in)
of almost two glasses of red wine
the pleasure of reading foucault
of the album that mentions your town (everyone is into it)
of sneaky cigs, sneaky spliffs
the kindness of giving each other timelines
the intimacy of casually influencing each other
this we nuzzle in
swim in
dance lazy hip circles in
accuse each other of being deliberately obtuse in
agree to disagree in
substance
lapping at the edges of grounding
accepting gravity
and in so doing
forgive it

you press your lips to my eye
pretending to be drunk
and our light, ever so light carefulness with each other
blooms suddenly
and we recall that we love each other
without speaking it
"I feel so damn slutty"
"I love your art"
"I woke up with a spill of my own blood between my legs"
in the quiet
we have no need to be cruel
and remake our family
until our parents are forgotten
and cousin means something so new
supes amazing
supes perf
perf perf
c u soon

your views on religion are somehow invalidated as a man who hates nonsense and dancing

Jklerh achel udwer ehadh
Lerh azaman iglaerh
Lerh azaman iglaerh
Tigila mela tigilat har takanarh am nounou
Anizdjoum djerh atat diktoh ihal falas oulhin
Kay ebedhoun de amarhanak erhik tarhet
Warhak dakhim sel inizdjam ed tid tekted
Jklerh achel udwer ehadh
Lerh azaman iglaerh

not that we need to know what it means

get under the covers, speak gibberish to me

portland

what the hell am i doing here?

the world gets stranger+ stranger in smaller little pieces that orbit the sun too

the softness of the bed gave me night terrors
in the bedroom below ground with no windows
how human to be folded in a city of books and seas of dust.

winter edges a bit closer every day
yet there's no telling which is winter and which is not
since it is all grey.
the house is bent and comfortable but if you trip
you rot
because here water has its way.
no matter how i fought
the mystery went away
i crushed the mirror and tried to eat it

the air we tore asunder in
eyeless argument and
empty thunder
was me holding back
i meant to say
i never cared +
you're too scared
i saw it in the beginning of the end.

find something to say with what you have
not what you dont.
and on the instance of happiness
drink a little wine but kiss
that moment goodbye
as it takes losing something
to even begin believing in it.

aside, besides: Brian Holmes—3 Crises

http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/first-meeting-three-crises/#more-2634

Even if you're not in Chicago this Autumn, the recordings and reading material are available at Continental Drift and Mess Hall's website.

taking the 'l' out of 'play time'

If you ever paid a visit to my old flat, you know it was worth the "trouble" i'm in. Exit strategies, anyone?

he sails me like an ocean,
he tempers every storm i throw his way.

i paint him like a wild cat,
he makes loves to me like one.

and just when he thinks he's reached the lost edge
and the wilderness is too much to hold
i'm his mermaid, his holy grail,
the land still lusty and gold.

Bhakti Yoga

I am so fascinated by partnership, this beautiful and complicated way of ultimate compassion and concern, of love, of surrendering part of your freedom towards someone else's joy

I am so fascinated watching all these partnerships form, thrive, be parasitical, dissolve, and shine, and beckon... they move around me and even (transitionally) through me

I said, listen, my joy is to be an independent warrior. Hands in pockets filled with alchemical chocolate and lavender oil, sprinkling magic upon the angels in my path, my toe-shoes gripping along the playa floor (a compressed globe) as I follow always only (only?) mostly always my OWN bliss, nurturing myself, my needs, my craft. I said, listen, I have to draw boundaries, I have to say no to the vampires.

He said, but what about vulnerability? Are you nurturing your softness? Your surrender?

"Aaaaah (soft eyes, exhale, sweet darkness, longing)"

I thought, how can I win?

I thought, I can not win, I can just be.

I can hurt, I can heal, I can cry, I can want, I can thrive.

Yes, but my path right now is to be a warrior. Moon warrior, goddess Athena the wise owl, Durga upon her lion steed. A warrior of my own healing and a leader in the evolution of the species.

(listen, come closer, slowly, fingers touch, let's nurture each other in this dance, let's laugh, just don't fall asleep, don't expect me to fall asleep)

end of summer finally summer's here

calling the slinking sun to come!
come here and bring me flowers!

a tumble of hair
stiffens into curls
under the wind
all kinds of prepositions
to explain why it's like this
dragging a bottle of red
by its neck

the texture is yellow the texture is gold
a mere one and only creature gone spinning
gone speaking
the flowers are told
their color has faded
a tear flecks off into space.

the quicker burst of light

um

can you even DO that--

(yes)
7 minutes left here on the jefferson county compity comp and it's DARK at 8pm these days like i've seen it brighten and darken slowly this summer. last night i watched the moon move, millimeters at a time. i watch plants grow i watch pigs fatten i watch blueberries get bigger and bluer and smaller and purple mummified shrinkly curply fall to the ground. the ducks get their big teeth-oily feathers in and they still aren't sure how to eat a weed. i put the little plantlings, comfrey starts and jerusalem sage and yerba buena, in the ground that i have been cooing over in the greenhouse like a good plantdaddymama for a month plus or so and so...and summer has just begun and perhaps it will frost in the low field on the full moon...!
(almost often someone is somewhere waiting and
i am not sure if i will arrive)
the idea of ideas excites me, the memory of the taste and smell of
theoretically dense tangles of tendrils and
inspirations that turn coffee into mud and
mud into madness and back again.
picking blueberries i swear i have ideas that might shake california loose from the u.s. and by the time i leave the field they're gone, reduced into zucchini relish (which is still good)
i love this life for now
i love much
i forget often
i am curious
i want much
27 seconds--

big changes

holy shit, lots has happened in my life.

adele dumped me for someone else. ouch.

i'm over it. yay!

i'm moving up to the northside - hot damn! high time! should i come out to the west coast? should i tour the us/world with my erstwhile, prodigal baobuddies? yes but no. i still have a life here in chicago (booooo).

az where are you?

anyways, the new andersonville place is going to be beautiful. and life is going to be beautiful. and a LOT less stressful. fondest to all, and if you're in the mood for a housewarming, still live in chicago, or wanna reconnect, well it'll happen soon, i wanna see you, and also i'm going to come out west some time in the next coupla months.

ps post #400 woot!

love

leli

feel me?

like wut am i eeven do-ing? m'scalp ih-ch-ehzzzz. m'ayes r gray-knee, like sand sand and sand. ooooooooooooooooooooooooops. there r may-bee 7 er 8 peeple here so wut can aye say?

there's cheer and then there's cheery and gentlemen in oatmeal colored sweaters, collared dogs in the fountains and dashed, preemptively nostalgic ideas of Europe's platzes, hair up in plaits, not touching the plates, reclaiming the land lost in the refridgerator and doing the herky-jerky in yr bed hoping to maybe sleep thru the night if the heat should let you, living in the infra-black space before you crash into the wall and wut iffen i'm a crawler a night snake a pointy eared pixie not the fairy my mother and daddy hoped for, u kno experimental conditions, the left turn past ultra-violet, ultraviolence, meet me in caracas, i'll put uh rug beneath the sky scrapers and then yank it out from udderneath it and the mushroom clowd that'll follow will be followed by more rug pulling on my behalf and more mushroom clowds and the dust in our throats the kind that gave daddy PTSD and shredded mother's nerves, so mother and daddy were the hobbling kind after that, but like u stole my shampoo and i don't think this movie is that good and she felt uncomfortable at the bar, was it the mixed dancing and i'll leave you alone if you've got a boyfriend and just the usual, you know, and still wishing to pull the rugs from udderneath buildings!

witch iz 2 say, nobuddy sh-ohs uh-puh. we r like rolling r aye-z and nash-in r teef in a em-tee wight rum wit like 6 peeple and like nobuddeez laffing.

around town looking to rent a place for a bit

i dont read books about anything real
it doesnt work anymore.
gone are the days of seduction
by ideas and images full of promise,
the long nights of transcendence through
other people's transendence that they sold to me,
that i downloaded or stole.
there is no more curious boy adolescing
in the tiny room above the war.
he might be older now but such things dont matter
since he forgot and we're all insane.

a cigarette is the couch is the receipt is the mirror is taking out the trash is the turning page the picture frame is the waning smile is
the paralysis of many tiny futile and
impotent beliefs
fragile as wax combs.
and just as the wax comb is the most labor intensive and delicate thing the bee makes
so is my own concern for life
as something long and particular.
what do i care about?
ask the tree it might say nothing
it might say something you think it should say
ask me and it might one thing or
nothing as well.
yes, it's me. yes, i am more than a bowl of ambition
trying to push my own smile out into the world
insisting that it's it. it's love. it's worthwhile.

what is it that i dont know and
will it save me?
this is the question under the dirt
for the deeper-digger and
not for the one who stops satisfied to be satisfied with that they've found at the surface.
this is the question for the one who lives upon the edges of edges.

one day the world is the world
the next it is not.
it crumples and shifts like the idea that it is.
why my nose is bleeding
why it feels like this
why i write and go on
these are not things i know.

be careful, i don't need you.

the rebirth

anything and everything is possible. never settle for anything but love. you deserve nothing but pure love and admiration, and be commited to giving the same, seeing the warrior and angel in everyone. everything is a sign... the world is our friend. trust and have faith. overcome the hurdles of beingness to see the splendor all about you, and remember to play. it's an infinite game.

live in your million senses--touch, feel, taste, make love! to everything! run wild, think hard, be ferocious and unapologetically sincere! scurry like a nymph that doesn't know the rules. read whatever books you enjoy--it's all the same story. dance, make music, flirt, breathe deep, be present and engaged, roll and flow and run--it's all the same timeless, sensual experience of your given, beautiful world. allow yourself to get turned on, TURN ON to the world around you! HAVE SEX with everything. SEX is innocent and it is magical, it is PLAY with your whole body and SOUL.

listen carefully -- everything is speaking and trying to befriend you. we are all each other's beautiful, powerful angels... here to fulfill our roles, find our strengths, and heal each other.

THOSE VOICES? they're real... there's no such thing as crazy... there's only GIFTED, having the gift of acute and unique sensitivites that whisper and guide.
so,,
trust, listen. hear God,
be a heretic,

and don't forget to BURN. . .

I'm writing again!

Hi, I just opened up the computer and started to type, and this came out - it might be a little dry...

I just came across a passage in Gravity's Rainbow succinctly describing, but only in passing (unfortunately), an idea that I’ve long held:

“She knows her own precarious thinness, her leukemia of soul, and she teases with it. You must want her, but never indicate it--not by eyes or move--or she will clarify, dead gone as smoke above a trail moving into the desert, and you’ll never have the chance again.”

In this case, the speaker (thinker, I suppose) sees a physical thinness, and associates with it a mental, emotional, spiritual, really just total overall thinness in the subject. It’s clear too from context and from the quote that he holds this against her, although her powerlessness is certainly not deliberate.
He thinks she teases with it. She is taking advantage of her lack of power, really flipping around the whole arrangement. As if there is strength at the rock bottom - because he wants her, because showing he wants her would be too strong, she would blow away, although interestingly enough Pynchon also uses the word ‘clarify’, as if there would be something left, something dead.

So she knows that a person might want her, and she knows that her power is that they cannot show they want her, for fear of destroying her (or at least their connection to her). She might not, however (although this is dubious), know that this particular person wants her. At the very least there must be doubt, in her mind, as to whether he wants her. The moment this doubt clarifies, she clarifies as well.

I’ve often felt a similar feeling while sharing space with people I desire. As if the possibility for sexual connection is always there, in fact is real (however tenuous), until the moment when I express my desire explicitly to its object.

Maybe the Beatles knew it too: “Hey, you’ve got to hide your love away”.

Until I read the quote above though, I never connected the idea to powerlessness in the person. I always saw myself at a disadvantage. After all, it was I who had to hide, and the outcome was never up to me, right? It must be admitted that every once in a while someone did clarify into love, after all, even if most admissions of desire ended poorly for me. But seeing only my own disadvantage hides the greater picture, that my disadvantage comes from the same situation as above. The girl in the quote’s powerlessness is analogous to the systematic oppression of female-bodied people worldwide, and any power I perceived the many objects of my desire to hold over me is analogous to the power the girl holds in the quote - the power of death, the power of a last resort, the power of having nothing to lose.

as close as a heartbeat, as vast as the horizon

****blissed out****

contact improv festival at a hot springs in the sierras. Every day I transform, yesterday into an electric red earth and today into a self-existing white mirror.

I leave my body while dancing and feel sensations through the body of my partner.

A snake lives inside me which coils, writhes, enlivens, scares and initiates me into the knowledge of good and evil, all polarities and challenges... which ultimately all go back to the same source, the garden,

the flowering of human evolution.

What are you paying attention to? Do you use your enlivened body, your awakened neurons, to wake up your mind? Imagine yourself as a ship, piercing through space as you move, leaving ripples in your wake. How does your existence in the world change as you pay attention to the forward movement vs. the leaving moment? The being moment?

We are surrendering. We are rising up.

if you feel called, thecosmicrat.blogspot.com
gratitude.

trash can emeritus - eh eh eh eh pick pick pick pick pics on the internet - like we own the inner net - like we dunk that better bet - and if we like it we can keep it - all the twinks and tweakers surround the speakers and if you put your hand to floor you might find you wanna speak it - we saw the hurricane when it was coming cross the lake and the lifeguards called us in - photocopier emeritus - and anything we do, well i don't think it merits this but - go ahead and try it you should prolly try it - and if we like it we can keep it - and the people who aren't going to berlin on saturday night are moving to berlin for some crazy reason they can't explain - and everybody's shouting in german - and we are clutching each other - even the quiet part of the night that's just the wind and us in torn in two by the drunk boys and hobo bros and other bros - sure all the bros - and the street lamps make everything look suspended in orange jello - and we say oops and recuse ourselves like it's not our fault - like it happened to us - but our faces hurt from laughing and we run away from home - oops - and this week middle school teachers and grandmothers and professors emeritus die all within in our near vicinity and we write screeds in the woodchips of the playground with our piss - people are here for a year - for the next two and a half weeks - the people who say they are visiting might never actually show up - and you're probably moving in five or six months - so we all use the same towel - and say what we mean when it's past eight and we've been drinking since two - because somebody thinks we must own the inner net - and everybody thinks the other ones are hogging all the fun - you must be - we must be - if other people think we're having fun - we must be.

to my knowledge there exist no archetypes of 'the eternal girl'
such as there exist for peter pan and little princes

i am determined to create one

silence is dangerous when you make it talk

in a boy's body that pretends it's ready to be something else:

i am not a bird or
a tree that stands in everything
loving its own life for a long time.
i dont know how to be that way
though apparently i keep trying.
im not the immaculate berry riot
in the garden
satisfied to do what it does and
no more.
oh, but right, we read in books now
how everything is everything else
dont fear, we'll be reborn
as a leaf or a rock.

fuck that i dont want to live for that
because i cant
if i cant live as a brain heart with
ten fingers ten toes i cant be the mushrooms
or the rain.
i cant be the rock. i'd let us all down.
we're learning how we'll all heal by
growing organic vegetables on stolen land.
it's the new salvation.
and if i cant have faith in that then it's my fault.
im told the tides are coming through
and we're all gonna change into better things
we'll be more like before but different.
ive heard that death is also different and that
people are waking up that
it's only a matter of time until
folks renounce their stupors
and shit-filled pinatas and
we'll forget that we're boring and unloved.

i love the bird overhead , the one that dips
down from endless grey mute
but i cant be that bird and i dont know a thing
about flying. it cant see me down here
through the panes of glass
among the poems i write to save myself
each one less and less effective.
i guess what i am saying is
ive hit the ground.
im against it.
the only thing preventing me from becoming it
is my beating heart and time.

how can you ask me to dream in the style that you do?

your world and mine are not the same, despite what mary says.

i dream to wake up and just find some berries.

i know magic is real and i know a lot already about love.

i am nervous about being a puppet to an idea.

be it love.

why?

i distrust the glorification of life,

fetishization of eye contact and the truth

i wont put up with it,

the aggrandizers.

it is not endless bliss and cosmologically ordained.

it's not seamless light. and

i dont always know how to hold what it is you have given.

do you fear me then?

Here's why I can't leave Chicago.

Lake Michigan is my o(w)nly site for prayer
July August
my frenzied festival of religious ecstasy
water warm enough to wade into
and let slip
murmured, stored up slights
at night
the edge of the world seeming
the land dropping off
and me far enough out
that I see no one

and the things I speak to the lake
it holds
today I beg
to be strong
not because I have learned not to get hurt
but because I am simply strength
and I apologize
the cigarette smoke the only burnt offering I can produce

long walk there
long walk home
bearing the penance of walking alone in the dark
bearing the heavy looks from those not alone
bearing the lashes of concrete on my bare feet

Lake Michigan holding me
and all my whispered promises
vows dropped in its terrible depths

and if I could I would drink the whole lake down
but the summer storms
have pushed the river beyond its boundaries
and shit has washed up in my temple
my eyes swell with bacteria every time I put my head in
but I can't leave
because the lake knows everything about me

is this a poem or the release of a full bladder
after several long bouts of intoxication?

the pressure builds
the feeling is urgent, i catch myself running
to sit, split my mouth and let the confetti fly out

confetti this time, really?
one comes to expect the soft toulle of a garment
or waves like an ocean
perhaps music
i always hope for a little music

it funnies me too
the shades that emerge
in the splinters of glitter
blue then green then something i've never seen before
something that either scares me or draws me in closerrrr
it's always a fine line
a thin gloss
a look then a turn
a wink then a high tail

it's not that i don't trust you, dear friend
you and i know better than that
we've shared the same skin
the same heart
the same passion and pulse
it's been exciting, blessed be it is true
it's just the surprises that exist behind every corner
the surprises that kick scream jump
behind
every
corner

like this one
this small moment of reflection, of expansive sight
is a surprise
i sit now in my helicopter hovering
my bubble for one floating high in the sky
catching light on my glassy globe
marveling at its fancy
making love to the blue
cooing like a kitten
looking & seeing so far
in so many directions

and maybe it's not a surprise
these soft times, they come at the same time every year
every season, every hour
like the autumnal part of the day when the wind quiets
and the leaves drop
and you walk with no rush admiring each fallen gem
remembering its life
before trying to figure out what cool craft you'll make with it during the winter

mossy nests of nostalgia they are
nostalgia of paris, nostalgia of norway
nostalgia of farms and giggling creeks
and the lacy shadows of trees on a cool, wet path
nostalgia of walking into the golden embrace of a rustic kitchen
like the natural museum of a garden
with your lover there to meet you
to laugh with you
to spill flour and rub noses
a home that never quite felt like home
nostalgia, nostalgia, you prankster nostalgia

on second thought:
i adore you nostalgia
you hold on only to what is true
that home was really a home at times
if only for those split seconds that resonate through time
to now

they serve as arrows and road markers to the truth we are building
the trick is in trusting
the trick is in biting the bait
see,
i nibble fantasies with my morning fruit
i sip fairy tales for lunch
i know now what really feeds me
i have tasted the stuff of dreams and i know it is real
i look for it everywhere

look for the child with paint on its face
mud in its toes
the world in its hair
eyes,, the mirror reflection of a mirror
and skin the gift of 24 long summers

long underwear in july

strawberries! (sometimes a bit moldy)
the raspberries are ready
and cherries
and sudden abundance of things that grow on trees--
next place i live i'm planting trees first thing for sure,
windowbox or rolling hills.

often clarity's hard to come by for me here--
i think i might be sad a lot,
but also i really like this work and the pace of my days,
beans and rice,
going to bed my body exhausted,
getting up and doing it again.
recently we put up 2 acres of nets
so the birds couldn't eat the blueberries;
now we are getting ducks
so THOSE birds will eat the mummyberries, the fallen diseased ones--
inside birds outside birds baby birds dead birds mobs of hungry birds...

for breakfast i am eating often eggs & mustard greens
or oatmeal & yogurt
there's a wealth of dumpstered field roast in the fridge
and politics of sharing the kitchen are confusing to me--
a different texture of communal living,
but i guess it is true that
people who come out to live on a farm want some quietness, private space,
become a little more okay with silence and aloneness
at least silence is easy to come by around here.

and sometimes the sun is glorious!
and there is fresh bread! or pizzas on friday!
i am always excited to eat lunch!
local politics are kind of super interesting!
our dog left and returned!
the hard cider flows and flows!
and when z and i clean the cabin and burn a bit of cedar, it's homey.
and in my head all day i know i'm walking some lines of sanity and also worlds and also dreams.

but so it goes.
i have been writing a lot of letters recently. i'm happy to write you one too if you remind me of your address, you reader of this blog (i have been a faithful reader but posting, not so much...)

happy summer, to those with fur and without, long underwear or no...

oh also this is cool!
"notes concerning recent actions of the police" regarding the recent murder of kenneth harding, a faredodger on the BART in SF, who was shot by the popos...if you scroll down to the anarcha-fem flier that was handed out that's kinda cool too.

Construction night at the bao

We're full of changes! the living room has a honkin big couch straight outta animal house, my former office is now devoid of all life and extraneous landlord-added ugly wood things that did nothing (recall the aforementioned plan to turn it into a shortterm reallycheap lease for local, visiting nonprofit social justice-type workers? we're on target for an august release!)
, the sun room off of the common space is reverting back to common space (like a walmart turned nature preserve, or maybe california sliding back to the pacific) / guest space - including lots of power sawing and touch-up paint jobs and spackling and light fixturing and um did I mention that I hit myself on the head with a hammer? It sucked. It was also a repeat of my best serve return ever while on the high school tennis team - slice to the face!

Pictures in this post include the common room in a state of transition, helen at the powersaw, the future room stripped to its core, and my head, slightly broken.

Goings on at the bao!

Hallo,

yes it's been a whhililileileiellele since forever, but here we is, still baoing. I have three experiences to share.

1) Iron & Wine played a free mill park show for all of the lovely people of chicago. Yes, all of them - there were so many, the city stopped letting people into the show. So I climbed up a girder and sat on top, behind the park ampitheater thing, to listen to Sam what'shisfaceBeanorsomething croon. Here's some pictures:

2) The garden continues to grow. I can hardly believe it. I find myself very attentive to the weather each day - has it rained recently? Is it going to be way too sunny all day? Sometimes we water twice in a day, sometimes we water twice in a week. that's chicago, anyway. but soon, yes soon, there will even be some veggies to eat. We've been talking about preparing the veggies of our labor and taking them for a picnic to that weird abandoned park building just southeast of the bao, next to the 57th street tunnel under lakeshow.

Anyway, here's some pictures of greenery:

aaaand #3) last night Mark the neighbor came by and juggled balls of fire on the roof. He pulled back his hair so it wouldn't light on fire, and it made him look like a sailor.

till next time!

lelz

crazzy ass witch living alone in the big grey house over the glittering freeway clusterfuck with her dog and a skin blistering fury and no one peeking in but the princes of the night

busted lip, aching hip
a thigh run across with a shallow frankenstein cut and a fading bruise
anne and tina say
"bruises should not result from this work."
a tenet i have clearly discarded

the thing is
they've promised to tie me up
in front of several audiences this summer
ankles lashed to wrists
with ribbon and lace
and I am excited.

the clown who puts the kick me sign on her own back

somethin cool,

specially if you're biking-inclined
or geography-inclined

http://www.heywhatsthat.com/profiler.html

may's a-flurry

home-to-home!
i left oakland on sunday night, after two weeks of preparation--bike building (spend FOUR HOURS tuning my front derailleur and now it mostly works but of course when you load a bike up with like 50 lbs of shit everything is a little different), packing, repacking, saying goodbye, sweeping my room so someone else can live there and call it theirs. i kept telling teresino they could move stuff in while i was still there but i think they needed to wait until i left, until the room was really empty...but they still came by every day to water plants and give me a big hug. we had a kind of thing but it was all very ambiguous and so when we said goodbye they gave me some quizzical looks but i'm never sure how much to make a summary story and how much to leave things open-ended, allow our stories to develop separately...
anyway,
after my goodbye party friday night (packets of stuff in tin foil in a fire, hella drunk kids from fancy house) i kinda disappeared, running around and helping build a chicken coop and celebratory beers for everything.
sunday i got an amtrak up to eugene
kevin helped me pack up my bike at the station, hung out on the tracks talking about hot mess and dreams and travelling and king cobra
i slept most of the way and felt bad about it cause the view was so beautiful--the starlight line i think--ate hummus and that funny gjetoast scandanavian cheese
woke up in eugene, packed up & took off!
i rode about 50 miles that day, starting around 1:30 and through lots of little towns and big fields...i managed to get lost only in the small cities (eugene then albany then hella lost in the outskirts of pdx)
constantly amazed that my bike was holding up, heavy as fuck with all of these things i thought i'd need
thrilled at first to have occasion to be eating granola bars and wheat gluten jerky and emergen-c for every meal
mostly excited to be on the open road
i biked around albany like 4 times and a cute girl at a coffee shop gave me a consolatory italian soda while i looked for the way out. finally found the bridge out of town and contemplated pitching my tent on the golf course, then instead asked some folks if i could camp in their yard and got 2 compassionate "no's" before someone said "yes."
hunkered down with "the some of parts" by t.cooper and a black butte porter...
after i was asleep some cops showed up with shiny lights and inquisitive faces asking what i was doing there; after i said i had permission they proceeded to ask where i was going, coming from, how long since i'd left pennsylvania, if i went to school, if i finished school, what i studied, where i'd lived...what what what. i was still mostly asleep and confused but eventually they left.
next morning (yesterday) started out at 7, biked about 110 miles! thought it was supposed to be only 90 but i got lost in lake oswego (wow i hate suburbs and cars wowow). the hills got worse (literally, topographically) as i got tireder and the worst stretch was near wilsonville, probably 60 miles in, 20 miles on a curvy road with lots of speeding cars and NO SHOULDER. once some bros in a car swerved and screamed "get the fuck off the road" and that shook me up, made me want to write "share the road - i don't want to die" on the back of my panniers. or i dunno, put up some guerrilla signs or something. such entitlement.
so! i made it to pdx exhausted, displeased with the city after arriving through its suburbs, now up in the north-northeast with bernard and c80 and other folks in a sleepy smoky beautiful house for a couple days till i head up to washington. i'm excited to get back on my bike and feel that freedom of movement.
love to all!

PRE-ASPIRATION INSTRUCTIONS

4. Please try to have a bowel movement the evening before or the morning of your procedure.



...and here I fail. I only have 7 hours left to prove myself.

Recipe for getting laid

Getting Laid Chili Truffles (GF)

Base Ingredients

· Unsweetened cocoa

· About 1 cup flour. A combination sweet sorghum flour and tapioca flour works well, or I bet coconut flour would work, too.

· Hannah Spice

· Chili Powder

· Cloves, or Cardamom, or neither.

· ½ cup sugar

· ½ tsp salt

· ¼ cup unsalted Land-o-Lakes butter

· 6 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped. Or, substitute unsweetened chocolate and increase sugar.

· 2 large whole eggs

Ganache Ingredients

· 2 large egg yolks

· 1 cup heavy cream

· 1/8 tsp salt

· 12 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (or substitute unsweetened chocolate and add sugar).

· Hannah Spice

· Dried chili pepper seeds

Base Directions

· Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter enough wax paper to cover the bottom and sides of an 8x8” metal baking pan, dust with cocoa powder and knock out excess.

· Melt butter in a saucepan (or tiny pot), then remove from heat. Add chocolate and whisk until smooth. Add Hannah Spice, chili powder, and other spices if desired. Add eggs 1 at a time, whisking until smooth. Stir in flour.

· Spread batter evenly in baking pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until it’s firm but not yet crumbly. Remove from oven and allow pan to cool, at least 2 hours.

Ganache Directions

· Lightly beat yolks in a bowl. Save whites for something else – maybe hollandaise sauce?

· In a saucepan or tiny pot, combine cream with salt. Bring it to a boil, stirring constantly.

· Gradually add cream to the beaten yolks, whisking constantly (if you have two people) or consistently (if you have one).

· Pour the cream/salt/egg mixture back into the saucepan and whisk over low heat until slightly thickened. Do NOT let boil.

· Remove from heat and add chocolate and Hannah Spice, whisking until smooth.

· Pour ganache over the cooled truffle base, while still in the pan, and smooth using a spatula or the back of a metal spoon.

· Sprinkle dried chili pepper seeds across the top of the truffles, so each square inch of truffle has at least a few seeds. This way, they’re beautiful and also clearly spicy. How terrible it would be to bite into a spicy truffle expecting it to be sweet!

· I wonder if paprika would work, for decorating. It’s worth trying. Let me know what you think.

· Press seeds (and paprika, if you like. Or flower petals, or a poem) into the ganache using the back of a metal spoon.

· Cover and chill for at least 5 hours.

· Cut chilled truffles into squares and arrange Adèle-ish-ly. This is when the wax paper comes in handy, so you can lift them all out of the pan at once!

· Feed these to someone with your fingers. Then lick off the excess chocolate. Mmmm.

a rooftop garden

We built a vegetable garden on the roof! happy dayz :)

It involves a jerryrigged two-ladder setup which I lashed together with wire and screws and string. It involved a fight with a budding nest of yellowjackets. It involved lifting 16 giant bags of dirt from the ground to the roof with my pulley system. Here are some pictures.

what would foucault do? What would jesus do? what do I do?

Power is not, as we are taught, to move up in a hierarchy (advance my career path, gain social prestige, etc.), but to recognize the glances and postures that create hierarchy and help ourselves and others to move beyond it.

The greatest power is allowing your own power to empower others.

This return to Chicago is a tremendous lesson about my own power and my life path. jedi guerilla healing agent of bliss! check yes in the career box.

krishnamurti says, "Only the mind which has no walls, no foothold, no barrier, no resting place, which is moving completely with life, timelessly pushing on, exploring, exploding- only such a mind can be happy, eternally new, because it is creative in itself."

If we are always present with this mind, a mind not monadic but naturally open to confrontation, risk, and collective consciousness, rather than being inscribed in our patterns/pre-conceptions/memories, we will re-generate in symbiosis with the unceasing-every-moment regeneration of the universe.

Power is believing in every word you say, acting genuinely in every social interaction.

It's also about vulnerability, accepting criticism without fighting back. It's a tremendous power to be able to cry in front of strangers, even more to cry in front of friends.

It is really easy for me to be powerful right now. I am fire and light. I am a little fearful that when I return to the west coast amidst so many experienced gypsy light travelers, I will again feel anxious and uncertain of my self. I'm grateful to this time in Chicago for teaching me that such a fear is unnecessary and will be overcome.

Power is knowing that the universe will always take care of you, and so you don't always need to know the answers or feel that womb of security. The power of Christ is his surrender. Power is faith and trust. Knowing that you are an awesome cook but allowing somebody else to spice the curry their own way.

Power conjoins the ordinariness of daily life with the sublime.

I invite power into our lives!

quickly quickly because there's a lot to do
everything is happening
except in the dull moments when it's not
and the panic moments when it is, but it's too much to bear

i hate work, i want to work, i need work
i've lost the thread a little bit about why or how
but i keep looking

i see a play or seven
i hate some, i need some
oh god
i saw black watch tonight
in an armory of all places
(why don't we use armories more, they're so oddly beautiful)
i meant to see black watch in 2006
but i didn't because i was young and things don't matter the same way when you're sixteen
so so so
it's so good
plays about masculinity
of course i love them
because there's so much dancing and singing and fighting
as i walk the three blocks home
i whisper under my breath
as my heels click on the pavement, imitating those brave boys
"if there's any thing at all that i ever do, ever, may it be like that"
please
please
please
i draw a salt circle round my mind
i offer up my spectacular weakness, my bone-breaking pleasure-seeking
like salieri on my knees in church
this sink hole ache will bleed herself dry to have a glimpse of that
i will slice open goats
burn every stick of incense
and i will try to work, try so hard
stephen fry says, "everything that motivates me in life is emotional and appetitive, it is not intellectual...my whole life has been driven by nothing but desire, for all kinds of things, it started i think with sugar, it was an almost feverous desire, it was absolutely enormous, it was replaced by cigarettes and sex, it was the same physical thing...and love and passion too, the intellectual side is the slave of that desirous side."
you can have that
delete it

once i was an automaton
and i am glad that i can feel again
but i miss the old girl
the serious little girl
who craved little but the chance to work and then be alone

i suppose that might be wrong
i don't care?

lake atitlan is vast, but tiny compared to lake michigan, even tinier compared to the ocean. and this gringo new age community, these indian weavers and coffee-pickers have such a well-contained life nestled amongst these volcanoes. one can easily forget there´s life elsewhere- banks, universities, capitol buildings, squats, salt flats, the massive variety and expanse of our earth.
and ill leave the lake, ill wander... in search of novelty, ecstatic emotions, the sublime?
and deborah will sit every morning in front of her tienda, sometimes blue markings under her mascaraed eyes.
are our sadnesses similar? how does their depth compare and in what proportion to the respective bodies of water at which we gaze?
the vastness of wanderings, the elevation of the intellect, don´t translate to the sublimity of experience.
leaving judgment behind....
Fernando, the mexican artisan I live with says, ¨I love, but I have no feelings.¨he has no attachments, didnt blink when he lost his three thousand dollar golden watch, never cries.
we have different kinds of spiritualities. i like to get ecstatic while dancing, hoot holler and sit in circles of emenating love.
but he is not more spiritual than me and i am not more spiritual than him and deborah with her child at 16 and the rest of her life selling mangos at the tienda in barrio 2 is as spiritual as either of us.
quantities are useless anyhow. didnt marx teach us that?

i hear that as mountains get older they get flatter. imagine a world that will one day be totally flat, all the mountains get old and lose their points, sucked down millennium by millennium to the crystal earth core.
or is there always regeneration?
will there ever be a flat world? will i ever attain equanimity and calmness of emotion?

I better go jump off the diving platform into the lake and cleanse all these ruminations. value? thought? sensuous experience?
´the wilted flower of her youth´
heehee

raining, in medium form

we were never what we think we will be or how

together

or separate

unite

disunite

feel it

unfeel it

how did it end

how will it begin

also am i the only one who feels this way

das licht der oeffentlichkeit verdunkelt alles

a thought

(finding light on rainy days)

"...even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth..." (p. ix)

(finding realness amid apocalyptic promisings, or feeling real anyway)

"'all passions, even the most unpleasant, are as passions pleasant' because 'they make us feel more real.' this sentence strikingly recalls the greek doctrine of passions, which counted anger, for example, among the pleasant emotions but reckoned hope along with fear among the evils...in hope, the soul overleaps reality, as in fear it shrinks back from it. but anger...reveals and exposes the world just as...laughter...seeks to bring about reconciliation with the world. such laughter helps one to find a place in the world, but ironically, which is to say, without selling one's soul to it. pleasure, which is fundamentally the intensified awareness of reality, springs from a passionate openness to the world and love of it. not even the knowledge that man may be destroyed by the world detracts from the 'tragic pleasures.'"

(p. 6 of "men in dark times" by hannah arendt)

#1 of 10 days of rain a-coming,

last night a woman dragged across the street screaming across from the haus

and what do we do! what do we do? what do we do!

radioactive tendrils

what do we do!

rainy days--

what do we do!

for now, dark dark dark petting cats shared showers thinking what we think we are

this is nice.

from the hope archive

"When trying to live hope, we believe it helps first to start where we happen to
be.

Hope works better when it's here.

Second, we believe that it is helpful to
think of hope as the acknowledgement that nothing is fixed (though much is
experienced as stable), that nothing is necessary, that nothing has to be the
way it is.

Third, we find it helpful to think that we are active participants in
our experience of meaning, power, and social interaction and in and through that
participation we are always-already making a difference. The job, it would seem,
is to make the character of those differences transformative.

How is always a delicate issue.

For us, the fourth element of hope is that gentleness is both a possible and a powerful politics.

How to begin to consider the effects and influences of our lives in the light of at least fourteen degrees of separation, especially if we don't just think in terms of people living right now?

An understanding of hope is, for us, very much an understanding of the politics of possibility and the possibilities of power. "

in other wor(l)ds, it's a sunny day of a rainy week here in oakland--half of hot mess converges at the library, i run around stealing supplies for a sex toy workshop, i smoke cigarettes, we make bread. the buckwheat groats in our oats were pretty sour this morning and i had a scrabble hangover when i woke up. what makes a life? i am feeling myself rush in small things, rush when i think i am relaxed, to do all the small joyful things i want to do. something funny in that.
there are tiny baby plants growing in egg cartons in our front lot and i feel my days to be closely intertwined with their progress, their minute but almost visible growth.
today, down the block, someone got shot in their car because they had just won the lottery. paul says it is black self-hatred. i don't know exactly what to think. similar with the japanese tsunami, nuclear meltdown, may 21 judgment day, peak oil crisis, birds falling out of the sky and cars running over bicyclists at the sao paulo critical mass...what to do? what can we do? today i will bike around, make bread, make sex toys, hug my friends, nurse my new tattoo, read some marquez. is that wrong?