some remembrances are no longer useful
slide down the back road to the rock on the cul-de-sac's edge
the dirt path forking around both sides
i always used to think the side i chose gave the day its shape
up through the trees and near the reindeer farm
how i would get spit out onto pavement again
right next to your house
staying on streets would have stretched the journey out by miles
i remember how

or a list of spots for roof access
where i could take kissers or
those whose youth i wished to crow
and
earlier
chants of victory poolside
the order in which she'd pick up our vegetables
the hot touch of plastic seats
the scantron's roving eye

small deaths refusing to be integrated
you looks so young - i've been born so many times
after the incidents down by the back board and the lunch table
chain-link passageways and alleys turned driveways
the hard champagne sun

off the off the of the

oh geez summer is shattering open in so many directions,
$10 in my checking account, kazoo in my pock-ette,
looking out over this garden, these red-hot poker flowers roses and hills of competing doug firs and cedars and white oaks and maples--
discomfort is a sign of a learning edge, a rich place to dig into
i love learning so i find myself on the edge of discomfort a lot.
the wind is singing and i'm learning to translate
for the fire's licks and the groaning of this dry red soil.
i've been around the siskiyous for the past month now, never thought i'd find myself in a place like this--this dry and brittle harbor, rich and seductive and secretive hills where craziness is an edge to dance along. we the firepeople waiting for the fire, scrambling strolling in this age of consuming forces and summer sun. getting downloads and uploads from the spirit channel; this land talks loudly in a thousand voices, a thousand thousand marrowed ancestors.
oh, to be a blade of grass. oh, to be a sharp knife. oh, to be an eagle chasing a rabbit--
for now.
back to portland tomorrow--more soon.

mugged by the muggy

it's been awhile--

my skin's a little browner, my tummy a little emptier, my room a little messier, a couple projects finished, a new couple projects in utero, my thoughts tumbling around like damp clothes in this broken-dryer-wet heat,

in the mornings, i stumble out of my bed (sort of like sheets left on the floor of a sauna) and put on the minimals and walk to the lake. so the first apprehension of my day is engineered, clear--i count to ten before i can dunk myself into the icy water. then i take a deep breath and count to ten again. and then i breathe for a little while. and then i dive--

this morning i sat on the porch swing with my coffee

and noticed a tiny spider hanging on a web
between the ropes of the swing

she must have built that home last night
while i dreamed of clay bodies

while no one was watching, she began to wait

and i watched her crawl around and didn't want to ruin the intimacy

(the promise of my silence, our tacit agreement that our shared story would turn out a particular way, that is,

enduring)

i didn't want to break our moment
by being the one to point out that

her home couldn't stay there,
that her home would be folded in upon itself

within the hour.
(and then that i might be the one to do it, to undercut
the optimistic fantasy that drove her to create a home.)

the man who supports the weight of his white crippled dog as they walk through the ally walked through the ally with his dog. the biker who lives in the house with the garden rolled his bike out, strapped on his helmet, and squinted at his watch. a car-driver in a car drove by. things went as they do, the listeners listening and the coffee-drinkers drinking their coffee and the bikers biking and the wakers waking and the sleepers sleeping.

LB wrote, "'i didn't think it would turn out this way' is the secret epitaph of intimacy."

(and i wonder, how do i change my living to avoid that--

not to say cynically, authoritatively "i knew it would turn out like this,"

but to think that in our intimacy, nothing is sure or promised or forever,

and this is okay and good and beautiful because it is)--

and to the spider, what i might have wished i could say was:
"i'm sorry i cannot be seduced by your web
but my aesthetics of attachment are not careful enough
for us to flourish together. it doesn't have to make sense."
but the quietude was tempting and i intimated with my breath
...it doesn't have to make sense.

last week my brother was here, what a quiet charming fresh young mind,

we adventured around and i felt my spirit of adventure returning,

to the MCA to live on metal mobile islands, biking, bäoing, sitting by the lake,

a sip of a beer is an illicit transgressive simple delight,

the world is not so hard, it is good, and the days flow by filled with ideas that are sometimes followed through till completion and sometimes the sketches are left behind.

and these days have been days of making and unmaking,

tinctures pickles lentils paintings drawings beginnings plans truths quietudes stories bread zines

promises obligations burdens annoyances aspirations falseness messes stresses desires pressures expectations stories bread zines

i'm finding great satisfaction in these small projects which have become daily rituals, and though sometimes the process is painful the reward is always great. i am content being alone and together, quiet in groups, fermenting and bubbling in my desires and allowing them to slowly unwind as i bike up, down, back, forth, through the prairie and the froth and the broken-dryer-air.

for now, that's all. i'm thriving on air and memories and presents and futures and glasses of water and icy mornings and the sparest of intimacies and the occasional loaf of hot hot bread.

story of my life

a draft, unposted, then established in quiet moderation

HONK bam PIEUW PÃO PÃO não? nãOOOO bing bang BEEP pheeeeeeew
a few short notes, since i'm still gathering my thoughts.
- i got a harmonica for christmas and it's been glued to my hand, mostly making up songs and "oh susanna" and "clam crab cockle cowrie" and some country, some classical sometimes, sometimes something like samba noises...
- i've gotten too good at saying "não falo portugues," people don't really believe me...
- i saw a great exhibit by sophie calle at the museum of modern art in rio.
- 18 hours in brasilia: anarchists, cerveja, and a testing of boundaries (subtitle: the impossibility of intimate straightness)
- the meeting of eyes, the exchanges of gaze, people giving directions, the enthusiasm of strangers, a number of friends and the usefulness of "oi"

accidentally stoned on an incidental rock

hullo world, i'm ready.
well, never-ready-but-ready-enough-anytime.

my days have been slipping by in smoke, rhythm, and gusts of cold wind. i confess: i have been in the reg. no, no, i take it back, wait: i was only there to print enough pages to make people wait awkwardly while i answer my cell phone unavoidably, talking in short bursts of reception in the quiet 1st floor. so where does the time go? how to patch together a rhythm of holes and gaps?

crisis averted then,
leli might add peanut butter. (or cheese? and.) i say chili powder, always.
i'm living on apples and bread and free cookies and when there's a meal it's an excellent meal.

maybe tomorrow i will theorize something. i would like to theorize a very nice rock.

for now, we play and we dream and we play

Becoming ten foggy plateaus

Bod-mod day (yesterday). Four piercings, a button tattoo, scissors, peroxide. A total of six deflowering holes. (Elliot met a seven foot tall black bear, wrestled with it, and extracted the leaves and sticks from its asshole that it uses to keep out bugs while hibernating). Deflowering. A claim that your body is your own as well as an alienation from it, as the metal instantaneously crunches through cartilage. You become yourself at the same time as yourself becomes something else. Infiltration.

If I were to tattoo myself I would want a swarm of cicadas and/or bees set to engulf my back. I want to stop identifying with discrete people, images, and symbols and instead become part of a swarm. Become infiltrated by a swarm. All we see of a cicada is it reproducing and dying, becoming something else. Death, birth, drugs, music and drag (sometimes), castration? (think of the castrati's voices!), how else do we become?