tips for a daily practice

let it form in your mouth--

tongue massaging pressing the back of your front two teeth,

tip of it piqued at the intersection of tooth and gum,

sliding down down down your teeth to the cliff of your open mouth

nose mouth humming nasal nascent "n"

rounding, opening, tongue flapping into the slow smooth "o"

you will need this practice.

it is good to practice this by yourself, perhaps on your way to a first date with a cute kid from okcupid or perhaps as you pick up the phone to call a parent. perhaps as you're riding your bike, hood flapping, on your way to a job or volunteer interview, somewhere where things will be asked of you. certainly on your way to the play party you're nervous and excited about, it would be good to practice. for sure as you are entering a dumpster or banquet or grocery store or place where you will be offered many things. perhaps as you sit and wait for your housemates to assemble for the meeting. definitely as you prepare to sort through old beloved objects or to clean the corners of your room, it would be good to practice this. perhaps also practice before or during any experience of momentum.

press tongue - to teeth - sliding down - nostrils flared - dropping open - rounding hum - smooth finish. repeat. repeat.

you would do well to remember that

this practice will come most in handy in the closest, most intimate situations

(walk-in closets, for instance;

being forced to stand or sit side-by-side, as an example;

sustaining shared ambiguity, most likely;

converging with any of the many or few you love, undoubtedly)

where you can remember that your tongue, your teeth, your vocal cords know already

you know how to do this, you have done it before,

even as your fingers work to tease apart sticky storied strings...

your honesty and the voicing of your hesitation will gain the rounded weight of importance.

in closeness, you will learn to say no,

to hear no.

to practice and trust that others' tongues are practicing too.

that there is space made for the presstongue-toteeth-slidingdown-nostrilsflared-droppingopen-roundinghum- smoothfinish to be heard loud and clear.

this practice

added to your daily ritual--whether brushing teeth or talking to spirit--

this practice fits well with other practices

of re-opening doors, or continuing to listen.

perhaps you could practice opening and closing a door alongside this practice.

it is just an idea.

i say this to remind you that (almost) nothing is irreversible.

another idea is to practice with a friend.

i suggest this to remind you that you can say no and yet not be alone.

another idea is to practice while doing kegels,

(i.e. temporarily stopping your flow of urine.)

i make this recommendation to remind you that the interruption of momentum might ultimately increase your pleasure.

there's a pun to be had here about knowing

and no-ing

and how we are shooting through space and time and opening opening opening ourselves stomping flying screaming and also taking care, stepping lightly, allowing slowness, calming...breathing...standing at the center of a circle we have drawn around ourselves. breaking down walls and stepping back. unleashing dams and drawing boundaries. giving ourselves wholly and reclaiming parts of ourselves a capitalist economy and overmediated world have tried to own. smashing structures that do not serve as we build homes among the chambers and organs and muscles held in by our skins.

you and i are both full of contradictions, and the space between us is brimming;

and the rubbing-together makes sparks;

i would like to point out that as there exist ORDER and CHAOS

and DARK and LIGHT

and GIVE and RECEIVE

and POSITIVE and NEGATIVE

(don't take this two-game too far, we've learned;

the fetishistic production of opposites is deceptively easy)

but if you've borne with me this far, there is also YES and NO

and as a libra, i would like to point that out,

to ask, "how are these things balanced in your days?"

[[we are not sheep we are not wolves in sheeps' clothing

we are not boys in wolves' furs

we are also boys and sheep and wolves all at once--]]

let it form in your mouth

(do you want it in your mouth? do you want me to put it in your mouth?)

press tongue - to teeth - sliding down - nostrils flared - dropping open - rounding hum - smooth finish

(what does it taste like afterwards, what do you taste)

keep practicing

(you deserve it...it's raining again)

a funny moment on the uchicago campus

while smoking, i saw a wandering fellow with a very nice camera looking rather lost and asked if he was indeed lost.

"yes, i'm looking for foster hall."

"oh, it's right there. are you taking pictures?"

"yes, i wish i could give you my card."

"it's okay, i wouldn't have much use for it."

"oh well, i figured you might be an aspiring photographer. i've been working for national geographic for ten years and i won two pulitzers. isn't that funny?"

"yeah, that's funny. what are you taking pictures for?"

"oh, i'm not sure."

(he pulls out a very pretty picture of obama.)

"i took this one. isn't that funny?"

"yes, that's funny. what's your name?"

"dan dry. i'm pretty famous."

"oh. i'm eliot."

"not to be confused with eliot spitzer."

"no."

"are you an undergraduate here?"

"yes, i just finished--"

"okay, i'm going to go. have a good day."

how funny.

i did my second day of poetry camp today and it was fabulous,

i'm sprouting poems just a bit faster than my calf muscles are growing hard.

tasty samples to come soon.

xray-ed jalapeno compliments of dan dry.

a lil bit of something else

so to avoid the onslaught of the wheezing robots, i changed the blog to "readable by authors/invited readers only." hope that's okay with you. if you want to open a fellowsquid-squirrel-fox's mind to something adventurous,
- click "customize" at the top of this page (or navigate to the "dashboard")
- click the "settings" tab
- click "permissions" (the last tab)
- scroll to the bottom and add your buddy's email address to the waiting-wanting "invited readers" box
they'll get an email with the address and so long as they are not a robot, are welcome here.
[update: after talking to some squids, i switched this back so you 1) don't have to sign in and 2) anyone can read the blog. as a little sidenote to myself&all, since this is an open page and we sometimes direct our friends here, use yr Sense and don't post any super private info--address, phone #, full name, etc. and since the robots are here, email addresses are rife for spam so keep em to yrself.]

in other news,
capitalism is so boring.

for instance,

this weekend i went to madison with z, the isthmus of bikes-goodfood-tall leaning trees-lakes-co-ops-“ethnic”food-bourgeoisdelight and for the rest of us it’s a prime site for liberatory politics and homes that heal after a long day of the same-the same-the same, this time in wisconsin. the capitol building is better when the farmer’s market rings around it and after we make the rounds (cheese curds, kale, wallawallawallawontcha onions, conversation, little leaf samples, toothpicks for free, hot pickles, endless preserves) we go at it again with coffee-as-handwarmer just to see if there’s something we missed. for instance, a pastry. for instance, strawberry rhubarb something. for instance,

we toured some co-ops, not quite tourists more like “membershipper&waywardperson,” dwelling in the in-between between living and desiring, asking and choosing. reading house journals, asking about conflict, in this gap between rhetoric and reality finding cleavages of spirit and quietude. for instance, how much is dirt a part of your house practice? do you do the dishes because you have to or because you love to? when you say something objectionably real, do others agree? and are you friends? were you friends first? for instance, who shows up? who lives here? for instance, in this huge space, yard-public-rooms-niches-shed-kitchen, where in here do you live? for instance,

cigarettes on a porch, punching kimchi until it sweats, introducing legs to hills and mounds to muscles, homebuilt saunas full of steam and newly-met naked bodies, greywater toilets, filling up space with talk, local beef and indian honey, filing cabinets rocking back and forth with the weight of zines that could change the world if they landed in the right hands,

for instance, our hands found each other.

for instance, getting this funny feeling between my hand, heart, stomach, junk, bellybutton that maybe what i want (permaculture, farming, living, learning, thriving, flourishing, creating, loving) might not be as far away as the west coast, that there are places where life is easier to live well, a funny feeling of jealousy and impatience and through stories and reconstructions and resonance,

coming to love my now/here/present all the more, as ephemeral as it may sometimes seem.

something like,

dear madison,

you are one hot isthmus. thanks for the sunset. i think i’ll be back to go bikeriding with you soon. meet you by the ramps at the farmer’s market?

with communal warmth, cool breezes, and flying hair&pages,
eliot

the beginning of a thought

all of my friends are getting furuncles...i think this might mean something.

The furuncle may begin as a tender, pinkish-red, swollen nodule but ultimately feel like a water-filled balloon. It:

• Is usually pea-sized, but may be as large as a golf ball
• May develop white or yellow centers (pustules)
• May join with another furuncle or spread to other skin areas
• May grow rapidly
• May weep, ooze, crust

like a dream but verifiable by other articulate beings

I had a slice of enlightenment handed to me just a night ago, and it was delicious. just one of those timeless spaces you enter where every thought presents itself with the light of day, hits the tongue and ripples off.

all of it with such ease and meaning. you are connected to everything living and vibrating in this universe, and although you've always known it with your rational and systematizing mind, you now feel it coursing through every fiber of your being. open system.

like a container, your body opens and begins to let in -- drinking the world in through large licorice pupils. like the 80% water that you are, you begin to resonate with the exact frequency of everyone and everything that encompasses you.

breath is full&deep, rhythmic, sweeps those cobwebs out of your chest.

you're probably taking in a higher dose than you normally do of the dear ones in your presence and the particles they're shedding into their chemical aura. they're probably breathing with the same depth and tempo and taking in from you too.

did you know that the literal meaning of "inspiration" is to breathe in?

food for thought

communication is flawless -- what isn't accomplished through a simple shared glance is given through a gentle hand and few small words. (!!!)

if that doesn't sound like close to perfect information retrieval, i don't know what is!

you're reminded of love.

love for the people who are not physically present but who linger in your mind exactly because you've been waiting and looking for some external inspiration to finally tell them -- tell them how you feel.

love for yourself and all these lovely people who perhaps at other times in other places can be monsters but who in this moment and underneath it all are beautiful children who just want to be held and told that they are good and have big hearts and that everything's going to be alright.

--rant to be continued and related to scifi, fear, e=mc^2, feedback loops, information processing, dance, the physical manifestation of harmony (it's structure and anatomy)--