You Were Here: 2010

9/29/10

More Lateness: Soccer Players of Brooklyn

9/21/10

9/20/10

What of the Ocean?

What of the ocean
were it not for the rocks?

A bunch of salt & fishes?

What of man,
goddamn him?

Fotos found yesterday at La Lagunilla market, Mexico City.

AS My Homeless Puppet Making Friend would say...
..."I Think You Dropped Something".

It Doesn't matter from whence you came,
or how by who for what you're named,
how cool you look, or sharp you dress
in tidy order or uncouth mess.
In the know, without a clue
with hearts in love with what we do,
no wrong is wrought, or life untrue.
dear friends I bid you all adieu.

"Oh yeah, all right
Are you going to be in my dreams
Tonight?

And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make."-P.M.

Gratitude for Growing Things

Dear Lovers,

The sun is setting here now. I was just hanging out in the garden here at Casa Libre where there is a newly constructed arbor covered in a grape vine. The sky is less pink tonight than it has been in recent weeks, but no less beautiful. I was thinking of how I wanted to end this project for myself and for you.

I am thinking about the cycle of things. I am thinking about the sun rising and setting, the grape vine that grew from a 3 foot seedling into a massive cape of green, about the dark that tuns into light and back into dark. About coming together and pulling apart of people and lives and bodies, of chances, changing seasons, what papa used to say, smooth flights, heartmind music, drifting, gold coins, trains, glove boxes, prisoner of war camps, car wrecks, other selves, lovers, Alchemy, Mexico, birthdays, dancing, elk hyde drums, "beast" pumps, psychography, job hunting, making out in orchards, teeth, hobos, exile, witnesses, daydreams, good news, language, sacrifice, naming animals, bike rides, hot dogs, days, nights, sunsets, memories of house parties, sex, irish whiskey, libraries, poetry, warriors, classes, dancing again, wolves, excess, overflow, promises, bumper stickers, kids, tough girls, apples, houses, parks, music, babies, questions, suffering, burning embers, 20 dollar bills, ice, kitchens, power, the Miss Fantastics, Lacey, black books, wind, wanderlust, cans of fresca, breakfast, dads, godparents, migrations, boardwalks, work, perros, set lists, excerpts, earth, apologies, notes, fiber, fish, birds, pleases and squeezes, death, bedrooms, villages, here, magic stuff, luminous events, haircuts, lottery, motorcycles, bike lanes, Clairvoyance, Logic, summer nights, eavesdropping, rising creeks, truth, mornings, dismemberment, teasing, Alabama, references, hearts, bangs, paint, rabbits, missives...

Beginnings and Endings. All of the things that have made up our last twenty days together. I am grateful to have shared this space with all of you. I appreciate the attempts to push how this shared community exists in space. To seek/destroy definition. To collaborate/communicate/connect. To balance rawness and craft.

Thank you, Bo.
Thank you, Camille.
Thank you, Malcolm.
Thank you, Melissa.
Thank you, Selah.
Thank you, Kristen.
Thank you, Mickey.
Thank you, Thirza.
Thank you, Sharon.
Thank you, Logan.
Thank you, Deborah.
Thank you, Adam.
Thank you, JenMarie.
Thank you, me.
Thank you, Travis.
Thank you, Angela.
Thank you, Kate.
Thank you, Soham.
Thank you, Rick.

"We have come into the presence of the one
who was never apart from us. When someone chews
sugarcane, he is wanting this sweetness.

Inside the globe the sound roars like thunder.
And now silence, my strict tutor." ~Rumi (from Meadowsounds)

With Love in All Directions,

Kristen

Postscript
This space will remain private for a few more weeks. On October 1st, I will send you an email to let you know that it is going public again. Feel free to delete anything you've shared here, that you don't want to go public. Then I hope you visit this space like a photo album. A memory of a shared journey. For me, my people, this has been one fantastic ride.

a chance blindness

just looked the sun right in the sunset and stared until it was gone. I still have spots where my sight should be. Gold and fuchsia ringlets.

We were really here, weren't we?

(gratitude and blessings to Kristen for organizing and contributing and all of you for sharing)

changing seasons

No profound last-day thoughts. Had a random visit from high school friend and her girlfriend on road trip. They cooked and drove me around in their car and I felt young and excited. packet came back from advisor. walked my dog. milked the goats. now, 110 pages of editing for the pitkin review. tori amos, to continue the high school revival.

thanks, everyone, for screaming into the chasm and bridging the divide and having discourse.

Are your seasons changing, too?

papa used to say "dream i love you princess"

kristen, what a wonderful gathering you arranged. thank you, everyone.

thanks

It's been lovely to share this space with you.

so many, so long

so many trees.

so much light.

so many long shadows

to go.

FIN

9/19/10

Drift

I drift I drift I drift

I center

   I lift
I drift

I
   drip I drift

I drift in
   dripping

I wander I stray

I drift

I dare I stare

I need

I want to drift

I admit I

(need) want to drift to

drip

I scare

I dare you

I
l
e
a
v
e
a
s
t
r
i
n
g

Wishing you all smooth flights, clearly illuminated pathways, and signs facing the right way.

gold coins

Digital Drugs

yo! where can I score some I-Dose?
You have to download that shit!
How do I take it?
Put it in your ear!
crazy....

....Just rocked I-doser "hand of God" and um.... well... I took some aspirin. and I feel numb to the world.
hmmmm. ..kids getting high on music...hmmm...what a novel idea...
WTF---- the new gateway drug! "How my second life high became a real world drug problem"
That's right folks!..DIGITAL DRUGS!!!!!!
SOMEBODY CALL HUEY LEWIS!!!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZcgUEkBIX0&feature=player_embedded

He imagines or remembers the train.

ballad

In the tiny upstate city where we lived, no businesses were shuttered, including her and I’s. The war-boom left no empty windows. His house situated at the back of the thriving shoe shop we ran when he was away. The store front near brand new. Still some broken glass. Through the angled windows, coming back from the market, I saw them reunited. First dusk, he came to me on the couch. He held one arm around me, the other across the front of me. This hand innocently tucked in skirt’s waistband. We slept like siblings, sitting up. In his sleep, he moaned in what seemed another language. We never asked what he saw from the sea. I slipped back into dreams. Just above my knee, a worm the color of my skin, mouth like a lamprey. Or was the worm simply my skin? Mouth a quarter inch wide. I was afraid but started to pull. Round balls of skin, connected like little sausages, one after another after another after another. The strand seemed endless. Finally what I pulled out was a string of beads on fishing line. I woke again, they stood at the bedroom door. Her blue dress with wide skirt, a pinafore, covered in white polka dots. Why was she dressed like this in the middle of the night? Call me The Sailor, he said. Do you know how many times I got on that ship?

Note: point of departure: http://flashfiction.net/2010/09/friday-flash-prompt-carol-guess.php.

This type of chorus is called a burden.

Most ballads can be sung to the tune of a hundred other ballads.

particle or wave, sangres?

9/18/10

We have lift off

So, having now completed her 2nd round trip flight, CV has flown more than probably 85% of the world. And, also, she has her own wings...

I wish you were here, even more

I'm sad that our experiment is almost over. Thanks, folks, for all your great posts. It's been quite a joy to wander through your worlds.

Found

Found in bed today: lizard tail, crystal earring, Scarlet O'Hara pin

Found in mail today: a gift from the sea fairy (oh oh oh! thank you, Poe!)

Found in class today: Kate's poem "2 of Swords" brings tears to eyes (not just mine) and promotes sincerity in the classroom:

----------------------
2 of Swords

~ Kate Greenstreet

There's always that moment

with people, right?

You look back...

you can't believe

how they just

don't love you.

And how,

in the minute before that,

you didn't know.

There was a place, near water.

The people had come

from somewhere else, and settled.

How we came to exist.

How we came to be here, everywhere

at once.

How could I say nothing?

Well, it's a long walk ahead.

For a long time,

I didn't know.

And it's all just another

story about how life could be.

A psychic told me once I had the mind of a nun.

As if there would be only one kind, for nuns.

The offices of seers we consulted in the South

sometimes had chickens. The vestibules

were swimming with the poor--

bobbing, drowning, in our lake

of dreams and wishes.

Tell me everything

you want to do while there's still time.

Keep in touch.

Think about the leaves

and the birds

in branches.

Think about the words

Big Picture.

The Big Picture.

For a long time,

I didn't know what to say.

And of course I didn't want to say it.

When everything depends--has always

depended on acting like nothing is wrong.

Fruit trees blooming in the blood drenched ground,

a ringing phone--

it's what we're in the middle of.

If we realized the extent to which no one understands

what anybody else really means

by anything they say, well,

you say we'd all go crazy.

But aren't we crazy already?

With trying and pretending

and being mad about it--I mean angry.

There was a place, near water.

How we all came to be,

everywhere

at once.

My prayer is changing.

----------------------

Found in class today: when you offer a student permission to break free, they take it

a stray walk-in/terloper standing stranger

I heard breathing and a sniff. T. had left and E. was outside. I walked from room to room, but there was no one I could see.

when the clairvoyant pauses, one buys a glove box

who she sung herself to be

True Story

This is the first of many weekends to be spent cleaning out this God forsaken house. Today, I gave up pulling weeds outside because of the largest impregnated spider I have ever seen. That was just the last straw. I am preparing to leave and that's what makes it all worth it. It might just be 3 months of doing things like pulling up tree-sized weeds from the corners of my fence (as seen here), or raking up a 2-year-old plastic bag of cat shit and liter left outside the bedroom window of an old (disgusting, WoW addict) roommate.

This is the first of many weekends where my boyfriend and I will have to give up any daytime enjoyment for practically's sake, as well as empty the garage for the umpteenth time, have a yard sale, have tile put in the bathrooms and laundry room, and repaint the interior. We are not selling it, mind you. Or should I say, my father is not selling it. Not in this market; there is no way. (There are 3 houses in foreclosure on my block alone.) When my boyfriend and I are gone, the house will be rented. And best of all: out of my hands.

This could be the first of many weekends where my father comes into town, means to do good, but ends up stirring up all this unsettled bullshit inside me in the process. We've already argued about this house recently. And, we are still both a little sore from it. It just so happened to follow a therapy session in which I admitted to Anna, my doctor, that I felt as if all the grimy corners of this house represent all the parts of my unexamined self; as if the corners of that self are left unclean because I am too lazy to clean them out. How it's a terrible trait, that I can't keep a house, but then my intellectual self speaks up and says I've had other priorities, that I'm young and haven't yet figured out all the details of taking care of myself while expecting nothing but achievements in art, relationships, school, work, friendships, etc. Then I step away from both selves and tell myself none of this is real.

I know I connect those objects with people and events so the thoughts ticker passed my mind's eye something like this house unclean corners father failures. Since when am I a little girl? Sometimes I wish he had never been in a financial position to buy this house five years ago, when the market was high, because now the market is low, and so are wages, and so is job availability. My father is a baby boomer, one of a generation familiar with recessions. He is also an Italian immigrant of the post WWII kind--Ellis Island, the whole nine, the third of 8 children, 16 years old when he came to America with his mother and siblings. The oldest men had to quit school and work. I know he is proud that I am about to receive a master's degree while he never had the chance to finish high school. I am sure it is part of fulfilling his American Dream; that, and being a successful, self-actualized beach dwelling business man. It actually worked for him.

Because he still owns this house he can still tell me what to do. I hate being told what to do. I realize I am childlike this way, but I don't think anyone really likes it. I think most just tolerate it because of some false belief that it is necessary to tolerate such treatment, like say, from a boss, in the adult world. Who made up these rules? Probably the same people who made up the rule that I can't throw the weeds into the retention pound behind my house. A. It's just where the neighborhood shit goes. B. Earth is earth. People like my father who want you to bag the weeds you just pulled up and place them on the curb so the garbage man can take them to the part of the earth that is government designated for bulk trash.

Sometimes I can't handle the modern formalities of owning anything. I would make an exception for my car, and at this point, just live it in. After taking care of a house for the last five years I want to own as little as possible for the next five years. I am grateful I have had this house for the last five years (although it may not sound like it, the way this is going). Just, have you ever felt like your things own you? It's never as overwhelming as when that thing is a house. I dream only in houses. About the dogs of old boyfriends. And escaping.

Escape is coming, but in the form of more commitment. More commitment for just 3 more months. And then? And then we leave. I quit my job. Sell nearly everything I own. Gather the cats. Go towards the beach. For six months or so. Relax. Work to live. Cut expenses. Lack possessions. Make some music. Eat. Love. Sleep.

drought

soil dried to cracking.

there was no rain.

there was no rain

to fill the broken

grackle egg.

Who was she, while she was traveling?

A ballad tells a story.

9/17/10

I die a little

another day of making something out of nothing.
another day of making nothing out of something.

in the bosque near the Otowi Bridge

The Pojoaque River Art Tour is tomorrow.

Here is some artwork by Trevor Oche.

Fact-Simile will be on the tour, too.

Query:

Someone says to you they've just been asked an "odd" question about cannibalism... what constitutes a "normal" question about cannibalism?

open the door

all her habitats

Post Car-Wreck

Following a fatal car accident on the morning of September 16th, 2010, near the corner of St. James & 6th Street, (San Jose, California) an altarpiece appeared the following day on the site of Death. Que viva la vida.

What's Left

I was inspired to write this after Selah posted "Love Poem" by Richard Brautigan:

What’s Left

He tells her he thinks she should write her mother. “Explain to her how you feel,” he says. “If you do it in writing,” he says, “she won’t have the chance to cut you off.” She doesn’t want to hear about her mother or what he thinks. She walks away.

He passes her in the kitchen and she says, “You are to blame for a lot of what has happened.” He calls her a cunt. She’s used to being called a cunt. She’s doesn’t care what he says, he’d never admit a wrong. He says he’s not to blame, “That stupid cunt bitch astrology loving mother of yours is a no good asshole. I’ve said from the beginning that she’s a stupid cunt bitch. I hate that fucking cunt.”

Her mother is no longer a part of her life.

When her father died earlier this summer, she began stripping away parts of her life that no longer needed to be.

She’s cleaning the toilet, their toilet, when he places the box that needs a shipping label on the desk, her desk. He stops to watch her clean the toilet. He leaves and she hears him sit on the couch and watch tv. He’s watching Home Improvement. She thinks to herself that he needs a personal improvement and for the first time that day, smiles. She finishes scrubbing the toilet and takes the gloves to the kitchen. She notices he is drinking a beer. It is 11 am.

She prints a shipping label, places it inside the box that needs to be shipped, and carries the box to the kitchen table. He has placed a roll of scotch tape inside the box that needs to be shipped. The label is ½ the size of a piece of loose leaf paper and the top of the box still needs to be sealed, too. There is not enough tape to do everything and they are out of packaging tape, so she leaves the box and the label on the kitchen table. She goes back to what she was doing.

She’s dusting the office when he yells from the living room over the tv that the box needs to go out in today’s mail. She says they are out of packaging tape. He does not reply.

She has finished cleaning the bathroom, kitchen, office and living room. She has changed the sheets, did the laundry, ran the dishwasher, de-pooped the back yard, and is now creating cover letters for various jobs. He comes into the office and asks her what she is doing. She says she is writing cover letters. “Why?” he asks. “You are a stupid lazy bitch with no work ethic. I told you that package needed to go out in today’s mail. The mail man just pulled up outside and you still don’t have the fucking package on the front step.” “I told you we were out of packaging tape hours ago,” she says. “Well then, stupid, you should have gone to get some,” he says.

He watches the mail man drive away from the front porch and yells inside, “Way to go stupid retard!” Inside he says, “The package didn’t go out.” She tells him that in the time he has spent bitching at her while watching tv and drinking beer he could have went and got packaging tape, sealed up the box, and put it in today’s mail. He says he has to do everything.

He takes the car somewhere. She feels like she needs to get out. She gets on her bike. She ends up at the library. She goes inside, turns around, and leaves. She sits on a bench. She people watches. She wonders what a stupid fat lazy dumb cunt bitch looks like. She takes a picture of herself with her phone’s camera.

When she arrives home he is there. He asks where she was. She says she was riding her bike. He tells her she’s a whore.

That night he is still bitching at her about the box and her laziness when she opens a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli for dinner. He says she is a dumb lazy stupid fat cunt bitch. He asks her why the roast is not ready for dinner and she tells him that tonight she is too stupid fat lazy and dumb to make him dinner. He says she is all those things every night. “Fucking bitch,” he spits. The ravioli swells in her stomach and she feels ill.

She gets ready for bed and from the bathroom she can hear him telling the dogs that their mother is a stupid bitch. She thinks, yes, I am.

The Appearance of Another Self

If I were a biker, I'd be the front rider, the MC president guiding the rest to their destination: a seat around my old wooden table, where the decisions are made via vote.

If I were a bartender, I'd make drinks strong enough to take taste buds right off your tongue.

If I were an amputee, I'd be a lot like Lt. Dan: fighting God manifested in a hurricane from the peak of a fishing boat.

If I were a farmer, I'd grow the sweetest red beats you've ever had.

If I were a cake maker, I'd pump the icing full of LSD.

Morning preyers

I thought that you were hungry

I know you like eggs

But you could just want to warn me

about the recent salmonella outbreak

Or you could be waiting for me to

open the door so you can hop/fly away

There is no way for me to know unless you tell me.

I got closer

You let me touch your antennae

You cocked your head at me when I whistled

You are not a woman in prayer, you are something different,

something that preys and I am not afraid

I'll cook you eggs in any style

and yes I want to hold you

Beautiful creature, I am honored by your presence

I will open up my palm and hope that you crawl up

I won't pick you up unless you ask me to. So far, all I can hear you say is,

"Lean in closer, lean in closer."

world wide web

because it was once submerged,

all her habitats under water

My sister said of walking DC w/o CV: "Suddenly I'm invisible on the street. Weird. People walk right by me without a glance..."

9/16/10

alchemy

Arches Text Wove about to turn into a new book...

Bicentenario Sounding

A walk from Colonia Roma Sur to Bellas Artes, Col. Centro, on the night of el grito, 15 september 2010, during the celebration of Mexico's independence bicentennial. (The cumbia starts about 6 minutes in, don't miss it. Classic tracks recorded in front of a blown-out speaker with el puebo ahí gozando.)

Adam, speaking of gunshots,

closer to home

Dear angel,

I will take you to a high place

where you will be

applauded with gold coins,

and there will be no need

to carry them home.

Independence Day

Viva México. Walking to studio two people died in car crash in the morning. News and photographers and mumbling bystanders gawking at medics and police.

Arrived to studio, ants invaded trash and were crawling in pages of Black Book. Many ants, every day, have to slap and sweep away.

Music for Angela

Girl- A lot of folks have a problem with Kanye, but this song.
Oh this song...
sometimes it works when nothing else does.

happy birthday ariel bui!

today is my best friend's birthday. she lives in taos, new mexico and i haven't seen her in almost a year. she builds earthships and is in love.

"what if i get married and have babies?" she wrote in her last letter. "would you be my best man? would you be my midwife? i would be so honored. would you help me build my home? i need your capricorn hands."

we are soulmates. i ache missing her today but it feels good to love someone like this.

On Lakes & el Bicentenario in Tenochtitlán

Then the country turned 200 and some went out into the streets and bought beer and tequila and drank it. Others bought beer and tequila and stayed in their houses and drank it. Some sang the national anthem with tears in their eyes. Others criticized the country until there were tears in their eyes. The point is that most everyone drank and walked the tightrope of laughter and tears that has been this country's acrobatics from the beginning. 200 years is nothing; the city has 489 years in this.

Everyone knows that 489 years ago this city was a lake. Not filled with metaphor, filled with water. The university scientists could explain how it is that a lake turned into a city, but I can't. Chinampas into milpas, capitalist human thirst, destruction of cosmovision, etc. Along those lines. The point is that the city and its monuments were constructed on a slushed mix of sand and water. This is why the earthquakes with their distant epicenters cause so much fear. Hardly any solid ground.

In the centro, the conquerors built one cultural palace out of solid marble. Now their grandchildren measure how many centimeters it has sunk into the sand this year.

The ska band started to play in the old centro. So many pairs of feet began to jump in unison that the whole centro began to shake on the beat. A human earthquake. Small by earth's standards.

200 years of human history, the entire formation of a modern political state. 489 years of mestizaje and laughter and tears. Small by earth's standards. A big deal for the humans here at the moment.

Now you know everything

From today in the moment of waking

Getting Through

Music. It's the best way to get through the rough parts. This week, M.I.A. has been helping me say energized and gets me moving in my car, that way I don't spend that time in my car alone stressing out, but rather dancing in my seat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcN1i6Qcjxg&feature=channel

Check it, if you haven't already.

Dance

I'm inspired by JenMarie's question, "What song must you dance to when played?" But instead of thinking of a song, I immediately wonder why some people refuse to dance at all.

the appearance of another self

My bags just went through a security xray. "Um, Ma'am what's in that bag?" "It's a beast pump for breast milk." Huge blush, "Oh, okay. Proceed."

9/15/10

a demon rendered into language from space

Why is possession so frightening? I encounter a demon on the page. Just seeing the words arranged in a way that suggests evil, I become anxious. I am, in fact, ever so slightly afraid to keep reading. As though taking the works into me invite the demon, too (are the words the spirit? Is language the spirit or vibration?). I read on and there are two stories at work—that of the unseen and that of the physical world. The unseen are where the demons live, the physical is where the effects occur. What does a demon do in the unseen world when he is not possessing a body? One can only communicate a demon (the presence of) with language.