I don't think I can underestimate the effect of Sex and the City on the BF. The fact that Carrie Bradshaw is a writer on the series... I think there is something key here about her profession - teaching other's to tell their own stories.

Yoga - I have practiced Anusara, Ana Forest, Iyengar, Hatha, Bikram, and Ashtanga. I finally have a sense of what these different schools focus on and what works and doesn't for me. It's taken me a long time to really develop a personal practice, but now it's become a part of the routine, much like writing. The heart was missing from Iyengar for me - both the heart and spirit. Bikram is a good workout, but it also leaves something to be desired. Can anyone explain to be the difference between Ashtanga in the Pathabi Jois tradition vs. the Patanjali lineage?

I transcribed a great oral history over the break of an interview with Al Young, a Chinese-American world championship race car driver. He donated his race car, the Challenger, to MOHAI and was interviewed about this object and his experiences in the sport of race car driving. Al talked about having an undiagnosed learning disability and doing poorly in junior high and high school (after being identified as a gifted learner in elementary school). He talks about his ADHD and how he had to learn to read while walking and moving to be able to focus. Yet this disability came into play in helping him in race car driving. When the lights would flash for the race to start, you have a thousandth of a second to leave the starting position, and for him, it would all play out in slow motion. His oral history talks about women in the sport, not just bathing suit models, but female race car drivers who beat men, and how they had a distinct psychological advantage over the men - because it's not a sport about "strength." Cars interest me about as much as sports, but this was a wonderful oral history of one of Asian America's little known heroes.

Reading Working the Woods,Working the Sea from Empty Bowl. Poems from treeplanters, loggers, and salmon fisherman, a literature of the "back-to-the-land" movement. One of the writers in the book tells of his days planting trees in word patterns to write out radical and poetic messages. It reminded me of David Antin's cloud poems, but ever more radical and activist. A sort of performance poetry meets land art meets environmental activism.

Mike O'Connor's The Basin is the best book I've read all year.

Tomorrow is 2009. Cripes!

Classes for the winter:
- Collections Management with lab at the Wing Luke Asian Museum.
- Thesis credits for continued work on the chop suey project.
- Educational Leadership

Here's to setting an intent: I want to be in Taos in Summer 2010 at the Wurlitzer.

It is hard to find a healer. The person I wanted to refer to my friend in Leonardtown, MD, has uprooted to Rochester, NY. The person I wanted to refer to my friend in Austin, relocated to Dallas, buying the practice of the woman who wanted Kort to take over her business. She left Dallas to find a cure for her aging boyfriend's macular degeneration and imminent blindness. Sharon absorbed the business of a Japanese acupuncturist who left Dallas to go to medical school in Mexico, to only drop out and later return to Texas. My acupuncturist left to pan for gold in Durango after considering a romantic stint on a cruise ship fighting Somali pirates. My current healer is MIA - he wasn't really taking new patients, and is in the process of closing a yoga studio. This all teaches me something - it's not right to keep moving Kort and I around - as I have been given the lead in the last year or two. Kort needs to be rooted in a place to build healing relationships with his clients - to lose your healer is a painful experience, at best, a difficult transition. I think I've lived it too many times this year to feel like we can keep doing it.

Thanks to David Horton for publishing an excerpt of Adamantine in Work 12 which is now available as a PDF file here. I've got tons of contributor's copies - if you want a hard copy, give me a shout.

New Year's Resolutions

I re-set my goals every year. This upcoming year, the list seems lengthy...

- drink more water
- eat less processed sugar and wheat
- read more (poetry)
- be able to lift my body weight/improve my chaturanga
- take up/practice a musical instrument (piano, guitar, vox)
- keep the plants healthy
- achieve unassisted headstand w/out wall
- learn to cook 5-10 new recipes/standards
- be more involved with sangha
- revisit Port Townsend
- stay open-hearted
- publish Adamantine
- funding from Artist Trust
- love well
- visit parents more
- finish school
- continue with oral history work
- make more fotos
- take another retreat
- develop my prose
- reconsider my relationship to social networking and the internet
- go off the grid more often
- explore new collaborations w/ old friends
- revisit Colorado

A very good poetry sale at SPD.

Spent my last morning in Port Townsend before K drove in to pick me up before the big blizzard dumps snow on the peninsula. It is another world from Seattle, indeed.

Wildlife sightings: 7 deer, numerous crows, 1 pigeon, several seagulls, 1 starfish
Bug rescues: 2 ladybugs, 3 houseflies

I stayed in SUD cabin 261, great light, a cozy little cottage, much better heated than our house in Seattle.

I can see myself living in few places - a handful of places over the years have called to me - Port Townsend, is definitely one of them.

Reading at Northwinds got cancelled due to inclement weather. A good reason to go back.

Thanks to new friends Mike O'Connor and Ling-hui Liu for the good company during my short stay.

Adamantine is finished. I'm happy with it, and tremendously proud. The minute that all shifted, I relaxed into vacation mode. Scribbled notes for a few prose/family essays, but having finished what I set out to do, I felt at ease finally.

The next two quarters will go quickly and be pretty intense, to finish up in June at UW, in the nick of time.

Onwards!

passing

my friend mourns
each day since her babe
was born,

Liam’s first day
on earth, his sixth
month of life,

this much
self-reflection
I can’t fathom, when

I catch sight of
your wool-capped figure
descending the snow-

covered path winding
away from my rooms,
aware then that

there will be a day
when you no longer
climb the stone steps

back to this heart

manuscript complete
the working retreat becomes
overdue vacation

***

too much talk during
savasana when a body
scan would be enough

***

after first/last Nia
class, feeling all the wisdom
traditions diluted

What happens to snow when it falls in the ocean? Why doesn't it freeze?

I regret not bringing a hat and snow shoes to Port Townsend.

I found an ancient Hitachi black & white tv buried in the bedroom closet of my cabin. Trying to watch the season finale of Biggest Loser without any picture and just sound, is like eating cake made out of Nutrasweet or some god awful substitute. Just not the same.

The fireplace in the Ft Worden Commons is operated by gas - those logs in the fireplace are fake! Someone just flipped the switch.

I took a Nia class at Madrona. It wasn't for me.

rope trick

picture a line in the sand
then imagine that edge
as a hempen rope

move it near or apart
from you, or lift the border
& lay it down

around your double,
so that you merge to make
a new center

Well, Adamantine has been undergoing some Frankenstein/samurai surgery. It's now a very different animal, yet very much the same.

What I've been reading:

Sara Suleri's Meatless Days - linked essay collection, highly lyric, somewhat overwrought. Compelling family stories exploring love and loss, obscured by the intellectual quality of the prose.

CS Perez's Unincorporated Territory - magnificent

Bachelard's Poetics of Fire - the poetry of intimate spaces: houses, rooms, and corners

Mauss' The Gift - a study of gift exchange, Lewis Hyde's book by the same name is much more relevant to poetry and creativity, though this book traces a number of cultures that engage in gift exchange

Sontag's On Photography - essays on Diane Arbus, August Sander, and the authority of photography

Joseph Goldstein on Buddhism practice - more

Cherrie Moraga plays

Note from the department of programming

My best friend and I are planning a blog swap. I will not say when she will be guest blogging, as I don't know when. You may or may not notice.

new haiku

stranded w/out nail
clippers, I resort to using
the kitchen shears

new gelato flavor
at the corner market,
small town pleasures

why must frozen
yogurt in Seattle taste sour
as normal yogurt?

wanting to reach through
the phone & pull him close
here next to me

nearly invisible:
the carrot yellow lotion
splattered on mustard walls

emotional eating
not just for boredom but
writer’s block too

panning for gold
in Durango, he sets up
his first business

dissed by Santa on
the Polar Express, he gets
into the Xmas spirit

leafing thru lit journals
I want to find something to
respond to; keep reading

after so many
sleepless nights, I’ve slept in
almost every bed

Revision

blind spot

when I turn back to stare
at the man poised at the street

crossing, long after
the light has gone green

only then do I see
the round sticker affixed

to his chest

I am deaf and blind
in big white letters

paling in comparison to
his outfit: the oversized purple shirt

beneath the orange safety vest
in his right hand a retracted

walking stick; the way
he doesn’t move, lost

in thought, I think,
the way I lose

myself in daydreaming
dumbstruck, I am

without words when
I realize there is no other

way to communicate
but through touch &

I do not have permission

when I lay my hand
upon his arm; see him

give a start; cross
traffic, just as the red palm


begins to flash, I
place myself between

his body & the hostile line
of humming cars queuing;

when we reach the other side
he’s ready for me

to let go
this is the practice

to mirror thought
with action, what I wish

for every effort, each
poem, this intention

why I like Mike O’Connor

when I ask Mike if he can
give me a lift he answers
SURE! w/ an easy smile,

Let me find a ride first –
my car’s in the shop.

this is not my story

cereal boxes in the kitchen
cupboard nibbled through
the sudden appearance of

droppings, a mouse in
the house, her lover says
it has a very tiny heart,

you need only chase
it until it tires; he knows
the hearts of small creatures

you see, having chased down
a few chickens in his youth,
accustomed to how birds wear out

easily - the human heart is
a wholly different animal,
we must know when to give in

before the other gives up

altar

change comes
whether or not
I hold

true inside
how I see
sometimes

a room/poem/altar
things set in concrete
fixed as though nothing

can ever speak –
the iron-coiled figure
I join to my shrine

a keepsake that asked
for a just memorial,
to mirror his place

inside the stone of
my heart the stone
of my heart

requiescat

on campus, co-eds mark
remembrance by wearing
“Free Amanda” shirts,

localizing their support
for the classmate jailed
in Perugia, entangled in

the murder of her flatmate

***

in the center of Red Square
the flower vigils have stopped
no more bouquets mark the spot

where In Soo Chun doused
himself in gasoline &
set himself on fire

a memory like a burning body
can’t be put out with water
bottles/jackets/fire extinguishers

***

that last week in October,
long after they pronounce him
dead at Harborview,

I hunt for his name
the death of a 61-year-old
immigrant laborer

won’t make headline news
unnamed in the UW Daily,
I find his identity in The Stranger

learn he was assigned
to the Ethnic Studies building
to empty trash baskets

scrub toilets, mop floors
when no one is looking

I lie down to sleep

***

what part of him failed
out there, the young initiate
who believed what he was

seeing: the death ritual
unfolding before his eyes
contact made

a moment before
cauterized flesh covered
ninety percent of Chun’s body

the police made him
stop praying over the corpse
noted him on the record as

a “person of interest”

***

these messages that arrive
from the administration:
170 million dollar shortfall

& twenty percent cuts
school-wide, the campus
health clinic extends

its hours, not its outreach
to accommodate those that
are affected, what counsel

mandated to turn long-term
cases outside the community
meet new patient quotas

***

we save a few
we lose a few

we lose a few too many
we lose a few too many

we lose

on the dirt road leading out
of Tamarindo a roadside
gasolinero puts up a custom-
painted display: stylized

orange flames, a flexed
bicep – bilingual the seller
reasoned to command
a better title

Pura Vida

Pura vida is what
the shopkeeper’s wife says
when Tom makes an offer
on a different sign, folk art

to his eyes, the weather-
beaten board, faded, full
of typos, to the Ticans
just another gringo loco

doesn’t even check
first with her man knowing
argument will ensue; let some
other actor lay down

in this gender war, cultural
contretemps over what seemed
an easy enough barter: a new sign
to replace the old –

picture a fistful of flaming
wrenches scripted in both
ingles & Spanish

a perfectly good sign
gone missing, the patriarch’s
shock to find himself cuckolded
by his woman and this outsider

demands that justice be restored,
along with his property;
Tom wracks his loss
up to a few days of labor

at least he’s not wedded
to this grease monkey who now
owns not one, but two signs
and just one shop

semiotics

the wooden notice hanging
in my friend’s Brooklyn 3-story,
hand-painted in childish
block lettering states simply

SE REPARA LLANTAS

Centrum

Not just a multi-vitamin...Centrum is an artist residency program in Fort Worden, two miles from downtown Port Townsend. My renovated cabin is a close neighbor to Copper Canyon and the Madrona Mind-Body Institute. I have a view of the ocean and from my front room, I can see the waters moving. I've been reading, sleeping, and doing some writing, but there are some definite shifts happening in my creative voice. The spaciousness has allowed me to arrive at a point where I was finally able to process why I left anthropology for museum studies.

Port Townsend is a Victorian seaport town full of hippies, retirees, and interesting people with names like Tarani, Nala, Tinker and Sweethouse. If I thought the Gene Juarez Academy in Seattle attracted people with interesting names (they actually choose their own studio names - i.e. Astrid, Stella, Gwynneth) - Port Townsend attracts a whole different breed. The town has four excellent thrift/consignment shops and a food coop. Multiple yoga studios and CAM practitioners in abundance. Small town living, good for the country-hearted country mouse.

salivating at
ropes of seaweed
washed up on the waterfront

that angry fly just
gets angrier, can’t see how
the door just opened

after three years of
practice, I kick into head-
stand, my spine holding

first day of writing
retreat: burn sage, invoke muse
& walk the land

day two of writing
retreat: I sleep & read
& sleep some more

looking before
leaping is not quite the same
as just simply leaping

warming my cabin
metal heat coils rising like
Van Der Rohe’s corn cobs

like a game of
musical chairs, trying to find
the writing sweet spot

starting to consider
caffeine options after over-
sleeping three days straight

On December 18, Northwind Reading Series will feature Shin Yu Pai and Tim McNulty. The readings will start at 7 pm in the Northwind Arts Center, 2409 Jefferson Street, Port Townsend, WA.

Shin Yu Pai is the author of seven books of poetry, including Haiku Not Bombs (Booklyn Artists Alliance), Works on Paper (Convivio Bookworks), Sightings: Selected Works [2000 - 2005] (1913 Press), and Equivalence (La Alameda). Her work is anthologized in America Zen: A Gathering of Poets and The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry. She lives in Seattle and is currently involved in Centrum's Creative Residency Program.

Tim McNulty is a poet, essayist, and nature writer. He is the author of two collections of poetry, In Blue Mountain Dusk (Pleasure Boat Studio) and Pawtracks (Copper Canyon Press), and eight chapbooks, including Last Year's Poverty (Brooding Heron Press), Reflected Light (Tangram Press), Through High Still Air, A Season at Sourdough Mountain (Pleasure Boat Studio), and out this month from Port Townsend's Empty Bowl, Cloud Studies. Some Ducks, A Cycle of Poems for my Daughter, is due from Pleasure Boat Studio early next year.

His award-winning books on nature include: The Art of Nature, Washington's Wild Rivers, Olympic National Park: A Natural History, Washington's Mount Rainier National Park , Grand Teton: Where Lightning Walks, and Grand Canyon: Window on the River of Time. Tim has received the Washington Governor's Writers Award and the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives with his family in the foothills of Washington’s Olympic Mountains.

The readings are free and open to the public. Donations are gladly accepted to support Northwind, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting the arts to our community

I leave on Sunday for a 14-day retreat in Port Townsend at the Centrum Center in Fort Worden National Park. Reading at Northwind Arts on December 18 at 7 p.m. with Tim McNulty. I am a bit nervous about the accommodations - I don't know if I will have my own cottage/space, or if it will be one big central building housing multiple sleeping rooms for AIRs with a shared bath and kitchen. Ideally, I'd like my own space, like in P-town or MacDowell. Where my space is my space to fill with words, noise, mess, and whatever. But that's not always how it works out. But things worked out pretty well at Soul Mountain last year, when Chip Livingston was my downstairs neighbor and we shared a kitchen and bath. Either way, extreme privacy or semi-private could be just fine and I'll need to be flexible, but I will keep my fingers crossed that I can lounge around the building in my sleepwear if I choose to...

Last day of my internship at Densho today. I got to close out my quarter by interviewing the lovely and amazing Kay Aiko Abe. Here's a woman who's been feeding the homeless in Seattle for 17 years, completely unfunded by any charitable organizations. She uses her social security payments to buy food to help feed the homeless. She is in her 80s and has had an inspired life. Interned at Minidoka in her teens. When they got out of the camp, her family had nowhere to go and she felt a profound sense of homelessness. This early experience helps her to identify with Seattle's poorest populations. She left the Densho studio to go pick up chicken to cook for tonight's offering. Four nights a week, Monday through Thursday, she serves 200-300 people and has rotating teams of volunteers from area churches to help cook and serve. Kay's eye sparkle with light and compassion and absolutely lit up my spirit. Even in a recession, she said, they have enough food. They never run out of food. I don't share Kay's religious faith, but her stories renewed my faith in basic goodness and doing good.

Happy 67th birthday to my father.

Is it just me or is the new movie Bolt a contemporary variation on The Incredible Journey story?

Entering the last week of the fall quarter at UW. The university declared two weeks ago that it has a severe budget deficit and will be making university-wide budget cuts. Twenty percent across the board. This will mean the elimination of staff, faculty, and programs, and a continuation of the hiring freeze.

I here it's bad in California too. The axe will fall at CSUSB tomorrow.

There is no wi-fi at the Centrum Center in Port Townsend. That could be really good for my writing.

I managed to spend nothing on Black Friday. I don't think I will be replacing my digicam by the time I leave for retreat.

I am seeing a new healer who practices Ayurvedic medicine and trained under David Frawley. His intuition, languaging and general abilities are pretty uncanny. My work is to reconcile the unreconcileable - i.e. the blessing and curse of being a writer and of being Asian American.

I should be done with school by June. In the mean time, I'm practicing living in the here and now, and the reality that is not my imaginative writing life, but my everyday life.

K and I looked at a beautiful practice space that just opened at SPA(CE) down the street from us. We really liked the owner of the space and I am keeping my fingers crossed that K elects to rent a treatment room in the spa for 1 day a week and start his practice here in Seattle. I have committed to splitting the rent on the space as an incentive.

Items I am taking on retreat with me:

CS Perez's Unincorporated Territory
Bachelard's Poetics of Space
Sontag On Photography
Shiva Rea Yoga DVD
nagchampa incense
makeshift shrine
books to sell at Northwinds reading
yoga mat
a film-based camera

I am now able to achieve an unassisted headstand against any wall.

This is a lecture-heavy week for me - going to presentations at/around the college. On Monday, I went to a Tak Fujitani lecture. He used the word "hegemony" about three times in one minute. Such is academia. Sigh. He talked about racism and its subtler forms. That the Japanese American internment was framed in terms of military necessity/national security, but that really, it was a disguised racism. And he warned the audience to be vigilant of the evolution of racism in a post-Obama moment and then made an empassioned argument against area studies.

Left that lecture and went to hear Cynthea Bogel talk about the import and evolution of mandala painting in ancient Japan. She talked about the esoteric, tantric path of Shingon/Mikkyo Buddhism popularized by Kukai, and the ritual tools that he brought back from China - they included portraits of his tantric masters, as well as mandalas/visualization tools, sacred texts, and objects - all purchased with the funding of a government grant that sponsored his travel abroad. Cynthea's got a book due out from UW Press next year on Mikkyo - I confess that I hadn't learned about this particular Zen Buddhist sect, which seems to have strong parallels to Tibetan Buddhism - mantra (sound/chanting), mudra (gesture), and mandala (contemplation/visualization).

Went to hear and see Annie Leibovitz talk last nite at SAL. She was completely unpretentious, funny, and very much herself - highly personable. She talked about her new book and how it was a project in finding her own voice, post-Sontag. That voice is clean and spare in its prose, to the point, but also heartfelt and honest. Her introducer talked about Leibovitz as pragmatic (would rather do than theorize the work), and connected that pragmatism with an "American" tradition. I'm not sure what's particularly pragmatic about American-ness, but I wonder if she was attempting to draw some kind of connection between Leibovitz's work and one of her influences/idols, Robert Frank, who of course, produced "The Americans." What I loved about Annie's talk - she shoots celebrities and famous people, but reframed the conversation in terms of how iconic-ness is born in each of us in being who we most are.

K and I found our way over to the Seattle Shambhala Center on Monday for their regular open sitting practice. The center is in a residential neighborhood in Fremont, not far from the Japanese Gardens, and is basically a converted residence, with two meditation rooms - one downstairs for classes and one upstairs (a large open hall-type space) for group sitting. Coming up the stair to the meditation room, I was reminded of climbing the stairs of the Lincoln Building at Naropa - the walls adorned with Trungpa's calligraphy. I had a good vibe about this place - the sangha here seemed mostly male, and white. Not a whole lot of cultural diversity, but that seems fairly consistent with Tibetan Buddhism in the west. We met a guy who had just moved to Seattle in June and connected with the Shambhala Center right away. It took over a year for K and I to find our way to this group and I wonder if any of the upheaval and transition might have been eased by joining the community sooner. We sat for 45 minutes, and it reminded me of the days when we would practice yoga together at exhale. Looking over to see my partner - a good feeling to have a shared practice. I'm also very interested in the Nalanda West Center here that is the seat of Ponlop Rinpoche's N. American presence and hope to spend some time exploring it in the near future...

Wow, CU Boulder received 190 applications to their opening for a creative writing faculty member, poetry specialty. Tough job market...

Upcoming readings

Cornish College
Seattle, WA
November 19, 4:30 pm

Northwinds Gallery
Port Townsend, WA
December 18

crossing the floating bridge, remembering Bellevue's ruined strawberry fields

seattle, not boston, and still we both wear our don't-fuck-with-me faces

thick carpet of leaves covering the sidewalk deadens my footfalls

Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth: You owe me. Look what happens with a love like that: It brightens up the whole sky.

- Hafez, courtesy of Norbu

Benefit Party hosted by the Friends of the NW Chocolate Festival

Hi Friends of Winter, Chocolate and Great Parties,

You're invited to Winter Warming in the House! featuring mojitos, lots of delicious chocolate, and Mystery Micro-brews.

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 8pm-1am
257 NW 42nd Street [the Fremont House]

You're most taste-fully invited to:

Celebrate the election!
Welcome winter!
Bid farewell to the summer, (on that note,we'll feature a classic summer cocktail, the Mojito).,
Share a local beer with friends!
Win a cool prize in the raffle!
and Co-create the indoor winter party culture in our community!

Along with your splendid self, BRING CASH!** (no need to BYOB, we got that covered!)
$5 donation at the door = your first drink/beer and a ticket for our hourly raffle of excellent party prizes!

WHAT'S THE $ FOR?
This is a Benefit Party hosted by the Friends of the NW Chocolate Festival. The NW Chocolate Festival is a community-centered event that incurred huge debt to bring the first-ever chocolate festival to the Northwest in September. We Friends have decided to host kickin winter parties to make sure there can be another chocolate festival very soon. In that spirit, we will be providing some serious chocolate and special treats for you to nibble, chocolate!

This is a fundraiser party, please bring cash for the bar with Rum Mojitos for $5 per drink and micro-brews for $3 per drink.

Mark your calendar now, and yes bring friends!!

November 22nd, 2008
Saturday 8pm

We are super-excited to launch the Winter Warming Party series for our awesome local community. Come meet people, dance your booty off, and drink indoors at the best house-party in town.

Much Love!

See you on the 22nd,

love,
The Friends of the NW Chocolate Festival

Merwin redux

I went to the W.S. Merwin reading at SAL last week. The program started with a 20-minute Q&A conversation between the poetry series curator and the poet on stage. I guess typically the format is reverse - a reading followed by talk. Merwin read for about 30-40 minutes from his new Copper Canyon book. The new collection is split into three sections - I am blanking on what the first and the third were, but section two was a collection of elegies for the poet's dead dogs. I found the lyric poem Lullabye particularly beautiful and hope that someone (i.e. GP) sets it to music (preferably for alto). Merwin talked a little bit before every poem that he read and read at a glacial pace. These were good lessons, to slow it down and to have a conversation with the audience. His new book includes just one translation - a short fragment by Hadrian.

Homes in ABQ appears to be a lot more affordable than property in Seattle. Add to this that Vasant Lad's Institute is based in the Land of Enchantment, and I think Kort and I may have a post-UW plan.

The Stranger and several other newspapers have published a few details on the death of man who commit suicide on campus two weeks ago, by dousing himself in gasoline and setting himself on fire. His name was In Soo Chun and he was a 61 y.o. Korean immigrant employed by the custodial department at UW for a full year, before he was terminated from his position.

"The value of doing something does not lie in the ease or difficulty, the probability or improbability of its achievement, but in the vision, the plan, the determination and the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which go into the project. Life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation." Helen & Scott Nearing, The Good Life

What interests me now

is not poetry, but living some version of the good life.

Lesson of the week:

The only thing guaranteed in life is death. Friendships, love, vegetable gardens, contracts, and promises go awry and things go from good to bad to good to bad again. We live unresolved lives. Relationships are born. Relationships die. We all get sick. We are all suffering and heading towards an undeniable death. Fame, poetry, money, recognition, publication, exhibition, and certain forms of education, etc. do little to stave off this reality. I look you in the eye, Death, and will make you my friend.

decaying bundles of flowers in red
square mark where he doused himself
in gas, set himself aflame

There are certain things that I believe that every human being must learn to say from the heart and hear with an open mind, over the course of their lifetime. They include:

- Please
- Thank you
- No thank you
- No
- Yes
- Give me some time to think about it
- I am wrong
- You were right
- It's not about who's wrong or right
- I'm sorry
- Please forgive me
- I forgive you

Everyone, including myself, is a work-in-progress sometimes where these finer points of communication are concerned.

I cast my vote at Greenlake this morning where the community center was handing out old-style paper ballots. The volunteers were perky and enthusiastic people which helped to lift my mood. I was offered the option of having a paper ballot in Chinese. Apparently, Greenlake is a bilingual polling station. I declined and then the poll worker promptly apologized to me saying it was part of their training to at least offer. It made me wonder if bilingual voting is available at all in my parents' area of Southern California. When we talked on the phone a couple of weeks ago, my dad made the statement after offering several negative opinions about one candidate in particular (the one I endorse) that it was "none of OUR business" - plural. My dad's been a U.S. citizen for what must be decades at this point, but his ethnic and political identification is still with his motherland to the extent that he doesn't see a responsibility or connection to the politics in this country which inform his social security, taxes, healthcare, etc. If he knew that he could have a Chinese ballot, I wonder if that would make any sort of difference, though he is fluent/bilingual - if that gesture at inclusion would mean anything to him. My parents' attitude towards politics in the U.S. had a large impact in my own sense of agency. The first time I voted was in the last election four years ago. I made Kort go with me to the polling station and I voted blanket Democrat on the electronic ballot. In Texas, our minority votes didn't really carry any weight one way or another, but here in Seattle, I found myself really caring about the propositions on the ballot. I'm glad to have logged my vote and am relieved too to move on.

I sat in on two interviews at Densho this week. On Tuesday, we interviewed a 96-y.o. Seattle resident who was interned at the labor camp in Idaho. Yesterday, I interviewed an 80+ year old who was removed to Tule Lake with her family, while she was still in her teens.

I'm finding that it's challenging to not interrupt - if you interrupt and break the flow of the narrative, you risk alienating the narrator and having them clam up. If you don't interrupt or reroute, it makes for a long, non-linear narrative at a mile a minute. The interview yesterday was little more than an hour, and we covered the building and development of Bellevue, life at Tule Lake, and racism in Bellevue post-WWII - house burnings and discrimination. The camera makes a big difference for both the narrator, and I must admit to myself - the self-consciousness factor. Trying to choose words sparingly and accurately, knowing there is no editing.

Yesterday, a former UW employee self-immolated himself in Red Square in the middle of the UW campus. The man was 61 years old and had worked for UW as recently as two weeks ago. At least one student tried to stop him. A student who photographed the burning had his camera confiscated by the police. Walking thru Red Square today, the center of the plaza was surrounded in a circle of yellow police tape, small flower vigils placed along its borders.

This is profoundly sad.

I'm heading into week six of the fall quarter at UW. Things have been going fairly smoothly, though I don't feel like I am balancing the workload stress very well. Last two weeks, plagued with aches, pains, and illness. I am fast-tracking finishing the degree by next spring and that makes for a very compressed timeline of working and achieving certain markers towards finishing up my thesis.

I'm very intrigued by the role of the oral historian and public historian, in a way that I had been very interested in anthropology at one time. Next week, I'll sit in on my first interview at Densho, and two days later, conduct an interview with a former resident of Bellevue and former internee of Tule Lake. I need to figure out what's going to be feasible with doing the chop suey interviews - if elderly Chinese-American men are going to want to talk to me, or if they'd rather talk to the project's photographer, over a beer and off the record. Lessons learned re: best practice for oral history and being a good listener:

Allow for silence.

Never interrupt someone.

Be flexible with your sequence of questions.

Clarify in the transcription process what cannot be clarified on tape due to timing, appropriateness, etc.

Read body language.

Open-ended questions!

Quiet setting with noise control is best.

Wishing I was in Austin just about now

WT is on a multi-city tour this month performing solo at small clubs and coffee shops and hits Austin tonight. I sent my bf. My cell phone chimed and the text msg that came in was "W is tall." A statement of the obvious. Something I feel/felt acutely hanging out with W is that the self-consciousness that I almost always feel about looking/being Asian falls away when I am with W, because people, strangers and acquaintances alike, inevitably fixate on his height. It is a marker of difference and it is such a distinctive marker that it prevents invisibility and/or anonymity that some how eclipses any markers of my own difference.

Why I am not a pizza chef... and other lessons learned at the Wedgewood Coop

I am lucky enough to know a couple of members of the Wedgewood Coop here in Seattle and went over to the house today for a clothing swap/pizza party. It was easy to tell who was a veteran of both the cob oven and the clothing swap and who were the tentative neophytes (myself included). The co-ed clothing swap involved dozens of friends and members of the coop putting into sorted piles their unwanted clothing; after about an hour or two, the scene resembled the Garment District in Cambridge, meets Filene's Basement dressing room. Women stripped down to brightly colored bras, women trying skirts on over jeans. Lesson learned for next year's swap - wear a tank top and or skirt, something easy to try clothes on over and under.

In the backyard, people assembled to make home-made pizzas, unsupervised. Last couple of times K and I went to the coop, K managed the pizza-making process. I didn't understand why it stressed him out so much until experiencing the whole process firsthand. My first pizza was a debacle - it became a half-cooked calzone that got fired in the house oven. I skipped reading the directions to the pizza line which instructed that you must first fire your dough before adding any toppings. It is also necessary to center your topping as much as possible, to prevent topping/sauce/cheese fall-out in the oven which gets difficult to clean. So the first pizza I attempted got sent inside. The second pizza turned out better, but as I was trying to determine whether or not the dough was sufficiently cooked, I put my face to close to the opening of the cob oven and got a backdraft of woodfire smoke and heat that seriously blinded me with an eye-stinging pain. If there is sufficient wood in the fire, it creates enough light that you don't have to risk blindness by leaning in too close.

I don't usually swear so much in front of acquaintances and people I do not know well, but tonight was one of those nights. I have never done so much work to make something edible. It made me think about how distanced I am from certain cooking/survival skills. This at a party where two people make their own kombucha and one guy pickles his own sauerkraut and a ton of people were ciliac intolerant. K says that in the last days (of earth) the coop people would be good people to hang out with and learn from.

Sad

The McLeod Residence in Belltown is closing at the end of October.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a beautiful essay on the work of my friend Ben Fountain for today's New Yorker online.

Ironmen

I pretend muteness when
he shares that the root
of his profession
is to educate,

my doctor raced
his last triathalon
for the sake of saying
he competed

you can’t school everyone
even if all beings
may be our teachers –

Pheidippides, that runner
who sped from the battlefield
to Athens, dropped dead
after sprinting twenty-six miles

this gospel the body knows already,
though its the mind that trains
to steel itself long distance,
screwing up one’s courage

All the world a teahouse, where humans behave badly

In the goddess Kuan Yin's Teahouse, two women argue over who's more virtuous

Centrum, a 36-year-old nonprofit located on Fort Worden State Park in Port Townsend, is recruiting an Executive Director. Centrum is dedicated to serving artists of all ages and backgrounds through residential workshops, creative residencies, and public performances.

when you are engulfed in flames

Just finished reading the new David Sedaris book which I am shipping off to the BF in tomorrow's mail. Best essays in this book are "April in Paris" - about a spider in Sedaris' Normandy home which becomes a pet/obsession; "Memento Mori" - about Sedaris buying his partner Hugh a human skeleton for his birthday; and "The Smoking Section" - a long piece on quitting smoking in Tokyo. Also loved "Of Mice and Men" - an essay inspired by Sedaris' reading of an AP newswire story - the story of Luciano Mares who's house was burned to the ground by a flaming mouse. The same story inspired one of the poems in Adamantine.

The Iron Chink

The local history museum here has an object in its collections called "The Iron Chink." It came up in our oral history class last week. The Museum planned an exhibition with this object, where some of the label and didactic information repeated the racist language of the object. It was a piece of machinery created by a white inventor to displace Chinese laborers - not unlike the story of John Henry. Anyways, the museum took an institutional party line that although the language of the exhibition was offensive to some that Chinese-Americans could "take it." This as opposed to their perspective that African-American visitors couldn't deal with an exhibition using the "N-word." So it was very interesting that people in the class had no problem saying "chink" but tiptoed around using the N-word. At one point, I became very irritated. MOHAI sent the institutional message to the public that certain kinds of racism are acceptable, and what is this perception based on? On stereotypes of Asian-American docility and good manners, the organized power of the collective, and the level of perceived threat or danger that they might be called out and branded by the public with the "R-word" - i.e. racist. So I'm working on a new poem called "The Iron Chink" that explores some of these tensions.

on having an archnemesis...

I have an archnemesis.

She is AA, and she is poet. I would be curious to know if other poets have such doppelgangers?

I did not choose her, or perhaps, we unknowingly chose each other. We attached ourselves to one another at a writing conference in 2004, where we were both fellows. Friendship seemed entirely possible at the time, or at least "resource sharing." She started blogging, cribbed liberally and critically from this blog, and a very public falling out ensued around the criticism her anthology received from the AA community, which had nothing to do with me, except perhaps that I mirrored some of these attitudes and subaltern voices which were violently silenced. I was accused of instigating some of the criticism and threatened with a lawsuit. All quite gracious, you say. All quite violent.

Water under the bridge, I like to think. Then in 2006, she came out with an interview where she took a pointed and unmistakable jab at me. She got the details wrong of course. Her new book came out last month and she sent me an email about it. Whereas, I regularly scrub my address book and mailing lists, it seemed like a very deliberate move. I congratulated her and asked to be removed from her list. Then I came across a recent interview, with another pointed barb. It's interesting how much in common superficially we can share with our "frienemies" and how well we can understand them. There is no truce, when there is no admission of conflict.

Your archnemesis knows that you write about violence, because of the war that you wage within.

Your archnemesis knows that motherhood is a construct. So is your AA identity. Along with that press photo of you embracing your child.

Your archnemesis knows that you are a maverick rulebreaker as much as you are a Republican in your sentiments.

Your archnemesis recognizes your allies when she meets them. She can tell by their distinct brand of graciousness.

Your archnemesis knows that you never got the approval you longed for from your immigrant parents, that this haunts you, that this plays into your competing for the unattainable.

Your archnemesis thinks your best poem is a highbrow remix of TMBG's "Bird house in your soul."

Your archnemesis understands the lies you tell yourself, and the lies you tell others. Your archnemesis also knows and remembers the truths behind them.

Your archnemesis understands all about representation and myth-making.

Your archnemesis understands that admitting naivete is an entirely different thing than owning your mistakes.

Your archnemesis is sometimes surprised at your behavior, but ceased to be hurt a long time ago.

Your archnemesis understands that paper is your kryptonite and that you should hire a PR manager.

Your archnemesis has compassion for you.

Your archnemesis is simply a mirror of you, even if you do not look the same. Since all Asians do not look alike.

Kicked out of YOGA class!

team diversity

cheer squad practice
stunted dwarf leaps alongside
white boy & colored girls

Thesis

After meetings this week and last week, I believe I have a solid thesis project:

I am working with the former director of the Wing Luke Asian Museum, a culinary historian and a photographer to develop a visual documentary manuscript that includes oral histories of Seattle's chop suey restaurants, i.e. Chinese Americana. We've got a tentative list of 20+ potential narrators and I am working on the paperwork to lay the groundwork and timeline for the project. The museological tie-in will be collections development for an oral-history based collection like the Wing Luke and/or a virtual or physical exhibition. Voila!

Guru Richard says, "Let go of the brain cells."

I speak for myself,

except when spoken for.

I was in Boston this past weekend for the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Festival where such questions as "What makes a Chinese poet Chinese, or Chinese poetry Chinese?" were posed on panels. Does it boil down to language, ethnicity, geography, lineage?

What makes this Chinese poet Chinese? Looking at the characteristics of the other poets in attendance and their shared commonalities, I felt like the marginalized of the marginalized. There were two Asian-American poets, inclusive of myself, both from outside of the academic world, at the festival to present our work. Neither one of us presented our work in Mandarin, nor were we able to provide written Chinese translation of our work. There were about 15 poets total, each allotted 8 minutes of presentation time. This festival, Marilyn Chin, Li-Young Lee, Timothy Lu, they all opted out. Apparently, the first fest left Li-Young feeling puzzled and out of place. The feeling of not belonging - though he did have the language piece of things.

The organizer of the festival felt that my voice should be included in such a gathering. But what is it to really speak at one of these events? Who gets to speak and who doesn't, quite literally? I realize that these sorts of gatherings produce in me a profound sense of identity confusion and self-loathing. To look Chinese, but to not be Chinese. To let others speak for me. That when the speaking that does occur on my behalf is a rattling off of CV details and qualifiers of my Chineseness - i.e. lived in Taipei, funded for a fellowship by the Taipei City Government, friend of so-and-so, etc. I am embarrassed.

The work should speak for itself, always. But where language is an issue, how can it speak for itself?

I came back on the airplane and saw a friend who's experienced similar alienation from her experiences with Cave Canem.

Sometimes I long for the experience of racelessness. This seems impossible.Even if I were to repatriate to Africa...

The question of what makes a Chinese poet Chinese and Chinese poetry Chinese - this catapults me back into my first PhD mixer at UW with the anthro department. Getting interrogated by a professor in my department who made me justify how I could identify as Taiwanese-American, if my father was indeed descended from Han Chinese.

I no longer wish to identify as being Taiwanese-American in terms of my poetic identity politics or my professional career. I no longer wish to identify as a poet. I write poetry, sometimes. I practice yoga. Buddhism happens to interest me. Etc.

I feel like a veteran of poetry organizing, whether of readings or festivals - it is difficult to not walk into a situation organized by someone else and to critique it. Agendas, priorities, budgets, politics, aesthetics, funders, partners - all these things compete for a subtle and sometimes dominant role, and yet in the end, isn't there a way to make them appear at least to disappear long enough to actually create a critical mass?

This past weekend, K and I went to another Wedgewood coop party. We went to one of their parties last Fall - we had just moved to Seattle and the coop had just handbuilt a cob oven in their backyard for wood-firing pizzas. There was a ritual related to the earth then - taking a handful of cob/earth and putting it on a communal canvas. This year, there was a ritual related to air (makes sense, Libra is an air sign), to letting go of pollution and creating cleansing and healing. Kort sat down at the African drum circle and never got up again, so I wandered into the backyard where I met a naturopath/sailing instructor who was making Smores with his 10-year-old son. Upstairs the hip hop band Hamburger Pimp played funk. I picked up some free books on feminism. I read a poem aloud and listened to Eden and Angel, coop goddesses, and Mimi Allin read their work. Seattle's been good to us - I've been lucky to find great people outside and inside the walls of academia. The partial occasion of the gathering was yet another coop member's birthday - so he MC'ed and made a few comments, using the occasion to encourage people to register to vote and to do more than simply register, but to find ways to organize and mobilize others. Kort found the agenda to be a bit didactic, but I found it energizing. Like minds, etc.

Randy, if you are reading this, can't wait to see you and Jenny in Seattle. Martinis post-reading?

In an out-of-character move, I applied to two creative writing poetry jobs that start in Fall 08, both in Colorado. Kort misses the Naropa tea house.

Thank you to every one who sent me a love note for my birthday. Much appreciated.

I've been fighting off a cold since last week when Kort got sick, and am losing the battle. Not enough rest. For my birthday this year, I sketched out notes for a poem, walked around Green Lake while talking to my friend Rick in Providence, made myself lunch (rice, lightly floured white fish, asparagus, and black beans), talked to my Dad on the phone, took a nap with Kort, ate Ethiopian food at Kokeb with several friends, and enjoyed a fruit tart from Whole Foods which was too much on the custardy side, but the fruit was damn good. I also re-envisioned my visioning collage from 2007 - every year, I add a layer of images to the paper assortment - that collage helped me envision changing my life, getting into school, and moving cross country to Seattle, writing more, eating better, and cooking more. The new layer includes a house, direction, more time, and good health. Writing and art remain central to the collage's foundation.

Next week, I do my first pre-interview for Densho. I've been learning about proofing transcripts against video footage and copyediting and proofing curriculum units. I will probably read my whole oral history course packet in advance of this meeting to get up to speed.

My oral history class is taught by Lorraine McConaghy, chief public historian at MOHAI. What do public historians do? They interview people and capture their stories. I think I may have found a profession that satisfies many parts of me. I regret having to miss class this Friday. I will be in Boston. I feel about Boston at this very moment, as I did about New York pre-haiku book release. It will probably get better while I am there, especially since I will get to see a number of Taiwanese friends and Norbu is coming up from Providence, but I am having flashbacks about the last Chinese Poetry Conference and thinking, this is going to have to be my last for awhile. To explain some of that reasoning would be to gossip.

What I love about the I-district:
I can walk down the street and not have to make eye contact with anyone

What I hate about the I-district:
No matter what Asian mom-and-pop restaurant I walk into, I get barked at in any number of languages that I do not understand as I am claimed as one of their own - sometimes I think they think I am lying or pretending to not speak Chinese/Korean/Taiwanese/Vietnamese

addicts in the bushes
twenty-five foot clearance from
doors, campus smoke ban

What's new at Makura-no-Soshi:

- Interning this fall at the Densho Project conducting oral history interviews and learning the ins and outs of processing oral history archives

- Doing an editorial practicum with a scholarly journal focused on museums and social issues

- Continuing studies in Iyengar thru the end of October

- Presenting here and here next week

- Hosting another reading as Writer-in-Res at the SAM

- Working on supporting an oral history project on chop suey restaurants of the PNW

- Working for the Simpson Center and Seattle Arts & Lectures

- Working on finding a publisher for Adamantine; revising the manuscript in December at Centrum

- Turning 33-years-old in two days

Confirmed for Boston:

Leung Ping Kwan
Zhou Zan
Hong Hong
Marilyn Chin
Zang Di
Zhang Er
Yi Sha
Kelly Tsai
Ye Mimi
Shin Yu Pai
Melusine Lin
Yu Jian
Yu Kwang Chung

Please please let there be an interpreter.

Hugo House has lost its E.D. under some sketchy circumstances.

I made it thru two days of new program orientation and am still *very* excited about Museology, the cohort, the faculty and the future.

My fall line-up includes taking a course on oral history with a staff person from MOHAI, doing an internship on oral history at Densho - an organization that collects the oral histories of survivors of the Japanese internment camp experience, and doing a self-directed editorial practicum with the Museums & Social Issues journal.

I am meeting with my advisor next week about the possibility of doing some work on an oral history project related to chop suey restaurants in the Seattle area that has a visual/documentary component. Sounds like a possible thesis project..!

Daily Candy tells me that the Secret deodorant brand is running a new promotion on their new product, "Flawless" which has faux diamonds embedded in the stick that lucky winners can trade in for the real thing. This strikes me as strange - I am picturing those opaque candles that you burn down until quartz crystals emerge, or tequila-flavored, clear lollipops with insects embedded in them..

anatomically impossible, part two

Today's nugget of wisdom:

"Relax the molars."

an invocation for Green Tara

I was not born
with the mothering

bone, so it’s not
the young woman

my own age
on the 48 bus

hoisting her off-
spring aloft

who trains my attention,
or catches my heart

but the face of the disabled
man withered in the wheelchair

strapped down to the coach,
his eyes grown wide watching

jaw gone slack until
drool spills out the corners

of his mouth, crying out
in a language that none

of us will recognize but
which we all comprehend

I officially enter my "Jesus year" on September 28. My gift to myself this year is going to be a digital video camera to replace my broken Canon. Readers out there with experience/expertise with video cams - please send your recs. And it needs to be Mac/I-movie compatible. Merci.

Good mail day: big package of Bronze Skull books from Roberto Harrison in Milwaukee arrived unexpectedly. Roberto's work is included in the City Invisible anthology, along with his partner Brenda Cardenas' work. Both very interesting and gifted poets.

anatomically impossible

Some of the instruction my yoga teachers over the years have said include:

"Release the brain from the walls of the skull." - Guru Rick

"Breathe into the legs." - Guru M.

These actions are of course, completely impossible and highly suspect, but very funny.

Things I did today:

- toasted and ate a bagel for breakfast
- reconnected with gratitude
- drafted new poem
- updated registration for Teachers as Scholars
- managed correspondence
- ordered books for November seminars
- reread my journal/document of the last 3 months in Seattle
- journaled
- fell asleep while journaling
- rollerskated around Greenlake
- put down notes for a new poem

and in a few minutes, going to Iyengar class

retro tabula
or gratitude is a process of becoming

I bristle when my teacher orders
me to raise an altar of gratitude –

it takes four months to carve
a space in a corner of my office

closet, a place I can close
the door upon; what I start w/:

a photo of my long-dead
dog, bowls of water

bowls of rice, charms
from a temple outside Taipei

dedicated to lost pets,
an incense burner;

months later, sick of
my own poverty, I move

the shrine to a new corner
lay down an altar cloth

add a picture of my parents
folded paper cranes

a painting of my Tsai Pai ancestors
an image of my three favorite uncles

clear a space on the floor to sit
w/ my loved ones, light sticks

of incense, close myself inside this chamber;

this morning in Seattle,
I add a figure of a man

fashioned from coils
of iron by the hands

of my healer to a new
corner of my altar

(it only took two weeks
instead of 32 years)

it sits now in plain view –
house guests come in,

& out, peer w/ curiosity,
I tell them of the love

in my life, a practice of
gratitude that goes without saying

One opening I wish I could have been at...John Ashbery at Tibor Nagy.

at the outdoor market
the farmer sells lamp chops
from a cold case alongside
a woven basket piled high w/
tufts of grey-brown wool

realizing yoga
w/ props is its own kind of
schtick & exactly that

loving the guru
despising the guru &
liking him somewhat again

Whiting's junk drawer:
mix tape, tape measure, grease pencil;
automatic drawing

man with prosthetic leg on rollerblade skates outlaps me at Greenlake

It's September 12 and fall quarter starts in 12 days. Cripes!

I need a vacation. Badly.

I am going to Boston for the Chinese Poetry Festival at Simmons College in a few weeks. Haven't been back to Boston since K and I left in 2004. Our house in Watertown near the Charles River and Mt. Auburn Cemetery was the best apartment we ever had - hardwood floors, enough room for two office spaces, vintage crystalware, huge display cabinets, huge kitchen, sun porch for writing, and a very kind landlord. I am not really nostalgic for Boston, but I am looking forward to getting on a plane and seeing college friends and my Taiwanese friend Mei. A lot has changed in four years. The acupuncture school relocated, a lot of poets vacated. I got what I needed from Boston living their the second time around.

I have been napping unusual amounts.

I read a book by an anthropologist that is an ethnographic study of body language in courtship. It was horribly written - very Cosmo and it made me think about how courtship strategies could be applied to performances and poetry readings to entice an audience - hand gestures, dress, etc. I flirted with the idea of actually applying these principals and went as far as wearing pink to last night's SAM reading. An interesting discovery in the book - women in the 19th century used to dilate their eyes with belladonna for that come hither look. Where can I find the nearest belladonna?

I don't know what I'm doing for the Subtext reading on October 1. Food poems? Body poems? I have been sitting with the blackanese idea and nothing is presenting itself. I am writing Buddhistic narrative poems instead. Ten-year anniversary of my refuge vows took place this summer.

I've been having Alexander Technique lessons on a weekly basis which has helped with the yoga practice. I am becoming aware of inefficient patterns of movement and rest and unnecessary pressure on my spine.

I miss my acupuncturist and getting body work.

I am waiting for K to help orient me on my video-editing software.

I am reading Vincent Crapanzano's ethnography of a Moroccan tile-maker.

I turn 33 years old in sixteen days. The "Jesus Year" some people call it. This is what I want to manifest:

0) publish ADAMANTINE in a beautiful edition
1) a house in Greenlake
2) a business with Kort
3) a regular spiritual practice
4) a return to music, my first love
5) progress with the family

Also, I would like to acquire more skills and take bigger risks. Skills like glass-blowing and scuba diving and such. Maybe letterpress printing.

Andrew Schelling's new book Old Tale Road arrived on my doorstep yesterday. It is a handsomely designed and typeset collection - JB Bryan of La Alameda Press did the design, and I think this may be Andrew's most beautiful book yet.

My digital camera broke this week. I am hoping this will be a good kick in the pants to go back to shooting film.

There are certain idiosyncratic things that I have a lot of trouble with in yoga. Teachers with imprecise language. "Move the blanket back." Depending on where you are sitting, back and forth can mean two different things. "Towards the wall" would be helpful language. I don't like the yoga teaching assistant for my Wednesday night class. She is humorless and dour in her orthodox perfection. One size does not fit all. Language such as "straighten your legs" doesn't mean much to me. I end up locking my knees. The honeymoon is over. It is good for me to pick yoga teachers that I will inevitably leave.

I went to Ten Pachi and got a haircut. I look a bit like Yu from Arthur and Yu.

The sun is setting by about 8:15 in Seattle. End of summer.

I am behind in my correspondence.

I am not ready to let go

like the dumb dog
that bounds up
the mountaintop

for her master

plays fetch
in the desert dune
in 110º heat

drops dead
from devotion,
not knowing

her own impermanence

I too close out
the noise of my own
thumping heart

the narrowing of my lungs
waiting for that moment –
you say “when”

Tennis anyone?

Whiting gave an artist talk yesterday at the Kucera Gallery about his Works "With" Paper show.


He started by talking about his automatic drawings. He had a practice of doing automatic doodles on scratch paper while talking on the telephone and became very interested in the free quality of these images. He connected that to drawings he had seen at a folk art exhibition by Amish (?) women who made gift, or trance drawings, that had the same automatic quality.


Sometimes the drawings end up being studies for 3D sculpture. I really love the cardboard architectures here - the way that the corrugated textures evoke tin roofs and building materials.


This little "free" sign sells for $800. It reminded me of the "free" signs that WT was going around lifting in his neighborhood - whenever someone would leave a pile of free shit on the curb outside their house, they'd put up a sign with the word "free" signifying to others that they could take. The signs are actually quite unique and full of character.


I fell in love with this piece. W talked about how he's always amazed at functional pieces of furniture that you find in weird places like gas stations, where a corner may be missing from a table, or a structure may have been made to hold specific tools. Objects that exist for a functional purpose for their own sake. So the piece is like W's metaphor for a junk drawer. Inside the top section is a little tableau/diorama with drawings. Inside the drawer were grease pencils, a tape measure, a cassette tape, a folded-up drawing, a plastic camera and various odds and ends. The objects were deliberate in the way that W's dressing of the "Bovine" sculpture was also very precise.


The artist pointing out different layers of drawing in his painting.

on the night of the last lunar eclipse

the alignment of moon
moving into earth’s outline

overshadowed by the glare
of headlight, brake-

light, blinking red stop-
light; the night sky dotted

by floodlight & helicopter
the neon signs of Roosevelt Square

powering Sleep Country, beauty
shops, all-night tattoo parlors

this bright life, streets
beaded w/ lamplight

stretch around Greenlake –
grinning cobrahead diffusers

obscure earth’s penumbra
a starred and striped satellite

this fluorescent poet moon

Note to self about Alexander Technique - ask Carol about AT as it relates to the movements of eating and the movements of Japanese tea ceremony.

Now at 516 Arts

Book Lung • Poetry's Spin on Art



In conjunction with STIR: A Festival of Words, 516 ARTS presents a poetry project organized by Lisa Gill showcasing poems created in response to the visual work in the exhibitions Cautionary Tales: A Visual Dystopia and Finding a Pulse. The poems will be displayed in less-than-conventional books by artists Becky Holtzman and Valerie Roybal. Describing her vision for the project, Gill says, “Arachnid anatomy has everything to do with my interpretation of how art and poetry inform each other. Situated inside the abdomen of many common spiders are miniature books that breathe—or, lungs that look like miniature books...This project explores both the inhale and the exhale of creative process.” Participating poets include Jill Battson, Amy Beeder, Hakim Bellamy, Debbi Brody, Jennifer Frank, Teresa E. Gallion, Gabriel Gómez, Renée Gregorio, Lisa Hase, Michelle Holland, Zach Kluckman, Jennifer Krohn, Michelle Laflamme-Childs, Maria Leyba, Joan Logghe, Mary Oishi, Richard Oyama, Shin Yu Pai, Greta Pullen, Margaret Randall, Mitch Rayes, Miriam Sagan, Maureen Seaton, John Tritica, Richard Vargas, Mark Weber, Chris Wrenn and many more.

For more information about STIR: A Festival of Words, visit www.harwoodartcenter.org

one hand clapping

at the rock concert
the hearing interpreter
mimes the drum solo

the wave of applause
in a sea of hands
turning to and fro

blind spot

when I turn back to stare
at the man poised at the street

crossing, long after
the light has gone green

only then do I see
the round sticker affixed

to his chest

I am deaf and blind
in big white letters

paling in comparison to
his outfit: oversized purple shirt

beneath the orange safety vest
in his right hand retracted

walking stick, dark glasses
masking his eyes; the way

he doesn’t move, lost
in thought, I think,

the way I lose
myself in daydreaming

dumbstruck, I am
without words when

I realize there is no other
way to communicate

but through touch &
I do not have permission

when I lay my hand
upon his arm; see him

give a start; cross
traffic, just as the red palm

begins to flash, I
place myself between

his body & the hostile line
of humming cars queuing;

when we reach the other side
he’s ready for me

to let go

the wonder of our most
pedestrian moments are profound

the language where
intention and action meet,

is its own kind of poetry

the last time that I felt this aware
was the last time that I felt this aware

Fall reading schedule

September 11, 8 pm
Reading with Oliver de la Paz
Seattle Art Museum

October 1, 7:30 pm
Reading with Donato Mancini
Good Shepherd Chapel Performance Center
Seattle, WA

October 4, TBA
Simmons College/Zora Neale Hurston Poetry Center
Chinese Poetry Festival
Boston, MA

Cornish College of the Arts, November 19
Tricia Ploesch's body & text class
Seattle, WA

Whiting Tennis has a new exhibition of drawings up in the back room at the Kucera Gallery for the next month. The best pieces are cardboard collage mock-ups of sculptural pieces that take on a Picassoesque quality in their corrugatedness. One very nice drawing on paper in lipstick - a pale coral color of a architectural shape - Gustonesque in its execution. A few studies for larger paintings, and a couple of wall sculptures. WT is one of the best parts of living in Seattle. If I can download the photos from my cell phone camera, I'll post them in the next day or two.

Hostile

I went to a cultural event this week at an unnamed venue where I had a disturbing experience that resulted in the question - what can I do to look less Asian? It is de rigueur that I am more often than not the only person of color in the room. I've come to accept this, and to try not to focus on this aspect of being out in public. During the course of said event, I introduced myself to someone that I knew I would be meeting sooner or later. I said, "Hi, my name is..." Their response was "Yeah. I figured." I think I tried my best to not completely recoil in complete disgust. There is more than one Asian female poet in Seattle - I can name five of them - none of them look anything alike and their work is radically different. Not only that, there are hundreds of Asian women in Seattle. Yeah, I figure. Go figure.

90201 redux

I have some problems with the new 90210. I find it even less credible than the original version, but whatever. The new generation of Beverly Hills High chicks look unnaturally thin, more so that Kelly or Brenda ever did. There is no geeky Andrea character this time around - the closest "outsider" is Erin, Kelly's sister, who wreaks social havoc, with her snarky blog commentary on high school culture. The new "twins" replacing Brenda and Brandon are Annie from the midwest, and her adopted black brother Dixon - he is very obviously the token minority. Their grandmother is the woman who played the mother on Arrested Development. The new Dylan appears to be a gender role reversal in the character of a pill-popping teenage girl involved with the drama troupe who steals money from her friend to fund her addiction and who is supposedly trying to break into acting and garner the big bucks to pay her mom's mortgage. The male leads are not very attractive or interesting or unique - one character has some interesting background quirks - his dad is a famous porn director. This generation of characters seems even more decadently rich than the last, which is hard to believe, but since the first 90210, Paris Hilton has come and gone. The revival of Kelly and Brenda's characters in the first couple of shows seems completely contrived. And apparently, Donna (Tori Spelling) is supposed to make an appearance too as a local boutique shop owner. Who writes the script? Who's directing this stuff?

Yoga Dojo

I am taking two months of Iyengar yoga at the Seattle Center for Yoga with Richard Schachtel. First class met last night. This is the yoga that I always should have been practicing. Precise, formulaic, step-by-step. Injury preventative, visual, experiential, and foundational. This ain't no vinyasa flow. The studio is very no frills - more like a big gymnasium with wood floors. No mirrors. No real lobby or waiting area. No A/C - just large clunky overhead fans.

I think I just had an out-of-body experience, while in my body. I'm fairly certain that's possible.

I was walking up 65th back towards my neighborhood, after rollerskating at Greenlake. Once I got past the I-5 underpass, I stopped at the crosswalk in front of the Java Stop to cross over to my side of 65th. There were three men at the crosswalk - all of them distinctive. Two middle-aged black men, one in a head kerchief - hanging out and chatting with one another. The third: A guy in a bright purple shirt and orange safety vest carrying a cane and wearing very dark glasses. When the crossing light turned green the black guys said, "Walk, it's green now." And they hoofed it across the street. I started walking too and noticed that the guy in the purple shirt hadn't stepped off the sidewalk at all. I looked at his shirt and noticed a round sticker on it that said in big white letters "I am deaf and blind." I ran back to the sidewalk and had a momentary dilemma. I opened my mouth to speak, and realized the futility of this moment. In yoga class, we ask for permission to touch, and there was no possible way that I could ask this man's permission to communicate. So I as gently as possible (conscious that I might startle him) put my hand on his forearm and he snapped quickly to attention. He nodded at me and started walking across the street. At this point, our crosslight had started blinking and turned red. Cars were beginning to queue up and I felt the anxiety of this moment and needing to create a safe space for this person. I put my hand back on his arm guiding him until we reached the sidewalk, and then I put my hand on his forearm again for a moment and then I watched him walk up 65th.

Then I came home, wrote in my journal and cried. Love comes through the hands. I do not often touch people, because I have been touched by other people who have not asked for permission to touch and because I am at least part culturally Asian. Living in Madrid and kissing on both cheeks was absolute torture. I prefer handshakes to embraces with acquaintances, bowing is good too. I had an intense moment of clarity in that crosswalk - the universe screaming literally in emergency orange and purple to pay attention. Pay attention. To intention. And to the love and awareness that is in me.

Bumbershoot '08
teens waving cell phones overhead
instead of lighters

Part of how I got to go to Bumbershoot for free this year, was I agreed to be part of a focus group on advertising for Heya Toyota. I have to say that after a summer of thinking through ethnography of expressive culture and performance, going to the fest and thinking about sponsor presence, branding and marketing, were actually very useful exercises.

The main visible sponsors of the fest were Samsung, T-Mobile, Rock Star Energy Drink, Starbuck's, a handful of radio stations, and Spin Magazine. There presence was created through banners throughout the mainstage stadium. Samsung had a VIP lounge on the main floor with couches and a bar, but it was unclear to me how to access that space. The most successful and unique branding was by Rock Star, who sponsored a stage, but also installed a huge skate ramp where skaters performed all day long. Outside the fest, Burt's Bee's also had a huge self-contained tent installed with sinks for product sampling, free giveaways, hand massages, and a retail store. They installed greeters on the lawn outside the tent and a woman on a headset mic to help drive traffic into the tent. They created a very powerful presence in being fully self-contained.

There are so many small vendors at the fest that it's easy to get lost in the booths - the way to go for larger sponsors is to definitely create some sort of unique and larger-than-life visual presence. Seattle Times and the Seattle Center had a presence in one of the theatre venues in having their names projected onto the walls of the interior theatre. Inexpensive, but visually impactful and assertive.

Bumbershoot

The best part of yesterday's fest for me was the Beck concert in the p.m. and the visual arts exhibition in the back of the Seattle Center.

This is the drawing room at Bumbershoot. The Gage Academy provided live figure models for various stations around the room. They provided free art supplies, paper, easels, etc. And live music! The guy singing yesterday, looked a lot like WT.





Sort of a temporary wall mural created by the community.


This model looked like a man in drag to me, but I couldn't be sure.


Another of the visual art galleries was occupied by the one pot performance group. They stage big banquets in unorthodox places like median dividers. In the back of the room, the food was getting prepared. Books were scattered over the table as conversation starters. I've seen this kind of thing in Andreas Strauss' work - my co-resident at TAV in '06. I think the Europeans have been doing the whole cooking-happening-art thing for a few years in Vienna and Berlin. My point is not that all things are derivative, but there is something compelling about the power of feeding people to bring communities together.


I was very excited about the Mourtidi installation throughout the visual art area. It was visual anthropology, ethnography and documentary work at some of its best.

Bumbershoot

Survival guide for Monday:

food
snacks
water in a reusable container
blanket
wool sweater
tissues

up close, ivy-veiled
concrete lumps rising out of
the schoolyard, from across

Ravenna Ave.
a camouflaged length of
covert crocodile

It's Fall.. which means that it's application season. Upcoming local deadlines for Hedgebrook, Jack Straw, and the 911 Media Arts Scholarship.

This morning while waiting for the 67 bus, I forced myself to meet the smile of a white man giving me the hairy eyeball. Why? Because he was significantly larger than me - hand big enough to fit around my neck. And because he stared a second too long sending me the message that if I didn't acknowledge his presence in some way that it could, like it has before, quickly descend into namecalling and nastiness- i.e. "damn chink."

Funny how smiling is supposed to be a gesture of "non-aggression." I can say with all honesty that I have never had this problem with Asian men - and perhaps it is because of the cultural nature of when eye contact is made.

This little encounter made me think about the way in which I move through the world - we cannot escape our skin or other people's perceptions of who we may be. Is it living in fear that I think twice and carefully before getting into any elevator alone with a strange man, because I think of Theresa Cha's murder? Or that I think twice about standing too closely to a subway platform because of the hate crime that I read about as an undergrad in my women's studies class - a pregnant Chinese woman in the NY subway, shoved in front of a train by a disgruntled man who feared that Asians were taking over the world.

I wonder about how I would experience the world, if I didn't live in this body. And then I go to Taiwan, where blending in on a surface level is entirely within the realm of possibility, if you wear the right clothing and make-up and style your hair.

One of the last conversations I had with my therapist in Dallas about moving to Seattle was my fear of becoming ordinary. Seattle is filled with green, entrepreneurial, culturally literate activist types. It's its own kind of tribe, where I take comfort. I can say to my acupuncturist who puts his clothes out for sale at a yard sale - did you smudge those shirts or wash those jeans before putting them out? And he will actually know what I am talking about.

Seattle is still an easier place for me to live than Dallas. But wherever I go, I can't escape this body.

The lovely Whiting Tennis is installing a drawing show at the Kucera Gallery that will open on 8/28, artist talk on 9/6. For fans of Tennis' music, WT is touring the U.S. in his sister's mini-van during the entire month of October, with shows set up in San Francisco, Buffalo, New York (Pete's Candy Store!) and elsewhere. Check out his myspace page for an itinerary update.

I'm officially done with classes and have a 29-day break until classes commence on Sept. 24. I finished my last anthro class on Thursday, after an in-class reading of the essay that I wrote on my mother.

I am completely out of sorts. To try and add some semblance of structure and regularity to my life, while trying to get back into a writing groove, I have been catching up on reading:

Lumakick 1 and 2 - a comic/experimental graphic narrative by Richard Hahn. Poetic, minimalist, referential to drawing, and philosophical with the dramatic tension interrupted by more comic sequences and scenarios.

Her Husband - Diane Middlebrook's biography of Ted Hughes. I haven't spent much time with Hughes' work at all, but having read this nonfiction work about the trajectory and development of his poetry, I definitely plan to now. Hughes work references animals, shamanism, myth and anthropology. I came across a reference to The White Goddess which was sort of a literary bible for Hughes. I had heard about Graves' book a couple years ago from a writer, who's tastes I cannot trust, recommended it to me when I mentioned that I'd been delving more deeply into anthro. But rediscovering it in Middlebrook's book, the concept of the white goddess begs further exploration.

Hard Travel to Sacred Places - travelogue of screenplay writer Rudy Wurlitzer who visits Cambodia, Burma, and Thailand in the wake of his son's death in a car accident. Cuts in and out of collaged dharma quotes from some of the teachers that Wurlitzer has studied with. The quotes seem a little too summative at times - might have been more interesting to see Wurlitzer write through more of his struggle with attachment, the body, arrival at realization, failure, etc., rather than relying on the buddhist canon for ground.

I Love Artists - a great intro to Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's work for anyone who hasn't already encountered her earlier projects. But really, the full books that are Empathy, Endocrinology and Nest are far, far more interesting and complex.

Poeta en SF - BJR opens with a prose poem called "State of Emergency." Echoes of Giorgio Agamben? You bet.

Currently skimming Nathaniel Tarn's The Embattled Lyric.

I have written a haiku nearly every other day in August. Much of the Haiku Not Bombs gang signed on for another year, along with some new people, like Ellis Avery.

I am experimenting with video letters. Goodbye to postcards and written letters for awhile. When I was a kid, I used to make audio cassette letters for my best friend Jessica Rollins. I've missed those days when we'd trade tapes like audio diaries. My friend Bridget and I are also trading a physical journal back and forth thru the mail. If you would like a video dispatch - send me a message - and specify your preferred topic, if you have one!

more Mare Winningham
circa St. Elmo's, then any
incarnation of Demi Moore

the interview ends when
he says I don't trust men; I
signify agreement

a metaphor for my heart

walking path washed clean of goose shit from two steady days of rain

Fellow La Alameda author Lisa Gill has been busy organizing the Stir poetry festival which takes place September 13.

Next week, Bumbershoot! The Heya Toyota site hooked me up with a three-day pass to attend, in exchange for blogging/participating in a focus group on branding and ad messaging at the fest. I hope it doesn't rain the way that it is currently pouring outside. I am looking forward to seeing Beck perform, as well as Death Cab for Cutie on closing day and Adrian Tomine!

Meeting the Light

I spent the morning practicing vipassana meditation at the Turrell skyspace at the Henry Art Gallery. The installation is called "Light Reign." The meditation session was organized by the Insight Meditation group - once a month a senior student from Insight leads a sitting group. This style of sitting was a bit different from Shambhala-style vipassana - they like to close their eyes. That aside, it was a healthful experience being in a contemplative space with others, concentrating on the breath and the body. Car alarms on the Ave sounded off around us, while buses pulled in and out of the stations. Thirty minutes flew by. I noticed the color of the sky, the patterns of clouds drifting across the oval aperture, flies on the wall. Turrell grew up as a Quaker in a tradition of silent meditation. As a child, his grandmother explained the practice of meditation to Turrell not as "finding the light" but as "meeting the light." I like this metaphor a lot.

The meditation put me in a clear head and heart space to go and say goodbye to my acupuncturist and to put closure to my therapeutic relationship.

It was a hard summer. I dwell easily in the dark places.

It is said that savasana, or corpse pose, is the most important yoga asana there is - because it is the pose where we practice death. I try to imagine a practice that would allow me to acknowledge death every day, but not negate life and light.

All this said, I am feeling much more like my old self.

speeding over pavement
on rollerskates, foot massage
for the undersoles

berry foragers
at Greenlake; in the back alley
a man picking thru trash

Kort helped me to make a Yoga Kick response video which is posted to facebook (viewable to friends only). I realized that while some people are shocked upon hearing their voice for the first time on an answering machine or an audio recording, I don't have that problem with the auditory - but I am shocked at my visual appearance and my resemblance to a cross between Sandra Oh and David Choi. Like them, I look awfully serious, to the point perhaps of caricature.

Beauty marks: curling
iron burns scab over, heel
blisters begin to express

swallowing swords - something
every Chinese daughter
must learn to stomach

10 Questions for Guru Rick

Will practicing yoga kick grant me any special abilities or powers?

Am I only allowed to kick in yoga kick, or can I chop too? Will chopping be part of your next video?

I really love your violent approach to yoga, but I'm a vegetarian and can't eat your bucket of chicken. What should I do?

Do you think yoga kick is a competitive sport that could find its way into the next Olympics or is it too deadly?

What advice do you have for people who can't kick?

There are no elderly people in your video - is yoga kick a suitable practice for people over 40?

There are also no heavy people, disable people, colored people, blacks, Asians, or Hispanics in your video. Is yoga kick right for them?

Being an important guru, you must know a lot of other important gurus. Who are some of those important gurus, dead or alive?

What do gurus talk about when they get together?

I'm shown your video to Tibetan refugees in Seattle to inspire them with yoga kick, but it's impossible to motivate them. Any suggestions?

retiring half-blind
daruma to desk drawer –
a dream deferred

Dear David B,

Cher David B,
If I could ask you anything, I would ask you what is your own story. You said today that Epileptic is your mother's story and that Babel is your father's story. They are both the stories of your family and you are clearly a part of them as the narrator and documentarian of the Beauchard history. We all have stories inside us that we need to tell, before we can move more deeply into our own experience. Yet, I wonder if the stories that are your story are the medieval histories where you do not appear as a character at all, the stories that inspire your deepest imaginings. I suspect that we share a similar melancholy - something that is mistaken by our lovers to be nostalgia. If only I could speak French.

Un bisou,
Shin Yu

Yoga Kick!

This video is by an old Naropa friend, Seth LePore. Watch the clip to learn how to get your own free bucket of chicken!

Fantagraphics opening for David B

I convinced Kort to go down to the David B opening at Fantagraphics last night. We hadn't been to this part of Seattle - a neighborhood called Georgetown which feels very "up and coming" and in the process of conversion - werehouse spaces into lofts like the Southside in Lamar quarter in Dallas and a handful of indie businesses. The area felt good to me, the kind of place that I'd enjoy living, were it not so much farther from the U District. The crowd at Fantagraphics was very interesting - slightly geeky but hip/unusual, extremely nice, and very appreciative of Msr. B. I have heard Fantagraphics described as a sort of holy grail for comic book afficionados. Having set foot inside the store, I can definitely see why this is a comic book lover's dream. It is a place that really elevates the comic to a high art.


I have loved David B's work since discovering Epileptic a few years ago. It's a powerful tale of illness, family wounds, the power of art to transform, and a story of loss.


The author did signings of his book for everyone who showed up. Not only did he sign the book, he did a personalized drawing - the same drawing for every book, which made it all very democratic and fair, which I liked very much.


I felt shy and could only tell him that I loved his work and found it very moving. What I would really like to ask is the significance of why he chose the name David as his nom de plume. If I remember right, the name David means love. Perhaps, I will ask him at the SPL lecture later today. My copy of Epileptic is now my most prized possession in all of my book collection.