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