Craig Arnold has gone missing in Japan, where he's on a Japan-NEA JUSFC Fellowship.

Dining Out for Life

April 30th is Dining Out for Life in Seattle. Dine at a participating restaurant on this day and 30% of your meal cost will be donated back to the Lifelong Aids Alliance in support of care services. Our friend Andy is the Lifelong ambassador at Kabul Restaurant in Wallingford .To find other participating resturants (lunch, and late night bars): visit this link.

Want a postcard from China? Leave a comment with your snail mail.

I've been going on job interviews since February or so, and here's what I've realized throughout the process: the museology program at UW has prepared me better than any other academic program I have been through for the professional world. Last quarter's collections management class for instance had direct relevance for my interview yesterday - if an employer says to me that they want me to help with the transfer of physical ownership of archives or photographs from a donor or artist, I know that may mean getting bids from ground shipping companies with expertise in art handling that have temperature-controlled relative humidity stable trucks. And then there's door-to-door, nail-to-nail insurance.

What I've also learned to articulate for myself is that I want to work for an organization that is first and foremost mission-driven with a formal or informal code of ethics in place, and a not-for-profit with diverse revenue streams and resources. In my mind this looks like one of two things - working for a small community-based, regional archive or collection; and/or administering a Buddhist-oriented nonprofit like the TNP. I look back now at some of my previous professional experiences - for profits, corporate, development for universities, public healthcare, academic humanities - and realize that choosing a work environment that mirrors my values and ethics is critical, has always been. What this means now is thinking very critically and carefully about what prospects I pursue and cultivating patience in that interim.

I'm reading for Mimi Allin's Intersection Series on Friday at 7 p.m. at the Phinney Neighborhood Association. Dancer Kris Wheeler who practices authentic movement and Skinner Releasing Technique will also perform. Audience interaction will be involved and improvisational movement (from Kris) based on verbal and written responses from viewers. This is the last event I plan on doing in the Seattle area for the rest of 2009. Thanks to 4Culture and P&W for sponsoring...

The Listening Party

AA scholar Karen Tongson was in Seattle over the weekend to present at a pop music conference at the EMP, and made a stop at UW to speak on her research on suburban spaces in Southern California and the 80s British invasion in music. Tongson's talk was one of the most innovative lectures that I have ever been to - crossing disciplines in the way that the most avant garde academics and artists aspire to but don't quite make the cut - (I'm thinking now of a poetry reading at Gallery 1412 in Seattle I saw several months ago where another audience member I talked to actually nodded off in the middle of a "multimedia" presentation). Anyways, Tongson's approach was to embed carefully selected video files of suburban themed music and film into a PowerPoint presentation. She'd talk about suburban dystopia and culture, cue song (i.e. Pet Shop Boys' "Suburbia"), talk about the lyrics, turn the sound down and continue her talk, synchronizing the timing of her talk to the songs - in playing The Smiths' "There is a Light That Will Never Go Out" she talked about the boredom of suburban spaces, driving in cars waiting for something to happen, or to stumble upon something. Like me, Tongson grew up in the suburb of Riverside, and the images, songs, and stories that Tongson shared, had a deep resonance for me. She called her lecture a "listening party" and talked about intimate re-enactments, which led me back to Phil Collin's Dallas show of Smiths karaoke singers from around the world in "The World Won't Listen" and the power of finding innovation and creativity in the repetition of what is a seemingly static zone - i.e. the Inland Empire.

When I was seeing a new acupuncturist in Ballard last week, I ran down to the Camera Techs to buy fresh 120 film from Camera Techs to test the Hasselblad. The tech at the shop walked me through how to put together the camera - several more steps than I am accustomed to, so I took him up on his invitation to bring the camera in to let him test it. Went back to Camera Techs this afternoon with the Hassie and when the owner tested the lens, it failed on the first firing - with the blades jamming. The film backs need new foam and servicing, and there appear to be a number of issues with the equipment which was graded as "bargain" (or cosmetic damage only, in perfect working order), so I am sending it back to KEH and buying a Hasselblad 500 from Camera Techs on Wednesday which has been fully serviced and ready to go without further repairs. I am disappointed, but glad to figure it out now, vs. while in China.

New information on some of the authors who will be working with the Life of Discovery Fellows in China next month:

曹有云 CAO Youyun (b. 1972, Qinghai Province)

金仁顺 JIN Renshun (b. 1970, Jilin Province)

李慧 LI Hui (b. 1970 in Xiaojin Yi autonomous area in Jiulong County, Sichuan
Province)

聂勒 NIE Le, (b. 1968 in Xigu Tribe in Ximeng Wa Autonomous County, Yunnan Province)

王华 WANG Hua (b. 1968 in Gelao Autonomous County in Daozhen, Guizhou Province)

胡学文 HU Xuewen (b. 1967)

The makeover edition of Biggest Loser is making me burst into spontaneous tears like every five minutes.

Fedex and/or my job has misplaced my Hassie delivery. #@$!!!! Well, I've waited to make the commitment to move to medium format for ten years, another few days of waiting can't be too torturous, or so I tell myself. Oh desire.

I saw my first 3-D movie ever this weekend. Monsters vs. Aliens. I thought I was going to be hit in the head with a giant meatball during previews. Kort got a good chuckle out of that.

In the absence of time to write poems, I've been on a cooking spree and tried out Martha Stewart's recipe from Living for chicken enchiladas. All things considered, it worked out, but I have to remember not to embark on new projects when I am a) hungry b) tired. And multi-tasking doesn't go so well when working on new dishes. While I was shredding the chicken for the enchiladas, I started warming tortillas on the cast-iron skillet. As they blackened, my smoke alarm started going off. As the blaring blinking alarm screamed out at me, I felt profoundly tired and ready to end the experiment. I gritted my teeth and switched from stove to alarm to prepping on a little circuit until the alarm calmed down. Unfortunately, it fired up again when I opened the oven to check the enchiladas under the heating element. In the end, the meal turned out delicious, but came with a whole lot of stress. But I think having gotten the meal right (taste-wise) on the first try, I'm going to have to have a dinner party with a Mexican theme sometime this spring.

Job interview for San Marcos curator position next week. San Marcos is just outside of Austin, close to the BF. But appealing job in Jemez Springs is also beckoning. The prospect of the kind of work I am now considering puts me in a situation where I am going to have to learn again to drive. But these jobs are worth the mileage.

I'm on an AWP panel proposal on dharma poetics with a bunch of Naropa folk. Right now, I'm thinking that I'd like to give a report on the Montreal Zen Poetry Fest and speak in more detail on the luminous beautiful poems of Peter Levitt. April in Boulder/Denver - could be sunny, could be snowy.

Swimming with bears not equal to swimming with dolphins.

One skill that I've learned this time around in grad school is reading quickly. Reading to be conversant and not getting bogged down in the details. The last time I've read an entire work of prose word for word, it was probably a David Sedaris collection or a Ben Fountain story. I had hoped to be more excited about Markos Zuniga's Taking on the System, but it only reminded me of Kalle Lasn's culture-jamming manifesto.

Like the authors of Born Digital, Zuniga is also a lawyer, though he has distinguished himself by his political blogging at Daily Kos. The gist of Zuniga's book is how savvy users of social technologies can bypass cultural and political gatekeepers by becoming involved cybercitizens who perform a smart revolt or act of civil disobedience thru the reclamation of media, which function today as little more than conservative ideological apparatuses of conventional wisdom. The book is not a how-to manual and draws the majority of its examples from political campaigns and events. The events that most engaged my own reading were an analysis of Cindy Sheehan's rise and fall to fame as the face of the anti-war movement, a brief discussion of the Jena 6 racial incidents in the South, and some coverage of Bill O'Reilly and the Fox news channel.

Some useful terms from the book are the idea of "manufacture outrage" (Bill O'Reilly) and "riding the backlash" (transparency, PR, and riding the groundswell). Zuniga himself comes under fire for a statement that he makes on the Daily Kos blog that is manipulated and attacked by the conservative right, though he is able to withstand the attack through transparency, accountability, and trust in his readers. His epilogue is the clarion call of all educators - personal responsibility and organic leadership.

"Your own ego can be your own worst enemy. Guard against the danger of buying into hype about your personal success or brilliance. Instead, understand your place as merely one element in a broad and ever-changing movement, with your effectiveness forever linked to your individual credibility, good reputation, and the respect you show your fellow activists." - Markos Zuniga, Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era

Finished reading Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives as suggested reading for social technologies class. The book is written by lawyers John Palfrey and Urs Gasser and targeted towards parents and educators on the issues related to technology and today's Digital Natives. The book opens by talking about the world of Digital Natives and the dangers that they face in terms of having to navigate complex social technologies that disclose personal information and also expose youth to safety threats and threatened privacy. Palfrey and Gasser also talk about the identities of the new Digital Natives - that there is a blurring between private and public selves and a continual reinvention and fluidity of the identity. I think about some of my friends on Facebook who took a long time to join the network and never/rarely change their profiles, and it's interesting to me to think about how the pre-digital natives use the technology in a more stable/static way, then say some of the college-aged students I've taught over the years.

The authors spend a good amount of their time talking about their ideas for policy and practice, as well as discussing ethics, copyright law. I think the main take-away from the book for me, as it applies to museums and virtual exhibitions is that parents are concerned about good technological design, controls and privacy (collection and sharing of personal info), and that these concerns should be addressed through any online project. The other take-away is finding ways to channel the creative energy or groundswell that is part of the uprising in creators, a category of social technology users (there are also observers, critics, and other categories, with the creators being the most active and participatory in terms of generating new content). I.e. finding ways to involve or capitalize on youth/user innovation and expertise - tapping their ability as collaborators and innovators to help take a project to the next level.

Naropa has a new president as of July.

A small press in SF is publishing my friend Rick Benjamin's first book of poems, Passing Love, later this year. Nothing would make me happier than if people submitted queries and pre-orders for the book and helped to build a buzz about what is a shining debut collection, with particular appeal to those readers with a Buddhist sensibility.

My medical records from South Cove have been sent to Iron Mountain, and now I must retrieve them.

For social technologies class, I have been reading Here Comes Everybody - a great primer on social media that encompasses a variety of case studies including Wikipedia, Digg, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Meetup, Myspace, Youtube, Blogger, and other technologies that have developed to help user organize, connect, and expand their communities through interacting in new ways around social objects. The author, Clay Shirky, uses a few examples that look at how users of social media have used those tools to challenge the establishment (digital campaign that led to policy changes in airline industry)and to disseminate information - i.e. cell phone photos of the London subway bombing in the aftermath of the event.

Reading Shirky's book makes me realize a couple of things. People use social technology in the way that makes sense to their own needs - usually networking and expanding their sphere of connection. I don't think that there is a "wrong" way to use social technology, but I realize that I have not been interested in using these tools to their fullest social capacity. I don't tag my posts or flickr photos typically, I disable comments on blog posts due to a history of blog trolls and unfriendly reader/spectators. I ignore friend requests on facebook from people I haven't met in person and/or had some individual contact with - particularly if I notice that the people contacting me already have 2,000+ friends, or even a couple hundred. Because the power of the social technology is to work as a networking and marketing tool - very prevalent on facebook with various poetry and art groups, or book recommendations on goodreads, etc. And unless I have a personal investment in a person or group, I don't want to be inundated with information, and I wonder if others feel the same.

I did not have an RSS feed on this blog until someone asked me to add one, and then I had to ask that person to explain to me how to set that up. I figure that the people who check into this blog or take some interest in spectral presence of who I am on the web know where and how to find me in real life. Because that to me is what relationships are built on - face to face interactions, handwritten letters, the random phone call, and shared experiences in real time and space. Perhaps that makes me more of a luddite than I previously thought.

But I am very much interested in how people organize their interests around social objects - i.e. for Youtubers it's videos, for flickr members it's fotos, for Twitter it's status updates. For the Buffalo and WOMPO lists it's poetry, or maybe it's publishing. For people who connect through Meetup, it's the idea of not bowling alone. And there is something within the technology that encourages creativity, sharing and a sense of community in modern times that can't be ignored.

Currently contemplating "big eye" contacts and Ayahuasca shamanic journeying.

I just finished reading Richard Bernstein's Ultimate Journey. Published in 1999, the book chronicles Bernstein's journey to the East to retrace the spiritual pilgrimage of Chinese monk Hsuan Tsang who crossed from Western China into India on the Silk Road on a 17-year journey that took place centuries ago. Bernstein's travelogue is fraught with the hardships of modern travel (crossing borders, getting visas, negotiating local ground travel) and reflection upon his years working in China as a journalist, woven together with a simultaneous historical narrative about the travels of Hsuan Tsang. I didn't love this book in the way that I hoped that I would. I actually like Rudy Wurlitzer's Hard Travel to Sacred Places much better as a travelogue, though I also had criticisms of the narrative arc of Wurlitzer's book. Whereas Wurlitzer's journey to the East (Laos, Cambodia, Thailand) centered around a trip that he took with his wife in the wake of grieving their son's death from a tragic car accident, Bernstein's main impetus for his trip at middle age seems to admittedly be because soon he will be too old to take such a trip. He revisits the sites of his youth and reminisces about the stories he captured as a fledgling freelancer writing for the Christian Science Monitor. Whereas Wurlitzer is a spiritual devotee and seeker, Bernstein traces the steps of a Buddhist pilgrim with seemingly little emotional investment. At times, the reader even sees the ugly American emerge when he demands an audience with a Maharaja basically unannounced and complains loudly on a train about his fellow travelers. The section of Bernstein's book on the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang glosses the experience - experienced at the end of a long journey through China to India to China again, the wonder of the cave murals is lost on Bernstein who is ready to return to the States by the conclusion of the book.

The one interesting piece of knowledge that I did glean from reading Bernstein's book was some of his recapping of Buddhist Jataka tales - the subject of cave murals throughout China and India. Apparently, there are more than a few stories of the Buddha self-mutilating in order to get closer to enlightenment. Not simply starving himself, but cutting off an arm to feed a tiger, beheading himself, gouging out his eyes - far more violent than Bodhidharma tearing off his eyelids to stay awake. Discovering these stories will I hope inform the long poem ("Kintsugi") I've been writing about wholeness, wounding, and mutilation. Digression - I think that the phenomenon of "wanna-bes" (thanks to my anthro colleagues) will also occupy some section of this long piece.

I am reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody book on social media for my social technologies class and am thinking now that Lance Phillips' poet-interview blog may have actually been inspired or derivative in part of Shirky's book.

I was in residence in 2006 at the Taipei Artist Village with this artist. Sejin was working on a couple of interesting video projects of nightlife in Taipei that included the documentation of night workers in the city. She'd come back to the village in the early morning hours and sleep much of the day. Some of her nighttime adventures included getting hassled by strange people - I admired her willingness to take risks for her work and to navigate a foreign city under less than ideal circumstances. Sejin is about to have a big solo show at the Brain Factory in Seoul. So if you live in Seoul (Jerry T.) go see the show, or learn about Sejin's work online.

We finally made it to the Garden and Cosmos show at the SAAM and it was totally worth it. The exhibition is of 18th and 19th century watercolor paintings of Jodhpur royalty and also encompasses metaphysical paintings of chakra maps, yantras, and deities. Though many of the paintings are relatively large, the richness of imagery, narrative, and detail draw the viewer into an intimate relationship with these paintings.

Tokyo Sonata

Went to see Tokyo Sonata at the Northwest Film Forum on Sunday. The film follows the story of the Sasakis, a nuclear family living in Tokyo. The family patriarch loses his job as an administrator (salary man) and spends his days in line for temporary work, subsisting on free food given out to the homeless and unemployed. Out of shame and perhaps duty, he keeps this information from his wife and two sons. The Sasakis eldest son volunteers to serve in the U.S. army and is deployed to the Middle East. The youngest son spends his lunch money on piano lessons, when his father refuses to support his interest in music.

The film covers many issues at the heart of the nation's crisis since the bursting of the economic bubble: unemployment, delinquency, youth disillusionment, the too-good wife/mother, suicide/murders, the rise in crime, and divorce. It's amazing how many hot topics the film includes. The heart of the story is really the tension between generations - the Sasaki sons represent a generation of youth connected to their emotions and to doing things differently than their parents, while it's the older generation that relied too much upon the 1-job, 1-career concept that resulted in displacement and a total lack of developing skills.

The film has a lot of heartbreaking moments - Mr. Sasaki coming home after sunset, after a day of looking for work and filling the time with waiting, forces a happy face. The youngest son auditions for music school. The eldest son departs for the Middle East - at the bus terminal, only his mother says goodbye to him. He salutes her.

One of my favorite Japanese film stars, Koji Yakusho, who appears in Babel but was made famous for Western viewers in Shall We Dance? makes a brief appearance in Tokyo Sonata as a failed locksmith who resorts to armed robbery, which he proceeds to botch very badly.

Cinematically, there are some stunning moments in the film - my favorite scene is when Mrs. Sasaki walks on to the beach and sits in the tide. The camera pans out and we see her figure alone under the moonlight, water lapping against her body, as she lies down in the sand.

Podcast interview with the Convivio Bookworks guys who talk about the Works on Paper project, books, and letterpress printing.