Heading out from work in 1/2 an hour for Bob Trammell's Memorial at White Rock Lake.

Had a busy weekend in California visiting my dad for father's day. It was the first time in a long time that I can remember visiting my parents without some ridiculous altercation.

While I was waiting in Ontario Airport for my dad to pick me up, an old friend from BU who's now living in L.A. randomly called. This is a friend from my days of interning at Agni Magazine for Askold and Erin, with Valerie and Drew. As an undergrad, Gac published his first short story with the magazine which caught the attention of Nat Sobel in New York. G's now working on a novel, which got sidetracked while working for the film industry. Things he learned in the film industry: that cash makes the world go round. His pockets stuffed with the sort of cash I last saw carried around by my Taiwanese uncles who are suspicious of banks.

With my BF, I also helped another dear friend move furniture to her beach-front condo in the LBC in 90 degree weather. We've been a long time away from the 909. Our friend runs an e-bay business selling designer dolls and collectibles - Barbie, Harry Potter, Star Wars - much of the house serves as a werehouse for the biz which last week pulled in as much as $1200 a week from the sale of six Barbies which have increased in value since she purchased them 2-3 years ago. We had to move the boxes in the basement up to the first floor unit so that workmen could get in to reinforce the concrete walls. Some of the boxes had been there for 4 1/2 years, and a handful had been eaten away by serious black mold damage. I spotted a mushroom growing under one of the wooden pallets - like an optical illusion, because there was no soil where it could take root, the stalk and cap hovering in a spider web. 

The poetry of Robert Trammell

Robert's memorial is next Tuesday at White Rock Lake. I spent the weekend going thru his books finding poems for his widow that could be read as a prayer at the tribute. Several readers have been clicking over to this site thru the Zafusy portal in England. For those of you who aren't familiar with Robert's work, here are some of his poems. We in Dallas are working on assembling his collected....

From Birds (Barnburner Press, 2003)

My Bird Clock Sings 20 House Wrens Past the Finch

Cats scratch my
window screen

Is it time

to cross over

or to feed the cats?

It is 9:20
It doesn't matter if it's day or night
(I started kissing everything in sight)

until the prettiest Painted Bunting
strikes 10

& the chariot arrrives.

Swing low



coming for to carry me

But the reason the males sing what they sing is that females favor those birds that sing the longest, most complex songs.



Birds & Death

I've seen a picture
of small blue birds flying
from the mouth of a man
dying.
But I can't remember where I saw it.
I asked a friend
who works with Oriental art
at the Kimbell Musem in Ft Worth
if he knew what the picture was & he said
The museum has a statue of a dying man
with notes of a song leaving his mouth.
I said Maybe that's it.
Did the notes have wings?
& were they blue?
He asked No but would you like to hear the song?
I said I don't think so. Not yet.

Another day at the salt races....

The ex-priest has a habit of mixing his cliches. On the phone this morning he said to the person at the other end of the phone, "I'm on that...like a dog on food." We all sat around puzzled for awhile, and then one of the editors said aloud, "I think you mean 'like a dog on a bone.' " Another editor piped in "Or white on rice."

Many months before I arrived here, the ex-priest was getting out from a meeting when he said to a colleague, "Well, it's back to the salt races." The person looked at him oddly. Later, he realized it is "salt mines" or "another day at the races."

One of the real estate editors has a heavy smoking habit. He likes to say, "I'm going out to check the weather." He said this one day when it was pouring rain outside, and that's when I realized that he probably wasn't checking the weather. He also likes to say, "I'm going to see a man about a horse." I think this is a euphemism also for smoking, but K says it refers to going to the men's room - i.e. both have a stall.

My friend Nicole who works at The Dallas Museum of Art turned me on to this article about Mei Mei and Richard in a recent edition of The New York Times. The Museum will be opening the Richard Tuttle retrospective on July 16 - the show that was in SF this past Fall.

In other Museum-related news, Capturing Motion opened this weekend. Kort and I stopped at the DMA before the A-KON conference and got to see my poem "Flower, 1949" installed in the galleries. The visual text is on a green background, with the text in blue, red, and black. The poem is on the left wall of the gallery, while the other two walls, behind and to the right of the Alex Calder sculpture are white. I will get some digital snaps from the Museum at some point, but what was interesting were the branches of the sculpture which framed the stanzas of the poem in such a way that it seemed more than coincidence or a happy accident. The lighting of the sculpture produced round discs on the floor of the gallery which mirrored the movement of the poem text as well. Other artworks included in the show are two Berenice Abbot photographs, a John Pomara painting, a Roy Lichtenstein and a few other pieces. Find out more about it here.

And the Louis Tiffany show on view was also pretty amazing. Jewelry designs, windows, lamps and other objets d'arts.

Cosplay at A-Kon Dallas

A-Kon Dallas, the anime conference, was in town this weekend and I convinced Kort to go for the photo opps. Actually, there was not that much arm-twisting involved. Kort's been watching a lot of Naruto these last few weeks and I've watched a few clips with him, to the point that we recognized several people dressed up as characters from the cartoon. It was a trippy experience - like Halloween, yet not, lots of good clean wholesome fun with a heavy contingent in highschool, the early 20s representing. Men dominated the conference, while the ladies in attendance opted for sexy outfits.


The Japanese schoolgirl from Kill Bill.


Gal with candied apple stuck to her head.


An angel and his companion.


Buddhist monk with giant mala beads fashioned from coconut shells.


Ninja with sword and videocam.


Characters from Naruto.

Different modalities, same concepts.

inner child = authentic self = basic goodness

Uncle Bus

Youtube has catapulted Uncle Bus to fame.

Some events from our friends at La Alameda

Sunday, June 11 7 p.m.
Larry Goodell & Friends
Duende Poetry Series @ the Anasazi Fields Winery in Placitas

Wednesday, June 21 8 p.m.
Stefan Hyner and Lisa Chavez at the Santa Fe Writers Conference
St. Francis Hotel
Come out and celebrate the publication of



Wednesday, July 19 7 p.m.
Harwood Art Center
George Kalamaras, Mary Ann Cain, Mary Rising Higgins and Gene Frumkin
Check out Mary's book red table(s and hear her read from her new book )Cliff Tides((. Mary was working on this book when we were at MacDowell at 2004 - it is tremendous work.

Sunday July 23 7 p.m.
Bob Holman and Gary Glazner
Duende Poetry Series @ Anasazi Fields Winery in Placitas

Real estate typo of the week

"...close to the connivances of the city."

Dancing Tongue Cabaret

Not to be missed this weekend in Dallas. The latest addition to Tim Cloward's performance troupe is the talented Lisa Huffaker, mezzo soprano with the Dallas Opera.

The community

A few weeks ago, I got together with a friend and Naropa alum, Karen X for dinner at our favorite vegetarian restaurant, Kalachandji's (the Hare Krishna palace). We went out with two young women, close in age to me, one is a first-class hairdresser and the other is a high school art teacher. We all have in common Karen X and the yoga studio which we go to in Lakewood. That and Sarah cuts our hair and makes us look like sexy goddesses. Karen and Kristin had both done the Total Life Cleanse which Kort and I will be embarking on on June 24. Sarah has been adopting some of the lifestyle changes from the cleanse, though she hasn't actually done the TLC. So we toasted to Swedish bitters, which tasted like mild black licorice.

I looked in my refrigerator last weekend and saw nothing but wheat products. Three loaves of different kinds of bread - olive, rosemary and cinnamon from Kalachandji's. I am glad that we will be giving up wheat..and dairy...and processed foods.

Some co-workers were talking about Jie Jie the three-armed baby this morning. It's a story that's concerned me for a few days - -birth deformity surely being a reflection of the rampant environmental pollution and health care issues facing people in China. So co-worker #1 wonders what happens to Jie Jie's surgically removed arm. The recently reinstated middle-aged freelancer who had been "let go" and then invited back when the company couldn't find anyone else commented "Well in China, you never know...." I snapped at him; I wanted to say - "Yeah, that's about as funny as you losing your job, HA HA" but instead I said that's totally inappropriate. To quote Angry Asian Man, that's racist

On tour

Gao Ping in the recording studio

My dear friend the composer Gao Ping will be performing in the U.S. for the next few weeks. Check out the good press he received from the Detroit Free Press here. Catch him at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival from June 10-25. And pick up his new CD from Naxos, which can be previewed at GP's website and purchased from the Naxos site. Composer extraordinaire!

Unlikely Stories

Unnecessary Roughness
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Mary Jo Malo has some observations on UR over at Jonathan Penton's Unlikely Stories website.

Outside Voices

Outside Voices
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

The eds at Outside Voices have taken a piece of vispo for the anthology. In the new group of accepted authors, a young poet named Jessica Bozek is included - Jessica was in my very first poetry workshop at Boston University 10 years ago. Good to see Jill Magi's name here too - Jill edits Sona Books out of Brooklyn which put out the 2005 gift publishing project .

Aria Ivory

Aria Ivory
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

I just received a lovely drawing in the mail from Steven La Rose.

Robert Heinecken (1931-2006)

Robert Heinecken
Originally uploaded by shinyu32.

Robert Heinecken, who helped to pioneer the photo program at UCLA and who was married to my prof at SAIC, Joyce Neimanas, passed away on Friday. He died in Albuquerque, where Joyce and he moved after she left her job at SAIC to take up a position at UNM Albuquerque.

Dallas Museum of Art Commission

Plans are coming along for my DMA poem installation which opens in a few weeks. Rendering above.

September Plans

It looks like I will be spending the last few days in September here.



Opening day coincides with my birthday.

Galatea Resurrects

Bill Allegrezza reviews the Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel in the latest issue of Galatea Resurrects and gives one of The Love Hotel Poems a thoughtful mention. Production is behind at Press Lorentz but the book should be out by end of June. Galatea also has a reprint of Tim Yu's review of V. Chang's Next Gen anthology. Read it here. It will be interesting to see if the editor responds.

Seamus Heaney

It was a full house last night at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Dallas for Seamus Heaney. Carolyn introduced Jack who introduced Seamus. Last time I saw/heard Seamus read, it was at MIT in Cambridge for Bill's series. His translation of Beowulf had just come out and he read passages from that volume interspersed with semi-coherent ramblings. Last night's reading was impressive enough to finally get me interested in Heaney's poetry after many years of teachers saying here, read these poems about Irish bogs when I was in my self-Orientalizing phase. I didn't get it back then, but I think I may now.

Most striking poems included "Digging", "Summer, 1969" - on a summer spent in Spain at el Prado, "Helmet" and "Midnight Anvil" - a wonderful haiku sequence written about a blacksmith who rang in 2000 by striking the anvil 12 times. The reading was in church and wonderfully complemented by two poems - one piece about Brother Kevin who prayed with his arms outspread and had a bird land and nest in one hand. The other poem presented the image of prayer in a chapel and the vision of a ship dropping anchor above the devotees.

Aesthetic swagger in "Digging": "under my thumb, snug as a gun"

Sending text thru "the blander"

"We're constantly making smoothies of our copy to make it more digestible to our readers."

Death and rebirth

A few months ago when I was home at my parents house in California, I went thru boxes of old correspondence, searching for childhood photographs and letters that I might be able to incorporate into my best friend's wedding slide show. I came across a lot of different things, letters from a close friend from choir who corresponded with me throughout her moves to the East Coast and than Germany. We used to make tape recording letters and send them back and forth. I found old love letters from suitors, some of which I did not recognize or remember. A note, for instance, from GB in Chicago who had asked me to a homecooked dinner on Valentine's Day not long after Kort had departed for Japan. I naively believed that it was an innocent invitation. G called his mother to get her eggplant parmigian recipe and spent hours cooking. When I arrived, another classmate was departing. She gave me a big wink, and I started to have misgivings. Inevitably, the issue was confronted that night.

In my boxes, there were letters from Naropa friends and letters from Andrew from over the years. And buried in one box was a card given to me on the occasion of my refuge vows on May 12, 1998 from my meditation instructor and co-worker Donna McIntosh. The note said simply, "Welcome, dharma sister, welcome." Enclosed in the card were three sheets of gold-squared joss paper. When I rediscovered this treasure, I imagine that the sight of those joss paper had a greater effect on me 8 years out than on the day she gave them to me. I have journeyed far since that night in Boulder, Colo. with Gangteng Tulku, and the idea of burning the papers to celebrate a spiritual death and rebirth is a resonant and appropriate one.

With the card, she also gave me a copy of Suzuki's "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind." The back cover bore an image of the Zen master at an indecipherable age. Donna described how she'd sometimes zone out just looking at the face of Suzuki. The old master. That book has stayed in my collections, and I have turned back to it more than once over the years.

In my shrine, I keep folded the kata that was given to me by a young German woman taking refuge at the same time as me. Having never taken refuge vows, I had not known what to prepare beyond a gift for the lama. I was blessed that one of the other refugees came prepared with more than one scarf offering for the lama.

After I took the vows, I went over to a classmate's apartment, a friend in the Writing & Poetics program that I have since lost touch with. She was gathered together with a group of women writers. I had a glass of wine in celebration and remember her friends asking me questions about the ceremony. They seemed puzzled that I should make the decision to take refuge before leaving Boulder, especially after my description of the ceremony which included having a lock of hair cut and having rice tossed at me and a name distribution. [I had wanted a Pema name (lotus blossom), but ended up with a greater responsibility to live up to.] I was already preparing for my exit from Naropa and brought items of clothing to give to one of my friends, downsizing my belongings for the journey ahead.

Anniversary

With a wish to free all sentient beings
I shall always go for refuge to
the buddha, dharma and sangha.

Today in the Buddha's presence
I generate the mind for full awakening
for the sake of all sentient beings.

As long as space remains
As long as sentient beings remain
until then shall I too remain
to dispel the miseries of the world.

The Bodhisattva Vow

Works on Paper

The work is in production with Convivio. We've gone thru typesetting and the guys are experimenting with papers and design. Fingers crossed for a summer release, July, or August at the latest.

Check out the Book of Days at the Convivio site and subscribe to the email list/monthly dispatch which features whimsical essays on small town life by the press' own John Cutrone.

Astrocartography

The results are in. Believe it or not:

Paris, France
Rome, Italy
Auckland, New Zealand
Tokyo, Japan
Portland, Oregon

Capturing Motion

Capturing Motion is scheduled to open at the Dallas Museum of Art on June 10. I was commissioned by the museum to create a poem responding to Alex Calder's sculpture "Flower" for the exhibition. The poem, which is a visual piece, will be blown up and installed on a wall adjacent to the Orientation Theater and across from the Gateway Gallery space on the 1st floor of the Museum. The show will be on display for eight months. If you are in the Dallas area, please drop by and check it out.

Obituary from The Dallas Morning News

Robert Trammell: 'The grassroots poet in Dallas'
1939-2006
10:25 AM CDT on Tuesday, May 9, 2006
By JEROME WEEKS / The Dallas Morning News



"Of all the insane things to do," Robert Trammell once said, "to be a poet in Dallas."

Mr. Trammell, who died Monday in his East Dallas home, persisted in his insanity, writing nearly a dozen books of poetry, including Lovers/killers and George Washington Trammell. He also established the local literary organization, WordSpace, which has brought to town such notable writers as the poet Robert Creeley and Man Booker Prize-winning novelist James Kelman.

Mr. Trammell, 66, had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, cholangiocarcinoma or bile-duct cancer, said his wife, Adrienne Cox Trammell. He had been given six months to live. But after more than two years, he had begun to decline in only the past two months, she said. Two weeks ago, he attended the Hiett Prize award ceremony, presented by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, where he was a fellow.

"He was the essential, grass-roots poet in Dallas," said Jack Myers, former Texas poet laureate. "He had a nitty-gritty streak. He was mainly self-taught, and he was very encouraging to young black and Hispanic writers. He didn't go through the MFA programs that most writers follow these days. But while he was writing about the back alleys of Dallas and the prairie, he was seriously interested in theoretically difficult poets like Ezra Pound and Charles Olson."

"He was the first bohemian I ever knew," said novelist David Searcy, who met Mr. Trammell in 1966. "He set the mold for me, wearing a beret, getting drunk and reciting the poetry of [Spanish writer Federico García] Lorca."

Tall and lean with long hair and a beard, "Bob looked like a cross between a cowboy and a biker," said Dallas writer Ben Fountain. "And people could find him intimidating."

In fact, Mr. Trammell had spent a year in prison for marijuana possession.

"But," said Mr. Fountain, "it didn't take people long to realize that he had this finely developed aesthetic sense, not just in poetry but music and art. He really had a gentleness in him."

Thousands of Dallasites may never have heard of Mr. Trammell, but they've read his words: DART's Lovers Lane light-rail station has 10 enamel "wind panels" featuring his poetry.

A fifth-generation Texan, Mr. Trammell often wrote about the region, from Dallas to Cherokee County in East Texas, where his grandparents lived and where he spent a lot of time as a youth.

Among his ancestors were circuit-riding ministers. On the other hand, Ms. Trammell said, there are historical markers near Jefferson in East Texas designating Trammell's Trace, an early pioneer trail that was used by Mr. Trammell's great-great-great uncle, Nicholas Trammell, a horse thief nicknamed "Hot Horse" Trammell.

Robert and Adrienne gave Clinton, their 12-year-old son, Hot Horse for his middle name.

Mr. Trammell studied political science at Southern Methodist University with the intention of becoming a lawyer, Ms. Trammell said, but gave that up.

"I want to show the people of Dallas that they have more alternatives than being a banker or developer," he said in 1984.

Mr. Trammell wrote his first poem at 30, and it was published in the Southwest Review. Other periodicals to print his work included The Texas Observer and The Exquisite Corpse, the journal edited by National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu.

Mr. Trammell was deeply enamored of singer-songwriters and Texas musicians, notably Townes Van Zandt, as well as spoken-word performance. In the '70s, he ran several New Arts Festivals in Dallas, which featured the area's first performance of the Sam Shepard play, The Tooth of Crime. Through the years, WordSpace, which Mr. Trammell co-founded 11 years ago with his wife, often presented evenings combining writers, slam poets and song lyricists.
"He felt that Dallas' literary greatness was in its music," said Ms. Trammell.

Of Mr. Trammell's several books of poetry, Jack Ruby and the Origins of the Avant-Garde in Dallas was probably his most popular, Ms. Trammell said with a laugh. "We had a lot of conspiracy theorists buying it without realizing what it was."

A complete list of surviving relatives could not be confirmed, but they include, in addition to his wife and son, Mr. Trammell's sister, Billye Sue Byrum; and two previous wives, Ginger Myles and Allison Kraft.

A memorial service for Mr. Trammell will be held at 4 p.m. June 20 at Winfrey Point at White Rock Lake. Donations can be made to Treasurer, WordSpace, 926 Valencia, Dallas, Texas, 75223.

In Memoriam, Robert Trammell (1939 - 2006)

Though I've lived in Dallas going on 4 years now, I didn't meet Bob Trammell until last Fall. I had been frequenting more and more WordSpace events, the organization which Bob founded to showcase experimental and innovative literature. Bob had been sick for some time and was going to fewer and fewer events. My friend Karen X invited me to Bob's 66th birthday party at his home in Lakewood. I hadn't seen Karen in what seemed like months and she said to just show up. That day, Kort and I visited his grandparents in Arlington and by the time we arrived at the party at close to 9 or 10, Karen was making her exit. She had worn a sexy leather outfit which was too warm for the weather. But before she departed, she introduced me to the man of the hour, Bob Trammell. Unbeknownst to me until days later, Karen had taken him aside and told him to look out for me and to talk to me, because of my excessive shyness and social awkwardness in large public situations. I walked around Bob's house looking at his artwork and bookshelves and every once in awhile he would come up to me and engage me in a conversation. This went on for a few times and I'd make my way over to the food table or make a beeline for the bathroom, but eventually, Bob invited me into his office where we sat and talked with two other young poets about the poetry of Robert Creeley, Allen Ginsberg and the poets who had been important to Bob. That night, he gave me two chapbooks - "Birds" and a visual-text chap on Dallas history and Jack Ruby. I enjoyed his company tremendously, and when days later Karen asked me how the party went and I enthusiastically raved about Bob and she admitted that she'd asked him to do her the favor of making the extra effort with me, I fell in love with Bob's spirit.

I loved Bob's chapbook birds which is a staple bound, 4 x 11 collection of poems on birds - birdwatching, the significance of birds, myths of birds, birds in our everyday environment. The work seemed quite close to Creeley's diction and sensibilities. The "Bird" chapbooks, along with countless others were produced by Bob's own Barnburner Books which also produced the works of Gerald Burns and other Dallas poets who came into contact with Bob.

What I found rare in Bob was his commitment to young and emerging writers. Many elder writers cultivate their own followings - it looks like different things - maybe you study with them formally or informally, they may advise you on your work, guide you toward success at their own pace, when they feel you have earned it and are ready to proceed to the next step. Or maybe that commitment looks like throwing a young writer a bone by publishing their first low-fi chapbook or anthology or inviting them to read at your coffee house or party where football blares in the background and the alcohol is flowing. Bob's affection for the new generation of writers was apparent in his programming choices for WordSpace and his interactions with people. His love for the poets before him, his contemporaries, for poetry. From the first day, I always felt at ease with him.

When I left for Taipei, Karen arranged a farewell to Dallas "ball" for me at Paperbacks Plus. Rather than make it Shin Yu-fest 2005, I asked my favorite area writers to read their poems - not stuff written for the occasion, but the opportunity to gather as a group and share our work. Bob came and read from "Birds" because he knew my affection for the book. Afterwards, some informal Q & A ensued and Bob threw out a surprising question - keeping me honest - knowing that I was leaving the country, he asked what kept me coming back to Dallas. I gave a fast and easy answer like "my husband and his family," but followed up with a more honest answer about living life off the radar at another pace, staying away from the squabbles affiliated with most scenes and making a place to do the work. It was a question that struck me afterwards - the sort of question encountered when taking one's seat in a warrior exam.

I saw Bob just twice after returning from Taipei in March. At the WordSpace reading at Poor David's Pub, where he read from his work in progress "Glances" - short prose vignettes written as sketches, and this past Sunday after a WordSpace board meeting. My friend Simone and I had been having difficulty coordinating a good time to make the trip to Lakewood to visit with Bob. At the board meeting we learned that he was on morphine for the cancer and that the family was trying to decide whether or not the time had come for 24-hour hospice care. We were told that he was incoherent and coming in and out. I had some time ago, made the commitment to editing his selected poems and wanted to see Bob and to borrow some books for my research. We phoned his wife who told us he was sleeping but invited us to drop by. When we arrived, he was awake, lying in bed. He had lost a lot of weight since I first met him, and he looked frail, child-like. We hugged him and sat down by his bedside and visited briefly before going back to his office with his wife to pull books from his shelves. We returned to his bedside and as we were getting up to leave, he said very suddenly and loudly, "I love you." I was shocked and speechless and so grateful for this man - his undying spirit and his limitless capacity to give until the very end.

One of the board members circulated a message this morning that Bob passed away at home around 11 a.m. this morning. I believe his wife and son were with him at the time.

Robert Trammell

Dallas poet and WordSpace founder Robert Trammell passed away this morning around 11 a.m. from complications caused by cancer. I saw him yesterday with Simone to say goodbye. We said, "See you Tuesday." He said, "I love you."

The Von Stoddards

My friend Dunja Marton is in a rocking new band called The Von Stoddards:

On Monday, May 1st 2006, *The Von Stoddards* are featured on mp3.com's website as their artist of the day, to take a peek go to this link:

http://www.mp3.com

We are currently finishing recording our first cd entitled, *"Ladies & gentlemen....The Von Stoddards"* which is more then halfway done. We will be mastering in May in our new studio relocating to Kingston, NY. You can check out more tracks and news at:

http:www.myspace.com/thevonstoddards

They will be released on *murdermuzic inc*. which is also soon to be recording and producing *The* *Traveling Salesmen*, featuring *Adam Mackie & Clint Chambers*.

website coming soon.

It was a shitty customer service day

The student loan website where I pay my undergrad and grad school loans has been on the fritz for 5 days. Irritated with the lack of response from the company, I called the service center to ask about the issue. I was put on a hold for several minutes during which time I hopped on the net using our DSL to check the site and lo and behold, the stupid site was up and running again. Customer service rep I-am-a-number-not-a-name gets back on the phone and says "What was your question? I forgot." I tell her the issue has been resolved and before she hangs up on me I say WAIT what's the back-up plan when the website's down can you confirm the mailing address for snail mail payments. She says "You'll have to wait, I've got someone else on the line." I hung up.

At work, it was an issue with the IT department. The MAC team rarely answers their telephones and dropped the ball last week on my computing issue - error messages stating that I did not have permission to save my edited files on the server. So I had a co-worker walk me over to IT central and put in a direct request - none of this voicemail email log your request bullshit with a ticket number. MAC tech hops on my computer using his computer and does a save and since it takes without error he sees no problem. Yes, well, I came here to ask you if you'd take a look at MY machine where the error is occuring so I could show you what's going on. Then he says, why can't you just save it where it is? Uh - because my editor wants it in a different format in a different location and that's department protocol.  Well, who's your editor?  During this whole conversation, the guy never made eye contact with me or turned around from his screen to look me in the face. He turfed it to the network server person who will no doubt drop the ball.

Slow on the draw

It was a national Hispanic boycott day and a sea of white faces in downtown Dallas, the absence of brown skin conspicuous. A co-worker read aloud a story about a finger fragment being served on a TGIF hamburger and quipped "that never would have happened if a Hispanic was working."  At Union Station, I waited for the red line train to take me north and two middle-aged Hispanics popped up in front of me in front of the pass vending machine.  They both wore white t-shirts and painter's pants and the contrast of their skin against their clothing was stunning. "Espanol?" one man asked. They wanted to buy a one-way DART pass for one of the men but didn't want to pay the Day Pass rate ($2.50) for the roundtrip ride, since they were technically doing a one-way. They wanted the disabled/elderly/child's rate of $1.00 and wanted to know how to get the lower rate. I got hung up on explaining in Spanish the distinctions between fares. The man looked at me patiently and said in heavily accented English, "Yeah, but we don't want to pay that fare. It's too much money." And for a minimum wage worker, an extra $1.50 is a lot of money. Had I been thinking instead of trying to piece together coherent Spanish phrases, I would have offered to pay for a pass for the 2nd man in support of the boycott. I don't know if they were striking today, or if they were some of the few who got permission to work, but they stuck out like a sore thumb and my mind was on language and communication vs. comprehension and understanding. But these men weren't asking me for money, they were asking how to navigate a system and asking why.

It would be very interesting to know if Dallas painter Ludwig Schwarz took his cues from Zhou Tiehai, since it appears that Mr. Zhou has had other people paint his paintings since the mid-90s..

Knowing the value of a vintage book

Kort and I went walking in downtown Plano to check out the historical festival going on. Nothing much going on there except for actors in vintage pioneer costumes. So we headed over to one of the antique stores which we'd never been in before. Ever since living in New Hampshire where amazing books, postcards and photos are to be found in Peterborough-area shops, I make it a point to slow down when browsing the bookshelves of antique stores. Well Nooks & Grannies had some great finds - an old Tuttle edition on Japanese flower arranging in a cloth case with bone closures, hand-bound (Japanese stitch) for $12.00 and a hard-to-find Peter Pauper hardback of Japanese haiku for $4.00. Someone who unloaded their old books at the antique shop definitely had an Orientalist thing going. I happened upon a vintage hardcover shell of Japanese fairytales that had been completely gutted. Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed. But a half hour later, as I was browsing thru the postcard and prints section, I found 11 full-color, watercolor plates that had been ripped out of that same book, individually plastic sheeted with a price sticker that indicated that the person pricing the inventory knew precisely what book those images came out of. So I assembled the shell with the individual pages and marched up to the guy in the shop who had tried to unload a vintage camera one me for a discount price for which film is no longer made (check the internet he said). The lady behind the counter tells me "the book came in that way." The man attempts to call the shopowner who has neither a cell phone or call waiting. He finally gets thru and asks her for a price for the collection. The book is damaged, missing pages and would need to be rebound. Each full-color page on its own was priced at $9.95. She said she'd give me the hardcover for free and give 20% off all of the pages which still came out to about $90. The man pushes the owner to drop the price, and she lowers it to 25%. I say no way, take my Peter Pauper and Tuttle and walk. When I got home and checked the internet for the price of this little 1913 edition, on the low end it came out to $35 and on the high end it came out to about $65. Uh-huh. The whole transaction annoyed me because of the lack of care for the original book and its integrity - pimping out each individual page for a wildly inflated price. This was a specialty book with Japanese artists providing the artwork, not a rare William Blake edition - but still - I was against the breaking up of the Blake edition that auctioned last year. While at the shop, I heard one of the senior volunteers working the cash desk say, "Call Sotheby's." Obnoxious.

What I love in old books are the embossed covers and the beautiful end pages, the simplicity of imagery, the low-tech production and the lack of slickness and the emphasis on craft. All things I love in a good modern-day chapbook.

While I love frequenting antique shops in small towns, it was creepy going thru the black and white photos of people's family portraits - babies and old ladies, ranch-style homes, happy memories, all sold off to modern day collectors at ridiculous prices. I believe in the karma of objects and while I pick up the occasional used book or item, postcard, of clothing for a deal, sometimes walking into these repositories of frozen memories has a strange effect.

Edinburgh or New Castle on Tyne?

Recent books consumed:

Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
Self-Made Man - Norah Vincent
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albon
Taipei Mutt - Eric Mader-Lin
The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World - Paul Guest
Poker Face - Katy Lederer
One Tribe - Evenlina Galang
Why is the Edge Always Windy? - Mong Lan

Currently Reading:
Berlitz Guide to Learning French
Barron's GRE Prep Book

Editing the auto pages....

"Wheel disintegration while driving a commercial-grade truck is something I personally avoid whenever possible."

I have been following the developments in the Kaavya Viswanathan upset with some interest - she's the 19-year-old Harvard student who has been called out for plagiarizing close to 40 passages in her new book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life from Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. A co-worker says that publishers today need to do "better fact checking" and suggested that they should get themselves a software program which universities use to check for plagiarism in term papers. But a program like the one described would have done nothing to prevent the James Frey scandal from going down. Writing seems more and more a dangerous craft.

The Rock Bottom Remainders

My co-worker won free tickets to The Rock Bottom Remainders at the Gypsy Tea Room in Deep Ellum and gave the tickets to me. The Rock Bottom Remainders are a literary band made up of prose writers Scott Turow, Mitch Albon, Amy Tan, Stephen King, Dave Barry and the occasional musically inclined guest artist such as Monty Montgomery. The show seemed exciting in theory. It started on time at 8:30 p.m. and Dave Barry took the stage, introducing the band members one by one. The audience for this performance were largely middle-aged to elderly literary lovers by the looks of it plus a few people in their late 20s/early 30s. Amy Tan came out in a long, layered blond wig. Scott Turow was dressed in a sports jersey and sporting a blond Slash wig. I can't remember what they opened with, but the set included covers like "Mustang Sally", "Leader of the Pack" (sung by Tan with Turow dramatically portraying the object of devotion), "Rebel Rebel" (sung by Turow sporting yet another wig) and songs that this group surely grew up listening to it. Those who have known me for a very long time will know that I am a music snob. If I don't connect to it, it might as well be nails on a chalkboard, kids crying or some other irritating noise. Call it my years studying voice and jazz standards or my deep love for a well-written lyric and original melody. If there was any value in the event tonight, it was that anybody can get up on stage and have fun, regardless of musical talent. The group was proficient in their instrumentation, but couldn't sing worth a dime. The show benefitted a national group called SCORE which does outreach work with kids using soccer and poetry (not sure how the two work together in combination). I picked up a copy of Tuesdays with Morrie for my co-worker and started reading it during the set. It looks like a great read. I regret having blown out my hearing for it.

"When I think about my father, I think about Bob Seger's 'Like a Rock'"

In "The Weather Man", Dave Spritz (played by Nicholas Cage) is at a pretend wake for his father who has developed an incurable cancer. Several people in attendance have already gotten up to give speeches in honor of Robert Spritzel. When Dave gets up to the podium, he starts his commemorative speech with "When I think about my father, I think about Bob Seger's 'Like a Rock'" at which point a power outage cuts the lights and microphone. It takes another several hours for the power to come back on-line and at that point, the restless guests all stream out the door headed for home - Dave never given the opportunity to complete his speech to his father.

At my best friend's wedding on Friday night, the best man and matron of honor toasted. At which point, the DJ brought down the houselights for the picture slide show that Kort and I made for my friend and her husband. I had thought that I would give a toast after the slide show, and than it was switched to before, and than apparently it was switched to after again. But I wrote the toast to be a specific intro to the show, so I scrambled for the mic to the front of the room to rattle off my speech. How do you relate 17 years in 3 minutes, I don't know. And then the technology failed. After about 10 minutes of fussing, the staff realized that the show should go on and the bride and groom had their first dance, succeeded by the bride and her father, groom and his mother, etc. etc. About two hours later, the community center staff and wedding planner decided to go for Plan B and cobbled together a borrowed laptop, cables and an LCD projector. Kort and I suspected that the bulb had burned out on the first projector, even though it had withstood several tests earlier that afternoon, but our guess was that the equipment hadn't been powered down correctly or that the lamp had overheated (temperamental technology!) because we could clearly hear the music from the DVD playing signifying that it was not a problem with the disc itself. And we were right - they shone a flashlight on the projector and read the error message. Then it was discovered that the group didn't have the necessary cables to amplify sound from the computer. So I was pulled aside by the DJ who had been provided with the soundtrack for the slideshow several weeks back. I had a "what do you want me to do about it" moment before saying - why don't you hold a microphone up to the speaker in the computer? So that's what they did. I had to tell the tech guy to press "play" on the computer to start the damn show.. So there was about a 2 hour gap in between when I gave my intro and the viewing of the show. But everyone seemed delighted by the show and there were many smiles and laughter and the father of the bride was pleased as was the bride. Thank god!

Sprockets Day

Everyone in my immediate group dressed up for Sprockets Day at the newly corporate-branded "The Agency." However, many people outside of the copywriters group wore there usual everyday garb. It was also supposed to be a high of 101 degrees today.

We had dinner at Kalachandji's and then caught up with a old friend in Boston (Hi, Chris!) on the phone. Chris and I went to BU together and Chris wrote for years for the Daily Free Press and is now a public school teacher. Needless to say, I respect Chris a lot. As we were about to get off the phone, he said something unexpected about my writing, particularly the blogging. Sometimes I forget that people actually read these posts, but it felt tremendously encouraging. I've been reading a lot of prose - David Sedaris, Eric Mader, and Katy Lederer in recent days and getting a stronger feel for prose and am getting some concrete ideas for prose work. But at the same time, since returning to Dallas, I'd been thinking about ending the blog in order to spend more time in pursuit of creative projects. I always knew that it would come to an end at some point, but maybe it doesn't have to.

The SAIC event was less of an alumni event and more of an admissions event for prospective students with two local alumni, Rebecca Carter and Elaine Polewicz, presenting on their work. Murray from admissions got up and did his thing on the merits of SAIC, including comments on its interdisciplinary nature and the community of artists. It's notable that when I enrolled in SAIC, I did not have a sense of what the school would be like at all. I decided to go to SAIC purely on the merits of a Naropa classmate who suggested the school. Writing program in an art school setting? Sounded good to me. It was a very young program then. So it was interesting to hear Murray speak on the mission and strengths of the school and to have that followed by two amazing examples of professional artists who have gone on to make unique conceptually-driven work. Rebecca did her MFA in the textiles department but was for a time making sewn drawings out of paper and thread. She designed a drawing machine which was controlled by air blowing into the window of her studio space. There were a series of interesting little videos. Elaine makes still life and landscape paintings with a fairy tale quality. Her early work was inspired by her experiences of growing up in Dallas. Each of these artists expressed their gratitude for an SAIC education and spoke of community and the feeling of being able to do anything - which to me, resonated of Naropa, and the sort of skills that students are imbued with during their education. The DIY, problem-solving, visionary attitude that believes that all things are possible. As I have been considering going back to school for a PhD, for the sole reason to have a real shot at teaching jobs, I reconsider, as what makes me really happy more than anything is making time to write and create art. Artists practice art. To be a scholar is something else. So write goddamit!

I'm looking into astrocartography as a form of divination to divine where Kort and I should move to for optimal career choices suitable for both of our needs and a happy, healthy lifestyle. My top geographical preferences include Taichung, Portland (OR), Nova Scotia, London, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Japan, and New Mexico. I'm sure the outcome will surprise the both of us.

Sprockets

Tomorrow is "Sprockets" day at the newspaper offices. Everyone who works in the basement (production, graphic arts, advertising, and copywriting) has been asked to wear black from head to toe as the office opens its doors to a few VIP guests who will tour our working "galleries."

"Sprockets" was a great skit on SNL during the Mike Myers' era of the show - he played a German intellectual named Dieter with a live pet monkey. Everybody wore black, looked sallow, and acted insufferably pretentious. It was fabulous.

After the work day tomorrow, I have to go to an alumni reception for SAIC at the Dallas Contemporary. I will be outfitted from head to toe in black. Perhaps I should pack a change of clothing. I am not not completely looking forward to the event, but I can think of at least a few locals that I would like to avoid who will no doubt show up to check out the scene and scorn the local competition.

Last Ink

I am no closer to writing a wedding toast to the bride and groom who marry a week from today in San Diego. But after reading hundreds upon hundreds of poems on love, friendship, birth, death, anniversaries, companionship, tripe, etc. and trolling the databases of the Poetry Foundation and the American Academy of Poets (which duplicate many poems by too many of the same ho-hum poets), I arrived at the feeling that the poem to be read at my friend's wedding would not be found within any of those "resources." I turned this morning to my newly assembled and organized bookshelves which need reorganizing since it took me a good 20 minutes to find the Japanese poetry anthology I was looking for. Nothing found in that tome, but my eye fell on Michael Ondaatje's HANDWRITING. I've had Ondaatje on my mind, having just watched The English Patient for the first time this week and thinking about Minghella's film in comparison to the richness of the novel. HANDWRITING holds one of my favorite Ondaatje poems, "Last Ink" which I saw and heard him read in Chicago at the Art Institute in 1999. Well, actually, I probably heard and saw it earlier than that, before it was part of a published collection, when Ondaatje  read it on a Robin Blaser panel on a hot sweaty summer day under the big white tent on the Naropa lawn. It is the kind of poem that stops the heart's beating. A poem of love and friendship  that encompasses wide expanses of history, art, death, and memory.

An effective way to drop pounds, while far from healthy or practical is to contract stomach flu twice in one month. Sigh.

My best friend is getting married next week in San Diego. Because I was in Taipei for much of the heavy planning period, I was let off the hook in terms of planning support. I volunteered to make the slide show for the big event which has been an interesting experience and a labor of love. We started with bulding the thing in Photoshop. Scanning photos and editing and cropping and doing clean-up on photos that needed restoration. The clone function of Photoshop is a million times better than sitting and hand-toning a one-of-a-kind photograph I must say. From there, imported to i-Photo to build the sequence and group images into categories. Then back to Photoshop to make collages of theme images vs. standalone pics. Then imported all to i-Movie (this is where Kort's help came in) where sound files were added from a requested play list. These songs are pure '80s - Bel Biv Devoe's "Poison", The Cure's "Just Like Heaven", Young MC's "Bust a Move", and some other more recent picks by Damien Rice and MJ. I am not so good on learning the new technology without a manual under pressure and problem-solving under deadline so Kort helped with the transitions and sound editing. I found that I really loved editing for sound, finding the natural breaks in a song, cutting on the downbeat, fading a phrase in or out and the fact that the whole process is very mathematical and time-based. Working with time in a whole different way, as in being able to control time and treat time as sections of experience, edit time, there was something wholly enlightening about that.

Kort balked at certain edits and cuts to songs I was making, referencing my friend GP in saying "they took my music and cut it up like a dead fish." Hmmm. The main dispute came over a song that I had never heard before called "Feel Good" by the Gorillaz. From the sound of it, a more recent song that would fit in the slideshow with the sequence of couple's photos vs. growing up photos, though it also has an '80s sound to it. But the slide show is eight minutes long and we already had it loaded up with seven songs. But we wanted at first to find a way to make it all fit and work but when it wasn't happening and when neither of us was willing to compromise on the 10 second intro which sounded like a series of scat sounds to me, Kort finally made his argument. It went like this:

Kort: You know what a milkdud is, right?

Me: Yeah.

Kort: What is it?

Me: A chocolate malted milk ball.

Kort: And what else is it?

Me: What the hell does this have to do with a song by the Gorillaz?

Kort: It's brown and white. Don't you hear it?

Me: Hear what?

Kort: Listen to what they're singing. "Cho-co-late cho-co-late cho-co-late milkdud."

Me: Um, I think you're pulling a Jimi Hendrix "excuse me 'while I kiss some guy." That's a little too Ebony & Ivory.

So we googled, and the song lyrics say that what's being sung is "shake it shake it shake it feel good", though the "shake it" would still work with the "milkdud theme."

Proofreading real estate faux pas

"2 blacks from Urban Market" (2 blocks)

"fagpole hill" (aka Flagpole Hill)

"380 degree views"

Residents vs. Eastside Village

Dear Greg LaMaster,
I am opposed to the elimination of the Phase 1 Fitness Center at the Eastside Village apartment complex. We selected our unit in Phase I, for its amenities - the proximity to the DART tracks and the presence of the fitness room in this phase - which make apartment living more convenient.

The fitness center in Phase II is a walk from Phase I and not as convenient to 24-hour access. The center itself is not much larger than the Phase I Center and when I have gone over to work out in Phase II in recent weeks, it has been necessary to wait to use the equipment due to number of people working out on the machines at one time. One of the elliptical machines was also non-functional/broken on the day that I went over to use the facility. Considering the number of residents (500+?)at Eastside Village in both Phases who will be sharing this space, it would seem important to evaluate how this space will be shared by residents.

If Eastside Village is in need of a space to hold its Monthly Care Meetings, why not use the main conference room space that was used for the Plano Book Festival at the end of March? The room is sizable and already set up for meetings. If the club house is being thought of as "a room that could be rented out for functions for our residents", it is not an amenity - it is a revenue-generating opportunity for East Village available to residents for a fee. As such, it is problematic and misleading to refer to it as an "amenity." How often would meetings or special events actually happen? Would the space be fully utilized or would it sit unused most of the time? Wouldn't more residents take advantage on a regular, ongoing basis of a fitness facility? Is there no other space available at the complex that could be converted for a club house?

Many of the amenities at East Side Village are presently at Phase II - the bicycle storage room, a larger swimming pool, a larger fitness center with free weights and weight machines - rather than taking away amenities from Phase I, I would encourage the company to work towards balancing this inequality and adding amenities to Phase I that residents would actually utilize.

Currently, the Fitness Center in Phase I is in a state of disarray. Half the room is filled with chairs and tables, the television sets have been removed and only 2 machines are actually usable due to the equipment having been shoved back in the corner. It has been in this state for at least 3 weeks. It is not physically possible for one person to move the equipment back into place. If the decision has not yet been made regarding the transition of the space, residents would appreciate restoring this room to its former condition so that it could still be used effectively in this interim period until an informed decision has been made.

Respectfully,
X

Haven't been able to find any reviews of the Paterson Museum show but here is an article from the Daily Record which interviewed the curator, Maria Mazzotti Gillan. Since we can't all be in lovely Paterson, New Jersey to see this exhibition, here is the image that I put in the show:


                The Floating World, 2003 (silver gelatin print)

Some misguided soul said to me yesterday meaning to flatter me or to inspire camaraderie that "Taiwan is the Mexico of Asia, compared to Japan and Hong Kong."

Renting

In fairness it should be said that I have always had contempt for all of my big real estate landlords, with the exception of Mr. Koufas, the private homeowner who leased us his childhood home in Watertown. I hated Landmark Realty in Chicago and got hustled into signing a lease before I was ready and Micozzi Management in Brookline was a nightmare too. Though we lived on Beacon Street near B.U., in a fairly decent neighborhood, when we moved in, Kort found a dead and dessicated rat on our fire escape. Southside on Lamar had its problems, renting out the artist's quarters for monthly gala events bringing in traffic, noise, and drunken revelers. My conversation with the current management at Eastside Village last week went something like this:

Me: Someone put a bunch of tables in the fitness center, unplugged the machines and shoved them into a corner. The space is unusable.

Brandi: Yes, we're closing that fitness center and turning it into a party room for residents.

Me: Were residents informed? Because I didn't get a memo and I don't remember getting notified.

Brandi: There is a beautiful fitness center over at the Phase II complex? Have you seen it?

Me: Sure, when I toured the facilities. But I've been renting a unit in Phase I, and I chose to live at Phase I because it's next to the DART tracks and it also had a fitness center which is convenient to the building.

Brandi: So you have to walk to work out, that's part of the work out for god's sake. There's a perfectly good fitness center at Phase II with weights and machines and everything you need.

Me: So did residents vote on the changeover, or who's idea was that to eliminate this amenity?

Brandi: The community room we're putting in is another amenity that some of the residents have asked for, so that when friends and family come from out of town they can rent out the space.

Me: So can I put together a petition and have residents sign to reinstate the fitness room?

Brandi: Well, we haven't actually made the decision. God! The decision hasn't even happened yet and the change hasn't occurred. Why can't you just use the fitness room in Phase II?

Apparently the muffin man lives on Drury Lane.

Other work-related funnies:

"Slogo" - a sales logo

"That's Easter Bunny with a capital 'B'. Second usage Mr. Bunny."

Overheard at work

"Yes, I know the muffin man!"

"Cult-a-sacs" and "hardwood dicks"

First day on the job copyediting for the advertising department. Working mostly on real estate ads from high-end brokers and getting to know the culture of Dallas' luxury homes and real estate. These are homes that I will never be able to afford - palatial estates in gated communities complete with wine cellars, game rooms, grand entries, sculpted owls, wainscoting, etc. Our department also handles the special supplements on health, weddings, automobiles and a few other areas. Should be interesting. One of my co-workers will be interviewing AA actor George Takei who is embarking on a speaking tour in the coming months.

This weekend, I went to the Writer's Garret Writes of Spring Festival hosted at my old home, Southside on Lamar. Sadly, it was difficult to make it to every program I was interested in attending. The panel on "unknown writers" in the main building overlapped with the WordSpace reading. I walked in to hear one of the panelists talking about John Ashbery - he is perhaps underappreciated, but unknown? Come on - the dude's won the Pulitzer! Before I left the panel to run back to Poor David's, I spied Lorna Dee Cervantes but had to leave before I could say hello. Took a workshop at the SWP with Lorna back in 1997, my first summer at Naropa at the urging of a former roommate Virginia Evans. Lorna's an amazing writer and teacher and her new book is out with a Texas press called Wings, run by Bryce Milligan. Lorna also has some illuminating things to say in her recent post on applying for teaching jobs, NEA and Fulbright grants, etc. Speaking of which, I'm not holding my breath on teaching in Dallas. The local uni has invited 2 candidates to campus to interview. Some interesting things about the candidates: both women, both have recent PhDs, both studied at UT Austin, both have limited publishing experience, both are fairly young, both have the name Susan.

Simone, Martha, Tim, Lisa and Robert read poems at Poor David's. Robert read from a new manuscript called "Glance." There was some great fiction too - Ben Fountain, the fiction editor for the Southwest Review, read some historical fiction about a piano player with 11 fingers. David Searcy read some funky sci-fi on horizontal vs. vertical space travel.

Carnival, 2004

Solicitations

This past year, I have started to get a whole lot of solicitations for poetry, contributions to anthologies, contests, and invitations to collaborate. These emails seem to come every two months or so. Sometimes these solicitations come from people in the general poetry community like Bruce Covey of Coconut who expressed enthusiam and real knowledge of my work, or a colleague like Nick, an editor extraordinaire (check out Pinoy Poetics if you haven't already) who asked for some poems for a special MiPo edition on AA poetry. More often then not, these invitations come from individuals who have picked up my name from the directory at Poets & Writers, publications like Ginosko or Marlow Weaver's In Our Own Words, or someone who's maybe heard about my work thru NPR. The worst of these are generic chain letters that don't make it past the junk mail radar that don't know the poems of Equivalence from Nutritional Feed, or missives that gush flattery (see "Daily Dharma post"). What they see is a commodity - colored poet, female poet, Chicago poet, collaborative poet, ekphrastic poet, poet who makes visual art, Buddhist poet, poet under 35, political poet, sex-depraved poet, experimental poet, poet that fits my project's demographic and readership. The best of these show an integrity and care for the work. I have started slowing down enough to say, thanks for the invitation but what have you read and what are your aesthetic interests and how is your project interesting or relevant. And I have just plain started saying no. And it feels right - not as in a self-righteous, I'm-too-good-for-you primadonna, but to have discriminating awareness and to see when there is an agenda on the table and to know who you can and cannot work with and to call that for what it is. I thank my early publishers, Jerry and JB, who taught me collaboration, hard work, communication, vision and integrity. I have entered a new phase of my life, a new phase in my artistic practice. When the remaining projects on my computer have finally all made their ways into the world, I will be done with indepedent publishing in poetry. Here's to cooperative publishing. The new rule of thumb is that there are a handful of long-time friends to whom I will continue to say yes, but where new opportunities present themselves, to go on your nerve, recognize and smell bullshit coming like Jane Allen, and to never fear "no."

Daily Dharma

As a wedding gift, our friend Terri gave us "Offerings: Buddhist Wisdom for Every Day."

These are the last two days entries... food for thought!

March 27
Unfortunately, we do not recognize the empty nature of words and we become fixated on them as if they were something real. This is why pleasant words make us happy, and unpleasant words make us unhappy or angry. These reactions are a sign that we believe in the reality of words. - Kalu Rinpoche

March 28
Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain. It bcomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down, and notice. - Pema Chodron

As a writer, I am torn between wanting to believe in the reality or truth of words and seeing them as meaningful. But when it comes to human interaction, there is no other way but to believe in the emptiness of words.

ArtLies

Noah Simblist reviewed Conspicuous Production at the MAC last year and gave the Love Hotel poems some nice but misunderstood attention. The choice to install the works as I did was not a "curatorial" gesture but an aesthetic decision (interesting that when wall text is encountered in a show it is automatically read as didactic material).

Unpleasant Event Schedule

Go here for an image from an early trip to Taiwan.

Crossing Boundaries: Visual Art By Writers

If you are in New Jersey, check out the Crossing Boundaries show which opens Saturday.



Artists on exhibition include Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane DiPrima, Gregory Corso, Allison Hedge Coke and Shin Yu Pai.

Yesterday and today

Yesterday I did not have a job. Today I was offered a full-time position doing copyediting work at The Dallas Morning News. It will involve editing using AP style and doing some writing with short turnaround time. My friend Andrew in Taipei trained in the newspaper industry when he got out of his undergrad and it taught him discipline, writing under deadline and many other good skills. Now Andrew is writing on Jet Li for Newsweek and Zhang Yimou for Taiwan News. Hmmm.....

Kort is giving me allergy elimination therapy (NAET). Yesterday's session involved muscle testing for organ weakness and testing for a BBF (body balance formula) allergy. So usually when you find that you are allergic to a substance, you have to avoid certain things. Say you are allergic to eggs - then you must avoid eggs, things with eggs in them (like cake), chicken, and feather pillows. I should also say that while Kort was stimulating the acupuncture points in my back, I found myself incredibly irritated and angry. So what did I have to avoid for 25 hours? Getting in a fight with anybody or losing my temper. Unbelievable. And did I succeed? By the wire. It's been past 25 hours and frankly, I think I will have to be re-exposed and retreated for this mystery BBF substance because my irritation around certain people/issues has hit its ceiling. On the plus side, it was a more contemplative day with mind-body awareness, but things went pretty awry at about 4 p.m.

Yesterday, I learned that a long-time contributor to the Dallas poetry community is going into hospice care for advanced stage cancer. I have not seen this poet since I left town in December. I am filled with sadness and hope to be able to spend as much time as possible with him in these final days. I will begin reading again The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying in preparation.

New Mexico events

in ALBUQUERQUE:

Kate Horsley, Thursday March 30 7pm @ Bookworks, will be reading and signing her newest novel, Black Elk in Paris (Trumpeter, $19.95).

Poets, Thursday March 30 7pm @ the Peace and Justice Center, perform for Amnesty International's Women's History Month special campaign: Stop Violence Against Women. AI's Albuquerque Chapter's campaign focus is to stop the killings of women in Juarez.

Lisa Gill, March 31 and April 1 7:30 pm @ Out ch’Yonda 929 4th St. SW performs her one-woman show "Caput Nili" -- a linked sequence of poetry addressing the theme of violence and how it impacts the brain.

RESERVATIONS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: (theater only seats 40) Call 385-5634 $10 Gen./$8 Elders & Students (A Benefit for the Albuquerque Rape Crisis Center)

in LAS CRUCES and EL PASO:
Chinese poet Zhang Er Friday, March 31 7:30 pm @ Hardmann Hall, rm 106 NMSU campus will read as part of "World in Poetry" reading and the La Sociedad Para Las Artes series at NMSU, Las Cruces. Zhang Er and Leonard Scwartz Thursday, March 30 3 pm @ Hudspeth 100, on the UTEP campus, El Paso.

Blends & Bridges

Blends & Bridges: A Survey of International Contemporary Visual Poetry & Related Art

Gallery 324 at the Galleria at Erieview is hosting a show of contemporary international visual poetry (Vispo for short).

The show is curated by Cleveland visual poet/publisher John Byrum, Florida visual poet/publisher Bob Grumman, and Cleveland artist Wendy Collin Sorin.

Gallery 324
1301 East Ninth Street
Cleveland, OH 44114
216.780.1522
marcus@designerglass.com

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, April 1, 2006 5 - 9 PM
Poetry readings/performances begin around 6:30 PM. Refreshments provided.

Free parking will be available for the opening in an underground parking garage. The entrance to the garage is off Lakeside, between East 9th and East 12th streets. (See bottom of this page for directions to the Galleria.)

Exhibition continues through April 30, 2006

Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday 10 - 6, Saturday 10 - 2, and by appointment

ABOUT THE SHOW

Intimidated by art galleries? Afraid of poetry that doesn't rhyme? Fearful of the image and text hybrid? Relax. Visual poetry is fun and good for you, too! Come explore the world where words and pictures collide and find true happiness. Don't miss this rare treat of an exhibition: a survey of contemporary visual poetry and text-based work by an international gathering of artists whose work creates new meanings from words and the spaces between them while challenging the distinctions between art forms.

These men and women are exploring the further ranges of what it means to make art, and their approaches move along a continuum from grand fun to the High Sublime.

Work by area artists Chris Franke, Steven B. Smith, Jim Lang and Ohio poets John M. Bennett, C. Mehrl Bennett, will join a national and international group which includes Susan Bee and Richard Kostelanetz (New York City), Shin Yu Pai (Dallas), Guy Beining (Maine), Karl Kempton (California), Carla Bertola (Italy), Klaus Peter Dencker (Germany), Luc Fierens (Belgium), Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (Finland) and many others. Founded in 2005, the mission of Gallery 324 is to showcase primarily Ohio artists. Located in the Galleria at Erieview on the first floor, near the Food Court, Gallery 324 is operated by Marcus Bales, a Cleveland glass artist, in conjunction with Gary Roberts, a Cleveland furniture designer.

Offered a spot at Ox-Box this summer for a two-week Professional Artist-in-Residence position but was asked to pony up 940.00 for program costs. So not possible. This was the same offer they made me in 2000, except I think the cost has only gone up. Sigh.

Plano Book Festival

Kort and I spent the morning at the Plano Book Festival which was happening in and around our building. The Fest set up several tents near the DART track and rented one of the meeting rooms at Eastside Village where we attended a panel on an incredibly mediocre topic "unexpected love" but where we heard two incredible women read from their works of fiction, Rosalyn Story and Michelle Stimpson. Story is the author of And So I Sing: African American Divas of Opera and Concert and her latest book, a novel More Than You Know. Stimpson is the author of a new novel Boaz Brown, a humorous tale of an African American woman who discovers love, except it's not what she expects it to look like.

Kort's currently in the living room assembling more book shelves for the apartment. After this group is set up, the apartment should look more or less settled.

I've been checking out the local neighborhood and applied yesterday for my first Texas library card. The nearest library is a 15 minute walk down 18th Street and has a modest DVD collection and a decent poetry section - will have to go back to check out Kevin Young's latest Black Maria. I checked out and watched several films this weekend:

1) A Raisin in the Sun
2) Dr. Strangelove or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb
3) All About My Mother
4) Blue Velvet

I think Kort was a little freaked out by my choices - none really "date" material. But three of these 4 titles are classics that I felt that I needed to see. Of all the films, I think A Raisin in the Sun resonated most for me. The story of a black family in Chicago whose lives are changed when they receive a $10,000 life insurance check. All of the characters are emotionally complex, particularly the elderly matriarch of the family, the long-suffering wife, and Walter Lee, Jr. who has big dreams of providing a real home and opportunities to his son and family, but who drowns his frustrations in alcohol. Walter Jr.'s sister Benny is also an interesting character but for different reasons. On one hand, I could relate to her and recognized her grasping tendencies. Youngest of the siblings, destined for medical school, overprotected and disconnected from her cultural identity and desperately trying to figure that one out. She takes up with a Nigerian classmate (though she resists his initial advances), wears African clothing and plays tribal music to try and reclaim her identity. It's just painful.

Peter Sellars plays three different characters in Dr. Strangelove - a British commander, President of the United States, and Dr. Strangelove. What range! Most unforgettable is Slim Pickens riding the nuclear warhead to oblivion.

All About My Mother - a Pedro Almodovar film dedicated to women, mothers and Bette Davis - with an homage to Streetcar Named Desire thrown in. Shot in Madrid and Barcelona, the plot deals heavily with transexuals.

Blue Velvet - definitely the most disturbing of the bunch and hard to swallow as "erotic" and all the other buzz words emblazoned on the back of the box. Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern look so young in this 1986 movie. Lots of signature David Lynch effects at play - the saturated colors and spotlighting on characters, ambient music and strange people dancing at inappropriate moments. Kyle MacLachlan plays a would-be amateur detective in Blue Velvet which is interesting to think about in contrast to his role in Twin Peaks. Lynch seems to enjoy working with a certain group of actors over and over again - MacLachlan will star in "Inland Empire" (where I hail from), currently in post-production.

Dirt Magazine

Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 09:21:27 EST
Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group
Sender: UB Poetics discussion group
From: PR Primeau
Subject: Dirt #3 (ft. Aram Saroyan Interview)

Dirt: A 'Zine of Minimalist Poetry and Poetics
Issue No. 3 (April 2006), 78pg.
Ed. PR Primeau
http://dirt-zine.tripod.com
POETRY (VISUAL & TEXTUAL)
Julie Kizershot
Michael Leddy
Steve Potter
K.S. Ernst
Andy Gricevich
Avery Burns
Francis Raven
Tom Gilroy
David-Baptiste Chirot
Sheila E. Murphy
Richard Kostelanetz
David E. Patton
Brian Zimmer
Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
Lawrence Upton
David Baratier
Jason Lynn
Jesse Ferguson
Denise Siegel
Nicole Proctor
Jill Stengel
Andrew Topel
Shin Yu Pai
Mark Young
Caleb Puckett
Nico Vassilakis
Jennifer Bartlett

REVIEW
Concrete Movies (Nico Vassilakis)

INTERVIEWS
Dan Waber
Aram Saroyan

The issue will be mailed out in early April. Send orders to persistencia_press@yahoo.com or to dirt_zine@yahoo.com.
Dirt is a free publication, though small donations are appreciated.

Taiwan photos

My thoughts are still very much in Taiwan and on wrapping up my family project. Today I went thru some digital photos and uploaded a batch to my flickr account. Here are some that were never posted at the Taiwan blog:


This is the Hall of Ghosts where 4th Uncle used to go to cut grass for the rabbits living under the bed.


Behind the buildings were buried ceramic urns with skeletons. The remains of the unworshipped dead - whether unmarried or childless. Here, souls were prayed for and offerings made for the deceased.


My 4th Uncle once took my father as a young child, about 6 y.o., to the Hall of Ghosts with him. He disappeared while 4th Uncle cut grass. Later, 4th Uncle found him playing with the skeletons. Every skull placed with a different body. In the end, they never knew if the heads ended up with the right bodies.


These are the holes in which the ceramic urns were buried.

The original buildings once stood here:


But the building was updated.


Now the skeletons are stored under lock and key.


Here is one of the central shrine rooms.

The eyes of the idols are covered because the ceremony where the gods are invited to come and occupy the statues has not yet been performed.

One of my favorite places in Ching Shui is the Kuanyin Temple. Here is a view from the 2nd floor at night.



And a mural with some interesting sea-human creatures:


In recent years, a Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist (red hat) temple has been erected - the land the gift of generous donors who's daughter is a devout Buddhist. Here the Buddha gets a good cleaning:



Outside the temple, there was a woman sorting orchids.


And this photo essay would not be complete without a view of the family shrine.

Note the two ancestral name tablets vs. one. Pai on the left,
Tsai on the right.

Haiku Not Bombs intro

This is the intro to Haiku Not Bombs. Not sure if it's hitting the mark yet.

INTRODUCTION

When I first met Tom Gilroy at The MacDowell Colony in Spring 2003, Tom was working on the screenplay for his film Location which goes into shooting later this May. Coming from a small and cloistered poetry-centered community in Boston at the time, I had not come across Tom’s work as either a filmmaker or a haiku poet. Unusual books by authors I had never heard of –– Hosai Ozaki and Jim McKay –– started showing up in my mailbox at Colony Hall and lively conversations ensued. I learned about The Haiku Year (Soft Skull Press, 1998), a project that Tom had organized with a group of friends which involved each person writing a haiku for every day of the year and sending these poems to one another in the mail.

One restless afternoon I hit a rut in my work; I took a drive with Tom and two other colonists to a used bookstore in the adjoining town of Dublin. The New England countryside was shrouded in fog and the roads were covered in snow. Tom noticed me white-knuckle gripping the arm of the door and slowed down the ancient jeep. We arrived at the bookstore and scoured the shelves for hardcover books and secondhand poetry. Tom’s enviable find that day near the checkout counter was a vintage series of stereoscopic photographs of old Japan – images in duplicate of kimono-clad geisha and Mt. Fuji looming in the distance.

After completing my residency and returning to Boston, I came home to find a handful of postcards and envelopes filled with haiku scrawled on random scraps of paper waiting for me. The one that struck me most was written on half of an antique stereoscopic photograph that had been torn from its mate –– the image: a beautiful young woman clothed in a golden yellow dress. On the back of this image, Tom had scrawled:

morning dove coos
drowned out
by jackhammers

Over the years, I have written and sent countless haiku dispatched into the world via postcard and other mailings and made haiku writing a regular part of my writing practice. When Tom asked me at the end of 2004 if I would be interested in being a part of a reincarnation of The Haiku Year in digital/blog format, I enthusiastically signed on the project. New friends enlisted, and the challenge was adjusted so that each participant was asked to write one poem for each week of 2005, a total of 52 poems. The new format was not without its computing challenges, but in the end, we had a digital, chronological archive of a year’s worth of poems encompassing birth, death, work, life and love.

We decided to call this collection “Haiku Not Bombs” after a line in a sequence of linked haiku which was inspired by a newspaper story that Tom sent me in 2005. The news story detailed how the government of Thailand was responding to civil unrest and the threat of war among its provinces.


over Narathiwat, Thailand
one hundred million
paper cranes

missives of peace ––
war is over
if you believe

haiku
not bombs
origami art of war


The authors of this haiku collection are a doctor, two filmmakers, an activist, a musician, a playwright, and a poet from diverse backgrounds. But what we all share in common is a belief and understanding that community and change comes about through compassionate dialogue and collaboration.


Shin Yu Pai
Taipei, Taiwan
February 2006

Dirt Magazine

Dirt Magazine has accepted three poems from Haiku Not Bombs for issue 3.

Lisa Gill

One of my all-time favorite writers and La Alameda Press author Lisa Gill has just launched a website. The big news is that she has a new book coming out this Fall from New Rivers Press and she is debuting a one woman show on March 31 called Caput Nili. If you are in Albuquerque, go and see it! Lisa published Red As a Lotus with La Alameda, a book of meditative poems addressed to Trappist monk Thomas Merton. A MUST read.

Idiotic Story Contest

This is a call for submissions from Eric Mader in Taipei. Eric is the author of A Taipei Mutt - a very savvy writer and fellow. Here is the call:

Idiotic Story Contest

This is an idiotic story contest. The rules for entering the contest are as follows:

1) Your story must be in English.
2) Your story must contain no more than 350 words.
3) Your story must be idiotic, to the point that the reader nearly winces at the tale's stupidity.

I would love to get stories written by actual idiots. This, let it be said, is my ideal. I'm certain however to get mainly stories of feigned idiocy, which I also will accept. Given the length of the tales I'm looking for here, it is in some sense a matter of what is called "Postcard Fiction" or "Postcard Stories." And since many of the best postcard stories already have a certain idiocy to them, I'm hoping to hear from some of the usual practitioners.

When I've received one hundred stories that I've judged to be idiotic enough to actually enter the contest, the contest will be over and I will take suggestions for methods of choosing winners. If methods are not forthcoming from contestants, I'll just have to pick some of the idiots I know to help judge the tales.

Finally I would hope to publish an anthology. A tentative title might Cretinous Tales. Any of you morons have a better idea?

So send me a tale or two yourself and forward this URL to any writers (or idiots) you know. Those who enter the contest recognize that if their stories are accepted they will be put directly on this web page. Writers retain the copyright to their work, but I will make the tales available online at least until the contest is closed and the anthology is pending.

Sincerely,
Eric Mader

I had been encouraging some of my extra talented former grad students to submit to the Anthology of Younger Poets, but after reading this, I think I regret having made that move and setting up my students for possible disappointment and rejection. "I guess I naively didn't expect people who aren't in our "circles" to "include themselves," but it seems like there are people who will just submit to anything that might take their poems." I guess I naively didn't expect that the anthology project would be limited to "circles" vs. discovery of actual new voices. What constitutes a writing community or circle? How do new writers outside of the usual communities break into the club? What's the secret handshake? Why put out an open call on multiple public list-serve in lieu of direct solicitation? Is this not problematic? One thing the project does have going for it is a shared editorship - point people in different poetic communities who are helping to gather together the work - a wide net approach like Evelina's Screaming Monkeys .

after sitting/awareness 
practice bruising my shin against
the yet to be unboxed bookcase

wishes aborted
the flaming lantern descends 
upon a neighbor's roof

Amazon

Thunder Bolt Books is selling a used copy of Equivalence for $35.87?

New Haiku Blog

52 Haiku has wrapped for 2005 and we are now on to the next incarnation at Haiku Anew. Tune in for poems by Jim McKay, Tom Gilroy, JB Bryan and others.

Galatea Resurrects

Thanks to Heather for reviewing Unnecessary Roughness and to Eileen for including it in Galatea Resurrects.

Work!

Pleased to report that Tupelo Press will finally be publishing Nutritional Feed in 2007. It was accepted for publication back in 2004. A long road it's been.

Working currently on polishing up a portfolio/feature of Taiwanese poets for Chicago Postmodern Poetry. It will include poems, vispo, and sound pieces from Chen Li, Hung Hung, Melusine Lin and interviews with micropublisher Shiah Shiah and translator Steve Bradbury and possibly an anthology of Taiwan poetry. I think we're looking at a May launch date which is Asian heritage month here in the States.

Haiku Not Bombs is almost ready to send out and the manuscript is smashing.

I am again among the gainfully unemployed. It has its ups and downs, but right now, grateful to have some extra time to transition back to life in TX and wrap up some very important projects and to lay the groundwork for new ones.

Returned to TX just in time to miss AWP. I hope our friends at La Alameda Press sold lots of books!

And in other updates:

Four poems from NUTRITIONAL FEED accepted for HOW2 edited by special guest editor Susan Schultz of Tinfish Press. Launch date TBD.

Five poems from THE LOVE HOTEL POEMS accepted for XCP Streetnotes, due out in Summer 2006.

A Gathering of Tribes has taken one poem from NUTRITIONAL FEED for its Fall/Winter 2006 issue.

Poems and journalings due out from @tached document at some point.

Convivio Bookworks has set a tentative release date of WORKS ON PAPER by June 2006, just in time for the Paper & Book Intensive. This limited edition handmade, handbound chap will include a combination of old and new poems on the theme of paper. Put in your orders now with Convivio!

Press Lorentz will release in late Spring/early Summer, a limited edition hand-produced chapbook of THE LOVE HOTEL POEMS.

Visual work to be shown in the Paterson's Museum exhibition Crossing Boundaries: Visual Art By Writers to open in Paterson, NJ in April 2006. Also, work will be on view at Blends & Bridges: A Survey of International Contemporary Visual Poetry at Gallery 324 in Cleveland, OH.

Lee Herrick tagged me with the 5 things weird about you meme and I don't want to fill up the Taiwan blog with personal info so here:

Five “weird” things about me

1. I do not drive. Which is not to say that I am not capable of driving, because I do have a Texas driver’s license, and before that, a California driver’s license. Rather a serious of minor fender benders with concrete columns, parking markers, and earlier on actually rear ending someone when I was in highschool which resulted in my car being revoked, have led me to develop this terrible dependency on those who drive. My nearest and dearest friends love and tolerate me for this idiosyncracy and know the roads are a safer place without me on them. On another level, I relate a lot to Marky Mark’s character in Huckabees. Petroleum IS evil. Suffice to say, I live in cities with public transportation or I walk or I hitch rides. But this year, I am investing in driving school and breaking out of pattern - either that or getting a scooter.

2. I can not speak a word of Mandarin. This is in result of having a father with fierce allegiances to the DPP and is pro-Taiwanese independence, meaning that the kids would not grow up with the language of the oppressor, but with Taiwanese, the language of the people. I went to Chinese school for one miserable summer in which the kids, born of mainland Chinese, and the teacher, also a mainlander, ridiculed and shamed me into silence. At the end of the summer when my mother asked if I would like to continue, I said “no.” Further, Taiwanese is not the same as Mandarin to one's ear, they are completely different.

3. I have a shade of naturally auburn red hair that an elementary school teacher Ms. Juchartz loved so much she cut off a lock to take to her hairdresser to match it. This is my mother’s doing – her side of the the family had inter-relations with the Dutch and as a result, her children carry this recessive gene for red hair.

4. Sometimes in my dreams, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and His Holiness the Dalai Lama appear. I listen to what they have to say. Rinpoche once told me to leave a message on his answering machine. The fact that he is dead, didn’t really matter.

5. Two of my front teeth are fused together above the root, but not below the root. My dentists call me a medical anomaly.