I graduated on June 12. This is me and Professor Ron Chew, former Wing Luke Director, who mentored me during my time in the UW Museology Program.



Immediately following the ceremony, Kort, me, Linh and Andy went to dinner at Casbah in Ballard and ate delicious 5-course Moroccan. The third dish was this powdered phyllo meat pastry thing. We were not invited to belly dance, thank God.



The day after, we resolved to take a trip to Port Townsend. On the way, we stopped in Port Gamble, where I had heard that there was a great ghost tour. We did not find the tour, but we did find a funky natural history museum with a variety of sea specimens.



But this was by far, my favorite display - a frame full of shells illustrating how pearl buttons are made.



In Port Townsend, we stayed at Red Pine, aka Bill Porter's, guest house - a converted garage, designed by the poet/translator himself. Here's the breakfast nook.



And the couch by the front window. Most of the structures we saw were wooden platform frames built to fit standard tatami, then covered with futon mattresses, which gave us great ideas for the future of our 3 tatami mats currently living under our bed.



We used Port Townsend as a home base for exploration and drove out to Mora and Rialto Beach on the Western coast of the Olympic Peninsula, where the landscape is hard to describe.



But I felt much more human beside the sea, cleansed of a lot of recent stress.

after feeling chilled
all morning, I finally think
to shut the window

We learned yesterday that Kort's uncle, Jim Phillips, passed away in a plane accident. Jim was a mentor to Kort when he was growing up and later when he was looking for a direction during his college years. Jim was a psychologist and taught in the Tarrant County Community College system and also ran for many years a camp on his ranch that used the outdoors as a therapeutic approach to working with troubled youth. During the summers, he hosted summer camps that my husband and brother-in-law both have very fond memories of. Kort's relationship with his uncle had a big influence on him pursuing the healing arts as a vocation.

The second time we moved back to Dallas, we went to visit Jim on the ranch. He showed us around the property with his dog Old Yeller No. 2, we watched him groom horses and feed cows out on the pasture. He showed us his airplanes. Later we went to see Jim rope cows in the local rodeo. He was a good man and we will miss him.

Speeding around Green Lake on rollerskates this morning, I caught a glimpse of the water plants colonizing the south end of the lake, blooming into lilies that closely resemble white lotus. The water plants have been slowly expanding through the lake for the last few years and keep taking over more space. It was the first time that I'd seen the plants in bloom - a sea of flowers. It made me picture the lake as a metaphor for the chaos of my own mind and how I would like a sea of lotus blossoms eventually fill that space. But these things take time.

I miss the energy and performance of haggling in the Chinese markets - places where you can pay what you want, or work towards a price that is closer to that ideal. Actually, that is entirely possible too in many of the shops, but not so in the U.S. unless you are at a swapmeet or flea market, or dealing with the owner of a thrift shop where you have a relationship.

I sometimes imagine owning a small boutique imports store that would sell traditional crafts and jewelry around the world. At the Tibetan temple in Beijing, I saw beautiful gau prayer box pendants, so unique that I've never seen anything like them here in the States. There were variations on the amulet, but the most exquisite were the deity boxes crafted from gold, silver, and precious stones. They can be found on the internet and ebay, but at upwards of $100 and more. The amulets which do not house figures or photos of deities are a kind of locket that can contain mantras, love spells, talismanic fragments, etc.

In doing research on a social media plan for the CWB, I learned that Blogger is owned by Google and if Google should choose to terminate my service at any time, I would be unable to recover any of the years of archived material - both photos and text. Thus the slow migration to WordPress.

I graduate unofficially from the UW Museology program tomorrow. My second masters degree and possibly the only degree program I've ever attended that has actually given me concrete tools and skills for working in the real world.

Kort and I have been discussing his recent change of facial hair. I realized that what has been disturbing me about the new look is the incongruity between his appearance and who he is. He is rocking a Hulk Hogan meets Earl meets mutton chop handlebar mustachio look. It being summer, he was prepared to shave most of the winter beard off, but then he decided to experiment. And the experiment was to see what look might bring different perceptions. The results of his experiment? Clients at work do not mess with him and accept his authority and challenge him less. But this is definitely not a look that would work well with the acupuncture/healer persona, at all, which is the man that I know and love. At some level, I understand the performance of appearance - it's like dressing up to look more authoritative when teaching, or putting on a suit to give a corporate presentation or to attend a job interview. To send a certain message and perception. But this is also why we prefer to work for ourselves, so that we can be ourselves.

man stops me for
directions to the Goodwill
down on the Ave

old ladies talking
about recession at the
local thrift shop

I am in the process of slowly migrating this blog to a WordPress site.

Kort and I made it over to the Bellevue Arts Museum for the Book Borrowers show which closes this weekend.



We saw sculptural and carved/excavated books, the most interesting of which were Long-Bin Chen's sculptures of Buddhas (one full bodied reclining, and a Kuan Yin head) assembled from materials that included Manhattan phone books!

Also very exciting were the Guy Laramee carved and sandblasted stacks of Encyclopedia Brittanicas which replicated steep gorges and physical landscapes.

After we finished with the artist books exhibition, we walked downstairs to discover the work of wood artist Michael Peterson.

Peterson lives and works on Orcas Island. He hollows out logs and burls to make the material of wood seem as malleable as the steel buildings of Frank Gehry. He makes both sculptural (geometric) and figurative forms and bowl-like landscapes which evoke extraterrestrial terrain. The longer we looked at his work, the more interesting it became.

This was our first trip to the Bellevue Arts Museum which has had its share of crises in the past five years, including embezzlement by a former staff member and a total rebranding of the organization to become crafts-focused. It is a beautiful space across from several luxury malls in the downtown Bellevue area which draws shoppers, tourists, etc., but the galleries were relatively empty today.

China Diary Continued

May 21

The long-awaited terracotta warriors. Many of the artists on the delegation are energized by this trip, and I have to admit, tourist factor aside, the experience was awe-some. Looking down into these huge archaeological excavation sites and seeing these human forms, each unique, standing at attention, guarding the first emperor's tomb.




New figures and artifacts are unearthed regularly.


Archaeologists and researchers have identified the precise location of the emperor's tomb. But here's the rub. The emperor's tomb is suspended on an island in the middle of a lake of mercury. Excavating the site could potentially destroy the fragility of the tomb's environment as well as expose the workers to toxic poisons. So the tomb goes unexcavated.

The original individual who came across the tomb was a Chinese farmer seeking well water. As he dug, he found a head or torso of a terracotta warrior and had enough sense to send these artifacts to the local archaeological college. That was in the 1970s. The site now has been transformed into a UNESCO site which accommodates thousands of visitors everyday.

China Diary Continued

May 21

We bid farewell to the desert and climb aboard a plane to Xian. I am sad to say goodbye to our oasis hotel.



We fly to Xian, which takes about two hours and proceed on to the Wild Goose Pagoda - where Chinese monk Hsuan Tsung established Tripitaka Buddhism after walking to and from India which took him 17 years. The Emperor built the pagoda to serve as the storehouse for the sutras and various religious items that Hsuan Tsung brought back with him.


The monk that helped to root Buddhism in China.


Wall of birds


Wishes for 20 yuan. I bought a "Dream" placard and wrote down my short and long-term goals and left my wishes hanging on the general board.

China Diary Continued

May 18
After breakfasting on the dunes, we took a bus to the Kazakh town of Akesai, a fairly recent resettlement development about two hours away from Dunhuang. The Kazakhs are the group that Sascha Baron Cohen, aka Borat, makes fun of. Anyways, there is a large contingency of Kazakh people with the largest community of Kazakhs in China located in the town of Akesai. They did not originally live in the town but on the surrounding land where the people farm and cultivate, but they were resettled into this planned community where there are more modern buildings and living quarters, though the farmers still commute to the land to work, to the places where they once lived. Although the town seemed very new and proud of its economy, it felt empty and ghost-like. There is also a strange kind of segregation happening - the Kazakh people do not intermarry with people outside of Akesai due to what I understood as transportation issues.

We toured the town museum, went to the horseracing track (no betting on ponies), and had a traditional Kazakh meal inside a giant yurt where Kazakh singers and dancers performed. There was also an interactive component where the guests got up and danced. At the museum, I was very excited by the architectural/landscape model of the development which included simulated rivers, mountains, and plastic animals.



This is what the town was modeled after:



Lunch in the yurt was a visually rich experience. Wallpapered textures and painted window shades with distinctly non-Chinese themes/styles.

Updates

I successfully defended my MA thesis in Museology today. My committee requested some edits and revisions, but the rewrites should not be substantive. Thanks to Carol, Geo, Nicole, Kylie, Kort and Marta for being there and to my committee for their graciousness, generosity, and gentle critique.

Kort trimmed his winter/spring beard down to a moustache and he is looking a bit 1970s meets My Name is Earl. This disturbs me to no end.

I still have a lot to say about China and am moving through processing many thoughts and ideas.

Working on a social media plan for the Center for Wooden Boats that is due to be presented on Monday. Thesis rewrites to be submitted by June 11. Then prepping a museum budget and a job talk for my Witliff interview. And then there is the exhibition that Nina Simon's class is installing this week.

China Diary

May 24



Return to Beijing from Xian. Stop at 798 on way back from airport en route to hotel. This is where all the foreign galleries come to scout new work – all the major Chinese artists are represented here. We only get an hour which is far too short.


This photo gallery had an interesting show up called "Between the Sexes" - one of the featured photographers in the show is a sex worker who takes photographs of herself with her various male "clients" (stand-ins for the pictures I think), making a commentary about her work.

The Chinese writers seemed less inspired by the visit, though I do run into Mr. Cao and Mr. Guo in an art bookshop poring over hardcover books of photography and 2D work. The American writers can’t stop discussing the appearance of Mao iconography in the work. I find a strange gallery called Beijing Happy Sheep Art that can only be described as sculptural taxidermy. Here is the artist behind the gallery.

May 20


The group bikes out to the desert on tandem bicycles to view Anne Wilson’s on-site installation on the dunes. Using a plaster mold modeled after lotus-designed tiles at the Mogao Caves, Anne cast dozens of packed-sand 3-d tiles which she left to disintegrate in the desert.



We return to the hotel and Eni talks about his poems and the Yi tribal people, their symbols, and his life as a poet and editor. I give a talk on my poem after, but make the mistake of trying to engage Yan in a conversation during the break. I apologize for losing my temper with her yesterday, which goes poorly. But during the introduction of my work, I begin to cry when speaking of writing poems, I use language that my mother would understand. In this moment, I realize the stress of the last two days and how the difficulty of communication in recent days has pushed a lot of my mother buttons.

May 19, 2009
Morning at the Dunhuang Museum and shopping at the bazaar in town. I buy rubbings from the Mogao Caves and scarves. I hunt around for tape for the rolls of film that have come unraveled. I go to every shop on the street and am unsuccessful. Thankfully, Yan picks up two rolls for me.

China Diary

May 18


Breakfast in the Taklamakan – we suited up in the hotel at 5:20 a.m. with face masks, fitted gloves, and heavy coats akin to what motorcyclists wear to protect themselves from the wind. We trekked out to the back of the hotel where we had the outdoor BBQ last night and lantern launching to find a fleet of camels waiting for us. It was still very dark outside, but I could make out the forms of the animals and hear their little camel noises. The camels were tied to one another with a long rope and we were separated into groups of three. I watched the sky gradually lighten and felt drops of rain come down. Because the sky was overcast, there was no real sunrise to observe. We arrived at the sand dune after what felt like a very long time climbing up and down sandy hills in the desert until we caught sight of a camping tent awaiting us with a glowing flame inside where several hotel chefs prepared a breakfast of eggs, sausage, and bacon. We drank tea and dined under red canopies - all very Passage to India.

China Diary

May 17

Climbed the Singing Sand Dunes today and used a bamboo sled to slide down the slope. Bright and sunny out with no wind. Vendors at the sand dunes rent out what are akin to gaiters to keep the sand out of one’s shoes – they are bright fluorescent orange – a good color if a rescue is needed.


The result is when walking around the dunes, the bright orange and the blue sky play off of one another beautifully, along with the colored parasols carried by women protecting their faces from the sun. I am not an adventurous person in any conventional sense, but after contemplating the hill for about 20 minutes, I asked myself what Kort would do and thought back to our honeymoon in C.R. and ziplining through the trees as well as our scouting trip to Taos Ski Valley where we rode the ski-lift one July. It’s true that I cried through much of both of those adventures, but beyond the first scream going down the dunes, I arrived at enjoying myself much more quickly. Across the sky buzzed electrical flying/handgliding machines that seemed positively medieval/da Vincian.

Evening BBQ on the hotel grounds where the chefs prepared us delicious grilled meats using huge pits that a few of the Chinese writers used to light their after dinner cigarettes. After the meal, staff distributed red lanterns printed with ‘I Love You’ which we proceeded to write wishes upon and send into the skies.


The lanterns that we used were a bit different than the ones in Taiwan. The combustible element is not grave paper soaked in oil, but a sort of wax that lights easily and produces a small flame which burns out while in the sky relatively quickly – by the time the lantern comes down, the flame is already extinguished, making the entire enterprise much safer.

China Diary

May 16

We went today to a geological park that is located at the site of what was once an enormous lake. Because of climate change and human intervention (damming), the lake completely dried up. In the early ‘90s, the site was developed into a national park to attract visitors out to the desert. I took a nap on the bus ride there and awoke to a landscape that is akin to the moon. The English translation for the region is the Devil’s City, though I prefer “Devil’s Pass.”


Finally had a chance to use the Hasselblad. Mr. Hu gave me a polished stone that he gathered from the sand. Though I would have wished to leave something behind for the land – a coin, tobacco, etc. – so that the land will not claim me, but I hope that I will come back here. I love the desolation of deserts. The only living thing I saw here was a fly buzzing around. Hugh and Edward reported seeing a lizard. I also saw camel tracks and piles of dung. But realized that although there are wild camels in the region, the geological park also had stations where it appeared that you could rent a camel for a ride, buy small rock formations, etc.



The land here reminded me of the rock formations in Yehlio, Taiwan on the northern coast. I also thought about the last slide image that Annie Leibovitz showed at her Seattle lecture last year – it was a rocky and ethereal landscape that seemed somewhat out of character with her portrait work. I wondered if she had visited Dunhuang. I also thought of Wolfgang Laib’s pyramids and mountains and imagined him seeing these strange forms for the first time.

We are slowly getting to know the Chinese writers through the assistance of several translators. Wang Hua wrote a novel drawn from a news story here in China – a woman who married three brothers who were too poor to each afford a wife. So they married one woman and she bore them each a child. Jin Renshun, who is ethnically Korean, writes on the coal-mining region that she is from and the lives of peasants and country people. All of the writers cite an interest in humanitarian themes (compassion, suffering, man’s relationship to the modern) with each also writing from their specific geographies and ethnic backgrounds. There is one Tibetan writer here who volunteered that he does not hold HHDL in high regard, after I stated that I would be as interested in visiting Dharamsala as Tibet. I changed the subject after he brought up the Panchen Lama.

This New York Times front-page story about the demolishing of Kashgar in Western China has me reflecting about my recent trip to the Kazakh town of Akesai and my conversations with minority ethnic Chinese writers about resettlement and relocation. It's a shame that Kashgar wasn't on our itinerary, as it's predicted to be completely torn down and rebuilt in the next five years, resembling nothing of what it does now.

China Diary

Blog sites were blocked while I was in China - everything from blogger to wordpress to tumblr. So I'll be slowly posting journalings of my recent travels through the mainland.

May 13
Visit to the Forbidden City. What were the emperors’ favorite nooks of this walled city? The Imperial Garden appeared to be a favorite place of Qian Long who wrote poems in the green space, but where else did they hide themselves away to contemplate?



In the evening, we went to a dinner-theatre restaurant featuring Mongolian singers and dancers who put on an epic performance that encompassed a traditional wedding courtship and party – faux roasted lamb and all. The costumes and dancing were opulent; the women were exquisitely beautiful. The dancers were incredibly athletic and strong. The American equivalent experience might be something like Medieval Times, but really, there is nothing that seems even close.




Hugh Ferrer receives a kata

May 14
Snuck off this morning with the American writers and Edward to Tianamen Square to try and get a glimpse of Chairman Mao’s corpse in his crystal coffin. We arrived at around 7:30 and joined the line, which appeared to be only several hundred deep. Turned out as we rounded corner after corner to see more throngs of people that there were thousands of people in line. I did not see any non-Chinese faces until we started to make our way away from the square. We had to be back at the hotel in time to bus over to the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature this morning. So the adventure ended short of seeing Mao’s body. I wondered statistically, what human remains get the most visitors a year – Mao, Lenin, Lucy, or King Tut.



The literature museum is fully funded by the federal government and operates on a budget of 1 million dollars a year. They do not have to fundraise. The Museum has an 80-person staff, 60 full-time and 20 part-time who serve about 32,000 to 40,000 visitors a year. This is not a lot, but because the museum is owned by the government, it is basically guaranteed to continue.

The galleries themselves were spread out over three floors. The first floor felt closer to climate-controlled, but as we climbed higher up into the building, it must have been over 75 degrees in some of those spaces. No relative humidity meters that I could detect. Most objects were under glass or enclosed in cases, except for the environmental installations of famous writers’ work spaces. Saw the workspace of Ding Ling, but not younger writers like Wang Anyi or Li Ang. A small section devoted to Chinese diasporic writers, but mainly this museum serves as an institution meant to inspire elementary and middle school students to learn more about the lives of the writers whom they read in their schooling. The first floor included a variety of green, leafy plants. I asked about a collections care manager (pest control!) and was told that the Museum is focusing more on acquisitions, in terms of its collections.


Mural in entry way to gallery


Guide to mural, note plants, pest liability!


Ding Ling's writing space

In the afternoon, we made it to the Olympic Village and the famous Bird’s Nest which is now a bit ghostly. The turf is in disrepair and the stuffed mascots of the Olympics are soiled by dirt and human hands. Muzak is piped in and the group identified “Moon River” and “Guantanamera.”




Olympic mascots and me

In the early evening, we flew to Dunhuang from the Beijing airport, with a short stopover. We checked into our hotel, an imposing oasis resort rising out of the desert dunes. The night-time arrival was positively cinematic. One can hear the cry of cuckoos from the rooftop. They are according to Eni (Lihui), the sacred and auspicious bird of the Yi people.

May 15



The Mogao Caves are the jewel of Dunhuang. Man-made caves were built in ancient times by monks who used the 400+ cave complex to meditate and express their devotion through creating elaborate murals. The caves are filled with statuary and wall murals depicting buddhas, bodhisattvas and apsaras. There is a 9-story sculpture of the Buddha that is 30 meters tall in one cave and a giant reclining Buddha in another cave. It was this later that was most moving to me – the figure is surrounded by his disciples as he enters parinirvana. The expressions on his disciples faces range from joy to agony, and are perhaps the most striking aspect of the scene. Kuan Yin was a repeated image throughout the caves, and the Chinese’s devotion to this goddess of mercy is apparent. In Cave 45, she appears along side several narrative pictorials including a prisoner being sent to execution whom invokes her name and escapes death. Elsewhere on the wall, there is a group of fisherman who meet devils and a dangerous storm. By invoking Kuan Yin’s name, they survive the ordeal. Some of the caves, including #45 are badly damaged by smoke – in the 1900s, a group of White Russians were imprisoned in the caves where they lived for a year. They slept in the caves and made cookfires which blackened some of the murals. It was only about 10 years ago, according to the poet Si Chuan who accompanies us on this trip, that the caves became more tightly controlled and closed to visitors. At one time, anyone could enter the caves freely – now they are behind closed and locked doors to protect them from sunlight damage and looting. Our guide brought up instances of looting by both the English and the Americans who placed portions of the murals in the collections at Harvard and in Oxford. No photos permitted in the cave interiors. Sigh.



We had a lovely English-speaking guide who explained the iconography, symbol, and narratives. After the group exited the cave, she went back very briefly to shine the torch on Kuan Yin again, so she could see her one last time. She has been a guide at the Mogao Caves for 10 years. This strikes me in some ways as a dharmic job, a type of dream job really. She got in a bit of a disagreement with another English-speaking guide, who piggy-backed his group into our cave while our guide was speaking.

Mogao Haiku

that man outfitted
w/ headlamp came well-prepared for
the Mogao murals

Arrival in Beijing

Internet service in Beijing does not seem to like the tumblr domain, although the internet is not blocking access to blogger..

Arrived in Beijing yesterday afternoon and am staying in a Western-style hotel in the city center. Adjusting to the sights and smells and air quality (my eyes are burning). Later today we go to the Imperial Palace and in the afternoon we'll meet for the first time with the writers from the Chinese Writers Alliance who will be working with us for the next 6 months. Weather is a lot warmer than I planned for, in the 80s with a lot of strong sunlight and what feels like not a whole lot of distance between the ozone and the surface of the skin.

New/old work at OK Camera.

While in China, I'll be blogging here if internet access allows:

http://shinyupai.tumblr.com

Expect some photos, audio files, and possible video files.

I did a poetry reading last week for Mimi Allin's Untitled Intersection series at Phinney Ridge. We facilitated some writing from the audience responding to Kris Wheeler's dance and this is the poem that was put together as a result of everyone's contributions:


There are many ways to fall
asleep but only one way to wake
up inside outside sometime

like playing a game
of duck duck goose goose
with only one

person by the shore of the now
crushed to be proud as accident -
to love it let it go, the enemy
looks like my brother-

sister dancing alone
recovers fleeting exhilaration
of estrangement from

familiar womb
the shades drawn
lashes checked

arms amputated
blue flame behind eyes
awash, draws sustenance

from a pole, she
awakes eagle
soars timber fall

log in earth raven
speaks at the end of world
enveloping togetherness

Thanks to Carol, Geo, Marcus, Judson, Ryan, and all who gave their language to the experiment...

Here at the Makura no Soshi we have been preparing for the China trip. Which hasn't meant reading up on Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves but finishing a draft of my masters thesis on oral history and museum exhibitions, which I will defend on June 1 at 1 p.m. in the Burke Room at the Burke Museum. Also, I am making a budget for an imaginary museum, as a final project for museum administration.

Went shooting with the Hasselblad this week and will drop off film at a new lab when I get off work today. The Hasselblad is a little persnickety, but simple in its basic design and ease of use - just a matter of getting used to a different process than shooting 35mm.

The weather vacillates between spring and winter. But yesterday Seattle had a beautiful 70 degree day. I took a long break and walked around Greenlake and came home to random stranger sitting on the neighbor's back stoop, clipping his fingernails in a patch of sunshine.

Things I need to make a priority as soon as school wraps: go to Cal and see my parents; go to Dallas and see in-laws. Sleep. Recover. Rediscover poetry. Help make a marketing plan for Rick's new book. Get back to yoga. Take a retreat. Re-evaluate. Plan a trip to Albuquerque to scout out possible live/work opportunities. Etc.

I find the whole Craig Arnold thing unsettling in the way that cruise ships freak me out. Not that I am going to go missing in China, but one never knows what will happen. Think Paul Bowles at The Sheltering Sky. On the heels of writing up my thesis, I am thinking a lot about issues of cultural authenticity but in regard now to China and Japan in terms of educational/artistic/pseudo diplomatic tourism promoted by programs like NEA-JUSFC and LOD. My former anthro advisor once said it would make a fascinating ethnographic study - and I agree about that.

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.