Rainbow: You have a chameleon aura. You know how
to adapt to your environment. You are usually
happy and few things in your life can change
this, at least not for very long. You love
life and all the challenges it has to offer
you. You are quite the enigma to other people,
but think you are really quite simple. You
could care less about money or material things
and, in fact, think they get in the way of
happiness.
You sometimes suffer from insomnia.
Secret emotion: Confusion and Passion


What color is your aura?
brought to you by Quizilla

Another reading from Equivalence:

December 5, 7 p.m. at the Brookline Booksmith: Gary Duehr and Shin Yu Pai.

Can anyone recommend a good endodontist? I spent Wednesday morning in the dentist's chair for a root canal. After 10 anesthesia injections, we declared failure and rebooked. Allowed injection into the bone, but protested when he suggested "drilling through and injecting the nerve". You gotta be kidding. Maybe all the crying threw us both.

Someone from Slovenia is reading the Pillow Book!

10 year reunion report: I beat out the "I sell panties and bras" nominee for "most unusual job" award with "published poet". (I had a great cheering section) Poetry triumphs! But actually, being a writer didn't seem to be all so unusual, considering that 2 other folks up on the stage were a "writer" and a "writer/artist/grad student".

"Fork lift operator" could be code language for exotic dancer.

Also won for "traveled the farthest" cateogry.

Felt rather sheepish/with mixed feelings to win what felt like the new "popularity" contest. The craving to be "liked" never goes out of style much as I would like it to, but than neither does "authenticity" - the topic of an old-new friend, Minerva Gomez's PhD dissertation.

You don't eat pancakes for breakfast?! I thought you guys were Buddhists!

The 2 sushi restaurants in the neighborhood of my job were both randomly closed today at 12 noon. Sigh.

At the post office, Debbie the clerk, tried to get my attention as I cashed out at the station next to her. I looked up and she said, "That's him. Abe." I blanked for a good five seconds, until she said "Abelardo. Morrell". Like a schoolgirl with stars in her eyes I turned around to a tall, white haired bespectacled man smiling slightly and said rather lamely "I love your work. It's totally amazing!"

David Byrne loves Powerpoint.

Kort and I are on a movie rental kick. Last night's movie was "Down with Love" starring Ewan MacGregor and Renee Zellweiger in a Doris Day/Rock Hudson tribute movie exploring the battle between the sexes. David Hyde Pierce starred as Ewan/Rock's Tony Randall. And Tony Randall actually made a cameo appearance as the CEO of a big NYC publishing house. In general, the movie seemed well cast, though the chemistry between Ewan/Rock and Renee/Doris didn't seem as magical as that between the original Rock and Doris. Ewan doesn't have quite the same body type and seemed to slink around a little more. I think George Clooney might have been quite good in the role, given his performance as Miles Massey in Intolerable Cruelty. Renee had that whole Doris pout going on and the wardrobe/costuming for the movie was just great. During the closing credits, Ewan and Renee do a song and dance number that is quite excellent. What a fun movie!

Mark Lamoureux gave a brilliant reading on Friday night. Buy his new book City/Temple from UDP... beautifully letterpressed in a golden ratna yellow brilliant as flower pollen.

Went to see Gus Van Sant's Elephant over the weekend. The movie touches briefly on one theory of why Columbine occurred - violent video games and the availability of guns over the internet. Also, absent parents. I was totally psyched to go and see this movie and than when we were actually watching it, though it was very photographically beautiful and well shot, the pace of the movie was hard to sustain at times. The camera follows several characters from behind as we eavesdrop on teenage conversations. It reminded me of how very depressing and oppressive highschool can be. One girl, Michelle, particularly captured my attention. She was very physically shut down, quiet, and wouldn't wear shorts in gym class. The best guess I can make is that she was hiding signs of abuse, maybe bruises or other injuries. Benny had a very short role that began with his introduction during the shootings. He helped to get students out of the building and was about to take out one of the shooters when the kid turned around and plugged him. The "violence" against Alex, one of the kids who goes bad, seems pretty senseless- I'm not at all clear on why he is the victim of spitballs and peer hatred, except that's just the way it is sometimes. Why did he warn John to not go in the building? Maybe because John too was a loner. John did the best he could do in that situation, which was to tell others not to go in the building. Interesting to think of what one would do in that kind of situation.

Protector


The ULTIMATE personality test
brought to you by Quizilla

Achin' To Be - Maybe the most depressing
Replacements song. You need some professional
help.

"She closes her mouth to speak and
Closes her eyes to see
Thought about an' only loved
She's achin' to be
Just like me"


What Replacements Song Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

The cover for Carol's book is a painting by John Yau's wife, Eve Ascheim. It seems like a perfect fit for "The Lightning Field". Abstract marks against a white canvas.

My reading with Arthur Sze yesterday was quite possibly the highlight of my year. Sadly, Carol, Arthur's wife, had to cancel at the last minute. Their 4 year old daughter, Sarah, developed a fever and she was too sick too travel so Carol decided to stay behind. The reading took place at Simmons College in a huge conference room with ceilings so high I felt lost. There were hundred of students and faculty and I was very nervous and stammered and stumbled over words. Some things never change.

To hear Arthur read his work is to revel in the beauty that is poetry. He read pieces from his collected poems, translations from The Silk Dragon and closed with a wonderful elegiac piece called "Earth Shine" for one of his colleagues at IAIA who commit suicide very suddenly. Years ago, Arthur lost another dear poet friend, I think his name was Gu Chung. I watch the way Arthur engages with the world, the way he answers a question from the audience, how at ease he is with the world, and in his work, and I learn so much about how I would like to engage in this world. The language of science, symbols from classical Chinese art and literature, the heart breaks open with every word.

Carol's new collection, The Lightning Field, looks really amazing too. The piece is based on a trip that she and Arthur took to Walter de la Maria's environmental installation out in Quemado, New Mexico. To visit the site, you call a # (its a DIA sponsored project) and you drive as far as Quemado. The caretakers of the installation than pick you up where you leave your car. They drive you around back and forth over remote roads to disorient you and than take you to the site, a cabin that can sleep 8 people. You are left at the site for 48 hours. No phone, no interruptions, no contact with the world. The site has several lightning poles installed and is the most interesting when lightning strikes, although on Arthur and Carol's trip, lightning only struck in the distance.

I cry easily. Today at the dentist's office, I burst into tears when he hit the interior chamber of my 14th tooth, as he dug away an old filling. After evaluation and assessment, it will cost me a grand total of $4,000+ to save this little molar, factoring in a little periodontal surgery. The word surgery definitely makes me cry. Bawl hysterically actually. Feeling a little heartbroken at the moment.

Reading tomorrow:

Arthur Sze, Carol Moldaw, and Shin Yu at Simmons College. 300 The Fenway. 11:00 a.m. -12:30 p.m.

An old friend at Naropa once randomly said to me, before I ever had plans to move to Chicago and leave Boulder and before she really knew me, "I could see you living in Texas." I wonder now if she weren't at least somewhat clairvoyant about the future.

On the bus ride to and from, finished 2 books:

Samantha Lan Chang's Hunger
and
Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina

Chang's Hunger resonated for me more than Tan's work. Like Tan, Chang explores the relationship between 2nd generation Chinese Americans and their immigrant parents, but in her work there seems to be less redemption, reconciliation for her characters. Whereas reading Tan's work, I felt the narratives were interesting and I was learning something about the stories and experiences of her specific characters, with Chang's work, I feel like I learned something about the universal experience of loss and love, touching in to some of my own experiences as a 2nd generation American.

Bastard out of Carolina - I read the whole book cover to cover and was knocked out by the writing, the story, the characters. Totally amazing.

I liked the feel of Saratoga Springs itself as a town. This part of NY state is called "The North Country" according to the bus schedules. I like this regional name, as it makes me think of Bob Dylan's song, "Girl from the North Country". There are a great many more bars in the town, more than Peterborough had anyway. I walked the 1.5 miles from my hotel past the empty horse racing tracks to the art colony of Yaddo and was shocked at what I saw and felt. The Yaddo gardens are the only area open to the public but from the main lawn, there is a terrific view of the main house, the original house in which the Trask family who built Yaddo lived, a greying and decaying austere old mansion towering over the grounds. The main house where apparently the administration runs the colony during much of the year. As I walked up the long road from the entrance to the grounds up to the public garden, it did not feel so different than MacDowell at first. Forest and creeks, absolute quiet, not a soul around. But upon seeing the main house, the only way I can put it is that I got a really bad vibe. That sounds totally "L.A.", but the place felt lonely, cold, and privileged in the worst most disconnected and disengaged sense. When I talked to one of the townies, a massage therapist at the Crystal Spas, later about my impressions, she said, well that's it, it's not a colony, it's a place where people go to be alone and work really hard on their art. Hmmmm.... that in combination with some of the snob and snub stories I heard from Laura Hendrie about some of the New Yorkers she encountered while at the colony sort of fill out the picture, not so much a community of working artists so much as a retreat situation.

What stays with me about MacDowell and its magic is that it was built on love - the love of Marion for her composer husband Edward. The old barn which they renovated, the first log cabin that still stands on the grounds, a gift to her beloved. Their graves on the land itself, where they lie side by side. The land a product of a dream and hope fulfilled.