On Addiction:

Once I blog once in an uneventful, unstressful night, I blog twice. Then thrice. Who knows how many more will follow.

Here's a quotation on addiction said by my legendary professor: Bobbie Louise Hawkins:

"I think reading is an addiction. Writing is like a secondary addiction. You realize if you're going to be an addict, you might as well be your own supplier."


...and since we're already here and quoting my most quotable professor, I will slap a few more into the cyber-world.

"Women who are attracted to Narcissistic men do it to have space."

"What kind of hooker has a bum hip?"

"Republicans love celebrities - why? - well, because they want them to read the lines right."

"I'd like to suggest that solutions aren't necessarily the best thing that can happen. Putting a nail through something isn't going to fix your future."

"And flopping around is often where it's at - you flop around until you find yourself at a place you didn't expect. As DH Lawerence once said: 'My characters slog along and slog along and then they blossom like little cabbages!'"

"Go with it that you don't have a chance in hell but to change constantly."

"The ideal is like a grey cloud hovering over what actually is. And it makes 'what is' look inadequate and even though the ideal extends itself as unattainable, you continue to vote for it to show that you have standards."

"Rhetoric will not let a new thing happen."

"Pieces like this run the risk of becoming confetti."


Everyone should meet BLHawkins.

The things we come across...

While researching far and wide across the vast internet for a job or grant or fellowship or future for myself, I wonderfully stumbled upon this FREE ad on craigslist:



Free: comfortable, sturdy, but ugly couch/sofabed

Reply to: sale-490507887@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-11-26, 7:28PM MST


Yours simply for the labor of hauling it away, one very comfortable and sturdy sofa, expands to a double bed for those too-many-friends-suddenly-comatose occasions. When not extended into bed form, highly suitable for many an afternoon whiled away with books and/or audiovisual entertainment, not to mention a favored location for lazy-Sunday naps. Due almost entirely to the aforementioned comfort factor, this was one of the few furniture pieces that we decided was worth hauling across the country when we moved here from Massachusetts in 2004, despite its aesthetic shortcomings (see below) and possible alternate usage as battleship ballast.

Only hitch: according to a local expert (full disclosure: said expert is related to me by marriage) the upholstery on this couch, while admittedly robust and in generally good shape without stains or much wear, is certifiably "BUTT-ugly!" (emphasis hers) to such a degree that the camera may have suffered an electronic aneurism when a photograph was attempted with the pattern completely exposed. (I have not yet looked up the resultant error code on Canon's site, but I am assured by the aforementioned expert that "CF card full" is an arcane digital-imagery message that really means "That is such a butt-ugly couch that I refuse to sully my CCD sensors or display panel with its image.") Luckily we'd managed several other pictures by that point with the butt-ugliness only partially exposed; see attached.

In consideration of the opprobrium you will likely face when you present it to YOUR discerning housemate(s), spouse, or significant other, perhaps even while uttering something like the following perfectly understandable but in retrospect somewhat ill-chosen words:

"Look what a great couch I found for practically nothing!"

...in consideration and mitigation of that awkward moment, I say, for the paltry sum of $20 I am also willing to part with the patented Butt-Ugliness Concealment Device (BUCD, a.k.a. "slipcover") with which the couch is currently equipped, depicted in the attached images. This particular BUCD is constructed of heavy-duty chenille in a sage-green color. (The prospective purchaser with delusions of aesthetic sufficiency may be interested to know for purposes of comparison that the print visible above the couch in the attached images is of Stephen Linhart's "Gaze", http://www.stephen.com/portfolio/9.html)

Not included: the mysterious BUCD accessories visible in some pictures. These sinister objects are sometimes referred to as "throw pillows;" this confusing nomenclature persists despite the cries of horrified consternation that inevitably result if one is so incautious as to contemplate actual throwing. Their true purpose remains steadfastly unknown to this researcher.


Couch dimensions:
width: 70" at widest point (arm to arm)
depth: 36" (90" in bed-mode)
height: 30" at middle of backrest (highest point.)
weight: unmeasured but significant. Bring a friend or three.

Provenance and, ah, pet peeves: couch was previously owned by a family with dogs. We steam-cleaned it repeatedly after acquiring it, and no trace of doggy odor or hair remains apparent to our senses, but persons with allergies may wish to take this history into account. In much the same vein, full disclosure demands mention of the fact that we are possessed by two cats who regularly avail themselves of the sofa's previously-noted afternoon-nap advantages; while they are not inclined to shed more than your average indoor feline -- and while we often vacuum and occasionally launder the BUCD -- persons with especial sensitivity may not be interested in taking the chance.

Note: Butt-Ugliness Concealment Device ("slipcover") does not function with 100% efficacy when item is configured in bed-mode; some Butt-Ugliness may be apparent to the perspicacious observer and/or your snooty parent-in-law who does not consider thrift to be a virtue and was looking for a reason to sniff disapprovingly anyway. On no account will the poster be held liable for incidental damages arising from failure of the BUC Device to prevent thinly-veiled speculations as to the purchaser's design sense, color sense, sanity, intelligence, or lack of any/all of the preceding.

WinterPark Thanksgiving

Winter Park Mountainline


Snowboarding Cocoa stop


Jeanie and Gans-look-alike friend Melissa


Our goodbye note to Nancy and Bill... a thank you even though we didn't get Banana Bread


Cruisin' Town


Empire, CO.





Christoph and Buddy



This was in the men's room at our Burger joint. We lived by this motto all weekend. Board games, beer and eating!

A reflection off the deck doors of our burger joint...


This is Wilbur... he chewed off all his feathers after a nervous breakdown. Though cold, he seemed happy enough.

Ophirs!

Yes, we went 0-17 for the season in frisbee. I think we doomed ourselves when we changed our team name nearly weekly. For the tournament we named ourselves the Ophirs to stand for Oh-and-fifteen on the season. We condemned ourselves!

But it was fun all along anyhow. Love you pumpkins afternoon delight random strangers!

It can be a bit maddening, having an irrational passion for something.

I think in terms of literary devices. Speak to strangers with subtle allusions & abstract references. Listen with rhetorical critique & I love in spontaneous snippets.

I can't ride my bike by a passing wind without mentally scrawling a haiku. I thought about good words to use in sestinas all day. I sometimes convince myself the entire world and everyone in it is living the epic poem; each action, a line in the verse of day.

Lately, it has been elegiac glasses fused to my visage; I'm not sure how to remove them. I can't convince myself that it's best for me to try.

It's a blurry focus to live in - a nebulous cloud of questions, constantly seeking epiphanies and explanations.

Now I know why Nietzsche went mad.

Better to have lived and died than to never have been born at all.

I am glad you were born - despite the rifts we've come across over the past four years.
H.B. frog.

Reminders against worrying

Do not round down.

Rewrite, edit, pare down.

Hug.

Don't grind your teeth over it.

Sing outloud on bike but watch for stop signs.

Hug, again.

Hang out with someone who makes you productive but often distracts and helps procrastinate.

Never be late; be just enough on time.

Kerouac Chorus Response # 17

Keep a coffin nearby,
collect every tear
in it.

Then, I guess, first
you should line your
coffin
w/saran wrap

so as not to spill
or allow seepage

A coffin doesn't kill -
it collects.

Just as a gun doesn't murder -
it's the messenger.

For those of you who know me...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/education/edlife/naropa.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

I go to Naropa. I study poetry in a Buddhist setting. I am a florist.

Last semester I took a course in Ikebana: the way of Japanese flower arrangement. I was reading through an old notebook and found a few things that re-inspired me:

"Why don't you live that question? Let it work on you in life and let the answer bloom."

in acknowledgement of shifting, impermanence: "The pain is then part of the happiness."

"The crescent moon is still a full moon." Even if it's just a glimpse, it is still a full moment.

Live your questions - answers are eternally evolving. Everything is transient. Appreciate a moment for what it is.

Gregory Corso:

"You can't tell anyone anything they don't already know - people's heads are just dark and you gotta light em up. In a sense, we were illuminators!"

Night off.

What's a night off?

For me, it generally occurs between 6:30pm and 11:00pm. It is a time when nothing must occur.

Tonight was a night off for me. We (meaning George and I) sat at the kitchen table and wrote and googled and giggled and drank wine, ate brie, probably annoyed people around us, but we just were. Now, this may sound hippie, but we literally were just BEING what we ARE. We just were.

And it felt good - to have a night like this. I felt like I haven't had it in a while. I feel like this is what I am looking forward to for Thanksgiving: a time to just BE. I'm most excited that we'll have video cameras to DOCUMENT it!

Thank you for the Goulash, George. The garbanzo beans went so well with the cologen, paprika and bay leaves.

unknown

How your words winnow in my head
I hate
that I cannot display the
ideas
of why you make me elate
why space
can make me smirk -
the edges between city skyline buildings
straight.

Can't there be more than one beauty
catches eye
I can't synopsize why he, why me
and think only we
'what's the bug with wood of a relationship'
I deposit this thought in the
comment box
that he never checks

what prompts
the line breaks?
What's the sp ace
mean?
Is it different in font or form on a subway car -
Question lapse like the moon eclipse
dawn of a morning star
sometimes cannot be seen because of
taller trees or
hover clouds

Either way, it's there, behind and
it's above you, too
and we are both below

tucked in the cellar bed

don't eat the quiche

"Why did we need to know about that?"

Why? Because history teaches us things. We can listen and be open to others' experiences and learn from them as if we had experienced it for ourselves.

Don't eat the quiche at The Cup. Do not eat the chicken at the Hungry Toad. Do not microwave Chef Boyardee with the cap on. Do not climb armoires.



* * * I wish I had know about Ettore Boiardi earlier; I would have written my Italian-Americans final paper on him. Damn.

Wu Wei

I watched her roll along slowly, not more than 5 feet in front of me. She was on her cell phone. Something must've gotten caught cause her front tire halted to a stop and her back tire flipped over her like a headbang. She crumpled and curled next to the handlebars on the curve at Goss and astonishingly enough stayed on her cell phone the entire time. She whimpered "Fuck fuck fuck, are you still there? I'll have to call you back, fuck" and hung up and held her head with her right hand. I asked if she was okay, if she needed anything and I think she just needed a second to catch reality - to realize what just happened. She hunched over herself silent and finally looked up and said "I'm fine - fine. Don't worry" but I wanted to tell her that, not to worry. It would probably be a moment that would fix her in the end as it had Jeanie. Jeanie bumped her knee in a faultless bike tip months before and subsequently realized Boulder was not for her.

Was it the accident that illuminated this fact for her? No - it was the string of events that followed. But her knee is better and she is better and none of us did anything to help her realize it.

Nothing was done and everything changed.

I tricked the Myspace Sponsored Links!

'Sponsored Links'

Wholesale Used Forklifts
Forklift City - Home to Good Values All Makes & Models Buy Sell Trade
www.forkliftcity.netFind Forklift

Directory of Mfrs of Forklifts Find Products, Services & Resources
www.business.comDoosan Forklifts

New Name Of Daewoo Doosan Infracore Reliable Partner, Quality Product
www.doosanlift.comForklift

Don't Bother Looking Anymore. We Have Your Part In Stock.
www.formsite.com/EZPartFinder



(I like the last one the best...DON'T BOTHER LOOKING ANYMORE! ... sounds like an infomercial for forklifts)

Shifted. Now I notice different things.

I propped all my blankets and pillows (2 and 2, respectively) up against the north wall of my bedroom. This was to gain propper alignment for long night ahead of reading Desolation Angels.

I read 8 pages and remembered "George!" Three telephone conversations later he was over at my house sitting diagonally from me on the velour orange couch. In the background Pete and his Grateful Grass Band were practicing "Scarlet Begonias" "Eyes of the World" and "Bird Song" for their weekend performances.

George and I decided to read to one another. We read Deb Olin Unferth and David Eggers' short stories. Deb likes tongue twisters, double negatives, insanity and confusion. David Eggers likes playing on the element of surprise and pretending animals can articulate their thoughts, and that they have thoughts - intricate ones. We read about six stories each. My favorite story was the one about the spice rack and how the owners of the spice rack were such capitalists.

I decided to sleep with my head where my feet usually are and my feet where my head usually is tonight. I have been having very vivid, exciting dreams (especially in between snoozes) and I want to see where this position will take me. I had really funky dreams in my sister's boyfriend's bed last week. That sounds scandalous but she was between us. Not one of us snores.

what do you want to be?

I want to be a proselytizer for poetry. Poetry meaning intensity of expression, meaning rhythm, beauty, creation. I do not mean to say that everyone should WRITE poems, but everyone should LIVE poetry. Live through expression, a pulsing feeling constantly reeling through the brain, moving us. What is the world without splendor and conveying it?

I am confused by the caustic reaction the word POETRY receives. Why?

We need a redefinition.

The Average Length of a Dream

I once asked her what takes her so long in the shower. I imagined her preening over each and every dread, slowly soaping and lathering to the root each ophidian extension, then the gradual ritualistic rinse.

“I was reading Heidi’s shampoo bottle. There was a trivia question on the back. What is the average length of a dream, it said.” Without even giving me a second to consider an answer, she continued: “The answer was on the Conditioner bottle: 3 seconds. Do you think that’s cause of people like me – the ones who never dream?”

She never gave anyone any time to reply to her questions. Nearly every question she ever asked was rhetorical. She didn’t call upon others to figure things out for her; she’d answer them herself or live with not knowing. She hated the movie “Everything is Illuminated” but loved the book.

It didn’t surprise me that she doesn’t dream. I asked her if she would sit in front of me on the couch, let me resurrect all my thoughts and impressions of her as she read through her letters from friends back in New Paltz. She said, “Whatever” with a whimsical intonation.

The frailer hair snaps in the sun. Breaks sewn together with beige thread and hidden by glass beads and beeswax goo. Everytime the top frizzes, she envelops it with oversized knitted purple hat.
Cleaning dishes, she smiles and her eyes widen like an owl on watch. She gets mad that we never notice her notes, attached to the hanging fruit bowl above the sink.
Her movements are slow and controlled – deliberate, every step.
Thin face, crisp apple shaped, sunk under the eyes and bruised colored (maybe lack of meat? She needs protein.) Pale with an oriental touch; maybe just her demeanor.

She eats kale, conji, rice pilaf and squash, sometimes Earth Balance butter, on a glutton-free waffle just to have a palette. Her actual palette (paint and texture glue) has mounds of one-toned hues as if she never mixed a tube in her life. The kind who keeps peas from her potatoes on her dinner plate. Once thought the cleaning juice from mopping the kitchen tiles caused her violent weekend sickness, dry-heaving and tired on the orange velour sofa, yet still lighting up her oney twice an hour.

Keeps her weed in an artichoke jar in the drawer below the fish tank. Says “Call me!” instead of “yes” for affirmation. She’ll hug you when she sees you if she loves you. But selective as she is, she lets an old enemy cuddle up sometimes on a lonely Saturday night. I bet her eyebrows look like art from close up; thin curves of eyelash hair, contradicting dreads. I image them to be as the punk cabaret chick from the Dresden Dolls: all scrawl and secrecy behind.

She is simple and does not live her life in comparison with others. She is not more or less of anything than any of us, just who she is and content. Content in a not stressed sort of way.

She’s reading up on Narcissism and narcolepsy lately. Wonder if she flips through the encyclopedias and points and masters, slowly over the years.

Getting into Kirtan and crock pots, getting out of afghan-over-the-legs in a rocking chair pulp novels and into lost in the back of the bookstore obscures.

A gardener, a hummer, an upright bike rider, a half way up the mountain stroller, a grandma jogger, a Blanding Utah ukulele playing folk singer, kiwi masseuse who hates getting massages. She believes in Bikhram. She’s pierced in places mother would rather not know about. She’s cold, always cold – her hands, feet, neck… any appendage open to air holds an epidermal chill so she keeps a stock of scarves, gloves, socks and sweaters in her handmade satchel with a variety of buttons and patterns. Hates to drive but doesn’t mind stick shift Datsuns spotted with rust.

Tiny, holy body, clad in organic purple, browns and tans. She calls her rims “mauve, not purple, mauve” and only wears them later at night under the dull ghost lamp that sporadically clicks and shuts off. Brings home fresh basil and raspberries. Bakes apple crisp with sugared pecans and pot chocolate brownies. Cooks anything tempe. She enjoys the over-kill on chocolate in New York Super Fudge, hates the white planks. Her cat, Isis, likes ice cream just as much as comfort food on a weekday. Isis is 7, overweight with a tumor in her tail and never been to the vet. She believes in Reiki and a mental capacity to heal and implements this on her cat. She hates being touched. Believes in a previous life she was speared diagonally through her chest and the pain stays at the exit point. Says she was the ice man. Now she’s so sensitive to it, hates touch all over.

Her small rock waterfall trickles through the tympanum hallways of the house, nag champa in a similar fashion, stuck in corners of the kitchen and living room.
Says she’s a yoga instructor and I’ve seen her matt and pilates ball but never seen her stretch once or pose. Recently quit being a vegetarian after 13 years. Ate a junk burger and puked it up the next morning. Reverted back to conji and coffee, water and squash bean burritos.

Hangs her laundry on a line in the basement instead of using the ‘heat machine’, as she called it once when speaking of her scare that Isis might get caught in it while it is on. Hates winter, snow and ice. Loves tamales and men in overalls. She’s in love with a married man who used to be a florist, now a drummer in a reggae band. He lives in New York City and she hates cities. Hates any place permanent. Wants to move back to New Zealand, chant all day, sleep in late and stretch, she says.

for kyle, who will never read this

It's as if I am searching for something I’d hidden from myself: closet doors sprawled, desk drawers gawking, mocking my loss.

You wrote a letter to me in 2001, in your smudged black pen – barely legible handwriting. It isn’t about what it said, it’s about what it meant. You sealed it in a Ziplock bag and left it at the corner of Nutmeg and Caraway. It was raining and you called my house phone. My mother answered and you asked for me. She reluctantly passed the phone. It was dinner time; she hated callers during supper.

All you said was “Look under the peach tree in Sara Messina’s lawn.”

I galloped down the block. I read the letter. Like I said, I have forgotten its contents but I was speaking to Jeannie tonight about you and it popped into my head.

I stored everything we’d ever exchanged in that Ziplock bag. Pictures drawn, maps for the ideal future, poems with titles spelt incorrectly. Everything you ever did was charming to me. You said “We’re super cats! This is us:” and drew a picture of two white cats with bright blue eyes. You cut out cardboard into a small rectangle and wrote The Emotion Card on it. You wanted me to be more open with my emotions.

It is years later now. I could call you, but I like to live in the memory better. If I called and spoke to you, I wouldn’t know what to say. I’d want to get nostalgic and talk about Horatio the Peacock or the night we ran out of gas in the village and slept on the dock of the polluted lake. Even when I go home sometimes, we get together and go to the rocks. We used to count fish jumping in the lake off those rocks; you always hated reminiscing.

Rummaging through my desk drawers, used more for storage than normal desk drawer purposes, all I found was an old broken cell phone (a little juice left in it), a lock that goes to a key I’ve lost, and a blue ceramic hippo you first gave me when I moved to Brooklyn. You told me it had no particular sentimental value, just that you thought I’d like it. I did.

I put it on top of my desk and gave up on searching for the Ziplock bag. Maybe I’ll find it in my parent’s house this upcoming Christmas, but I’m wondering if I should continue on with this. I’ll just call you and receive a vacant response.

Other things I found while not finding you:

Two dollar bills
A slice of cardboard with my first impressions of Denver written on it
Co90
Spokes drafts
Lysistratosfear
Sorencified
Tuja and zintane
Orange OM bracelet from India
Raspberry beret

paralipsis

You spot him at a quaint and vacant library in Brooklyn. His lips pull in a sip of hot java. His lips murmur a stint of insignificant syntax. All you can think of: brinks of his mouth, a trapdoor to an unknown abyss.

You find his lips submit to a fault of always wanting Valium to dull angst of living in scrip; this paradoxical loop has spun him on many occasions. Says his lips panic at any thought of swallowing, for this act holds a part in our cyclical transit of victuals into mouth and out bottom – a swallow starts it.

You cannot stop his words. His lips pour out things no man can claim. His lips imprison no words but pluck fastidiously from his mind a particular way to say things. His words show a notion that almost drops but stops abruptly in an instant. Fat throbs of flow thrust upon our tympanums, as a hand would hit a drum. Words you typically wouldn’t stop to touch. Usually, you’d vanish as quickly as a lightning blink, but absconding from this is not an option. Launch of his words is so vigorous you cannot stay afloat. You drown in his paralipsis. You swallow all sounds and cannot slip away. It is in air and his wits put it out for all to draw in. Your mind cannot stop thinking of his lips. His lips, in your hourly thoughts, will not stop splitting but will not abandon you. Clock ticks. Hours pass.

Curtains of hair hang down on his lips as if not touching is not an option.
No knowing in not touching. You go out on a limb and put a hand toward him.

You can physically climb around boundary rims of his smirk – you think of following all topics of his cracks in and out, up and down. You do not touch, not so soon. Within, you skim his mouth with a touch so soft, if it wasn’t imaginary, still not a solitary flinch from him. His hands: rough but subtly loving. Mountains of rock affix palm to thumb and four additional digits. Both hands grasp.

“Both hands, now apply both hands to this instant. That’s it – now nothing is missing.” You submit & twist with him, splicing your body into his. Still, you think it slightly vacant as if a bit is missing. A film of cryptic sawdust forms down along his nails. His hand follows along a nook in your grin.

“Who sold this tour to us?” you say to him. “Why don’t you ask what kind of tour is going to follow this?” No solution from his lips. What is missing in your mind is a functional plan out of his sultry, pulpy skin. His lips.



Clammy hands touch his lips. You, afraid of his obscurity, flinch at his kiss.

What had initially drawn your focus to him was this: his inconspicuous lips, in a caught-off-guard-kiss kind of way. But his lips do not kiss. His lips brush up against, committing an artful skim against your lips without any prior approval. No kiss actually occurs in knowing a man such as him – just mixing. His lips spark in a distracting scoop-you-up sort of glint. You think about such lust.

A sharp sting of an abrupt touch on your sun-burnt back prompts a thought of what his lips last said to you: “Narcotic consumption will not abolish what haunts my mind. I am only soporifically functioning. It is you. My drug-fix is you. You are my anti-narcotic. Too bad it will not last. With you so far away I can’t…” At that, a click. And you couldn’t catch wind of any additional words. A finish you did not think would occur.

His lips now inaudibly blurry: just a sound of past, brimming with disturbing thoughts of addiction. Addiction to pills (or a habit of swallowing thoughts as if pills) and his fixation with constant withdrawal…

You cannot think of what is missing from him.
What is missing from his lips?
What addiction afflicts him?
Possibly, it is his compulsion to avoid. Obligatory tasks daunt him. Twisting his way out by simplifying what his lips swallow but also what his lips spout out. Subtracting a symbol and substituting with synonymous words is his lip-tripping fix. No difficulty with S’s; his lisp is not with consonants. It occurs within a contrasting sound-domain: a yawning configuration of our vocal tract forms this sound. It is fifth. “Just avoid it” is his solution.

Avoid.

Now conscious of it, you can fathom what splits into him: a void in his lips.