March 2010/ June 2008

Maybe it was the lack
of my green binder
that has slowed me down

until now. But inspiration
was not otherwise lacking.
Maybe there's a feeling of

significance that caused me
to hesitate. Maybe there's
more than one way to hold

my breath. When rain fell
on the Usumacinta river as
I bathed in it, the feeling was

remarkable. Go to Guatemala,
go to Mexico, swim in the river,
and if you're lucky it will

rain, and if I'm lucky
I'll learn how to live
while drowning.

Valentine's Day

I thought maybe "Viento", but it seemed wrong.

I can't say your name has ever
sounded like the wind to me.
But I can say that wind has
made me wonder about closing
my eyes and imagining a different
place; about converging places and
silent places; about cold and brown
and rain in the spring. There is
one street that is where wind
blows, there are no faces, but
temperatures and most of them
are warm or cool. The wind doesn't
lie until you tell it to. It doesn't
cry until I have something to mourn.

Stereo box

I can only please one person at a time. Today I've chosen Billy Carter.

“I doubt that there exists in any other
system presented for scientific or
practical study a comparable degree of
complexity. Indeed, scientifically
considered, this complexity occasionally
takes on an almost appalling aspect.”

When the moon skims the water that sighs and shifts in its slumber

I can think of two stories relating to coyotes. One of them has been on my mind. The other is as follows: I went with my brother and my parents to Mexican Hat one summer. 2004, I think. It was a two night trip, we stayed at Burch's Travel Lodge (where, though there was no TV in our room, the free breakfast next door was impressive and featured watermelon and toast, among other things - also, the nightly rate they'd quoted us over the phone was for both rooms together, not per room), we drove up (but not down) the Moki dugway, we had Navajo Tacos, we saw Monument Valley and the Goosenecks of the San Juan and Natural Bridges National Monument (which we would at times call by other names), and we ate pizza in Blanding across the street from a doctor's office. There were other highlights. Here's one of them: we were on the road between Bluff and Mexican Hat when a coyote ran out into the road just a bit in front of us. We weren't in danger of hitting it, as far as I can remember. I didn't see it, however, because I was looking out the side window at the fabulous rock formations to our left. This is how I'm certain it was on the road from Bluff to Mexican Hat, because that's where those particular fabulous rock formations were. Nathan, shortly after, insisted that instead this was just south of Blanding. I think. The funny thing is, though I was absolutely positive that I was right about where we were when a coyote crossed our path then, I don't remember for sure any more. I have no memory of ever seeing a real coyote. Also at Burch's, the Pearson's Nut Rolls were 2 for a dollar. My mom went to buy one, only to be informed that they were 67 cents each if you only bought one. So she bought two for a dollar.

Conspiracy theories

I learned over the weekend about how a lot of things are conspiracies. Pretty much everything, in fact.

I also went through an entire bag of Ricola Lemon Mint Herb Throat Drops.

And at least once I had to stop singing as I choked up, moved almost to tears.

$200 well spent.

In loving memory

Oct 11 2003 - Jan 12 2010

If I could teach you to fly, I would

In a city of thousands
I am the first to watch
you fly. Jumps, boldness,
hesitation, your head and
beak pointing to distraction.

Vivid, surrounded, color and
shades of sky darker and
lighter than the blue of
morning. Sound tells you
it is warm for January.

If I could teach you to fly,
it would be the same. Color
before solitude, boldness before
company, distraction before
destination. And I falling.

In introduction to Tearing the Page

sometimes I believe that to be true and sometimes I don’t, you know every wise child is sad, but the fact of the matter is, it seems to me,

if we equate wisdom with disillusionment, that is, becoming free of our illusions, oftentimes that can lead to melancholy or sadness initially but it makes me happier to think that maybe there’s a deeper form of wisdom in which you initially experience melancholy and then you experience the ecstasy of disillusionment, but I don’t know about that.

Shadows

Do you ever have one of those days when you're going to a fake wake and a Wallace Stevens poem gets stuck in your head because of that, and then your roommate starts rolling a piece of newspaper and you think, "So you've had that poem stuck in your head too?"

Then you realize, probably not. But the fact that he made a flower out of rolled newspaper... Maybe.

I think winter has less to do with temperature than it does with longing. Or reaching. The same could be said of Summer, but less accurately, I think.

It's great to be a robot!

651 170 5131770 007012.

Grass and flowers, revisited

I

Yo-yos were in for a while.
I was in eighth grade. I learned
some tricks, I was pretty good.
My daydreams involved wooing
the cute girl from my earth science
class in a yo-yo showdown – old
west meets geek meets fad
meets a melted heart. I wanted
a 3-in-1 yo-yo, all-wood, forty
dollars from the company web-
site. It was the perfect yo-yo for
me, I thought. Forty dollars said
otherwise. I never bought the yo-yo,
I never wooed the girl, and I went
on to mostly forget. Perfection is
a rare thing to find, and even rare
to imagine.

II

Alcohol on a cut or scrape has
been hell to me. Fear of the
sting cuts so deeply.

III

On Memorial Day, 2005,
I went with my family to
the cemetery, looking for
stones with names I hadn’t
known before, but names
that I was told belonged
to me. We found a young
magpie, injured or sick on
the ground near a tree. It
was very cold, and my dad
caught the bird and we
took it home in a box. We
hoped to nurse it back to
health, and then to free
it. I secretly wished to
keep it as a pet. It didn’t
recover in the cage where
we kept it. We buried it
without tears showing.

Grad School Dedication

For Leslie Lynch King, Sr.,
Jimmy Cracker, and
Strawberry Clean,
with all my love.

Grass and flowers

My Praktica MTL5B Camera
is a prized, if seldom used,
possession. Perhaps I love how
constant it is. Kodak prints

remain Kodak prints, and though
my perspective may change,
the purple flower, and not the
white one, will remain in focus.

No revisionist history will bring
a kestrel's head out of its box,
no wishing can hide that a paint
can once held honey-roasted peanuts.

East German, one battery, all
manual. Even smudges on the lens
can be blamed only on me. And
regrets are dated and catalogued,

Every 3 by 5 in every album
eternal in its message: I
do not take back what I have
felt, I do not withdraw my statements.

I do load a new roll of film.

(Gordon Rees, personal communication 2009)

So Tuesday afternoon I'm working on calculations for a soil physics lab. Then I stop thinking about it all together because I've got this monster paper due Thursday by midnight, right? So, it's not exactly on my mind, if you catch my meaning.

At least, that's what I thought. Turns out: no. It was on my mind. As evidenced by the following:

Wednesday night I went to bed earlier than I maybe should have. I hadn't made a lot of progress that day on the paper I was supposed to be writing for my Pedology class. At least, I'd made very little progress in the actual writing part. That is, I still hadn't concluded the research portion of the paper, let alone started writing it. The good news from Wednesday, however, was that, after a long early-afternoon nap, I woke up to the conclusion that I'd picked the wrong topic for my paper, and that's why it wasn't coming together mentally or emotionally for me. I changed the topic a little after three that afternoon from gleization, shrink-swell, and ferrolysis to clay synthesis, shrink-swell, and ferrolysis. This was a huge comfort to me, and I became, almost instantly, a much more pleasant person. Unfortunately, there was no one else there to enjoy this dramatic change.

At some point, while I was in bed (and I honestly can't tell you when - maybe just when I'd gone to bed before I'd actually fallen asleep, maybe when I had a brief textersation at about 1 am, maybe waking up randomly during the night, maybe after my alarm had sounded in the morning but before I'd really awakened... Maybe in a dream) the thought came to me: Wait, we did all those calculations using the Q value as if it were our q value. We have to divide by the surface area of the column. That's why our saturated hydraulic conductivity (K) values didn't come close to matching what we'd calculated earlier.

It wasn't until a little later that I realized how bizarre this was. The K value disparity hadn't really bothered me at all. I hadn't been thinking about it at all. And suddenly, in a state of partial consciousness, not only did this lab randomly come to mind, but an error in my calculations that I hadn't been looking to find.

I'm not sure that makes any sense to anyone else, but I can't get over that. A day and a half later. Bam. I have to divide by surface area. Bam. When was my mind thinking about that enough to process all my calculations and come to that realization?

I haven't ever really had a fried pie. Maybe I can remedy that. Maybe not...

There's your trouble

I was going to spend most of the day working on the 10ish page paper due on Thursday that constitutes a third of my grade in one of my classes. I was going to spend most of yesterday evening on that too. Now I'm thinking maybe that's what tomorrow is for. Obviously I'm in a bad way - I dangled that preposition and I don't care.

On the bright side, I'm almost done with that paper: at least in terms of time: I'm only a couple days away from finished.

Circle of Life

I'm full of myself.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if someone else came in and wrote a blog post as me. What would they say? Would they project my own ideals and opinions or would they type what they perceive of me? And if I were to hack into someone Else's blog... what would I write?

Goodnight, dear void.

What's the point of forgetting if it's followed by dying?

I really am trying. I swear.

I once started filming a movie (with some friends) about a person who would start crossword puzzles but never finish them. Actually, I'm not sure he even started, he might have just thought about starting. I think that's how it was. But he was always certain that he could finish if he wanted to. The sequel to that movie might involve him actually trying to finish a crossword puzzle and failing. It would be devastating to him, but at the same time, it would only confirm all of his unspoken suspicions.

Also, keep your eyes open for Newsies 2: Life in Santa Fe. *Spoiler alert* It's actually about a teenage girl who becomes so obsessed with the movie Newsies that she believes that she must live out the rest of Jack's life by traveling to Santa Fe and fulfilling his dream. (Is that his name? Jack? I'll have to check that before I write/direct/produce the sequel.) But don't worry, I won't tell you here whether or not she succeeds. You'll have to wait 'til it hits the dollar theaters to find out. Or maybe it'll go straight to VHS.

Poems on death

I wrote this one year ago today. That's why I'm posting it now. I mention it here. I do plan on reading that talk again tomorrow. I think it'll be appropriate once again.

I

I want to talk about my dog -

In June, she was dying from cancer
and I went out to say goodbye to her
before I left on a trip.

We had carried her down the steps to the grass where she could lie in the shade
and we had covered her with a faded brown towel to keep the flies off –
we had tried to pick off the maggots that had already hatched from the eggs they were laying.

As I laid my hands gently on her
this is what I said to her:

How’re you doing, dog?
Are you alright?
I wish I could do something for you.

Dog, do you remember
how when I first got you,
when I called you puppy,
that you spent the night
in a brown cardboard box
and we would take you out
to hold you?

Do you remember that
when you grew a little
I would take you out
to the front yard and
play with you on the grass?

Do you remember that you
didn’t run away then?
Do you remember, dog,
that later we had to keep
you fenced in the back yard
but that you only jumped
that fence one time?

Do you remember how high
you would jump next to that
fence without pulling yourself
over?

Did you choose not to make
that leap out of love, or out
of fear, dog?

Do you remember winters and snow and you would jump, rabbit-like, through it while we watched from inside the house and laughed?

Do you remember thunder, dog?
Or have you chosen to forget
how it tormented you?

Do you remember the nights
when I sat with you and held
you to comfort you until
the storm had passed?
Do you remember how I would
talk to you in those early morning hours
and tell you secrets that I never
told anyone else?

Have you kept those secrets, dog?

Do you remember the nights when
you would jump and whine out
of fear of the thunder, and I would
close my door downstairs and
pretend that I couldn’t hear you?

Can you forgive me, Dog?

Then I spoke to her in Spanish,
telling her all the secrets that
I have never told to anyone.

I looked at my faded brown dog,
and watched her slow breath
and felt her shiver
and I said a prayer:

Let her die, God.
Let her die.


II


A month after my dog died,
I met you.

I told you about her,
and how she never
jumped over the fence
in our back yard.

I didn’t tell you that
one time, she did
make it over.

You said that maybe
God sees us jumping like
I saw my dog
and wishes we would
pull ourselves over.

I didn’t tell you that
I had been terrified that
my dog would clear that fence.


III


It’s been more than a year since
my grandmother died of cancer.

I was alone with her when a nurse
came with forms for her to fill out.

What should we do if your heart stops?
she asked.

Let me die was my
grandma’s answer.

If you stop breathing?
Let me die.

If you enter a coma?
If you lose consciousness?
If you can’t swallow your food?

Do not resuscitate.
Let me die.


IV


If I don’t dream of you at night,
it’s not because I’m not trying.