monkey brain story again it’s an honor

to smash and eat medieval plums from

Asia minor what to speak of at dinner

close your eyes and see visions – you just

have to see them sometimes delight in inhumane

eating perverse adherence to cultural norms

stop telling me the story explain to your

eight year old sister your twenty four year old

coworker babyboomer meltdown

howabout swallow chew watery reproduction

quit falling in love with me carve

an inverted chest to even deeper concaves make

snide pregnant comments I’m female

on purpose I like the dog don’t like

earthy assertions isn’t it brighter in here?

It’s great I said it was great

If you eat human flesh you will be a human. I
hesitated to translate this, sensed tradition.
If, in the process of those standards, exploring hitherto
uncharted personal growth, caught in the
middle, approximately, or early the next morning, well,
I was living with every single human, I
was intimidated by my master, by a
series of renamed calamities. "Food," he replied.
"You people are chicken." We became apathetic.

My mid and lower back aches--it's a combination of the good kind of soreness from going back to yoga after not practicing during my trip, but it's also the sensitive, feverish kind of ache that starts in the skin (not just the muscle) and moves all the way to my bones. I'm either getting sick or this is just menstrual. My PMS and MS "symptoms" are varied and unexpected. When I was in high school I could anticipate things by a definite ache in my hips and lower back (this one mostly in the bones, not the muscles and skin) as well as a cliched craving for chocolate, but now it's much more complicated. In short, it's difficult to know which aches and sensitivities to connect to shifts in hormones, and which don't.

Yesterday evening the water from the tap tasted and smelled moldy.

I'm still congested, mostly on the right side of my sinuses.

This morning we went for a walk around Batiquitos lagoon--it actually rained (it's still raining now!) Rain does sharpen the smells of plants--so the eucalyptus and decaying goldenrod were very strong. A cloudy SoCal sky is unusual--they sky above Batiquitos was filled with high clouds, some from the smoke, and some from the rain. It was both clear and cloudy. It had the sharp contrasts of a desert sky, but with clouds.

I've been sneezing all day. We had lunch in Oceanside. The smoke is still noticeable there, and a few times I smelled it and felt my lungs bunching up. My pressed Cuban sandwich with roast pork and cured ham (and pickles and swiss cheese) was perfect. Not too salty.

For dinner, I roasted a chicken with potatoes, parsnips, onions, and lemons. It started smelling good immediately--a little bit sweet--maybe a combination of the parsnips, onions, and lemons as they caramelized.

I want to change my living space. Rearrange objects.

Since Tuesday, allergies, specifically a stuffy nose, sneezing, tightness in my chest--familiar feelings I associate with DC fall and spring, and also heating. The Santa Annas are almost gone, but I'm still waking up with dry mouth and lungs, again a feeling I associate with dry DC heating, the kind that rats scurry out of. I was going to write "crawl," but I've never seen a rat crawl.

My joints feel like someone poured concrete into them and so my femurs and shoulders are set at odd angles. My left hamstring hurts, and I'm sitting lopsided, leaning to the left.

There was a marine layer this morning, and it's cool. Some of the ash has settled. I could smell smoke on Carlsbad Avenue when I rode home from yoga this morning at 10, but only briefly. I can't smell it here at the apt. on Acacia avenue, where there is almost always a sea breeze.

It was hard to get warm during yoga because we were doing a restorative, gentle practice. But I have trouble moving into restorative poses when I'm cold and feel like my hip sockets are frozen. Several people mentioned that they'd been unable to do much of anything this week except eat and watch TV, but that at the end of each day they were exhausted. I've felt the same way. Being uptight is exhausting. I know that it's just my body naturally contracting and protecting itself, getting ready to run if it needs to.

When I pulled the clothes out of the washing machine, they seemed overly saturated. Too heavy.

Lester is green and a bird; I am a woman and not green though I like to wear green; once I think someone told me that “blondes look good in green.” perhaps it was the 7^th grade teacher but I was not in 7^th grade at the time. Is it true that blondes look good in green? Lately I’ve been wearing more purple, a color I associate with hippie poet peoples; please don’t come in the room during this exercise, I cannot write with someone looking over my shoulder because I always feel like I should not be writing and should instead be working, making money I mean, because writing is working, a speaker is working and newspaper print gets all over my fingers.

Freewriting

Well, go where? We got rid of a box without meaning to but there was nothing left in the box for it to matter. The carpet is terrible and covers a floor that is probably worse. Here we go to the land of parrots and millet, sentimentalizing animals; probably animal otherness is gendered. No I mean that feelings about the relative otherness of animals is gendered. You turn of the light in the room a lot when I am still in here; we often forget where we are and where the other is, even in our case where the other that is each other is so intimate--that we don’t have to relate to similarity, or that what is similar has nothing to do with relating or not relating.

My hands are falling off. I am dyslexic. Grading on the computer does not work for me.

And also, please know, this blog is not about how I'm feeling.

Say the thing you think the other you
doesn't want you to say You'd
say it if you were preceptive
and paying attention Buildings don't
usually move People move multitask
insurance goes up
After you read this poem you will
say the thing you think the other you
doesn't want you to say and you'll
listen to your reaction You'll see it.
I'm imagining I know how you think feel how
you might react if I touch you here and here
or there or here, again but harder and
closer to your shoulder Imagine you
touch the other you at specific moments
in specific places You crash
and the insurance goes up

My Italian Poem

My Italian poem won't be very good, but I will write it anyway.

Will you mention the Botticelli news?

You can say I don't identify with what I identify with, but you would not be correct about your saying.

Going to the grocery store to buy salty yogurt drink and dates to break the day's fast, a grocery store at the top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle on a Thursday afternoon, nearly impossible to describe precisely as I am in a kind of desert now. A likely place for dates. To go from desert to jungle I will need a lot of water, millennia, and continental shifts. Also, I will need money and time off.

I can imagine an oasis but not with much detail: water, a spring, a wadi and some date trees, an unruly camel who breaks away from a caravan to chase me out of the oasis. I look back and see the camel's neck stretching out. It bites me on the shoulder, leaving a camel-bite shaped blue and purple bruise which is now yellow and brown.

So I'm back in the desert imagining airplanes. One comes but does not land. Instead, women and men dressed in purple robes parachute out of the plan and run towards the oasis. The ill-humored camel at the threshold bites a few and I want to return to the oasis to find them so that we may sit under date palms with our feet in the wadi and compare camel-bite bruises.

It rains and the wadi floods and I paddle down it in a canoe, listening to operas on a waterproof gramophone. On the way to the ocean I pick up several women and men dressed in purple robes. One woman also has a camel bite and we talk about what that's like. The initial shock, how we didn't know camels could run so fast or bite so hard.

Because there are no stars it is night and there is no rain; we've reached the ocean and all the other women and men are gone except for the other woman with the camel bite. We won't make it across the ocean and we don't know where the nearest jungle is. We throw the gramophone overboard and stay close to shore. A reef forms around the gramophone, so we assume we are close to the equator and close to a jungle.

I put my right hand in the water and am stung by a jellyfish. My hand swells to two-and-a-half times its size and I weep and weep. My companion says "hush hush." The water is warm but where is the jungle?

Ea shows up and the water boils. Or maybe Tiamat comes--I'd rather a goddess than a god in this story, but she's usually watery and depersonalized, or else she's a bloated dragon, and anyway, one of her grandchildren stood upon her hinder parts, smashed her head in with a club, cut open her veins, and then had the north wind carry away her blood to secret places. So Tiamat can't come and I don't trust her children, much, except for Ea with his love of beer and penchant for incestuous affairs. Perhaps we should stop telling each other about ourselves.

First time goes and then our sense of it. Landscapes shift but look the same, transient scapes and disappearances. An impossible unduality not in but is, where burial and banishment are a knack for death, entertainment, and storytelling--I kept throwing the beetle away from my bag. Unless we are here for some kind of visionary experience, prefabricated cities will appear. There is no border or gate to guard, no bridge, no leaving to follow the voice of your lover, no never coming home.

First doubt comes and then our sense of it. An inability to bow before kings, the ability to lead armies and argue over how to rank elements of which we are made. An arbitrary request. "Get thee out of it," we might say. We might plead for clemency; wish to avoid being cast anywhere. Speak of me and I will know you are speaking of me, the sense of self before framework. The story is this: We went up then down. Or else we just went.

Look to time alone to be alone
so that we can be
alone and not have to tell
you about it or
withhold information.

If we attract what we're thinking about then we'd have to think clearly: "I'd like to be friends with the tall woman who can stand on her hands."

I now understand why abrupt departures in the midst of conversation are detrimental to conversation.

~

Surely my mother did not sell Tupperwear.

~

Your friends are dying. Don't you care?

Thanks for bringing that up, asshole.

We are like angels, kind of. But we die. And eat. Also, we sometimes marry and have children. Perhaps you imagine us as resentful older sisters and brothers. Perhaps we are angry for legitimate reasons—it’s important to imagine a time when we were all working together cooperatively to churn the cosmic ocean and produce the Elixir of Immortality, I suppose. Or else we can concentrate on the remote possibility of being reborn as a saint.

having had it several times the sunheat on my
right shoulder and forearm being designed
desensitized grilled there’s a courtyard and parrots in the design district
wrought iron natural oddities of nature marketing find something
to tie the bike to to sit and eat in frontlong garden shade
and doorknobs to go

~

lizards not bats no adults
private school students and
people going north

~

swooning—no going to the UN but
never believed anything could be saved
love is still a good idea “God willing
you will find a wife” g-d willing in English
smile officers do and strip club bouncers do
nearly no one going is

~

polluted lagoons are pretty egrets don’t avoid them

~

stuckout limb complicated telephone poll series cut it off
what can I do / why go home in my body are biles—yours, too
track by the track and difficult fences self in everyone

~

“the new wheels are about an 18th of an inch
too long
and the little
snappy rings don’t work “I don’t really need the top hats

~

something is slow no possibility to assess what the data something about
inbetween and among that doesn’t account
there’s backbend eat review fix file and fillout especially
one says to one we are negative too often and houseboats farms lofts groves

~

I lack content.

What about point of view in Moby Dick.

I cannot print labels correctly.

People come through the weapons testing zone.

My body adjusts it does and must and it is not a blessing. Everything that happens is not a blessing.

I wanted to learn about food and rituals associated with eating. They knew about these things so I spoke with them.

~

Weird and normal are tiring. Someone is cooking rice. The desk chair at the yoga center is rigid and uncomfortable. “It takes spiritual discipline to get up at 3 in the morning,” he says, “I know.” Lean in. I want to be obvious: Warhol. Desensitization. The fact that I will never go to Oman again and I’ve never been. I miss the fear of being attacked by people I love. Searching for shared context but we blow it. A runner passes me running. Says, “are we there yet?”

~

You will die but not before we see you naked.

~

town squares recent hauntings the imperial valley is looking forward to a temperature of a hundred and one one day the damn blew up again we blew it up and we want you and them to come to us

~

it’s the getting out of the house that helped
not the Wal-Mart I mean it wasn’t that specific
it was the getting away from abuse that helped
not the things I say I like my neighbors but have nothing
to say to them

~

flip flops in the jungle comfortable anywhere but no good for leeches it rained and the river was brown and there was mud in the river and on the road the road was mud and the river went over the road we walked or drove a white pickup truck it was fun the main character had so much fun and was so happy she looked for rocks with her father it was a family moment and she rubbed mud all over her body and stood in the sun until it was gray at that time the sun came out

~

don’t want to visit because

~

militated improvident trips to the grocery store tetchy car trips a charry attempt to invite a new friend to dinner alone in the mountains under roofs sough with rain and so on rain as if it were linked together in a series an order of things it’s a good idea to have your characters talk to other people

~

can’t imagine anything except jumping into a pool of edible packing peanuts or
rectangular styrofoam chunks in shakes of grey and blue

~

When I can’t write I think of chickens. I think, “I can’t imagine not sharing my life with this machine.” I can’t write about autumn. My cuticles are dry. They are not sexy. Are they sexy?

~

In Haifa I ate many dates and persimmons and various sorts of cheese. Yesterday I bought some dates and will eat one each day until there are no more of them. I think a lot about eating dates in Oman. It’s Ramadan and my friends are breaking fast with dates. I wore a shirt today that is cut too low for teaching. I remember the names of the tragic students first. We visited the museum and saw all the taxedermied animals.

~

organized wife dinner party carpet cleaner car seat hardwood car shower brunch with friends phone calls money Persian carpet dusting

~

try to get us off the street during the end of the world
off it people are exchanging bodies on purpose
there are people saving other people and exchanging bodies
there’s a brief attempt at reggae music people must find
a way to do things or all will be lost things actions
movement glue all of it in the meantime create
sustainable industries and products other than soap and coffee
the heart decipher futuristic pictographs that are more complex
than pictographs the fast food is appealing as long as it is abstract
“This is concrete,” I say, holding up a magenta dry-erase marker.
“If I threw it at you, you could catch it.”

~

The heat is off in a gorgeous loft in Istanbul and we are there together.

~

Then, we walked through the wedding party in our bathing suits.

~

after practicing asceticism we practiced asceticism made verse looked at the moon and the stars and the dirt we did not ignore water but we looked at other things first

~

I don't know what
want to drink
eat dinner. Please
tell me what to do
--be a better
lazy feminist.
The kitchen is
all wrong. Can hear
your watch ticking two
blocks away, smell
the gas from the stove.

~

Obviously you prefer
your friends to be
self absorbed.

~

Do you remember
when that car hit
you in Beijing?
A huge gash on
your achillies?
It's very sexy.

~

Did you write that at the pizza place?

~

Other poets have written
about this. I'm reading
them. Obviously.

~

He said, "I like the word continuum."

~

Not on a subtle
plane today, not
with extraordinary
powers, not fully
mature or invoked.

Various creepers.
Imobile things.

Besmeared with

~

Chick Corea. Chick's Natural Roasted Chicken. It was funny.

~

Fragile. How
Sadness is only lonliness with
or without others.

Grey-blue. Trite, I know.

That kid again, in his
plastic toy car.

On the train from Shanghai
to Huang Shan that man
sat up all night, smoking.

We took his bunk,
slept heads to feet,
flipped like fish,
tried to speak French
in the morning but
couldn't, so we went
back to Chinese.

I'm cold and nauseous.
Mark reminds me he
was ill our first night here.

~

Stinky the Cat leads
a somewhat lonely, vocal
life outdoors. Unlike Cage,
he's not happy about
his feelings. Contract,
release, etc, then
complain about being
pushed around. Wetland
from dam break, agricultural
run-off. Something to be saved,
to walk while keeping arms
perfectly straight.

Anthropomorhic strippers
on a dance floor dance across
the stage, shedding metalic parts.
Maybe they lurch. Spontineity
as animal is a masculine thing
to say, I think, but mostly
I'm angry at my failed attempts
to be a suburban female flaneur.

~

The birds fly under the awning,
over our heads. We like it.

~

He said: "Where I come from, people aren't so concerned about age difference," and then he began to talk about the path to healing. "I'm a healer," he said. "I heal people with my hands." We were in a parking lot near a bank and a takeout Chinese resturant.

~

No, I haven't read Raymond Roussel's Impressions of Africa.

~

Neither is.

~

A lesson in impersonality. My lesson in impersonality. I hate adagios. Also, a permanent desk slouch.

~

A tutu is never a trend.

Ok, I promised Kevin R. Hollo that I'd write something about my "early experiences in the acquisition of any sort of dance knowledge." And I will write you, Kevin, separately, but since this is connected to my thinking on gestural memory, I thought I'd try and start here.

I have no memory of the first time I danced, or moved in a way that might be considered dancing. I don't even remember my first ballet class. Oh, wait, I'm lying. I don't remember ballet, but I remember taking some kind of creative movement class in the upstairs of a fabulous old building on Main Street, in Sedgwick, Maine--one right on the Benjamin river. One part of a dance involved cradling our arms and making a movement that was like rocking a baby to sleep. Maybe I was six, or seven? I don't think there was any music--we sang or chanted some kind of a poem/song that went with our movements.

I probably remember the "rocking the baby" movement because it's one I would have already known in some form.

I don't think the class lasted more than a few weeks one summer. Our teacher was a slightly plump, "earthy" looking woman in her 30s or 40s--though who knows how old she was, really. She was older than me and seemed motherly. My own mother was in her early 30s at the time, so this woman could have been the same age as my mom.

What I loved most about the class was the dance space. Every town on the Blue Hill peninsula has an old town hall, usually with a large meeting/dance hall and a stage. The room we danced in was like that. Maybe it was an old town hall. Old wood floors: slippery, dusty, full of splinters (but good for turns), light and ocean air coming in through the windows. Exposed beams in the ceiling.

I just remembered this now. Before I was going to talk about music. I have very very early memories of singing and being sung to. Mom singing lullabys or asking me to sing, Dad singing and playing guitar. One day I may coax my father to either write his songs down, or do a low tech recording. There are a few recordings of me when I'm five or so singing--sometimes I'm singing a song I actually learned, but often I'm just making stuff up, or telling a story about what I did last week, etc. As I got a bit older, singing was something I'd do while walking, a way of processing information.

As a dancer, my musical phrasing and use of space is certainly what I'm best at. I'm not flexible, and wasn't even when I was younger. So, my early knowledge of dance then, would be based in two things--sound and space. The whole idea that dancing can be social, something you do with another person, came much later.

Of course, I danced with my Dad while standing on his feet--this has to be a common little girl experience.

This is a cheap poem about being a man in the woods. Suddenly, I experience a very deep epiphany. Or else, this is a poem about being a woman in the woods, alone, thinking about men. Or else I'm feeling my innate, womanly connection to nature, especially the earth and the moon. This poem is terrible. It is a tired poem. In Carlsbad, everyone says "namaste" to the teacher after class. In Washington, DC, only a few people mumble it, very privately. Actually, there are people in Washington, DC who say "namaste," but I didn't practice with them. A woman in Whole Foods once greeted me by saying "namaste!" I was smelling tomatoes at the time, and looked at her with a dazed expression. She pointed to my yoga bag. I smiled and nodded my head stupidly. I don't feel blessed by my womanly connection to nature, nor by my manly ephiphanies in the woods. I don't believe in "blessed," but I believe in other things. There are probably people in Carlsbad who do not say "namaste after class." No one has said it to me on the street though on the whole people are eager to greet and engage in small talk. It's important, I suppose, to accept that some thing are true and real. I don't want to be true and real, but I belive in other things that might be. The sunset is beautiful, obviously. I imagine watching myself eat a fish taco in my large sunglasses, the wind blowing my hair into the salsa, the blue of the water and the blue of the sky looking clear and fake.

More thoughts on memory, body, etc. Jessica asked about:

"Is that true? What about investigations into Alzheimers? Or--the loss of normal memory? Also into how one learns--that's research into memory."

There's certainly been work done on different ways of learning.... It might have to do with the way the research is classified--"gestural" or "bodily" are terms most frequently used with PTSD. Surprise.

And her idea that:

"memory is arche-writing. arche-writing is violent. violence is traumatic. thus all memory is traumatic."

Yes. Violence and pain play an important role in subject formation (I'm more up on my psychoanalytic theory than Derrida). Actually, I find it helpful to go back to Freud when thinking about actual bodies and how they might connect to language and subjects. He talks a lot about how physical pain helps us become aware, literaly, of where our bodies begin and end.

Mmm.

This is kind of gross, but I remember once asking my mother if it would hurt if I peeled off a piece of dry skin and then bit it. I wasn't sure if I would still be able to feel the skin when it was detatched from my body.

Guilt and identification are not the
same thing. Either way, I’m not
going to shoot you. Excuse me,
I have something to take care
of. Thinking about this makes me
hunch my shoulders up above
my ears. We were white people
at a party. It wouldn’t be funny
without context. There was
common ground, but we don’t
know any of the same people and
you kept making paranoid statements
about your relationship to
my profession. “It was all beautifully vague, “
I later told my friend. It’s spring,
and there’re a lot of dead animals on the road.