26 May 2005

penis has an idea that could be helpful.

you politely ask me
to button my collar
to tighten my belt
if i wore a tie you might
wish it rather more straight.

(i mean, no, that came of badly--
but you would like to sit at a party
to listen while i speak urgently
of the postmodernist bubble
and its imminent burstation)


you rather forcefully suggest
that i reel it in, maybe leave a nice tip
and put it back in my pants;
the verbiosity of my penis does nothing
but extend the rebuttal.

if he may, penis would like to share something?*

you suggest that i force the issue of myself,
that i appeal to my spirit's court
on grounds that verbal contract is not--

penis wants to re-iterate a certain willingness

--aargh

you sink your fingers into me with a great care
not plainly different from that which came before
except your eyes are unlike
they are breathless with understanding
the sheerness of their faith makes my own eyes squint.

then you ask me to walk you to the car
where you kiss me briefly, ask me to be tremendous
and pull away

the ball chills in my court.
the ball casts an eye at my broken shoelace.

you ask me (penis, et. al) to be fabulous




*rebuttal. re-Butt-all. buttal. butt.

19 May 2005

PSI: Special Treatment Unit

today marks the first in a series of life-recalibration efforts that we are calling (with redundant sarcasm) the Special Treatment. after meeting this morning with the director of seattle pacific's mfa writing program (now cemented as our #1 target school) we had a lunchtime session with the venerable bonip, our therapist. (seriously--"venerable" is the word for her: she's getting paid to sit there and listen, but she does so with a quiet grace that leaves us feeling distinctly like we are being granted something.) it was here that the term "recalibration" escaped our lips maybe 14 times in 45 minutes--but in a good way. which is to say that we have some momentum going in matters of both brain and spirit, and it feels real nice.

is a welcome change... to paraphrase bonip, it seems to her as though now i am standing in a grassy field, while my prior state called to mind the image of looking up from an empty grave while simultaneously standing on the edge of a cliff. which is fabulously paradoxical. it's as though, were i fortunate enough to climb out of the grave, i would take one step and promptly tumble into the abyss. ..it is perhaps fitting that my f'ing therapist's conception of my dark side looks to have been produced by mel brooks. but the point is that i am in a field; before, grave-perched-on-edge-of-nothingness; now, a field. (around me, each blade of grass is sunlit. soft pink worms leap from the ground into the happy beaks of waiting robins. in the cooler, the ice ne'er doth melt.)

so the task before us is a simple one: to keep the momentum going. and for this the Special Treatment is required. it is exactly one step long, consisting of: get up early. my life currently involves no daily obligations that begin before 10am, so my arising "early," as it is commonly understood, takes some doing. why it has to happen is twofold: i need to write; i need to pray. and any honest approximation of either happens only in the am, before the spindly pokey wires of daily life have had time to close in and begin jabbing at me. how praying and writing affect me on a given day is a known (not to say understood) quantity: writing--something that is my own--sharpens my eye; it lends my verbs a certain tartness, and these things cannot help but carry over into the rest of my day. meanwhile, prayer--thankful prayer, as opposed to dear-god-don't-let-the-bank-call-till-tuesday prayer, which bonip calls Vending Machine Prayer--serves to make me almost palpably more thankful and loving and honest and capable. we have been terribly unsuccessful in recent times at both of these endavors, hence the application of the SpecTreat. we'll see how it goes; while there are only a very few things i know about myself for certain, putting a personal certitude into play has always proved harder than it has any right to. but i like it, here in my field. very much.

10 May 2005

a very long forgetfulness.

so dr. john medina, a family friend, brain researcher, teacher, and generally overwhelming person for the strength of his love and the vociferousness of his mind, has somehow taken it upon himself to actively mentor me in the process of sifting through my spaghetti-piled career path. and he is alarming for the way he engages me, for the manner in which he waits for my eyebrow to arch with interest, then dives headlong into some phenomenally fecund tangent to illustrate his point--quarterback fran tarkenton's invention of the deliberately broken play [the benefits of premeditated improv] or the circle of fifths as the unwavering structure beneathcharlie parker's improvisational music [the observation that the most breathtakingly sudden creations possess a simple-but-rigid foundation] or fox2p, the uniquely human gene that lets our thoughts translate into language with immediacy and ease [honest, useful communication as a skill and commodity]. he is like charles wallace murry (the younger brother from the wrinkle in time books) trapped in the body of a bearded, venerable george costanza. (remember charles wallace? he's the kid everyone in town thinks a retard, cos he always looked so serious and never spoke. not one word. then, one day when he was 4, he started to talk. in complete, complex sentences. ideas poured out of him.) yesterday medina was analogicalizing about the transference of information from shortterm to longterm memory, and i asked him how long that takes. he got this crackle of excitement behind his eyes and was like,

really want to know? how long do you think--how long for any piece of information to lock in and never be forgotten? and i was like,

hmm...90 minutes? and he got this kind of giddy smile and was like,

yeah, no. 10 years. it takes 10 years.

and i was like, f me. right? how do they figure this shit out? i have only the sliveriest sliver of a clue. but. he's teaching a new university course in the fall about the biology of learning, and i get to take it. ..maybe i have a natural interest for this kind of stuff; more likely it's a hybrid result of teaching distractful teenagers and my RA work at iLABS -- whatever the reasons, I think my interest in learning to learn is a sustainable one. which is exciting. super-extra-duper-for-reals exciting. it's going to be a lot of work.

07 May 2005

postsript-cum-inquiry -

almost certainly this is a completely unneeded, almost self-self-referential thing to do, but. for some reason i am compelled to make note of my blog-absence of late. it is due in part to an un-new and unsurprising lack of focus; but even more it stems from a re-direct of said focus. (am very quickly falling very much in love; am also in the middle of mental wanderings regarding my future schooling/career-type paths. [i strongly dislike that recent days have heard me use the word path quite so much; path, together with direction, course and endpoint, have conspired to make me feel a grade-school copernicus -- too naiive to object but intuitively certain that it makes no sense to conceive of your every ambition as leading straight away from you in a line.]) so, i've just decided to ask all of my closests, namely you, a question: let's say that i'm back in school in the fall of ‘06. studying writing, but with the primary aim of equipping me to teach writing. also let's say that a good chunk of energy in the coming months is to be spent locking down a bunch of pages of my shit for application purposes, but that, after that is done, i’ll have a chunk of time to work as i please with no concerns of it leading anywhere, other than keeping my pantry stocked with a variety of ramens. this is a rapid-fire, thin-slicing sort of question -- answers are encouraged to be honest and wide-ranging, from “you would make the best rock star ever” to “you would be the movie star ever.” (it is worth noting seriously that, while there is no such thing as a stupid question, a stupid suggestion is not so hard to come by. as such, please refrain from demanding that i do something like sign up for a seminar series in balloon art; ie, when considering what mark should do with himself, bear in mind that fitting and useful are not always interchangeable.) the actual question is twofold: a) what do you think i should do for work during that time and, more importantly, b) if you were in my (most probable) shoes what would you do. extra credit for describing the shoes – should they be sensible walking shoes? kangaroos perhaps? loafers? please, god, don’t let them be loafers.

it's my party, and i'll wear pants if i want to (i do not).

today is NoPantsDay, everyone. the mandate for observance is, you know, kind of obvious. but should you require context, go here.


am sitting here alone on saturday evening, jittering happily in anticipation of tomorrow’s sonics vs. spurs: game 1. the supers have been ever-so fun to watch. one week ago, ray allen was awfully retarded; was awful in his retardation. his shotclock-beating, game-settling, off-balance-fadeaway-rainbow 3-pointer with a minute remaining was called by announcer kevin calabro as well as a shot can be called: they give it to the man; he drifts right and lets it fly … boom! goes the dynamite!

tuesday’s series-ending game was extra fun cos i watched the game from a stool at bishop's – the one bar on vashon island with tvs. lynnette and i tromped over to vushina that afternoon for reasons that are still unclear; either we want to move there together or we want to pretend want to move there. running around was super fun, though; and at bishop’s the trailer boys were out in force to watch the game and drink and hollah. when i went in to the men's room, a guy (big, excessively hairy, mullet-possessing) came in to use urinal next to mine, and another dude walked in to use the stall. their exchange is as follows.

"Wassup!!"
"Drainin' the spices, alright!"
"Whooooooo-oooop!!"

and, you know : Draining the Spices? yeah. that's what he said. who would've thought that the bishop's men’s room would provide my favorite mixed metaphor. of all time. not me. but damned if i’m not excited for the series.