D.U.I.

I should've gotten one, and I didn't. I'm dying for a fucking cigarette. Since I was fifteen and a half with a learner's permit in the San Fernando Valley, I've talked---yes TALKED---my way out of---a dozen tickets at least. So the pure irony when tonight, at age 39, way past nubile and pouty, I was pulled over for doing 50 in the 25 zone, and the docile and doe-eyed act [I was too drunk to properly speak] is the one that worked. No flashlights in eyes. No stand up out of the car. Just a long wait and receipt of a faux ticket issued as "warning"---I don't have to go to court or pay any money. And a fatherly suggestion that the pink slip [which I handed over thinking it was the registration] be stowed "in a jewelry box, or at the bank, somewhere safe." Fuck the motherfucking Oakland police. I love the police.

which means can't speak

photo: Alli Warren

Today's event/collaboration/intervention at the Presidio--- guerrilla poets theater staged invigoratingly under cloudy skies & light wind, afront a dry field surrounded by what could be barracks and under the sign of Army [Re]Education Center---the performance of Brandon Brown's The Persians by Aeschylus, a literal translation [caveat aplenty] of The Persians, by Aeschylus---was the moving, important, actually radical and radicalizing True Intervention I've been longing to encounter---all my life.

Arriving to the field for the performance [quickly resited from the original locale, bunker Battery Marcus Miller, when construction obstructed just access], Brandon, Alli, Sakkis, myself up the cement pathway could see crossing the long field in boots carrying provisions and looking [anti-]days of heaven Judith and Brazil, everything from that moment on looking somehow extra---wild, de-institutionalized, open, actual.

You who don't live in the Bay Area, do you know the difficulty in getting to the Presidio from any points not already Presidio? the war was Over There, and we collectively counter-pointed. All in attendance, the players and the audience of ---twenty-five?---so collected & by playing and listening having spoken! so fantastic.

Brandon, forgive me giving just the barest few of the opening lines here---[in today's event spoken by inimitable Dana Ward]---anyone not present deserves at least the tiniest taste of:

NARRATOR

'ts been a few years since we went
to fight with Persians. I meant to
fight with Greeks. No, I meant to say
t's been a few years since we went
to fight with Axes, since we're Allies.
If this is confusing, it's because I'm saying this to you in
Greek. In fact we're Greeks, because we're

speaking Greek. But isn't it as
if we were Persians, making this
speech about fighting with Greeks? All
the more rich I'd venture since we're
making the speech in Greek. That's what
Persians do after all in The
Persians. Speak in Greek 'bout fighting
with Greeks, or rather against them.

We, the Persians, speak Greek so well
we know that they, the Greeks, call us
"barbarians" so we go a-
head and call each other barbar-
ians, since we're speaking Greek, one
Persian to another. What will
we speak about? About fighting
Persians and Greeks. I meant Persians...


it continues gloriously for something. ie, not for naught. Poetry's for something! isn't it grand. Thank you Brandon for writing such a stunning play, leafy and intricate and dazzling without dazzling, in its melodic, disarming, suturing, painful rich & edible accuracy, and for casting it--uh, brilliantly--and to Judith for all her particular work organizing and logisticizing, & the nonsites collective for instigating and supporting--as Alli Warren once said to someone who loves her, 'it's great to be alive and to know you and to be eating this apple'

The Persians by Aeschylus, by Brandon Brown
Cast: Taylor Brady, Brent Cunningham, Tanya Hollis, Dan Fisher, Cynthia Sailers, John Sakkis, Lauren Shufran, Suzanne Stein, Dana Ward
Organizational Tactics & Action: Judith Goldman

More info, more resources: here.

nature is a small town snoring this morning.

i'm to go be a persian elder in the presidio today and won't be home til evening.

mood terrible here. i went to a spectacular reading last night but was assailed afterward by evidence of the patriarchal privilege, in the form of my many young men friends' [and the male-identified women who top the rest of us alongside them] hyper-articulate discourse. it's enough to put you to bed to nature.

i'd like some watermelon juice, if you get around to it.

the road you're on doesn't run through here

Something's been missing and I didn't even realize it had gone missing. The person maybe most kin to me in all the world called today after many many months unanticipated and unorchestrated [an accidental] silence, and the timbre of my friend's voice awakened a part of me I hadn't even noticed had fallen so silent. Has it ever happened to you?

Tragedy can befall slowly without our ever noticing. Stay vigilant to each other, friends.

there is no cure for the quitting of smoking.

except for this gratuitous and inacccurate sentence: "Think J.H. Prynne, Peter Seaton, Tao Lin, Bernadette Mayer, Taylor Brady, Linh Dinh." I like Ron Silliman yesterday.

Monday, July 23, 2007

How to Have a Peaceful Life By H. H. Sri Swami Satchidananda The ultimate quest of the entire world is peace. Only in peace do we have joy. Not by acquiring things, not by doing things, not by earning or learning, but by dedication. Your entire life must be a sacrifice. Think for the sake of others. To such a person, peace is guaranteed. For this, you don't need to go to a monastery or sit in a cave somewhere—because it is not in renouncing actions that you will find peace, but in renouncing your attachment to the results of the actions. A truly dedicated person is the king of kings, the richest person in the world. Who is the richest person? The one who wants nothing. There is only one cause for all mental problems, worries and anxieties: selfishness. Restlessness of mind is caused by disappointments. Only selfishness can cause unhappiness. To maintain your tranquility you must keep your mind away from duality—pleasure, pain; profit, loss; praise, blame. If you can keep your mind away from duality, you can still have ideas and perform actions, but they won't affect you. When you renounce your attachment, there is nothing to shake you. It is the feeling of possession, of clinging, that disturbs the mind. Test all your desires and actions. Ask yourself, "Is this going to cause restlessness to my mind?" Which should you choose, peace or the other thing? Peace is worth preserving more than anything else, even at the cost of your life. Actually peace is God. Dedicate your life in the name of God or humanity and your mind will always be clean and calm. You will reflect your true nature always. That is the goal of all the different paths: to keep the mind clean and calm. If you lose your peace, you won't be able to help anyone else, let alone yourself. Still, many people ask, "How can we do all these things for our own peace when the world is so full of suffering?" Normally, we think of the world first. But Yoga believes in transforming the individual before transforming the world. Whatever change we want to happen outside should happen within. And if you walk in peace and express that peace in your very life, others will see you and learn something. 11:25 PM - Add Comment -

When faced with a terrifying and daunting task ["literature"] I am fully capable of laying myself down and falling straight to sweaty, immediate sleep, which is what i did today, at 5 pm, for twenty-five deep, dreamful, sunny, luxurious, sultry minutes.

Walking around the lake earlier today at a pace designed to deliver me from my fears, I was reflecting on the motherfucking awfulness that next week I will have to return to my full-time job. I complain often about the awfulness of Being a Poet and Having a Full-Time [non-academic, okay?] Job, and it has not been lost on me that there are Some People who Don't Like It when they have to hear it. It is distasteful to suggest that one might prefer to stay home reading and thinking and writing all day, and even more impertinent to suggest that one should not only have to Wish To but should Get To! It was not implied, but stated directly to me once [by a friend with a trust fund and no day job] that perhaps I thought that jobs like the one I had were "beneath" me. Listen up people, I'm a poet! NOTHING is beneath me. Our labors are the lowest of the low, the lowliest.

I was the cleaning person for a stockbroker lady two years my junior for six months once, and it was more manageable in polite society to articulate the scrubbing of her toilets than it is to squeak up, "I'm a poet." But if you're reading this blog, you're a poet, and you're already on your hands and knees and you know it. You've written this post fifteen thousand ways come and from Sunday.

[But don't believe the hype! the heart is always right!]

hi mom!

Tonight my yoga teacher said she read this on the back of a motorcyclist's t-shirt, while driving up hwy 5 from los angeles:

Don't believe the hype! The heart is always right.

Remember that faraway time before the Mission was swarming with money babies in cheap oversize sunglasses puffing american spirit organics? Whenever I hear the phrase 'don't believe the hype' I think about my now-ex-husband riding in the back rack of the 14 Mission with two dudes and a boombox who were shouting it out with Public Enemy: DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE! when gunshots were fired into the bus windows from both sides of Mission Street.

but it is still true, it's true!

Don't believe the hype! The heart is always right

sitemeter shows san diego is reading this blog, I think it's my sweet mom. Hi Mom! This post is for you.

hiatus

i think i've found a way to de-archive and reiterate in the space that demands constant keeping even while its mode is self-erasing