It's that time again...

where for no reason I start feeling homesick for NY. I know all the cons: it's expensive, it's crowded, the winter is too cold, the summers too hot. Oh, and the whole gentrification thing. I agree and am even enjoying the perks of California living - there is no such thing as "cold" here and I can drive to an ocean, a mountain, a redwood forest or a desert with ease - the geographical diversity is spectacular.

But there's just that je ne sais qua that New York has and almost everywhere else doesn't. San Francisco is adorable, but it doesn't have this:












Or this:













Or subways (worth traveling). Or pizza. Oh god. East Coasters take note: you leave NY, you leave pizza behind. California thinks it has pizza, but it only has cheesey bread. Sometimes this cheesey bread is satisfying, but mostly it's not. Often it's horrendous. An ex-co-worker of mine (one born and bred in CA) once commented to me "Oh, you like NY style pizza."

No.

No. There is pizza (which is found in NY) and everything else purporting to be such. Saying "NY style pizza " is like saying "Pizza Pizza."

And to give California it's due - there is no Mexican food on the east coast. Trust me, you may think you're eating a burrito, but you're not.

Um, anyway. I'm homesick. I'm not moving back. I guess I should learn to enjoy this feeling.

*sniffle*

Um...

Gentle reader (readers? I have my doubts that anyone but I actually reads this stuff), accept this as one of many pointless blog postings. I just felt like blogging.

This being the case, I don't have much to tell you. Our weekend was great - my friend threw a drunkin' good time party on Friday night - while I was not drunk, such inebriation does the heart good. There was drinking, bean dip and the inevitable firecrakers. No one was burned or disfigured, which is almost disappointing. On Saturday we gorged ourselves with fine sushi and I finally returned to yoga after a two week hiatus. Kevin, the instructor, cranked the heat and tortured us like the yogi sadist he is. We took Fried to the beach in Half Moon Bay on Sunday with my co-worker Lisa and her husband Ted. This was directly proceeded by a terrific lunch over which we hatched a plan to put another fellow co-worker out of her misery via a massive nicotine fit (still in its planning stages).

California is still on fire. I am, this very moment, experiencing a high fructose corn syrup fit - my employers stock the office fridge with Cracka-Cola. I will resist.

See? If I had real drugs this wouldn't be a problem. Damn you, farm bill.

We have a trip to the Grand Canyon booked for next June, including a burro ride into the chasm - the other night I dreamt that the trail ride led us over rickety bridges and at one point we were required to carry our burros while we scaled the vertical face of the wall on a dodgy rope ladder. Maybe I'm afraid of the Grand Canyon? Doubtful.

And well, I've run out of steam. Hopefully my next post will be better.

Dogs on the Beach

These Days

I had a kick-ass dream the other night where a friend (not a real one, just a dream friend) introduced me to a friend of hers. This friend of our friend invited us to crash at his dirty little house, but best of all, was equipped with an endless amount of acid. Each hit was in a small tablet form and attached to a band-aid, fully wrapped. He gave me a heaping handful.

Where are these people in real life, dammit?

I'm way too sober these days.

As I probably already mentioned, I've been submitting my poems to all sort of contests - it's annoying that to do so one must pay a fee to enter, especially considering I don't have a very good chance at winning any of them. Nonetheless, it's good to keep the cycle going - garbage in, garbage out.

Sean is taking a drawing class at Stanford on Monday nights, so I have a little alone time at my disposal. Last night I spent it making enchiladas. I tend to eat at least two fudgey popsicles for dinner when left to my own devices. Just pathetic.

Have you read Obama's speech on faith? I'm not a believer at all, but one can't discount the fact that a large percentage of our population claim to be. It's disgusting that Muslim is now being bandied about by the right as an indictment and drafting public policy based on narrow "faith-based" ideologies is beyond stupid. So, it's awfully refreshing to hear anyone, presidential candidate, or otherwise, suggest a pragmatic way to allow the church and state to remain separate, but not mutually exclusive:

"Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don’t believe this partnership will endanger that idea – so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we’ll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work."

That last sentence particularly delights me - am I the only person who fees utterly irate when churches engage in political rhetoric, yet don't pay taxes? As the late, great George Carlin said (loosely quoted) "why not make them pay their fucking admission fee like everyone else!"

If believing in God is the only thing that can convince people they should give a shit about one another (why general feelings of humanitarianism aren't enough, I don't know why) then we should definitely work toward partnering them with government action. Ideally it should all go toward the common cause: universal good, you know?

Frank!

The NY Times Book Review profiled a new collection of poems by Frank O'Hara (my favorite-est poet).

Booze, artists, poetry, NYC, tragic death... what more could a romantic hope for?

While I'm at it...

I'm up late due to a surfeit of sleep today. Besides rising late I took a long nap after lunch. This morning I took Frieda to the beach with my coworker, Lisa, and her friends John and Yosh. The dogs had a great time, though I think Frieda overdid it, her hip is sore and being a crybaby, she's acting incredibly put out about it. Me, I feel gritty - there's easily a pound of sand down my shirt.

This last week was busy. Summer is usually slow around university campuses, but I've got some ongoing projects to slog through. Adding insult to injury, I was also hormonal as hell and that tends to suck my energy away. And make me weep uncontrollably. Nonetheless, I had a productive week, poetically speaking, as I entered out an assload of poems into some contests. (Assload: that would be more than "a fucking lot," though considerably less than "goddamn horrifically vast.")

I'm a little disappointed that we don't have any summer vacation plans - all of our travel is happening this fall. Pairing that with my heavy workload makes me feel a little overwhelmed. I'm also bummed that the solstice is behind us - now we start losing daylight. I realize this happens incrementally, but I mourn the loss of sunlight anyway.

We were watching the first of Frontline's two-part series Bush's War tonight. You know, some light, weekend entertainment. It's both impressive and angering at the same time - the horrible march toward war where almost every player in the administration bowed to the whims of fucking Cheney. It's a finely crafted outline with amazing photos and moving interviews. One realizes, watching CIA and Pentagon officials sit and spill their guts out, that these people were burned badly enough to participate in this documentary. These aren't people who would generally run to the media and let loose - they're truly appalled enough by the adminstration's actions to come out 7 years later and tell their stories. Part two begins with the first attack on Baghdad, the actual start of the aggression. As Navin Johnson said in The Jerk: "Roll the ugliness."

Wouldn't Navin be a great name for a cat? I think it would.

Sean's stepdad has been scanning Sean's baby pictures this week (a fucking lot of them) and many of them are unspeakably cute. This is my favorite:

Self-Indulgence

I'm working on this new poem - this is my first draft, after several rough drafts. My process is to write it out long-hand several times over, modifying it until I feel it is "done" enough to bother typing. How do I know when it's ready? I don't mind reading it. I worry that this poem is a bit inaccessible. I showed it to my friend Brian and he seemed to feel it was a bit hard to enter. I don't mind this - it's a hard balance for me to strike, saying what I want to say, how I want to say it, but also allowing some of it to get through to the reader. I don't want to play to an audience, but it would be nice if they caught my general gist.

I think it needs to be expanded outward. There's more to say, although I'm tempted to let it be for a while.

Letterhead

Should we call me a cat’s toy or
tired mouse? That’s not quite
it – a double-breasted bauble
a mailbox slit rammed with
letters, outgoing notes unread. We
won’t extend one finger,
unfurl a knuckle inside the crease
split a jagged line – not for old
time’s sake or even a bubble of gas,
a laugh. We, flurry of loose’d pages
a sigh, leaves that never hit
the ground. We boats sink
paper melts from our mouth.
We are the page, slicing
each pad of the fingers I own.
I the whole hand, cup
at the sea, open.