My quarter comes to a big crashing close. I didn't quite keep up on my promise to blog every day up to the end of it, but it ended last Wednesday (regular classes did indeed end on the 15th, so I sort of kept up. ). Final observations- teachings a good racket for poets- I like it and would keep doing it if I could afford it. Bank account says, however, that I can't, what with gas and parking expenses, not to mention the annoyance of getting paid once a month (not a good thing for people who are not a' so good with money).

Saw culmination of student's creative projects- many surprises, some really extraordinary. In all, they reported that the project was a smash, even therapeutic for them, which was heart-warming. Apparently, being engaged in creative work is pleasant (don't know how I keep failing to notice that).

On my own front: the thing about basing writing in research is that you never know when to stop researching. Have stacks of books on the End of the World, stacks of books on cognitive science, stacks of books on Oakland, going to get stacks of books on autism, and all I do is keep reading them, and get kind of annoyed when I have to actually produce some writing. Here's all for today:

How do you feel about meaning?
Does it rest at its object, or pierce deeper? With Newton, would it then need a reason to stop, traveling on past the sky? Does it stop at you, or like a song go ‘right through (me)’you?
How do you feel about digging- how is the flesh of your hands?
Does etymology just weigh on you, trudging up Wittgenstein’s ladder? Do you dig the ladder’s legs in the ground, if you know you won’t need it to get back down?
From Merlin Donald: Darwin’s story is of song proceeding speech, and then being selected for- the original seduction of language!

This stuff always threatens to turn into a onger, probably multi-media piece on relations of text and music, a sample of which COR promised to publish (whenever they do a 2007 issue, I guess). Other projects are stalled, but I have many reasons to be in woodshop coming up, and have no job, so chapbox and brickpoems likely forthcoming. Get in the body, everybody!

I'm in single poems too. ick. Post thesis (still editing, but I don't think any more new writing) and I have no idea what "project" is next, but I have to produce for workshop. So, now what?? God they're awful.

In other news, yes, Baudrillard died, but I didn't know anything about him & now I did a bit of research that actually extended outside of Wikipedia. I am intrigued by his writings on hyperrealism--it's like memory contruction (which I am working with for the thesis)--except in the present tense. Perhaps hyperrealism is my new project. Perhaps not.

Right, so here's this:

here i am without longing
an accidental state
i reached Wyoming
oh, I wouldn't know why

Am I writing mini lyrics now- is that what I'm doing? So weird when you don't think you have control over your craft anymore.

On music front- good rehearsal with the Gomo's, gig tomorrow night. Not going to go build walls tomorrow, instead going to rest and practice some instruments and work on brick poems (ok, I will build some walls, but they'll be Potemkin walls).

Here's something that I started as a little block poem:

How easy it is to see the yellow wildflowers and not the agricultural runoff in the creek. Is cutting down eucalyptus worse than planting them in the first place? The smaller the surround, the sturdier the fence.

And then broke into lines and discovered it wanted to rhyme:

We don’t notice how easy it is to see
the yellow wildflowers and not
the agricultural runoff in the creek.
Is cutting down eucalyptus worse
than planting them in the first
place? The smaller the surround,
the sturdier the fence. Or what
separates the sky from the ground.

But now it doesn't fit into anything else. Maybe I'll add six lines and call it a sonnet. I'm with Dillon on the whole Big Project scenario; I have such trouble writing single poems that I don't know what to do with them when I get them.

Ok, more from the weird annals of the abandoned e-mail account. Here's a draft that's been there for I don't know how long. I think it was a cut-up from craigslist postings, probably the "free" section:

Will trade potential enlightenment
for sorting flour from bag of rice
...Have windows, Need gates
"WHAT ELSE?"
White Clock- that you can hang it on the wall
White Clock- that doesn't work for some unknown reason
Silly me. No overhang over door+no sunshine=wet mat

In return for leftover Halloween...
...we are ooking

Being quite convinced I can't write anything worthwhile unless I'm depressed, I woke up really happy that I woke up depressed, because I thought I might actually get some writing done. Better yet, I woke up depressed because I had a dream about of a long-lost, possibly estranged friend. So, I composed a little ten-line poem and sent it off to her by way of an e-mail account I rarely use but through which we used to correspond. I went back to that account to see if I could find the poem for possible reposting here, but there's no record of it in that account. Now I'm wondering if it actually got sent, or if I even composed it, which is meta-weird because it was about the phenomenon of waking up and not knowing which parts of your dream were actual. It also adds to the mounting issue of what the status of this, often mostly e-mail, relationship is- in the way that only an e-mail correspondence can make you wonder that (maybe paper letters can too, but I've never corresponded that way, so I wouldn't know).

This is continuing to make me depressed, but it's not producing very much poetry. The truth is, I just kind of want to hear from this person, and have a fairly pedestrian conversation about what's gone on on her life in the last forever of days. It doesn't really matter to me if it produces good poetry or not. I think maybe I have to develop a new poetics if it all revolves around managing to keep myself properly depressed for extended lengths of time. Here's the only thing I did produce today:

memory-free today
i want pledges like alcoholics get to have
please, Lord, grant me the unstable”I”, i know i am
i want I out i want(ed holy, holy skeptics doubt)
let me wipe this hard-disk, rounds its corners off with
sand paper or terry cloth

Now all I'm doing is avoiding starting commenting on student papers, which I've actually been enjoying lately, but I feel guilty about abandoning the draft above, even though I don't like it. Likely it's because it's not connected to any of my Big Projects, so I can't get my brain around writing in whatever way the first two lines are asking me to. Again, evidence I need to change my poetics- maybe I need to start stalking myself, if I'm reading Loretta's post right.

On other fronts, spent several hours trying to negotiate a truce of sorts at my old warehouse between dysfunctional parties I'm no longer party to all in the hopes that I can sneak back in there and make use of the "arts space" for practicing, throwing readings, finger-painting etc. Got home from that around 8pm, at which point it seemed too late to do any drum practicing, so I just watched the freakin' Al Gore movie (which is smart about information presentation, in an Allen Tufte kind of way, really dumb about drama and narrative) and went to sleep. Even if I get the whole arts space thing worked out, it will be months before I can just walk in there and sit at my drumset undisturbed and play at any hour, which is quickly becoming my sole ambition in life (fuck poetry, let's drum!)

I started re-reading Edward Sanders’ Investigative Poetry again this weekend (my first introduction had been with Joanne Kyger a couple years ago), and I've been thinking about "how" one might go about being an investigative poet. Some of Sanders' ideas:

"one of the first rules of Investigative Poetry: Do not hesitate to open up a case file on a friend."

"an Investigative poet of any worth at all will have to become as skilled a collagist as the early Braque."

"The art of the excellent footnote is ever to be practiced."

Of course, Sanders also goes into great detail about making files and glyphs and event grids and data clusters -- all of which may very well describe his own process, but is not necessarily the sort of thing that I’d like to spend my time doing. Perhaps I’m not as organized in my methods (at one point, Juliana urged me to make a spreadsheet detailing all of the things in Valley/Ridge that I’d covered, and all of the things I hadn’t, and I tried it out, but I’m not sure how much good it did me, as it would be impossible in any project to say Everything That Can Be Said).

"When facing or working gingerly around a hostile data-source, always remember to let a close friend, or even the police, know where you are going, and when you will be finished, and the approximate geographical location of the facing."

One thing that strikes me as I read Sanders’ text is how it is suffused with a 1970s-Watergate-CIA paranoia that ought not be out of place today, and yet feels dated in its earnestness, in its willingness to pay attention. These days I wonder if anyone notices we live in a fascist theocracy. Is it complacency? Or just a failure of imagination?

What could the poets be doing?

agghhh, already missing a day. Well, yesterday and today's efforts blend into each other. Working on producing text for this dance collaborative piece. It's very research heavy, literally spent 8 hour or so pouring over texts on different versions of apocalypses (apocali?apocalyosae?) which never actually occurred. It's not like it's the densest text I've ever worked with, but I need to do so much distilling, and there is this requirement of a certain degree of clarity and comprehension for our audience that is a difficult stricture to work with- in short, no mess (in the poetics sense of 'mess').

Started yesterday thinking about doing a kind of movie-telling narration of some footage of Oakland me and friend Nao Nakazawa shot a while back. Some many of us were doing those under Walter Lew while he was on this coast, and I never got started on one. Such an interesting process, but alas I had to abandon it when the disk I was working from corrupted. Thinking instead that I'm going to throw up a bunch of brick pieces throughout Oakland and ask people to check in on them and see how long it takes them to dissolve. I'll update on that effort.

In music- no composing, some drumset practicing. Need to start working on making and compiling field recordings for dance collaborative piece.

The shame of not posting to your own blog for three weeks...

Good news is, I've been busy with the very sorts of things this blog is supposed to be about. Bad news is that not blogging it defeats the other purpose of this blog, which is a kind of informal psychological survey of what conditions do and don't lend themselves to productivity in things artistic. So, I'm going to try to blog daily (oh why did I ever put that word in the title of this blog?) until the end of the quarter, because that will mark a crucial turning point from academic/poet, back to mason/poet.

First, the gritty:

-going to practice drums when I finish this blog. Have been doing that very not daily- blaming students and their thick. messy portfolios needing grading for that situation the past two weeks
-writing: producing steadily for collaboration piece. less than steadily for oakland piece. Had to compile, rework some things for a reading at CCA last weekend, and that was good. Even got a review on Barbara Jane Reyes' blog. Printed some proofs for Debts.
-building: I'm thinking of adding this as a category I track up until I start doing it again for a living, at which point I will reevaluate it. Mostly because any building I do know is for non-economic motivations. Specifically- little wooden boxes to house poems that make up Debts in. Need to get on that, can't figure out when I will, but need to.

Just got back from seeing a presentation about books on Oakland at the library. Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen, who many Millsians know as just Hoa, was there pimping new art/literary book, As Is. Beautiful design, will continue enjoying content and say more later. But recounting the panel from last weekend made me recall, A.) how hilarious it is that Mills is going to pay me $50 for telling the audience of potential students that MFA's are financial suicide, and B.) that I should think about this whole work/poetry issue again. In all, it seems like this quarter, where I was working only one job and also actively incorporating creative writing into my course, had a good effect on my own work- I'm doing more of it, and compelled and even obligated to do more of it (I told the kids I'd do every assignment related to their big creative project along with them). So, as much as I trash it, adjuncting has been pretty good to me. Downsides are over 300 miles of driving a week, and the fact that my body has completely atrophied (read gone to shit and uselessness) now that I spend most of my day in front of this infernal machine. Looking forward to spending it in front of machines that have diamond blades and two-stroke engines. In fact, toying with the idea of dropping in on the crew and working a day tomorrow (in part because I need the money to buy some new shoes- how classic is that?).

One reason I'm sad to no longer be in the MFA program: I can't take this class with Juliana Spahr. I will try to work my way a bit through the reading list. Part of staying engaged once we fall outside the academic sphere appears to be continued reading and thinking and struggling with the ideas behind the work. At least, it seems to me, that if I'm not investigating through my poetry, then I'm just driveling self-absorbed trivialities.

I realized a long time ago that I was deeply interested in the world, in all sorts of different things and ideas and people and places. And instead of focusing in on any one thing (being a physicist or an activist or, god forbid, an accountant), I would be a writer, and I would write in any direction I felt like.

If I haven't really been writing anything, it's hard to worry about not having posted to this blog, either. And Dillon -- I haven't been making any progress on There, either, so need to worry that I'm going to pester you.

This morning I went with a friend of mine to look at a gallery space in West Oakland. She's organizing a benefit for families with autistic children, and I've agreed to edit a book of poetry and art created/performed at the benefit.