intellectual properties

brooklyn ladders, violent dreams

in the backyard of a block of railroad apartments in bushwick
we had to climb through a precarious window to reach
there stood in a line between the trees
a series of tall metal ladders
reaching up into the branches
overgrown by years
artifacts of a time
when cotton was scrubbed in tubs
and the wet sheets and linens
and pantaloons were hung out to dry
stretched on long lines from windows
3 ,4, 5 stories tall
crosscrossing the interior courtyard on mechanical pulleys
stiff in the summer sun
and winter wind

i looked at the ladders against the night sky for a while,
wondering if anyone else had been since the moment of arrival
wanting to climb,
or if this was something only a non-native new yorker would do.
then over the ledge and into the unkempt garden,
-”hey, those probably aren’t safe” -
the solid steel frame barely moved under my weight
and confident, up i went
a few stories into the night
-”hey, watch out for those power lines”-
-”hey, be careful, it’s starting to really shake” -
-”hey, maybe someone should stabilize the bottom”-
i perched near the top, momentarily
the rest still wondering aloud
-”what is she doing?”-
until i climbed down, rejoined the party,
satisfied.

.::.

last night i had the most violent dream i can remember. i awoke surprised and a little scared at who i’d been in my subconscious – a demon throwing plates, breaking furniture, screaming wildly and stabbing the life out of someone, a knife in my bloody hands.

quantum entanglement

this morning i woke up and wanted to have brunch in california, where it is 70 degrees and right now as i type this there is a sunny backyard full of friends laughing and having mimosas.  it is snowing softly but steadily here in brooklyn.

[who'd have thought

that snow falls?]

WHERE IS MY FUCKING TELEPORTER, i silently screamed.

then, because there is the internet, i looked that up.  what *is* the situation with teleporters? and rabbit hole: i started reading about quantum entanglement, which i get but don’t really understand and so my brain turns metaphysics into a love poem for the universe and everyone i love in it.

you move that way

i move this way

with perfect correlation

regardless of distance

“there is no

slower-than-light

influence

that can pass between

the entangled particles”

 [

there is no

slower-than-light

influence

]

.::.

einstein thought this all up, with a little help from his friends. thursday was Pi day and his birthday.  did you read this?

and now they found the God particle (again.)  this seems like a thing that will be endlessly discovered. (that’s some job security right there, looking for god particles)

.::.

on the infinite:

“I promise you that labyrinth, consisting of a single line which is invisible and unceasing.” — Borges

– referenced in the first line of Bochner and Smithson’s The Domain of the Great Bear: in the center of the infinite:

from last wednesday’s art class. textual art in the form of a “magazine-intervention”. see:  ”the medium and the tedium”, a 2010 written piece by bochner for explanation of this and his other work on language. {+that triple canopy website layout is awesome.}

["For translucence, against transparency."]

["questions of meaning, due to the nature of language, are undiscussable."]

the silent and spoken structures of language are an alien and incomprehensible labyrinth, an unmanageable pantheon.

 smithson :a heap of language:
(larger)

.::.

i am tying us together with really weak strings, strings that are unnecessary to the already entangled.  but i like the feeling of these words as strings, pulling gently.

.::.

textual impotence

if you’ve been following along you’ve noticed that i’ve once again encountered the problem with words, in that that they’re abstract and incomplete and volatile.

every word is both an overstatement (in its inherent categorization) and an understatement (in its representation of reality).

to say or write anything true is arduous.

so instead of my own words what you’re getting is a lot of  posts about art and philosophy and poetic things. and the apocalyptic visions of each, but that’s always been the case.  these are the things i’m thinking about and struggling with and it’s where my head is (school).  and it’s all very disorienting, to sit and read and talk and think about how your self and your culture and society and world is constructed/deconstructed/constituted for hours and hours and days and days.

please forgive the resulting lack of coherence.

how time is passing

mom got here late thursday night

-her first visit to NYC -

friday morning i had political philosophy class (Montesquieu and Rousseau) and

then we went to central park 

and to the Met

and then times square (nothingtoseethere)

saturday we went to battery park to glimpse

the Statue of Liberty,

which you can’t get to b/c of Hurricane Sandy damage

and passed by the 9/11 memorial but did not go in

and had donuts in zuccotti park

and then hopped over to DUMBO to see

the Wild Bride at St. Ann’s Warehouse , which we liked and would recommend

and later that evening after mom went to sleep we met up with another visiting SF friend and had way too much to drink

and then sunday morning we walked around brooklyn because it was cold but sunny and warmer and dryer than where she’s from

and then she left.

way too short, but she’s a prof and has to teach and our breaks were different weeks.

.::.

so Friday i went to the Met and Saturday i went to the theatre and sunday afternoon we went to some LES galleries and today i went to the MoMa and now i want to continue this art run for the rest of the week, which is my spring break, but doesn’t feel like it because it’s neither spring nor any real break.

.::.

the ways things happen to fall

wood cabinets and leather couches and a woodstove and a small library and candlelight and bourbon cocktails brought to you by waitresses who are really good at their jobs, just like old times. last night we sat in the back room of the delightful french restaurant, and i took the anthology of poetry off the shelf and read this to j&j.

Table Talk

Granted, we die for good.
Life, then, is largely a thing
Of happens to like, not should.

And that, too, granted, why
Do I happen to like red bush,
Grey grass and green-gray sky?

What else remains? But red,
Gray, green, why those of all?
That is not what I said:

Not those of all. But those.
One likes what one happens to like.
One likes the way red grows.

It cannot matter at all.
Happens to like is one
Of the ways things happen to fall.

–Wallace Stevens

.::.

then we went to barcade and drank beer and played marble madness and q-bert. and we talked of yelling goats and fake tans and hamburgers, and tried to determine which of my long-committed veg/vegan friends i can someday convince to go on a date with me and order the 24-oz steak. and eat it.

2012: the unraveling

2012: the year of the water dragon :

His main drawback is that he may be like an overoptimistic builder who forgets to reinforce the foundation. By trying to hold on to too much he may lose everything. He must learn to make difficult choices and to relinquish whatever is unfeasible or unnecessary. This way, he will be able to devote his energies to fewer but more rewarding endeavors.

it is no overstatement to say that this past year of my life has been one of the most challenging and transformative i’ve made it through, most importantly because it was not the result of any outside force, but inner ones.  things happen as they do in life and yes, some of the larger moments were due to things beyond my control – nature wielded its sublime powers and humbled us all, loved ones passed on forever, and humanity continued to stumble its way through the world, the neverending series of victories and defeats.

but for me, and for us, as we are two, the movement into the unknown was intentional and therefore in a way so much more terrifying then when something just happens to you.  as the saying goes: anyone can withstand a crisis.  it’s day to day living that wears you out.

a year ago this december, things had not yet started to actually shift but were being conspired. i was also in new york city then, and i was working on my application to graduate school.  i had interviewed the chair of the department right before christmas and decided to go ahead with it.  i spent the week of christmas in puerto rico with reagan, learning to surf and being beach bums in the daytime and working on my app at night. it’s so hard to believe that was a year ago.  when i talked to my mother the other day, she said that time only moves faster as you get older.  i don’t doubt her but i just can’t imagine.

i submitted my application at the end of january and waited 2 months for the answer.  in that time i worked on getting financial aid and getting my job that i’d had for 12 years ordered and cleaned up so that when i said i was leaving it would be easier.

in february the video promo for lovesick 5 (my acting debut! ha ha), which we made in Dec2011, came out and then the show happened again on 2/14/12 and was one of my favorites, especially the part where i forced the bridegirl onto the stage with a shotgun.

in march i saw Anastazia perform the Little Matchstick Girl  and i will never forget how hard i cried.

i found out i got accepted into the Critical Theory and the Arts program at SVA the first week of april  and had 2 weeks to decide.  i won’t reiterate too much of what was written here then, when i accepted the application and announced we were moving to NYC after 14 years in the SF Bay.  and that’s when the world really began to shift.

at the end of April, BadUnklSista did the full production of First Breath, Last Breath and those 5 days were 5 of the best days of the year.  watch the promo vid (esp. minute 2:31-2:44. oh. that moment.) listen to the full score.

april -july was thus spent preparing for the move.  preparing our jobs. preparing our belongings.  preparing our finances.  preparing ourselves.

at the beginning of May we went on a 7 day cruise from Seattle to Alaska with our families. we got a lot of family time and scenic views and got to ride in a helicopter but did not get to go dogsledding.

on June 1  we lost our young friend Robert unexpectedly in a bike accident, and 2 days later jay and i worked a 12 hour day to put on Spring Training in the park.  it was a weekend we all spent loving eachother as much as possible and being so so grateful for eachother and our lives.  the world was taking its course.

the end of june was a whirlwind with the logistics of the move to new york getting crunchier, and then my grandfather passed away on June 21, and i flew back for his funeral services in northern michigan 2 days before flying back and heading up to the mountains for the 7th year of Priceless.

on July 28 we packed the rental car and left Oakland and drove east. we went to Utah and stopped to see my family in Indiana and up to Ann Arbor to see friends and family and then continued east and arrived in NYC on August 5th.  it was so amazing to think that 14 years after we had packed up the car in Michigan and drove West to California, there we were, still together, again packing up and driving across the country to the opposite coast.  we had a better idea this time of what we were doing, but it still seemed like a thrilling adventure and really, we still didn’t know what we were doing.

shortly thereafter Neal and Shelby came to visit and we spent many days being ridiculous in the summer in new york city.

we did not go to burning man, and in september i started school and my brain went haywire.  i will talk more about school in a separate post.

in mid-september  i went to the one year anniversary of OWS and then it was my birthday and i turned 36 for the first time ever i really didn’t care to do anything about it.  i had enough going on.

then the hurricane happened. and halloween pretty much didn’t.  i mean, there were parties and stuff but obvi things were weird around here and the failures of our government to respond set yet forth yet another small revolution:  when it became crystal clear that the government by the people wasn’t working for the people, there arose  #occupysandy .

november and december have come and gone and so many things have happened that are unwritable.  we went back to SF  for a week and it was a wonderful immersion back into that world, but also a week where we really had to do a lot of processing about who we are, where we are, our relationship(s), and our future and it was really good but i was also pretty exhausted by the end of it all.

so many friends have come to visit us since we move to NY which is awesome because the week i spent in SF before Christmas might be the only time i’ll to go back again to SF until September.  i love my community there so much and am always so inspired by everyone i know and love there, at their visions for the world and their willingness to take it on.  not that new yorkers don’t also have drive and ambition and compassion and a desire to change what seems unchangeable but it doesn’t feel the same.  it doesn’t feel optimistic like it does on the west coast.  it feels like survival.

as perry ferrell said the other night at the jane’s addiction show:  ”god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change….wait… that doesn’t seem right.  fuck that.  I’M GONNA CHANGE EVERYTHING I CAN.”  there is no revolution in acceptance.

then last night we went to see Phish at Madison Square Garden and before the show we went to a bar and i saw some people i haven’t seen in literally decades but we all still remember eachother and the community we built and it was really heartwarming and amazing to really feel that those things will last forever inside us. and then the show ROCKED and we went bananas and it was a great way to end the year.

it may all seem really ridiculous, i know. but one life to live, people.  one life.

this is unraveling.  i know i’m forgetting and omitting many things. there certainly aren’t enough words above to convey all that has come and gone this year, where we have been and how i have changed and how the world has changed.

when i started 2012 i didn’t know what would happen or where i would end the year.  there was a lot of potential.  and a lot of it has manifested into something real and i am really happy with how things have moved forward and so thankful for my life and those in it who support and love and push and pull and believe in life as the search for truth  - my friends, my family, my professors, and most of all jay, who continues to amaze me.  i don’t know where i’ll be at the end of 2013 either, and i’m fine with that.

most of what i feel right now is a great amount of love and respect for my fellow humans and hold a wish that for all of us, we continue to work really hard on being who we are without compromising ourselves but also with deep love and respect for everyone else working on their own lives – from each of us as individuals to our society as a whole. bumper cars, maybe. but not civil wars. we can do better.

cheers to 2012.  may 2013 flower even bolder.

as democratic as death

last thursday evening we were having cocktails and she said “did you know there’s a hurricane coming?”  i did not know.  i don’t have TV at all anymore, and read the news as it gets filtered through twitter and facebook and email threads.  she shrugged, and later on someone else in the bar or the street or the subway said “hey did you hear there’s a hurricane coming?”

then friday morning it was everywhere.  there’s a hurricane coming.  here? really?  what does that mean?  people went on.

then saturday, oh. god. there’s a hurricane coming.  people are evacuating.  they are closing down the subway.   purchases of water and booze and food and candles and some extra supplies, but hey, we’re burners, we have everything. saturday night the streets were dry and filled with costumed revelers doing strange things in every direction, and on the news on the other coast the baseball team won again and the people rioted there.  we went to a party for a few hours but honestly the whole thing is just exhausting.  i am not young anymore.

the SF baseball riot unnerved me more than the weather predictions.  in times like those it becomes so very apparent that so very many people – people who seem “normal” and socialized – walk through their days with torturous levels of anger, frustration, hurt, and fear inside, just waiting for someone to give them one good reason – or a bad one – to let it all out.

“i think we’re a whole society of overinflated balloons, ready to pop”, she said.

what if this storm brings out the riot everyone? the weather might be bad, but humanity can be even worse. *that* is terrifying, in so many ways.

sunday morning we went for a long walk, as the weather was turning and the reports were getting worse and it seemed like we might get stuck inside for days. who could tell?

monday morning the rain came on and then the wind picked up.  from our apt in south williamsburg brooklyn the storm seemed no worse than any we had weathered in oakland, where we would stand and watch the wind blow and the streets flood for fun.  but the reports came in that all was not well, that houses were flooding and hospitals without power and neighborhoods burning after explosions. and then the subway: flooded for the first time in 108 years. the tragic alignment of a full moon meant super high tides, pushed into walls of water by the hurricane wind, straight into southern manhattan.

around midnight the wind subsided and the damage of the surge was done.

and now, the tuesday sky is grey, the air cold and damp, and we all look around. what happened?

.::.

in the middle of all of this i had a small nervous breakdown.  the hurricane was not just itself but seemed to be a manifestation of all of the imbalance, the confusion, the turmoil, the inequity in my world.

my studies are such that every i am consistently challenged to question what exists vs what we believe exists.  from straight up HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU EXIST?  to critical abstraction of the ideas that structure our reality to my psych prof saying that we are a traumatized culture, individually and collectively appeasing our oppressors in the hope that we won’t suffer anymore, which was probably one of the saddest things i’ve ever heard.

what exists, and how?  only to come out feeling that we are constrained by so many ideas.  prisoners of our own device. it seems highly intellectual, but it keeps the blue-collar man down just as hard.

the problem we have now is that everything is so fucking ambiguous.  who is the enemy? is it them, or us?  is it you, or me?  is it outside, or inside? internal or external? who is the cause, and who is the solution? is it all just the same?  then what the hell do we do.

through all of this there are the emotional tides that seem to be heavy in this season of our lives, the subjective internal chaos reflective of the ambiguously anxious state of the outside world. who are we in this? should i go on with my life if nothing is the way i thought it would be?  should i be someone else instead?  disintegration.

but then i have my friends who but their bodies on the line and declare themselves radical pragmatists, set the fuck out to change the world and not accept any presumptions for what will and will not do.  those for whom optimism isn’t just a state of mind, but a strategy.

as always i find myself in between, somewhere between terminal crisis and utopian dreams. this would be ok but i do not feel like i am floating, able to swim in one direction or the other on my own accord.  i feel paralyzed.

2 important things (PBS and art)

1.  i am wearing my cookie monster underpants in solidarity with #OccupySesameStreet

(why save PBS?)

2.  tangentially, more than one person thinks i went into this art school program to become (more of) an art critic, since the program is titled Critical Theory and the Arts.  i did not go to art school to become an art snob.  i am falling evermore in love with art. the thing is that the word “critical” isn’t intrinsically negative, and critique can be positive. in fact, i would say that even only less than a month in i already have so much more respect for all the weird crazy art-community shit my friends back in SF have done/are doing.

it might in fact turn out that i’m an optimist.

#birthday

brooklyn + autumn sunshine + coffee + Hume’s “Of The Standard of Taste” + subways + manhattan + walking, swimming through + prosaic + poetic +pensive + people being beautiful + questions of  justice and inspiration+ i like the smell of ink + i miss SF/OAK  = a swirling mix of heaviness and lightness. this is where i am today, and today i am 36.

i like where i am.
i am still working on who i am.
there is a lot of room to grow.
we are all infinitely possible.

..:..

(love comes in colors i can’t deny)

push pause (cheating on ourselves)

what:

i did go to the the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street shortly after dawn on Sept 17 and spent my morning marching through barricades and avoiding police with the rest.  it was (to me) pretty anticlimactic but necessary.  i will admit that i find it all somehow both terrifying and boring.  terrifying  in the normal crowd-push-cops-physicality, but boring in a “i can’t believe we still need to do this” way.  the hundreds of policemen were there protecting PRIVATE BUSINESSES and PUBLIC SIDEWALKS, clearing the way for those special people who were able to show worker ID badges for businesses on wall street. on your tax dollars, they blocked the streets to keep angry citizens out and let those people in. how is that a democracy?  i witnessed them pull people off the sidewalk in order to arrest them.  it’s all infuriating.  but tedious.  so so tedious.  where can we go from here?  the path remains obscured.

i will say that my current study of social movements has given me much more respect for OWS, despite my misgivings and boredom with the bureaucratic leaderlessness – particularly because some of those with a qualified long view support it unwaveringly.  you never know what a movement might produce. (and please don’t say Occupy is over, or that it hasn’t accomplished anything.  neither of those are true, and saying it only shows that you haven’t been paying attention.)

last friday i also went to a press conference with the lawyers representing the women in the Russian punk band Pussy Riot who were arrested and charged with nothing.  i mean, they were charged with something  which usually means a small $25 fine or whatever, but they didn’t get charged the fine – they are facing prison not because of what they did, but what they said when they did it – not for the act, but for the content. there is no criminal case against them.  they know it, and the court knows it.  it’s a little complex, but the gist is that they are facing years in a work camp for basically doing a song and dance for 40 seconds that disparaged President Putin. wikipedia and news reports will tell you otherwise, that they committed a “religious hate crime” or some bullshit, and that they defiled a religious site.  but the fact is that they only thing they were hating on was Putin, and the site they did it on is in fact public property.  this is what the lawyers said and i believe them.

and especially after that, i agree with those who say you should protest because you can.  we are not far, here in the U.S., from what is happening (again) in Russia.  you too could one day be arrested for singing a song about hating Obama in a public place, on public property.

and that last QOTD i posted is something i strongly believe.  people need to get in the streets.  sitting around thinking about shit and watching TV and complaining on facebook and signing MoveOn petitions doesn’t do anything but isolate the people who understand the problems enough to know what to do from the masses they need to do it. (read this). so anyway i figured if i am still gonna sit here and continue to think and write about OWS that i am morally obligated to go. and i did.

what else.  we’ve had a whole string of visitors.  i am seeing some people here in NY that i haven’t seen in SF in literally years!  it’s awesome. and many more coming – lots of visitors from now until the end of the year.

and school…….the kinds of things i am reading and thinking about are really exactly the kind of thing i always want to be thinking about and now i have some people to guide me.  they are a bit too complex to explain here in any short form, these ideas of representation (in the self, in politics and through art), but here are some sketches (none of this is mindblowing or original – i’m still only at the edge of grasping any of it):

how it is that the great diversity of American culture has become so antagonistic, so self-interested that we can barely stand one another, and our ideas of “freedom” are internally destroying the freedom we seek.  how can we pull together to achieve this democracy when everything we do is an effort, all in the name of freedom, enterprise, and individuality, to separate ourselves?  to compete?  we say our capitalist democracy works toward “equality”, but it is only so that we can all have the chance to be unequal.

we can escape each other so quickly now, with smartphones and internet and jet planes and private apartments and ipods and fences and 2 car garages and manic schedules full of business and distractions.  we are all consumed with being “in touch”  yet utterly disconnected.  getting someone to see you – to have a real conversation, about YOU – not the public you – the private you – is almost impossible.  we are all alone in the cloud, searching for each other with our heads down, and hiding when another ghost appears.

we do not know how to stand still, but the movement is nowhere.

the most painful thing we have now in America is our ambivalence. this or that?  shrug.  we love what we hate and we hate what we love.

we do not believe that anything real exists outside of ourselves. everything is only through us.  anything that comes from outside of us, as individuals, is suspect.  we trust no one.

we are telling it like it isn’t. we know what isn’t happening. we don’t know what is. the want for understanding becomes a need. we talk silently.

we are cheating on ourselves.

.::.

in the midst of all of this i waiver with the wind.  i am up, i am down, i am sleepless, i am exhausted, i am awake, i am starving, i have no hunger, i am turned on, i am turned off, i want so much and so little, i want you so bad, please leave me alone, never again, please one more time.  i think i am alive, that this is living, that this is doing something, but it also feels very much a dream. i could wake up and cease to resist.