My Oakland History

My mom sad that she moved to Oakland to be with her cousin Tammy. They live in a apartment close to Lake Merrit. She move here when she was twenty one years old. It was 1992. She and Tammy had a dog named Lulu. She met my daddy at Lake Merrit with her dog. She walk her dog. Daddy was visit a friend. He live in Chicago wen he met mommy. He come back to visit my mom. They got marry and have five kids.

Thank you WORLD WIDE WEB!

I am now all moved in to my own place by the lake. Life is good. The move happened just in time. I'm in Love with my girlfriend, Bridget, and am excited to have my own private space where that love can be expressed unabashedly. The apartment has a lot of character. The lofted bed is my favorite feature. It feels like my bedroom is a tree-fort.

In our tree-fort of Love, Bridget and I like to reminisce about the days of old. She and I knew each other back then. I met her when I was 7yrs old. Funny how long it took us to figure it out. We went to grade school together. She was 1 of 8 girls in my class of 30 or so students. After the 8th grade, I didn't see her again until a class reunion 3 years ago that a classmate organized. At the time, I was in a relationship with someone else, as was she. Our paths crossed again when her mother passed away. I wasn't able to attend the funeral, but was going to be in our home town later that week, so I paid her a visit. We exchanged contact info. Then, earlier this summer I saw on her Friendster profile that she had moved back to the USA from Ireland. I called her and was reminded of how great she is. Later on, while she was on a road trip, I sent her a love note via Friendster. It worked! You see...Friendster is worthwhile. Besides...I spent a year or so checking her Friendster photos and daydreaming of our potential union. It's kind of hilarious how I developed a crush on her digital photos. Thank you internet! Thank you WORLD WIDE WEB!

CHANGE

My birthday was fine and nice. I liked Rocky's gifts. I'm wearing the Star Wars tie to a dinner party tonight. Plus, she bought me dinner! Rocky scores so many points. The others score one point for showing up. I should have ordered the whole fish special as I initially intended, but the sound of shrimp stuffed with crab wrapped in bacon got me. It sounds better than it tastes.

OH HELL YA!!!!!!!!!!!! I JUST SAW MYSELF ON THE NEWS!!!!!!!!!!! I WAS AT THE 5 DE MAYO CELEBRATION IN SF WITH CLAUSEN HOUSE STUDENTS AND WE WERE IN ONE OF THE CAMERA SHOTS. I'M FAMOUS!!!! I'M ON CHANNEL 7 NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Matt Volla rolled the dice three times as a bday gift. He roled a 6 & 4 twice. The other time was two 3s. What does it mean? When he rolled the 6 & 4, the numbers were familiar from some part of my day. Then I remembered that it was from change I got back in some transaction and I said aloud "change". Okay. Change it is then. What should I change? I'm starting by reducing drastically the amount of pot I smoke and cutting cigarrettes out all together. I'm increasing excercise. I'm improving Spanish skills.

I'd like to change the way John's meaningless insults make me feel. It's always a bunch of bullshit and meant merely to amuse himself and not to actually hurt me. It adds up, though. When I come home feeling emotionally spent from giving all of myself away to people who endlessly need my attention and affection, even trivial, just-joking insults chip away at my already spent self and leave my sense of self worth a bit beaten up. Have I told John? yes. He says "okay, but don't listen to me. Think of it as another language that when translated means positive things." And, "You're too sensitive." I am what I am. And I've been in his shoes before. I used to tease my sister to amuse myself all the time. It always hurt her, but I always thought she was over reacting and being too sensitive. I was the one in the wrong. And now that person is John. There's no point in trying to get the guy to change, though. For one thing, he is constantly changing. One moment he is this and the next he is that. He is also everything at one time. Which is why he is so amazing. Besides, I don't believe in trying to make people change. We can only change ourselves. That is already an enormously difficult thing to do. How can we expect to make someone else change? We can only accept people as the individuals that they are and relate to them the best we can, make the best of the time we spend.

The other thing about CHANGE and the numbers 6 & 4 that I thought of last night is that 10 is a very stable solid and constant number. "Change is constant", I said to myself, "so no need to worry about the way things are or might be because things always change anyway".

okay. enough of that.

until next time

Stephen Dunn- Technology/Memory

Okay. So maybe not everyone has to read it or have it read to them, but I would recommend that everyone I know and anyone who might come across my blog should read it. So once again, the poet's name is Stephen Dunn. The book is called Riffs & Reciprocities: prose pairs. There are forty five pairs in the book. Here is the first:


TECHNOLOGY

Maybe we've always been transported by what we can't explain. But if the world were almost destroyed and only a few of us remained, who could reinvent the telephone, no less the radio or the car? I'd be a man with hopes for a farm. I turn the television on, and there's baghdad, and there's a missile and a rationale. I could be in a cave watching the Northern Lights- it's all so out of my control. I watch a laser repair a heart. I look in atmy daughter before she is born. There used to be a gulf between empiricism and faith. Now an e-mail message arrives on my turned-off machine. Somebody who lives in cyberspace- where my mother never roamed- could say how. Normal: the most malleable word our century has known. The light bulb changed the evening. the car invented the motel.


MEMORY

A kind of achievement, William Carlos Williams said. Or a curse, said the man who couldn't get the phone book out of his head. Speak, Nabokov asked of his. Which it tends to, if we invoke it often enough. Imagination is its most important friend, selecting, coloring, casting aside. Without imagination, an endlessness, like my colleague's story of his summer by the lake when he listed birds and his wife was tortured by a lingering cold; he told me so much I didn't know what I'd been told. More and more I forget what I need, and remember what I'd like to forget. And sometimes I keep talking, keep recalling, as a way of not saying what I feel. Memory's law: what we choose to say about our past becomes our past. That other past, the one we've lived, exists in pieces that flicker and grow dim. I can buy memory in a store called Circuit City. I can press search, and find a fact, a person, but not what I've most dearly lost. Every time I save I exclude.

Rocky is right

that I need to write. I majored in creative writing. Why? because it was fun. I got to do homework that was fun. I don't write much anymore. Why? I don't know. I haven't been inspired? The other night, I was talking to Manny's girlfriend, Julie, about majoring in creative writing: poetry. She asked about who inspired me. I couldn't remember one of the poets I used to really like. I felt embarassed about how I had majored in poetry and been very interested in it at one point and now pay almost zero attention to it. I just pulled one of the poet's books off the shelf for the first time in a long time. His name is Stephen Dunn. My favorite book of poetry by him isn't really poetry, but not really just prose either. I guess you would call it a book of prose poetry. It's called Riffs & Reciprocities and I believe that everyone alive should read it or have it read to them. I will type out a small sample for you Rocky when I get back from dinner. John and I are going to go eat cheeseburgers at Luka's.

until then....

POEM OF JOHN'S BIRTH

Hospital room swirlin
WAH WAH pedal on his "this one to eleven" voice
his wet lungs scream baby scream
"SCREAM, BABY! SCREAM!!!"
boo hoo heady head
spillin out legs spread

EAGLE

NORTH
EAST
SOUTH
WEST

home is where the range is

Aptos, Boston, Tenessee, So Cal,
He's cousins with chill out barbecue weekend
cousins with kill
and will you give up your where-abouts?
Where is everybody? and why are they all here?
they all there? why they say that?
family all over again
why they say that?
TALKIE TALKIE
GOBBLE GOBBLE
There's more
CHICKEN CHICKEN
BWOCK! BWOCK!

all over again

A long ways coming
all over again
500 years
all over again
used to be a bee in a tree

he came out screaming this time
sting your ears this time
he came out screaming

pierced the scrubs
the linoleum floor
the white linen
the stainless steel

ouch little guy!!!
why you cry?

cry for my four track

I want my four track back and I don't want to pay anything for it!!! I lost it to Rob Bronco in a card game. We were in NYC about a year ago when either John or Rob proposed that we play Texas Hold'em. I am thinking about this as I sit in my backyard with an old man's grey beard light. Actually, John said that the light was as such, I think it looks normal. Though, I'll use my imagination and agree with the statement whole heartedly. I've never been a good card player. Especially when money is involved. Texas Hold 'em is a game where you play until there is one man left standing with everyone else's money. My opponents were good card players accept for Mike. John and Rob knew it would be a game to see which one of them would get the money. But a small part of me thought that maybe this time would be different. Anyway, I gave Rob my four track cassette recorder instead of money because I didn't use it anymore and he thought he would. He hasn't. He left it in L.A. in his friend's bedroom who is now in a coma. It is so very not getting used right now. Rob could potentially make some very amazing music with it (because he is always brooding and ruminating) and that would be well worth losing it. But alas.... I want to cry.

Went Like This

Went Like This

Last night, I did nothing. It's amazing how easily that can happen. Whenever I have nothing to do, I think "I should read a book". Sometimes I do. Othertimes, (like last night) I just think that and then I start day dreaming about something else and before you know it time has been pissed away and it's time to go to bed. Wait... I put new wheels on my skateboard and rode down to Hollywood video only to find that it had closed. I also made a weird drawing. Anyway, books however, are just some dude's daydreams written out. So if sitting around reading someone else's daydreams is time well spent then so is sitting around daydreaming. Right now, all the books at Adobe Books in SF are arranged according to color. It's an art instellation thing. What a pointless way to spend your time. Reorganize an entire bookstore by color for the sake of art. forget that! That dude should have just stayed at home and sat there daydreaming. Actually, I kind of want to go see it. But mostly so I can reiterate how stupid I think it is. Maybe I will be totally impressed when I see it. Who knows?

Tonight, I'm going to go see Millitant Children's Hour play at Mama Buzz Cafe. All HAIL RICARDO THE AWESOMEST ONE MAN BAND!!!!!!!!!!