What is it good for?

As of today, the current U.S. war in Iraq has gone on for five years. To mark the horrendous occasion, I woke up at 6am, packed up some food, got on my bike, met friends at 7 and headed to downtown San Francisco, where we met up with even more bikers. We took a series of rides together, to give support to various acts of civil disobedience, lockdowns at the Federal Reserve Building, the Chevron corporate office, and the UCSF campus at Mission Bay. Then we joined a festive march going down Market Street and helped stir up some hubbub at various Market Street intersections, two where die-ins were taking place and protesters laid down in the intersection. The second die-in drew a large crowd and we stood on the sidewalk for two hours as those trapped by policemen in the intersection were arrested. Here are some photos I took. Those are the basics and all I have the energy for right now. (Check out Lizzy's current post for more on our day.)

AND for the past few weeks, I had tuned out on Barack Obama. But, after hearing about it from many folks, I decided I should actually listen to his recent speech on race, delivered in Philadelphia:

Yes, it is a good piece of rhetoric, but more than that it makes me feel like maybe this man should be president. He seems to have good reasons for wanting it.

AND I was telling a friend the other day that I am sad aboumoving to Richmond, Va. in the fall because there will be no Rainbow there. And he said I should grow a garden. That's something I'd have to learn but I think it might be a very good idea.

AND I have nearly finished The Road. Damn, Cormac McCarthy can certainly compose a tension-wrought and bleak future for the last few of our human race, a time in which co-ops and politicians and wars are blackened wisps of haunting memory. I had it on the table in the cafe when I met my professor there yesterday, and he said, "Oh, God, you're reading that." (Not as in "why?" but as in "what a trip!") So, yeah, I've got to go finish it now. Sweet dreams to me.

catastrophic days

That is a photo of a dead, somewhat flattened pigeon shoved into a grate, headfirst. Encountered FRIDAY night at the corner of something and Valencia. Pretty devastating. And yesterday (SATURDAY) I saw two more, as I was biking around. Those two were much flatter, small raised discs of pigeon that I rolled by on the asphalt as I rode home from the grocery store.

On MONDAY I went to my cousin's house where they have satellite tv, and on the news there were stock market line graphs flashing downwards across the screen. Seems the market "has an upset stomach," as my father described it yesterday on the phone. And last night I was sitting in front of the same television again. We were watching something called "No Comment" on Euronews, a show that consisted of video coverage with no commentary, not even in a language I can't understand, not even scrolling across the bottom of the screen. There was footage of a mob of black-hoodied people in Prague, beating each other up, against grey walls. And then the cops showed up and then it switched to somewhere in the boondocks of Turkey, where peasants set up camp and hauled things against a stark desert. In the distance behind their tents, there were dunes of dark pebbles, what might have been coal? And all this as my little cousins expended energy at our feet:


On TUESDAY I woke up early and voted. Off-year, so there were like six propositions and of course Gavin Newsom won for mayor, perhaps because, as someone told me later that day, "He's just so damn good-looking," and the roster of people he was running against read like a variety show line-up. The volunteers were sweet, but seemed a little incompetent, and I wondered how voting could be more powerful than certain conversations.

On WEDNESDAY, this happened, but I didn't hear about it until THURSDAY, and even then I was too busy getting painfully drunk with the best coworkers a girl could ask for. And so I started to process it on FRIDAY. 36,000 gallons of oil fuel (which is somewhere in between gasoline and straight-up crude oil) spilled in San Francisco Bay. Unforgivably slow response and the poison spread quickly and far, closing down more than a dozen beaches, seriously the most amazing gems of our city and surrounds. But then this fine SUNDAY morning I happened to click on this. 1,300 tons of oil fuel spilled in the Black Sea after an oil tanker split in half?!

Still the thing that gets me most is that after a nice walk with a friend in yesterday's grey drizzle, about a half a block from my house I encountered a man I often see hanging out on the streets of my neighborhood. He was standing still right in the middle of the sidewalk, facing east, underneath one of those huge black umbrellas, the kind my dad used to have. And as I slowly walked by him, I realized his head was bowed towards his chest and he was sleeping.

Maya

This is a photograph of my cousin, a girl named Maya. She is one and half years old, approximately, which is the age, it seems, when human beings begin to notice things around them in the world, begin to be interested in how things work in terms of form and symbol and function.

Maya has a some picture books she is entirely devoted to. Whenever I visit her at home, she brings me one or two to read. She crawls up into my lap and follows along, enthusiastically turning pages and pointing out the things she knows:

"Baher!"

The "H" is hard; this is the word for beach and ocean in Arabic. Maya has seen the baher in her picture books; she knows each fish and bird and Dora represented in those pages. She knows sand, too, playing almost daily in the sandbox at the playground near her house. Maya's already been swimming. Her mother takes her to mommy-baby lessons at the Y, calling the pool "baher" whenever she names it for Maya.

Maya's been to the beach before--here in SF and in Lebanon--but this past Friday, when I accompanied her and her parents to Crissy Field, Maya understood something about the beach for the first time. As we got out of the car and walked up to the trail and alongside the sand, she turned and said, "Baher!", loud and pointing. And then we tried to get her to walk on the sand, but she wouldn't have it, would rather stand between her parents, holding a hand of each and walk along the cement sidewalk, chanting the word. Then finally her dad grabbed her, lifting up into the air and pulling her against him, and I took my shoes off and we all walked towards the Pacific.

When we all sat down on the sand, Maya stayed in the of her father's lap, until he put her down next to him. She was stiff at first, but then we pulled out some plastic molds and shovels and began playing with the sand, encouraging her to join. And then her mom walked out to the water and Maya began to call out to her, who was becoming smaller and smaller, a colorful dot against the brown and blue expanse and I reached my hand out to Maya and got up and we walked towards her. At the water, Maya's mom took her hand and I walked into the edge of the surf. It was cold! Maya came towards the water, too, and when the water touched her she shrieked and then cried. She was devastated for about ten seconds.

We walked back towards her father then and sat down, beginning to play again. Maya curiously removed her shoes, pointing out the sand on her tiny baby feet. We helped her wipe some off and explained to her that it was alright, getting sand in you and on you was part of visiting the beach. "Ees Okay!" she echoed, pointing at her sullied feet. "Ees Okay!"

We spent about two hours sitting out. Maya's dad went for a jog. Her mom told me a story about coming to the same beach right before Maya was born. It was her idea and she loved the smell of the water and walking there even though it was cold and windy that day. Her own mother had been with her and mentioned a few times the possibility of her giving birth right there, at Crissy Field.

Maya began to realize that the whole beach was her sandbox and she wandered off from us in many directions, following pigeons and falling over her own feet, uncertain in the sand. She seemed like a crazy drunk. I guess she was drunk on the beach. On the way home she passed out in her car seat, her head slumped forward. I pushed it back, noticing her cheeks had gotten sun despite all the spf applied. She just slumped forward again, snoring her soft baby snore.

It's been a while since I've posted here. The weather has been lovely. I've been enjoying my new bike. And writing a bit and reading a lot. Today so far a coupla things stick out:

"A passive understanding of linguistic meaning is no understanding at all, it is only the abstract aspect of meaning." (M.M. Bakhtin (who I am officially in love with, btw), from "Discourse in the Novel")

"I beg to dicker with my silver-tongued companion, whose lips are ready to read my shining gloss. A versatile partner, conversant and well-versed in the verbal art, the dictionary is not averse to the solitary habits of the curiously wide-awake reader....In the rapid eye movement of the poet's night vision, this dictum can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover's name." (Harryette Mullen, the beginning and end of "Sleeping with the Dictionary")

Rough Stuff

These are middle drafts of the three newest poems I've written. They've come out sort of as a series--because they are concerned with similar topics. I swear I am no where near ready to be married, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately, in the abstract I guess. I'd be curious if you married people had any thoughts, particularly about "And". Anyway, here goes:

And

And stand together but not too near together
For the pillars of the temple stand apart…
--from “On Marriage,” The Prophet, by Gibran Khalil Gibran

And (+) conj. 1. the most basic connector: “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” man and wife, man and woman, boy and girl, male and female, master and servant, mother and father, sister and brother… 2. Yin and Yang? Earth and Sky? 3. consequently: “I saw her across the room and my heart stopped and she made me do the craziest things. I couldn’t sleep! Days on end, I couldn’t eat! And then, finally, she agreed to marry me.” she: “And it’s been heaven since then, hasn’t it?” he: “What are you talking about woman?” and pinches her ass. she: giggles and sighs (and sighs and sighs and sighs and later they will moan their regular and uneven chorus). 5. The final joint in a series: ironing his shirts, cooking him dinner, and bearing his kids. 6. The present is an addition, the future an addition, to the past, and to our collected imagination, and our history, and our symbols and signifiers and systems. 7a. In the News, Marriage is turning into an Elite Institution, like before... Marriage in America is capitalism’s wet dream, full of SUV’s and IRA’s and Caribbean cruises and Thanksgiving feasts. 7b. And the revolutionary rant: Polyamory! Raising children in tribes! With many who can act as parents, and sharing knowledge and tasks and celebrations, like before… 8. But back to marriage, which your mother tells you is something that will certainly some happen to you, which your father tells you he put you on this earth to do: to marry and join your good genes with some other’s good genes, and in the end you will continue the line, fill out the tree. 9. The advice-giver clears the advice-giver’s throat (Ahem!): “A successful marriage is a combination of chemistry and hard work.” 10. The concave form and the convex it lays against; like two folds of flesh inside a closed fist.

after A. Van Jordan


After Dinner

I am happiest behind a sink
of dirty dishes; scrubbing pots
makes more sense than sitting
in the swill of satiated
conversation.

Try to talk about what is happening
or what happened or what will

happen,

and you might trap me,
briefly, in the bones of memory,

but then the light will catch
the corner of my periphery,
flash like a rocket’s sizzle
in a darkened sky, and I bolt upright,
for there will be water to boil
for Turkish coffee and tea,
tupperware to fill,

wilted, oil drenched lettuce
to brush off of plates.

I am

I am older wiser stronger stupid fragile
breakable fixable trickable tall pale
freckled smelly scented woman girl
female bitch whore angel virgin am I

Sometimes the house we live in
feels like a small, cold sickness,
tight and falling in on our heads;
then one day I came home,
slowly pushed open the door,
and the windows
flooded
the dusty floors
with light.

The food I cooked for dinner was
hidden, wilted, bought last week
that night we ate burritos instead,
but I cut it, touched it, built it
and we talked over it
and very slowly cleaned up,
talking still and eating
small, sweet berries, their
bright juice settling
over
the meal.

And there are spaces in my love for you,
where the thought of loving you
is laughable but
here there are stars
and tendrils of silent sidewalk air
crawl over us as we
trace street corners
and deeply
breathe
the night.

I am virgin angel whore bitch female
girl woman scented smelly freckled
pale tall trickable fixable breakable
fragile stupid stronger wiser older am I

(Thanks to my writing circle, Jim, my Individual Vision class, and my sister for reading some/all of these is such early stages.)