flu and research?

don't seem like they'd go together, but when you're researching a book about um... vampires and the old west... well, mix well with a strong dose of tom waits and a splash of yann tiersen, and things almost start to make sense. in a scary way.

plus, i've been reading up on the lore surrounding st. george.

particularly fascinating is the difference in tales that i've read about whether st. george slew the dragon (by far the more popular version) and the version where he enslaves the dragon, wrapping it's tail around it's neck and allowing the princess to lead it around. plus, the fact that on a symbol worn by the order of the dragon, the dragon is pictured with said tail wrapped around said neck, and with a cross attached to its back.

more later.

revised already?

yeah, because that's how we roll around here.

anywho... did some cutting/pasting/rewriting and here's a new version of the just completed section that i posted yesterday or the day before... whenever it was.



bobby’s best friend switches channels like blinking,
looks for himself in crowds, wishes he could find
the remote control for his life so he could skip to a scene
with some action, or sex, or maybe stop the damn thing
and trade it in for another movie about fire.

he stares at an image of a girl on television so hard
a village in the Congo, like this one minus the jeans,
bursts into flame.

he sees his reflection on the screen
settling like an unseen visitor across her lips,
practices the perfect smile: one part hope,
two parts desire and a pocketful of indifference,
then washes the taste of ash from his mouth
and decides this vague longing can’t be love
because it doesn’t hurt enough.

in progress, muchly (part 2)

er, actually, i think it'll be part three if the piece ever decides it wants to be finished... but here's another section from the poem i've been slaving over the past month or so... still working on it, so suggestions are always welcome. hint, hint (read: fix this poem for me, please).



bobby’s best friend stares at an image
of a girl on a billboard so hard
a village in the Congo,
like this one minus the jeans,
bursts into flame.

picking at the remains of last night’s sushi,
he practices the perfect stare: one part hope,
two parts need and a pocketful of indifference,
then washes the taste of ash from his mouth
and decides this vague longing can’t be love
because it doesn’t hurt enough.

he switches channels like blinking,
looks for himself in crowds, wishes
he could find the fast forward for his life
so he could skip to a scene with some action,
or a little sex or maybe just end the damn thing
so he can trade it in for another movie about fire.

research

just an fyi for anybody who's been really bored and kept up with the goings on in this part of the universe. still planning on that book type thing. just been busy doing research on the time period and other related subjects. the more research i've done, the more i've discovered that i needed to do, but i have seen a light at the end of the tunnel.

i'm hoping it's not a train.

meanstwhile, back to reading. there are some really interesting threads i've been able to pull together, but i still have a few questions that i haven't been able to answer yet (like villains... how many are too many? how dark should they be? how light should the 'heroes' of a piece be.... shouldn't we spend more time in the gray areas in between?).

so, yeah. just a heads up in case you were holding your breath.

go ahead and exhale for now.

reading and writing and watching, oh my!

so, i've been on my own bit of summer vacation today, holding an impromptu twilight zone marathon, and it occurs to me how much my habits have changed over the years. growing up, i always had a stack of books around and was poking my nose in them whenever possible. even in school, i'd often be 'talked to' about reading the 'correct' books and studying with the rest of the class.

i still carry an armful of books around in the car, but find myself reading quite a bit less as time goes by... and as one of the seeming legion of folks out in the world who considers themself a writer, i find this rather troubling. my attention span for reading has diminished over the years and i find that i still pay attention to storylines and laugh behind my hand at what passes for writing in many movies or television shows and such (not the case in the twilight zone marathon... there are, of course, bits that are showing their age or that are dated to the early '60's when it originally aired... the strength of the show always was, and always remains it's writing... which is what disspointed me so much about the new versions of the show when they attempted to resurrect it... the twilight zone without a strong core of stories, and fresh innovative ideas, is just... sad... and rod serling must have been tossing the typewriter at the walls of his grave), but haven't been really practicing this craft nearly enough... which includes an ample portion of reading with a side of editing.

ah, the pitfalls of living in a video age, i suppose... but we'll see how the trade winds blow in the next few weeks... next up in the supply line of reading... some gertie stein and edna st. vincent millay... nummm.

ode to my laptop

o, laptop, with your keys that work the way
bill gates intended,
you click and clack and don't behave
like a 2 year old on ampthetamines
is sitting at the keyboard
while i'm trying to type.

now if you only had a fountain
of lemonade built in,
i swear i'd marry you.


(it bears mentioning that i just spent 10 hours at my crappy work computer working on videos with a processor under-equipped for the job, three days in a row)

in progress, muchly

here's part of something new that's in progress... it's very much in bits and pieces right now, but heck, might as well put something out there, right?

...right?

and happy valentine's day to all y'all.



bobby’s girlfriend volunteers to be the town’s
next human cannonball… kisses him goodbye,
her lips an implosion, a back draft,
three words she never meant to say.

already, she can taste the echo
of her escape—the sudden emptiness
of the sky as she sails over main street,
a smile like the sun painting the upturned
faces a deeper shade of fire.

she tries on the bomb’s desire
like a new pair of shoes, forgetting
her footprints were always surrounded
by broken glass and blast radius.

laptop goodness (en route)

so, two things which are makin' me happier than a chipmunk with a sackful o' nuts (mmm... okay, that just sounded wrong):

uno: got word that my new motherboard for my long-suffering laptop has arrived! now, i just need to take my 'puter into the shop and they promised i would have it back by wednesday. hurrah! huzzah! cheer numero tres!!

dos: recorded 2 basic tracks for the cd last night (thanks b-dub and d-bub, and of course, the magical fingers of my roomie). very happy with the results. had them playing a typewriter and making cat sounds... and that was before the all-improv beat on something loudly session that dmitry suggested, and was much more fun than you'd think.

now, i just have to get the laptop back, and start in on the multi-track goodness. had an idea tonight on the way home about using cello for a bass line on a track... so i may have a busy lil' cello player workin' overtime soon. muahahaha.

it's a loaner

so, i'm on a loaner of a laptop. i miss my programs and my processing speed, and my happy little tire swing of a piratical desktop. but, hey, at least i can check email and get in my online gaming addiction, so we must be thankful, mustn't we?

also, digging on the new mini-disc player/recorder. captured some cool sounds out in the desert this weekend. keeping it in el backpacko just in case something catches my ear.

oh, and i'm whittling down the reading list slowly. very slowly. have two books sitting in my car so i can read at lunch, but wow... i've really taken on a bit of a research project with this book thing. enjoying it... just trying not to take too many steps back to see how large the project is... just trying to work through the details a step at a time so i don't get mentall overwhelmed.

look up dr h.h. holmes if you get a chance on the internet. or better yet, read 'the devil in the white city,' for yourself. a chilling little chapter of u.s. history that you don't read about in any of the textbooks that i can recall, though you do read about the world's fair that it took place at.

oh, and also look up the election of 1876. scary stuff. am knee-deep in research about that and also the building of the transcontinental railroad and am just starting to crack open the prison writings of leonard peltier. all this while trying to piece together some kinda tenuous connections between them all, though some are more philosophical links.

anywho... back to cleaning the room.

in search of

sounds. am getting some ideas of different sounds to use on the cd, and discovered a few things that i'll need. if you have one, or know somebody that does, um... let me know:

a manual typewriter
a screen door, wood (aluminum has a much different sound when closing)
an old set of heating vents (preferably those huge metal boxes that used to sit in a living room floor)
an old (50's-60's era) car with those loud clicky turn signals
a field full of crows (yeah... um... if you happen to see one... ahem)

will add more as i think of 'em.

recording

so the mini-disc player has arrived. yay!

experimented with it a bit the past few days and i'm pretty confident that it'll do what i'm hoping it will, which is record clean and clear audio in most situations (espeically with the electret condenser microphone that i ordered specifically for that purpose).

also have enlisted a very talented and cool cast of characters to make music for me. surprising how many people have talents you never even knew about once you start asking around.

and i was introduced to the dresden dolls (not in person, but close enough... check out their cds... available at your local amazon.com screen). thanks to beth for that... incredible sounds. gonna be immersing myself in their punk cabaret goodness as well as the old faves like tom waits and new faves like madeleine peyroux. acoustic chocolate.

techno resolutions

ok, so i've made the standards new year's resolutions already (losing weight, getting in shape, putting my life together, etc..), but i'm also putting together a few projects that require some
technological expertise, which i am slowly attempting to gain.

first off, is the whole book-writing project... and i've got my laptop, so that's good to go (though the reading list i've been accumulating for research is really rather odd... i'll post a bit of it sometimes), though i've got to do something this week about the problems i'm having with it since my friend placed a drink next to my keyboard when i wasn't looking and helped me figure out how to spill rootbeer across my shiny new high-powered computer.

additionally, i'm attempting to get some more work in video production... also have the software in place for that (sony vegas 6.0 with dvd architect... sweet). in fact, i've already done a project for a friend through work, where i took about 800 some photographs, scanned them (with my a lovely canon mp500 scanner/printer) and made a video collage with music and transitions and such out of them. turned out a bit better than i had expected, especially considering the fact that the entire project had to be churned out in a little under a week, from receiving the photos to having the finished dvd. zoiks.

the other real project that i'm working on is a cd of my poetry. i recently ordered a sony mz-rh10 minidisc recorder. portable, clean sound (from the online reviews i've read) and both line level and mic level inputs. that, combined with the audio-technica electret condenser microphone that i've ordered will make me a mobile recording studio (oh, those and the shure in-ear headphones that i also picked up), and considering i'm planning on using a small catalog of found sounds, should make things move along fairly quickly once i get started.

i've also decided not to put any time frames on these projects, but to just begin with a clearly defined plan on how to get the work done. one thing i've noticed about myself... timelines aren't an impetus for artistic work, but actuallly beginning the work sort of makes it feed upon itself... the actual act of creating and editing is really where the joy in the art lives.

the social progressives

ok, so anybody read about this?

first, off, yay for judges in south africa.

second... um... this makes south africa the socially progressive couple down the block, right? so, uh... south africa... south africa... you remember that place... apartheid... south africa... yeah... that place... is more socially progressive than oh... almost every state in the union? they were able to get this through their high courts, and we couldn't??



South Africa's high court approves gay marriage
Decision paves way for homosexual unions, a first for the continent

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South Africa's highest court ruled Thursday it is unconstitutional to bar gay marriage, paving the way for this country to become the first in Africa to legalize homosexual unions.

Gay rights activists welcomed the ruling on a continent where homosexuality remains largely taboo.

In its ruling, the court gave the country's parliament a year to change the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

"We were thinking we would be calling our friends today and inviting them to our wedding," said Fikile Vilakazi, of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, who proposed to her partner more than six months ago. "Now they are asking us to wait another year."

South Africa recognized the rights of gay people in the constitution adopted after apartheid ended in 1994, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But married couples have numerous rights still denied gay couples, including the ability to make decisions on each other's behalf in medical emergencies, and inheritance rights if a partner dies without a will.

Marriage is defined in South Africa's common law and Marriage Act as a union between a man and a woman. The Constitutional Court has instructed Parliament to add the words "or spouse" to the definition within a year, or else the change will automatically be effected by the courts.

don't die... or go to jail?

okay, so reading through the news today... and have you seen this? i mean, have you seen this?? read on, dear reader (or not so dear and anonymous browser... you know who you are):



BIRITIBA MIRIM, Brazil (AP) -- There's no more room to bury the dead, they can't be cremated and laws forbid a new cemetery. So the mayor of this Brazilian farm town has proposed a solution: outlaw death.

Mayor Roberto Pereira da Silva's proposal to the Town Council asks residents to "take good care of your health in order not to die" and warns that "infractors will be held responsible for their acts."

The bill, which sets no penalty for passing away, is meant to protest a federal law that has barred a new or expanded cemetery in Biritiba Mirim, a town of 28,000 people 45 miles east of Sao Paulo.

"Of course the bill is laughable, unconstitutional, and will never be approved," said Gilson Soares de Campos, an aide to the mayor. "But can you think of a better marketing strategy?"

A 2003 decree by Brazil's National Environment Council bars new or expanded cemeteries in so-called permanent preservation areas or in areas with high water tables. Environmental protection measures rule out cremation.

That left no option for Biritiba Mirim, a town on the so-called "green belt" of rich farmland that supplies fruits and vegetables for Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city. The town produces 90 percent of the watercress consumed in Brazil.

Most of Biritiba Mirim sits above the underground water source for about 2 million people in Sao Paulo, de Campos said. The rest is covered by protected forest.

More than 50,000 people already are buried in the 3,500 crypts and tombs in Biritiba Mirim's municipal cemetery, which was inaugurated in 1910.

The cemetery ran out of space last month, and 20 residents who have died since November were forced to share a crypt. But even that solution has limits.

"We have even buried people under the walkways," de Campos said, predicting that crypts will reach capacity in six months. "Look, people are going to die. A solution has to be found, or we'll have to break the law."

At least 20 towns within 60 miles of Biritiba Mirim have a similar dilemma, de Campos said, though none has ordered its citizens not to die.

Biritiba Marim isn't the first Brazilian town to draw attention with an unusual law. A few years ago, a mayor in Parana state banned the sale of condoms, arguing that his town needed to increase its population to keep qualifying for federal aid. Drugstores ignored the ban.

De Campos said his town wants the Environment Council to change the wording of the cemetery decree to allow exceptions approved by environmentalists.

Biritiba Mirim has set aside public land -- five times the size of the current graveyard -- for a cemetery that environmental experts from the University of Sao Paulo say "will not affect the region's water tables or surrounding environment," de Campos said.

The Environment Council declined to comment before a meeting to discuss the matter with local officials Thursday.

Meanwhile, town officials say they are hoping no one else dies.

hi de hi de ho ho ho

...or something to that effect. serves me right for listening to cab calloway and christmas music in the same weekend. though, truthfully, the christmas music wasn't my fault... well, okay, it was kinda, as i was the one actually playing it... but it was a holiday event, so i was forced to play music. i cannot emphasize enough, though, the number of people who thanked me very heartily for mixing it up and not force feeding them a steady diet of holiday cheer. how many versions can you play of winter wonderland in one night anyways?

two.

then people start to notice.

i have to mention two very nice surprises... er, make that three, but two are in the same category.

first, i'm doing this job where i'm attempting to create an 8 to 12 minute video in under a week, involving many pictures that need to be scanned in, plus music and transitions... the whole shebang. that's not the surprising part.

the surprising part is that i went out and purchased a brand spankin' new canon mp500 multifunction printer/scanner... and the durn thing actually works better than advertised! it's the first time i've had a machine suggest one way of doing something (scanning multiple documents) and i've said, 'no, don't worry, mr. machine, i already know how i want to handle this' (making contact sheets of multiple photos so i can go back and crop out the areas that i need) and then sat back after doing three pages and realized that hey... mr machine knows whereof it speaks... in it's silent machine-like way. and it didn't even gloat when i realized the error of my ways.

on the plus side of this kinda embarassing submission to technology is the fact that i talked the salesperson at compusa out of trying to recommend an hp (i've had them before and while decent machines, their print quality never impresses me for the price you're paying), and even his trusty back up recommendation of epson (excellent quality printing and features, but too many stories abounding about the printheads that are designed to fail after two years). he came back with specs (a nice touch that the sales people at compusa do... they do research for you, even if you've already done it beforehand...) for the model that i wanted and kept remarking about how it surprised him the number of features and quality of print you get for the price. go cnet.com and amazon reviewers united... plus a couple of other sites that i browsed before purchasing.

the other two combined surprises? music. madeleine peyroux and maria muldaur. both keepers of the flame of old timey music. madeleine is more jazzy, maria more bluesy, but they both have excellent bands behind them, and understand the heart of old time music, and more importantly, really seem to love what they're doing.

and maria got her start in a jug band! a jug band, i say! and madeleine has marc ribot playing his ever excellent strings (see tom waits... mule variations among others... the man can play, out and out)! did i mention that madeleine also covers edith piaf... en francais?

hi de hi de ho ho ho

sleep: over-rated?

i wouldn't know lately, as i haven't been doing too much of it lately.

at work, we've been busy building an outdoor ice rink. in southern california. where we don't have weather, just minor variations on summer.

also, not sure if you've heard about this... but there's this little holiday thing that takes place every year around this time. it's pretty freaky. people buy over-priced gifts for other people and give them away. sometimes those other people even give the giver over-priced gifts also.

just out of curiosity: how many gifts do you remember off the top of your head from christmases past?

i remember the fire truck that i got when i was six. the freakin' thing was better than the batmobile, except that i didn't get to wear a cape while driving it. believe me... i asked.

more later. time to research some printers and scanners for the side-job that i've got lined up, which is going to pay for a lot of over-priced gifts that i hope will make people smile for at least 2.5 seconds. i'll be counting.

revision: moments

ok, so i'm working on this piece... yet again. i finished a draft and was thinking.. yeah... all right.

then i realized that was the cold talking, telling me to go to bed and forget about this writing thing.

i don't like the cold telling me what to do, and i'm not too crazy about settling for something less than what i'm capable of creating. however, the orange juice has run out and so has the nyquil.

so, here's another draft. more work will be done. suggestions, as always are welcome.




We leave these moments unfinished,

like sketches: deep tongue kisses
of graphite stranded like a dead ocean,
sand and heat on bare white paper.

Notice the use of space,

how the contour of a line might suggest
the pink curve of lips caught mid-smile,
breath being drawn into lungs the moment
before a kiss, or a shy bend of linen sheets
half-exposing a tangle of limbs;

how the page begs for color,
the way a grey September morning welcomes
the slow invasion of light, adding color
by degrees, layers of gold and brown and autumn
gathered like leaves ready to burn;

how the small gouges taken from the skin of the page
might remind you of Jackson Pollock, cigarette trembling
in his mouth, paint mixed with shards of glass
tumbling from the open vein of the bucket in his hands,
in the moments before the scrape and the scratch,
the terrible gentleness of the trowel and the knife,
the desperate precision of a derailed train
jumping back on its track—

were you so inclined to think that way,

on a sunday afternoon, in a city named for a state
where the page of the book you were reading
just turned in the breeze, your thumb slipping
into the margin a second too late.

obsessing much?

discovered today that i'm working too hard on the bike. i set the seat too close to the pedals and so my legs were scrunching up into me belly! set it back a peg and voila! still did 40 minutes but added an extra mile and a half to my distance theoretically traveled in a sitting position without having to balance or look where i was going, which is lucky considering my nose was buried in a book the entire time.

two things of note today:

did you read about the girl who died in quebec because of her allergies to peanuts? she went into anaphylactic shock after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten a peanut butter sandwich hours earlier. 15 years old. kisses her boyfriend, then dies after doctors are unable to revive her, in spite of receiving a timely shot of adrenalin.

15 years old.

damn.

...do i seem to be obsessing on death these days? could it have something to do with reading too many news stories? something to do with my own age?

oh, and peanut allergies have been on the rise in recent decades, possibly having to do with baby creams or lotions that use peanut oil in them that cause children to develop allergies later in life.

the other thing of note (i know... you're probably saying to yourself... anything happy or at least not so depressing? and the answer would be no.): november 29th marks the 141st anniversary of the sand creek massacre.

for those non-history buffs, or who just kinda listened in high school when the hisotry teacher talked about the battle of sand creek (if they dealt with it at all.. which isn't a guarantee, considering it came near the tail end of the civil war), here's a quick summary.

a band of southern cheyenne and arapahoe indians, camped outside of fort lyon, colorado were attacked and killed by a force of colorado volunteers led by col. john chivington.

having led his band of people under the protection of major edward wynkoop, their informal leader, black kettle, was determined to make peace, in spite of raids by other bands of cheyenne who found it impossible to live on the government hand outs doled out by the indian agents (read more about it... the history channel and also pbs have excellent resources about this whole incident).

black kettle flew a white truce flag and also an american flag (a gift from general nelson miles who assured him that as long as he honored the treaties and flew this flag that no harm would come to him or his people from the us army). the soldiers attacked near dawn, while many of the indian men were out hunting, having been given permission to hunt near the fort. apparently, many of the soldiers were also drunk when they attacked (near dawn). more than 100 women and children, along with 28 native men were killed. then the corpses were scalped and many of the bodies were mutilated, before the company of volunteers paraded the body parts through the streets of denver.

during the intermission at a downtown theatre, the scalps were shown to the applause of approving crowds (bitter over being raided by the indians).

later investigations 'strongly condemned' the attacks and mutilations, but because chivington resigned his commission, they found that they were unable punish him, as he was no longer under military jurisdiction.

yeah.

all of which leads me to post this, courtesy of sherman alexie, and availabe in his book, first indian on the moon. check it out. seriously. me? i need sleep.


Tiny Treaties

What I remember most about loving you
that first year is the December night
I hitchhiked fifteen miles through a blizzard
after my reservation car finally threw a rod
on my way back home from touching

your white skin again. Wearing basketball shoes
and a U.S. Army Surplus jacket
my hair long, unbraided, and magnified
in headlights of passing cars, trucks, two snowplows
that forced me off the road, escaping

into the dormant wheat fields. I laughed
because I was afraid but I wasn't afraid
of dying, just afraid of dying
in such a stupid manner. All the Skins
would laugh into their fists

at my wake. All the cousins would tell my story
for generations. I would be the perfect reservation metaphor:
a twentieth century Dull Knife
pulling his skinny ass and dreams
down the longest highway in tribal history.

What I imagine now
is the endless succession of white faces
hunched over steering wheels, illuminated
by cigarettes and dashboard lights, white faces
pressed against windows as cars passed by me

without hesitation. I waited seconds into years
for a brake light, that smallest possible treaty
and I made myself so many promises
that have since come true
but I never had the courage to keep

my last promise, whispered
just before I topped a small hill
and saw the 24-hour lights
of the most beautiful 7-11 in the world.
With my lungs aching, my hands and feet

frozen and disappearing, I promised
to ask if you would have stopped
and picked me up if you didn't know me
a stranger Indian who would have fallen in love
with the warmth of your car, the radio

and the steady rhythm
of windshield wipers over glass, of tires
slicing through ice and snow. I promised
to ask you that question every day
for the rest of our lives

but I won't ask you even
once. I'll just remain quiet
when memories of that first year
come roaring through my thin walls
and shake newspapers and skin.

I'll just wrap myself
in old blankets, build fires
from bald tires and abandoned houses
and I won't ask you the question
because I don't want to know the answer.

--sherman alexie

ridin' research

so i bought an exercise bike. thought it would be a good way to spin my wheels while working on the research for that whole book project thingamabobajigger.

more fun than i expected, actually. planned on thirty minutes, but went forty the first time because i wasn't done with the chapter.

now it's just a matter of committing to that time and the reading and we'll be off and biking, right?

meanstwhile, the more i learn, the more i learn that i've got a lot of reading ahead of me. there are so many things that we take for granted in our everyday lives. light. plumbing. cars. email. food. music. food.

did i say food?

no mcdonald's until what, the early 50's? anybody know when they were founded? anybody? bueller?

bueller?

...bueller?

and then reading more headlines... the trial of saddam hussein, an explosion in a mine in china, and then the one that sticks with me: heiress to samsung fortune commits suicide.

evidently the young lady (age 26) was worth about 170 million dollars and was in new york at graduate school attempting to learn more about art to help run samsung's cultural foundation.

and she hung herself with an electrical cord.

have you ever had somebody you know commit suicide, or attempt it? i have. and the number of people can't be counted on one hand. have you ever thought about it? more than idly? who hasn't, right?

who hasn't found themselves at the end of a dark tunnel of a day when decisions and breathing and finding a reason to wake up in the morning seem to be harder than choosing the longest, most dreamless sleep we'll ever know. but what is that thing, that one reason, or that one moment when we decide tomorrow's another day, and maybe we haven't hit rock bottom yet, or somebody out there would miss us more than we care to admit, or whatever reason it is that makes us draw one more ragged breath, then another, and another... until the pain and loneliness seem somehow manageable.

and why is it we don't always find that answer? or provide that reason to those we love... or to ourselves?

...

some joni mitchell lyrics i'm going to fall asleep to tonight, as channeled by diana krall and her piano:

I met a woman
She had a mouth like yours
She knew your life
She knew your devils and your deeds
And she said,
"Go to him, stay with him if you can
But be prepared to bleed"

Oh but you are in my blood
You're my holy wine
You're so bitter, bitter and so sweet

Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling
Still I'd be on my feet
I would still be on my feet

where do you write?

okay, so for the past few months, i've been spending more time and energy in trying to vary not only when and how, but where i write. used to be a hardcore sit-in-front-of-the-computer-and-type kinda guy, but that was mainly a force of habit combined with very poor penmanship skills.

that and i used to be a very quick and accurate typer. now, not so much, but hey, lack of practice makes lack of perfection, yeah?

but last year in idyllwild, while at poetry camp, i discovered that i really enjoyed lying on my stomach and writing longhand. or scribbled longhand/block letters... depending on how fast i was writing. the surprising thing was how i found myself leaning into the page as i was furiously and illegibly scratching letters into the page. it became a much more visceral experience than it had been previously... like back when i used to work out on a regular basis... that kind of intensity into ordering the words in just the right way.

and two weeks ago, i finally broke down and bought a couple of those cute little writing journals that you see people who fancy themselves writers carrying to places like starbuck's and squinting their pricily caffeinated eyes into and pouring out their souls like a custom carafe of coffee.

i find myself switching places, styles and times much more often lately, now that i've provided myself with more tools... and the funny thing is... i find myself changing how i word things depending on where i am and what i'm writing with/on. the funniest part is that i've been using it in editing mode very heavily. if i get stuck in a particular phrase or mode of thinking and start banging my head against the wall... i switch modes. rewrite a typed page into the journal. transcribe a journal entry into an email so i can work at it from any computer. lie down and scribble.

the most helpful part has been making sure that when i'm burning out on an approach i either a) switch modes or b) i start over in the mode that i'm in... meaning that i transcribe whatever i've done so far... allowing myself just by the physical process of writing to pull myself back into that frame of mind... it's amazing how your body will lead your mind where it needs to go when you start learning the right tricks to let it wander a bit more freely than our nine to five lives seem to allow us to explore.