"Perhaps I am not I even if my little dog knows me but anyway I like what I have and now it is today."

from Everybody's Autobiography

Gertrude Stein

ETA:

came across this image & was struck by the way in which it is a sort of mirror inverse of the above pic of GS, ABT, and Basket. Thank you, internet, for the weirdness.

"Red Meat Nation" by Nigel Holmes

I dream that I've written essays

One of the dreams was about a paper I'd written called "The Fog of Scholarship." The thesis was that scholarship creates a fog around the subject, and sometimes it fills a book or a room. Or else it is there like a ghost in conversations. In the paper I called appearances of the fog in conversations "ghostings," and talked about how the language of scholarship is both guest and host which made the term especially appropriate. This all made perfect sense in the dream, even though now it seems...foggy.

Another essay was called "Multi-colored Pencils" and it was about how constructions and representations of race are articulated in different poetry communities. I remember that it seemed urgently important that I clarify that I wasn't talking about pencils of different colors, but rather pencils that were marbled rainbow (like these or these).

Another essay was called "Compassionate Sentences for Socialists" and it was written in a sort of Mad Libs form with many blanks above fine print descriptions of what should go in the blanks. There were things like "an animal with gentle skin" and "verb to describe the sound of machines" and "a house made out of paper and grass."

I have less time to write on paper or screens. I write when I am driving, or when I am walking home from class, or when I'm falling asleep. I see the words in my mind -- shuffling and reshuffling like scrabble tiles -- but my contact with the materials of writing -- paper, pencils, keys, and screens -- seems to be for typing and to-do lists.

These swans live at the lagoon at UCSB. For the longest time there was only one. Local birders believed that it was the offspring of a pair that had migrated out of the area. When a second swan appeared, the birding listserve was atwitter with the news. So many people were glad that the first swan was no longer alone.

@ SBWCN

Today I saw three whales. I was in an airplane. The whales were in the ocean. The shadow of the plane skittered across.

Good news

My pamphlet "How Hate Got Hand" is now available from eohippus labs.

Eohippus labs is the project of Amanda Ackerman and Harold Abramowitz, two of the coolest people ever.

Harold has a new e-book out from Little Red Leaves, and Hex Press will be publishing Amanda's chapbook this summer.

Also, the new issue of Little Red Leave is gorgeous and full of really awesome poetry.

I want summer to last forever

It's my favorite. The long days make me feel safe; for hours everything is gold. We were moving for so long and now we are resting. But it all feels like running in place.

The other night -- it was dusk, really...the gold-silver light -- we saw a fox in the field near our house. It was a red fox but it looked silver. It was traced by light. The ears were pointed, the tail held straight out behind. "foxlight" I thought. That was exactly, it. silver-pawed. feather-eared. lilac-misted. paused, pointed. forever-light. deep in my heart-bones.

On television there is a story of a man who takes his red dog to the steamy night sidewalk. He emerges from silver elevator doors, crosses the polished lobby, and opens the glass doors. The red dog barks through the glass. The man walks away. The dog trots away. The dog made the man so sad.

Today, dragonflies. At least three of them, one of them clearly blue. I've read dragonflies mean money. money is so sad.