at least he's so shockingly appauling, we can laugh on occasion

www.theonion.com/content/v..._to_survey

it's nice

it's nice to be with someone you haven't settled for
good enough just isn't
as there's the ever present eye
gazing and gleaming
for far fairer fields

it's nice to be with someone who meets you where you are
lovingly accepting
those scars from long ago child wars
and the one nasty habit that suggests a pariah of polite society
whether you be
soiled and snotty
or shining and sylvan
they meet you where you're at
with loving embrace

theres a war on, if you haven't noticed
how many small defeats do you accept in a hard day's work
the cavalry of averted glances and twiddling thumbs
the battle cry of "Oh i can manage for another day"
the silent reprisals
the white flags fluttering in the breeze of our daily doldrum
and a barrage of wounded words to be unleashed as part of the grand stratagem

it's nice to be with someone who's so much on your side
that you've forgotten the battle

it's nice to realize that the person loving you with diligence and ferocity
for all this very long time
is you

didnt take long

been in salt lake city less than 48 hours
and had a whopping maybe three conversations with people
in between setting up my apt etc
and sat through a 15 minute right wing diatribe about how the country is going to hell
and san francisco is the penultimate of unpatriotic traitor cities
i didnt feel like arguing that early in the morning
so i just listened and noted that he had never been to the place...
but i think ill find a way to turn and lock his internet homepage to
www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno

visiting my old home...

after completing the dissertation
(he gets up and dances in a little circle writing this)
I fly home, or to that other home,
the home where my parents live
and where i used to,
where parts of me still do...

the last thing i did before moving out to california was to
remove nearly everything from my room
which held me in a particular time
...so i took a razor blade to the old thick blue carpet
and carried it in chunks out of the room
i got rid of the piles
and the junk.
the furniture of no longer use
i got rid of books that would never again be read
and music that would never again be heard
so that when i would return to this home
i would be an adult
and not some version of a child
in a larger body

so here i am, in a room with long wooden floors
windows that stay open at night
and the fan left at a lazy wafting of the muggy air

the first morning i awoke,
i was in the trees
disoriented and floating in a forest
my parents house, a red brick colonial with dozens of rooms,
is nestled in the woods
there are trees everywhere
and on the third story, in a corner, is my bed
(not the bed of my childhood, this one is far more comfy)
surrounded by windows
the forest is tall and arching
with lush foliage

this is cherokee land
and there is a sacred space in the neighborhood
the creek that goes by was mentioned by a medicine woman
and there was a signaling tree
crafted and bent by the natives
that pointed to the creek behind the house
my parents built a fence for their two akitas to roam in the forest
the fence sliced through some of that land...
a month later the cherokee signaling tree
was struck by lightning
and burned to the ground

nevertheless, the medicine woman
stated that the house guards that land
as deer walk through it every morning
and my parents were deemed "knowledge keepers"


that first night my cat visited me
i havent seen him since before he died in a violent way
(see people.tribe.net/wilyum/bl...04c804424)
he came purring up to me
and i told him he was dead
to which he replied, with calm and presence,
"mew"

last night, i visited with old friends
and we made old jokes
and little else
i tried to share the places ive been and the experiences ive had
the beautiful people ive shared a few paces of this life with
and i tried asking the same of them
but i found the interactions wanting
and i found myself feeling disconnected
from these threads of my history
as the years go by, our more distant footprints appear all the more strange to one another
and the common parlance and the shared knowledge of each other begins to unspool
there are some i am still more connected to than others
but this is the ebb and flow of friendships
and so as i prepare to leave my current nest
i see echoes of my history
and wonder what timbres and pitches will resound
in this current movement of the piece

metaphors, metaphors, metaphors
last night (the third night)
i dreamt once again that i could fly
as i have dreamt this for many years
understanding the physical and spiritual movements
necessary to levitate
sometimes just flying, and sometimes a sort of moon walking
with very long delayed bounces from spot to spot
and as usual, last night, i had spent a lifetime learning this skill
and was doing my best to teach others how to fly
(this has been a very consistent recurring dream for me)

a thunderstorm awoke me this morning
as a bolt of lightning hit the creek
approximately 100 yards from the house
that the signal tree used to point to...

Come grab a drink with me!

I just successfully and with stellar praise
completed the oral defense of my dissertation

so, in the spirit of the paper, which is about alcohol neuropsychology
I'm heading to the alembic (located 1725 Haight St in SF)
and would love some company
so...
ill be there round 630 or 7
and
PM, call, or just show up


BIG LOVE!

MLK's last speech

prophetically prolific

worth a listen to if youve got half an hour or so
and still quiet relevant for today
(what a beautiful beautiful beautiful man)

www.americanrhetoric.com/speec...op.htm

For all my friends enamoured by the MMO

www.pwdocs.com/secondskin/
looks like a nice documentary on the construction of virtual lives...
(and sent by dear brother barnaby...)