Weekend for Labor and the start of Fall.

Standing on the edge of the new semester, watching the mass move-ins here in Bloomington, and the opening of college football all equate to the grand openning of the fall of 2008. Easily the best time of year it is this weekend that seems to cast the long endless shadow of unending possibilities. Fall is also the time of resplendent and endless color. Especially here in the midwest. Yes, I will miss the aspens of the northern Rockies. But its the maples, the oaks, and chestnuts that seem to know color so well. Here in Indiana, that might be months away, but you can at least feel it in the air. Regardless, with the anxious wait for fall over, this time seems to be the best to simply relax and enjoy the endless possibilities.
The snapshot today is a touched up, filtered exploration of the old chicken coup in our backyard. Labor day is about slowing down and enjoying the beauty of mundane things around you. Be it the changing of the leaves, the brightness of a pumpkin blossom, or the texture of 70 year old wood, the small of the universe is what matters most.
A day such as today offers a chance to post a little Carl Sandburg. The fine labor guy as well as skilled exhibiter of the natural world of North American needs a little illustration. Enjoy the weekend, the grilling, and approaching season.

Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn
by Carl Sandburg (taken from Cornhuskers)

SMOKE of autumn is on it all. The streamers loosen and travel. The red west is stopped with a gray haze. They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks, They make a long-tailed rider 5 In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star. . . . Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River. There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol routes west. Around each slippery padding rat, a fan of ripples; in the silence of dusk a faint wash of ripples, the padding of the rats going west, in a dark and shivering river gold. (A newspaper in my pocket says the Germans pierce the Italian line; I have letters from poets and sculptors in Greenwich Village; I have letters from an ambulance man in France and an I. W. W. man in Vladivostok.) 10 I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan of ripples on a sheet of river gold. . . . Better the blue silence and the gray west, The autumn mist on the river, And not any hate and not any love, And not anything at all of the keen and the deep: 15 Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor, And the new corn shoveled in bushels And the pumpkins brought from the corn rows, Umber lights of the dark, Umber lanterns of the loam dark. 20 Here a dog head dreams. Not any hate, not any love. Not anything but dreams. Brother of dusk and umber.

I'm Back Baby - Greetings from Bloomington

To quote the great Costanza, "I'm back bab-y!" (of course without food poisoning soldiers), I've fired the site up again. Well settled in south central Indiana, I'm about to embark on the study of prose fiction for my MFA. The race for publication has begun a new as has the always entertaining life of a graduate student. I've traded the Big Sky for the Big Ten, and mountains for glacial hills. But writing and photography continue to abound in this very different personal and public space.
After a summer of watching Ken Burns, baseball, and Anthony Bourdain (oh, and little thing called marriage) the need to push energy out in the form of stories and pictures is growing elephant in the room. In honour of my triumphant return to the midwest, I believe a little well placed Allen Ginsberg is required. Please do check back more often now. I'll be posting more writing and photography more often. I'll try to keep the editoralizing down, but that's a hard thing to do when one writes.


Rising over Night-blackened Detroit Streets
by Allen Ginsberg

brilliant network-lights tentacle dim suburbs
Michigan waters canalled glittering thru city building
blocks
Throne-brain lamps strung downtown, green signals'
concentrate brightness blinking metal prayers & bright
Hare Krishnas
telepathic to Heavenly darkness whence I stare down and
adore O beautiful!
Mankind maker of such contemplate machine! Come
gentle brainwaves
delicate-soft heart-throbs tender as belly butterflies,
light as Sexual charm-penumbras be, of radiant-eyed
boys & girls black-faced & bond that Born believe
Earth-death at hand, or Eden regenerate millennial Green
their destiny under your Human Police Will, O
Masters, fathers, mayors, Senators, Presidents, Bankers &
workers
sweating & weeping ignorant on your own plastic-pain
Maya planet ...
february 15, 1969

Poem of the Week: Tax Week 2008

Hey, just figured I needed to brighten this page up. Here's my selection for Poem of the week. It really expresses my longing for a little more city life. There are fewer love poems as beautiful.



Steps
FRANK O’HARA

How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left

here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days
(I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still
accepts me foolish and free
all I want is a room up there
and you in it
and even the traffic halt so thick is a way
for people to rub up against each other
and when their surgical appliances lock
they stay together
for the rest of the day (what a day)
I go by to check a slide and I say
that painting’s not so blue

where’s Lana Turner
she’s out eating
and Garbo’s backstage at the Met
everyone’s taking their coat off
so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers
and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes
in little bags
who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y
why not
the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won
and in a sense we’re all winning
we’re alive

the apartment was vacated by a gay couple
who moved to the country for fun
they moved a day too soon
even the stabbings are helping the population explosion
though in the wrong country
and all those liars have left the UN
the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest
not that we need liquor (we just like it)

and the little box is out on the sidewalk
next to the delicatessen
so the old man can sit on it and drink beer
and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day
while the sun is still shining

oh god it’s wonderful
to get out of bed
and drink too much coffee
and smoke too many cigarettes
and love you so much

Notes from the First Hot Day in Bozeman

At work again and avoiding the usual important things I should be doing to close out the semester's end. Just figured I'd post some thoughts concerning the final academic paper of my undergraduate life. We must be getting close to the end, what 20 days left or so? Anyhow, the final paper is dealing with the duality of the America Literary Canon. I'm working with trauma theory and looking specifically at the master-slave dichotomony in the American experience. After looking at a book like Bloom's Western Canon and coming from a place like metro-Detroit you have to start realizing that there is fundamentally something amiss in conservative academic programs. Programs like the one here at Montana State University. Realistically, I've only studied about three writings by African Americans here: Ellison, Morrisson, and Kaufman. This is incredibly problematic at best. I've come to wonder if this is the norm across the educational board in this country. Thus the paper topic. 20 days to read and talk about all those voices left out in the canon. I'll keep the word informed as to my writings.

On the upside of things, I just found this great concert posted on CBC radio two's website. I encourage everyone to check out the show. It's free and if you like Afro-Soul, jazz, or R&B you should enjoy it. Her name is Melissa Laveaux and she now lives in gay ole' Paris:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/concerts/20080229melis

Ahh ... Montana Politics

I'm still a little muddled down in the fall out, but I just figured we had a little gathering here at MSU on Saturday night. Obscured somewhere behind the monster truck rally at the Brickbreden, we had our local chapter of the Republican party bring in David Horowtiz to give a little lecture to rich white folk out here. My jaw dropped suddenly when I showed up to work the next day to find his hate literature on my work desk. It's great to see that he deflect his ignorance temporarily away from America's educated and educators and onto the totality of Arab-American students. I wasn't aware (but thanks to the pamphlets I've now become acquainted with the fact) that some of the best brightest at MSU are secretly planning a Jihad. He stopped short of claiming they had sneaked the WMDs out of Iraq before coming to Bozeman, MT.
The really scarely thing wasn't just the propaganda left at the desk. Rather it was the non-chalantness that the all of the local media outlets have portrayed his visit as. Some might even say that were quite pleased with themselves in landing such a "fantastic" speaker. Our local State Representative (Mr. Rehberg) was even kind enough to attend the event. Yep, all of this dim shadow of ignorance stamping out any sort of light on the hill beacon that our school is suppose to play to the community. Nothing like selling fear, intolerance, and misunderstanding on a major public University grounds. Is this the great promise America is holding up for the world to see? I've contacted those that I should have. We'll see if anything
comes of it.

Quick Updates after a Prolonged Absence

This blog is now in line for a couple of important information updates. First and foremost is the pending move from the high alpine valley of Bozeman, Montana to the rolling lowlands of Bloomington, Indiana. My fiance and I will be moving there in May as I will begining my MFA in prose Fiction at IU this fall. This is, of course, a very cool thing. The Buddhist connection to Bloomington is pretty massive as is the quality of the people and program at IU. I'll be keeping the world informed as to any upcoming readings i may have.

Secondly, I recently achieved the cover shot on the Winter 2008 MacGuffin. Check it out at New Pages: http://www.newpages.com/magazineguide/newmags/newmags.htm. Full colour, it's pretty snazzy. I'm thinking the issue is available at bookstores around Michigan

Thanks I needed that

I just heard back this week that I've been accepted to present a selection of my poetry and a paper of mine on Jack Kerouac's prose structure and bebop at the Sigma Tau Delta conference in Louisville, KY. I needed that. All this waiting around for graduate program info has been starting to whittle away at my confidence and general sense of well being. Between this period and the GRE, I am really starting to wonder why anyone bothers with graduate school. I guess you really have to want to go. Regardless, I'm looking forward to heading off to Louisville in March and hope to get more out of this conference than I did last year's in Pittsburgh. Now, I just have to find the money ...