All, Writing, Climate Change, Environment

The Fire in My Kitchen, My Belly

As a birthday present to myself, I bought a copy of Poet’s Market 2008. I’ve put my novel aside for a bit but a sudden fire under my bum has been lit to get some of my other stuff published. I think Evan set this fire, by mentioning in his blog that he is interning with Sharon Olds, who is my favorite living poet. Or maybe it is this thing stirring in my belly, this turmoil about the state of the world and a desire to express that in writing. A lot of people ask me where the best places are to go dancing, etc, but I am not really interested in that. I want to go to poetry readings or stay at home and write.

The other day when I posted that article about global warming, wherein a scientist said that in one week the arctic had lost an area of ice almost twice the size of the United Kingdom, another interesting thing happened. My boss came back to work from his basketball game. The game ended early. Why? Because two players got into an argument over a foul. Not usually a game-ending event, but in this case one of the players left the game and came back half an hour letter and put a case full of bullets in the other guy. Somehow no one felt like playing basketball when one of their teammates was lying on the court full of more holes than blood. My boss seemed to be taking this pretty well.

The most striking to me about this was its insignifigance in the grand scheme of things. Oakland has a serious problem with the whole shooting thing (maybe you’ve heard about it). I’m not playing that down by any means, nor the suffering of the family. But the high murder rate in Oakland is not going to kill as many people as global warming, not even close.

This is what I want to capture in my writing: this feeling that the issues humanity is facing right now are huge, but they don’t feel huge. The day of the shooting, I also set a fire in the kitchen. I remember the exhileration of that moment, the thrill of the temporary emergency. No matter how much perspective I have intellectually, it is hard to feel the difference, it is hard to feel the suffereing of the vicitims of the shooting or global warming when that fire is the danger in front of me. And that same fire is a thousand other things, social conflicts or career concerns or a packed to-do list and on and on.

It seems that the only way people can reach these higher, more important concerns, is through art. Books and music allow us to feel, rather than only think about, these problems. And you can hear a lot of artists now are immeshed in it, this compulsion to capture the direction the world is heading. The Besnard Lakes, in a recent interview, explained it as the reason their new album is so dark. And Tom Morello described it recently in an interview on Sound Opinions, “Its preaching to the converted, well I strongly believe the converted need a kick in the ass. Why the White House is not ringed by pitchforks and torches I don’t know.” And the new (and frankly, the previous) Modest Mouse record captures that spirit as well.

This juxtaposition of what we are feeling and what we should be feeling is my new obsession. I know how to capture it artistically and maybe that’s why I have been so interested in drawing lately. I am only just beginning to explore what it means for me as a writer. I am very interested in how this conflict between the struggles of day-to-day life and the larger problems facing the world have affected the rest of you. Does it change your passion for the things you are pursuing? Some days, it makes my desire to be a writer feel like empty egoism.
On other days, that same desire seems like the only power I have to affect the world at all.

All

Bragging Rights

After my recent premier in Publishers Weekly Magazine, I have more grounds for bragging rights.

BRAGGING RIGHT 1

As many of you know, I have tried my hand in the past at growing things and I am the only person I have ever met that managed to kill an aloe plant. I was doing okay for a while with my bamboo, as I only had to fill a glass bowl with water every month or so and even that my girlfriend did most of the time. But tragically the bamboo disappeared off the back of the moving truck on the way to California. Very mysterious, no? Or perhaps not, since I barreled down the interstate in a 26 foot truck with the back open for several minutes.

I suppose there is something to that old cliche’, something about getting back on that dead horse and beating it until it rides because even I have managed to grow something. Yes, dear readers, I am the proud parent of a ripe cherry tomato.

This all started with a witch who put a potato in my backyard and expected it to grow and though I watered that potato the only thing that sprouted was an ugly desert dandelion. But since I was taking the time to water it anyway, I figured I may as well get something more promising than an old potato. So, basil and tomato it was.

Some of my lovely plants.

But after the birth of my first fruit, like every new parent, I went a little wild. I started planting every scrap left over in the kitchen: the core of a pepper, three cloves of garlic, a ginger root that was too old to eat. I spent sixty dollars on a flourescent lamp and special bulbs and fancy organic dirt. I have since bought strawberries, mint, a pepper, cilantro, dill, a second tomato, and more basil too. They can’t all die, right?

This blog is certainly long enough but I can’t have a whole string of posts that are mere self-promotion, so I will continue on.

BRAGGING RIGHT 2

Lately, my internal alarm clock has been surprisingly accurate. I want to get up earlier than I have been, so despite having six or seven hours of sleep I wake up at seven exactly. But I hit the “snooze” button in my brain and think, let’s sleep for another half-hour and then I wake up at exactly seven thirty. I think 7:40 is a much better time to wake up and I go back to sleep for exactly ten minutes. As impressed as I am with myself, I don’t seem to be getting out of bed any earlier.

BRAGGING RIGHT 3

Though this took the least amount of work, I think it is the bragging right I am most proud of! As you all know, I have been going on at length about the eighty pages of novel I have written. No matter how much I write, it seems to stay around eighty pages. I suppose I am deleting things too. I have read several places that a “manuscript length” should be at least 150. That’s a long way to go from eighty. But I wasn’t using the standard manuscript formatting so I changed my novel to one column, double-spaced just to see how far off I am. It came out to 172 pages! And this is at a ten point font. If up the size to twelve, it fattens to 219 pages! That’s a hefty manuscript. In pages to pounds, I like the idea of my manuscript weighing more than I do.

Of course I understand that I didn’t actually write another 139 pages. But knowing that what I have is actually novel-length is a relief. Feeling like I need to write another eighty pages is such an uphill battle. And I may have that much more to write yet. But I can do so because the story needs it, not because an editor would expect it.

IN CONCLUSION:

I may be walking proud these next couple of days but the truth is I don’t eat any healthier, get up any earlier and I don’t have a finished novel.

Environment, Culture, Racism, Class

Update On the Neighbors

I am classist after all!

I was saying hi to my neighbor the other day, he is about my age, Mexican, drives an SUV.
I got up the will to confront him about throwing away furniture. I told him about the place up the street where they take furniture donations.

He said that that wasn’t their furniture at all. Random people had been dumping it by our trash. That is why they had started locking the gate at night (another thing they were doing that was really annoying because it doesn’t make me any safer and it takes extra time).

All it took was a little communication. Now to figure out why he’s driving that gas-guzzler.

To make matters worse, I found out that their aunt used to live in this apartment before she died. So at that time they had this whole complex all to themselves, one big happy extended family. I feel like an intruder. No wonder they are polite. We are like a ghost in the attic; they are stuck with us.

All, Racism, Class, Environment

This Blogger’s White Privilege is Showing

My Mexican neighbors keep throwing away their furniture. I don’t know how they go through it so quickly, but once a month or so I will see sofas and pillows and dining chairs stacked by the trash, like a big-boned house of cards.
I wonder how many tissues, crushed soda cans and credit card offers I can fit in the space these will take up in the landfill.
If they were white, I would ask them about it. I would ask whether they knew there was a thrift store three blocks up that will sell their furniture for the benefit of disabled children. I would say that I know a guy there who would walk the three blocks with a dolly to come get the stuff.
But they are not white. They are first generation immigrants living the American dream: a gas-guzzler in the driveway and furniture that matches the carpeting.
Herein lies the disconnect between us: conservation activism is a luxury. It is only conceptualized in a world of abundance. How can one think about the impact of all they have when all along the most glaring truth is all they have not? Those who cannot afford new clothes aren’t thinking about organic cotton. It is the middle class people that are replacing the innefficient bulbs in their house with longer-lasting ones. And I confess that as a poor college student I bought the cheapest ones because renters don’t stay long enough to see the economic benefits of the earth friendly light bulb.
I’m not saying poor people don’t struggle, on the contrary, their lives are defined by it. But it seems like the struggle of the poor is one for survival. They sure as hell aren’t going to feel guilty for not recycling when there are corporations privatizing their water supply.
Maybe I am wrong about this. After all, my neighbors are paying the same rent that I am. Maybe they are just typical Americans and I am blinded by white guilt. Surely there are no excuses, now that conservation is a matter of survival for everyone. But our exchanges now are smiles and nods and I want to keep it that way. Who am I to give them a lecture?
I threatened this balance the other day while murdering the kudzu in my backyard. There was so much of it that I couldn’t have told you what the fence beneath it was made of. This created quite a pile of lawn clippings. A young man and old woman come out of the apartment above while I am dragging branches to a heap half as tall as I am and just as wide. They look at me inexplicably. I ask if they know where the compost bin is (in Oakland, they have a recycle bin for compost). More confusion, some head shaking. You know, the bin that you put leaves in. The bisabuela points to the dumpster. No, I want the one for recycling. I wonder if she speaks English. But surely he speaks English. I can’t help but think that as a result of this exchange they gather that I am simply too lazy to walk the extra five feet to the trash. I vow to call the Oakland Recycling Center. They smile and nod. I smile and nod.
And isn’t this very same conundrum happening on an international level? Excuse me, China, but I can’t help but noticing that the smog in Beijeng is so bad it would be safest to never leave the house. Our Olympic athletes are precious assets and we’d rather not have them damaged by breathing in all your smog. But then someone comes along and reminds us: China is just getting the hang of the “first world,” give a country a break! And don’t get them started on the banana republics and African countries that are raping the oceans of what’s left of the big game fish. Don’t they get to have economies, too?

San Francisco

I Appreciate the Tori Amos Song More and More

At 4:47 this morning we had a 4.2 earthquake very close to my apartment. I was dreaming of Tarot Cards when it pulled me from sleep.

Earthquakes are so strange. Mostly because they’re loud. It is hard to tell: is that my furniture moving, or is it the sound of the earth? Maybe we Californians are a little more in touch with the earth. It makes a fuss every now and then, gets a hankering for attention.

Earthquakes are the only natural disaster I can think of that aren’t exacerbated by global warming. I take some strange comfort in that. Its also the only natural disaster where the more you have them, the safer you are from them. It is such a relief to have a small earthquake, it prevents “the big one.” But just imagine someone saying, “I sure am glad we had that little tornado. Now we’re set all season.”

San Francisco

Perfect Moments

I leave the dusty, dark recesses of my apartment to drop off a big box for the charity-thrift up the street. I love to go there and leave a huge donation and walk out empty-handed. It makes me feel freer, lighter.
Outside my door, the neighbors are throwing a birthday party, with chips and cheese and Mexican music and a giant sponge-bob bouncy castle. One of the boys offers to open the gate for me, though my box is surprisingly light.
Looking out at the mountains and feeling the ocean breeze I am suddenly caught up in a perfect moment. There are a smorgosborg of joyous beings all around: bicyclists, cute dogs and their beaming owners, hip sisters towing sassy siblings, and lesbians kissing.
I am thinking of Sartre, how he had a character who deystroyed her relationships by trying to force all moments to become perfect moments and being disappointed with anything less. This is an exaggeration but to some extent we all do this, try to force our expectations on a wedding or a prom night. In the same postmodern way that there are as many ways to look as an object as their are people to look at it, the future moment will never quite have the texture that you expect of it. But that’s okay.
Because these perfect experiences that can you hit you when you are solitary and doing the most mundane chore, these simple, blissful moments, are what make life worth living.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with the bouncy castle.

Politics, Economics

Psst…My Dollar Has A Secret

Beneath her cobwebby exterior and obscure, Masonic symbols, we know the dollar likes to keep things to herself. But this is too much.

I found a scary article in my email the other day. It frigtens me because it is not from a political blog, not from a left-leaning alarmist group, not from a group with any kind of alarmist bias. It was from a list-serve I am on, “Publisher’s Lunch” that is distributed to people who work in the publishing industry. Most of the stories are either “who got hired” and “big book contracts”. That’s why I was surprised to see this lead sentence:

Canada continues to grapple with the consequences of the ever-weaker US dollar.

From the article:

Prices [of books sold to bookstores] were adjusted once last fall, but as the dollar has continued to decline, that change is insufficient…The Globe and Mail reports that dominant chain Indigo plans to “imminently” pass on savings in the form of discounts or promotions. Random House Canada president Brad Martin indicates they “will give booksellers a 5-per-cent discount on U.S. books until the end of the year.” Penguin Canada will reduce prices 5 percent on their new fall books and on some backlist hits.

Ouch. Next time you pick up a book, imagine the Canadian and U.S. prices reversed to get a more realistic idea of the current value of the dollar. And that’s what its worth today. But what’s in store for the future of our currency?

Project Censored every year releases a top ten list of important stories that were buried by the corporate media. I heard on a podcast that OPEC is trading its dollars into Euros. According to the projectcensored.org site, the value of our dollar has been a big white lie, which we have been able to get away with because it is tied to the price of oil. Which works out fine for us, as long as that continues. Then it is certainly bad news to hear that “Russia, Venezuela, and some members of OPEC have expressed interest in moving towards a petroeuro system for oil transactions.”

According to the article, China is the world’s second largest holder of U.S. currency (you would think the U.S. is number one. Its Japan).

“Maintaining the U.S. as a market for their goods is a pre-eminent goal of Chinese financial policy, but they are increasingly dependent on Iran for their vital oil and gas imports…But the Chinese government has indicated interest in de-linking the dollar-yuan arrangement, which could result in an immediate fall in the dollar. More worrisome is the potentiality of China to abandon its ongoing prolific purchase of U.S. Treasuries/debt—should they become displeased with U.S. policies towards Iran.”

Hmm…how can we displease China?…I know! Let’s go to war with Iran!

I kid, but this is serious busines. I’m accostomed to my currency maintaining its value. What good is the 25 dollars in interest I have earned in my savings account if the dollar itself is worth half what it once was? I don’t like to hear the words “plummet” and “dollar” in the same sentence (truly, “plummet is an unpleasant word. I don’t like to hear it in any sentence). But if you need to know how to spell “plummet” you can look it up in the Project Censored article, their right next to the word “dollar”.

This article is only ranked 9. Makes you wonder what the other, higher-ranking censored stories are, doesn’t it?

I can’t really blame the dollar for being coy. A little rouge on the cheeks, a corset under the bosom. She still wants to get into the swankiest clubs in town. And dance and dance all night. And we see her with rose-colored glasses. Beneath it all, I don’t just hope she is looking fresh tomorrow. I hope she’s still standing.

All

Housesitting

It is just a small two bedroom cottage; the garden in the back is almost as big as the house itself. It is decorated deliberately, but also as an afterthought. Most of the pictures are thumbtacked to the wall. The house is clean if a little cluttered. Most of their mail is high-class gloss ( the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly) or plees from charities they have likely given to in the past. They have tacked paint swatches to the wall to take time in deciding what colors to paint them.

There is a selection of books that reminds me of my vow to not read another second-rate book while there are so many more classics than I can read in my short life-time. Here I choose between Guns, Germs and Steel and Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. I settle on the latter partly because it is shorter but also because I am beginning to forget why I fell in love with the writing style in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Then I commit to Kundera, a big glass of Charles Shaw shiraz, and the queens of jazz (Ella, Bettie, Etta) for the rest of the evening. I could read my own books and listen to my own music, but why not partake of the best someone else’s home has to offer?

In that same vein, the next morning I breakfast on strawberries, raspberries and blackberries from the garden. They are the sweetest to ever pass my lips, not a bitter fruit in the bunch. The juice from an enormous strawberry runs down my hand like rivulets of blood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen juice flow from a store-bought strawberry.

I am writing this because it occurs to me that I am more comfortable in this house, the house of two people I have never met, than in my own home. Sure, it is a little cleaner here, and the ample, uncovered windows make it much brighter. But it is more than that. I like myself more in this house. I want nothing more than to dance and read and draw and write. These are the things I love, these are the things that make me who I am.

But I find that at home, these are not the things I do very often. Writing is something I do away from home, a catastrophe because I arranged my living room to make it as writing-friendly as I could. Perhaps to write, I must be alone? Or perhaps I don’t like to write in front of San’s critical eye.

This is no small matter. The one thing a writer needs, besides something to scribble on and with, is a mind free of criticism.

Additionally, there is always the tug of television. Truthfully, I don’t much like TV, it is an over-rated drug that all my friends are hopped up on. I find that when San goes out of town, I don’t watch any TV at all.

I read half of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting the first night. I remember now: the way he asks questions of his characters and then always answers them, the way he is a character in his own novel, freely admitting that each character is fictional but they are still somehow so real. It is beautiful and intimate and honest. At one point, I weep.

I have so many things to do this weekend. Kat is moving to Azerbaijan today; tomorrow is queer pride. I think of how my sweetie says I never leave the house. It is not true! I am never hestitant to leave my home, with its dark, dusty carpeting and piles of boxes that still remain unpacked. But this house, this house that appeared as if out of my dreams, I want to be sequestered, contained. This house of strangers that lets me be myself for the first time since I’ve remembered who I am.

San Francisco, All

I Left My Heart in North Beach

According to my sweetie, the best hostel in San Francisco is the Green Tortoise, so that’s where my best friend Ray and I stayed for the second day of our vacation. It is in the North Beach district, which is S.F.’s version of Little Italy. The Hostel is in the most famous part of North Beach, Columbus Ave., where it borders and blends with Chinatown. From a block away you can see the majesty of the Sentinel building and the Transamerica Pyramid. You can also see the Citylights Bookstore and the Vesuvio. The Sentinel building is a green flat-iron that was constructed in 1907. The frame was actually built in 1906 and survived the great earthquake to be finished the following year. Supposedly you can sometimes see Francis Ford Coppola upstairs in his office, he also owns the cafe on the bottom floor.

Citylights is about as famous as a bookstore can get. It is where Lawrence Ferlinghetti first published Ginsberg’s “Howl” though it had been declared obscene. Ferlinghetti went to jail and it started the court case that is still the precedent for whether a document is considered obscene (whether or not it has artisitc merit). Aside from all that, it is a damn good bookstore. On the same block are the Vesuvio bar and the Stinking Rose, (named because all the recipes are made with garlic) both well-known beatnik hang-outs.

Ray and I spent the morning at the Beat Museum. The museum is not glamorous. It occupies an office space, old doors are used as makeshift dividers to define the space. There was plenty of info but they could use more artifacts. It seemed like the kind of place that exists not as a tourist trap but because a small group of dedicated folks think it should be there.

Rather than eating at the typical North Beach hang-outs, we brunched at Juicy Lucy’s, a mostly vegan, organic juice bar. The atmosphere is just my style: vaguely (Eastern) Indian and very brightly colored. Instead of benches, I sat on a bale of hay. They serve juice in bowls. The owner commented that the strawberries were particularly fresh and tasty that day, I love that the ingredients list is seasonal. Everything is made right there from scratch so it took a long time for our food to come.

After brunch, Ray and I walked to Chinatown. In my mind, Chinatown is the best place in the city for shopping. You can’t beat the prices or the atmosphere. I bought a girlie hair pin in the shape of a spider. I had regretted not getting it the last time I was in Chinatown and I was determined to find the shop that sold it. I love spiders and there is something delightful about wearing a pretty ornament made to look like something that most think of as ugly. I also fell in love with these bracelet/necklaces that are held together with magnets. Ray was shopping for a digital camera and I was very happy to buy a memory card from one of the little shops (rather than a corporate chain).
That night Ray and I went to the famous Castro theater in the Castro district. In the tradition of guady, early theaters it is not the prettiest I have seen but it won big points for the organ player. Before the show, a pipe organ rolls up from a trap door, played by a formally-dressed gentleman. The sound fills the entire auditorium in a way that no paltry speakers can. The sound is so full it is like hearing an entire orchestra. Truthfully, I enjoyed the pipe organ more than the movie. The movie was a Japanese film entitled Vengeance is Mine. After the movie, Ray and I went home, vowing to continue our celebration at Booty later in the week.

All, San Francisco

I Left My Heart In the Mission District

I ended up with an extra two days off from work so my best buddy Ray and I decided to take a much coveted vacation in my favorite city in the world, San Francisco. Never mind that S.F. is less than an hour from my doorstep. I saved the money on a plane ticket so I felt free to spend carelessly all week.

My vacation started off slow, as we went to three places that were closed. Our first stop would have been the South Park Cafe. But being closed, I enjoyed watching artists work their easels in the park. Leaving South Park, we happened upon a fantastic gallery that runs there own printing press. I watched the machinery print rather unspectacular cards and realized that I am in love with every part of the book-making process. This gallery had, in addition to standard art, many hand-made books.

Failed destination #2 was the Arkansas Friendship Garden. We climbed high on Potrero Hill to not get there. On the steepest streets, instead of sidewalks there are stairs. No wonder the people of this city are more friendly and tolerant. I would have been impatient at all the false starts if the views weren’t so spectacular. The sun glinting off rows of cars on distant city streets looked like mercury floating in rivulets down the side of the hills. And this isn’t Nob Hill; this is standing next to project housing. Already tired and hungry, we trek to the Mission to sign up for a mural tour, which only runs on the weekends (It was Thursday).

Backtrack a bit, the Mission and North Beach have been in competition for my favorite ghettos of the city. The former is Mexican and the latter is Italian, though also known for being the site of the Beat Rennaissance in the sixties. I had been to some mediocre bars in the Mission, primarily around 16th and 17th St., but I had never spent a day walking through the neigbhoorhood’s South side. Every other building is brightened by colorful murals, most of which honor revolutionaries, activists and their ideals. 24th St. is mostly restaurants and small groceries, with the ocassional shop or gallery.
We got a banana for a quarter at a local bodega and some fantastic pastries for a dollar each. Then we caught lunch at La Nueva Fruitlandia. I haven’t had Cuban food so good since eating my Cuban bisabuela’s recipes as a child. We tried to stop at a gallery for local hispanic radical artists but, keeping with the theme, they were closed to prepare for a big opening night. So instead we happily browsed the shops. One shop sold mostly carnival accessories for Day of the Dead and little Mexican dresses for girls to wear to church. But they also carried a lot of Zapatista products and we walked out of there with Zapatista (light roast!) coffee and coffee flavored honey. I also acquired a wrist warmer with Che’s visage for only $2.50. That’s something you won’t find in North Beach.

We turned North onto Valencia, which is more of a commercial main drag. Valencia St. is low-key bars, vintage and kitsch shops, shamelessly radical bookstores and vegetarian chow.

Ray and I happened upon a small side street, more like an alley that goes through, that was entirely covered in graffiti art. I should say, murals, because most of the work was not stylized in the typical graffiti style and you could tell they were all by different artists. Stepping into the alley, we could hear a woman wailing but this did not deter us from taking in the artful walls. I thought the woman was in the thin walls of one of these muraled studio apartments but about half way we found her sitting indian-style with her head in her hands. She appeared to be holding some sort of pipe. Her face was ragged and wrinkled and dirty. She was likely homeless. Her suffering moved me. I asked her if she wanted a hug. She said “sure.” Then she stood up and I held this her in my arms while she sobbed and sobbed. I held her tightly and didn’t let go until she did first. She asked if I had a cigarette and of course I didn’t. We left her still tearful, but no longer filling the corrider with her anguished sobs.
Then a strange coincidence happened. I have hugged a tattered old San Franciscan once before, when I was drunk at the Bar in the Castro. This was after a conversation about her manic depression, as I recall. The first place we went after the alley of art was a small boutique. As I was entering the shop, that same woman I hugged in the Castro was leaving. She didn’t recognize me.

We stopped in 426 Valencia, which is Dave Eggar’s program that teaches creative writing to kids. The project is partly funded by the pirate shop at the entrance. The pirate motif is also a ruse to entrance the kids into getting excited about writing (426 Valencia has been very successful, so you might have heard of other centers around the country). I was hastily filling out a volunteer application when I heard the guy behind the counter telling people it was closing time. I didn’t look up, but I overheard a dejected couple responding. In coindidence #2, the dejeced couple was Lawrence and Cecily; they were staying at my house for a few nights before they move to L.A.
Later we meet up with Lawrence, Cecily, Jeremy and my sweetie at Delirium to have drinks. We barhop to Zeitgeist, a biker bar with fantastic bloody marys and terrible music. Day two of my vacation continues with a youth hostel, North Beach and the search for the perfect San Francisco bar.