january :: trout fishing in armstrong woods

february :: dress the part 

march :: alive 

april :: back to basics 

may :: friendships

june :: adventuring

july :: mate

august :: new side 

september :: i love you 

october :: pair 

november :: sisters

december :: grounding 

danny breaking up with me

we were always wrong, from the beginning, from the beginning something wasn’t right. his voice is muffled, he is standing on a cliff, i am down on the shore reading lips. it was wrong, i am not sure i ever loved you. i shake my head. night time in oakland, he pushes me out his door. the tree leaves fall, points of yellow stars droop.  plus, he mentions, his hand on my shoulder - plus, you are crazy. 

i nod. maybe so, i say. i don’t cry, i laugh, and my fluttery voice bumps against the sky. goodbye, i say, and i walk back to my car, measuring every step. for now it feels like releasing, but i know it’s about to hurt. 

summer 2012

- complications from the surgery 

backseat dancing with kevin, belting tom petty’s “won’t back down” until the driver yanks out the key. we step from the car to the dirt, he looks around and asks, “was I the only one singing?”

in the hospital and your mom is telling us stories from her first few weeks as a nurse. she talks about washing art the cart, a cursing, spitting, homeless war vet in a huge basin set in the middle of a hospital corridor. when she took off his shirt she found a woman’s vagina tattoed on his back, gaping from shoulder to shoulder. 

we sit in the garden and you are glowing, if an angel tumbled down you would be it. you are telling me how your therapist told you to stand in front of the mirror and recite “i don’t fit in” until you laugh. 

two boys texting me about the same things in different ways. 

i don’t fit i don’t fit i don’t fit i don’t fit ——> made it to here then started to laugh. 

- meeting beau, our saturday of adventures 

two southerners lament lightning bugs struck silent at the bottom of mason jars. moon shine shamelessly spilling across velvet marsh. cricket symphonies, sweet tea, bread crumbs punctuating corners of grins. two clouds bumper cars and a bubble floats by - 

look into your liquid eyes and I will this serving of myself to be enough. never have I sat so close to you. gentle easing. north star. you. 

let's hope we both stay put long enough to get it right - 

--- fourth of july, rooftop party in portrero 

lisa and i move our mats together during our morning yoga class. our instructor calls the forms our bodies takes “shapes.” cat steven’s free to be you and me begins our sequence of shifting.

i pick up Amy and we head to the beach for a muni amphitheater beach walk. too windy, sand sandwhich for lunch, no thanks. instead we sit in a mini park someone made of a median cleaving two highways. we eat our quinoa, lentils and sip perrier next to a group men smoking from greasy pipes. when we walk back to the car two boys ask, can we get a ride up the street? yes, I say. 

both boys from scranton, pennsylvania. one of them works at a toliet paper factory, and he describes the paper roller he manages to tame. size of a city block! he says proudly, needs fourteen other guys to get it going! in my rearview mirror I watch him put his hand to his forehead and say, but i don’t really like my job. 

at night i pick up what I think is a watermelon and head to a rooftop party in portrero. a girl with shimmery hair helps me open the fruit and we discover it’s a honeydew. we burst out laughing, our friendship cemented. upstairs I hold a hot dog between my thumb and my finger and sway to bruce springsteen.

MAGGIE NELSON

Once I traveled to the Tate in London to see the blue paintings of Yves Klein, who invented and patented his own shad eof ultramarine, International Klein Blue (IKB), then painted canvases and objects with it throughout a period of his life he dubbed "l'epoque bleue.' Standing in front of these blue paintings, or propositions, at the Tate, feeling their blue raidate out so hotly that it seemed to be touching, perhaps even hurting, my eyeballs, I wrote but one phrase in my notebook: too much. Perhaps I had inadvertently brushed up agains the Buddhist axiom, that enlightenment is the ultimate disappointment. "From the mountain you see the mountains," wrote Emerson. 


from Bluets

finally

making the move to tumblr:

http://ooi-ioo.tumblr.com/

non-format

paprika

PAPRIKA SITE

LOUIS GAGNON

the guy who started Paprika in 1991...

kevin clarke.

happy fb

lovely swedish design studio.

http://www.happy.fb.se/

All watched over bY machines full of grace, braughtugan

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Poems referenced in the Steve Jobs biography

Poetry & Technology: “God Is A Verb”, by Buckminster Fuller

I see God in

the instruments and the mechanisms that

work

reliably,

more reliably than the limited sensory departments of

the human mechanism.

And God says

observe the paradox

of man’s creative potentials

and his destructive tactics.

He could have his new world

through sufficient love

for “all’s fair”

in love as well as in war

which means you can

junk as much rubbish,

skip as many stupid agreements

by love,

spontaneous unselfishness radiant.

The revolution has come-

set on fire from the top.

Let it burn swiftly.

Neither the branches, trunk, nor roots will be endangered.

Only last year’s leaves and

the parasite-bearded moss and orchids

will not be there

when the next spring brings fresh growth

and free standing flowers.

Here is God’s purpose-

for God, to me, it seems,

is a verb

not a noun,

proper or improper;

is the articulation

not the art, objective or subjective;

is loving,

not the abstraction “love” commanded or entreated;

is knowledge dynamic,

not legislative code,

not proclamation law.

not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon.

Yes, God is a verb,

the most active,

connoting the vast harmonic

reordering of the universe

from unleashed chaos of energy.

And there is born unheralded

a great natural peace,

not out of exclusive

pseudo-static security

but out of including, refining, dynamic balancing.

Naught is lost.

Only the false and nonexistent are dispelled.

And I’ve thought through to tomorrow

which is also today.

The telephone rings

and you say to me

Hello Buckling this is Christopher; or

Daddy it’s Allegra; or

Mr. Fuller this is the Telephone Company Business Office;

and I say you are inaccurate.

Because I knew you were going to call

and furthermore I recognize

that it is God who is “speaking.”And you say

aren’t you being fantastic?

And knowing you I say no.

All organized religions of the past

were inherently developed

as beliefs and credits

in “second hand” information.

Therefore it will be an entirely new

when man finds himself confronted

with direct experience

with an obviously a priori

intellectually anticipatory competency

that has interordered

all that he is discovering.

Buckminster Fuller / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

God is a Verb, “Whole Earth Catalog Fall 1968”.

AT LEAST
raymond carver

I want to get up early one more morning,
before sunrise. Before the birds, even.
I want to throw cold water on my face
and be at my work table
when the sky lightens and smoke
begins to rise from the chimneys
of the other houses.
I want to see the waves break
on this rocky beach, not just hear them
break as I did all night in my sleep.
I want to see again the ships
that pass through the Strait from every
seafaring country in the world—
old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,
and the swift new cargo vessels
painted every color under the sun
that cut the water as they pass.
I want to keep an eye out for them.
And for the little boat that plies
the water between the ships
and the pilot station near the lighthouse.
I want to see them take a man off the ship
and put another up on board.
I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy—I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what's going to happen.

in marilyn's muumuu

Security
by William Stafford

Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.

Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.
So far, I haven't let that happen, but after
I'm gone others may become faithless and careless.
Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea,
and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.

So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
to be a discoverer you hold close whatever
you find, and after a while you decide
what it is. Then, secure in where you have been,
you turn to the open sea and let go.

rio, brazil

 

miami airport & end of summer report

11 > traveling to toronto for the first time alone, acrylic nail biting flight attendant wearily gripping my boarding pass / 18 > post spain expulsion, sprinting through the baggage claim and jumping into dad's arms while alligator tears rolled down my baby fat cheeks / 21 > being held at customs, trying to conceal the clanking of a duty free rum bottle buried in my bauer pack -now, 26, clicking on my laptop leaning against a peanut pillow eating an apple luiz packed for my trip home (but home is where you are)

new voicemail from dad, 6:45 this morning:

hi robin ann, welcome to the states! wanted to be the first one to call. please let your mum and i know when you get in, glad you're home. in houston right now, headed back to palm beach, hot sticky. talk to you soon.

can't can't wait to develop film and watch what happened to me in south america this time.

night in brasilia / fantasy island

brasilia, truly one of the stranger places ive been. i have a lay over here and am spending the night in a boxy "phonecia bittars" in the hotel super block. city of no right angles, super highways, shaped like an airplane (or an irregular cross). oscar niemeyer & lucio costa. designed, constructed, declared utopian city in four years.