Francis Ha

Poets. Stop prefacing your work with how bullshit you are. Your human self betrays your art.

I went to an electronic show weeks ago and danced my ass off. Eating otter pops and hanging off a chain-link fence like a prisoner or a lazy stripper. The djs felt the need to explain the songs and for 30 thousand people they would cut the beat to lay down an explanation. they would cut the beat to tell us to put our hands in the air. They kept cutting in on their own work, wrecking the rhythm of the music and halting the vibe of the crowd.

My advice, artists. STOP. You can't speak for your art. A child is life yearning for itself. 

Hanna's picture: too much control can destroy a work

Nothing is so intoxicating that you can stay drunk forever

Rien es

I'm not sure when it stopped being about happiness and comfort. When being liked was less of the priority when compared with living authenticly. 

Ohio

I moved into the Ohio Boy house to become lost. Rinnah said I would be like Wendy but that was not my intention. I wanted to be caught up in the gust that was blowing everyone around.

Steinbeck

Steinbeck's boat keeps sinking and they keep bringing it up. They say they are going to divide up the boat; bring parts to Salinas and put parts in a hotel somewhere near ...
They're holding on to much. It would be better to point at a body of water and say, "that is where Steinbeck's boat lies," and leave it at that. Then we can all come to it without needing to pay money for the museum or the hotel room.
VOnnegut wanted his body thrown in the ocean. They put it in a box and did a big ceremony and

The only one who almost got away with dying the right way was Gran Parsons. But ... got too drunk and didn't being enough gasoline into the desert to get the job done and They took away the body to be buried proper.

Mom and Dad are in the front seat telling me about church. The sermon was about Jesus giving his body and metaphorically using his death as a way to nourish the people. Giving his body to the people to eat. Man can not live on bread alone. And they are saying how beautiful it is, this sacrifice and I too, started to feel how beautiful it was for someone to offer themselves like that.

There are a package of chicken hearts in the food pantry at my work and I don't know whether to put them in a food box or bury them in the yard.

Hearts are something special.

Lying on my stomach in yoga class my ear and chest to the floor I hear the suck suck suck of my heart pulling in blood. The floor has created a perfect audio conduit for my ear and my heart. There's the tape I found in the free box at work that is sounds from the womb. It is made to play next to babies when they are sleeping to comfort them with sounds from the womb. The sounds of my heart beating into the floor sounds like this

...

There is sugar in everything. I spit a mouthful of cranberries into my hand as I read the ingrediants.
In fucking everything.
The balsamic dressing and all the sauces and the gluten free cereal and all the things.

Kaycee is so excited. She asked me to make a wish and I wished for a place Ryan and I could both live. The universe is vibrating! She said. We can feel it. We are so excited. All our wishes are coming true. It's ok.

More here coffee

There are mornings I wake up and ask you, how long has it been?
5 months, you told me last.

I have not been good at counting and remembering names. Worse than ever. Counting days or cups for the milk. A fantastic woman was in my kitchen and I could not remember her name. She was a doula and worke with children and had just finished a counceling program and I couldn't remember her name.
I told Jen, I love you so much. You are such a good friend to me, but one day, I will forget your name and it will embarrass me and make me feel so scared that you will feel our story means nothing to me, but you must know, it is not that. It is that I cannot remember names. I will always remember you.

When Eugene left France I said I would miss him and he told me I would forget him and I didn't say otherwise but I have never forgot him and still remember fondly him telling me stories of sleeping with prosituites all around the world as we sat by the fountain either very late in the night or very early in the morning. Prosituites in Europe have no heart. They charge by the hour and are constnatly looking at the clock. Prostuites in SOuth America can be bought by the day and are warm and affectionate like friends.

Offerings of Grace and Mischief

We are blowing about like magnificent seeds,
falling apart and drifting away maddengly in huffle puff gusts
It is not a path we are walking
It is a current
and we are flying on the bristles
our arms and legs

watermelon and almond butter
we are stripped away and we take flight

It's so funny
They are going to celebrate Banned book week by
writing controversial short stories
or something like that
I am going to write a story
about a young boy and his grandfather in a functioning monogamous relationship
without a hint of irony. It's going to be so fucking banned.

Let's play a game called
Find the Tooth

Racoons hold onto shiny objects
even at their peril
even to sacrifice their freedom

What is my shiny object?

Pills like baby teeth
I break them apart
I am weaning.

I can't do it
I tell Ryan
and he drops his bike, leans it against the truck
Walks towards me
and puts his hands on my shoulders
tells me
"Do what you want
I love will love you no matter what
I don't see you as a person on medication
Don't do anything you're not ready for"

So I'm breaking my pills in half.
Half of 20mg
Half of 10mg
5 mg a day.

I used to go without. Give myself a month.
Last winter, my eye twitched
and I swooned in headaches that felt like heat waves.
And I had just forogotten to take them
And I slept in
My routine was distrupted.
I did it all wrong.

we fall to save ourselves
we climb to save ourselves
we are always looking to be saved
Salvation

I start splitting my pills in half after Ryan and slept that night in the daisy field.
After we woke up in the hotsprings
After we woke up on the truck
After breakfast
After I dropped him in the forest by the creek
I collected mountain flowers
in a rusty tin can I found in a firepit
I find a dead pigeon by the side of the road and pick it up for Alicia Renner to pluck
The pigeons mate was nearby in mourning when I scooped it up
and I felt terrible as I drove away
I left Ryan in the woods and starting splitting my pills in half

I pick up a hitchhiker.
She's headed to the desert.
Born in Pheonix she was needing desert medicine. Living in Eugene she packed nothing, took the bus as far as she could to Rainbow and I picked her up next to the gas station.

There's another of us that's trying to be saved.
She's hanging out with a scuzzball who's doing heroin
Too frequently.
We are worried she is doing heroin.
Everyone is concerned.
But no one knows that facts
so we can't really do anything about it.
She just got out of a relatioship.
A long one, like 3 years.
The old one, the ex, is trying to save her
but he can't get close anymore
and he is confused
and worried
and feels powerless
and he is becoming beautiful
in a way no one ever saw coming.
And she is becoming sick.
And we want to save her
but
no one knows the facts
so we can't really do anything about it,

Kryon and I are talking about angels and demons
The boy who stabbed himself at the chest at the open mic at Strictly Organic was a friend of his
Kyrin explained he had been doing a lot of these hallucineginic drugs that had been coming through town
His friend would wake up from black outs having done ...
Demons we say
are the things that possess us
Take over out body
we let them in
even if it's a small acceptance we accept the invitation and they take seed
they come inside us
Angels
we agree
are the ones who do not come inside us
they watch
from a distance
they do not manipulate
they are observors
they cry
they do not judge
they walk with us along our path
later that night kyron calls Matt a hipster faggot. He calls Ryan a hipster faggot. He tells Rio she has no friends. He tells Matt Ozrelic a hipster faggot.
Kyron has demons.
I marveled at our connection by the fire
Tyler tries to punch Kyron in the head three times to knock him out so they can leave. Kyron won't leave. He is still calling eeryone hipster faggots.
The other Tylerblocks the punches. Demons abound

I didn't know I needed to be saved until I was.

Oh Lord please don't let me be misunderstoof

Mixtape to this?

I once was lost and now I was found

on the recorders

Micah
Rinnah

I won't stick around the people who ask too many questions.
Ryan was explaining to Nico why he had to go. Telling Nico he was going to see me and that he wanted to see me because he loved me. Ryan says something can't really make sense if you can't explain it to a child.

Angels

Facepicking (illustration?) Jack Black cigarette light Sasquatch

Shaman teacher

KDZ9WH2

Protest Mixtape

Derek Jensen was in the woods, Kasey tells me, he was staying some days out there.
This what wasn't in the documentary, a seperate tale. Maybe they cut it out. Occupied Cascadia. They were asking Jensen about his experience as an acitivst. Talking about the land in the Nortwest. Loving the land, loving the trees and the forest and the plans to protect it.
"Embrace me in your arms, as if for the last time." -Stephen Harrod Buhner

The woods were keeping their distance from him and Derek felt like a stranger. Days went by, sleeping under the boughs where he felt like an outsider, like he didn't belong. 

On the third day a man came and began tagging trees to be considered for removal. Logging. 

Derek flared up and yelled at him. Told him to get the fuck out. Made him stop marking the trees. Made himself big as a douglas fir and the man left. Then Derek felt the shift and the trees welcomed him. He suddenly felt at home. He had earned his keep in the forest. In the world. In the universe.

They say the trees in Port Angeles swallowed the machines that were cutting them down. The earth opened up and feasted on metal bits. They left that place and it's crazy trees. 

There have been fights lost. Few fights won. 

If They Come in the Night
Marge Piercy

Long ago on a night of danger and vigil
a friend said, why are you happy?
He explained (we lay together
on a cold hard floor) what prison
meant because he had done
time, and I talked of the death
of friends. Why are you happy
then, he asked, close to
angry.

I said, I like my life. If I
have to give it back, if they
take it from me, let me
not feel I wasted any, let me
not feel I forgot to love anyone
I meant to love, that I forgot
to give what I held in my hands,
that I forgot to do some little
piece of the work that wanted
to come through.

Sun and moonshine, starshine,
the muted light off the waters
of the bay at night, the white
light of the fog stealing in,
the first spears of morning
touching a face
I love. We all lose
everything. We lose
ourselves. We are lost.

Only what we manage to do
lasts, what love sculpts from us;
but what I count, my rubies, my
children, are those moments
wide open when I know clearly
who I am, who you are, what we
do, a marigold, an oakleaf, a meteor,
with all my senses hungry and filled
at once like a pitcher with light.

Kevin is on a drunk rant again, but this time it's different. 

On Friday's folks stand in front of the bank, on the busy intersection heading into downtown on Wall and Greenwood. They've been here since I've been in High School. Since 2003 when the war in Iraq started. I was involved then, making my mom drive me to peace walks. Lighting candles. Music being played. Redemption song. It was a small movement and has remained small, flaring up on occasion. There are usually the same folks, older. The diligent ones. The mainstays. The bedrocks. 

Kevin walked by them the other day and he told them what they were doing was useless. Protesting was useless. Standing there, wasting their time, he grumbles to me. 

I'm listening incredulously. It's hard to find the words to say. 

Of course. They are small. They are the small axe. They hold their signs,  "PEACE" "NO WAR"

Simple things

Make your voice loud. 

Do you remember the riots in Gothenburg
in the summer of two thousand and one
Boy, we sure had fun
I held your hand so proud
it was shaking from what I learned was doubt
in the warm summer sun

And I saw my face on a screen
they filmed us from a helicopter
The most frightened face I've seen
red in the face like a lobster

Do you remember the riots in Gothenburg
in the summer of two thousand and one
Boy, we sure had fun

Down the avenue
the black black crew
were throwing rocks at the cops stand
everyhing stopped
They started a bonfire
a couple of days prior
I wanted to do that too
burn down the avenue

And I saw my face on a screen
they filmed us from a helicopter
The most frightened face I've seen
red in the face like a lobster

And your hands slipped out of mine
I couldn't see no love in your eye
and I knew what I had to do
burn the avenue

And I'm not a political fighter
and I don't even have a cigarette lighter
But I wanna see that fire
I just wanna see that fire
I just wanted to see that fire
Burn down the avenue

Do you remember the riots in Gothenburg
in the summer of two thousand and one
Boy, we sure had fun

There was this rant a boy posted on his facebook about the apathy of his peers, this generation, our generation. "Who are your friends?" I asked. Who did young man surround himself with? Everyday my friends were coming out of the closet, organizing events, writing radical zines and cookbooks, growing gardens, going into the woods and learning the old ways and passing them on to each others children.