some days are better than others

Yesterday was nearly a perfect day. As nearly as I’ve had in a while, anyway.

Today was pretty great too, full of late lingerings in bed and hikes in the snow, but there was a mishap on the other side of the bridge that backed up traffic for two hours, a retaining wall, a brand new one, collapsed at the sight of a new overpass. That meant that I couldn’t go to aikido this evening, which sucks. Of course, it also meant that I had time to come here, to a favorite haunt, get a pot of green tea, and write.

So see? That silver lining shit works sometimes.

not. goin’. anywhere.

Seems that the urban centers of North America got together and coordinated their own acts of uncivil disobedience this week, with evictions and threats of eviction popping up everywhere. Oakland evicted violently, New York evicted violently, Berkeley students and staff only wanted to have a two-day occupation and were squashed violently, threats in Toronto staid by court injunction, threats in Vancouver staid by injunction.

The common thread? The disobedience? It’s this: Where police act, heads and ribs get busted, and pepper spray is suddenly in short supply. Big, tough folks, those cops. Their parents must be so proud. Their uniforms should have advertising on them: “I Work for Wall Street.  I Serve and Protect the 1%. Sponsored by Goldman Sachs.”

why so serious?

I want to learn how to play. I never did that, not the way I love to watch others play - un-self consciously, without concern, as if nobody was watching, as if it was mortally important to do so. Maybe it was the only-child thing - too many hours spent playing alone, or the way Mom taught me to be considerate and to not draw attention and to not do anything to offend anyone. 

I'm over some of that. I offend people all the time now, if not by being particularly inconsiderate then by expressing an opinion that they don't agree with. I can live with that. Actually, I consider it imperative to do so. 

But what I'm starting to think I can't live with is this internal aversion to dancing, to laughing too loudly in public, to oblivious play. I'm jealous of those that do it naturally, or that have learned to do it. I need to, learn that is.

via the rumpus, acculorber weather from occupy wall street

Found this today through Stephen Elliott's Daily Rumpus mail. The accompanying article is here, and you should absolutely go read it, but the poetry is riotous and couldn't wait...

zen and the art of intentional procrastination

* Updated at the bottom

It takes a lot of effort to prioritize. There’s the judging, and the weighing, and the balancing and contrasting. One must take into consideration scenarios both probable and im-, measure the potential consequences of each choice carefully, count the cost of each path not chosen, consider the ramifications.

It’s an awful lot of work.

...just not that rich

Richard Wilkinson is a Public Health Researcher. He has a new book out, The Spirit Level, co-authored with Kate Pickett, in which he provides an exhaustive statistical analysis of the effects of income inequality in modern society. I could go on, but here - just watch this TED talk:

a dear john letter

Dear free market capitalism and first-past-the-post voting schemes,

We want you to know how hard this is for us. Even as we write to you, there’s a war going inside us pitting a desire for stability and fear of the unknown with a deep-seated passion for change and hope in something both dramatically better and dramatically different.

What we’re trying to say is that this shit ain’t easy. Part of us still loves you to bits and thinks that you can and want to treat us well. But part of us knows – just knows – that you can’t change. That you won’t change. If you won’t, then we have to.

climbing... mostly (at Vie hebdomadaires)

Today was my last guest post at the Vie Hebdomadaires collaborative blogging experience. I wrote about climbing. And stuff. I can't help myself sometimes...

I had a blast blogging there this week. I think that maybe I even got my blog groove back a bit. ;)

another one bites the dust (on Vie Hebdomadaires)

My fourth Vie Hebdomadaires post. Gaddafi is dead and it's just not as simple as we'd like it to be.

not the destination (at Vie Hebsomadaires)

Part three of my week at Vie Hebdomadaires is about the manuscript, and process, and stars. you can find it here. Hope to see you there...

life inversions on Vie Hebdomadaires

Another guest post at Vie Hebdomadaires, this time covering the basics of life inversions, tol-style. If you've been around a while, this will be oldish news. Still, I'd love to see you there. I always love to see you.

occupy this on Vie Hebdomaires

I'm juiced to have been given this week to fill up Vie Hebdomaires with words. Vie Hebdomaires is young, but such a cool idea, a new writer each week in a collaborative blogging effort. it will either be magic or fail beautifully. I started today with some ramblings on participating in the first few days of Occupy Vancouver.

we don't need no stinking plans...

Yesterday I posted the communiqué from the Occupy Wall Street non-group stating their one demand. Today I was thinking about what a ludicrous thing it is that the media was applying pressure for them to state what their demands were. I thought about it yesterday too, but there was no making sense of it, so I just had to let it lie.

But today I was thinking about it some more. I thought about it in the context of why that’s such a big deal, the idea of a list of demands. I thought about the meme of public consumption that encourages people to dismiss activism and dissent if it doesn’t have a set agenda – if there isn’t some stated premise or an alternate plan to “make things better”, an idea to change things to the way that the activists want things changed. I thought about how demands make activism seem like a hostage situation. How that also makes it easier to criminalize dissent the way we see that happening so much more in the “free” world.

this is our one demand

It was a busy, irresponsible summer full of visiting and hiking and revisions. But not much in the way of blogging. I’m not apologizing, I’m bragging. Just to be clear. There may or may not be in increase in posting now that the weather may or may not be getting less cooperative. Then again, there’s hockey to play.

Today, however, I came across the following - a creative, subversive, beautiful, and heart-breaking response to media complaints that the Occupy Wall Street movement has not stated specific goals. That they are just protesting, willy-nilly and all, and don’t have enough direction to their dissent. How dare they not have a published set of reasons! How dare they not have made a list!

This is their response, as copied and pasted from wilderside.wordpress.com: 

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.

i don't know stephen elliott

I finished Stephen Eliot’s The Adderall Diaries tonight. I’ll probably say this again, but it’s amazing. And fucked up. I was reading the last couple chapters intermittently, sneaking a few pages in while my coffee partner was in the bathroom or manning the counter for the shop’s owner.

The book is like a drug, like Adderall itself, maybe. First I wanted to read it in 5 milligram doses, and later I wanted to crush it on a TP dispenser in a bathroom and snort it. That’s how I felt driving home with around ten pages left to read. Crush and snort.

My friend and I had this incredible, rambling conversation for almost four hours. We talked about my manuscript first, my “process”. She writes, or did and will again. We took a creative writing class once, long ago in (for me anyway) another lifetime. I think about my “process” in quotations marks because the term suggests an established methodology. I feel the same way thinking of it as my “process” as I do about calling the manuscript my “work in progress”. Both seem dishonest because, well, it’s my first time. I’m making this shit up as I go along. 

If I do stuff the same way next time then maybe I can say it’s part of a process. When I start the second book it’ll be a WIP. Maybe. This time though, it’s just “the work”. I’m involved in “a process” in the sense that I’m working through something, but there’s nothing established yet that I can say is “my process”. It technically is a work in progress, I admit, but talking about it as my WIP seems presumptuous. I’m the only one that actually knows there is or will be any other WIP. You can only take my word for it.

And we talked about artists, meeting them, how there’s a difference between meeting an artist to take their autograph away as a souvenir and actually meeting them, asking them about what they like in life, what matters to them. Having coffee with them (or just wanting to) instead of just wanting to get proof that you met them. She talked about the difference between meeting the band so that you can take a bit more from them after the show, and meeting the band so that you can give something back. Neither is wrong or right, but there's a difference.

There was other stuff too: self-discipline and how it isn’t discipline when we love to do it. How it can look like discipline to other people, maybe, but to the person loving it, it’s just good fun. And music. And the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction. And definitions of success. And how hard it is, when we assume a definition contrary to cultural norms, to express how we’re successful. And on and on and on. It was delicious.

I don’t know quite what to think of The Adderall Diaries beyond my belief that it’s amazing. I don’t want to try to figure Mr. Elliott out from it, or even have it inform my opinion of him as a person. I don’t think I want to have an opinion of him as a person, at least not from his writing. It’s a memoir, and a wonderful read. It’s ugly and beautiful and painful and tense. But it’s not him, you know? Even he says that he writes to figure shit out. Memoir is fun because it’s opinion, not autobiography. Factual accuracy isn’t the point, even if it is accurate. The point is not to take it as fact. The point is to enjoy the experience.

We all want to be known, maybe artists more than anyone. We metaphorically (or literally) bleed into whatever medium is relevant. There’s a cost we decide is worth paying at some point, and then we pay it. We say it’s just for us or for the art, but we want to be known, to share something. To express. But we only share a very little bit.

I love Pearl Jam, love Vedder’s lyrics, the passion and angst. I’d love to have coffee with him and pick his brain, to know him and be known by him. Truth is though, that even in the bizarro world that allowed me to have coffee with Eddie Vedder, we simply might not hit it off. At all. The hypothetical conversation might suck. I might not like him. He might not like me. Doesn’t matter though. I’d still like the music and the words and the voice. He is not his music. His music is not him.

When I got home there was a broken mouse dragging a trap across the kitchen floor. The roommates are away, camping. I showed it as much compassion as I could, imagining its fear, and the pain. It was trapped at the hip, broken on the same side I was. I had to euthanize the mouse, right? Right? I know of no non-violent way to do that with a mouse broken in a trap. So the climax of my evening sucked. Finishing Adderall ended up being massively anti-climactic.

Writing about it all works better as a denouement. It’s like using mouth wash.

Memoirs should not be read as biography. We are ridiculously incredible, fragile, strong, broken, ascendant bags of meat. I don’t know Stephen Elliott, not even now. Not at all.

p.s. Revisions on the WIP are going really well. I'm loving my process. ... ... ... uh, yeah.