You have not listened to a word I have sung —Jack Spicer
Sometimes I wake up singing. I remember there were a few months, close to when I was down with Covid, I think? Anyway, I’d wake up for mornings, like a month of morn
ings, speaking. I’d be talking distinctly. It would become less distinct the more awake I got, so it wouldn’t last very long, but what I was saying, well, what I was saying was
never clear in the end. Perhaps if you’d have been there you might could tell me. But I do know that each morning I woke up that way, I’d solved one of the world’s biggest problems.
It could have just been my problem. It’s quite vague, but I had the solution, of that much I’m confident. It’s not like when I wake up singing, which I’ve done on again and off again for as
far back as I can remember. It’s a bit rare, but waking up singing is easy – it means I’ve gotten up in good spirits, a rarefied good. That is what
When it’s Thanksgiving Day, say, and you’ve gotten used to flying solo (even after decades of dom estic partnership holidays with in- laws and romantic excursions and men who cook turkeys in ovens, and you think it’s a day like any
other, the familiarity with those words and with being alone, but yet it’s Thanksgiving, a significant holiday, or it always was for you however you’d wind up spend ing it, whether in Charleston or Conway or Little Rock or Fort Smith (in the hospital with a burst appendix), Arkansas or in Bowling
Green, Ohio (why, oh, why, oh?),
or a few miles north in the Old West
End of Toledo in the same state, all
flat and windswept with a spindrift
of snow dust swirling just above the
ground most days and nights for nearly six months each year, or Ann Arbor, Mich igan in the heart of winter in the early 1990s so in love and so romantic, in that tiny little apartment with all of
its potatoes and peas and episodes of
The Next Generation, and what about
in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts while working in Boston or Cambridge at MIT and all of the Thanksgivings, so far there have been twenty-five, spent in San Fran cisco, which is now called home. Except, well, the past eight years of holidays, the big ones, that begin with turkey and go through Christmas and into the New Year, all times that were historically milestones,
celebrations to be remembered with loved ones, to be cherished, and in many ways they still are, only the ones up to a certain time, say, around 2015, or perhaps a couple of years before that, when Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s got reduced to whatever they’ve been since then. Never theless these have been historically monu mental days, events that mark time, that become nostalgic, marking moments or eras ing whoever it was we were at each of those given monumental moments. And now to poke a bit, there is this project which you (I) alone have put together, bucking the system, and publishing it in blog format, having been
one of the first publishers to dispense with the
notion that a book has to be something you can hold, or something that’s made of wood and has a semblance of soft or hard paper and a cover, but
this has the intentional appearance of a modern
day diary, the ones that, rather than locked with a key that you hold on a chain around your neck, say, are viewed and always available, somewhat for free, in a public manner, as democratically available as things get, in many ways. and within
this past year, only a few short months ago, not
only did you make a big deal of celebrating the
20th anniversary of its existence, building your
own fanfare, much as it is often not the easiest
thing to do, and from this compendium, you
have never really read from it with actual people
around, or not in a very long time (but you
definitelty want to), so instead you make vid
eos of you reading each piece, settling it further into that same modern bookless vein, what has been called a vlog, on top of the diaristic twenty-years of entries posted most
every day, literally much of which has been
stolen or half-stolen from your own previous journals written at most every age of your life.
and sometimes you want to stay under the radar, you know how embarrassing diaries can be, but then maybe that’s the point and you’re fine with it, and you want to tout it
as loudly and proudly as you possibly can
because this is who you are. but then that
seems a bit much, as you are not the
fondest of showcasing your artistic acc omplishments, if that is, indeed, what
they should be called, but you can, in a disc iplined fashion, use the modern powers that be to make sure that people maintain an aw areness that you’ve got this thing going on over here, even though you never really discuss what it is or why you do it or how maybe it has saved your life or how it’s been the most consistent thing, the only thing, that’s remained constant in some stretch close to twenty-two years now, with no signs of a slowdown. and then one day shortly after its big birthday you find yourself finishing up the four thousand nine hundredth entry and poem and photo and video to post into this book that is not
a book thing that has taken up so much of your life. that IS your life. that is perhaps
the most accurate representation of it and
of who you are, the best and the worst of
you, not just an idealization of who you want
to be, even though it’s just poetry, collaged
from slices of the many days that you’ve lived
thus far, turned semi-fictional often, or heartfelt and very real, but you have done all of this, it is quite an accomplishment, of what it’s hard for you to, with any objectivity, relay, yet who else might relay such a thing better, given that you’ve now written that 4,900th piece.
and it’s done and you don’t even really have to
look at it again .you just make sure there are
no glaring errors, you pair a photo that seems appropriate or inappropriate in some poignant way that is all your own, that gives you away a bit, just like you have done for the many pages
in the compendium, in a composite way that might begin to tout a life that has, for several years now, felt quite unrelatable, quite ineffable.
clash from the beginning, some where in the middle or not until the very end, it doesn’t matter. If I were an expert, I’d say what mat
ters is that one develops a means to vanquish it, to reduce it, at least. I picture all the ways in my mind to articulate (for me, in my head, the
picture more of a scene, a diorama, a
chart, a photo with an image of me with
a magic wand in my hand, glitter swirl
ing around the tip of it) anxiety into non-
existence. The only thing is me, clean from such degradation, floaty, eloquent (with my mouth this time, not confined within my thoughts). But those thoughts,
moving from inside to outside, as if in a gorgeous setting, unpopulated, natural, there has to be the sound of a burbling brook, even if it is unseen, it might as
well be unseen. All of the jangled nerves ease, all of the discomfort is soothed as mentally the diorama is moved from my head onto the stage that holds my presence,
that holds nothing but my eloquence, an appropriate confidence. And then there’s an audience. I look into their eyes and can know the clarity of what I’m saying,
I’m so on fire, I’m burning bridges! Then, with an older voice, No, Uno is not code for anything. It’s a card game, like Skip-bo. And I like card games. I also fancy creative
ice-breakers. Bummed at the beach as the water’s too cold to dip into. Even a toe. Back at the hotel there’s a tall awkward- looking but gorgeous orange bloom that
sways back and forth in front of the low hotel signage – it’s one of those signs carved out of wood and then painted, like the one I
ordered to go in front of the new building for
the accounting firm’s office I worked for in the
mid-1990’s. I built a 17-station network from
scratch with the help of a dapper gentleman
with whom I went home one night after danc
ing at the gay nightclub in Toledo, Ohio. He had a snake and beautiful lips and seemed nearly twice my height. Later that week, I received in my Bowling Green mailbox
several mix-tapes with lots of Skinny Puppy
and Nitzer Ebb songs. There were a few
by Depeche Mode, of course, as I’d pro
claimed my stance on their music quite
repetitively, I’m sure. Five years or so previous to that, I was dancing with Tammy and her friends to many of those industrial bangers at a goth club at the edge
of downtown Little Rock, very near where I’d reside for a couple of years later, right after my graduation from Hendrix. My time in downtown was pre-gentrification, very quiet,
creepy on weekends, about two blocks from
the state capitol. I remember one rainy night, stubbornly, drunkenly walking through rain and mud to Discovery, a fantastic gay club
owned by a former winner of the Miss U.S.A.
drag pageant. This, after I’d just been kicked out of the place for falling asleep and driven
Capturing the Specifics of Unchoreographed Movement
And then we entered the deep era of the night. Let’s talk about the night for a moment. It’s when we dance. The night is made for the
procreation of children (as manifest ed by babies), yes? What is night for? For what, the night? Hiding? Being stealthy, being surreptitious.
So, in the end, the night is for the dance, for brashly unchoreographed movement, especially by (and for the further fulfillment of) a team. For pairs,
for pals. The characters can change, or remain the same, certainly evolve like the set. In order to understand it, there is the need for spotlights, for disco
Despite what I and many others before me have so confidently said (Frank O’Hara: “There is no rain in California”; Del Ray Cross
during a very mild drizzle, has often described such as “a hard San Francisco rain.”), one might assert in truth that there is a broader variety in
our weather patterns of late – is it our imaginations or is it so-called global warming or the climate crisis? – plus, having lived here for over twenty-five
years, I do not think I am simply imagin
ing a return to the weather patterns that generally existed upon my arrival to this city in which one acquires a sense
of seasons or patterns of weather after being here for some time, as they are quite subtle. But let me just assert it is a complete and utter fallacy that it never
rains in California, certainly in the best part of our great state, which of course is the San Francisco Bay Area, as I have personally witnessed this specacle several
times, just in the past several weeks, and
mostly while observing it through my living
room windows from my cool and dry apartment, that there does occur here an almost storm-
like hard and heavy rain that lasts in duration more often than not just a few distinct moments before once again, if one is lucky, and one scurries rather quickly out and back in to run whatever out
door errands one must accomplish, one can be out and back in again before another hard rain occurs. In fact, it might be several months before another hard rain can be witnessed. This is a myth-busting fact.
Why the eloquent description you lay out of your city becomes my own so very different city? Are cities all that different? Why,
of course they are! And mine, I swear, is so much better than yours; my city, not that wonderful description which sort of becomes mine, my own
city as I listen mesmerized to you and your voluptuous description of what is distinctly not my city and yet I can see my city’s trees, my trees, and the post
office you describe is also my very own, either the one on Pine Street just a block or three from Polk or the one rather hidden in the side alley off Market as one passes
Van Ness (oceanward). The museums you des
cribe are the ones in my everyday horizons, the
ones I have failed to enter, no adventuring in
these museums for years, but not quite as many
as the years since I have crisscrossed the galleries in your city, which is a truly fine city filled with really respectable museums, I’ll be the first to concede, and yet, and this
I recall, wondering why it is long since I have ventured within either of this, my fair city’s museum doors just for a bit of an adventure, our museums are far superior to those of yours.
We needn’t continue this line of thought as we both know our own personal feelings on such matters and may never reach any agreement except that we live in our separate cities that
we love and each of us know, me especially, how much more superior that the city and its architecture and art and inhabitants and person alities are than those that exist within yours.
I’ll return, perhaps often, to your city, to examine these inferiorities, learning so much along the way of how I live in the fairest city by far, the fairest, I’d say in the entirety of civilization. For what a fine and
immeasurably invaluable (though measurable enough to know in relative comparison to yours) city it is that I think we can agree this is. The best, really. And in my heart of hearts I know that you wholeheartedly agree.
alone as a tree bumping another tree in a storm that’s not really being alone, is it —Frank O’Hara
We can’t decide, can we? To be a hermit or to rub elbows with all manner of humanity, in which case, to take the good with the bad, the uppity with the lowly. Or to tuck oneself neatly out of
sight and remain in that unsightly location for as long as we can stand it. The best of both worlds, which is neither, actually, might be that tree that bumps constantly into another during a storm.
Are there only two of them? Are they in the thick of this stormy tree kingdom, with hundreds of tree neighbors, yet only able to rub elbows with that one close neighbor? Oh, but to imagine the loneli
ness, the sheer isolation, the desolation, of being so mobile and immobile simultaneously, all caught up in the frightening storm, only able to touch that one constant companion, and only the one, and only
when the wind has been kicked up by a storm of some magnitude. One can imagine the loneliness that with a bit of focus, or a distinct concentration upon the singular mess in which one would consistently remain, if one were
that tree. Or perhaps the storms, when they come, are a sort of sexual awakening, creating within the banging tree (the one that is banging, not the one banged? how
sad!) a sort of hope. A relief from that interminable isola
tion. How being so firmly rooted into the ground, even
with all the jostling and banging which might occur only
during a storm, or a wild and uneven wind coming from where? How could the tree know? What a family those
two trees could have of each other within what might otherwise be a tumultuous and frightening existence!
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 —Frank O’Hara
find me the oopsies! all of them, no longer cooped like a jailbird is my way. hey, i’m no saint, but living as always for the holy whispering breeze.
and when my time comes, i’m not going to give it like a dum-dum, not going to
freeze up or be inefficient. i’ll readily free up my programming, make it seem easy, release in sensational outward explosion, sparks driven every which way, not into a broken self combust.
We can’t stop thinking about winning. Impossible to stop, our tails flagellating. It’s a case of the snaggle-toothed waggles. Fortune sends airtight flames at the enemies.
And the enemies of our enemies aren’t all mine, are us, are just what the doctor ordered, are the buffet breakfast the lost parents wanted aboard the Holiday Inn. You’d think the treasonous
wrinkles would give them away, and they do, but only generically. Us cats finding it next to impossible not to pounce, to stop pouncing. Don’t stop the pounce! Cats like us can’t
help such things. We can’t lose grip on what we’ve gripped. Don’t let go, the saying goes, as said by a voice as eerie
as a misty dawn set on portrait mode
at the entire length of the mosquito-
screened porch that extends the
backside of the entire width of the
owner’s quarters, the shot aimed due
north, black and white, just far enough downhill to capture the whole of
Might I still argue that these are one in the same? Looking specifically at artists. Art isn’t history. It might hold up a mirror, several mirrors, to a few
realities. Some might be conniving, like those you’d find in old traveling amusement parks, they’re made to distort. But what is it that can be
seen within the glass, all out of proportion, a movement away from whatever is real? Perhaps the only way to really know some
one, to know a person as much as one can, is by way of those distortions, through analyzing an artist’s intentional diversions and purposeful sleight of hand,
not to mention their own misperceptions of the world and of themselves as presented in earnest. Even lifting a spyglass to someone’s every move might provide much less than, say,
a caricature, a myth, an ideal. When one is known more for their so-called flaws, or when one goes down in books resoundingly a hero, how far off we all must be. And yet, to know
a person. To accept what is impossible to know, but to bathe in the knowing, to spend a lifetime just to get at something of who one is, that person closer to you than anyone will ever be.
He looked at me as if he knew me, so I gave him a run for his money. Or was it my money? Maybe the truth of the matter is that I barely even know myself. If we all say that in unison, which of us would be comforted and which would find ourselves frighteningly on the outer edge of reality. Tell me what you really think, neigh bor. What kinds of hungry have you known? Now I’m getting snide, the sniveling victim of unregulated pride, which might better be lumped in with those other emotions that I personally find useless: guilt, stub bornness, jealousy, vengefulness.
Are they characteristics or emotions?
Perhaps they were once important, like the appendix, thousands of years ago, for various reasons – that arise with in humans experiencing such things that
turn the dizziness into a will to survive and
the necessary adrenaline to sometimes do so.
But they’re not me. Not that I know of, really.
They are just who I try to be, relentlessly. No
body but me. Sure, it gets confusing. But
what’s worse, I go long stretches actually
believing in certain things, what we might call values. I’ve learned not to bang loudly upon them, nor try to thrust them upon others. Most of them, anyway. If you can’t find some thing important enough to stand your ground protecting, though.... But the worst is when, doing my best to go about expressing myself, of making a big production of performing with some clarity, that which is me, wearing my own face and being forward about it, around people I’m comfortable enough to do so regularly, and finding that those people, my people, in turn find
it impossible to express in any detail who I am,
get all the salient facts rearranged, misnamed,
absurdly incorrect, well, does it invalidate
who I think you am, make me realize what
a chore it is to literally perform my self
authentically or does it just make me
question further that you are, that I am, that we are anything but a big heap of ill
ogical mess? Or does it make me try harder
to find that authenticity of me and assist me
in the discipline necessary to be clearer about it?
I have decided that the problem with most of my previous relationships is that they were with millennials. This may sound rather harsh, but for the
six years of being attached rather to someone from a newer generation, Z, I have been reflecting on this. I recall a ladder on the cover of a rather
popular book with a title that essentially proclaimed when someone you’re with seems stuck on a rung, when they’ve outlasted their usefulness to you (dear
reader), then it’s time to ditch them and move yourself up a rung. Perhaps not every millennial owns this book, but it seems awfully indicative of how things
went at the end of my times with those who’d be considered such. Furthermore,
loyalty and commitment feel excluded
from a lengthy, generation-sized beat on
the timeline of modern life. That’s a pretty broad stroke I’ve just painted, granted, but I do think it one worthy to contemplate. If you’d ever like to discuss this further, I would
