Where You Should Be Tonight



Fourteen Hills, SF State's graduate literary magazine, is sending its latest issue out into the world tonight at the San Francisco Motorcycle Club. We're talking awesome contributor readings, amazing raffle prizes, really yummy food, fun people. And, um, an interview I did with SF State lecturer, published writer and the author of a forthcoming novel, Alice LaPlante.

Here's what you need to know:
come to the
San Francisco Motorcycle Club
2194 Folsom St. (@18th St.)
at 7 pm tonight

If you can't make it, buy your copy through Fiction On Demand or pre-order from Small Press Distribution. Also see D.W. Lichtenberg's breakdown on designing the cover art at We Who Are About to Die.

Things that Repeat



I saw this in a bike tunnel in Isla Vista in 2003. The war in Iraq had just been officially declared and it was just a matter of months before the truly embarrassing and horrifying destruction abroad would occur.

I was reminded of this yesterday, when I read in the New York Times that the American death toll in Afghanistan has reached 1000. I wonder, whose morbid job is it to count the dead? Does a mortician do it? A military officer? Some inverse incarnation of the stork who brings babies into the world?

I wonder, too, about the real question that this number hides: If 1000 Americans are dead in Afghanistan, who else is lost? Death and its dark honor is not a privilege that only Americans endure.

In 2007, I was working at an elementary school outside of Malaga, Spain, when we celebrated el Dia de la Paz. Peace Day. We took about a week of class time and instructed kids of all grades to design their own posters and learn peace songs. This was right around the time that the American death toll in Iraq had reached 3000, and my aunt April was hosting candlelight vigils in Los Angeles.



I'm thinking it's high time we had our own Dia de la Paz as well. If we're going to be repeating ourselves, it might as well be with something good.

Who doesn't want more machines?



This is called a continuous blood glucose monitor.

Actually, this is called a comic, one that happens to involve a woman who happens to wear both an insulin pump and a continuous blood glucose monitor (CGMS). These two little machines, when they work in tandem, effectively tell her what her blood sugar is doing at five-minute intervals throughout the day, and then help her make decisions on how much insulin to take.

Sometimes being a savvy type 1 diabetic means remembering words from high school chemistry. I knew "interstitial" would come in handy someday. Gotta love those "hypers" and "hypos," and "glucose"--my life would be so much more boring without that C6H12O6. But the opportunity to live with not one but two
little machines plugged directly into me all day long--this was something I could not turn down. How often do you get to tap into the superhighway of your own bloodstream every day, all day long, and have it help your health? Not only that, but it graphs out glucose patterns and beeps before you get high or low, just to check in. It's like living with a doctor slash mother attached to your hip, with some of the implied advantages and disadvantages.

I'm not squeamish about needles and finger pricks, and have worn an insulin pump for more than 8 years, so I learned long that the diabetic aesthetic doesn't -- and won't ever -- cramp my style. One of my favorite Eddie Izzard sketches is his identification as an "executive transvestite" -- I like to think of myself as an "executive diabetic."



Pretty soon everyone will want one.

Introducing the Stall Series



We live gracelessly.

I don't know who wrote this, but I'm pretty sure I know what she was doing when she wrote it. I should mention that many of the bathroom stalls at my university come equipped with handy little chalkboards, perhaps in an effort to cut down on bathroom graffiti. Instead, people write with indelible pens on the chalkboard. And then others write over it again.

I've long been an admirer of bathroom poetry--you know, the little afterthoughts written on paper dispensers and stall walls all over the world. I often wonder if the people who write these little aphorisms carry pens with them when they go to the bathroom, or if maybe they are struck by sudden inspiration, and their first instinct is to make a beeline for the potty to jot it down.

It's safe and anonymous, and yet intimate.

I've decided to start documenting my favorite moments of bathroom poetry. Some of them are poignant, some of them are sad, some of them have girly curly-cue handwriting, some of them are written in WhiteOut, some etch their emotions in with the precision of a straight edge.

I went hunting today for my absolute favorite moment of bathroom bizareness, but it looks like it might have been washed clean from the chalkboard in the stall. It said: "IF YOU RUB YOUR HANDS TOGETHER FAST, THEY SMELL LIKE PEANUT BUTTER."

But what made it even better was the little note right underneath it, in clearly different handwriting, different color pen even:

"...Wow you're right."

Oh, the wonders of fleeting, spontaneous and seemingly heartfelt bathroom poetry.

The True Nature of Surfing the Web



This was at Quiet Lighting V at Mina Dresden Gallery here in San Francisco. Fun.

I was a little startled, however, to see it pop up on some random Julia Roberts blog this week. I'm wondering what this group is, who Frances Kelley in Grand Rapids, Michigan might be, and what possible relevance it has for a group of Julia Roberts fans. Maybe this is a meme for anyone with the first name Julia?

The internet does funny things to our lives.

This morning, while trolling internet news sites for possible Forum show ideas, I came across a photo of a performer at the SF Weird Street Faire that looked oddly familiar. There was something about that pink hair...And she was identified as the one and only Trixxie Carr, a performer, playwright, musician and faux drag queen here in San Francisco, who also happens to be my cousin.

Trixxie was the girl at my family reunions who was always completely unafraid to be herself, and as the only granddaughter on both sides of my family, I always wished I could be so unabashedly my own person. She is, as I've soon learned, an accomplished performer who has toured as far as China. I hadn't seen her in some time, and suddenly we had exchanged contact information and I realized that maybe creativity is a force as powerful as family, one that makes us circle the same overlapping Venn diagrams time and time again, until we hit all the matrices that seem interesting.

Small, lovely, funny world, thanks to the internet. And perhaps the people out there doing the things they love, and then putting them on the internet.

Revista EOI Fuengirola: International Magazine That You Should Read



credit: EOI Fuengirola

Marta Moreno is pretty much one of the best teachers I have ever met. We met in 2006 when I was working as a bilingual educational assistant at en elementary school in La Cala de Mijas, Spain. Marta teaches English at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas in Fuengirola--just across the street from the apartment where I lived. Once a week, my American friends and I would join her for a bilingual "teatro" club with several of her Spanish students who were in her English classes. Marta organized these classes on her own time with the help of Amy Nickerson, a fellow American who, like me, had come to Spain as part of a national bilingualism-in-the-schools project. Each week we'd perform little skits in English and Spanish, in part just for kicks, and in part to engage that language part of our brain that was still transitioning from English to Spanish.

Marta and I often talked about writers and artists we liked in various languages, and by the end of the year she had become a wonderful friend and resource. This year, she emailed me to say that she and her class at the EOI were making an international magazine. She was asking around her international friends to see if we would contribute a short piece about the cities where we lived. I passed her along some notes about San Francisco, along with some photos. Today she emailed me to share the results of their year of hard work, and it is really well done:

http://eoifuengirolarevista.wikispaces.com/

Whether you speak English, Spanish, German or French -- whether you're an armchair traveler or a Trotemundos (Globetrotter), you'll love the work they've done.

Y a Marta y su clase de escritores, disenadores y artistas: bien hecho!

Cool Stuff You Should Know

There are a lot of them--things, that is. But I feel the need to dash off a list of some of the coolest nouns in my life these days. People, places, events, programs.

The Best New Literary Series

Would have to be Quiet Lightning, a monthly reading series curated by Evan Karp and Rajshree Chauhan. I was first turned on to this by my classmate (and Managing Editor of SF State's kickass graduate literary magazine, Fourteen Hills, D.W. Lichtenberg), who has been actively reading work from his first published collection of poetry, The Ancient Book of Hip. Karp and Chauhan take submissions of 5 minute pieces early in the month and then arrange them in specific reading order for the event, which has hopped from bar to gallery and back again. Writers are invited to submit poetry, flash fiction, excerpts and really it seems anything that can be performed in about five minutes. Not only is the event itself a fun gathering of writers and friends, but Karp and Chauhan have managed to bridge that gap between open mic and literary journal by publishing all the work in sPARKLE & bLINK, and by video-recording all of the readers and posting them online.

Best New Radio Shows

New to me, that is. Just yesterday I got turned on to Snap Judgment, an NPR program that explains itself as an "audio rollercoaster." Glynn Washington hosts these hourlong programs, which are sensationally produced with music, sound effects, and dramatic moments of pause in between personal narratives.

Risk is a New York-based personal storytelling program in the tradition of The Moth, except it allows its readers to offer long, entertaining and practiced personal anecdotes. Kevin Allison (most famously known for his work in the comedy troupe the State) hosts, and sometimes has celebrity guests such as Janeane Garafalo or Elna Baker -- two ladies whose writing I definitely admire.

Best Local Music Show

Golden Beat, from Berkeley's KALX, is my go-to when I've got a few hours to write an assignment and crave some indie, funky, country, bluesy, eclectic beats.

Best Impersonal Email Message

VSL, or Very Short List, has mastered the art of anonymous culture-busting. I got turned on to this by following Kurt Andersen, host of Studio 360 and another one of my literary heroes, who helped found the website in 2006. Basically, their concept is to summarize "one must-see gem" a day, and it's usually an underground book, film, band, or even political movement that might not otherwise see the light of day.

I'm not usually one for the mass email, but this one I read every day.

And, finally, last but not least:

Best Way to Respond to a Bad Pick-Up Line

A short, accidental moment of true, unblemished impoliteness. Every now and then someone will see the little machine on my hip and use it as a way to chat me up. 99% of the time it's a perfectly harmless exchange, but every now and then I find that it acts as an excellent screen. One example:

After the reading Monday night, I was talking with my cousin and my friend Max, and a young guy approached me and interjected rather loudly, "WOAH you must be a doctor or something because I haven't seen a PAGER like that in a long time!"

To which I responded, "I'm diabetic." In my head, I modulated the tone as a kind of "I'm happy to talk to you about it if you ask," but it actually came out in a much more of a "fuck off, you ignoramus" way. I didn't realize that until I saw the startled look on his face, and I turned back to my friends just as he did a full about-face and walked away.

So yeah. I think this stuff is cool. You don't have to agree with me, but if you ask me about my pager, I might accidentally shut you down.

Night at the Oakland Museum

This time last night I was just walking up the steps to the Oakland Museum of California, which was hosting a spectacular 30-hours re-opening celebration in honor of its recent renovation. There were deejays, documentaries, palm readers, and lots of vibrant, diverse, amazing exhibitions. It was "From the Mixed-Up-Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" meets "Night at the Museum" except in Oakland, on a beautiful spring night.

The only other time I'd ever been to the Oakland Museum was as a fourth-grader. We had driven all the way to the Bay Area to get a hands-on look at California history, and yet all I seem to remember about it was that there were koi in the pond, and that the adult chaperone in our group got lost on the 880 and we ended up in San Francisco. But last night--last night art was seeping in our pores. There are three main exhibits that are currently open to the public: "Art", "Nature," and "History." I don't think I've ever been to a museum that examined California identity so carefully, and displayed such an honest depiction of what it means to be multicultural. I was especially moved by the exhibit of art made in Japanese internment camps, many of them in the Bay Area.

There's something magical about being in a public place with lots of people late at night. It's almost as if the truly fascinating, exotic or curious parts of ourselves emerge when no one else is looking, and these are the parts most worth documenting.

Picture of the Day: Fairfield School




My favorite school: Fairfield Elementary. This is a two-room schoolhouse five miles west of the town where I grew up, a small little red brick building lost in miles of ag land. Hot air balloons used to land in the fields behind the school. Lizards used to lose their tails under the wooden walkway at lunchtime.

I hope that in this rush to salvage public education, we don't lose sight of just how much it means.

North Korea, La Mission, and Found Plays -- just another week in San Francisco

Last night, fiction writer and Stanford lecturer

Adam Johnson

read at our second annual Gina Berriault award event at San Francisco State University's Poetry Center. He read to us from a novel in progress that is set in North Korea. One of the story's main characters was a loudspeaker that made us, as an audience, chant nationalist propaganda in English and Korean.

Johnson was, in a word, phenomenal.

Every now and then I have these glimpses of how other people live creatively. On Monday, while interning at KQED's Forum, I had the opportunity to meet Benjamin Bratt and his brother Peter, two talented men in the film industry whose latest work, "La Mission," tackles the thorny yet common theme of clashing cultures and ideologies in one of San Francisco's most fascinating districts. The younger Bratt, who is most known for his television work, spoke eloquently about this desire to channel both the artistry and complexity of a bridge between generations and ideologies. I was struck not so much by both Benjamin and Peter's obvious talent, but by the way they made it all so personal. They grew up here. They've heard stories. They've driven low-riders. They have a desire to reconnect with a population that they both identify with and systematically question.

One local story that I find particularly exciting is a new SF State project headed by Theatre Arts Professor Joel Schechter, who while researching a book on 1930s Yiddish plays, stumbled across a lost script outline originally devised by the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project in 1937. Schechter and a group of his graduate students then adapted the outline into a musical called Money, an aptly named piece both for its Great Depression origins and for its current economic relevance. Talk about the creative process - what must it be like to revive a story decades old, one that brings startling new meaning in the post-housing-crisis world.

I wonder what our country would look like, if we had a Federal Theatre Project now, if the government valued the arts in a way that it did the sciences or academia. Maybe then there'd be more out there about up-and-coming writers and artists whose work makes life digestible, even powerful.

The Ligre Debut

Introducing the world premiere of Ligre, an improvised comics tour de force created piecemeal by a Tiger (Ryan Alpers) and a Lioness (Julia Halprin Jackson).


"It wasn't the world that made him dream of beautiful girls and wonderful things..."


"and landscapes surreal with smoking pots and endangered desert tortoises..."





"It was his job, after all, to imagine..."




"unreal realities portrayed behind curtains on silver screens...
-Ever seen that dog before?
-Nope, but she's got style on those skis!
-Yip! Yap! Yeaaahh!"



"wondering what willed whatever wont withal..."



"smaller and smaller when love comes to call..."


...



All drawings by Julia, usually done in class, in a little notebook
all text done by Ryan, usually done on the weekends, on a little tiled counter in San Francisco
website help by Ammon Bartram

I found this poem

I had a legitimate moment of literary amnesia just now, when cherrypicking old work for potential submissions. I found these words and I know they held special meaning at the time, but the idea of titling something like this a "Bloodletting for Scarlet O'Hara" -- the Julia who wrote this poem is someone I no longer resemble.

Blood Letting for Scarlet O’Hara

You laughed when I said,
It’s been far too long since I’ve had a good scab.
It was true;
My body was tired of stories
Knee high fence posts
And narrow doorways.
We were at Whiskeytown lake
And it felt appropriate to be somewhere
Named after alcohol
Because my legs got drunk around you
Skidding down the boat ramp
It was 104 degrees
And the dirt was scarlet

O’Hara would’ve never done that
In a black bikini
Run down moss while you were still in the car
By the time you had your trunks on
My knees were the color of the dirt
Even lines of oxygen trailing into whiskey

Town lake and when you put me on your shoulders
I’d never been happier
To acquire a scab

-

I wonder at what point creative work simply overrides memory.

-

A brief follow-up to the Monday night Quiet Lightning event: Evan Karp, the San Francisco Literary Culture Examiner, wrote up a great summary of the reading at Gestalt.

Read-a-Roni



Before I wax poetic on Passover and Easter (and pre-Passover breakfast, which at my house consisted of bacon and French toast, how very kosher), I have two quick plugs to make. Tomorrow, Monday April 5, I'll be reading at the Gestalt bar in San Francisco, along with a great group of Bay Area poets and writers, including novelist Shanti Sekaran and fellow SFSU grad students. Come check it out if you're local -- cheap beer and expensive words!

Also - on April 22, I'll be sharing some work at a reading hosted by the amazing fantastic and cutting edge literary journal Flatmancrooked, which is publishing it's First Annual Poetry Anthology this fall. Rockstar poet / SFSU grad student / my neighbor Shideh Etaat will be hopping a ride up to Davis' John Natsoulas Gallery. Loverly.

And here's one image of an amazing Passover seder--intentionally blurry, you see, to reflect the four glasses of wine we are expected to consume during the dinner.

On Spring



This meadow is a childhood deja-vous.

This is the kind of place where an old person would sit down at the end of his or her long life, maybe lie back and look up at that spot where the leaves of neighboring trees crisscrossed, making darker, greener shadows, and slip into reverie. This is a place where the quality of light is different, where the air is still and quiet, where there are more banana slugs than people.

We discovered this meadow last weekend while hiking near Point Reyes, an hour northwest of San Francisco. This little bench was nestled in amongst a thicket of berry bushes and a small rushing creek.



We splayed our lunch across the little bridge and laid with our heads to the treetops. I remembered what it felt like to be tuned-out, turned-off, plugged off and out of reach--and I liked it.