bob dylan pandora radio station

I am (as I often am) frustrated with my writing. With what though? The verbs? The nouns? Or, gad, the little commas, all in cooperation and coup with each other to break my self-delusions about what my hands should do and my brain wired toward.

But this is all just a long introduction to tell you that I have things for you to read. Finally.

A news brief about a very complicated issue, very little of which finds its way into the actual article simply because there is no space in (a) the average human heart and (b) the newspaper itself. I will express a frustration now: that when I say They are building Yet Another industrial plant in a poor area (inhabited mostly by Hispanics and the sort of white people we categorize as whhhhhhhhhite people), Some People give me that set of mouth that tells me, "Don't be ridiculous."

Here's another piece. For the gift guide. It's about yarn. I believe every word, but (I may have mentioned) I'm having troubles with words so the writing disappoints me. It's boring. Predictable. It is what it will be and I will be something else tomorrow.

---

OTHER NEWS:

Life is the busy beast it has grown to be and will never stop being until someone dies.

I am

...working on three final art projects. A book project. A construction project. A drawing.

...writing book reviews. Poetry. Essays. Anthologies. Novels. I need three more days. I have one.

...seeing friends I don't see much anymore and wondering if it will become even less often. Because, you see, I might be moving farther north than usual, but I'm not sure yet and I don't know when or how or even if.

---

Read this and tell me what you think.

roller derby girls

My greatest frustration in these evil times is not having any way to edit photos. Natural light just isn't cutting it like it used to.

museum day

The Louvre. What does it mean to you? Loooooooooooooo-v-ruh? The loo-f?

L. and I lost in the Greeks, than the wretched Dutch masters. Pan and close up: that lady and her smile. Da Vinci. Oath of the Horatii stretching upwards about one hundred feet--by which I mean 165 inches. L. and I shunted along one white ceiling wood floor gaping hall after another and people with cameras instead of faces flashing left and right and above and below. The point of a museum is not to see, but to prove that you have seen, that you have been, in hopes that by being and by seeing you have appreciated and are now become the sort of person who Understands These Aesthetics and Ideas In General. Cock a finger against your chin and frown. We all know now.

The single greatest semi-secret crime I might have ever committed was to spend only one hour (or was it an hour and a half?) in the Louvre. My eyes did skim and my heart did breathe in the drifting molecules of the old masters. This was (goodness) five years ago.

Outside, French police patrolled on roller blades when they weren't leaning against fences and staring at French girls.

Move ahead two years: New York (New YORK!) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Shall-we-call-him-Sheldon-just-for-the-fun-of-it and I, frozen to our wrist bones, inadequately coated for a winter day complete with sleet, suffering and being lost on the subway system. But we found the museum. Passed ourselves as students--not so hard, since that's what we were, but it was a small accomplishment in a strange town.

I recall a rapid progress of chairs and stumbling over some basement repository of assorted pottery. Madame X or Z or Y? Anyway, in black with red hair. And there was the J.Pollock taking up an entire wall before which I stood entranced for ten full minutes until I was made to move on.

(While we're on the subject of Jackson Pollock, go to THIS WEBSITE, but don't watch the video--unless you want to, it's god awful boring--just enter the site. Drag around and stuff and then click to get a different color. Hours of amusement!)

Two more years and we are somewhere outside of Portland--which, pause, reminds me that we should stay in Portland long enough to remark on the Ancient Egpyt exhibit that passed through and also the giant golden dandelion found on the apocalyptic modern art floor. This floor may or may not actually exist. We have never found it, nor its death camp oven elevators again.

But leaving Portland, heading south, we come to Today and the museum I walked to.

What little I know of art seems to point to the need for space, time, and integrity. Space: the art is not crowded, the day is not cramped, you are not bogged down with bags, cameras or other people. The need to compete in intensity of pretended interest might prove too strong, or the pressure to move on MOVE ON. Time: a few hours, at the least, so you can sit and watch the piece and (oh liberal hippie that I fear I am becoming) so the art can watch you and make you uncomfortable. Not that discomfort is necessary, but it is interesting. Integrity: the conscious concentration, the leaving aside of ego and boredom and most other distractions. Research might be necessary. Focus is also a part of integrity. Perhaps a scholarly mind only less soap-like.

This is not what I did. I hurried through. My excuse: I was so hungry. So perhaps along with time, space and integrity, we should add Sandwich Hidden in Coat Pocket.

fan mail

The day I found out that Jack White was the last rock star, I was sitting at my parents' kitchen table, a pot of English breakfast tea in a white and blue tea pot and buttered toast on a plate. Revolutions often begin in a field and revelations hang around at doorways waiting for someone to trip over the propped up feet. I imagine trains were moving especially slow back in Eugene. People waited while coffee cooled. In Portland, we were a long morning with nothing going on except a piano to play and a bathroom to clean, and the newspaper said:

He (Jack White) was bigger than the room, and gave every impression of always being bigger than every room. Because Jack White is a rock star, and not just a rock star, but possibly the last rock star.

Rock star, according to this article, means: strut-strut-strutting like you own the place and once impregnated the landlord's daughter, charmed his wife with a smile, and left town on your own terms, everyone shaking their heads a little but loving you the whole time. Furthermore, you have replaced Metallica. It is implied that this is something you are to be proud of. You are a finite resource, like fossil fuels. In a world of oil, you are the rumor of a new field in sub-Saharan Africa.

As the last rock star, your duties include (here the article is vague) being Jack White, whatever Jack White happens to be. Nowhere and everywhere mostly.

The burden of being the last rock star is heavy. Un-sleeping are the eyes that wear the crown; the grave diggers are on duty from 12 am to 12 am. Once you are the last, you are doomed to die be you gold fish, child, dog or Mohican. As long as we pretend and flirt behind closed hands, death is a poem and most poetry is printed on paper. Paper doesn't do much except biodegrade. It is when poetry is spoken with throat, breath, spit, and teeth that you need to worry. So perhaps Jack White should be worried. Shovels clank. The diggers don't realize. They're marking time with marks in the dirt, milling and humming, telling dirty jokes. As the last rock star, you face a horde of over-educated, yet incredibly dumb indie kids on the one side and on the other side are the haters of the human spine who want to thrash and throw themselves around like dog toys. In the empty spaces live everyone else. In a crowd, everyone becomes a single face and personal taste is like specialty organic tea in an over-mountain town: unheard of and unnecessary.

As the last rock star, there are expectations of extraordinary living. There are rules and shoes, both dictating an interest in night and cocaine when night becomes tedious. Five women or a controversial wife. You must live in a perpetual state of breakdown without actual full-out insanity. If you get tired, crash a motorcycle. It worked for Bob Dylan.

The day I found that Jack White was the last rock star was the happiest day of my life. The waiting is over. The time is come. Prepare the torches, the pitchforks and the black flag. Run those colors. No doubt the feeling is similar to Jerusalem's Jews upon meeting the Messiah. However, they were doomed to disappointment. God came to die and rock stars "sell out." But like perfection, selling out is primarily a matter of perspective. I think when people say "Sell out" what they really mean is that they are bored or confused, two human emotions already prevalent in every other aspect of our lives and life is too short. So I will stand in different corners and sometimes the middle of the room.

It is with great relief that I pass on this information to you, reveal to you, remind you, petition, bribe, and imply: Jack White is the last rock star.

Unless, of course, Meg White is.

people just float

My childhood was a swift knowledge that I was going to die, perhaps tomorrow, possibly today, a high chance of mortality in the next six seconds. I closed windows to keep bus noises out, rapists and men with mask faces, women made of seashells, and foxes/wolves/wild dogs. Halloween in Portland was a house of dark rooms. Ten foot tall windows hidden behind white curtains and I, crouched underneath the sill, watched witches and Satan gambol past. There are eyes as murderous as tornadoes (another fear, related to basements and Nebraska and TV shows celebrating Natural Disasters). With demons on my mind and a Poe orangutan lurking up every chimney, Halloween was a certain cemetery.

Then, upon growing up in Reformation, Halloween turned into a scimitar triangle shaped like John Calvin's beard. A voice pitched through the nose and Luther booming somewhere Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott! I traipsed in Robin Hood green or skirts longer than my legs and a pearl on my forehead.

Now, Halloween is a brothel and I the Puritan stuck somewhere evil. The first year I moved to Eugene, I overcompensated, draped myself in sheets and a burka. The next year, I covered my hair with plastic snakes and my shoulders with a red dress. This year, my lip is kept decent with a plastic fibered mustache and my legs will go a-walking in jeans. Meanwhile, three blind mice are three 19 year old girls, waving white canes and twenty inches of thigh down 18th Avenue. And behind them lurk the hungry boys, head scarfed pirates, barefoot and boozy. And behind them is a crowd of tall boots connected to cleavage, a sparkle in the left corner and a sparkle on the hand. And behind them is all of Eugene where you ask yourself twice, "Is that a costume or normal life?" Because sometimes it's hard to tell. Blest is the idiot who "dresses up like a hippie." What are you thinking? Be a racketeer, be Zeus, be a reel-to-reel tape. In a valley of the blind, the man with sighted eyes is king.

---

After a good talk with a good friend in which goodness was discussed and conversation often dissolved into the literary and we had to pull it back to plain English (noun-verb, heel-toe), and in which the question was posed "What do you want to do with your art?" and collaboration was volunteered, I've decided to state in a public forum, my intentions toward my work.

Dear Work,

Too long we have sat apart
in separate chairs
facing other walls
with all the lights turned off
and I have drawn by looking at my paper
and not at the object I am drawing.
So now is the time to declaim and declare
and perhaps fail spectacularly.

Love,
Kate

Projects (in no order except the order of association):

1. The illustrated dictionary, books bound by door hinges. A visual exploration of the root and ridicule and visceral experience of the fears of a) getting fat, b) being pregnant, c) letting the wrong person in, d) and others.

2. A short illustrated story-ish. To whit, a serious-minded comic.

3. A cycle of short stories. One of which is finished and longing to be edited in a ruthless, conquering manner.

4. Plot out a book that is graphically-designed. Please see: House of Leaves. This will give you an idea of what I am talking about. Also: Boring boring boring boring. I am fascinated with this idea and I think it could be done better with an ear towards the People. An act of both literature and design where both are understandable and one does not ask oneself, "Am I stupid or am I dumb?"

5. A newspaper story of social and environmental importance in which the Freedom of Information Act will be strewn around like candy.

6. Collaborate with T. (Tobias/in/y: I don't know if you ever read this, or know it exists, but it was your conversation and I will attempt that children's book and maybe take you up on the camera)

---

To close:

"People don't live or die, people just float"
- Bob Dylan

a thursday

So there's this feeling after working with flour when your fingernails are outlined in white and there are white smudges on your face and in your hair and the pile of dough refuses to feel like a baby's bottom -- how that became a measurement standard, I don't know -- and you are working on five hours of sleep and perhaps it is very cold outside the house and in one hour you will have to go make art for the rest of the day...it is at this moment that you feel tired. It's also this sense of Tired as you realize it is once again the end of a week and life seems to be ticking by extra fast in week-long units. Instead of seven days, you have one (1) week. We are the fifth?sixth? week into Fall Term. Midterms. The first wet and driving cold of winter. Already black walnuts are falling less frequently in machine gun precision against the kitchen roof. Damaged cells turn purple with the first awareness that frostbite is in the air again.

Tonight is Thanksgiving, except that it is October and Thanksgiving is a month away. But tonight is still Thanksgiving. We from the Kitchen are assembling at a single house to eat Thanksgiving food and play games and perhaps even engage in family drama if we can come up with a good scenario.

Last week is a blur of little sleep and driving in a car to Portland and also driving back. This week has passed almost as quickly with slightly more sleep and no drives to Portland, but just as frayed at the corners. It seems I haven't written anything except letters in months, years, lifetimes.

In the meantime, bread is rising. Clock is ticking. Rain falling. Car passing. Roommate ignoring alarm clock. And all is well with the blue rug on my bedroom floor and the glue gun on the kitchen table.

marxism

Man. Where to even begin with this day?

A few highlights:

Let's begin with a table outside of the bakery around 2:30 p.m. when a girl asked me to apply to join her sorority.

"We're looking," she said, glancing at my ratty gray hoodie (hood up), bandanna, lack of makeup, and the charcoal dust stained into my fingers, "for diverse people."

I could not get out of bed this morning. I literally groaned as if in pain because it was painful. Waking up was going to kill me. I missed the bus I was supposed to be on and settled for the one I wasn't supposed to be on, the one that made me 10 minutes late to work, the one full of people who smelled like sleep -- the mushy, greasy-haired, grimy sheets, fug breath sleep smell. We practiced avoiding each others' eyes.

Skip to when I took the bus back from work around 4 p.m., stopping at the library and the grocery store. Pause to bewail how my current hippie grocery store of choice no longer carries Swedish Fish which I am completely addicted to. Picture me walking through the Eugene ghetto (such as it is) in my anonymous clothes, stooped a bit because I am tired, carrying a paper sack of groceries (quinoa! cherry tomatoes! eggs!). I, intrepid down the streets, avoiding the crazy people--my secret power is the ability to spot crazy from 20 feet. Using this mad skill, madness was avoided from 13th and O to 8th and Some-Cross-Street. And then I hit 5th and my powers were deflected, like Superman faced with lead-lanced buildings.

Hidden behind a facade of a straight-ahead gaze and walk that went heel toe, crazy came from the left side of the sidewalk, cradling a black dog.

"Halllllay-a," he said to me.

I thought he wanted a cigarette or directions, so I stopped.

"Huh?"

"Halllllayyyyy-aaa."

I did what you're supposed to do: smile, nod, walk by, assume it was meth.

He looked at me, brow furrowed and repeated adamantly: "Halllllaaaaaaayyyyyy-aaa."

As I kept walking my feet away, it all became clear. He was saying, "Hail Satan!" and was truly perplexed as to why I was cheerfully smiling and nodding and walking away instead of looking horrified and strewing garlic around in a frenzy.

He gave up on me.

"Satan keeps you beautiful!" he yelled.

Glanced over my shoulder back at him -- I imagine my face looked ridiculous at this point -- and hopped over a curb, took myself off through Death Park past the couple making out and the sleeping bags in the bushes.

I remembered again the main reason I am not a Communist or a Marxist or anyone else who thought people were a good plan all on their lonesome.

Now, today's happy reality: Cherry tomatoes, $2.02.

Goodnight.