The sun is shining when I’ve got a bad knee,
and I can’t decide if I am insulted,
I think I’m glad,
I can’t decide if the blue sky doesn’t
care about me, or if it’s trying to be helpful.
And the fact is I am just a little drained,
and after it all, what remains is me,
and the sleepy time tea.
We rolled under black hills,
traveled under green hills, and all I see,
it wasn’t seeing me
You took out the last cane, and I took
out the sugar cane,
didn’t give a damn about me
Give a damn about me
And everything is the same,
why can’t you tell the difference.

Fixed mind- like a fixed animal, it is a mind that had been made tame and infertile. The chief attributes of people possessed of a fixed mine are the inability to change or enter into new relationships and communities as well as a fear of re-imaging the world they currently experience.

one hundred thirty pages through the two hundred fifty page manuscript of the fourth Rossford book. So much happens in it and the thing is, not having looked at it since I finished it a year and a half ago, much of it is a surprise. I do remember that there are two suicides and two rapes. Rossford becomes grim in this fourth tale. I told Lisa, as I came downstairs from proofing: "I have gotten through two suicides and one rape left to go." She said: "You've had quite a day."

I feel myself becoming lazy. I haven't left town in some time, and now as I get ready it seems like such a great effort. That means its time to go. For such a long time I didn't travel at all because it was just too much effort, and then it became impossible, and then I just didn't do anything. So I prepare to take a short trip and put up with slow trains, bizarre people and weird smells, El trains, and a shortage of good public bathrooms, in order to come back into a state of adventure. I need to be shaken out of myself. I need to remember that I can travel, and I can move. Without movement we just get fat.

There is that field a couple blocks down
the road where the dogs like to shit,
and it is full of tall wild plants and flowers.
So very carefully I pick them every few
days to put in a vase on the table.
They open up,
Like you open for me
and I water them,
God knows I’d water you
and for a few moments each morning
when I see them,
there is a time of listening
and touching.

she came home and we talked for three hours
and there is nothing better than this
except to be together for three hours,
and nothing crazier than this,
or nothing crazier than you
and a two a m conversation
that covered everything,
the joke i keep repeating but never quite right.
if there is proof that things
are not as bad as they
almost feel, that we can more than deal
with the situation we fid ourselves in,
then that is it, and this is it.

when its been a while i fear i will forget how to write
these poems early in the morning, how to go like light
to light from pulse to print so quick,
without even thinking of it
and it rusts a bit, but after awhile it
comes back, like the water goes
back to the sea
or like you come back to me

Livable Certainty- trusting in ones senses, but knowing that those senses may very well be off. This is a certainty ones life is not dependent upon. Though humble, it is what both logic and mystical knowledge have traditionally been built upon. There isn’t as much to say about this as there is to say about Absolute Certainty, mainly because this way of life does not possess the excitement and promise of absolutism. It does, however, have the advantage of cultivating humility and allowing people of different creeds to talk to each other civilly, and it is a definite requirement in journeying, for it is the thing that prevents a fixed mind.

Fixed mind- like a fixed animal, it is a mind that had been made tame and infertile. The chief attributes of people possessed of a fixed mine are the inability to change or enter into new relationships and communities as well as a fear of re-imaging the world they currently experience.

Transgressing- Ltn. Gredi (step) trans (across).  To step across boundaries. For the queer, the voyager and the witch, transgressing is an absolute necessity, to be in one of these camps, but fear or refuse transgressing is to give into bonsai brain, pleasantism and/or Uncle Toadism.  Trangression is, of course, a type of journeying and, like voyaging, can be dangerous and requires the proper passports. One should be tolerant of those not yet ready to transgress and realize that many never will and, in fact, for many, transgression would be damaging to their selves.

White Girl is going to Warsaw, Poland (imagine that!) and will be there for the next two weeks. I can hardly believe it !

Text of the Traveler's Prayer

The Prayer for a Safe Journey

יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְפָנֶיךָ יְ-יָ אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ וֵא-לֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵינוּ. שֶׁתּוֹלִיכֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם. וְתַצְעִידֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם. וְתַדְרִיכֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם. וְתִסְמְכֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם. וְתַגִּיעֵנוּ לִמְחוֹז חֶפְצֵנוּ לְחַיִּים וּלְשִׂמְחָה וּלְשָׁלוֹם. (ואם דעתו לחזור מיד אומר: וְתַחֲזִירֵנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם). וְתַצִילֵנוּ מִכַּף כָּל-אוֹיֵב וְאוֹרֵב וְלִסְטִים וְחַיּוֹת רָעוֹת בַּדֶּרֶך. וּמִכָּל פֻּרְעָנִיּוֹת הַמִּתְרַגְּשׁוֹת וּבָאוֹת לָעוֹלָם. וְתִשְׁלַח בְּרָכָה בְּכָל מַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ. וְתִתְּנֵנִיּ (בל' יחיד) לְחֵן וּלְחֶסֶד וּלְרַחֲמִים בְּעֵינֶיךָ וּבְעֵינֵי כָל רוֹאֵינוּ. וְתִגְמְלֵנוּ חֲסָדִים טוֹבִים. וְתִשְׁמַע קוֹל תְּפִלָּתֵינוּ. כִּי אַתָּה שׁוֹמֵעַ תְּפִלַת כָּל פֶּה: בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְ-יָ שׁוֹמֵעַ תְּפִלָה:

Transliteration:
Yehi ratzon milefanecha Ado-nai Eloh-einu veilohei avoseinu shetolicheinu leshalom vesatzideinu leshalom vesadricheinu leshalom vesismecheinu leshalom vesagi’einu limechoz cheftzeinu lechaim ulesimchah uleshalom (If he intends to return immediately, he adds: vesachazireinu leshalom) vesatzileinu mikaf kol oyeiv ve’oreiv velistim vechayos ra’os baderech umikol puraniyos hamisragshos uva’os le’olam vesishlach berachah bechol ma’aseh yadeinu vesitneini lechein ulechesed ulerachamim be’einecha uveinei chol ro’einu vesigmeleinu chasadim tovim vesishma kol tefilaseinu ki Atah shomei’ah tefilas kol peh. Baruch Atah Ado-nai shomei’ah tefilah.

from Chabad.org

I'm having a beer and doing my laundry. Next up is tackling the bathroom. The tub is looking pretty awful, which is why I need a beer first. I don't know how my apartment gets like this, seriously. You know that cupboard you cleaned out? It's like my whole apartment turned into that.
        - Erin Tracy

Consciousness lowering- the reading of, hearing of or participation in things which reconfirm the way one already feels and wishes to keep on feeling which is often confused with consciousness raising. When a Republican watches Fox news and says, see I always thought things were like that, or when Klan members go to Klan meetings, these are obvious example of consciousness lowering. Similar ones are when a Christian on their way to baptism or some religious initiation reads C.S. Lewis and wrongly credits him with “opening his eyes”. In leftist circles the same thing applies though leftists deny this. A feminist who continues fueling her views on a diet of Mary Daly and Gloria Steinem or an atheist who continually reads Richard Dawkins is no better. All are engaged in the steady campaign to stay steady, that is mired, in the same thinking and the next step after consciousness lowering is being lowered into bed and putting all consciousness to sleep.

sunday school lesson

dedicated to White Girl.... who stream of consciously raved most of this

it wasn't a whale it was a fish,
goddamnit get it right!
quit saying its revelations when
its revelation;
even i know better
and i don't believe in that shit
now if you're gonna tell a
story get it right
jonah wasn't in a whale
he was in a motherfucking fish
it was a big ass fish and a fish
is not a whale because a whale is a mammal
like a dolphin, like a monkey,
like the man who took my money,
like you, like me,
like mitochondrial eve
and because there is a
mitochondrial eve,
since darwin's gone to heaven,
you need to know...
none of this shit matters

white girl says

and white girl is walking to work and up in the sky,
real nice like it goddamn should be is this bird,
just flying you know,
and its carrying something and it drops in on
the ground and what is it?
now what the fuck is this shit?
its a dead bird's head,
and fuck you, bird!
i don't need this shit at 7:30 in the morning
on my way down magnolia to catch the EL
train and maybe the bird was grieving
or maybe the bird was holding what
was left of its old friend,
maybe the bird just couldn't carry his
burden anymore (birden?) and maybe... no,
maybe that motherfucker is just some crazy
cannibalistic asshole and maybe you
shouldn't drop dead shit at my feet
when i'm just getting up, and you know what?
No,
FUCK YOU BIRD!

Mentacontortion- the horrible mental disabling that comes when a brilliant mind twists itself in order to become small enough to fit into an ideology. Because this involves a naturally great mind being cut down in order to make it cute and beautiful for oppressive people, this is also called bonsai brain.

TODAY'S DICTIONARY

Stubbidity- willing stupidity. The stubborn choice to remain stuck in one’s limited perceptions refusing to understand anything in a new, helpful or honest way. Stubbidity’s greatest friend is circular thinking and BTSS. It is also a key component in consciousness lowering. In the Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis aptly describes this phenomenon when he says of a character who cannot understand the Talking Beasts in Narnia, “The problem with pretending to be stupider than you really are is that eventually you become it.” The state of stubbity is confoundom.


No-ledge- impractical knowledge that cannot be applied to life, or false knowledge which leads away from wisdom. Proponents of no-ledge are found in churches, in temples, in synagogues as well as universities and bar stools. No-ledge especially applies to specialized knowing that is of very little use anywhere except for at a given place. Someone who is proficient at their job, but displays no skill at managing her life. A friend who earned his doctorate in mathematics and then immediately entered the Catholic priesthood with no knowledge of history, religion, the Bible or himself came back into the real world briefly to tell me that he had learned that a Catholic priest was the center of the universe because as a man made in the image of Jesus Christ he was able to turn bread into God and wine into Blood and keep the world running. This is a deep example of no-ledge.

t h e  p o e m   o f  m y  l i f e
the poem of my life is easier to write at 6 am and far more visible,
how visible the twinkling of its threads this early in the morning against the night
light my way best
with the heart of things,
at this time when i haven't had the time to gather up all the bits of armor i would put on to make me different from you and
me different from him and
him and then
this has always been the heart of me
to stare into the middle
of this morning blackness and see
us







s i g h t
see me here, nude as birth lustful as a boy
confused as any child on the brink every time i think i've figured it out here it goes again
and it is life
and it is the movement of the earth
and it is the mother
the father, the following of the day upon the night
the admission that three fourths and
nine tenths of the world exist beyond my sight