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Ozomatli Closes Out Stern Grove 2006

God love Ozomatli for doing their usual... From political booty swinging to throwing your arms in the air noddin your head like ya just don't care, from the usual Sesame Street sing-alongs to crowd weaving acoustic parking lot post-show jams and all. I even forgive them for the cult-on-rocker action of getting everyone to throw up peace signs (causing me to almost throw up in the process). Bless you my lovely friends old and new for making the fog-filled eucalyptused wrist-stamped dragon-flied whisk(e)y-thermosed yes-dope-no-cigs-smokin newly-landscaped "improved" (ha) grove such a pleasuah as always.

Mi Lindo Peru

Missin' mountains to la playa
when everything's long-haired tight and orange with elevators only goin' to every several floors,
Inkan crop circles abound 'round altiplano nopales
winter silence screams hushed with the sound of waterways
mist it's streaming
over my hair in high sun
steaming,
dancing til 6:30 a.m sunrises,
Boulder seams masks music magic surprises
quinhoa lisas calabaza maiz grow heavenly,
blue eyed pigeons side-ball me suspiciously,
picaflores condores connecting god and (hu)man
masked men run me through fire and put me down again
little boys duck hiding behind my legs from whips
while reggaeton and Shakira run off my lips,
breath-keeping altitude scenes with che selling everything,
crazy Violeta Luna plunges nails into cow hearts, bites down in the name of Frida's art,
sacras quake at Virgin dolls in green petticoat layers,
an entire country of knitters and weavers and titeres makers,
and it is fuckin freezin in July and
I am holding everyone's hand and kissing your cheeks right and left hello and goodbye.

Les quiero Ericka, Jacki, Jorge, Doris, Mauricio, Gabby, y mi little tiny tattooista-piercer chiquillo. Una locura completa era en 2006.

Streets of San Francisco, An Update

Great sadness. The original stenciler, the ever-romantic hippified 'blue lost love' serialist of course ended hir stencil in "hope".... But haterism being what it is, it took little to transform this into its present state.

Sigh.

I personally blame all the transplants from Boston (nothin' personal, Tasha, Shalanda and Jaime-Nhu.... I know y'all would too, if you didn’t still live there)

Summertime Sundays in the Sucka Free City

10:30
park's stuffed already
Spills over into hidden meadow, poison ivy shaded nooks
Sharing bread and cheese and fineries
Blankets, sunshine, beer'n'wine,
ocean breeze (occasionally)
Dragon flies stare me in the eye
one hawk glides overhead
In a gulch o' raised up trees and stone steps
People perch steep hillsides, sleep
Brazil beat the aussies and everyone is here
Yellow, blue and green scene
seu jorge represents
straw in a to-go cup sounds his instrument
A section drum circles
Another does one massive electric slide
We are all alive
in portuguese
we're pleased

Intermission Aimee Mann
Lost in Space reels us in again
Listen, her lyrics
Hazy heads of sunshined wine
People mill
Make connections
seeming sad self-reflections
start and sleep sets in
lay back, relax decompress from
depressing any mann

The day's over we recycle
Climb back up to street level
Take off every way and out

First of the series
Bleary.
Beautiful, lazy Summertime Sundays.

Good Days Turn to Dust So Quickly

Sometimes, even hung over during an assembly, a person can have a good day.

Sometimes, even having 5150ed people right before graduation, a person can have a good day.

Sometimes, even with grades hanging over one's head, a person can have a good day.

Sometimes, a person's cell phone makes the tiniest blip of a noise, and the person is startled because they have dropped their phone so often that the phone rarely makes any kind of wurble and then realizes they have just gotten a text message.

Sometimes the text reads: I love you so much i'm sorry.

Sometimes that text is from a student.

Sometimes that person calls the student and says, I love you fiercely too, I am so happy to receive your text, and what exactly does this mean? Did you hurt yourself? Are you thinking about hurting yourself? And though the person promises that they haven't, they are not believed and when they start to get tired the person has to say to the sleepy and acting strange but no longer weeping controllably person: Do you have any idea how much I love you? I love you to the point that it would devastate me; it would change my life unalterably, I might never ever recover, if something were to happen to you. And the other person says: I took 50 Tylenol. And so the first person says: When? /A half hour ago. / You have to walk outside with me on the phone and you have to tell your dad what has happened and I need to talk to him, ok? / Ok.

And sometimes the person is meanwhile on the phone with another person getting them to call the dad's cell and tell him that his child might die if he doesn't get that child to the ER right then WHILE keeping the person awake and on the phone so the person says, Oh hey, um, I need to call you back later because my dad is at the door and he says that we have to go to the hospital now.

And so the person says, OK, I will talk with you later. I can't wait.

So sometimes a person gets a text message that changes their day dramatically. And thanks any possible diety for hearing one tiny bleat.

Wrapping It Up: Teacher Life

I like bowling. Turns out I like to wear other people's shoes and hurl balls at little pins far away. Turns out the stale air is good for me. Turns out I am a far better bowler than billiardist (word?). Turns out I am better at each of these things under 2 circumstances: 1. Drunk (but I wouldn’t know about that, since these were fieldtrip/parties for my munchkins.... Although one of my students COULD speak to that.... In the form of his spiked sprite bottle.... He got maybe two sips before I nailed him.... Its not like I was born yesterday) and 2. Not paying any attention to what I am doing. Turns out I somewhat belligerently don’t understand why bowling balls can be all sorts of glittery glistening colors but pool balls are never pink or turquoise or lime or brown....

Turns out that I am a SAP because I even love these pain-in-the-ass ball-and-chain children in JUNE, even while I was singing the "go home go home sarah needs to be alone" song at 10 or 11 or who knows when on Thursday night after a long ass week with so many of them kicking some peer education ass at conferences, etc. with me almost taking a nap on a pool table during our never-ending-year-end party despite loud music, big big boys surrounding me babbling in my ears about god know what and who, schooling bad-decision boozer-boy, gaggles of cute teens playing pool and eating pizza and being sweet to each other in the weirdest ways by saying things like....

R to B- You KNOW I mean you KNOW T_________ wont play me cuz she's hella scared, man.

B to T - T_________! Ya know what? R__________'s over there saying you're scared to play him cuz he's that good.

T screaming across 4 tables to R - WHAT?! R________! You say I'z SCARED to play you?

R- I sure did! (fat grin)

T- R_________! I'ma gonna to kick ya ass. And then I'm gonna kick ya ass at pool, boy. (oh, pizza! can I get a slice? Thanks, sarah.) R__________! I kill you. Don’t make that face boy. I'll seriously kill you. I won't even use this pole.

Me: (Audible) Sigh.

THREE more days ....

When Live-In Brothers Come to Live With You...

Here is the kind of paraphenalia you can count on finding on the floor. A little bathroon reading?

On a totally separate note, while describing the Light Man's job on a gay porn set to my friend R, I was reminded why it is to have old, good friends with kick ass memories. He reminded me that shortly before my stint of dating the alcoholic artists I was with the amateur porn star and it was only when I somehow mentioned that to the alcoholic artist #1 that he became quite suddenly VERY insecure. Woops. I would've completely forgotten that episode. Thank you, R.

Happy Birthday Gemini Sister

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaw. I love these ladies. Cute as buttons, aren't they?

The Streets of San Francisco

Is there any faction of the U.S. not at war?! It is madness out there. And haterism is even reaching all new heights even in the live and let live Sucka Free City stenciler community. Long gone are the whispered debates within queer communities: support gay marriage or not? Everyone went public with the Support Gay Marriage stencilers versus the Gay Shame Counter-Stencilers versus the Fuck Gay Shame Uber-Counter-Stencilers. In retrospect, that little display all over Dolores Park sidewalks a couple years back was NOTHING.

Check this one out:


Should you not be able to read it, you've got the but one of the many in the pinings that I call the "Blue Lost Love Calls Out" series of stencils all up and down 14th - 24th streets in the Mission: "Your sweet voice breaks my heart. " Which was snuffed by the "Shut Up Honky" Poo Piler stenciler, followed by the Poo Piler Hater/Stencil Love Defender Scribbler "Snore". And anyone's guess is the identities and persuasions of the Big Snore arrow maker and the Eat Shit scribe. And of course, who ensnared the whole lot in a puffy white heart. Aaaaaaaaaaw. And this is only one of the 10,000 yelling matches all over the Mission cement. All the same people. I wish I had an aerial camera. I would like to have captured their trails over each other. It is like Stalker Stenciling out there. Lord help us all.

Inclusion in America: The Ever-Controversial Lawn Bowling Vs. Bocce Debate

Lawn Bowling Leagues.
White people with white hair
very seriously
clinking their little balls into other people's little balls.
No one claps. No one cheers. Everyone stares.

Friggin Memorial Day. Causing white people who would otherwise be wearing white hair and white hats and white clothing to wear American Flags that have been fashioned into the fashion faux pas of the American Flag Jacket. Hot. Red White and Blue Hot. VERY Memorial Day '06.


There is an entire industry devoted to the enforcement of Lawn Bowling NOT Bocce on not one not two but all three lawns in Golden Gate Park. How very community. What exactly is the difference (besides English Versus Italian)?

So marquitapants and I headed to the beach, where the people are still friendly and the little dogs with the cute little behinds can still poop everywhere.

3:49 AM... Home from PROM

YES. It's true. I was totally against it in high school. I protested it. Shook my fist at it. Boycotted it. Plain old didn't go to it in high school. And not just because people wear uncomfortable shoes. And not just because it is a sexist, heterosexist, classist "tradition." And not just because I was painfully shy and into being counter-culture. And not just because I was embarrassed.
BUT NOW I've been to my third prom. I appreciated the relative modesty of this year's crew, although I could have lived without the plethora of hand-squeezing-butt views I was party to (no pictures, thanks), the attitude, the relative sobriety of this year's staff, my mom's 60s dress (sorry I had to cut the super cute under 18 folks!).... Bal 06.




































The after-party... Back to street clothes and chaperone stragglers and used limes appearing in untouched "rosinis" and touched others and Skinnard and Kenny covers and choppin it up til they turned the lights full blast on us after we ignored last-call forever....

One semester down, two to go

A Short Ode to Grad School

I write haiku to
remain occupied counting
and quiet in class.

Procrastination: It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

(well that's for damned sure, since it is 1:56 a.m.)

I could hold a PhD
In procrastination psychology,
This final won't get the best of me,
Though it made me miss Dania's party.

Friday night I fucked around,
Watched 4 Sopranos in Surround Sound.
Did some beading, read short stories,
All defying the coming gory
gouging out of both my eyes
Denial passes prior highs.

Saturday returned a van
Milled home slowly as I can.
Cooked some food and read some email
Even listened to a seashell.

Water plants, desperation grows
Procrastination reaching all-time lows
When, to put this off 'til later,
I even wrote A DIFFERENT Final Paper.

Wait til Sunday to see me stress
Pull all-nighter, be a big mess.

...But for Now....

Still avoiding I write to you
End bad rhymes with a bad haiku:

Thirty pages due.
Research-based blathering. Euw.
Monday comes too soon.

My Favorite Guest Speaker So Far

Nona Casper, Who Has Never Read a Blog

A muppet in motion
Flung hair blooms off the side, like a horse’s tail whips her headshaking face
She's frantic, engaged, boiling over

Her teeth wear ghost braces – I keep missing them.
I think she wears red glasses without lenses.
Her “I” is shifty and continuous, she explains.

She lives a writer's life
Unveiled, crafting, naked, languaging
Finds moments of unbalance in dailiness
(at my school we call that DRAMA-queen)

She reads of minutiae of 15th and Dolores
And wishes she had Jesus. I laugh at intervals.

As she reads
Girls outside slap jump ropes skip chanting.

Sometimes

1. Your professor wants to meet about your writing life. He is earnest and focused while you reply, "Oh that should be a brief conversation, since I don't have one." He sighs. You meet up 30 minutes later in class and he can't meet your eyes.

2. You read your poem about goats to your group and no one laughs.

3. Your drunken ducky nineteen yeared neighbor shows up seeming sober but sans shoe tongues.

4. Your teacher, a poet heart personified, plays opera and reads aloud science textbook passages, sighing, finding profound beauty in the word semi-aquatic.

5. You just gotta laugh over your 11 pm dinner.

May Day Madness

I'm up to one's ears in sunshine surrounded by that crazy sea of white (but not the usual kind) downtown (did ya ever think I would use Downtown and some form of happy in the same sentence?) and it didn’t once feel like drowning (although I have certainly had my fill of US flags, thanks.) Happy May Day - siguiendo la lucha contra HR 4437!!!!

Take a Day Off, Learn New Stuff

Here's what I learned by venturing downtown for two hours:

1. There are anacondas in the Everglades.

2. They are not native, but they are greedy.

3. Anacondas eat alligators.

4. Greedy anacondas eat 300 lb alligators.

5. And then burst.



6. If you time it right, people will offer you free haircuts as you walk down the street.

7. And they will tell you about anacondas while they cut your hair straight though you act like a steerage passenger who has gotten bumped to first class for the first time -- trying out all surrounding gadgets in under 10 minutes while disclosing that your last haircut was... a year back and..... done by you. Because apparently this Vidal Sassoon place is just that pro.

More recently, a Monday Haiku from tonight's installment

50 Minutes Left

My research teacher’s
references Kurosawa.
Up weirdness factor.

Spring Is Here

When Seattle is in bloom you know it (hi Meem).



When San Francisco is in bloom you know it.



When the desert is in bloom, you seriously have to search for it.