Sing Out Sisters

Raising money for breast cancer in the midst of boytown Castro@18th the night before the Castro Street Faire in San Francisco seems like, well, a bad idea, but somehow shit always works out, especially when the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence get 'hold of it, ya know..








































































And We Heart Harvey's in the Castro for always keepin it real with what's going down around town raisin' moneywise. Twas lovely drag show, although of course we were all there secretly to whoop'n'holla at the absolutely fabulous and ever-tasteful Louise Evans, complete with her vodka filled airline attendant attache case. Now, I am not a shallow person, but y'all know I am a suckah for a fella in a dress and, well, she IS dreamy, isn't she? I am especially impressed with her ability to put on that glam gal face and shake up some mean drinks for the audience even after some little nitwit stole her clutch (and cell and cards and cash.... that she was busily giving away all night to the CAUSE and all) while she was shaking her very firm (but unfortunately not hers) parts on the dance floor with G and me.

I Heart New Vocabulary

Visual.... Sitting on the dusty rose colored new-to-them couch of a and aa, playing with this funny flap that comes up over the back of the couch, like a drop cloth of sorts. Wave it around.... "what do you call this thing?"

AA doesn't even blink... antimacassar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimacassar

One of the many random words my friend can pull outa nowhere, and one of the many reasons he is to be appreciated.

UPDATE: One (+) Year Later....

It has come to this author's attention that the rose-colored antimacassar mentioned avove is no more. Stolen from a van during its short trip to be reunited with its new owner and old couch, the antimacassar, which was travelling separately from the couch for reasons still, well, unknown, was abducted. Its whereabouts are still undetermined.

And On Day Two.... Art and Healing Were Separated... So we must dance them back together

Rather than spend such a balmy, perfect Finally Summer Sunday rubbing the newly spanked downy butts of boys in chaps at the Folsom Street Fair, I instead had the dubious pleasure of spending from 8-6 in that thing called CLASS. Following yesterday's description, several of you wrote questioning my sanity or chiding what you took to be a clear tendency towards exaggeration. So I brought a camera to class. Let all questioning of the realism of my posts cease and desist.


And since a picture is worth a thousand traumatized words, let me say that....

Yeeeeeeeees.

First Journey of the Day:

This morning's Virtual Sweat Lodge Experience has been brought to you (more than 31 times counted) by the words PATRIARCHY, MANIFEST, and the phrase DIVINE FEMININE, with major underwriting provided by the makers of all drugs I will begin to self-medicate with following this course. Note: Sighting of Saturday's Screaming Low Blood Sugar Lady.... Lower Left.

Second Journey, Still Not Lunch: My Virtual Vision Quest. Thank god for colored charcoal. My happy place is the highlight of my day.

Check out sweet new hair look. Our professor forgot to pick up gold and silver thread at Walgreens this morning for impending ritual (read: doom). Professor: "Does anyone have any gold and silver thread?" Student: "No, but oh wait I have purple-blue wool yarn?" Professor: "This is known as Manifesting. I Manifest all the time since I found my spirit animals. See how it works? It is an act of the divine spirit." Professor has a profound ability to manifest his spirit animals. He sees and hears them everywhere he goes. It helps that he only wears clothing with bears on it. It helps that his ring tone is an owl. But that is just Manifesting A La Modern World style, for you non-believers. I have manifested a number of things myself -- ukuleles, couches, particular people, and almost a pencil tip where my eye once was. I am fucking spiritual, too. So ha.






Drummer going into trance. Several hours later, comes out of it to say: "That was so magical. I looked up, and though lots of people were taking on their animals, you, you, YOU were magical. I was drumming and looked at you and you DISAPPEARED. I mean, you were not just embodying the bear. You became the bear. You WERE the bear." Our eyes both fill with tears, possibly for different reasons.






Owl lady looks into the eyes (souls) of all participants to purify us.... I look back. Since owls reportedly can see into our real selves ("thus allowing us to see ourselves".... See? I learned something else in this class), one might guess from my expression that she and I were learning that while wearing a bear pelt, I can tolerate a phenomenal amount of crap.


Shortly thereafter, community play dance-a-thon drum circle commences with the story of Art and Healing being spiritually and sexually connected and all the
directions were one.



And then along comes Western Medicine. And breaks them up. It is a little porny.... a little West Side Story...





Art and Healing bump 'n' grind while Sar-Bear subtly tries to get away from the scene while bear huffing and grumping. Of course, I have an entire bear on my back, so.... this is right before I get caught. Professor (hand lightly on my receding back): You have to stay in the circle. Me: Grumph. Snort. Shuffle.



People Clap. I clap on the inside, grateful to have somehow gone to my happy place and survived this.

Second thing I learned today? SCARED and SACRED: same letters, different arrangement. Yeeeeeeeeees.

The Afternoon Hours

1:30 pm: Back to class. Classroom locked. Sit butt down on cold sterile hospital-like floor hallway until…

2:00 pm: 40 bendy water swilling yoga students stream out of next room. Told by professor that we will switch into their room. Enjoy the stench of collective B.O. as another example of “sometimes sharing is NOT caring” [ya know, like STIs].

2:04 pm: Physically Present Prof literally hurls a book on the floor and says, “This is a medicine wheel.” Proceeds to build classroom sized medicine wheel to create sacred space. This student notices her intense discomfort with putting a book, I mean it’s a BOOK, on such a cold, slidey, sterile floor. Student is OCD about the book placement for the rest of the day. It occupies her even through her nap during the subsequent Guided Imagery exercise to uncover internal Animal Guides, and is only remotely downgraded into temporarily tolerable discomfort by smell of crayons on hands.

4:00 pm. Professor uses the term "Hermeneutic phenomenology." Students duly write down words, wonder how to spell them, and silently ponder if not knowing what they mean somehow makes them dumb. Except for S, who rolls her eyes and says aloud, “What the hell does that mean?! F#$^&!@* Scholar-Speak...” S then looks startled and wonders if she can deflect blame for outburst onto the Crazy Yeller.

5:00 pm: Power Point "lecture" stipulating professor's belief in Burner Alex Grey Acid Guy as not only one of the world's preeminent Sacred Vision painters but also a modern day god.

6:00 pm: Visualize being free. Receive homework, including gathering musical instruments, art supplies, and a mask to bring to following day's community dance ritual. Sigh a lot.

Projection to Sunday, 8:00 am. Back in class. Bang head on table. Repeat.

Through December.

Feel free to line up to knock me unconscious anytime.

The Morning Hours

8:00 am: Meet professor. Stats: New York Jewish MD geneticist with unending levels of male guilt turned Florida doctor plus Chumash shaman - bear dancer. Professor announces he easily gets off-topic and talks too much, so he will be working on that throughout the semester. Professor also announces he will be team-teaching the class. Professor proceeds to use 'we' on-and-off throughout the rest of the day.

8:04 am: Statement of goal of class (a.k.a. first quotable moment of the day) - “You won’t learn anything in this class. Instead the goal is that this will be a lived projected to change you and the world.”

8:04.30 am: Students dutifully note down this purpose and wonder what kinds of homework this will entail.

8:07 am: Second quotable moment of the day. Professor shows four texts, all written by him. Tells us, “These are the textbooks of the class. This first one? Um…. It would be good if some of you got this one. The others…. Well most of them are out of print, so….” Never mentions them again.

9:00 am: Count of professor’s use of “intent,” “destiny,” and “process” exceeds 20.

9:34 am: Begin film that Professor has shown to every class for the last 13 years. Watch professor shake his head at film. Watch tears drip off his jaw. Watch him chuckle during scene changes.

10:14 am: Go to “restroom” (a.k.a. pace back and forth in hallway). Return to film. Wonder if even a minute has passed.

10:21 am: Film ends. People cry. Reason undeterminable at this time. Perhaps because of sentimental movie music, film content, or lack of ensuing BREAK. One particular student we know begins to wonder whether a break will ever arrive.

11:00 am: Group circle sings “Everyone is an artist; everyone is a healer” as one by one each person comes to front of room and becomes anointed as an artist and healer by the co-teacher of our class, M____, who is with us spiritually, for physically she is living in Florida. Meanwhile, the physically present teacher lights sage and makes us clean in the circle. His hawk wing loudly pushes energy out all over the place. Physical teacher says, “You are an artist; you are a healer.” Person in center says back “I am an artist; I am a healer.” [Except one student the readers might know, who first tries to get out of it and then, when approached that she is a artist and a healer, says, “Um… thanks.”] Physically Present Professor’s index finger ploinks a dallop of on foreheads between the anointed artist-healers’ eyes. Watch people alternately get really emotional or tensely relax in order to look like expert healing circle participants. Then watch them one by one go cross-eyed trying to look between their eyes, silently wondering, is it dripping? How long will my forehead itch? How long before I can wipe off the water without doing something healing-circle-heretical?

12 noon: Group introductions. Threats of imminent lunch break.

12:15 pm: Rambling professor throws out another esoteric question. Student starts shaking. Professor continues. Student stands up and yells, “Ohmygod, are you EVER going to shut up?!!! I am low-blood sugar. We have been listening to you for HOURS! I am going to die! 40 minutes is too long to promise a lunch break. I have to eat! To eat! To EEEEEEEAAAAAAAT!” [Editorial note: Surprisingly this was NOT yours truly this time. I haven’t vocally physically freaked out by standing up, screaming, and falling to the floor in a class since I was getting my credential, thanks very much.] Professor blinks. “Well, by all means, go eat.” Student hurls self from room, dragging a cooler. Unsuccessfully attempts to slam door. Professor seems not to notice. Continues to babble. Another student is so appalled she starts scribbling mediocre poetry onto her laptop. She is still angry writing this.

12:33 pm: Lunch break por fin. Run out to the lawn. Sit with Crazy Class Yeller. Feel temporarily comparatively balanced.

12:34 pm: Intense morning sun replaced by usual low slung fog of the sunset. Shiver. Continue shivering indefinitely.

Those Xenophobic Fish

Speaking of signage, a shout out to the Mt. Shasta dwellin' "Yjhim" for sharing this.

Graffiti 'n' Sign Changin' In the Sucka Free City....

I love graffiti in San Francisco. It is like no one ever went to the Angry School of Spray Paint Protest. Bless their wee souls....

Perhaps This is Why High-Chaired Children Are Scared of Me

I mean, it's not like I am actually GOING to eat them. Although I can't speak for Boothy, of course.

The more they change, the more they stay the same

The Sucka Free City has changed a lot, and, as many of you will recall, I like to blame the ex-Bostonians. Most recently, I am blaming them for the sheer laziness, the self-focused egomaniacal energy of the Mission, which today resulted in:

(1) Tens of red and lime green bounding dodge balls 'boing'ing across the Dolores Park soccer field and into the street with none of the inadvertent human boundary markers raising even one foot up to stop them or kick them back to the gamers and

(2) A ridiculous amount of unnecessary trash.... and more specifically for allowing a billowy plastic bag to slow-roll all the way across Dolores Park while scads of barely clad sun and shade worshipers duly ignored it til it headed within 50 feet of me and I sighed myself up to grab it (and a receipt, and an index card with the highlighted word VERDIGRIS, and half a newspaper section... which, being the Chronicle, certainly counts as trash.)

But some things remain the same. So thank you to those of you who allow me to count on:

1. Crowds of people, at all hours, hunched over laptops on sidewalks or grinding their cars up over the curb to park-n-type practically into Eureka Valley (Castro)'s library walls despite NO PARKING signs.... all to enjoy for hours the library's blanket of free wireless signal. Now that is community.

2. True San Franciscans, who even on a lovely September it's-finally-summer day continue to drive to the beach with the newspaper, friends, or thermoses of hot chocolate to park for hours in front of the ocean, blink at it once in a while (if that) and never never get out of the car.

3. Whoever wrote in permanent marker "I've Got a Big Dick" small and in the lower corner of seemingly random Bay windows down 17th Street. Charming.

4. That 20 year old with a megaphone inviting anyone in the vicinity of his voice to join a D-park-wide pick-up game of Dodge Ball on the field. And then watching 60 or so people join in, some wearing hotpants, some wearing flip flops, some wearing football gear, some wearing ipods (and running and appearing surprised when they get zonked by a ball.... which leads me to believe they were hapless jogger-bys). And tiny dogs running frantically and amok to avoid being squashed. And watching a guy play Dodge Ball while smoking. And watching him stay in. Very California. Nice.

5. My lovely co-scrambler, who interrupted her conversation to scoop up the other half of the milling newspaper section.

6. My parents, who, true to form, continue to reject the usual parent-child order of things by taking my furniture from ME, this time lobbying for livingroom furniture, thereby making the total number of brown corduroy couches in their place.... TWO. Solid work, kin.

Elementary School Celebrates Bullshit Day

The good news: No matter how grumpy things could get for me, I can always count on the ranting raving emails of my compadres y comadres in the teaching universe to make me feel comparatively healthy. A shout to G, who by now is hopefully asleep, envisioning a brand new day. He writes:

The junior academy kids were actually literally clawing at their doors trying to get out of class. the kindergarteners were crying. all day. two children in the first grade vomited in the hallway, one right after the other. and there actually was a fist fight in the second grade. let me remind you that second graders are 8. on top of this there is, of course, weird tension and drama between several teachers. great.

so, today, wednesday september 13, 2006 is bullshit. i hereby declare it so.

Thus spake G. Let It Hereby Be Known. [Wooooooord.]

Cranky Grad Girl Loses Her Mind, Season 2

Allow me to point out that it is now 34 minutes past the official end of classtime. So the word bitter doesn't even come close to describing me. The grand SHE has now said, "One more thing, and I will let you go," three times and "Oh and S., did anyone tell you yet that your advisor is taking the rest of the year off starting next week?" (Um... no...) "You should really get yourself a different advisor. Are you still trying to complete your masters this spring?" once, which is really one too many times to be delivered such news during the class break.

-- -- -- -- Haiku: the only way to deal -- -- -- -- -- --

[Note-- can anyone tell me-- is "wild" one or two syllables? What about "smile"? Hmmmmmmmm. Boy, academia sure makes ya smarter.... And more knowledgeable, eh?]


Outside: yellow sun
Goes orange, blows breeze and shadows
to taunt me: Inside.

What to do in class
Internet signal sucks ass
Clock-watch? Hurl? Perhaps.

Teacher mills about
Suspiciously screen glancing
Mostly at me. Why?

Sharpened pencil tip
Point in line with eye. Insert?
Break comes just in time.

She uses words like
drafty-draft, nifty, while I
glower, eyes beading.

M.E.d: Short for
Masters in Navel-Gazing
and Piece of Shit Ed.

This wild haired teacher
Keeps us late, trapped, an airless
Clockless room. We wait.


Professorial Deep Thought quote of the day (the Frazzled Fräulein apparently talks in haiku too):

Although you are all
precious individuals,
you are not unique.

High School Teacher Practices the Five Ps [whatever they are]

Sometimes the day before going back to work you get a call informing you that your position has no funding, "it turns out." When that happens, you get to make some decisions. Shake your fist and call the Union. Take a year off. Sleep in 'til they call ya. Raise a stink. Or, if you belong to the incredibly disfunctional system I do? Go to work like everything is all good. Yep, some folks advocate sit-ins, dance-ins, love-ins, sick outs, work outs.... But me? I am a fan of the one-woman Work In. Make it hard to get rid of you by filling your classes with students and making them fun.

Now the Work In concept goes over some people's heads. Like colleagues, sometimes.

Case in point:

Scene - A recent staff meeting
Begin moment with Principal saying: "I mean, look at S..... she is really embracing those 5 Ps we are focusing the students on this year. She shows up to work every single day and teaches class and does mediations like nothing's wrong, like she is ever gonna get paid ... and she doesn't even HAVE a job." People all look at you, which causes her to see you finally and say, "Oh S, sorry. I didn't realize you were here. And here I am talking about you like you're not even here. [Editorial Note -- Which makes me think she was all ready to talk about behind that person's back, but whatever.] See that, people? Even at a staff meeting and not being paid. Now that is P for Positive."

So you point out, "Actually it is really P for Pain-in-the-ass Persistence. (pause, tilt head) Are those two of the 5 Ps?(blink and smile)"

P for Principal: "Um.... no. Those are maybe numbers 6 and 7..." (P for purses lips and looks away from you).

End moment.

Oh the Places I Would Rather Be ....

create your own visited countries map

.... Sigh. Rather than sit in this class without a clock with a professor with wild hair but no sense of time, I daydream of how much there would be for me to smell and taste and watch and hear and learn and share in all these countries which I haven't spent more than three weeks in(just stepping in and out of a country really doesn't count). And I would rather be in any of these places than stuck in this airless closet of a graduate seminar, which I am currently blogging from. This semester's personal challenge? De-wrap my fist from this pencil that is unfortunately not nearly sharp enough to effectively poke my eye out and instead blog myself into successful anger management despite my class consisting of only five students. Personal challenge #2? Continue to breathe while writing a multi-page paper on "my relationship to academic writing." Line one: I wasn't aware I was even in a relationship with academic writing. {Begin diatribe against the academic lust for omphaloskepsis (um... navel-gazing.... see how the dirty ivory tower of sfsu has ruined me?). Six pages later, end rant, print, turn in. Glower.}

Oh grad school you'z a nasty little beast.