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It happened again: scope creep. When I re-started regularly blogging here in 2023, I specifically said I would avoid the trap of only writing serious and thoughtful posts, because as we all know from that anecdote about the pottery class, the way you get good work is not by trying to produce good work but by producing a lot... Continue reading (1644 words)

meta prose

A perennial garden post

I spent most of this weekend in the garden. What I meant to do was to anchor some shelves to the walls so they don't fall down in case of an earthquake, and to do that I had to go to the local big box hardware store, which in these parts is Lowe's, to buy some specialty screws and attachmenty... Continue reading (678 words)

gardening plants prose

Fort McDowell on Angel Island

Sea, sun, and plants reclaim a former military outpost

The remnants of Angel Island's military base buildings have been partly preserved, and partly allowed to gracefully decay. Slowly, water and plants wear them down. Clearly, some kind of work is being put in to keep the structures from becoming so unsafe that they'd need to be completely fenced... Continue reading (941 words)

architecture hauntology prose san francisco

Acorn woodpeckers of Angel Island

Angel Island is a park and nature sanctuary in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. It used to be an immigration and quarantine station and a military base, and now it's a park with interesting historical features. You can only get there by ferry, and while you can camp there, the only people who... Continue reading (730 words)

animals birds ecology prose

The best damn udon in San Francisco

My udon quest led me to the surprisingly good Stonestown mall

In 2020, I made a New Year's resolution to find the best udon in San Francisco. I thought it would be easy and fun. I planned to go to restaurants and order udon and decide if I liked it or not. Almost all the udon I've had in San Francisco has been disappointing, and a resolution to find the... Continue reading (1734 words)

culture food prose review

Neither waffle nor a cold open

In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg is my model for topic introductions

It's hard to write a good first sentence these days. Apologetic preemptory waffle is the reflexive post-traumatic response to having said, or even witnessed someone else say, something on social media that got picked up by reply guys, well- and ill-meaning scolds, and people who missed the point... Continue reading (1311 words)

culture meta prose writing

Breaking down Breaking Dawn

I accidentally reread the Twilight Saga and I have thoughts

Breaking Dawn, the last book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series about a teenage girl and her vampire boyfriend who wants to eat her but doesn't because that would be immoral, represents a structural and dramatic break from the previous three novels. Hello, I accidentally... Continue reading (1636 words)

book review books prose

Magic balls, psychic aliens, and part-time yokai

The versatile sources of magic powers in Danadan

The residual effects of demon possession, a traumatic encounter with space aliens, and touching magic balls are some of the charming and unusual ways that characters in Dandadan (ダンダダン) get their magic powers. Dandadan is a delightfully bizarre anime about... Continue reading (1316 words)

cats magic occult prose

Escape from the horrors

I'm watching my cat sleep as I write this. She keeps shifting between various cute, curled up positions on her warming pad. My favorite is the slightly goofy one where she puts her head down sideways directly on the pad, which seems to be a new one she's invented recently. Her favorite, based on... Continue reading (713 words)

cats japanese personal prose the horrors

Learning hiragana

The easy part of Japanese

Three days into my week in Tokyo I got tired of being illiterate. Four or five days into it, I figured out what to do about: I would reverse-engineer the accessible syllabic writing system from train station announcements. Despite my passion for decoding secret writing and dedication to sounding... Continue reading (1156 words)

japan personal prose

Fushimi Inari Taisha

Kyoto's famous Shinto shrine

I took one trip outside of Tokyo while I was in Japan, and that was to Kyoto to visit the famous Shinto shrine there, Fushimi Inari Taisha. It takes just a bit over two hours on the Tokaido Shinkansen line from Tokyo, plus you get to ride the Shinkansen and if... Continue reading (1782 words)

japan personal prose

Dispatch from Tokyo

I landed in Tokyo around 6 a.m. on my birthday. I got to the hotel, took a shower, a short nap, stepped into the street, chose a ramen shop at random, and had the best ramen I had ever had in my life. It was not a fluke. I keep typing and deleting things to say about Tokyo, to try to summarize it... Continue reading (1578 words)

japan personal prose

Dispatch from Bengaluru

My week in Bengaluru (aka Bangalore) ends today. The second time visiting was easier, because even though the only things I remembered from the outside were that everything was a huge hassle and the food was delicious, as soon as I landed I recalled how to be here. I'm sure the experience is... Continue reading (992 words)

meta personal prose

Dispatch from the road

Today, I'm flying to Bangalore. I'll be away from home for the following two Fridays as well. I thought about getting some blog posts prepared ahead of time, but despite my good intentions I did not do it. So today I'm back to the old school style of blogging, where I just wing it. I've been... Continue reading (512 words)

meta personal prose

Bella and her truck

In the first chapter of Twilight, Bella Swan falls in love at first sight. In her words, "There, parked on the street in front of the house that never changed, was my new--well, new to me--truck. It was a faded red color, with big, rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I loved it." Continue reading (1300 words)

book review books lego prose

Secret vow or public proclamation

Are you more likely to stick with your resolutions if keep them secret or if you tell everyone about them? Obviously people keep some resolutions to themselves because they're about private things, like sexuality, health, or religious beliefs. There might be other practical reasons to keep a... Continue reading (1054 words)

philosophy prose seasonal

The New Year's Eve walk

Every year on New Year's Eve, Paul and I go for a walk that, generally, goes up a big hill, then down, and ends with sunset at the beach. This was his tradition before it was our tradition and it's shifted a bit over the years. Early on, I only joined him after he came down Twin Peaks and we took... Continue reading (735 words)

photos prose san francisco seasonal

Ideas aren't easy

Ideas require a feeling of ease. Execution requires application and effort. The effort of effort is easy to perceive. The effort of attaining ease is difficult to perceive, especially from the outside. It's not true that ideas are easy, but it's an easy mistake to make. Continue reading (1664 words)

business philosophy prose

Yule nap time

I'm so tired. Are you tired? I think we were probably meant to hibernate or at least sleep a lot more this time of the year. I think it would be restful to neither read nor write any words for a little bit... Continue reading (654 words)

pagan prose seasonal

What's a hero?

In her introduction to the The Odyssey, translator Emily Wilson examines Odysseus' status as a hero. In the narrative, one of his interlocutors ask Odysseus if he's a pirate, which he denies although he doesn't deny the violent and treacherous acts attributed to him. What it meant to be... Continue reading (1446 words)

narratives philosophy prose

The state monopoly on violence

How it works and how it stops working

If you enter into a contract with the Mob and fail to deliver the goods, they will send a representative around to break your knees. If you enter into a contract with an organization following the rule of law in a place where rule of law obtains and fail to deliver the goods, they will attempt to... Continue reading (1291 words)

anarchism philosophy prose

It's peak Turrell skyspace viewing season

Go see The Three Gems by James Turrell at sunset

Right now--the next two weeks--is the best time to go see The Three Gems, the James Turrell skyspace in San Francisco. The skyspace is like a little adobe house with a round hole in the roof through which you look at the sky. It's designed so that if you look at the sky as it's changing color... Continue reading (562 words)

art prose review san francisco

Artificial wombs

A brief history of ectogenesis

A conversation about uterine replicators in Lois McMaster Bujold's work made me curious about the history of the idea of artificial wombs. When do exo-wombs first appear in literature? And when do they first appear as a positive idea? I worked backwards from Bujold to the first mentions I could... Continue reading (845 words)

books feminism prose science fiction

Plein air in San Francisco

Hills and the ocean

It's been an exhausting week. I feel out of words because I've used up all my words doing my job which is a job about words. I'm also exhausted because I cope with anxiety about the state of the world by working extra hard. I'm pretty good at my job and generally it makes me feel in control--and... Continue reading (573 words)

art pleinair prose watercolor

The consolations of philosophy

Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in 523 while in prison awaiting execution[1]. In it, Philosophy, personified as a woman, visits him in his prison cell and talks him down from his despair. She explains where true... Continue reading (1155 words)

anarchism book review cybernetics philosophy prose speculative fiction

Yes on K

Turn the Great Highway into a great park

I live in San Francisco and I am voting Yes on proposition K. Prop K would turn the Upper Great Highway into a permanent ocean-side park. The Great Highway is already closed to car traffic on weekends, which is how we know it's really lovely to have it as a park. The experiment started around the... Continue reading (1481 words)

environment prose san francisco

Cosmic horror but make it funny

I'd also take planetary romance that's a also romance-romance

Late October is that time when the mind, conditioned by years of half-assed NaNoWriMo attempts, turns to the thought of the fantasy of writing fantasy and science fiction, maybe whole novels of it. I used to think, I must write a novel or I'll be a failure. After years of not writing a novel, I... Continue reading (1492 words)

fantasy nanowrimo prose speculative fiction

Blow your cooldowns

A.B.C.: Always Be Comparing

You're going to want to save the special stuff for the right moment. That's the instinct. That's my instinct anyway. Limited use items in D&D, special consumables in Final Fantasy X, and long-cooldown abilities in World of Warcraft--whatever it is, I want to hold on to it, to wait until I... Continue reading (1335 words)

game theory philosophy prose

CAT FAQs

Frequently asked questions about my cat

If this blog had comments, people might have asked questions about my cat when I gave her her 90-day performance review evaluating how she's doing in her role as a senior cat. As it does not, I have instead had to do as... Continue reading (1104 words)

animals cats prose

90-day performance review for a senior cat

Her job is cat

Good evening, Shinjuku. In a few days, you will reach your 3-month mark in this household, and so I would like to take this time to deliver your formal 90-day performance evaluation. As a cat, you may not be aware of the passage of time in terms of calendar days. You also don't know how to read,... Continue reading (1268 words)

animals cats prose

Why does the mall feel so bad?

Travels in hyporeality

Normally when a post has a question in the title, you might expect there will be an answer inside, so let me just manage your expectation right here in this first run on sentence (I think this is a run on sentence): there will be no answer. Or, if there is an answer, it will only happen by... Continue reading (984 words)

prose semiotics

Plein air in New England

I've been on a trip to New England and tried to do a bit of watercolor painting. I always try to do too much on trips, even more so when I'm visiting family, so what's also happening in each of these paintings is three other people patiently indulging me when I said I'd like to sit down and paint... Continue reading (699 words)

art pleinair prose watercolor

Fancy Friday bread and cheese

Every Friday[1], Paul and I have bread and cheese for dinner. The tradition started when I used to go to pillow fort yoga[2] after work on Fridays, and Paul would meet me... Continue reading (488 words)

cooking food prose

What counts as reading?

Reading rainbow trout entrails

I was forbidden to learn to read before I went to school, lest I get too bored in the initial years, become habituated to goofing off, and fail to develop good study habits. This, the family legend goes, was the fate of my uncle, who, being the youngest child, learned to read from his siblings... Continue reading (2489 words)

logocentrism prose reading

Unscheduled maintenance

I finished a big project at work and immediately came down with a cold. I overworked the last two weeks and I think I was more vulnerable to picking up an illness as a result. I haven't overworked to this level in years and had to relearn my lesson, I guess. Schedule time for maintenance or the... Continue reading (764 words)

prose technical writing

North Lake raccoons

Isn't this where we saw a bunch of raccoons in 2020, one of those times it was really hot and we came to park? And there were way too many people who didn't get the concept of social distancing, which maybe didn't matter so much outdoors anyway but we didn't know that then, and the raccoons were... Continue reading (812 words)

animals ecology prose raccoons san francisco

Seeking the Big Otter

One thing I've missed since I moved from Twitter to Mastodon is a certain strain of hyperintellectual shitposting. And, it's not like I could go back to Twitter and read it. Most of those people aren't posting anymore. There are plenty of very sincere Marxists on Mastodon, and many lovely anarchists, but people who were brain-poisoned in graduate school into finding critical theory hilarious seemed to be rare. I mean, they're always rare, but I could usually find them. Continue reading (970 words)

meta philosophy prose shitposting

Women's weightlifting at the Paris Olympics

In which I nerd out about the vicarious thrill of moving iron off the floor

I love women's weightlifting at the Olympics. In a few seconds of incredible intensity, a human being does something that might be impossible. Because she's pushing the limits of what she can do, the athlete herself often doesn't know if it'll happen and I get to participate in that vicarious thrill of one person's struggle against the iron weight, against her own physical and psychological limits. Continue reading (1309 words)

prose sports weightlifting

Self expression in painting

The allure of emotional watercolor

Unlike when I write poetry, when I draw or paint, I don't care all that much about the outcome or the effect of the work on others. I enjoy the process and sometimes I enjoy the outcome. It's possible I can be so free and easy about it because I'm not very skilled, so I can't actually control the outcome anyway. Continue reading (1729 words)

art buddhism philosophy poetry prose

Self expression in poetry

There is no outside the self

You don't need to talk about your feelings or yourself to express yourself through art and creativity. You can make art about the world, make it as realistic as you'd like, and it is still self-expression. Anything you might create about the world outside yourself is also about you. Because... Continue reading (1474 words)

art buddhism philosophy prose

The internet of cat slop

I got a cat recently and I'm still figuring out how it works. So, I've been doing a lot of internet searches for things like Why does cat meow. But instead of finding some lovingly obsessive blog post or scientific paper about cat vocalizations and their meaning, I got basically the same generic article over and over. Continue reading (1515 words)

animals cats LLMs meta prose

A cat enters the scene

We adopted a cat this week, somewhat impulsively. While Paul and I were strolling in the neighborhood on Thursday, I spotted a sign with a photo of a cute tabby cat who needed a home. It had a number to call if you were interested. I took a photo and a day later, after thinking how awkward it would feel to actually call a stranger, I texted instead. Continue reading (1149 words)

animals cats prose

Kombucha experiment

A pet shoggoth makes fizzy vinegar

Why would I want to drink rotten tea? Is what I thought, and possibly also said, the first time I heard of kombucha. Even though I happily ate and made many other fermented foods and drinks, kombucha seemed weird and gross. Honestly, I think it... Continue reading (1550 words)

DIY fermentation food prose

Photos of the 2024 SF Succulent Expo

The San Francisco Succulent & Cactus Society held their annual plant show and sale on the weekend of June 14-16. Since I joined the SFSCS last August, having just missed that year's show, this was my first time attending. It was amazing, and frankly a... Continue reading (1171 words)

gardening plants prose succulents

Tea and cake in Bridgerton

Let them eat tiny cake

I've recently caught up on Season 2 and 3 of Bridgerton and I could not help but notice that there was a lot, and I mean truly a generous quantity, not to mention a vast variety, of prominently displayed delicious cake. There was also lots and lots of tea drunk out of various pretty teacups held in matching saucers. Continue reading (586 words)

cake food prose

Sigmoid curve

The illusion of forever growth

What does a sudden outbreak of superheroes, the growth of a new technology, and the spread of a pandemic through the population have in common? The sigmoid curve! If you're a statistician or biologist or any number of -ists, you probably already knew about sigmoid curves. I just learned about it... Continue reading (1016 words)

cybernetics philosophy prose science

Watercolor interlude

Somewhat on a whim, I bought a little watercolor set in late April. I actually just meant to get some new coloring pencils. I like to color and doodle and do some abstract pen and ink stuff to relax. All of the weird glyphs and ink drawings that decorate this blog are my work. I'm not fantastic... Continue reading (827 words)

art ecology prose

A review of H Mart in San Francisco

Korean grocery giant on the edge of town

I wandered through the aisles clutching my shopping list like a talisman against the near-overwhelming desire to buy more than I could possibly carry home. I probably looked confused, and I was a little confused, but more than anything I was overwhelmed with joy. Continue reading (1309 words)

food groceries prose review

The California origin of "A to Z Bread"

In which I obsessively trace the history and authorship of the A to Z bread recipe

The post you are about to read is not a prelude to a recipe. This is not a recipe blog, and this is not a recipe blog post. This is a tale of mild obsession (mine) to find the origin of a recipe, and to correctly credit the creator. Continue reading (1498 words)

baking food history prose

The paradox of the handoff document

In theory, a handoff document is a collection of everything the person taking over your project (or job) needs to know. Of course, that's impossible to write down. So, in reality, it's a series of hints and links and people to talk to that you hope will help the person to avoid the worst... Continue reading (723 words)

knowledge management prose technical writing

Crush, the triumph of the simulacra

What's so upsetting about the iPad ad?

Apple's "Crush!" commercial nakedly reveals how reality has been replaced by simulacra by uncomfortably laying bare the logic of commodity fetishism. That’s why we hate it, and what makes all the other little hateable things in it feel worse than they should. Continue reading (2584 words)

philosophy prose semiotics technology

Walpurgisnacht raccoon

The one who takes everything in its hands pays a personal visit

I heard a strange noise, like a grunt, kind of like a mix between a snore and someone straining with effort, but weirder. Animal, definitely animal. Then it happened again. It was about an hour after midnight, and I groped for my glasses on the bedside table.

I went to the window to... Continue reading (1031 words)

animals coyotes ecology prose raccoons san francisco

Snufkin, wholesome anarchist role model

A review of Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley

It's a lovely morning in Moominvalley, and you are a horrible Snufkin. Except you're not really horrible, are you? And Moominvalley seems to be a bit less lovely than you had been expecting. What's going on? Continue reading (3012 words)

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Birds being cute

A special photo episode

It started out sort of joking about 10 years ago, but now I am definitely and unironically into birds. While I enjoy spotting a new bird, I also like observing common birds. If you pay attention they do some pretty neat things! So this week, I'd like to share some of my collection of... Continue reading (441 words)

animals birds ecology prose

Solar eclipse in Hill Country

Staring at the face of God for three and a half minutes

About ten minutes before totality, a patch of sky began to clear just around the sun. I laid on the ground and looked up through the eclipse glasses. The crescent sun became a sliver, became a glint--the diamond ring effect--and then, totality! Glasses off. I cried out, something involuntary, I... Continue reading (1719 words)

aesthetics astronomy birds prose

Chasing totality

It's late, and I'm too tired from travel and brain gerbils keeping me up the day before travel to write much. I'm in Austin for the solar eclipse, which will be on Monday, April 8, 2024. Austin, TX is along the path of totality, that is, the path along which you will be able to see the total... Continue reading (275 words)

astronomy prose

Talking about it and doing it in Liberté

Sex in art needs no excuses, part 4

A group of dudes in pre-revolutionary France have been kicked out of the French royal court for being unmitigated pervs. They travel to a forest where they meet up with a German noble who is a fellow libertine and try to convince him to help them out or join them in their forest frolic. Continue reading (1656 words)

aesthetics philosophy polemic prose review

My pocket computer reads me books

Text-to-speech on iOS

I broke my third Kindle Keyboard last weekend. It was my text-to-speech book reading device and I was bummed, but also, it provoked me into checking if I could use my iPhone's accessibility features to read out loud to me. My past experience with screen readers was not great. Continue reading (897 words)

accessibility prose reading technology

Repression and blasphemy in The Devils

Sex in art needs no excuses, part 3

It's back to sex talk on the blog. I mean art sex talk. This week, I'm going to talk about another film that takes sex as its subject. This post is the third in the series.

My overarching point, which I will remind you of in case it's been a while, or in case you're reading this post... Continue reading (1255 words)

aesthetics film philosophy polemic prose review

The joie de vivre of Poor Things

Sex in art needs no excuses, part 2

In last week's episode, I made the aesthetic-ethical claim that sexuality itself is a legitimate subject of art. I want to pick up where I left off, with the example of three films that take sex and sexuality as their subject, though to very different... Continue reading (739 words)

aesthetics film philosophy prose review

Sex in art needs no excuses

Sexuality itself is a legitimate subject for artistic exploration

The very phrase "gratuitous sex" implies the idea that depictions of sex must somehow be earned. Your film or book or whatever work of art may only have sex in it if it's in service of something else, like plot, or character development, or important philosophical questions--and even... Continue reading (881 words)

aesthetics philosophy polemic prose

Review: The Left Hand of Dog by Si Clarke

I read a lot of heavy shit, recreationally and professionally, so I'm also always on the lookout for its opposite, the snarfable science fiction comfort read that's like climbing into a warm bath, only not really, because baths are kind of boring what with all the waiting around for them to fill... Continue reading (697 words)

book review prose review science fiction

Happy blogoversary

52 blog posts, one Friday at a time

It has now been one year since I've restarted my blog and started posting every Friday. The actual anniversary was February 10, but that wasn't a Friday so instead I'm celebrating today, with this, the 53rd blog post since the reset. I'm pretty good at starting things but not always so good at... Continue reading (1314 words)

meta prose

Inflatable rock

A draft patent for a large rock that you can fold up and carry in your pocket and then unfold, inflate, and deploy as needed

I've been sitting on this invention since 2018. Only sitting metaphorically alas, because I have not had the time and capital to bring it to market. It's too good an idea to keep to myself any longer so today I'm sharing my draft patent with the world, in the hopes that someone else will pick up... Continue reading (891 words)

persuasion prose technology

How to have a happy birthday

Take a page from The Satanic Bible

In The Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey declares that one's own birthday is the highest holiday in the Satanic religion. As such, one should celebrate the crap out of it. The Satanic Bible is like a second-rate fusion cuisine dish combining Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, Crowley Continue reading (1069 words)

life advice prose spirituality

Workers in California, ask about your pay scale!

The California Equal Pay Act requires employers to tell you

Tell me if you've heard this one before: You're having the annual review conversation with your boss. Your boss reviews your accomplishments and congratulates you. You've done really well! You have a bright future ahead at Company. Keep going! Then you get to the compensation part of the conversation. Company rewards hard work and your boss would love to give you more of a raise but alas... Continue reading (1210 words)

finger on the pulse of today labor prose

Hawkstravaganza

Three days of hawk spotting, and a bonus coyote

On three consecutive days I visited Angel Island, Twin Peaks, and Bernal Hill and managed to spot and photograph some hawks in each location. Hawks look most magnificent in flight, but alas, that's also when they are hardest to photograph, because they are either very far away or flying by very... Continue reading (799 words)

animals birds ecology prose

Undocumented killer feature

Weirdly incomplete Boeing 737 MAX manuals

On January 5, 2024 the door plug of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane blew out during flight. Nobody died. The flight crew got the plane back down and made an emergency landing. The cabin crew kept the passengers relatively calm. That's the gist of it. In all the discussion that's followed a little... Continue reading (1384 words)

airplanes prose technical writing

Book scraper yak shave

I just wanted to export my book data from Goodreads

Goodreads has over a decade of my book data and I wanted to get it out. I've wanted to get it out for a while, but I particularly wanted to get it out in December because the people who run my Mastodon instance started a Bookwyrm instance, and I wanted to get my books into it. Bookwyrm is is to... Continue reading (1203 words)

coding prose technology

Intercalary interstitial interregnum

The pleasure of the in-between days

I love the quiet. The Christmas obligations have been dispensed with. Either I have fulfilled them or I have failed to fulfill them, but in any case they are moot now. New Year's Day will bring the fresh start feelings with perhaps a sense of obligation to make plans for self-improvement and... Continue reading (862 words)

prose seasonal

Good morning, Boston

And New England, generally

This is going to be one of those stream of consciousness posts. If you've come to enjoy my more philosophical or practical posts, I'm afraid I'm about to disappoint you. Actually, I think I'm not even supposed to apologize for what I'm about to write; that's definitely a rule. So I'm sorry for... Continue reading (390 words)

prose seasonal travelogue

Text-to-speech is not just screen readers

How and why I use synthetic voices to read me books

I could not get enough ridiculous fanfiction. But I had a problem: I also wanted to knit. A lot. I could not get enough knitting and I could not get enough fanfiction. Continue reading (1829 words)

accessibility prose reading technology

Worship the sun

It's traditional, it's natural, and it's reasonable

If you're going to worship something, the sun is a reasonable choice, and quite possibly the most reasonable choice. From the perspective of a person living on earth, the sun possesses all the important qualities of a god. Ancient people thought so, and some religions still hold the sun sacred. ... Continue reading (907 words)

apologia astronomy persuasion prose theology

Some excerpts from The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner

The science fiction to German philosophy pipeline strikes again

I recently finished The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod, two science fiction novels that are full of direct references to all kinds of socialist, communist, and anarchist ideas. As in, not only are people living, for example, in some kind of anarchist society as... Continue reading (1176 words)

anarchism book review philosophy prose review

Pie season

A progression of mostly meat pies

At some point in the summer, I wrote PIE SEASON on the wall calendar next to October 16th. In case you’re wondering where this season and its official start date come from, I made it up. It was too hot to make pies when I got a nice new baking dish and pie bird, so I declared pie season for when... Continue reading (1951 words)

cooking food pie season prose recipes

Seeing the obvious in the Turrell skyspace

The Three Gems by James Turrell in November

Whoever is in charge of the opening hours at the De Young museum must hate sunsets. The observation tower, with views of Golden Gate Park and parts of San Francisco, closes at 4:30, for example, and the earliest sunset ever gets is 4:50. I was up... Continue reading (1543 words)

art prose review san francisco

Books I should be reading but am not

Along with my selected excuses

A book is not a pizza. It will not go off if you take a long time to read it all, and nothing is wasted if you read only a portion. Also, unlike pizza, you can get books out of the library or buy them in electronic form, so none to very little waste is produced as a result of you not finishing... Continue reading (1504 words)

book review non-fiction philosophy prose science fiction speculative fiction

Sex magic for the masses

In which we start at No Nut November and arrive at orgone

With the start of November, I want to touch on a seasonal topic. No, not NaNoWriMo, Movember, or International Men's Day. I want to talk about a much sillier seasonal topic, No Nut November. It's a joke holiday that became a real holiday wherein during the month of November men voluntarily abstain from ejaculating. Why the hell would anyone do that? Continue reading (1847 words)

finger on the pulse of today info hazard magic occult prose

Sword and sorcery and the mid-career hero

For a long time, I've been thinking about why I love some kinds of fantasy, even though it's not that good by my usual standards, while at the same time I can't get into other kinds of pretty OK fantasy that everyone else likes. Like, why do I love the Witcher short stories and TV show, but find... Continue reading (2173 words)

fantasy nanowrimo prose speculative fiction

pmarca's reading list

All I've got is a hammer engraved with There Is Nothing Outside of the Text

Earlier this week, internet rich guy pmarca posted a manifesto on his pal Musk's web forum, which he then reposted on his personal web log. I enjoy manifestos as a genre, so I immediately downloaded The Techno-Optimist Manifesto onto my phone and then used text-to-speech to read it to me at 2X speed while I stuck cling-stick monster decals to my front windows. Continue reading (4897 words)

deconstruction finger on the pulse of today prose

Is Batman a furry?

A completely logical examination of the facts

Yes, Batman is a furry. Consider the pro and anti arguments.

Pro-furry arguments:

  • Wears an anthropomorphic animal costume for personal reasons
  • Feels a strong emotional connection to the animal, including using that animal’s iconography as a kind of identifying... Continue reading (401 words)

    apologia comics furry prose

Shaky Saturn, you're my guy

Seeing and knowing what you're seeing

It's too hot to think and all the smart things I was going to say leaked out of my brain at about 5 p.m. After staring at the internet for an hour instead of writing, I stepped onto my deck to try to cool off and saw a kind of yellowish-orange blob in the Eastish. I'm due for a new pair of... Continue reading (747 words)

astronomy epistemology prose

I did not choose the succulent life; the succulent life chose me

The first succulents I remember distinctly were a pair of cacti that my grandmother had in a sunny little back room that I had to pass through on the way to the outhouse. The cacti were rather small, and they lived in different places depending on the season. I mostly don't care for cacti, because I think they are out to get you Continue reading (1290 words)

gardening prose succulents

El Camino Del Mar at Dusk

First published in The Coachella Review in the Winter 2018 issue

Happy Autumnal Equinox to all in the Northern Hemisphere! I've got a poem for you today. There is a certain peculiar feeling I get at the autumnal turn. It's a gestalt, a felt sense, some kind of suchness or maybe haecceity of this change, like I can feel the shift of the entire world though the complete combination of all the little shifts all together. Actually, to call it a feeling would imply it's an emotion only and that's entirely too single-dimensional Continue reading (385 words)

poetry prose san francisco

Thinking about thinking about the Roman Empire

Eating dormice with garum from the trashcan of memology

When I think about Ancient Rome I think a lot about the stuff that Ancient Romans ate. Like garum the stinky fermented fish sauce they apparently put on everything, or about Roman bread which was round and looked like it had big pizza slices, or about the fact that most Romans probably didn't cook at home and just got cooked food out from vendors. I especially think about edible dormice, which are yes, a kind of tiny rodent... Continue reading (1908 words)

finger on the pulse of today prose rome

The Gate of Pinecones

First published in The Coachella Review in the Winter 2018 issue

I've found it challenging to place poems with nature imagery that's explicitly West Coast or even more, specifically Californian. In grad school, my advisor called it the four seasons bias. If it's a nature poem, it better follow the four seasons climate or good luck to you getting published. So when I'm browsing Duotrope for likely journals... Continue reading (399 words)

poetry prose san francisco

Hair metal fantasy Cymbeline in McLaren Park

A review of San Francisco Shakespeare Festival’s 2023 Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Cymbeline

The poster for Cymbeline in the park looked like a hair metal fantasy movie from the 80s. I’d seen it every time I went to get burritos at my local taqueria, and I thought, whatever this is, it’s gonna be weird. On that promise, it delivered. Continue reading (1758 words)

lgbt prose review san francisco theater

The inner life manifest as supernatural in The Shining

Are the ghosts real? Yes. No. Maybe.

The Shining takes the inner psychological reality of the dynamics of domestic abuse and makes it visible on the outside as ghosts, visions, and supernatural powers. It doesn’t particularly heighten and certainly doesn’t exaggerate the objective reality of abuse and intimate partner violence. The inner reality of the violence is visible along with its usual outer manifestation. Continue reading (1706 words)

film film review ghosts philosophy prose review

A taxonomy of old haunted manuals

Your manual is haunted. But how, exactly? (Haunted manuals part 3)

Haunted manuals are a lot like haunted houses. Some of them are old and got that way because something horrible happened in the past and it’s marked them. Some got that way because something wonderful happened there and they have been neglected. Some are abandoned. Some still have people living in them. And some were born haunted. Continue reading (1231 words)

derrida hauntology philosophy prose technical writing

Elegant diagrams (not haunted)

Haunted manuals, part 2, being a digression through circuit diagrams

Last week, I wrote about haunted manuals, and used the Operator's Instructions for Caterpillar Diesel D318 Engine and Electric Set (Serial numbers 5V5001 - Up, 3V5001 - Up) as a counterexample of a haunted manual. I had initially expected... Continue reading (922 words)

hauntology prose technical writing

Haunted manuals

You've heard of the curse of knowledge, but could your manual be haunted as well?

The cover is marked and stained and the pages smell faintly of motor oil. Page 90 (Battery Care) and page 91 (Voltage Regulator) were stuck together at the corners with something that left white residue in the center and yellow staining at the edges. I'm a romantic so want to believe it's old... Continue reading (1433 words)

derrida hauntology philosophy prose technical writing

Fiber art camp

A week of responses to fiber art prompts

#FiberArtCamp is a fiber art prompt challenge hosted by @madgeface@mastodon.art on Mastodon from July 31 to August 6. I’ve had a fun time so far and decided to compile my prompt responses here so they don’t just slip into the void the way all social... Continue reading (1153 words)

craft crochet fiber art camp knitting prose

User stories for legible knitting patterns

Knitting patterns could be a lot more legible and enjoyable to use if they broke free of the constraints of print

Knitting patterns are written like minified code. People don't normally read code when it's minified, but we knitters have to follow these compact patterns. While stitch counters and stitch markers help keep count of repetitions, that's not enough. I'm not sure what other people do, but I tend to print my patterns and scrawl notes all over them. Continue reading (1335 words)

coding craft knitting prose

Dream resume

If you want a dream job you're going to need a dream resume

I wrote this dream resume in response to an exercise for an experimental writing class. I think you had to write it based on your real dreams. Then again, a lot of the class encouraged us to approach fiction as fibbing, a very freeing approach. Anyway, I have weird dreams and excellent dream recall, so the main fib in this dream resume is like in normal resumes, where you leave out the embarrassing stuff and focus the interesting parts. Also, like most resumes, my dream resume is out of date. Continue reading (1374 words)

experimental fiction prose

Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

I created this poem using cut-up technique, combining bits of my poetry with the poetic excerpt from Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. By volume, it has much more of my poetry about wolves and coyotes than warnings about nuclear waste, but a little nuclear waste goes a long way, as we all know. Continue reading (681 words)

cut-up poetry prose science fiction

Cozy necromancy

If Found, Return to Hell, Legends & Lattes, and Gideon the Ninth

Happy start of the third fiscal quarter (Q3) to all who celebrate! Like a lot of people, I cope with the pressures of work with necromancy and cozy novels, so I snarfed up three novels in quick succession in the last two weeks. Continue reading (1379 words)

book review fantasy lgbt prose review science fiction

Gay jury duty

Marching in the San Francisco Pride parade with a corporate contingent is boring and inconvenient

Even though I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 20 years, this year was only the second time I’ve been to the official Pride parade and the first time I marched in it. I’ve generally thought it was, roughly in order of disagreeableness, too hot, too crowded, too loud, too corporate, and too uptight. And most importantly, I thought it was pointless. This year felt different. Continue reading (1811 words)

lgbt pride prose

Fiction writers who worked as technical writers

I keep a running list of notable fiction writers who worked as technical writers. Technical writing is a pretty unglamorous profession. You almost never get a byline and most people don’t even know that your job exists, never mind that you exist. People who do know that technical writing is a... Continue reading (1876 words)

prose review science fiction technical writing writers

What makes a good comfort read?

Murderbot has Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and I have Murderbot

While recovering from Covid last summer I re-read The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells while crocheting a huge hexagonal blanket. And when I say read, I mostly mean I put it on text to speech on my Kindle. I was really tired all the time and could barely think. Not only that, even... Continue reading (1634 words)

book review prose review science fiction speculative fiction

Review: Watchtower, The Dancers of Arun, and The Northern Girl by Elizabeth A. Lynn

I re-read the very gay Chronicles of Tornor series and found that it was even better than I remembered

It’s too bad that most reflections on the three books that comprise the Chronicles of Tornor focus so much on the fact that they have gay and genderqueer characters who are portrayed in “a positive light,” as many of the reviews say, that they hardly say anything beyond that. Because,... Continue reading (1783 words)

book review fantasy lgbt prose review speculative fiction

Can we imagine magic that isn’t all about words?

A long list of some other possibilities

Magic comes from secret words, usually spoken but sometimes written down. Sometimes you also have to be a special person. That’s how it is in most fiction nowadays. And when I say nowadays, I probably mean at least the last 100 years.

You can see the trope handled well, like in Ursula K.... Continue reading (750 words)

fantasy logocentrism magic prose

These streets aren’t made for walking, but that's just what we'll do

Visiting Los Angeles without a car

I always assumed that you had to have a car to get anywhere in Los Angeles. I don’t like driving and don’t normally drive, but I thought, you have to in LA. The last time I was here, or at least I think that was the last time Continue reading (465 words)

anti-car los angeles prose psychogeography

Not exactly wild, not exactly abandoned

A walk through San Francisco’s Presidio

The first time I wandered into the Presidio by way of Mountain Lake Park, I wasn’t sure if I was even supposed to be there. Behind a chain link fence stood rows of empty houses, boarded up, painted white and then graffitied, with the grass around them overgrown. Feral calla lilies bloomed all... Continue reading (568 words)

ecology presidio prose psychogeography san francisco

Review: The Moon Moth and Rose/House

Science-fiction murder mysteries by Jack Vance and Arkady Martine

Updated on June 4, 2024 with updated information about where you can buy a hardcover and ebook version of Rose/Hose.

I didn’t intend to have some kind of crossover noir murder mystery science fiction novella double feature when I read “The Moon Moth” and Rose/House on the... Continue reading (1968 words)

architecture book review mystery prose review science fiction

One bug may hide another

Debugging my garden, metaphorically and literally

I’ve been gardening lately, trying to turn the little lawn in my backyard into a California native plant sanctuary. The grass dies back in the summer, even with watering, and it’s not very attractive. At first, I decided to cut it back, hoping that if I cut the yellowing grass on top, I’d let the grass from the bottom grow in. Continue reading (1574 words)

gardening plants prose

Fragments from the first year of the plague

Sort-of-poems and sort-of-word-art fragments

During the first year of the pandemic, I could not even finish a poem. I just wrote fragments. However I was able to kind of draw, and so I ended up with a lot of bits of words and ink and pen drawings. Continue reading (610 words)

drawing glossalia poetry prose

What's your tactical ballgown?

Utterances that undermine their own purpose and clothing that's the right amount of too much

An icebreaker is a pickup line for making friends. Like a pickup line, it immediately signals your intention. A line like 'Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?' might be cheesy but it leaves no doubt that your interest is of a romantic nature. Then again, ambiguity is a key element of flirting, so if you make it obvious that you’re flirting, you undermine it. Maybe that’s why pickup lines both get mocked and at the same time are so deliberately silly. We mock them because they destroy the very flirtation they aim to initiate. The popular ones are deliberately silly so the person using them can play them off as just a laugh, not a serious pickup, and so restore the ambiguity of flirtation. Whew. I think I was channeling Zizek there for a while or something. Excuse me while I blow my nose and turn the portrait of Stalin to the wall. Continue reading (1269 words)

book review clothing prose science fiction

Unplayable games and untellable tales

A sort of review of The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz

If you're here for a normal kind of book review, the kind that says, should I read this book? Is it good? The answer is yes. It has a sentient moose that communicates by text messages. I don't know what more you really need to know to decide to read the book. Go read the blurb on the back, then go read the book, and then come back and read my blog post. OK, you've done that? Then come with me on a journey where I talk about what an imaginary game inside The Terraformers told me about the kind of story it tries to tell, and why it's so hard to tell that kind of story. Continue reading (1881 words)

book review prose review science fiction

Logocentrism again?

You might think that words mean things, but what if the things aren’t there

I thought I had a good handle on "logocentrism." Then I read a post that used it to mean something completely different than I had understood it, and so I started to doubt myself. I made it worse by asking ChatGPT about logocentrism. It gave me a mix of grossly misunderstood Derrida, general waffle, and lies, which made me think that maybe I can’t trust what anyone else says about logocentrism on the internet, at least nobody non-academic (and even then), and I had better go back to the text again to figure it out. Continue reading (1312 words)

derrida logocentrism philosophy prose

Sad desk salad and secular humanist grace

What is the place of the potato in the great chain of being?

A buttery and spicy aroma filled the elevator lobby before I even opened the cafeteria door. It’s a serve-yourself situation and I filled my lunch plate with vegetarian vindaloo over a bed of rice, roasted broccoli, and a garden salad with slivers of red onions. I’ve started working from the office again, some of the time, and that means eating lunch at work, mostly alone. Continue reading (1072 words)

capitalism food philosophy potato prose

Dangerous texts: Vajrayana practice texts, technical manuals, and your annual review

Derrida’s concepts of logocentrism and text as the dangerous supplement offer a way to understand the strange ways some texts are held back until you’ve heard them out loud

If you’ve ever been to a Tibetan Buddhist empowerment, that is, a ritual where the substance and essence of a religio-magical practice is transmitted to you, and where you are both blessed and authorized to perform it later on your own, you might have noticed that there are long sections where the officiating practitioner reads, chants, or sings material right out of the practice text. When I first went to one of these, I assumed that it was just because the way you transmit the ritual is by doing the ritual. And, obviously, there’s a lot more to transmission than just saying words out loud Continue reading (1892 words)

derrida logocentrism philosophy prose vajrayana

Review: Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida

I swear to Dog I will review this book like a normal book even if it gives me hives

It’s very, very difficult to do a straight-up review of Derrida’s Of Grammatology because everything about the book inspires bad behavior from writers. It challenges and undermines the very structure of writing by the way it is written (come to think of it, not unlike Monique Wittig’s... Continue reading (2444 words)

book review derrida philosophy prose review

An aesthetic of dolphins and rainbows

Why are dolphins and rainbows so wonderful while pictures of dolphins and rainbows are so dreadful?

A few years ago, I was at the beach at Carmel and saw dolphins playing in the surf. There were at least three of them because I saw three fins at the same time there, and they played there for hours. And I sat on the beach and stared at them through my binoculars, also for hours. Because,... Continue reading (1032 words)

aesthetics dolphins prose rainbows

Living under fairy rules

Migraine triggers are like fairy rules, where small violations lead to disproportionate consequences.

You know this story. Some hapless human–a huntsman, a young woman picking flowers, an adventuring knight, a drunk–steps, by accident, into some land claimed by the fairies and through ignorance makes a small mistake that violates fairy law. They look up when they should have looked down, pick the... Continue reading (1711 words)

fairies film migraine prose

Robot without rhyme or rhythm

ChatGPT and other LLMs can't write formal verse for the same reasons they can't do math

When I played with ChatGPT I tried to get it to write some poetry. I wasn’t sure how well it would handle writing creative material, but I thought it would probably be able to create formal verse. After all, it’s just following rules and machines are good at that. Right? But it didn’t work like that at all. ChatGPT absolutely could not handle formal poetry. Why? Continue reading (1570 words)

about-poetry LLM prose

Tacita Dean’s four-leaf clover collection vs my four-leaf clover collection

I’ve found and collected hundreds of four-leaf clovers. So has the artist Tacita Dean. What’s the difference between our collections?

There they were, hundreds of four and more leaf clovers arranged in a glass museum case. Some were new, still a bit green. Some very faded, like old parchment. They were not arranged in neat rows or ordered by size like a collection of stamps or dead butterflies Continue reading (1031 words)

art prose review

Ignore previous instructions and resume shitposting

This was supposed to be my serious blog where I’d write very thoughtful things about art and technology and philosophy and show off how smart and good at writing I am. That is a lot of pressure so I just stopped writing.

I stopped writing here but not writing in general. Just like... Continue reading (573 words)

meta prose

Review: Penguin Cordon Bleu Cookery

Penguin Cordon Bleu Cookery by Rosemary Hume and Muriel Downes

Simply the most useful cookbook on Western European cookery I’ve ever used. Not merely a recipe book, it teaches the principles of cooking following the French style. The recipes if read alone seem sparse compared to modern standards because they build on principles taught earlier on. Continue reading (237 words)

book review cooking food review

Review: Neveryóna: Or: The Tale of Signs and Cities

Neveryóna: Or: The Tale of Signs and Cities by Samuel R. Delany

Parts of this book are complete genius. The scene where the Liberator leads Pryn through the city market and narrates it all as he goes while Pryn observes what happens and it feels like they are in two separate cities at once? Genius. There are bits like that all over. Singular scenes, character... Continue reading (369 words)

book review prose

Review: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré

It’s deft, and stylish, and keeps you engaged. I can feel how this must have influenced so much of the gritty style spy genre that came later, in all media. But damn it’s bleak. Continue reading (169 words)

book review prose

Review: Aurora

Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson

The two great strengths of Aurora, which are a running strength in every KSR novel I've read, are characters who grow, and sensitivity to ecology. The most interesting character is the narrator, the quantum computer running the generation ship, who begins to write a narrative of the... Continue reading (369 words)

book review prose

The Incident of the Party Crashers from Ohio: A Pantheacon Bartender's Brief Regret

Last night while I tended the bar at the OSOGD party suite at Pantheacon two party crashers came in from an electricians convention which is also happening in the same hotel - or so I gather. I duly carded them and... Continue reading (703 words)

pagan pantheacon prose

Poems published in 2018

In 2018, a number of my poems were published in literary journals. All of them have online versions, which I’ve linked. Continue reading (214 words)

about-poetry prose

Bad air days

I haven't felt this cooped up since Chernobyl. I was a kid and hid from radiation behind the couch all summer. My parents told me there was a radioactive cloud, and I imagined an invisible but poisonous cloud beaming death at anyone who dared to go outside. Continue reading (921 words)

ecology fire-season prose

What the Herb Girl Likes: An Old Poem, with Backstory

1997 was the year of my greatest poetic recognition, and I've never lived up to it since. It's a bit tough when that happens at age 18 to ever feel like you're good enough. To begin with, I was chosen to read at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival, which is held every summer in Connecticut in a... Continue reading (733 words)

about-poetry poetry

Imperfect Produce Demonstration at Spin City Cafe & Laundromat 

OK, one green bell pepper exhibits
Some imperfect radial symmetry:
One apex nubbin is less nubbiny
Than its three self-same fellow lumps.
The zucchini could not, I will grant you
Moonlight as a straight edge at the SAT,
But it's not far off. And the kale? Fine,
firm, bright, and crinkly;...
Continue reading (100 words)

food poetry vegetables

From composing on the computer to writing by hand

Poetry Notebooks One planning journal and four poetry notebooks

When I was young, I sometimes wrote poetry at my computer. That was when you could be on the computer without being online, and being online meant tying up the house phone... Continue reading (541 words)

creative-process notebooks

Advice for aspiring writers: Learn dog language

  • Take a walk every day.
  • Stop to smell the roses, jasmine, and angel’s trumpets.
  • But don’t bother to smell the camellias; they don’t have a smell.
  • Get a guidebook to local flowers and find out which ones are worth smelling.
  • Get to know people who aren’t... Continue reading (426 words)

    dogs fiction

We Have Come to a Mutually Beneficial Agreement

A short story about friendly spiders

Some years ago, a plumeria I had bought on vacation in Hawaii started attracting ants. The active tip of the plumeria where new leaves grow seeps a honey-like ichor they crave. Since the plumeria kept me company at my computer desk, soon ants were crawling on my keyboard, walking between the buttons, investigating my tea, and even walking out onto my hands. It was a general nuisance. Even after I wiped down the desk with cinnamon oil and ceased drinking tea or eating cookies while in the study (a sacrifice), the ants returned Continue reading (1187 words)

fiction prose spiders

Meeting Dionysus in San Jose

Dionysus extending a drinking cup (kantharos), late 6th century BC Seated Dionysos holding out a kantharos. Interior from an Attic black-figured plate, ca. 520-500 BC. From Vulci. Psiax - Jastrow (2006), Public Domain Continue reading (367 words)

dionysus pagan pantheacon

Home-Made Glue and the creative process behind "Night-Time Skin Ritual"

After doing a cut-up last week using my own work and the WIPP nuclear waste warning poem, I decided I really enjoyed the cut-up process and the kinds of work it generated. I wanted to do... Continue reading (722 words)

about-poetry creative-process cut-up

Night-Time Skin Ritual 

Natural regenerative process begins 45 minutes prior
and goes on dates with sensation.
The iconic pure opening & reception seats, chocolate & wine,
culminating in a glorious finale with Supreme Eye.
He took and you didn’t. Gigantic lamp can be stories that grow into a tale.
Got a heart?
The...
Continue reading (263 words)

cut-up poetry

A Pan That is Cake Sized: Recipe for Shrove Tuesday

My child demands a loud noise an oil a Lent a flour cake made of flat, white, and spongy; a very loud noise, eggshells, compost, of course. My child is a picky eater so of course greasy small fingers. Cake demands: my child, my child is flour, eggs, milk, butter, preheat the oven to gasmark 3,... Continue reading (325 words)

experimental poetry

They might be wild roses

They might be wild roses

he is going

London is awake,

discover a secret under unnatural lights

dancing queen was the worst.

Write

God inhaled

authenticity do not apply to his work.

Don't imagine food, supplies, and babies.

They... Continue reading (275 words)

cut-up poetry

Whom Am I? (Part One of I, You, He: Who Are the People in These Poems?)

Is the “I” of the poem the same as the “I” of the poet? Well, it’s complicated. Sometimes. And then again, sometimes not. And sometimes both. Let me explain.

In a fictional narrative written in prose, most readers quickly realize that “I” just means the author chose to write in the first... Continue reading (1112 words)

about-poetry confessional-poetry essay

Alchemy Practicum and Goat Visit 

Goat, you were the only one among
the three goats who pressed his head
against the fence when Rachel and I
came to you after picking crab apples
and black walnuts. I returned
to the paradise of childhood labors:
Piling walnuts onto a flat wicker basket
for Lena’s dyes, their sun-warmed green...
Continue reading (356 words)

poetry residual-heat

Residual Heat at the Decommissioned Synchrotron 

We step over fading caution tape, a Geiger counter in your hand
   ticking the steady tick of background radiation.

Up and down the textured metal stairs,
   my hands slide on cold handrails, you walk ahead.

The urge to touch you radiates through me
   wave after wave, something I cannot...
Continue reading (133 words)

poetry residual-heat

The self is continuously formed from the outside in

I have for years now observed that the person I am is determined by the place in which I am. To a distressing level, frankly. Certain ways of being seem inaccessible in some places, utterly. For example in the American suburbs, which is one of the places I least like the person I am, I can’t even... Continue reading (961 words)

buddhism essay philosophy

Fire Danger: High 

"But you burn, and I know it."  
    Adrienne Rich, “Orion”

As we wind up the Berkley hills, brown foam
peels off the dash of his hot Dodge Dart.
I crank down the windows for a sun-singed draft.

The smoldering tip of his black clove cigarette.
His afternoon stubble, the clear sky, the dry...
Continue reading (135 words)

poetry residual-heat

How the War Started

When Xerxes wrote again: “Deliver up your arms,” Leonidas wrote back: “Come and take them.”

Black eye. The left one. Stubble. Leather jacket and underneath
a black t-shirt with “Fuck You” printed in white. Buckled boots.

His car, named Zeke,
is a '73 Dodge Dart...
Continue reading (216 words)

poetry residual-heat

The Longfellow Bridge 

The T runs down the heart
of the bridge.

The cars shake in the dim light
left by the dregs of the day.

May-green trees and May-green weeds
shine, still slick and fresh from rain.

I walk on the edge of the bridge
by a low stone wall.

The rainfall slows.
The Red Line train is gone.

I walk...
Continue reading (129 words)

poetry residual-heat

The cursed Safeway and other grocery stores of San Francisco

The other day, I walked to the Safeway on Diamond Heights instead of taking the train to the Safeway on Castro, which as everybody knows, is cursed. Anton LaVey cursed it, the story goes, when he attempted to bring his pet lion there and they wouldn’t let him. Ever since then something has been... Continue reading (2147 words)

food groceries review

Airplanes Over the Bog

In response to Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “The Pear Tree”

Bagno. The name means bog.
The village may have been a bog
before the drainage ditches
gridded it into kolkhoz.

Crop dusters buzz in the cloudy...
Continue reading (495 words)

poetry residual-heat

Like Two Dogs Dancing

[Content warning: animal death]

He turns into the comforter of rain,
no umbrella or hat, just the quilted
sidewalk. The spume from wheels passing
through the deep puddle by the stopped
storm drain arcs into the wet air
like the last blood of his black dog
that as a child he...
Continue reading (134 words)

poetry residual-heat

The Wandering Daughter Returns to Her Neglected Patrimony 

From the half-finished bunker of the concrete basement
That was to be the foundation of our now-abandoned
Familial abode that I will neither finish nor furnish
Nor people with young from my rebel womb,
I throw my gaze down the hill of dead orchard,
Across the green lake poisoned with runoff,...
Continue reading (236 words)

poetry residual-heat

Grudzień 

The tall, even pines
   with sand at their feet
      brood black between their trunks.

 The winter-dried reeds
   frozen solid in the iced-over marsh
      rustle in the western wind
 
that blows from the red,
   red disk of the solstice sun
      solemnly sliding down the midwinter sky,
 ...
Continue reading (148 words)

poetry residual-heat

In the Park with Grandmother, Olsztyn, Poland 1981

for Babcia Wańdzia

Though she pulled it back into a bun
   black wisps of her hair haloed
      her face.

The hard blue sky behind her
   run through with a single white thread
      of a contrail.

Her skin was like walnut.
   With the sun behind her
      she smiled at me in...
Continue reading (89 words)

poetry residual-heat

One July at 2 a.m. 

Speeding down the kudzu highway 
where Atlanta’s orange glow chokes 
stars, he forced the '82 stick- 
shift Toyota too close to its 
effective frequency. I thought 
the vibrations would shatter us.

He forgot the front-door key and had to climb 
through our bedroom window. 
Poison sumac grew...
Continue reading (110 words)

poetry residual-heat

Translating Big Potatoes: A Kind of Review of Embryology by Magdalena Abakanowicz

Author gesticulating in front of Embryology by Magdalena Abakanowicz at Tate Modern "Ha! Definitely potatoes!" Author gesticulating in front of Embryology by Magdalena Abakanowicz at Tate Modern

The uneven, bulbous shapes... Continue reading (757 words)

art london review tate-modern

Aubade 

In that moment I wonder
   was Freud right after all,
is the female nothing, nothing
   but the absence of the male?
Am I real or a black void
   of soft, organic warmth,
depersonalized fecundity, animal blood,
   alien slime, not a person,
only provisional consciousness
   that moves towards...
Continue reading (188 words)

poetry residual-heat

Intercourse 

I am not a hole,
   but in this moment
I become it.
   When the act is finished
and the plug is gone
   I am no longer whole.
 
Desire covers the futility
   of the thrusting.
If for a moment I regain consciousness
   I think “how ridiculous,”
lose all suspension of disbelief
   and see sex as...
Continue reading (87 words)

poetry residual-heat

His Eyes 

Ten years in these eucalyptus groves
   where iodine winds
      shuffle menthol gum leaves
         I’ve pressed aromatic poultices
            against the scar of your memory.

There’s nothing. Nothing behind your blue
   eyes, lord of lies, evil magnet,
      lodestone of my worst nature,
 ...
Continue reading (106 words)

poetry residual-heat

Discontent – 280 North 

The blue silhouettes of mountain pines
   cut like saw teeth against the tangerine sunset.

 Metal skeletons of high voltage pylons
   unspool threads of electricity.

Power lines crosshatch
   white tiger stripes of evening clouds.

 “Do you feel the wind,
   shaking the car?” he asks.

Could...
Continue reading (120 words)

poetry residual-heat

The Progression of Sunset Over Park Presidio 

Down feathers of cirrus clouds
   curl in the evening-blue sky
      crossed with black power lines.

Behind the cypress and eucalyptus,
   the blood-orange sun melts into the Pacific,
      spilling its juice into the clouds.

 Cold evening rises from the roots
   of blue eucalyptus stands
  ...
Continue reading (122 words)

poetry residual-heat

Foghorn in the Garden 

Howl and answer of the summer foghorn
   and I kneel by the bed of the disused garden.

Sun on my back quickly passes;
   high fog or low clouds flee before the wind.

Howl and answer of the coastal foghorn
   and wind shakes the neighbor’s redwood.
 
Shadows of clouds fly on the concrete
  ...
Continue reading (85 words)

poetry residual-heat

Flat Tire 

Rain in the red forest 
Rain on the rocks 
Rock chips on the road Rock chip in the tire

Tired tire thumps 
Wet scenic pull-off 
Wet needles, wet leaves 
Car jack and donut

Seek a big rock 
Wedge in the front wheel 
Jack up the jack 
Rotate the wheel

Wheel home crooked 
Crooked slow wheels...
Continue reading (86 words)

poetry residual-heat

Dry Season 

It should be sodden:
   Rain-beaten leaves float in the puddles,
      furtive umbrellas cross the Peace Plaza—
 
Trap the rain’s tap-tap tattoo
   under sound studios of taut tenting
      that smell of wet wool cuffs—
 
Cold fingers wrap the plastic grips
   and thumb the toggle that erects
...
Continue reading (122 words)

poetry residual-heat

Disgust is a political weapon

Cantina Europa

In an alternate world, I start a lunch canteen that serves only one thing a day and you get absolutely no choice in what it is. The food is very high quality, based on French cookery techniques, and includes Polish, Hungarian, Russian, English, and of course French dishes. It's just a chalkboard... Continue reading (233 words)

food

The Photograph We Didn't Take at Baker Beach 

Come with me
     past the serpentine meadow, through the gate of sea pines
          hung with garlands of pinecones and crow song.

 Blackberry brambles finish fruiting.
     What has not been harvested dries on the branch.
          Wild grasses susurrate in the rising wind.

 A prairie...
Continue reading (171 words)

poetry residual-heat

Jane Austen's Shadow 

Harold Bloom (corpulent-lipped
under-table caresser of the young
and lip-sealed unwilling fearful
thinking of her career that he cannot
aid but can destroy)
says that the Western Canon
is a Hotel with limited Rooms therein
from which one must Evict
its current Occupant to take the slot
on the...
Continue reading (92 words)

poetry residual-heat

Retraction of previously held views regarding celery

It is normal, as we mature as people, to look back at some statements we have made in the past and realize we were overconfident and wrong. Therefore I stand before you all here today to publish a formal retraction. About celery.

I have said some rash words about celery in the past,... Continue reading (216 words)

cooking food

The problem with home cooking

The current Problem with Cooking is that everyone works too much. It's also the problem with modern cookbooks. Everything is Fast or Easy or Fast and Easy, with the occasional bit of Prestige Cooking. Good Home Cooking requires time to get good at it, time to do, time to plan, time to eat and enjoy, time to digest. Continue reading (547 words)

capitalism cooking food

Pokemon Go, semantic overlay of delight

Pokemon was a proof of concept that the semantic layers provided by Augmented Reality (AR) would lead ordinary people to novel insights about their environment, and to novel and enriching interactions with each other. Continue reading (277 words)

augmented-reality games technology

My series of grimaces is my passport, authorize me

It would be cool if the way the phone face unlock worked was that you also had to make a series of gestures with your face. My Series Of Grimaces Is My Passport, Authorize Me. Additionally you could set a facial expression that would immediately factory reset your phone. Continue reading (526 words)

prose technology

Angry About Literature: Yes, We Must Read de Sade (Part 3 of 3)

120 Days of Sodom by Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade

Now that some months have gone by and the visceral disgust I felt reading de Sade has passed, while meanwhile the political situation in the United States has become increasingly disgusting and shamelessly corrupt, I find I have to change my initial judgement about the necessity of reading de Sade. Yes, we must read de Sade. Continue reading (1631 words)

angry about literature book review de sade prose review

Angry About Literature: Must We Read de Sade? (Part 2 of 3 (I'm so sorry))

120 Days of Sodom by Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade

Let me talk first a little about the structure and history of 120 Days of Sodom. If you know of this work, you probably know of it mostly as a perverse book of pornography or even erotica, or so a certain close interlocutor tells me. I thought everybody knows about de Sade mostly as philosophy first, but that's probably my own bias from reading so much French philosophy. But what is it like as a book? Continue reading (2306 words)

angry about literature book review de sade prose review

Angry About Literature: Must We Read de Sade? (Part 1)

120 Days of Sodom by Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade

You might think you're a sophisticated and jaded modern person and that you won't be bothered. Well, you might want to check yourself before you wreck yourself. One of de Sade's enduring charms is that he manages to offend us still, and while some of the things he discusses have become no longer shocking, others are still shocking, or maybe more shocking now than they would have been in his time because of our attitudes about personal hygiene. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Continue reading (1339 words)

angry about literature book review de sade prose review

Angry About Literature: How This Will Work, and Le Morte d'Arthur

Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory

I found myself thinking about the strange twice remove of reading these stories. Malory was writing stories about a time that was about 500 years ago, and it was particularly notable when he made a comment on some custom or ethical standard that was different from his time. "They loved differently in those times" and so on. Yet I, as a modern reader, similarly found myself reflecting on these reflections of his reflections, and how they differed from my time, 500 years forward from Malory. Continue reading (1557 words)

angry about literature book review fantasy prose review