"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

I Know This Feeling

I'm lonesome. The other weekend this really great woman sort of just brushed through my life; a highschool crush, and still quite something. Then just this past weekend I was hoping to see her again -- she lives far from here, was on her way to and from a Spring vacation -- but no such luck. I shouldda called her. And, yet there's been an effect, old musty parts of my mind and body are alive and tingling.

And I remember this feeling. As all my senses come online it feels like senior year of college, like that last frenzied compressed three semesters. Very busy and on my own. I'd broken up with Yael, was solidifying my identity, directing my friends in a play, taking a full courseload -- classical theater, musical singing, hitting the weights, trying my little gambits with the women. Everything was full of movement, and yet I cut through it more or less in my own bubble.

Once again my days are full, the stress is high, the great singing uknown calls out, but this time I think my sense of isolation is more pronounced. My social world, while growing, is much smaller than it was when I was in college. With work taking so much of my time and being so far removed from the rest of my life, conditions have been unfavorable; the network is thin. And so the night just a mite bit colder.

Read More

Tags: 

What's Your Agenda, Koenig?

Sunday afternoon was beautiful in San Francisco. I took my bike up some hills to one of the hilltop parks, sat there on the grass looking out at the city in the sun, thinking about how it aught to be. Maybe you wonder what I want out of all this work I'm doing. Here's a round-about answer.

The United States and the rest of the world are in trouble on numerous levels. I'm not being pessimistic. I still think humanity's chances are decent, but I'm not willing to cheapen the gravity of the situation. The way life works now can't go on; cementing the status quo is not an option. I'm a big one for saying, "we can do better than this." Here are some of my specific ideas.

It's a tall order. My idea of what a 20-year agenda might look like, but that's the level I think on. At some point I want to have children. This is the world I want for them... This post continues on my MfA blog.

Read More

Tags: 

Satire

Stoller and Sterling over at BOPnews know how to have fun. I've decided once and for all that Tommy Friedman is a tool, mustache or no. That is all for now.

Read More

Tags: 

The Wave

Went to Vegan pot-luck last night; good times debating various things with anarchists who know their shit... The rest of this is posted on my MfA Blog.

Read More

Tags: 

Radicals

Has the world become more radical or is just my change in senery? The bay area harbors more fringe elements than the five boros; it's more sheltering in that way. On a good day I like to call it spaceship San Francisco. On a bad day I feel scared that so many are so bloody-minded. On most days I feel restricted by my square-world occupation; electoral politics. It's not like I have to wear a suit to work, but my activities of late have led to a great deal of self-censorship, and often I find myself feeling a little illegitimate.

But it's a long story, my struggle with trying to meet the rest of the world halfway.

I've been involved in way-out circles most of my life. I know from hippies and anarchists and would-be revolution. There's something different, sometimes sadly sour in the air out here. Maybe I just didn't move in the right circles back east, but it seems like every other person I meet out here is talking about making plans for the collapse of the system, for the "inevitable imposition of martial law," for revolution of the decidedly non-velvet type.

Sometimes it's frightenlingly attractive. Frank and I were at a Reclaim the Streets party a few months ago, ate a couple pot cookies some nice hippie girl sold us -- two for five dollars -- and after lazily circling the laconic SFPD on our bikes ended up at the Anarchist protest, where the legions of red and black were displaying solidarity with striking grocery workers. It was allright as protests go; no great shakes, but there's some good energy. I've more or less had my fill of these kinds of things, I'm thinking, when a real livewire organizer takes the megaphone, a young black man stalking the line in cammo, solid deliver, crisp diction, chants the crowd knows and loves. He's got the touch.

And sitting on the outskirts with my bike -- a spectator if there ever was one -- I'm just about buying it. "There are more of them then there are of us." You're damn right. But then so what? What are we here to do? Dismember the police, tie up the managers and burn down the store? It feels like a possibility, but I don't think it serves anyone's purpose. Obviously it's not what was going on, but in that moment I was ready to do something drastic. Potential for mob action? distressingly high.

Every now and then it cuts the other way. Every now and then maybe I pull someone back towards the sunny-minded way. I know my optimism is infectous. I know that it's no fun believing the world is fucked and that billions must perish before a balance is struck. That's a really depressing way to look at things. That people carry the notion with a measure of grave pride seems to be distinctly American. There's tough times ahead, but it's gonna be them what falls to the flames. They deserved it, ho ho, right.

Dig, yo. The Ice Age doesn't discriminate, and you may not believe in voting, but unless you're stockpiling guns in the woods -- and even if you are -- the idea of resisting the powers that be with violence is a fool's errand.

I'll tell you what we need. We need some damn information revolutionaries. People who machine-gun the truth of agency into the population. We've got a way to do whatever we can get people to agree to do; democracy is a good idea and we aught to take it more seriously. People get hung up on money, myself included, but the real action is in what people can do to one another. Relationships outvalue dollars by orders of magnitude, and the tragedy of the modern era isn't that there's such a great disparity between the rich a poor, it's that people have so few meaningful flesh and blood realtionships and put so much stock in flickering images, ghosts and simulations.

I remain optimistic about the chances of people, if not the state. I tend to think that lacking any pressing animal need and given good information, people tend to do right. People don't naturally attack one another unless there's scarcity, and as a world we've got plenty. The tricky part is realizing this, because it threatens everyone's line of business. Personally, I look forward to the time when we know, and everyone can relax.

Read More

Tags: 

Sexy

It'll soon be illegal to get your ya-ya pierced in Georgia. This law would apply only to the ladies:

Genital piercings for women were banned by the Georgia House Wednesday as lawmakers considered a bill outlining punishments for female genital mutilation.

...

Amendment sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the vote that some adults seek the piercings.

Bill. Buddy. You've got to get out and see the world more. I mean, I've only gotten up close a couple of times, but my limited experience has left me decidedly pro on this issue. Outlawing non-consensual mutilation is a no-brainer (wouldn't that be assault, or child abuse or something?), but you should see what sticking a little strategic metal somewhere can accomplish. It's really quite something.

Read More

Tags: 

Creak Creak

Things might just be starting to open up. Taking stock of where things have been at for the past two months, I've been far too tight and narrow in my focus. I've got a lot of work on my plate, and my tendency to place that above everything else has lead to bizzarrely atlas-like delusions of overarching responsibility on my part. The weight of the world is on my shoulders, yeah, but it's not on me alone. There are millions of people out there who are helping to bear the burdin. We just gotta get ourselves organized, and we can get some shit done.

But I'm not here to talk about work. It creeps into everything I do, I know, but I want to get past it for a little while. I went out and surfed the net tonight. It's been ages since I did this. I went to re-visit some old faces and have a ball nerding out. Just clicking around, seeing what's up. When you're not reading a politics site and every click doesn't leave you dead-ended at a news-source, you can go on some interesting journeys. In contrast with channel surfing on cable TV -- something that rarely fails to give me the fear -- this felt interesting and natural.

It's spring. I can feel parts of myself coming a live that have been sleeping for far too long. I'm a little cramped, a little soft and saggy, but it's nothing a little yoga can't cure. I'm going to start going, and I've got to find some art to take in too. The world may or may not be at a watershed moment, only time will tell, but if I don't improve my cultural and social diet, I'll be no good to anyone.

It's odd, living this life. In olden days I'd be more apt to spill guts, to tell a lot of lurid soaring tales. These days I don't brag or boast much; my meditations are about things outside my window, and not the inner workings of me. In a perfect world I'll start uncurling my experience, revealing each twist and turn and kink and whirl with a flourish of intention. I strongly intend to turn this period of my life into great art. I strongly intend to return soon to performance.

And in the meantime I'll remember to make time to dance, and keep the zen of everything wrapped around me like invisible armor. We must be smiling buddha warriors, for in our conquest the future is a bright one and we work on the side of the good... But I'm not going to talk about work.

I'm sleepy, so this is where I'll leave it. Suffice to say that there's movement. There's a movement too, but that's been there all along, building in the background. What I'm stoked about today is the sense that my personal situation is on the thaw.

Read More

Tags: 

Blockage

Did some spring cleaning yesterday, which left me feeling pretty decent. I need a desk. Everything is a little overwhelming and I feel creatively blocked. There's almost too much to deal with, and my analysis paralysis is costing me time and opportunity. Gotta get uncorked here.

Read More

Tags: 

The Seventh Sign

Read More

Tags: 

Maxing

It's the year annevarsary of war, and so I was reading back blog archives. At its best, this is pleasently like reading an old journal; you get new insight into your present situation and discover wonderful language to lift for future applications. Witness this stuff from about 20 months ago. There's a hint of prophesy in the frist bit, the the old ring of poetry in the August 12th entry. Those were good days, even as they were full of struggle, and I miss their winsome flavor.

Mature content; spring equinox and all. Here's a non-hypothetical hypothetical question for you. If you were the first American a woman slept with, and you fell victim to premature ejaculation (let's be honest, shit happens), would that qualify as unfortunate, hillariously ironic, or both? I think both.

Read More

Tags: 

Pages