"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Anna in Estonia

I have a lot of stuff to write, but I may or may not get it all written, and so I quickly wanted to alert everyone to a new good thing to read if you're looking for something to tickle your brain. My friend Anna (or Anita, the first girl I ever slow-danced with) is a real live professional Artist, and is currently spending some time in rural Estonia doing an artist-in-residence thing. She's writing about it. It's good! For instance:

bq. I was already surprised to be speaking with my mom on skype- with me in Mooste, Estonia & her in Eugene, Oregon- then it got even more exciting- when Marcel, my younger brother calls my mom from Prison, in Umatilla, Oregon & she puts him on speaker phone and we are all three speaking to each other as though we are in the same room, only thousands of miles apart and each with completely different circumstances. Marcel could ask me about Mooste and I could ask him about how his parenting class is going & other such matters and my mom could intervene at any moment. If only i could have recorded our conversation it would have been an art piece in and of itself- a sound piece. I guess it was recorded through the prison- as they monitor and record all telephone calls- Now to get a copy!

Check it out y'all: A May in Mooste

Also, in one of the best examples I've yet found of how other parts of the world are starting to seriously kick our ass in internet access, this village of 500 has total WiFi, as did the bus she drove to get there. Which is what makes this possible. The assumption that US Citizens lead the best life becomes more and more faulty over time, it seems....

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I made a lot of mistakes

Friday night BART blogging. Out on the germen bar name scene, Zeitgeist then Gestalt. It's a weird fun scene. I'm contemplating more and more the implications of letting go and being confidant and full of energy about my position. There's a very real way in which my last several big efforts have been thwarted, and/or were dissapointments. I think this left me with an undue sense of skepticism about the positive potential, a sad and lamentable "can't do" attitude.

Also, one can learn a lot from Mountain. MISSISSIPPI FUCKING QUEEN. Take that shit to heart.

(morning after): and this

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Vote For Joe. Again.

My man Joe is close to internet fame. Vote for him again even if you did before (1 vote per day is allowed apparently):

http://broadcasting.projectbreakout.com/media_page/entry_id/197

It's internet democracy, Chicago style.

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Gears

Well, in spite of getting a mild cold, possibly from dancing until 1am in a sweaty tent full of candy ravers (everyone kept asking me for pills), I'm feeling pretty dang good. After a little bit of a rocky start getting back into the grove with work -- it's still a tenuous thing for me to take a vacation -- I'm riding higher than before, in large part thanks to getting the fuck out of my routine, shifting gears. I be riding my new Mission Bike fixie any day now, but I still think this is important: gearing lets us tackle bigger hills, and also go faster.

It's a wild world out there. I forget that a lot these days, and it's important to remember, to know in yr bones. Praxis is hard, but dancing helps. Driving fast helps. Getting a lusty little crush going helps. All these things that tap into feelings and challenge our notions of control, they're important to keep up. I realized this past weekend that I haven't been doing enough emotional exercise, and the result isn't pretty. I've been feeling bland most of the time, nervous-to-terrified the rest, and it's getting worse. This ain't no way to be, so I figure I better stop.

People have been telling me for years to get out of my comfort zone, and they're right. It's hard though. I'm pretty good at getting comfortable wherever (benefits of a big limber brain, y'see) and there's a certain innate conflict between pushing ones boundaries for the sake of rut-jumping, and pushing ones limits for the sake of getting worldly things accomplished, a pull of internal/external focus.

I was talking about this stuff w/Julia down in LA, before we went to Coachella, and her response was "yeah, these days I'm more about really good sex and working on myself." It's a refreshing perspective to consider, as I've been about neither for quite some time now.

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