fresh blood in the base of the neck

The title has already changed. So much to learn here - photos, layout, links. It's happening - and its happening at work - so this is a paid adventure. I am the lucky recipient of my employer's unknowing grant. And, amazingly, this happens while I do my job, for they allot me far more hours than they do work. Fellow folk of this century, I hear this is how it used to be. Once upon a time there were many such jobs allowing a latitude of freedom at work, and now I think they are whittled away with each cycle of merger/layoff.

The title changes since w er d um fi e ld was a bit more obscure than I could stand by as a blog title, though it has this lovely, where is that place feel to it. But, unless you speak German, so will this. The original title meant to conflate werden with word hum, into its own little neologism, so a word-hummed field of becoming. This computer hums - whines, creaks - I am obsessed by it. That drone I return to in dozens of notations and pieces - an originary noise for computer people, even the expensive models sound, they are just designed to sound silent. But like Mr. Cage said, silence is but further noise once you listen to it.

All our lovely others seem rather like fictive characters in an often cheap plot. Masking exactly what use of words and worlds? In the Bay Area, less than 5% of the native ecosystem is intact - the entire region has been thoroughly remade - intentionally and otherwise - by humans : ship ballast discharging Polynesian crustaceans into the harbor waters, gulls and pigeons and sparrows to feed on our waste, salt marshes dyked and farmed for salt, and then, in turn, filled for condos and computer companies. Hills stripped of trees and brush for firewood and cow feed, than paved over for homes w/ a view. Lagoons filled in and creeks made into sewage tunnels (the area of 16th and Valencia was once a lake fed by now hidden watercourses off Twin Peaks and Buena Vista - you can see it on very early San Francisco maps) South African ice plant and Australian eucalyptus to "reign in" dunes and manufacture forested glens, snails to feed the discriminating French migrants, concrete, steel, aluminum, a thousand forms of plastic and several forests worth of wood to carpet, cover, retro-fit and thoroughly resurface the earth here, and to link up each new habitation into the non-virtual net of infrastructure in which this glorified electronic city is but a small, nearly invisible parasite. Or, perhaps more a fattening cow along for the ride.

So there's my paragraph of eco-doom. As long as our fuel resources keep shrinking and our fuel prices keep rising though, this level of consumption will become unsustainably, prohibitively expensive though, and our technology will either wither or turn green (even going nuclear would - if you look into it - not only take forever and be exceptionally risky, but be prohibitively expensive in this coming crunch). And its been said before but the earth itself will recover, even if caribou, sequoias, the monkeys of Madagascar and the monkeys of homo sapiens, along w/ most other large mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, etc. Are wiped off. Its happened several times before, and the raccoons, crows, ants and company will flourish where we fell.

So there's my second, more cheerful paragraph of eco-doom. I really would love to see the ruins of our civilization someday. It would be so refreshing - either in another incarnation, or as a time-traveling tourist. I write this forgetting all the possible pain heading our way as we live through this probable contraction of of techno-splendour upon which we all so depend.

But for now I'll content myself with noting that a) this has nothing to do with what I stated was the site's aim yester and b) i am letting go of what i said yester. As for the aim and direction of this site, it is as new as the name, and the blog itself - I don't know exactly yet what will happen here. I'll be exploring and hopefully get into a groove or twelve. Poetry and writing and consciousness are never more than a ranting paragraph of eco-doom away. But when working for a firm that is full of architects building (well CAD-ing) new structures, when working for an institution that build institutions for other institutions is your daily workday domicile, the call of a couple paragraphs of prophetic eco-doom is all too sweet to pass up.

AND if anyone is curious where this particular eco-doom came from, there is a recent article worth checking out (and perhaps fact-checking : I haven't) in Rolling Stone of all places. It's called "The Long Emergency" - check it out here.

Focus. Focus. Obsessed with focus. A desire for control, a controlling fucking desire. But for now, further chaos, out of which what might come... Its where the wild things are.

Gof4 thought for the day: please send me evenings and weekends.
please send me evenings and weekends.

It's Melissa Benham's 30th birthday on Friday. Shame on yourselves if you didn't know that.

Artist and writer friends: when can we quit our day jobs? Another 40-50 yrs is just too long to toil for another's $. I don't want to be building these buildings (Federal Prisions, Hospitals, Police Stations, Luxury Condo High-Rises). Stay tuned for the saga of the Rawk Papier Sizz-o-s Collective's struggle to overthrow our oppressive conditionings, conditions, and conditioners. And just maybe the saga of how I am or am not saving the ass of a near-dead Gay Sunshine Press.

"Beloveds, your skin is a boundary separating yous from the rest of yous"

-this connection of everyone with lungs, Juliana Spahr,OUT NOW.

If you're reading it, let me know, we can talk. Its a big world, so its nice to share a book (even electronically).