Poets and their clothes.

Okay, okay, I'm jumping on, finding some intriguing things happening in Laura's post today...

For age appropriateness, I've got to hand it to Nada for not giving a fuck about her t-shirt inspired skirt and to Laura (is it okay to say this?) for still rocking the off-the-shoulder T with visible brightly colored bra strap on occassion...yes, it's usually partially hidden by a scarf, it's true. But she rocks it. I think I'm too old for that, but maybe there's an in-between age that it doesn't work on, where Laura can get away with it just as well as or better than a teenager?

Tangential example on the same note: Nicoloff buying his faux-Ray Bans says "I think I'm just old enough to get away with this without looking like a total teenage poser. I was at least alive in the '80s."

I recently bought a pair of vintage lace-up ankle boots on my lunch break at work and called them Alli-boots. I can't believe I just admitted that on the internet. I was almost dissuaded from buying them, for the Alli-ness of them, copying a friend etc. It seemed very uncool. But assured myself that I'd pair them with generally girlier things than Alli would, so it was okay. (Alli, forgive me). And they're comfortable. Really comfortable. And today I'm wearing them with grey tights, a light blue skirt that's not pleated but has all sorts of seams to look like it's pleated, and a really girly ruffly white button up. And a necklace. And two rings. Very foofy/froofy. I am little bit schoolgirl, and this morning Michael called it "affected nerdiness." But it's girly/foofy/froofy affected nerdiness. I don't know. I'm at work, my tattoos are hiding.

I just read "Against Pluralism," where Hal Foster writes, "More and more, art is directed by a cyclical mechanism akin to that which governs fashion, and the result is an ever-stylish neo-pop whose dimension is the popular past. An arriere-avant garde, such art functions in terms of returns and references rather than the utopian and anarchic transgressions of the avant-garde."

So what, if anything, does our clothing say about the art and work we're doing? Does recycled fashion, vintage boots, 80s throwback sunglasses (which Michael preferred to refer to as French New Wave), hint that we're recycling our poetries?

There's been talk (see Erika Staiti's Canessa Reading, where, you should note, she's wearing a Peter Pan-esque fedora and a great tie) asking the Bay Area scene to return to discussions of work instead of, you know, afterparties. Afterparties have appeared a lot. And so now I'm thinking about "why" we don't talk about our work much here right now. Is it easier to say Are you going to the bar? I like that tie. Nice boots. Great necklace! You getting another drink? Is there an afterafterparty? than to ask ourselves if we're recycling our work, as Foster suggests? If our work is worth talking about?

If we talked about our work at the afterparty, what would we wear?

And remember when Brandon Brown wouldn't have been caught dead in a white linen blazer, but instead donned black pants, black button-up, black tie, and red chucks? Every day?

I agree that some levels of costuming are fun, for the few hours of attention that I usually forgo, but I'm also a fan of intentionally over- or under-dressing. Fuck it. Wear a cocktail dress to your reading (okay, I did that at my Canessa reading in April. I had just come from a wedding, but decided not to change), or come in your rattiest. I'm down with that. Or if you're Brandon Brown, rock that three-piece. This does not successfully work for everyone.

Walking down College this morning I saw this sign: SUMMER CLOTHES OUT SALE.

Also, I'm having lunch with Lindsey Boldt today. Maybe I'll report back about what she's wearing.

Things I overheard my boss say the morning of Thursday, July 9th.

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1. Crusty brown mayonnaise, how may I help you?

2. With a stun gun on hand, just in case. What are those things called? Stunner, damn-O!

July 7

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Hey kids. I feel both really old and really young at the same time, don't you?

T started a summer program instead of his old preschool across the street which means I have to get in my car every morning, and I hate that. I drive him ten minutes away, to Bay Farm Island, which you probably don't know but it's a part of Alameda that's between actual Alameda and the Oakland Airport. I hate it. It's the total burbs. Track condos next to track condos next to track houses and a golf course. Awful. And my bus ride is now 40 minutes into the city, which this morning meant 40 minutes next to this guy with a sour expression, weird throat clearing, audible yawns, and major phone fidgeting. I was tempted to quote T and say, "You're a bummer!" but I refrained. I was trying to read Foster's Recodings, but totally failed.

Then I had extra coffee.

Please don't:

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clip your fingernails on the transbay

floss extensively in public restrooms

I hella love Oakland.

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DITTO.

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here and here.

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from Rockett St. George.

Oh, dear gem.

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I'm digging Clay's blog right now.

Thanks, old friend.

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What now?

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1. I think I've decided to buy oil pastels to match the palette of today's outfit.

2. Department of Eagles & Grizzly Bear. The Dirty Projectors, old and new.

3. Really into my farmer's market people. Last night: celeriac and caramelized leeks in brown butter, seared chard. Tonight: parsnip and potato puree, spinach with roasted garlic.

4. Reading about Eva Hesse's drawing over the weekend, and her relationship with children and the grid and to line. And so thinking about art making with Taeo, the graph paper in my notebook, pens, yarn, tape, knitting, knotting, impulse, impulse control, hair. Also thinking about Maya Deren's move from poetry to film. And so my relationship to poetry and then to art/knitting/making/bookmaking/painting--the other things I do that inform my creative self in ways that are not poetics. Thinking, in this way, about Morgan Levy's relationships to art and language. And thinking that she might know about other people I should be looking at. I'll ask her.

5. SUN!

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Taeo and Polly Jean. Photo by David Buuck, through his living room window.

This week.

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1. Learning Legalese and dodging lapses in logic.

2. Listening to more rap than any other genre and making my facebook friends pay for it in lyrical updates.

3. Apologizing for unintentional alliteration. (Really, I'm sorry).

3. Sonnets. Berrigan and Mayer. Again and again.

4. Eating like shit.

5. Waving to my new neighbors.

6. An hour later, my new neighbors making out before eating dinner. Finding this incredibly endearing.

7. Physically paying for eating like shit.

Recently.

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1. T, fake snoring.

2. T, real snoring.

3. The World at Large.

4. My first gluten-free Fettucine Alfredo, all of it from scratch. Sauce, noodles, everything. It took 3 hours.

5. Apparently I don't slur when white-wine drunk.

6. Watching my new neighbor brush his teeth before bed in the kitchen with his lady. Finding this incredibly endearing.

7. Pockets.

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Favorite graffiti lately:

1. "Howard Tight Fit" on the cement floor of the bus terminal in large, clear caps.

2. A stencil of a little girl's face on the sidewalk on Minna @ 2nd.

3. "Panda Sex" on the top of a building coming out of the Posey Tube, again, in large, clear caps. Huge.


Favorite weekend moments:

1. MN: "Pshshsh, whatever."

2. Staiti, dancing in the backseat: "You gotta what? How long you had that problem?"

3. A-dub's interjection: "So, have you guys tried parsley root?"

DUDE, WHERE'S MY SHIRT?

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for John Sakkis

nose slide and then 360
big spin, i could bust those
on your celebrity/poet.
pervy text messages over
an ice cream belly, your
piss smells like MSG
and your persimmons smell
like what? good job,
brain. long-arm
a testicle tonsil in a bar fight,
you are too old to like punk rock.
I'll throw garlic bread
at your brother, too. how
do you mix your dry rub?

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Hey, internet. You don't feel like real people.

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I had been writing so much both in letters and on paper it was getting me into trouble, there are experiments to see how many words can be gotten on the paper but only a lunatic would do them, like writing everything what they call tongue in cheek, I guess some people have done that. I'm so tired of poetry because I don't want to talk about it, also we're having so much trouble with the fucking mimeograph machine to get the ink to wash over every word of my poem, it has too many words for it. So I said to revolve the drum without running paper through, then the stencil ripped Marie's name and we saw we would have to write it on every page like an obsessive craving for sex and booze I was reading or to create one I've got a vodka and tonic now, Peggy got it for us. Sometimes all we say all day long is hurry, even Sophia can say hotdog. About food and money the family is one body which we seem to nourish as a whole or as a single one, not mystical though. What I mean is I eat the rest of your lunch and the water from your vegetables goes into our soup.

Bernadette Mayer
from The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters

Dream report.

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In real life, my kitchen window looks directly into the kitchen window of the Victorian next door, but the house has been under renovation for like over two years and I've been free to leave my shades up and do whatever I like. Over the weekend, a family apparently moved into the flat. So the dream was that strangely these people (in real life it's a couple with a baby who's about 10 months) were a couple with a baby and a single mom with a baby, and that the moms were sisters and they were my distant cousins. Except that my living room was transformed into my parent's living room and their cats were there and my cat was there and Michael's parents' cats were there (this is now 5 domestic cats) but they were all snuggled up to a cheetah and there was one jaguar on the other side of the room and another outside the sliding glass door on the deck (which again, is the layout of my parent's house) and there was the sense that there were more wild things outside. So, while I'm nervous that all these domestic cats that are dear to me are snuggled up to a goddamn cheetah, my dad says, "hey, that's your cousin, let's go say hi" and we do and he introduces me because these are distant cousins on his side and I've never even heard of them. So, now I'm in this flat, and it sort of reminds me of Michael's uncle's house except it's smaller and closer to the floorplan of the actual flat, and the single mom shares a room with the two babies who are in bunk beds even though they should both be in cribs or a mattress on the floor or something, and the couple has the other room. Except they also have a large glass door leading to their backyard but it is very small and muddy and in it is a sea lion and a crocodile, both completely buried in the mud and another jaguar in a fig tree. And the guy says "Yeah, we paid the rent for a backyard for the babies, but there's a crocodile in it." And then a train goes by and it's right on the other side of the fence and I'm thinking, no wonder the sea lion and crocodile have buried themselves in the mud.

The End.