At my Tuesday morning workshop, "Sparking a Creative Inferno"...about a dozen people here, not bad for a 10am slot...

First exercise: a wordlist, generated from the theme "sleep":

pleasant hat dream peace dance snuffles restless blanket nuzzle tired
coffee lack now wonderful

restless in this place
tired and alone
a blanket not enough to warm me
there is one I think of

I remember our dance
firelight warm on her face
her hips under my arm swaying to the drumbeat
lulling me into a wonderful dream of more still more pleasant closeness

At Brushwood now, in the lull between Sirius Rising and Starwood...arrived
last night, saw a interesting thing when I got off the highway, a bunch of Amish (or Mennonite?) people playing volleyball, women in bonnets, men in suspenders.

On the ride up, passed under a bridge for "Middle Road", could only think of Buddhism, I was passing under the dharma somehow.

Sitting under my pavilion this evening, playing guitar, a cute girl came up carrying a flute, asked if she could play along. And it occurred to me, hurray for women who aren't shy, if I had to always rely on my bad conversation-starting ability I'd never get to talk to a pretty girl...

Ok, that's a little self-pitying now, ain't it? But still, I find my energy in this endeavor scattered since Cathy broke it off. (I am glad, though, that I went to Red Emma's to buy a copy of the Harry Potter book (which I finished today), reminded me of how many pretty girls seem to hang out there. Oh, and another great revelation - you see lots of pretty Asian girls at the Asian supermarket.)

Good music today, I have neighbors, a couple, the guy plays guitar, the woman stand-up bass (the flautist I met is camped with them), they were playing at their campsite this afternoon, now over at Phil's Grille as I sit across the way in the Starwood bar, great stuff. Then walking in I passed Randolphe (Harris) playing by the side of the road, amazing as always.

Just saw Nicole, she was headed off to meet with Dorian and Jason who just arrived. Brian and Joe are also here, Trisha on the way, so we'll have the Baltimore crew well-represented.

Ok, I'll admit it. I'm waiting for the damn Harry Potter book to go on sale at midnight.

I had figured I'd just get a copy when I get back from Starwood. But with all the fuss about spoilers, somebody might well ruin it by that time. And I can get a copy here at Red Emmas and support a cool local business. (I'm posting this from one of their PCs.)

So grab a copy, get home and get sleep so I can be fresh for the promotions at the dojo - or stay up and read? I know I'm going to read some of it...

Stumbled across this on the web today. Discussion over at Slashdot about the role of high-fructose corn syrup in obesity; someone mentioned that with all the sugar in hamburger buns, "you might as well be eating your hamburger in the middle of a donut sliced in half." Chuckle chuckle.

Then someone pointed out this, from the Sauget, Illinois "Gateway Grizzlies" minor-league baseball team:

The burger, which was debuted at the Grizzlies' December 10th sale, consists of a thick and juicy burger topped with sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. The burger is then placed in between each side of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnut.

(It might be noteworthy that Sauget was founded as a Monsanto company town, and thus has a long history of poisoning people.)

the poet is an anarchist
as any god must be
(I've no idea what that means,
the words just came to me)

a summer evening in Baltimore the wind picks up i'm sitting outside at a cafe and the wind reminds me of a moment half a world away, sudden wind rippling the surface of zen garden pond shattering the reflection of mountains and breaking something in my mind like dropping a glass bottle and letting the genie out

a bottle of water floating in the sea suddenly shattering

nothing is lost and the whole ocean is gained in an instant

the wind here the same as the wind a half a world away

Zelda's Inferno exercise: we wrote words and phrases on index cards, placed them around the room for others to find, then wrote from what we found.

1) "tina turner on acid yodeling in arabic": strange dreams of late-night TV rock opera mixed with the CNN headlines I fell asleep in front of, Tina Turner as the Acid Queen morphing into a ululating woman in a burqua, wailing over another senseless death / my mind flipping from CNN to VH1 and finding satisfaction in neither, Tommy can you hear me? 25 killed in a car bomb attack. That deaf dumb and blind kid, and now to the White House for an address by the "President", you won't find me any of those ways, although you think you must

2) "Booger": Booger-brain! Poop-head! Childhood curse insults, unselfconscious, heartfelt anger, hatred...I remember my mother telling me "children don't hate", but no, only children can hate, grown into it but not yet past it (and so many children in adult bodies!) the purity of passion without compassion, the lord of the flies, the boys who beat me and spit on me, the hatred I knew then, a more pure and refined poison than anything I've known since; I hated then as I cannot hate now.

3) "beautiful in the overused meaningless way": I can't call you beautiful, that word is worn out, overused, meaningless, no tread left on it, I want a special edition vocabulary, words you have to earn the right to use, words with some kind of artistic cover charge to keep the riff-raff out, words that cost two months salary, words I had to bleed for, words I had to scale mountains and fight dragons to have the right to use...instead all I have is this thesaurus...attractive, cute, good looking, gorgeous, handsome, lovely....Give me words that cost me a year of my life each to use, that I can tell you how I feel.

On my refrigerator, I have an old "Zippy the Pinhead" cartoon. Zippy and his friend Claude are discussing worry and love.

"When I'm in love, I worry I'll fall out of love. When I'm out of love I worry I'll never love again..." says Claude

"It's a vicious cycle of ecstasy and despair, huh, Claude?" observes Zippy. And with a wistful look, Claude replies, "Wouldn't want it any other way, pardner!"

So that's a bit of where I am now. No names (though those who know me can figure it out...), but since I've been back and since Cathy broke it off with me, I've been feeling smack in the middle of that vicious cycle. Several women on my mind...one lovely lady I met at Starwood last year who I'm hoping to see again; one friend I've been sweet on for as long as I've known her (eight years or so); ok, another friend I've been sweet on for even longer time and once had a tryst who has also been in my thoughts; there's a new lady who's a writer and a book lover; one ex-brief-girlfriend who called me today; one friend-and-one-night-lover who seemed interested when she heard I was unattached; one lovely lady I met in Japan who I just heard from; one cute new recent internet correspondent...what's that song? "Seven women on my mind, four that wanna own me, two that wanna stone me, one says she's a friend of mine...."

Anyway. Went to the reading at Minas today, a Gimme Shelter benefit for a well for a village in Africa, did some stuff at the open mic. The guy running it hadn't seen me read before, which points out how lax I've been the past few years about getting out into the scene. Anyway he was interested in booking me for a future reading, so I ought to get my ass out and read some more. A nice after-party, then dinner, hanging with Robin and Carla and Brian.

The following tale of civil forfeiture woes was sent in by an anonymous correspondent. (Well, I guess someone who leaves a phone number isn't really anonymous...) I've cleaned up typos but otherwise this is as received. If anyone has leads please contact the querent. (I've already suggested contacting FEAR.)

On 12/04/06 I was served a forfeiture summons. I responded back to it on 12/14/06. IC 34-24-1-3.states that the state has 90 days from that date to file with the courts. They filed with the courts on 4/10/07. Do the math, that's 117 days from receiving my response to file. That is a state law in Indiana. How come the state can break these laws and take our hard working money? They forfeited my money yesterday. On 7/09/07. What can I do the system is failing me. I have not been convicted of any crime. How can they DO THIS..........CAN ANYONE HELP ME. The ICLU won't, who will? I need help. You can contact me if you have any advice at (317)246-7059. Please...I have all the paper work on this in my possession.

Marine Corporal Trent Thomas is being court-martialed for his role in the murder of Iraqi Hashim Ibrahim Awad, in April 2006.

His defense lawyer, Haytham Faraj, is claiming that he had no choice, because "Marines in combat don't challenge orders."

I can only quote Thoreau:

A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?

Poetry is invincible! Zelda's has outlasted many venue's; the Planet X crowd kept meeting and reading after the place burned down, even in the face of a tornado warning we met under an awning and read poetry.

Politics must serve poetry, not poetry politics

exercise: looking closely at some small part of our new meeting space:

I don't know what you call these decorate carvings - scrollwork? finials? - on the columns, curled like the fiddleheads of ferns, arching out from the column where it meets the bottom point of the arch, a bouquet of them