Prefontaine

I went running on Pre's trail this afternoon. It's a bark trail along the Willamette River, with sections where the trees have grown over the top of the trail to make a tunnel like in a fairy tale, and it suddenly gets really dark and cool and so quiet that you can hear the draft going around your body. I'd love to run in Eugene more often. I ran with my dad, something I've never done before, and it was a strange experience to hear my dad struggling with his breathing next to me, I guess because it's a revelation of infirmity, which I don't want to accept.

I went to a reading in Seattle by a poet/essayist named Lucia Perillo. She has Multiple Sclerosis. In one of her essays she observes that in most of American society there are so few reminders of our mortality around us that we can ignore the fact that we are all bodies that are going to die. She compares this with past societies, e.g. London during the Plague. She compares our burial practices to cultures in which the body is kept visible through decomposition, or discarded with violence. She questions what kind of progress it is, that thanks to modern sanitation, burial techniques, and--I don't know, etiquette?--we're able to distance ourselves so much from death in our daily lives. Is that advancement? I wonder how it changes the way we think, not to be confronted every day with death (in person, I mean. Not on CNN). I mean, when was the last time you saw a dead human body, or saw someone die? In December, I saw a homeless man dead in front of the laundromat across from my apartment in San Francisco.

I'm thinking about those of us that have experienced death up close, death of someone close. Do we become closer to death? I'm thinking about those of us that do confront death often, because of our job or neighborhood. How are we different from the people Lucia Perillo describes? I'm thinking about The Year of Magical Thinking and the essay "Love of My Life" by Cheryl Strayed. Part of what makes them so good is that they locate and illuminate the paradox that we remain unprepared for the one thing that happens to everyone. Why is that?

I'm packing now to leave tomorrow morning for Eugene. I just walked to the corner to mail my RSVP for Chris's wedding. As I was waiting at the light to cross back, a young guy walked up to the corner with a suitcase and a piece of cardboard, wearing an old suit. He looked like he was about 19. He asked me

Hey, do you know what paralysis is?

Yeah.

What is it?

It's when you lose control of a part of your body.

Oh! [pause] I think I have that.

Well, you should get it checked out. There's a hospital right up there.

I don't have any money.

There's a free clinic.

Eh. I kind of want to die.

Well, okay.

He was an attractive kid with nice skin. I wonder where he was going. Last night I had dinner with Albert at Cafe Intermezzo in Berkeley. It was a beautiful evening--it's amazing how much warmer it feels over there than in the City. I got back to the City and got drinks with Andy and his girlfriend Becca at Valley Tavern in Noe. We ended up being there for past three hours, a few of the only people in bar after 1 a.m. on Sunday night, sharing beer and Andy and Becca playing songs on the digital jukebox, Beck, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5.

Andy is restrained when he speaks, but I'd describe him with something he once said about one of our students, Forrest: he lets things in. Andy has this quote taped to his bathroom mirror: "Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart." -Rilke

Yeats

I don't want to post whole poems, but I wanted to post the Larkin poem below. Here's Yeats:


The innocent and the beautiful
Have no enemy but time


Kyndall told me those lines are tight. I'll miss him.

Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel

Light spreads darkly downwards from the high
Clusters of lights over empty chairs
That face each other, coloured differently.
Through open doors, the dining-room declares
A larger loneliness of knives and glass
And slience laid like carpet. A porter reads
An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,
And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,
Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How
Isolated, like a fort, it is -
The headed paper, made for writing home
(If home existed) letters of exile: Now
Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.

-Larkin

Larkin

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.

-Philip Larkin

Chekhov

"In a short story it is better to say not enough than to say too much, because--because--I don't know why."

-Chekhov

Oakland today

The liquor store on the corner by my apartment sells eggs 3 for 99¢ from a little basket at the counter. So, if you go in to buy beer to fuck yourself up, you can also consider making an omelet.

I didn't post yesterday, I know! I was feeling sick all day. Watched a documentary with SSJE called Soldiers of Conscience about conscientious objectors in the Iraq war. I told my large school classes I won't be back next year. A lot of people told me I would cry, and I might have, but I felt too sick. I felt more like I was going to faint.

Had dinner with my dad at Saul's after school, then drove him to the airport to rent a car. He's going out to a party in Stockton thrown by a college friend of his. His friend just started a coffee company.

Going to a barbecue at Sherene's in Oakland later where I'll fuck myself up. Then I need to work on some recordings. One of my students has a friend at the Cal radio station who will play me. I need to give her what I want to play on Monday.

For the life of me
I cannot remember
What made us think that we were wise and we'd never compromise