here's when i gush

saw him last time he was in town at the Cedar and it was a great, almost spiritual show. i listened to his albums all winter and am hooked.
favorite song: Daughter of the Sun

tonight i plan on taking chas out to the Ecopolitan for some raw food goodness and then we'll go get settled into what i hope will be a soul filled evening.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism & Socialism

I'm going to this tonight at the Guthrie!

Finally had a slower couple of days last weekend. This weekend is fast approaching. I've been trying to get everything done and ready to go camping with some friends.

The last couple of weeks I've been in planning mode. Chas I purchased our tix for NYC and New Hampshire and I'll be going to Vegas for the Annual Immigration Lawyers Assoc. Should be interesting. Vegas is not how I roll but we'll see. I'm excited to go out east and finally meet Chastity's sisters. We'll be spending the fourth grilling out in Harlem!

Have been working on my MFA manuscript. Think I've got about 20-25 pages worth of poems that I am ready to submit to friends for feedback in order to finalize fall submissions. A lot of the poems have already been workshopped on Steve's forum and have gone through multiple modes of existence so I'm looking forward to having this finalized small colleciton. Even if I don't get into any schools I'll be able to send poems out to journals and continue using all of the lessons I've learned from compiling the manuscript. Just having this deadline is nice because it drives me to follow projects/pieces through to the end. Also, it is kind of a marking point--I can now move onto newer pieces and give them my full attention. I have been drafting my personal statement..right now it's pretty formulaic...needs some flava. I didn't realize how difficult it'd be to try and pin point the moment or the moments in life where I realized that I want to write full-time and live the life of writing..still not sure about teaching for a career, but I do want to TA in an MFA program. I am glad I waited 4 years after undergrad to experience as much as I have and to see if this is what I really want to do. I've been writing more in the last four years than ever before. I was definitely not ready right after college. Next it's the more administrative tasks of the application process.

Life as an immigration legal assistant is legal, assistant-like, and full of immigration. Sad sad news about Mogadishu and the fighting that has recently broke out--it's displacing 500 refugees or more a day.

My bike rides to work have been difficult with the wind slapping me around and with all of the construction in downtown Minneapolis. When I get home, or to work, after a windy ride my legs feel like they might just burst. If anybody has been recently flipped off by a girl on a yellow bike it was probably me. Don't honk and please respect the bike lanes mothafuckas!!!!

listening to: the hum of air circulating this building. and of course: K'nann. I catch myself singing "Wav'in Flag" all the time. Gives me goosebumps.

drinking: h2o..later tonight hopefully some tea after a homolicious production by Tony Kushner

reading: still knee deep in The Omnivore's Dilemma. I have been slacking on reading fiction and contemporary poetry but feel like this break might be helping me step outside of my preferred reading habits. Although I admit that I write better the more I read, especially creative works.

Am missing Early. I sent smoke signals to him with the fire we had in the back yard on Saturday. Did you see em bud?

Off to the show! (not really, but soon)

Our Common Treasury

Here are some pics from the Mayday parade. Was a gorgeous day. The ceremony, the political theater, the people.....god I love Powderhorn.

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I've been singing "These Tears Ain't Mine (reprise)" by Roma di Luna to Chastity all day...oooooh there's nothing worse/than sleeping on bad words...

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am thinking of starting a couple of character poems...some of them have been in me for a while, but reading Rigoberto Gonzalez's So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water unitl It Breaks is inspiring me to actually draft them.
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[singing]

T-Storms & Jelloslave

this Spring has already pushed out the first thunderstorm and with that came some hard rain...we had to put Early to sleep about three weeks ago. i feel like his ghost is following me everywhere in the house. i've never held a living creature in my hand as it bowed down in death. i feel he is curled into a ball, tucked under my rib cage..snoring his liquid lungs out in peace. in the pic above he's chillin like he did through so many rehearsals.

"A good-bye generates a moment of chaos in the immediate enviornment.."
-Fanny Howe
finally finished her memoir/essays...was exactly what i needed this past month

on a lighter note i took my mother to see Jelloslave this weekend! am currently digging their album "Touch It"- such a brilliant title to an album/project
also have been listening to Kill the Vultures, K'Naan, and Romantica

reading" "The Omnivore's Dilemma" - along with everyone else i guess. also just watched "King Korn" and "Jesus Camp"....that is all i will say.

finally drafted "Blue-Glass Prairie Grafitti" and "Dynamo" and am working to revise a series piece I have in rough form right now titled "Naturalization"

drinking: too much red wine. i feel like if i were to write about something happy right now my tongue would fall out of my mouth.

grateful. i feel grateful as all get out.

home is where the heart is

I see this house on my bike ride home everyday....34th & Oakland....Bloomington Ave. is also boarded up from about 24th to Lake St.

reading

Carolina Chocolate Drops at the Cedar 3-29-09

this pic is from a slower song...the rest of the evening we danced our feet into the ground. they even played "Hit em' up style!"

here they are playing "Hit' em up style" on the Blue Plate Special in Knoxville,TN:



crazy to see that they played the Blue Plate Special as Chas plays there everytime she goes home to Knoxville!

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am thinking i'll read these on friday at the variety house show:
Two Hues
Soo Dhawow
Starting Point
Believe It

listening: to Early breathe syrup-lunged on the couch.
drinking: chamomile baby...cause i am bad ass like that.

knee deep in:

"It is snowing outside the cafe. It falls on the waves and foam and on the cars and leaves. It looks the way music arrives in the brain and lights up a different cell until the brain is flooded with its sound or its silence."

"Can dreams support the whole weight of the material world?"

from Fanny Howe's The Winter Sun, Notes on a Vocation