War when you'll bleed to death

In this dream a man was shot. The life-blood left him quickly and he lost all control. Entropy, I guess, took it from there. I watched this, in dreaming, with something like horror, with something like sorrow, all masked in a miasma of hazy slumber. As I awoke, the haze peeled back like the skin off a grape, to reveal naked horror, sorrow. I lay in my bed staring out at twin peaks, and houses cemented into green hills.

Then I turned on the news.
Darfur, Bagdad, Myanmar, West Bank, Syria. China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Guatemala, North Korea, Iraq, the United States. Kurdish rebels, Jan Jueid, Hutu, Tutsy, Talma Tigers, Algerians, Sudanese. Illegal immigrants, In-prisoned monks, Pro-democracy activists, Insurgents. Black water, Chevron. Including ten children, Including seven women, including thirty civilians. An American Soldier here and couple more there.

And one in Mosul one late and gray spring morning in 2003. His was the 100th to die since the beginning of this freedom war. This war that has since served only to freed thousands souls from their bodies, free children from their mothers, free families from their ancestral homes. He was Chris Gelineau, a fellow student. 23. I knew him, I knew his wife, a Romanian immigrant and student of English. So I drove to his funeral, from Vermont to Maine, four hours through forests emerging from their slumber to put green flesh upon their branching bones. Bittersweet: all this resurrection, for Chris I knew there would be none. He was not coming home to his wife. He would never see the shoots of spring, the falling of many colored autumn, he would not see this world anymore.

Words, language still so new

It always strikes me as astonishing when I read a passage, just floating by in a whim, that pierces the heart of the human condition. These verbal descriptions, sequence of small images with meaning, cut to the heart of intangible feeling. I can't explain the wash of...happiness, that rushes over me when I read or hear a small segment of relation, a blurb of well-though prose, to which I can proclaim, "I know".

Why do we long to relate? Shouldn't we know that what I feel is what you feel is what he or she feels. No. That is not the case. And so some of us search, and yet others grope blindly and briefly in the dark. They never quite find what could easily be a start.

Language is new: maybe a hundred-thousand years old. But the emotions infusing my flesh, driving my heart, warming my loins, affecting my very ambulation is as ancient as the first replication unknown. To survive, to love. To give yourself.

God is telling me to leave this alone. Cause as ancient as my yearning for you, your modern ways and shallow haze... all simple praise will do you fine.

It is so easy.

It is so easy to pin happiness to you
to waste health and time with you

You go so much deeper than this
so much so that at the bottom of where you really are
,at crush depth,
anyone would wither in and die in that darkness.

So fine, I can't survive down there.

I love the light and air up here, where games are played in the sun with fleet limbs and laugher.
Without constant doubt, with out strings... well maybe with white twine in the webbed-form of a cat's cradle. With abandon. not thinking of the control I could wheedle, or the supple clay of your state...

I could manipulate. And, allegedly do.

But that is grade A, home-grown, sun-ripened, horse-shit.

Open, open, open, open wide.

Truly, it is not your fault, it is mine. Cause I could say "No", I should say "No". Then maybe you'd realized it is not about control: what you CAN do.

In your room, burning Sage, burning tobacco, imbibing red-wine, singing, laughing and kissing. And even with those heavenly amenities, you must have control. Test the waters; tell me I suck at the romantic arts, you expert you. Push me away and pull me in, just cause you can.

I'm leaving. You are in the bathroom vomiting.

And all the world should know that I wasted all this time.

So if my heart bleeds out and, in the crafted words of Homer, death takes my eyes, I will have only myself to blame. For I wasted all this time.

"All I ever wanted to do is hang out and have casual sex with you." I repeat as we linger on the side of the road.

That seems so easy.

A rat

The previous song had been replaced by one from the heart. I guess they are all from there, but this is different.

http://www.myspace.com/whatyourpoint


Somethings wrong
Somethings wrong
My hearts not there
Blood is still
Eyes are stale
Adore

Caged song bird
Caged song bird
Done with her
Take a stand
No chance to
Adore

We’ve all been damaged
But that doesn’t give you the right
To play on my heart strings
Almost every night

What did you want with me
Was I just a place
Somewhere you could conquer
Someone you could waste

somethings wrong
you don't call
you are gone
I am down
all I can do is ignore

Sun is up
Sun is up
So am I
So am I
No more of this
to adore

rare is valuable

rare is only rare to me
and when my opinion is shared
by many, it looks like a tough fight.

Rare is beginning lied to
and never trusting you.
How could I when I don't know
rare is the genuine spark in my soul
and lost are the words with which I would have told you: the
rare and honest truth and the scared timid heart that is so often cut that it fears the bluntest touch,

I would have told you the sharpest truth.

I found this on my computer in a folder for semester's works. I guess I wrote it in 2003, around fall I guess. So dramatic. I think I was struggling with the idea of elucidating the human genome or something. I vaguely remember writing it in the library. I've not changed much... maybe a touch happier.

Deserve



am I the one to deny?

looking at the results

calculation of risks

this one is doomed

this one is very doomed

this one in greater time

this one in less time

this one will suffer

this one will cry

this one will wish it was never born

it will scream a lamentation toward its cruel creator

it will embrance its deformed face, wet with a layer of tears

it will not laugh, it will not sing

it will not know love, it will not know the warm spring wind

so...

I will do intelligent justice

I will provide immaculate righteousness

I will decide: live or die

In this way perfection will thrive

In this way humanity dies

Solitary?

"Not really."

"Don't been so sensitive. You'll scare people."

"You're so serious."

Not about the right things.

"I just wanted to feel this way again."

"What does she want?"

"Who knows... not kids."

"He wants kids? Soon?"

"Maybe she does. Maybe she does if it is a sure thing."

"Oh, it's a sure thing."

"Safe and sound. Safe and secure. Nice and simple. All planned out. Die is cast."

"Maybe there is more to come."

"She done when she is done."

Can we talk tomorrow?

Can we talk tomorrow?
No.

I've got to much pride. There is scrapes and scars from all this being brushed aside.
This solitary life will continue and I'll pretend I never knew.

The fog rolls in and you've said nothing in reply, and why? Why would you went you now have slightly less than the day before. Its all just carousel anyhow... only you're the graceful round and round and I'm getting off and kneeling on the ground.

Feel as little pity for me as I do for you. I understand, I understand, I know.

The view from the park in the mid-night dark you could share with nearly all. But I've only shared it with you.

Red Ribbon

It is really rough, but I wanted to post it since I makes me feel like I didn't waste the time to record it. And I don't give a shit if it sounds bad; sounds good in my room. Only verse and chorus one is in the song right now.


Verse 1
I know when I don’t belong
But my sight for you is strong
Caught me scanning for your eyes
Hooked me with the brightest lines

Confused and alone
I’m dreaming of home's snow
But you’re so lovely in city streets
You are so dark blue eyed

That I can’t let reason stand

[Chorus]
So take this song
Right or off the mark.
Lay it down
Take your heart and mind

Rap in red ribbon

It’s been so long
Since I’ve been here
I’ve been here before
And I don’t like open doors

Verse 2
I’m no stranger to the door
It’s no problem either way
If you go or if you stay

Sick and hard-skinned
I think I’ll just give in
Cause you are so lovely in soft sheets
You are so white sleep’s shroud

That I can’t let reason stand

[Chorus]

Forget it. Don't have the grit for all pushing and pulling.

Phrases of the moon

it's 4:45am.

All night I drempt, then forgot it all.
To wake, to stare out this small window, one of thousands, probably millions
One for everyone who is worth a listen, a moment's consideration
I search out my window, blinded by sodium glow and white headlights.
I search the sky, but see nothing: no pulsing tower, no distant green hill, no eclipsing moon.

Shorts and a jacket and Sperry's and American Spirits.
It is always the same here, the moisture air drifts through the lamp light
and chills my legs.
I search the sky for this promised moon, and there in the west it was: a blurry round shroud over its face... just as girl that hides from grace.

In one night you can witness the phases
those that would the better part of a month.
In a moment I can sum up the phrases,
those that are spoken over an entire year.
In an entire night, I can swing from excitement to sorrow
from delighting brightness to washed-worn and borrowed.

And you can still fit a mold, though I know you don't
and you can still feed your gaunt soul; erase the pain.
I heard you can't remember pain.
But you still fit the mold, so easy to do when you slide,
unhurried, unworried
into place.

The shadow 'cross the moon is creeping left, giving way to the clearest tranquility, the whitest blanket, the brightness golden and I thought of you.
All those rational things, they make sense, don't they?
The safety...all that beautiful security... the freedom for struggle
the freedom given so early. All for only what you've relinquished for much less.
All those times before.

I wonder why there is no pocket marble model of the moon. I wonder if I missed my chance to feel alive again with affection.
To lay out under the stars, in dewy grass and feel like all this is planned, and none of it is really that important.

I couldn't email it.

I want to share something I wrote on the plane yesterday. But it is really "serious". I don't want it to scare you, hopefully it wont.

Cotton clouds stamp shadows on these sprawling lands. Dirt road winds and tar highways snake, lakes of shimmering sun. I'm flying back to you.

How happy can I show you I am? How long can I tell you it's been? Can I attest to you: extraordinary? Can I tell you truly?

These miles quickly pass and people below I'll never know go about breathing and dreaming, and loving. For them, I imagine, the barriers between an unhindered embrace are thinner than this atmosphere. Taking for granted the air they breath.

But not me. Cutting atmosphere and plunging through, I would dive down at speed toward you, on the land stamped with cotton cloud shrouds.

Money, culture, age, ambition, distance, career, race... pressure this air to liquid and see it slip into cracks, catch all you can.

If I do, would you pack me a chute of hope and affection? I was wondering, in this way, would you let me down softly? Else, my heart-sleeves shatter on the ground. Would you watch me descend, passing layers of high piled clouds and smaller fluffs of inert white back-striped with sharp strips of stratospheric ice. Would you open your arms and put my heart-sleeves 'round you? Bring me down.

Am I falling too fast toward you, toward the ground?

Writings from... I don't know when.

formalin preserve this heart
take it back to where I start
anytime you want to come
visit me in my seasoned home
I'll take your hand round the town

one and half years
all this time I've been here
not laid my lips on you
I've dreamt pining scenes about you

unlike me you are constantly wanted
you are a gorgeous smile
soft eastern eyes
beautifully standing
catch lightened glances

I just want to sing the melody
call back to me

maybe in this time
I only get one shot, one go, one try

Im so shy I get staring down
but I know you, I know you for now

so you're over him
right when
your fill my needs

searching in him still
he's every gem indeed
years of what you need

did stars match you up
did heaven mold you exactly


I have a request for you
could I borrow her lips for a moment
I gotta see what I'm missing
I've gotta know

you love the heart can't have
so on and on its beating with
jealous stabs and numb restless

I got a favor for you
oh, you barely know me
but would you do this for me

clearly I have been broken in
my breath I continue not to breath
heart is stamping on my chest
you press, I continue to bleed

say goodbye to all my love
my winters in the cold
sun is sinking to the set
but rise I surely wont

struggle everyday

such an ordinary face
filled with fear lines I'm gonna 'rase
now that I know I can dip into my past
when I made snow forts I knew wouldn't last

so the same with you
trying to do the things I ought to do
i know that are time there is mangled and tangle
in the end roll right over you

Amtrak is inspiring

I wrote this on a train to Plattsburgh from Albany.

In my youth, in the woods, I found a skeleton key.
I was walking, it was summer, I was on the old Indian trail.
I saw it: red-brown, rusted, embedded in the ground.
With roots of pine snaking around and arising from the floor
Backs of surfaced soil whales.
White-bone bitches shimmered in the sun, and the key was in the ground
I squatted on my heels and peered at the metal, brown, and loops like
clover at the head. Rings you could see through. I pinched through a clover-loop and pulled, but the packed-down ground held. I wanted it for my own, this skeleton key in the ground, its loops in the round, clover in infinity, round and round. So, I dug with a stick, and pulled with my child’s-might. The earth released its hold and gave it into my hand, as the original hand that crafted the shaft the teeth the clover leaves.

I pitched back on my rump with the dirt-covered key in hand. After the initial shock of hitting the ground, softened as it was by pine needles, I examined the key.

Where is the lock to this key now? Not that it would accept the rust-covered, dirt-caked teeth as authentic. It would not let me pass into the beyond. Was the key unimportant, the kind of key that could be replaced? No need to worry about the state, it will never again need to be authenticated and turned to let the possessor in to the beyond. No need to worry, the replacement is easily created, as if it never one-of-a-kind.

Or was it? Did they just bash it in, to the beyond? Did they circumvent the lock with clandestine craftiness. Does it let you, truly let you, in?

Else it remained unopened and undiscovered. It remains buried shallow or deep, far or near from the old Indian trial. Maybe it would still accept the dirt-covered teeth and hopefully, turning gently, it will release the bolt and I will pass in to the pure authentic beyond.

I keep an eye to the ground perhaps the hopeful lock found.

9 years later

Struck by spring and moved to tears
immediately evaporated by the graceful breeze

two dreams of you, two mornings of familiar throbbing
some deep awaking wound, rising familiarity with the sun

somehow your face is as clear as this day... and it could
be the very next day from the one I realized I was not suitable, my actions not sufficent
my demeaner not tantalizing, my taste not palatable, my stature not intimidating enough to make you feel like a woman: small, protected, smart, slender, over-powered. I wanted too much equality.

The word of the day is rejection. Nine years later and still, STILL, I can feel the sting.

To switch gears...

What does it mean when I want something beautiful? What is it that makes you the way you are? I can't have you no more than I could understand why. Even if you were receptive and present, it would not be me.

solitary refinement is the name of the game. Not hard enough to tame, to completely there, to utterly bare, eyes begging for matching gazes. You aren't right where you are and I've got to say, love is love and at the end of the day you should feel the same way. You make a good team, though. Everything is safe there.


9 years later and I've not felt the same way since. I could wait to see all but you, I couldn't feel the excitement of spring in their voices. I was in love once, and I've sleep forever tonight, it will be always, just once.

Homesick science (randomness)

May 23, 2007

Albany, New York


I’ll tell you why I like the East. The weather here is metaphor for normal human existence, or what I consider normal. There are cycles, seasons, times we consider bad contrast the good—indeed, the winter prepares the soil so the seeds may grow.

The winter comes, skies are grey, ground freezes, trees become bare. There is little life to be seen outside, no one in the parks, some chick-a-dees in the trees, a solitary crow drops out of a pine and splits the snow muffled silence of the day with its crowing. The world seems dead, but it is not; it is sleeping. It is preparing.

The world tips, tilts, pitches toward the sun. Whenever thinking of dynamics of seasons and how they are a manifestation of the world wobbling, it thrills me. Call me a nerd, but I find it absolutely humbling that a simple phenomenon of this planet’s rocking to and fro creates enough difference in temperature that we get seasons. So the world is pitching toward the sun, the rays of our solar body are hitting our part of the world at a less acute angle, i.e. we are receiving more direct sunlight.

Life, however it started here, on this earth, has yielded so beautifully to the higher forces. I suppose it didn’t have a choice, as the name of the game is survival. I like to blunt the raw truths of nature down by slamming them with personifications. Therefore, I liken interactions between living organisms and physical forces to partners in a dance. This is certainly NOT an original notion or comparison, but I think it is so apt. The leader is the physical forces. They are affect one-another, but lumped together they create the physical world: mass and energy; gravity and entropy; diffusion. The follower of the dance does not “sense” cues until they have occurred. The leader signals, the follower reacts appropriately and the dance continues. The physical realm changes, organisms evolve with it: sometimes by small degrees, other times in huge “leaps”, and other times they just die. But the dance, in its four-billion-year-old glory goes on.

All organisms have been created as they are by these rules, these laws. Some have found ways to dampen their influences: winged creatures negate gravity for a short time (relatively), dolphins are shaped such that the friction and viscosity of water is minimized. Cells, not considering some large exceptions, are all small and started out small because of a simple little law that governs 3 dimensional Space: as you increase the surface area of a sphere (or any shape), you increase its volume by another order. The volume quickly out-grows the surface area around it. Now, if you need to get things (oxygen, for example) across this surface area to the center of the space within—and each unit of volume needs a certain amount of surface area to “service” it. Imagine a loop road around a city that services the interior of the city. As the cities area grows the loop road gets longer, but not fast enough to keep up with the needs of the city.

Anyway, all that brings me to Spring. I love the Northeast for its Spring. I love the trees here. Northern California cannot compare to this verger. It is really not a fair comparison, they are two very different environments (biomes even). That does not change my penchant for oaks, maples, beeches, birches and pines. The deciduous trees are a glorious sight in a park or in the center of a field. They spread out, like a child on a king-sized bed, all around and up. As they age they become full—thousands upon branches. In the Spring they bud, then explode it a bright green chlorophyll splendor. They’re sheltering branches have been written about so numerous times before—I don’t care. I will not let my appreciation of nature be eclipsed by reiterations, man-made dilemmas and bullshit.


Right now I am in a park. It is about 70 degrees in the shade, the air has enough moisture that it holds the heat. In San Francisco, if you get out of the sun the air becomes cold, because it is so dry.

In about a week and a half, I’ll be started out on a weeklong bike journey to LA.

UVM medical school: my status is uncertain. More time in SF?

Back

I'm calling you today; I'm coming back to stay
in the past I've made my way with mistakes and ashed in the flakes floating from a trail of fire I left about 1 mile wide and 3000 long.
But I've paid with a drenching loneliness, a smothering solitude and it is you that I will never take for granted.

Nights when we were alone, winter days brushing off snow. It will fall on us again, like I had never left. And love like you've never known.

See? See these compunction re-uptake inhibitors can stop my soul, the neurons still glow as singing solitary pulsing coal. Just lay your paper white upon it, give it a blow and catch again with heat radiate untold.

Can dream

how many dreamless nights will pass while clouds and time obscure the moon.

the sleep is good and deep, but I wake in the night to see tower pulses red lights.

And a fading dream of you.

I love to simile at you and absorb your charm. Simple shapes, eyes and mouth, exceedingly excited to see you react to the worlds cues. Though, I suppose you control them to haunt me, don't you... Swinging your sheened skin in front of my eyes--so unlike mine--and I go under.

and dream of you.

You can have it all, I'll dig it all out of my head and you can keep it. I'll rather be known and hollow, then hide these dreams of you.

the mechanics

Songwriter

nothing is secret when you are a songwriter. Nothing should be secret.

Drought

If they say Love's a river, then you know you can walk along side. The sun sets early and the bed is bone-dry. It will be cold tonight in the open land, and the rocks and sand may move you to take a stand. There are beautiful seeds that sleep deep in this river's bed. The Sun is kept from them until washing winter's wet.

The river roar is silenced. The banks: mounds of clay, and I walk along the bottom shocked and counting days.

Please remove your shoes and socks and drop the act. Please feel free to saunter and make tracks. Amble amongst the once-wet bed and see, as you come to know me, the sand is becoming damp.

You've traveled with me so short a time. Pan around, you'll see what's breaking through the ground, along the banks, in the Sun our Spring has come.

Green, green, yellow and green. With azure above and brown below. Cool, clean, clear the leaves fill the foreground, there is no more forever acre cemetery of skeletal frames. Greene, yellow and green. Life as won.

A while more you've held me, the water swiftly flowing just above our knees. Moments before you are swept away...

The water's raging, trees rooted in the clay. All started with a stroll along my bone-dry river's bed.






Of these things I play on, none will alight on my horizon.

Break it.

it is better than nothing at all.

Swinging arms around in the dark
hoping to hear a my breaking heart
wish to feel some sorrow
better than nothing at all.

Adam's Apple

I had a dream about having an Adam's apple. Clearly, there is a problem.

Smoke up!

These are the people I work for. I was not involved in the study, too bad really.

UCSF Press release:
http://www.cmcr.ucsd.edu/JS-Abrams-final.pdf

Watch the video that is cued up 'bout half-way down the page.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=5028346

What are you?

Origins: where are you from?
I'm from the 'burbs, from the Area, from a small town in beauty you've never seen.
Doesn't that say so much? Cause, dear, I just met you, I need to know how and where you were forged. Where is the Earth missing it's your minimal mass, and darlin' make it fast. Cause I've got another lined up and I've got to make some decisions tonight. Where are you from? Where do you hail from? And what does that make you? Are you fertile from the plains? Healthy and thin as air in the Rockies? Hot and sultry from the South? Cold and forgiving from New England? Or are you from a place of surf and palms and silver mirrors that encompass aspirations.

Ethnicity: And who were your parents? Who brought you here before me: breathing this air and a part of this age? What are the fractions of your blood? How'd you get that smile, that sorrow, those breast, that intellect? Stand before me and peel your layers and tell me finely examine each one. Cause I've got to make some decisions tonight. In this city we've got the time, but don't waste mine.

Conclusion: If I like, I'll stay. But, there is more where you came from and plenty more of those layers are duplicated in her and her and her and I don't understand combinations. How do people come together with blood and soil to combine in a uncountable unimpeachable unrepeatable combinations? That doesn't happen... You are replaceable.

Moss on trunks that faces north
but for myself, I can barely figure out

why 'm I here? What the fuck for?
I'm not making up for lost time or
events are not coming strong. I'm just sitting here as usual
singing my same old songs.

And so I've gain a lot of gace and pose and shit that doesn't seem to shine as well as I've been told. I'm here still alone, not providing or supporting or indeend being of worth.

When what should really matter? Alone forever, and serving as I can, when I can. Thats no use cause you are only obesssed with you... nothing more can you realized.

Truth is you've fit so precious few places comfort and presistance to save the doubt that frames a depression of guilt is waning like the dusk covered in navy-night fall.


So seek a meek and remembrant one, so rare I'll find ice on the sun. One who's straight and worriless, i'll protect you I'll protect you.. if llack of power's what you feel.

Sincere and good and local (for me).

I highly recommend getting to know these guys: myspace.com/lowredland

Do it...

He liked to go fast

Justin I wish you could see me
the color of these pills don't match my mood
and you'd be thrilled you'd be very thrilled
sky and lakes not me in hue

it's been almost a year since you died
your parents and friends were beside themselves,
oh I wish you were here with me now

The early spring sand saving winter's smashed
did you in, you liked to go fast.
your daddy said, "he liked to go fast."
and soon. too soon . too soon.

So we went to the white house surround by woods
with boulder in back and the hoop in front.
Your dad survived the hemorrhage
with long gray hair, blood shot eyes.

I'll never forget the way she cried
your mother clearly knew
on the day you died she gave a way
a part she lent to you

mirror

As objective and unbiased as a flat mirror, showing you, on the wall, just who you are.

Urban awakening

Oh, I am better than you. You do not fit in here, mostly you fit in everywhere else. Smart, straight and able, but here you are not welcome.

But, I mean you no harm.

We will talk of tragic figures: the eighteen-year old kid, gay with HIV who works the Tenderloin, 6th street, fucked up off herion and methamphetamine. There are so many without the stability of money and love and good friends. So, really, you see, you don't belong here.

Well, I want to help. This is a good cause. No, I do not personally know those that suffer with HIV and addiction and spurned by my family. Do you see within me some insincerity? Is it that clear at the end of the day I will return to a relatively privilaged set of six days and 20 hours before I am here again feeling dejected. I suppose I deserve it. You can make me feel this way, cause the rest would never.

Look at you. You are so weak. Everything to live for, so much that could be done with you, but look at you.

The bench is low to the ground and green. It is 8ft long and made of closely spaced 4 inch by 4 inch pieces of soft wood, probably pine. It is nearly noon, but the sun is almost down, or maybe it seems that way. You would think that the position of the sun would make haunting natural sense to humans, since it has been around since we've had eyes. As modern as we are, I guess we've got no use for these natural phenomena to make sense anymore. The sun is warm, though, radiating a strange, slanted heat. Nothing feels quite as good, I think as I dip out of the negative mental tar pit I've been fighting to move in all day.

The bench is so low that I can extend my feel a good distance in front of me. In front of me lies Duboce park, a velt of green course grass, lined with low bushy trees that don't loose their leaves, three blocks long and a half block wide. Maybe there was a time were kids played stick-ball or soccer or tag here, when this neighborhood was filled young families. Presently it smells overwhelmingly of multiple-wet dog, dog piss and dog shit. The warm sun is actually cooking the excrement of a thousand different dogs; the odor is...unique. Times beening what they are in these urban areas people can only afford to have dogs. For this reason I do not loath the smell or current cainine occupation of this park. I sit with my book, the first hundred or so pages are crunchy and warped--I dropped it in the bath tub. But, I cannot read. The dogs, most of them smaller than a large rabbit, are running and bouncing and nipping at eachothers hunches. A small white cumulus cloud, bright red tongue hanging out anteriorly, moves across the grass with out aid of legs. Or so it seems. These silly dogs are so blissfully unaware of the War, global warming, my waning trust in people, my parents financial situation, the crime rate in Oakland, the fact that they stink. They just do what they do, mostly ignoring their owners. This makes me laugh and smile, a bit.

It is 12:17pm. The N-line stops at the western end of the park, just before it enters a tunnel boared under Beuna Vista park. I'm getting on a street car going east: downtown. It is Sunday and I'm going to Needle Exchange.

I walk across the park, dodging dogs and their frantic owners, and move to the other side of the tracks. My crunchy book makes me look educated as I wait for the arrivial of the train. The "brrrriinnngg" of the street car's bell shouts from the opening of the tunnel: that was quick. It is full, of course. I've never been able to predict the when the N-line will be full of people goign downtown. It is not as straight-forward as a rush hour phenomenon. It is noon on a Sunday: it is full.

My last quarter misses the slot on the fare machine and falls unreachable between the machine and the operator's door. He--an older black man with distinguished salt and pepper curls--gives me a transfer slip and waves me off. I grab some aluminum ceiling bar and bury my nose in my obviously-once-wet book.

You see every type of person on the San Francisco MUNI. It is really something amazing. Today a young persian(I think) girl escorting her grandmother caught my attention.

The street car dipped down into the tunnel that runs under Market street. It jerked. Someone almost fell over onto an old asian woman. Typical goings on for a ride on the N.

Civic Center stop is my stop. I am birthed from the train, squeezing out between to large white men who apparently didn't understand the foot traffic inhibitory effects of blocking a doorway. Next, I parry a polite tourist who has stopped directly in front of the train door to snap an ingeniously mundane picture of the station signage. I'm in a surly mood as I let the escalator bring me heavenward.

Today, I will be giving clean needles and clean works to people who will do one of three things with them. 1) They or someone they're with will use them and bring the dirty needles back. 2) They will give them to someone who needs clean works. 3) They will sell them for nearly nothing (of course that is something to some of these folks).

The second escalator brings me into a world of sun and tents and the sound of water being shot against concrete. The tents belong to the weekly farmers market that sets up in Civic center plaza on Sundays. I stroll by boothes of organic egg farmers, piles of asian and unrecognizable vegetables, and homeless people. They are not there for a hand out, but to mere hangout. That is, apparently, what they do. I'm not being provokatively insensitive--these are the people I've grown to appreciate and care for. I am stating an actual fact.

Walking across the plaza, the sound of water becomes colorful in my right ear. Glancing in that direction I see the fountain: a retangle depression in which sit loitering and louging cubic columns of marble. These chunks are being constantly showered with water, spouting up from unknown, unseen nozzels. A man and a child walk in the depression of the fountain(ignoring a sign forbiding just that). I pass behind one of the two walls that bound the back side of the fountain and, for the second time that day, my nose is filled with piss-vapors. This time it is human. It bothers me only slightly, mostly because I've walked by this very spot and smelt this very odor many Sandays. On the lawn bordering the wide brick walkway perpendicular to Grove st. two homeless people eye me. Two black man to my right talk to a closed glass door. I just mind my own business.

As I hike up the sligh incline to the corner of Golden Gate Ave. and Larkin St. grey metal baracades line the sidewalk. There is the occasional used needle lying forsaken on the concrete, offen with the point missing or broken off. I know I'm close. A black homeless man who looks farmiliar sits propped up against a baracade, his legs streched across the sidewalk, his hands clasped over his stomache and his face in the warm sun. Quietly, I plod past.

So much has been written about the homeless and street culture of America, and probably 50% of what has been documented has come from the hands of writers in SF. It is really the most habitable of cities for the homeless. Here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons to be homeless in San Francisco, if you are to be homeless at all: the weather is agreeable, never getting below 45 F; the social services are fabulous, I've never heard of a homeless person dying of starvation in this city; public transportation is easily accessable and goes almost everywhere in the city; people are nice and generous here, especially the tourists. I remember seeing homeless peopl huddled up on exhaust grates in DC when I was in the fifth grade. Today, I would stir them and advise them to hope a freight train to SF.

TARC is situated in a building whose purpose was once retail, but I am not sure. The area which we have the needle exchange resembles a store front, with plate glass windows. It is really no bigger than the standard size vestibule were you are blasted with hot air before entering. When I arrive, I am early and the door is locked. Tammy (no real names within), a man to women transgender, sits at a table busying herself with gloved hands. She is preparing hundreds of small baggies of tiny cotten balls.

"Hey Matt! Where have you been?"

"Oh! Hey Tammy. I was at home."

"Glad you're back! No one knew where you were."

"Dan didn't know? I told him I would be gone for the next three Sundays."

"He had no idea."

"Well, I'm back. Sorry about the confusion."

There is a lot of confusion at the Needle Exchange. The are things that really matter when you deal with life and death and disease. Scheduling is one of those things that falls by the way side. There is no money paid to some people who will be helping with the operation today; we are volunteers. The people who do get paid are stretched so thin for time and resources. It was slighty touching and alittle worrying that I was missed. They must have been sort-staffed.

Tammy has been working since 9am filling preparing cotten and vitamin C packets. I grab the vitamine C packets and start placing "TARC" labels on them.

Before I go further I want to give a run down of the supplies we make available at the Needle Exchange:

The mainstay of any syringe exchange program is, naturally, sterile syringes.

1. Insulin syringes
1. 27 5/8 gauge needle with 1cc capacity syringe. Know as "longs" on the street, because the needle length is longer than the "shorts". More frequent IV users needle the extra length to hit deeper veins.
   
2. 28 gauge needle with 1cc capacity syringe. Know as "shorts", the standard.
3. 28 gauge needle with 1/2cc capacity syringe. Know as "micros".
   
2. Larger syringings aka Musclers
   
1. 23 gauge x 1 in needle with a 3cc cap. syringe. People that use these bad-boys are hitting deep into muscle tissue for they are out of usable surface veins. If you think you could never run out of veins, think again. I once watched a phlebotomist stick a recovered IV drug user for a good 5 minutes until she found a usable vein. The guy was clean for 15 years... they didn't come back.
2. 23 gauge x 1.5 in needle with a 3cc cap. syringe. Even worst shape then the people above, the people who ask for these I really really worry about.

Supplies aka "works"

Clean supplies for preparing and using IV drugs. Three main IV drugs: herion, crack/cocaine and methamphetamine.

1. Cookers: clean small aluminum containers about the size of a large bottle cap, but deeper. Heat is applied to the underside to aid in solvation of the solid.
   
2. Tourniquets: clean, rubber, funny-smelling. People were using (and reusing) dirty rope.
3. Alcohol Prep pads: For injection site sterilization.
4. Sterile water in small one-use 3ml capsules: For dissolving drugs for IV use. Better than tap water. For better read: cleaner.
5. Tiny spun cotton balls: For filtering large debris from the drug solution when being drawn into the syringe. Before the use of spun cotton, users would employ cotton balls for filtering. Fibers of cotton would be drawn up in the filtering and injected in the vein, which would quickly elicit an immune response resulting in a condition know as "cotton fever".
   
6. Triple Anti-biotic oinment: Reduces local tissue infection. Absesses are a common problem for IV drug user.
   
7. Vitamin C (Ascorbic acid) powder: Its presence in water creates the acidic conditions needed to dissolve the chemically basic crack/cocaine for IV use. It is harmless to inject, especially compared with lemon juice or Kool-aid powder. IV drug users who were using lemon juice were going blind from a fungus present in the juice that would attack the optic nerve.

The Needle Exchange goes as normal. The figures shuffle in toward the survey table. We take no names, just ages, sexual preference, gender (all 4), race, HIV status and number of needles to be returned. We stopped having them fill out the dates and printed them directly on the forms. Too many of them had to ask what the date was. Most of them, when told, would say "Is it July already?" and, in some more astonishing cases, "it's 2006?". I wish I were exagerating.

Earthquake in my mind

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/nc51177644.php - I felt this at 3:33am. Fun.

Martin Sexton was introduced to me by Emily. He has a new song that you should hear: "Way I am". It's great. And it made me think.

I think I've got some good Catholic blood in me, cause I feel like a sinner. And I deserve what's coming my way, every last insult. Such a sweet sight to get the poison out.

Ruminate on an interview

My interviewer: "With your application I would've liked to hear a story."

This was his response to my question: "What do you think when you see an application like mine?"

I asked this because he invited me to ask a question and because I knew that my cumlative GPA would come into question. The way the American Medical Application Service calculated it, it didn't look great. And my application is peppered with blemishes: an F in college writing my first semester of community college, another F in Discrete Mathmatics about a year later, transfer to UVM after almost two years as a computer science major at USM. I look as if I am an unpredictable vagrant, close to the truth. But there was a definite upward trend in my grades, and I had performed some compelling research.

Well, I don't have a fuckin' story. I've got lots of little experiences that are remarkable when combined, but when accounted one-by-one would sound sorta pathetic. I've never saved a live. I've never watched a person die. I've never cured anyone. I thought these are things I would do in med school. I'm not a triathlete. I've not written a book, fiction or non-fiction. I'm a worker. I try to be creative. I'm not consistant, but I am diligent. I'm unorganized. I'm emotional, was powering against myself.

But I've got greatness within me, the potential to do that elucive "something great". People always say that to me, that I will do something great. Just cannot leave it up to God or fate or chance. Right? Go to do it myself. Do I want something with my brand on it? This urge to leave something behind after death... it IS our very nature to do just that: leave out genetic material behind. But socital accomplishment, in whatever form, seem to have takin' over for proceation. But, I have been going against the grain since I was born.

Story telling seems exciting. It was the way we(humans) passed history until writing was invented. Some have lost the art.