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cherry blossoms

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The cherry trees on the UW campus are at about peak bloom. As much as I like the trees (and I love the trees!), I like even more the fact that so many people come every year to see them; they stand around smiling and taking pictures of each other with the trees all around them, and it gives me hope to see humans so thoroughly enjoying naturally beautiful things.enter image description here

new chapbook/zine of words

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I made another chapbook/zine. Let me know if you'd like one and I'll send it to you!enter image description here

new EP!

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I finished my EP for the RPM Challenge 2024.

I had a lot of fun with it: I think I had more time to spend on it this month than in many recent Februaries.

I put it on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. Let me know what you think!

new zine/chapbook of algorithmic drawings

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I put together this chapbook of drawings I've made using code I wrote over the last few years. I've been printing it at home and staple binding it. I'm pleased with the results, and have mailed a number of them to people. Get in touch if you'd like to have one, I'd be happy to send one to you.

ditch ice

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A cold spell in Seattle has created ice in places it normally is not seen.

ditch ice

poem

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while measuring my blood pressure
(disappointing numbers)
through the biggest window
I saw a hummingbird land for a moment
on the leafless January dogwood

a black silhouette against
the next-door beige Brutalist behemoth
built after demolishing this humble house's twin
after Steve and Eydie (their real names!) left
and moved their lives across town

the hummingbird wasn't there tomorrow
(but my numbers were a little better)

Moving Breakfast

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Moving Breakfast (by Sidney Goldfarb)

I get out of bed without breaking anything
I give my daughter Cheerios and bananas for breakfast
First I let her stand on the table
Then I let her put her foot into the cereal
I look into the mirror and say, "Sidney, you're no criminal."
I put on a necktie because I have one
I go outside and find myself in Chicago
I say, "Boston, you faker, cut that out!"
Then I see Lake Michigan boiling up at me like a billion white birds
And clouds of soot talking to one another above the skyscrapers
So I yell up to my daughter,
"Sara! Take your foot out of the cereal, you're in Chicago now!"
And she answers back,
"Cheer-i-ooos!"

(from Speech, for Instance, p. 53)

Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet

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I finished reading Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet today. It took me too long to get through it. I am disappointed. I like "overly wordy" writing, but this seriously needed an editor: it is far too repetitive and unfocused to be a good read (I know why it is like this, but still...).

Some good bits: "I have a tender spot - tender to the point of tears - for my ledgers in which I keep other people's accounts, for the old inkstand I use, for the hunched back of Sergio, who draws up invoices a little beyond where I sit. I love all this, perhaps because I have nothing else to love, and perhaps also because nothing is worth a human soul's love, and so it's all the same - should we feel the urge to give it - whether the recipient be the diminutive form of my inkstand or the vast indifference of the stars." (#7)

"Let's buy books as as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us." (#23)

"To live strikes me as a metaphysical mistake of matter, a dereliction of inaction. I refuse to look at the day to find out what it can offer that might distract me and that, being recorded here in writing, might cover up the empty cup of my not wanting myself. I refuse to look at the day, and with my shoulders hunched forward I ignore whether the sun is present or absent outside in the subjectively sad street, in the deserted street where the sound of people passes by. I ignore everything, and my chest hurts." (#99)

"Tedium...I work hard. I fulfill what the moralists of action would say is my social duty. I fulfill that duty, or fate, without too much effort and without gross incompetence. But sometimes right in the middle of my work, or in the middle of the rest which, according to the same moralists, I deserve and ought to enjoy, my soul overflows with a bitter inertia, and I'm tired, not of working or resting, but of me."(#263)

"The love of absurdity and paradox is the animal happiness of the sad. Just as the normal man talks nonsense and slaps others on the back out of zest and vitality, so those incapable of joy and enthusiasm do somersaults in their minds and perform, in their own cold way, the warm gestures of life." (#296)

birthday self-portait

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I forgot to share my birthday self-portrait a month ago!

birthday self-portrait

rust

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Photograph on the walk home.

rust