Guest Blogger: Irene Boldt

*Image Courtesy of Google Image Search for "Family"

Hi to Lindsey's blogger colleagues. First time blogger here, imagine a little stage fright and a drum roll. fyi I'm in San Fran with my darling precious daughter, Lindsey. My lst time in San Fran was around 1970 when the flower children were beginning to wake up in Golden Gate Park and think about making money so they could move indoors. Lindsy's Dad was presenting a research paper at Stanford and trying to make it to his 25th birthday so the draft couldn't send him off to the Viet Nam war. So this trip was different. All about mother/daughter bonding and looking for ways to be happy and have fun. Meanwhile back in the midwest, my (90ish)parents are defending their homestead against their childrens' efforts to protect them from falling down stairs. My Dad, a retired jet fighter pilot(who by the was had been bummed out because he didn't get to order troops around in the Viet Nam war), is rodding around the 3 story house in Mom's wheelchair because he did in fact fall down and fracture his hip. So, part of this San Fran experience has been problem solving with Lindsey's aunts and uncle...beginning to seem like episodes of Arrested Development. I picked the picture of the solar system family to help me put family in perspective. Family sure has pos and neg impact on becoming independent and maintaining independence. What do you think? Any success stories?
So stage fright is over, thanks for reading. I see that sleeping in the park is still an option. And there is another war going on. Still I vote for some fun and happiness in this sunny place called San Francisco. Love, Mom

Word.

Of interest. Mayhap.

Score 2 for me

Look! Look!
little girl-face, whats-it one
made an appointment for her life
mummy's here and washing pots
things are good and getting better

Score 1 for Me

I felt really proud today when I remembered how to make a pipe out of an apple and did so for my friend Persephone. I'm usually not very good with my hands, terrible at crafting things, shaky and generally have poor spatial awareness and motor skills (I can dance but I can't parallel park). P was all out of rolling papers and wanted to smoke a cigarette. There was no going down to the corner store to get more because she didn't have her face on yet and I wasn't about to go down 6 floors into the TL morning to get some for her like her dumb boyfriend, so I did the good friend thing and fashioned a pipe out of an apple so that she could get her nicotine. Just as I was stabbing holes in the tin foil with a knife she found her rolling papers and it was all for naught. I did make her take one rip (?) off of the thing before allowing (ha, nobody tells that girl what to do) her to roll herself a cigarette. Then I ate some of the apple, the part not soaked in tobacco, just like in high school with the other stuff.

Also, this morning I decided to think more positively and to share that sunny sunshine with you. My friend Persephone, of the above story, goes around laughing in life's face like it's a casino cop on a power trip or like one of the girls in that movie Daisies (Czech New Wave, yeah, I'm hip) and maybe it's all the Deepak Chopra I've seen her reading but things work out for that girl, and she always has a damn good time, so I'm getting on that train, starting with this story. Here's to some positivity. It's Spring. I'm going to write in the present tense more often because I think it might be empowering. Ha. Shoot!

Score 1 for me: apple pipe

A Po-eem

There was a little girl
who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead
and when she was good
she was very, very good
but when she was bad
she was horrid

Self-reflection

It's possible that I am an idiot.

Saturday on the bus, a man sitting across from me dumped a zip-lock bag full of weed onto a newspaper in his lap and began to roll it quite deftly into about 8 joints, then place them neatly in a large orange prescription bottle. Then the man took out a box of Popeye's fried chicken and ate it.

Also, Saturday as I was walking past, a...uh, streetperson (problematic language noted) who yelled after me that he needed my boots. I felt flattered.

Last weekend while walking to North Beach with my cousin, Michelle, a uh street person (use of term a second time would seem to condone its use but really it's just out of convenience and a sense of symmetry) asked us for spare change. When I said, "Sorry dude, don't have any." He responded by asking, "May I kiss your ass?" To which I responded, "No you may not!" but then quickly thought, "How polite!". He could have said,"Kiss my ass." or "I want to kiss your ass." or "I'm going to kiss your ass." I was happy for the change of pace. My cousin joked that maybe we should take a cab to her hotel on the way back to which I said, "Nah." because I'm all jaded and city now.

And Saturday night I saw my friend Ryan Donnelly play a show as Casual Fog. He saw me in the audience and said, "Hi Lindsey" and I teared. I hadn't seen him in over a year. Then, an all dude indie rock band, Dame Satan, played "I'm on Fire" by Bruce Springsteen and I felt strong feelings about America and Bruce (we're on a first name basis).

Later Saturday night I had one of the best conversations in recent memory with my poetry fellows (fellas might be less gendered?) about the nature of charisma. Sure the conversation began there but went on to the nature of gossip, narcissism, trust, divulgence.and the affects of awareness of these on these etc. etc. rat-a-tat-tat. I'd like to say that my favorite contribution of mine to the discussion was the bit about charisma points in Dungeons and Dragons. My least favorite contribution of mine to the discussion was my use of the phrase "life force" to describe charisma. I think someone said, "Fuck you, Boldt." immediately afterwards. I apologized.

Sunday, I relayed the last paragraph to DZ who told me that the word charisma comes from charis, meaning a gift freely given. More excellent conversations with poetic fellas.

Crap, I have to go to work. Always more but there's some stuff. Mostly all of the above explains why I'm glad to be here in the Bay Area and that is the least charismatic way I could end this blog post and that is what I did.

And there were amazing ladies in my life visiting from out of town who added buoyancy and effervescence to my blah-sauce.

Some Things

1. Baby bed. Ladies, how do we write it? Baby-bed, Babybed, Baby Bed? Baby bed is a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor with women in it in sweatpants. There's nothing sexy about it. It's not for that. Okay, maybe it's a little sexy but back off, you know, this is pure. I miss it. This is decidedly not what it looks like, but what if it did?

Do people actually put their babies in these things?

2. Having already been a mathematical singularity this week ie: a tiny point emitting no light (bed), I am now beginning to expand, unfortunately, not big-bang style. I am recreating Fantasia and just like Sebastian I will fuck it up (see: The Neverending Story by Michael Ende [kind of a terrible book for children]), start wars, name things incorrectly, create things that live their own lives and come back to me in unfamiliar forms (gossip, poetry, food, shit, money, work). I will build something that will break down again but that's okay because that means that built into an assured destruction is a next time.

3. What else, guys, what else? I nearly imploded during the reading at David Buuck's house last night (Brandon Brown and Erica Kaufman). That's a dramatic statement but it really felt like I was about to collapse into a more densely packed version of myself. No, I was just imagining being a singularity. I want to say something about the reading but don't know where to start and have no time to do it properly.

4. I'm a child. For this, I blame the children.

5. Brandon's blog.

6. It's personal. All of it.

7. Something pertinent.

Life-like

1:38 AM: Look out: On a daily basis I see at least one person cry; today it was 3 1/2 (1/2 for tag games, one for bummer birthday, two for family) and I was the cause of almost half. Sometimes my heart goes out. Today it went out when a very small person said, "Everybody hates me (...) I don't have feelings anymore. My feelings are being crushed." If you don't remember how it happens, how it happened to you, this (that) is how it happens. You learn early and then you forget and then you learn again and remember, maybe, or you were home schooled and you're constantly amazed or you don't want to believe it (that) and so are constantly amazed.

Everything is going to be fine.

It's okay.

signed,

The Mediator
The Enforcer
The Comforter
The Comforted

Here's to You

Happy Friday and a couple things:

1. Pony vs. Horse: First, what does each word conjure for you and why? Do you notice a difference? On a scale of 1-10, how bummed are you that you're being asked about ponies again? Second, were Pony vs. Horse the name of an independent film would it be better than that terrible indie Kiwi (Kiwindie?) picture Eagle vs. Shark? John? Third, I typed in the phrase "pony vs. horse" in google image search and a picture of Keanu Reeves came up. Sadly, the picture was not downloadable or you'd be looking at that picture. Oh, hey, do the image search; it's a nice moment you can create for yourself. Last, the reason behind the pony fixation will be revealed in due time, just bare with me.

2. Oh snap! Kathy Acker was an Aries. Fire sign. I totally called it (quietly to myself while riding the train today.) Thanks, Wikipedia.

3. Miette left me another poem this morning. I'd like to reemphasize that she did physically type this poem and that I had nothing to do with it. This one wreaks of either angst or psychedelics. Also, I don't know if you can see this but on my computer screen the repeated I's make striped rainbow patterns. Cat, you are freaking me out.

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-LESSON PLANS, OVERBOARD

Thanks, guys. I'd apologize for the kitty, pony, astrology overload but then I'd be apologizing for my brain and I just can't do that in good conscience.

Burnination

Max-love Lover,

I've been writing some weird shit lately. Your beautiful notebook has been sullied by my vile thoughts, but maybe that's okay. I think I've been channeling Guyotat (total wacko). I've been wanting to transfer this feeling and image that's been charging around inside me: one of a woman who's so chock full of writhing, electric energy that her hair stands on end, crackling with electricity, currents thrumming from her fingertips and fucking serious flames in her eyes. She is the sound of giant amps stacked high turned to 11 blaring distorted electric guitars and wailing, wailing, wailing. More precisely, the distorted sound of a lion's roar through these amps.

I think it's the influence of the fire signs in my life: you, Persephone, Jessica. Y'all are fucking crazy and I love you for it. You seem lit up from the inside like your skin is about to rip apart and light about to come streaming out in big ol' rays that blind on-lookers by scalding their eyeballs to a filmy cloud of gack. You just don't quit. The term "balls to the wall" means nothing to you. Your balls are in the wall, like a foot deep. Your balls ARE the wall. I don't know. It's weird (and I'm this l'il air sign just blowing on you, saying, "Yeah, yeah, burn...")

...
The above is an email sent to dear-friend Maxwell Heller a while back. I post it not so much for its (eh hem, aack, blarf) literary value but because I recently found references to this electrified Jezabel beast woman in the work of Kathy Acker (The Adult Life of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec) and Dodie Bellamy (The Letters of Mina Harker) and wanted to share. Kathy and Dodie (In my head we're all total buds and hang out red tent style, chatting and drinking tea and calling people "fucking morons" together) get it and maybe, I got it from them and have since forgotten the source. Either way, see those references below:

Acker:

Janis wasn't going to be put off like this. Goddamnit, he was going to notice her. Notice me! Notice me! her body cried. She ran into Jimmy and started punching him.
"Just cause you're some fuckin' MOVIE STAR," her eyes, skin, and hair seemed to light up and explode, "you think you can ignore me..."

Bellamy:

...I was giving him more than he asked for and I hardly recognized myself in it...purged in the fires of the Book of Life I felt utterly bewitching my flaming hair crinkling like seaweed my logo-glossed lips spewing opinions..."

Thanks, ladies, and thank you to the band Karp, which has been providing the soundtrack to the burnination in my brain lately.