this is what i look for//what do you do with your hands when you're not looking?

Click for more

And more to come {sorry, no click}

i voted for the first time//there is a field

Ivoted for the first time in a presidential election this week, and I went through the wrong door. 

You, too, may feel like something about Tuesday went wrong – or that the polls spelled something wonderfully, wonderfully right. But please join me in this moment of being uncertain. Please join creation in creating, poetry in reflecting, life in living with others. If you voted, you made a choice. You must keep proving to yourself why you made that choice.

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Read more here.

DANCE LIKE is expressing itself in//\\new colors

[this is obviously monochrome, but still an image from my most recent photoshoot. I love this one.]

[but click here for this color I'm talking about.]

DANCELIKE///Photoshoot 4

Let's dance again.

DANCE LIKE

Photoshoot 4

 ^ (to check out or event details, we must be Facebook friends) ^

LIKE>>>

a project i didn't complete//make it ironic because of that//bend

This past summer, I quickly became enthralled by an idea for a photo project. Although I can honestly say I usually follow through on my ideas, this one didn't quite make it; I had hoped for it to be a collaborative project, with different people contributing their photos. At this point, there exist only twenty-five photos, all from me.

that can change.

the Project: "One Pose", where each collaborator chooses one yoga asana,

practices the asana every day and,
at some point during the pose,
takes a picture of his/her/their view. The picture-taking part necessitates safety and control; don't choose an asana like the first one I chose, chakrasana, or wheel pose:

thanks Jung, but don't get all psychotherapy on me when I'm just tryna to do a backbend.

you can imagine it would be difficult to take a photo while maintaining a backbend. The first photo in this series is me attempting to do that. 

I changed my "One" very quickly:

My "One" Asana:Padangusthasana (Big Toe Pose) (Google it)

Days: 24 (+1 in Chakrasana) 

Maybe we can continue this project. Interested?

simple.««««««««««««««««««««««««««««

Parritz, R. H., & Troy, M.F. (2014) Disorders of childhood: Development and psychopathology (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Rochester Fringe//color schemes are found in nature

Rochester Fringe Festival was the goal, and we got caught up in typing. Well, yesterday, we did both.

A few friends and I drove to Rochester to support our college's super-secretive extra-extraordinary Guerrilla Poets. They call themselves guerrillas because they constant disseminate poetry throughout campus. Check the library bathroom; deepen your mind as you do your business.

Guerrilla's exhibit consisted of poetry, as always, and everywhere: as magnets attached to boards painted with magnetic paint and inviting you to manipulate them; as lines chalked on pavement and encouraging you to write each word then step back and read it all at once; and as pages on tables, offering a good read as you sit.

Here's the Guerrilla event page, and a few photos:

Guerrilla Art at Fringe

Okay, supportive post, we love Guerrilla at Geneseo. Without further adieu, get caught up in this typewriter. Filming him type was majestic. And look at how beautifully the colors complement one another! Color schemes just happen, I tell you:

For more videos like this (I am constantly making them I have no reason not to), check out my Instagram.

And to make videos like this, check out the video-making app Splice.

//mind the ñ

I am trying to arrive again.

Please allow my study material for a little while.

publicity//\\poems

I haven't been posting as regularly.

Let me see where we can start.

The year is starting up again, and as the publicist for my college's Poet's Society, I promote our organization cautiously. How does one publicize poetry? Isn't PR and poetry a laughable combination?

The best thing I could think of – to avoid boisterously advertising a sometimes quiet but chronically inspired group – was to present images in the backgrounds of our voices.

And I'll end this post with a favorite poem of mine:

Youth

Through all of youth I was looking for you

without knowing what I was looking for

or what to call you I think I did not

even know I was looking how would I 

have known you when I saw you as I did

time after time when you appeared to me

as you did naked offering yourself

entirely at that moment and you let

me breathe you touch you taste you knowing

no more than I did and only when I 

began to think of losing you did I 

recognize you when you were already 

part memory part distance remaining 

mine in the ways that I learn to miss you

from what we cannot hold the stars are made

P.S. This poem tends to be under the name of W.S. Merwin, but I first came across it under the name of Osip Mandelstam. Through all the midday afternoons this poem has followed me, through the nights I have followed it, I no longer wish to know the author. 

2 videos about eggs//

ONE i know will be relevant to you. that is if you eat hard-boiled eggs:

1:06 by YouTube channel CrazyRussianHacker . Everything that I've seen from this guy is highly amusing yet useful.

THIS ONE is exactly 5:54 minutes longer than that (^) one:

5:54 minutes longer

^^if you watch this even though it's considered long these days you might find this information useful, but not quite amusing:

a celebration of eggs, light, myself, people nearby, Lady Lamb (who makes the music you hear), and something that connects everything 

for optimal viewing, watch with good headphones or speakers, not too loud, with little light in the room and your keyboard completely black.

"Atlas" by Lady Lamb:

Funny how a good thing opens your eyes, makes you feel the branches, leads you to the pines. Funny still how infatuation shuts you all up as it makes you a dead beat son of a gun. Honey, but I do know where I come from; I got a key to this chest. Honey but I do know where I end up; I got a body for this bed and I undress like eyes upon an atlas. Shotgun orchestra, the needle bends as it spins. And we got skin like we were born to swim past our scalps in it. And I do, I want to swim the length of this with you. I want to swim the length of,  swim the length of, swim the length of this life with you. I'll undress like eyes upon an atlas. I'll make you a map to me, I'll be there in your sights. I won't make me hard to find. I'll be made into a mark  with a heart steadied and strong; a readied aim for your arrow, my darlin. I know where I come from.

star-mangled pan-ner//you can find this recipe on your own

but I will give you this, and it's for your bedrock baby, your crust:

4 ingredients

he vuelto//bagels.

He vuelto {I'm back}.

Yes I'm learning Spanish. But how do I learn during the summer, without formal classes to guide? One way is to regurgitate everything I am thinking in English into Spanish.

solid method.

I haven't posted in a while, and that's because posting hasn't been my priority. Traveling as a Teaching Assistant, you reserve less time for what you're doing and thinking and spend more time doing and thinking things with your colleagues and students.

But ahora, he vuelto. So, I'll indulge. With bagels. Let's begin with this short video:

Food Science understanding adapted from thekitchn.com

Ingredients. 

This recipe is adapted from Margaret Anne's "Best Homemade Bagels".

Yield: 8 bagels [Today's making yielded 7 –– we lost some dough along the way]

Time: at least 3 hours.

Le Dough:

• 1½ CUPS warm water (Margaret's recipe calls for the water to be 110° F – I didn't have a thermometer)
• 1 TABLESPOON active dry yeast (a little more than the yeast in one of those Fleischmann's packets)
• 1 TABLESPOON brown sugar (I didn't have brown sugar either – scroll to the bottom for what I did to cope)
• 4 CUPS flour (I used all-purpose unbleached)
• 2 TEASPOONS salt

Le Water Bath:

• 8 CUPS water
• 2 TABLESPOONS brown sugar (one again, what did I do to cope? scroll down)

Directions.

1.) Pour the water into the bowl, and sprinkle in the yeast and brown sugar. Let sit 5 minutes. Add in the flour & salt and mix (you can mix with a mixer, but I don't like to use mixers. I use spoons & hands). A dough is now formed. Knead the dough gracefully for 10 minutes, like I did below: 

2.) Place the dough in a greased bowl (I greased the bowl using the bare end of a stick of butta), cover with a kitchen towel or cling wrap, and let rest for 1-1.5 hours.

resting just to rise. so poetic.

eyes targeting individual messes. not so poetic.

3.) Transfer the dough to a floured work surface. Divide the dough into 8 equal parts to shape into balls. Punch a hole in the middle of each ball and swirl the thing around your finger with its tip on the top of your work surface. Cover whatcha got with a kitchen towel and let rest for 30 minutes.

it's the bro. 

his hands were too lovely up there to the right so i made them black & white

these are my hands tho.

4.) While the dough is resting (to save time, of course), prepare the water bath by heating the water and brown sugar to a gentle boil. I was going to use a large pot, by Margaret recommended a wok. I didn't have a wok, so I used a large sauté pan.

upstage – what i was going to use

downstage – what i actually used

5.) Preheat the oven to 425° F. Re-poke a hole through the center of each ball, as some holes may have closed over. Swirl the dough on your finger to stretch the hole, like you did before.
Place each newly-swirled bagel on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet.

6.) Transfer the bagels to the simmering water, four at a time. Simmer the bagels for 2 minutes, flip over, and simmer for another minute.

7.) Use the end of a wooden spoon to remove the bagels from the water and return to the baking sheet.

8.) Ah! Because you preheated your oven, it is now hot. Bake the bagels for about 25 minutes, or until they look like the best NYC bagel you've never had.

9.) Transfer the bagels to a cooling rack 5 minutes before serving. Serve with whatever you'd like. You probably already have something on your mind...

Cream cheese ~ Lox ~ Butta ~ Bacon ~ Eggs ~ Cheese~ Bacon, Egg, & Cheese ~ Peanut Butter.

Y'all know I tend to opt for the PB. I won't add an end photo here because I don't want to perpetuate bagel paragons. You make what you make. 

enjoy.

****brown sugar note:

this was why I did not have brown sugar.

so I made brown sugar instead! 1 tbsp molasses for every cup of white sugar.

All videos made with Splice Video Editor by GoPro. Download it here --> it's free!

fear//make.french.toast

It is finals week here in college world! What an in to a discussion of FEAR.

I've been thinking about FEAR because I feel it, I'd say, 95% of the time, at least a little bit. A sense of FEAR seems to be perpetually looming. Both its presence and its absence come in waves. The FEAR waves just permeate less suddenly, and for longer.

hello i am either FEAR or no FEAR!!!!!!!!!

In the past two days, FEAR has turned from a feeling to an explicit thought. FEAR has ceased soaking the background of my consciousness and is now dripping in a puddle of its own pee downstage. FEAR is wet; like liquid, it pours. And recently, FEAR has been soaking up the spotlight–and is able to be seen through, for now. 

Flows of FEAR are usually followed by an ebb; now they are consciously monitored, analyzed, deliberated. Part of this temporary change, I think, was inspired by Liz Garbus' documentary, What Happened, Miss Simone? I had heard about the flick for a while, and decided to see for myself what all the speculation was about. I am not going to make the space here for the discussion that her life and legacy deserve, but I recommend that you watch the doc. 

FEAR is also centerstage, downstage to Garbus' investigation into the musician's life and career. It is often humbling to remember that FEAR affects most people, even those who seem to have no reason to fear anything at all.

Maybe that's the relationship! I thought. Maybe it's as direct as that:

freedom = no FEAR. 

The absence of FEAR leads to freedom; freedom is only experienced in the absence of FEAR.

In appreciation of the human ability to THINK about THOUGHTS, I wrote a little thing:

what I could do if I had no fear!

how would i do it?:

extract the amygdala there are two and they are almonds but especially on the right

side 

rip it out 

with the fear of anaphylaxis from the one allergic

to tree nuts.

FEAR ancestors who were fearful lived by skirting

situations and saying 'that does not seem safe' while hiding

in caves.

but we are safe! we are safe in piles of laundry

still with this fear of having

nothing to put it into nothing

to promise a ripping out of.

it comes to malaise

I BECOME the cave.

think about my strange position!:

I am not the one seeking shelter;

I am not the predator;

I am the cave!

just standing and people

may visit. looking

for something.

i may see threat growing 

from the outside!

but i am standing

and i do not know how big I am.

I'm hoping to turn this stream of consciousness into a poem, but I believe that streams of consciousness are poems, too. 

This blog helps me face fear. By writing, I challenge fear with words. Every time I sit down to write a post, my syntax is shaking; I'm afraid that my points can't be articulated due to some inherent incapacity to communicate. 

But this is communicating.

I would like to think that the feeling will go away, that this will all get easier. Maybe for things to 'get easier', I will need to look straight through FEAR; maybe FEAR will go away when I look straight through it; maybe staring through what I don't want to even THINK about leads to freedom. 

If that 5% of the time that I don't feel FEAR is freedom, I could quantify its existence by assessing if, somehow, the FEAR waves begin to ebb 6%, 10%, 50% of the time.

If I could have that, half of my life, no fear.

If you are soaking in fear, try soaking bread instead. Ready for french toast, love?

VEGAN FRENCH TOAST RECIPE. 

IN CAPITALIZED COURIER TYPEFACE.

LET ME TELL YOU,IT ALL BEGINS WITH A BANANA IN SOYMILK AND FEAR.

this recipe does, anyway.

VEGAN FRENCH TOAST ON A SUNDAY.

INGREDIENTS: 

-2 slices of hard, stale bread that you were about to throw away before you saw this. (I used wimpy bread. I should have used hard, stale bread. There's where the name comes from, after all: pain perdu, or "lost bread".)

-1 nanner (banana yeh)

-1 cup soymilk or whatevermilk.

-cinnamon, vanilla extract, and nutmeg to taste.

PROCEDURE: 

1.) Pour whatever walk of milk you have in a blender or food processor. I used a nutribullet and am lucky to have one.

2.) Tear your nanner in 3 or 4 pieces and drop them in that lovely pool of whatevermilk. I feel like "tear" is not apt for describing what I advise you do to the banana.

3.) Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg in there, too.

4.) Blend all that up in your handy machine.

hah! get it? handy?

5.) Pour that mixture into a bowl and dip your (not wimpy) bread into it.

 

+

wimpy bread from Wegmans.

=

6.) Pour oil or butter in a pan. Remember to keep it vegan if you want to keep this recipe vegan. Vegetable oil, canola oil, and butter are good alternatives to animal products.

have no fear! the wimpy bread soaked it up already!