Projects
"20 lines a day, genius or not"
dailyness: 1. Of or occurring during the day. 2. Happening or done every day: the
physician's daily rounds. 3. Computed or assessed for each day: a daily
record. 4. Everyday: casual clothes only for daily use.
PROJECT: DAILYNESS
What does it mean—these minutes, hours,
the minutia of a given day—what do all these repetitive gestures, tasks,
and moments mean? How do they define/undefine our lives and the lives of others? These arethe questions I set out with when
I began my dailyness project and I feel as if just when I am almost able to
comprehend what it is I am doing, it is lost. Perhaps this is what Sartre meant when he said "Existence is what I am afraid of."
How do we measure the weight of time set against
such brevity, such loss, such absence? My dailyness project is concerned with
the how of how we live our lives. I began this project on February 13th 2003,
after Brandon Mise, founder of Blue Barnhouse Publishing, a good friend and most-excellent writer and book artist
posed the question to me, "It seems like you're generating a lot of work
these days." I was surprised he held this perception of my writing, as
normally, I had only written under the pressure of feeling guilty I hadn't
written in a long time.
This began as an experiment, a yearlong project
(that hopefully continues the rest of my life) that is a variation on Marie Stendhal's
practice of writing "20 lines a day, genius or not." Although its ostensible
purpose was to pursue the limits of generating new work every day for a year,
this practice helped me confront certain personal concerns and expose areas
of my life and experience that I had previously failed at excavating.
My America. An Anthology
This anthology highlights the collected efforts of
14 poets who spent an emotionally charged and
intimate four months exploring the essence of
Witness and writing from that stance. While the
group was committed to this exploration before
the onset of Episode II of the Gulf War, the
timing was chillingly serendipidous: During the
course of these months, we bore Witness to the
world as the prospect of a war with Iraq loomed,
descended, and then quietly withdrew from the
eye of the nation, with its consequences, for the
most part, peripherally seen at best.
One such consequence is this anthology.
Only 150 printed copies of it are in existence, and it
was assembled entirely by hand by the authors
within.
We realize that many of you might see this book
as a keepsake, a locket, something worth holding
on to. If the book means half as much to you as it
does to us then you’ll understand why we ask that
it remain in your possession only long enough for
you to inhabit the work before you pass it along
with an encouragement to its recipient to do the
same. Make this book a gift as we have made it a
gift to you. Witness can only move as far as you
allow it to travel. (Hard copies of the anthology might be available through Blue Barnhouse Publishing.)
Download My America Anthology
Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace October 2006
Since 1991, National Book Award-winning author and peacemaker Maxine Hong Kingston has led meditation-and-writing workshopsfor veterans and their families. This book is a collection of the essays, poems, and stories that grew out of the group's work together. Vast in scope and in heart, it is the distilled wisdom of suvivors of five wars.
Most of the writings are by combat veterans, medics, and others who served in the military or were in military families, many of whom continue to struggle with the trauma of war—physical and emotional disorders, substance abuse, homelessness. Other contributors joined the group as survivors of abuse, gang members, and also conscientious objectors, deserters, and peace activists. Reading this extraordinary and varied collection ofdeeply moving writings, we witness worlds coming apart and being put back together through telling of one's story and being heard.
Visit Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, Koabooks.com or Amazon.com for ordering information.
Shrapnel
Shrapnel is a novel about the fragmented life of Garrett Patterson, a disabled Former Marine from Episode I of the Gulf War. He’s on the run from his own life, from the Marines, and from the nightmares of war. He’s on a journey across America, working odd jobs as he meets eccentric people who have a lesson or two to teach. Garrett struggles with his guilt about helping kill thousands of Iraqis and a secret about a fellow soldier who was killed in action that threatens to consume him. Garret discovers that the road is his community as he wanders by-ways searching for a home and a sense of wholeness.
Garrett Patterson comes home from the Gulf after ten-months in the theatre of war to ticker-tape parades and cheering crowds. But when the fan-fare ends, Garrett’s nightmare begins. As the threshold between his waking life and his nightmares merge, Garrett withdraws from the world, until one morning he woke, walked out to his car with only a couple hundred dollars and a sea-bag full of clothes, and drove away from everything and everyone he knew.
Along the way, Garrett stops in back-road places and befriends quirky strangers in places forgotten or overlooked by the rest of the world: There’s Martin, the frenetic but brilliant physicist, grieving from the loss of his wife ten years earlier, who shares with Garrett his radical zen-like theories how he might bring his wife back from the event horizon. There’s the ghost of Captain Walker who was shot down on a bombing run, there’s the ghost of Sergeant Lang who shot himself in the head while Garrett watched from the next tent over, there’s Lance Corporal Morris whose death Garret carries on his shoulders.
“In absence, presence is made perfect and the world is made remarkable and is redeemed.” These are the words that haunt Garrett, as he struggles under the weight of guilt at having helped kill thousands of people. Garrett wants to believe in redemption, but he doesn’t know how.
Shrapnel is a story about the weight of guilt and the levity of grace and a soldier who struggles to make peace with the fragments of his past and find his way home on America’s black velvet highways.
Download an excerpt of Shrapnel (work-in-progress)
Manufacturer's Specifications and Guidelines
This book rose out of my dailyness project while working on my Masters degree at San Francisco State University. I've always held a fascination with the vernacular of consumer product guidelines, specifications, glossaries, and warnings. This project began and is continually evolving using the dictionary or glossary format for containing poetic explorations of objects, people, time, memory, and the curious relationships that connect-the-dots between all that is our world. Blue Barnhouse, publisher/author/book artist Brandon Mise, will be releasing this collection sometime in the near future.
(download Manufacturer's Specifications and Guidelines (requires Adobe Acrobat))
