New Web Page

I have my own web page now! I will no longer be posting here. All posts will now be at

www.leilaniclark.com

check it out!

Wanderlust

Been thinking lately about the idea of wanderlust. Is it a malady or a boon? The ultimate literary example of wanderlust is Ishmael, the narrator and protagonist of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Ishmael, who must take himself to see whenever he finds himself "grim of mouth" for fear of knocking the hats off people's heads as he walks down the street.

I can sympathize.

I've moved more times then I can count and find myself wanting to move again.
Feeling the constraints of small town, dreaming of the city, San Francisco, Oakland and all of the adventures I dream await me.

Yet, how many times can one move in a lifetime? Look at the trouble that Ishmael's constant wanderings brought him. He watched all his shipmates die and almost died at the hands of the great white whale. But how boring might his life have been if he stayed on shore?

Frank Bidart

Been reading a collection of poems by Frank Bidart titled Stardust. As I read last night, my eyes fighting sleep, I realized that I rarely read poems because I am lazy. And poems are like puzzles, and you need to concentrate to do puzzles. Here are a few lines from one in the collection I particularly enjoyed deciphering called Advice to the Players:

"But being is making: not only large things, a family, a book, a business: but the shape we give this afternoon, a conversation between two friends, a meal."

I like this because it serves as a reminder that we don't have to create epic works of genius to be an acceptable human being. It sometimes can be enough to just breathe into the day, to make art from the moment, to walk in beauty on a dirty sidewalk.

Not really a poem, more like a collection of repetitions, a collection of thoughts about what it is to be a "maker."

Direct Action Against Iraq War on March 19th

March 19 Actions

DIRECT ACTIONS ON THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE IRAQ WAR: DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO

7:30 am Multiple actions at multiple locations.
Market and Sansome
War machine tours of shame leaving from Market and Sansome throughout the day.

March & Rally to End the War Now!
5 pm
Gather at Civic Center
Polk and Grove Sts., SF
Initiated by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition - San Francisco - (read their call to action)

Rosa Luxemburg

Revolutionary

Born March 5 1871
Died January 15 1919

"The modern proletarian class does not carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight... That's exactly what is laudable about it, that's exactly why this colossal piece of culture, within the modern workers' movement, is epoch-defining: that the great masses of the working people first forge from their own consciousness, from their own belief, and even from their own understanding the weapons of their own liberation."[4]

Leslie and the LY's

Big girls rule! Leslie's playing at the Rickshaw Stop in SF on March 8th. I'm a steal that gold lame jumpsuit if it kills me.

New College of California

The New College of California, where I am currently working on finishing my MFA, has just lost it's accreditation. A sign of the times and the perfect death to the "Age of Aquarius." I will post a link to the article I wrote about New College's history of bad behavior for the North Bay Bohemian as soon as it comes out.

Freeconomics

I stumbled across this article today by Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired: Free: Why $0.00 is the Future of Business
and while I'm still digesting it, here are my inital thoughts.

Now, in all honesty, I'd rather not think about money, advertising, web business and all those things that involve what I perceive to be slimy handed people doing back-alley exchanges that almost always seem to involve the exploitation of people in countries far away. On the other hand, I love the idea of things being free. Free! It makes my heart happy just thinking about things being given away with no money exchanged and no animals hurt in the process. Anderson basically argues that the times they are a changing in terms of the way we look at scarcity and markets.

The things that power the web-storage, processing power and bandwidth-are getting cheaper by the day, according to Anderson, making it feasible for companies like Google and Yahoo to give things away (web space, blogs, etc) for free while still making a profit in other arenas. It's all very clever and insidious, and I think the whole free thing could be used to great effect by us non-Capitalists trying to keep our heads above water in a deeply Capitalist world. (Is it possible to be a non-Capitalist in a capitalist world?)

Thought of the Day

"It doesn't matter how many freedoms you claim-even the freedom to change jobs you hate, even the greedom to vote among corporate-owned representatives-if you can't breathe the air and can't drink the water (except the water they sell you).

From "On Freedom" by Derrick Jensen

Sandwiches

A few sandwiches available at the bookstore cafe near my house

The Charles Bukowski
Hot ham, cheddar, lettuce, tomatos, mayo on rye

(old man sweat, old rotted wine, cigarette butts, warm beer driplets, hooker bum)

Isabel Allende
Vegetarian burger, jalapenos, jack cheese, avocado, lettuce, tomatos, onion, mayo on a whole wheat bun with tortilla chips

(they had to add the tortilla chips. Just because she's Mexican, except she's not, she's Chilean, and I guess vegetarian and healthy according to this sandwich)

Oriana Fallaci
Provolone, pesto, lettuce, tomatos, sprouts on a focaccia roll

(I have to admit, I had to Google this one. Now, I've learned that Oriana Fallaci was a famous journalist who interviewed everyone from the Dalai Lama to Henry Kissinger. As you may have guessed from her sandwich, she was Italian.)

That's her to the right. A good-looking lady, eh?


Leilani Clark
Fried spam, mustard, white bread

(so sick it's delicious)

Bikini Kill Saved Me

In 1993, I was in my late teens and thoroughly obsessed with music. After graduating from high school, I fell in love with “grunge” and male-fronted bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, Green River, and any artist listed on the Singles soundtrack. But it was a Bikini Kill show in the backyard of a suburban Santa Rosa track home that ultimately altered my relationship to both playing and listening to music as a woman. Through Bikini Kill I discovered Heavens to Betsy (fronted by Corin Tucker who went on to form Sleater-Kinney with Carrie Brownstein of Excuse 17), Team Dresch, Bratmobile, The Third Sex, The Need, Helium, Slant 6 and countless other woman-fronted bands that eventually inspired me to start a fierce band of my own.

Bikini Kill, started in the early nineties in Olympia,Washington, were considered by many to be the forerunners of a movement towards highly-politicized raw feminist punk; they called themselves “riot grrrls.” In the blistering opening anthem “Double Dare Ya,”that kicks off the band's self-titled E.P. lead singer Kathleen Hanna declares over a cacophony of guitar feedback, “We're Bikini Kill! And we want revolution girl style now!” It rings out like an war cry, an invitation to fight a mighty battle. It was a song that spawned a million riot grrrls.

As I did my lonely trudge around the campus of Santa Rosa Junior College, where I was finishing up my second year of community college, I'd see these punk rock goddesses, these “riot grrrls” walking among us mortals with their colored hair and black hoodies emblazoned with the feminist fist of power. They sat on the lawn and smoked cigarettes, taking a break from lives of brazen revolutionary abandon, or so I imagined. I wanted to be one of them. I wanted to live my life outside of the gender norms imposed by society, punk rock style. By spring of 1993 about two months before I moved back to San Diego, I became tentative friends with a girl whose name if I remember correctly was Melissa. She was in with the scene and told me about the Bikini Kill show coming up that weekend. I decided to go, although I was deathly afraid of attending events by myself; it seemed like something I didn't want to miss.

That weekend, I found the innocuous blue stucco house with a white fence where the show was to take place. Melissa sat on a stool outside the gate collecting five dollars from attendees. At the time, that was the going rate for a show with three good bands in someone's backyard. I gave her my money and made awkward small talk for a minute, then entered the backyard. About thirty kids sat on the lawn, on the porch, around the periphery of the yard, waiting for the bands to start. I didn't know anyone. I stood in the corner of the yard and people-watched, praying the bands would begin soon, so I would be alleviated of the pain of not knowing a soul.

It was late in the afternoon and the sun shone weakly as Raooul, an abrasive yet endearing all-girl band from the East Bay, began their set. Two fearless teen singers screeched and pawed their way through rambling out-of-tune songs wracked with sarcasm, boasting and a devil-may-care attitude. I fell right in with their fearless rantings, their ability to scream against the terrible awkwardness and confusion of being a young female in American society. The crowd danced with raucous pleasure as Raooul barreled through a short set of songs, none longer then two minutes.

By the time Raooul finished, the sun was setting and twilight had made the crowd into shadows. Bikini Kill began to set up and I heard the band members talking about how they wouldn't be able to see the instruments in the dark.
“Why don't we pull the cars forward and shine the lights on the band,” suggested a guy with a blue mohawk and a Rancid patch.

Soon, a flood of car headlights illuminated the area where the band would play. Kathleen Hanna, who went on to form feminist electro-pop group Le Tigre, drummer Tobi Vail, guitarist Billy Karren and bassist Kathi Wilcox tuned up quickly, and then blasted into a set of songs that began my re-envisioning what it was to be a woman in modern American society. I was in the midst of a group of traveling feminist warriors, who had been sent to transform me into a warrior myself, singing lyrics that hit me my heart's core. These lyrics castigated rape, body image issues, gender stereotypes alongside full-blown, unfettered rants against patriarchal oppression.

I drank it in—the shining car lights, the dancing crowd, the Santa Rosa night sky. Hanna called out, “Revolution Girl Style!” and we screamed back “Now!” Young punks, male and female, desperately wanting a new way of existing beyond what we had known before. We wanted it so bad. It was like a shot of truth to break up the muddled confusion of teenagedom, the desires to be everything in a world that might offer nothing, the map I needed to create my own way.

Mushroom

I don't tell him how ugly I felt that day as I walked down Valencia Street towards the book store. It wasn't important. What was important was that I had the notion to pick up a a book about living abroad in China. See, this week, I want to research and plan exactly how we will start a new life in Hong Kong. It will work, I tell him. He's scared because he's never done anything like this, and who will take care of the dog while we are gone? My mother, and don't worry, I'll take care of the important things, I tell him.

But then, I remember the garden.

Last spring, I began planning my paradise community garden. I take notes in my mind whenever I pass the abandoned plot of land near our apartment complex. I ache to till and sow until paradise arises as beans, lettuce, peppers and squash. The owner of the land has okayed the project and all I need to do is dig into the dirt and plant some seeds.

But today, I discovered Virginia Woolf. I've listed her books in chronological order by publication date but I thought I would start with Orlando, or To the Lighthouse, or A Room of One's Own, because I own these, and I have never read them. I don't know which to study first, so I study all in fits. And then I lie down and read a book by a different author, one who writes in the present tense, who reminds me more of myself then Virginia Woolf ever will. To this new and different writer I want to say, I understand or, I emphathize, even though my own life experience was never so bad as I remember.

I exaggerate to survive.

Amidst the travel planning, the internet searches, the making of large chicken sandwiches, the feeding of the dog, and the walking through tall green grass damp with morning rain, I forget to tell him how ugly I felt walking along Valencia after sitting next to the pretty girl who writes experimental fiction and remembering that ugly girls are cursed to mediocrity and that mediocrity equals death.

I do tell him about the mushrooms that I saw on my morning walk through the park. He is alarmed and asks me if I ate one. I tell him about Babar, the elephant, who moved to Paris and developed a taste for fine men's clothes, and how the King of Babar's village ate a poison mushroom and in the picture book picture turned shrively and green, then died.

I don't tell him about the mushrooms that I saw in the field where the dog chased the ball. Mushroom villages. Tiny roofs like acorn caps over short beige stems. A mushroom with fine black and white pen lines, turned up at each corner like dainty tea cups. A mushroom like an ice cream cone, layered in black, white and pinkish-beige. A flat-roofed mushroom with unobtrusive construction like the white modernist couch in the shop window by the bookstore on Valencia Street. They, the wall, in between, made of tweezed roots and mushroom tea. Succulents glowed in the window like paradise.

Celebration (The Band not the Song)

I've been listening to Celebration's The Modern Tribe on non-stop rotation for the past few days. Lead by singer Katrina Ford, who recently did a guest vocals on TV on the Radio's latest Return to Cookie Mountain, Celebration combines elements of Sioxie-style goth, a Fela Kuti influenced horn section, and intense, tribal percussion elements, into one grand amalgam. Here, we find songs that could be sung from the tops of mountaintops, a tribute to the world before us--a basketful of crime, war, tempered with the stalwart beauty of nature and the possibilities of human kindness.
I've been following Ford and her organ-stomping bandmate Sean Antanaitis since their early days doing blasting noise punk as the Jaks and in a later incarnation called Love Life, where they paid tribute to the undead ghost of Nick Cave. The Modern Tribe documents a band that has reached a pinnacle. It taps into something primal, the idea of the spirit unbound, and the closeness of humanity with all it's trappings and vestments, to the animal world, and the world of trees lifting towards the sky, our nature as creatures of a wild, unpredictable earth. The German philosopher Hegel wrote of something called the Zeitgeist, which he defined as "the spirit of the age." Celebration ride at the forefront of the Zeitgeist, calling for a new way of being, learning and loving as the system breaks, and societal ruptures knock us further towards the abyss. And they say, Jump.

"If you hear a howl near/It's time to feel, not to fear/If you see Running Bear/Go ahead shake his hand for me."

From "Tame the Savage"

The Voting Conundrum

I don't believe in the system and yet I plan on voting. I feel like I was brainwashed at some point (probably elementary school about the same time that we had to make miniature representations of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria) into thinking that my vote actually counts for something. This is an idea that has proven to be a blatant myth after the last two elections, which were unofficially stolen by our Alfred E. Neuman dictator "leader." Yet, here come the primaries and I find myself weighing who to vote for, without faith in any of them. Somewhere inside my brain, there must be a subconscious desire to feel that I still have some agency in this country, I want to believe the democracy myth, and voting acts as that one frayed root that keeps me connected to the tree. Who am I going to vote for? Does it matter? Not really.