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.