Pieces of Oakland Sky

 

   here    upon me 

a slash

  an arc

     a   bird

skyline    telephone poles

 Diaspora into sky

    Up the roofline

I emerge and see the colors

creamsicle orange   pale green    washed out plum

 

I color you, West Oakland

 

and try to see you against green leaves on a slash of clear blue skylight

 

The skylight

 

Alive writing 

Thoughts of this thing 

Ulysses, by James Joyce, alive is writing 

Something that you’re seeing as it happens.

 

Of course the movies already did that.

 

But  experience isn’t always authentically shared 

Can you see this room I’m in the way I do as I’m thinking? 

Don’t make yourself nervous thinking about this

 

Because    

 

It’s part of my thoughts

 And then it can become part of yours

And you can see its parts in what I’m saying

But you can’t see it, not as I do 

Writing looking down at the words as you write is different

 

Somehow.

 

Instead you sit here at a keyboard, exactly here, and look to your right 

You see more than paper 

See that building across the lot?

See how a low squat barn severed itself in half lengthways? 

Its got a rectangular eye near the peak with a pupil

A long earlobe with an earring and a short slash for a mouth

 

I’m wondering what it must be like to live a ruler-oriented awareness

where everything measured is supposed to be

 

I know of course 

But it makes me nervous

And if I don’t let go I start getting edgy 

 And if it keeps going nerves on edge for too long....I usually get angry, like I can hear hammering in the distance.  

 

A worker

 

The sunlight incredibly rushing across the floor in a stripe 

A cool breeze lifts from below

wind passes through the windows and opens out through the skylight to join the other wind.

 

My loft

 

If I distract myself with how much things cost I really get nervous 

I was thinking about this room

How it’s mine     

How I formed it 

Kind of like a cave out of some refuse left by default   

In this case a hundred ten year old Victorian cottage left behind

In the lowlands of Oakland

when the industrial workers came

 

A long dead craftsman 

Redwood forests chopped in two  

By four splinterees, hammering, sawing

 

A worker

 

And the wealthy moved

 

 

We lifted once, a side of the roof in the attic 

Created a stairway...  Then I made a home for myself here 

Never really before like this. Just this

 

I am sitting here thinking, What?

 

Oh yeah

 

What’s it like to live a ruler ordered experience without relief.  No humor 

One thing, you could get so full of rules you’d wind up with a continual high pitched giggle as the fullness squirts out your throat 

Probably a sign you’re a pretty nonviolent person and you don’t let anger enter your experience 

No, don’t be angry.  Probably too dangerous 

If you think of anything beyond the ruler oriented existence as anarchy, then even laughter is anarchy 

But it might be truth.  It might be. I’d rather live in truth