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…that I haven’t taken yet, but patience! (I do have well over two thousand images on my flickr account. Check it out by just clicking on any of my photos.) India is three weeks away and the destination is just as thrilling and revealing as the voyage. I’ll be in Delhi, Agra, Jaipur and Pushkar on a friggin’ camel! In the meantime, let me catch you up.
In the news:
I don’t know if to hang my head down in shame as one of the most advanced nations only graduates 70.5% of its students. Although Houston has done great job in increasing its numbers above the national average, as a whole, Texas is having serious issues with this.

On the professional horizon: Can your boss ever get dooced? (Dooced meaning fired for blogging.) Well, not if they never keep one. Considering just about every teacher is being forced to head that direction, already there with a personal blog, built one for their class’ e-portfolios district mandate…well shouldn’t the boss blog too? My take is that being an administrator is not easy and dealing with a small school of 500 students really means that the administrator affects the lives of 2,000 people or more. A blog can only increase sensitivity and liability for that person. However, as a teacher, I really have no respect for a someone who has no idea the amount of work a blog requires and will therefor not compensate accordingly or have realistic expectations. Via Education & Tech

FREE: You gotta love it, and not just for educators only! Ever wanted to go to college for free, yes I said FREE, well check this out Universities with the Best Free On-line Courses. While it wont give you your degree or prepare you for the massive amounts of writing you’ll happily do, it will remove much of the anticipation, give you a good heads up on the class and make learning a reward onto itself.

FOR EDUCATORS: Giga pixels is here, hurray! Remember those really cool pictures from Mars? Well the people who made the camera at Carnegie Mellon University are hoping to preserve the images of the world’s heritage sites by partnering with schools to take pictures of them. They hope the technology will be available for the public on a later date and at a far less cost than your mega pixel camera. Check out the giga sexy visuals from learning.com. Can you imagine movies with this technology? While you’re there peek in on the Grock It debate of the overhaul of the educational system. I both like and dislike the idea of peer learning because it changes class sizes but even now as a graduate student, I feel like the instructor is copping out when I get this kind of work. The educational experience then depends on the students if they are able to contribute to the class and make it worth while…so why am I paying the university to teach? It has worked for the people at Carnegie Mellon’s IT and education department but that’s a very extraordinary example. The jury is still out on this one.

Spiritually:
Has your mind on your money got nothing but money on your mind? Then you’re missing out on 6 important things in your life, according to Dumb Little Man, like self-esteem, self awareness, and happiness. Talk about a heated debate on this one! Although I’m leaning toward the “money is great start to happiness” camp, a lower paycheck may not mean less when additional fees for things like a good health care package go away. Health care….that’s another post.

Well folks, love to hear your input! Remember, you’re never lost, you just don’t know where you’re going yet.

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Private journal: Having been foretold that his son will become a monk, the king took all precautions to shelter his son from things that would make him think too deeply. The baby grew up with luscious mango gardens, given a beautiful wife and all of his servants were told to smile and replaced when age showed. At the age of 30, the prince saw for the first time in his life an old beggar. I wonder how the prince felt and what his thoughts were seeing someone so frail.

Connections that run through my mind: If 30% of the English language in compromised of the Anglo-Saxon warrior tribes and 60% of the Greek/Latin philosophers, does it mean it takes less words to fight than to farm in any language? One of the worst punishments on a human psyche is to want something they cannot have but be so close to touch. Sisyphus knew this pushing his rock up a hill. Legend has it that so did the Shah Jahan, the king who built the Taj as a testament of love for his wife. The Shah was legendary for his guardianship of the structure making contractors and workers alike swear to never work on a similar project and beheading those who wished to replicate it. Yet, when one of his sons desired the same, he was was placed under house arrest on the top of one of the minarets with a window over looking the Taj. Years later, that same son killed his brothers, claimed the throne and placed his father under house arrest, except this time the window to the Taj was sealed shut.

I’ve chosen to celebrate my birthday this year by visiting the Taj Mahal and the Rajastan region for my friend’s wedding. I contemplate on the reality of the situation and how my thoughts reflect so easily in this country. India in mid July is not something I can predict. I doubt that she ever predicted out of all her friends, I would be the one attending. She tells me not even her family will make it, and it makes me wonder if I’m the only one who views “family” without the prerequisite of blood, time and/or location. The warnings from previous visitors are plenty: beware of the lice, the dung, the heat, the smell, the water, the crowds, the air, the pickpocket children, and more. I think about Colombia and the kidnappings, drug wars and the roofies to render a person unconscious. I wonder if the visible filth is worse than the implication of filth.

Truth is, I don’t get it. I don’t get how people speak of pride for a place/culture/nation and turn around to use violence against it. I don’t get how politicians in countries so rich with resources like Colombia and India can engage in corruption, sacrificing many for their own gain. I don’t get many things but among it all, I remember my friend who spent many years quiet and alone without dating. I thought it was unhealthy treating herself this way…soon, she’ll be getting married. Thinking of the Taj Mahal, I finally get that she put herself in the minaret for safety and not for punishment. It’s not that we see what we want to see, sometimes. It’s that we remember what we understand and choose the direction of that which we don’t.

The prince left his town at 30 to find answers for the suffering he saw for the first time at 30. His name was Siddhartha, but later he came to be known as Buddha.

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Living midpoint between the valley
and the peak of a mountain
means you’re still in the shadow of the giant
feeling tall on a troth;
It’s like standing on the plastic rim of a tupperware
disfigured with evaporating heat
waiting for the snow kissed winds to sweep
dropping heat and eyes to sleep
on this somnambulists hot night.

It’s one o’clock in the morning.
Waiting for the curtain’s to animate,
I hear my neighbor across the street.
Tonight, he has a soliloquy,
performed on the paved hot road
with quarreling cats and swindling rats,
Drunk and missing home, he says, drunk and missing home.
He’s a teacher too, but we’ve never met
first impressions should be coherent and content,
so I just listen.

Zucchini is in season, so I have five
Funny how this raw vegetables looks
on the palm of my hand:
reticent and protective,
porous, listless and dry–
Sometimes I think that sadness is a dried heart
if not too skinny with lost affection
too plump walled from affection
Like Zucchini, soak in hot water and right attention,
the core will get thick and heavy,
soft and present,
gliding aromatic wave of playfulness,
sweet and semi crunchy talkative invitation:
“Dance with me, dance with me!”

The wind is back,
The rats scurry off to the sewers,
Heat that revives is different from the heat that hangs
Cold that dries is different from the cold that sooths.

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“So what inspires you?” Silent fidgeting as the audience struggles to fill the empty void at the reading. Typical answers: things no one talks about, my culture, the stories of my grandmother, comic books, etc, etc. Me? I’m inspired by pictures of my throat when it was invaded by mathematically perfect spherical colonies of bacteria.

I was born in a generation that watched the flesh of my country scar and people dive hundreds of stories, screaming, charred skin, seared mouth, and from somewhere hearing: do we have a list? Angered and pained, I supported Congress to war. Seven years, 4,000 soldier bodies, and a thousands of dollars lost on a depreciated economy, I’m regretting that decision. I sat on the pinhole of a gun in slum raids at three o’clock in the afternoon, and in the cockpit watching bombs fall to a mushroom in a part of the world that I thought were only markers of my parent’s generation. After we won the war, we’d leave, right? But war is never that simple and I wonder what was I cheering for on the tv? Say mister, is that an extended cab, 12 cylinder engine SUV?

Or how about the financial uncertainty since the fifth grade that there would no Medicare/Social Security funds for me? Nothing better than a 15 minute surgery that costs me two months paycheck even with insurance. Welcome to the land of the free and watch your step, don’t want to get injured and fall financial uncertainty or foreclosure with medical bills. But those with money aren’t really affected, right?

Do you want me to say the fairness of affirmative action? No, that ended the year I applied to law school. Watching the lawyer across the way living in a one bedroom to pay quarter million school loans to get a job that pays a teacher’s salary just didn’t equate. So this artist/teacher wonders why one job should be more prized than another while society complains on issues of crime, child endangerment, etc.? You get exactly what you pay for returned with the respect that you give it. Were we better off trying to balance a situation of inequality or asking a child to be responsible even if they couldn’t get all those extras tutorials and experiences on the other side of the tracks? Or was that just a band aid for a bigger issue of inequality that no one has dared to touch?

So, is it any wonder if I choose something that can be proven, logical, and needs no translation to inspire me? I am part of Generation Bacterium. I am Googlized, idealized, generalized and egocentrically privileged to hide in the world I want…just look at my avatar. I am part of a generation of extreme information and inverted emotional disposition; just check my blog or Facebook to keep up and don’t forget to show comment love. I am the generation that has watched documentaries of thousands starving in third world countries since 1986 fed by the UN except now, there are no more crops. I wish it would be about survival, but that would be standing on those that live on hands and knees. I watch for haphazard encounters, like worms on vermiculated wood, looking for the few to change the world for the world’s sake and not to benefit their pocket.

As for the I never get political argument, I would, but it would be a two headed dog in a New York avenue looking for some time to kill.

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We lie miles apart
seconds in touch
I think about you
I wonder if we could be making love to Tom Waits
maybe I just listen to Waits too much
silence

Damn, my miserable want
or the Achilles of my lips
so warm with the hot breath of our embrace…
but not really.

in Naha, I’ll sleep in the palace of the shogun
with night and gale floors
and secret anti-assassination whispers
loud knowledge of clear intentions,
honesty of affection

I like my eyes,
dark, quiet, small and sad
porcelain white plate cool surface
to my baby octopi heart
blind temerity,
into blue fires I go
mastery is painful.

“The one who loves the least is master.” –W. H. Auden

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But really, with two pink eyes, bird flu, bronchitis, two busted ankles and endless visits to the doc, thank God April is gone! So how can you celebrate poetry?

1. Poets.org has 30 ways to celebrate the month by: adding a verse to your signature line, hosting a reading, taking your favorite poet out to lunch or giving out a pocket size poems to your friends like this one or this one. My personal favorite is the mp3 ring tones and the phone friendly poetry web page. Think how cool a phone ringing with “Do not go gentle into that good night, Fight!..” would be!

2. Gas is expensive so check out your favorite poet on the net with University of Cali’s TV. I love the way the camera allows you to see the relationship of the author to the audience. The second option: Download a chapter a day from the best books in history or checkout a podcast. A little difficult with the monotone reading and there’s no time to look for really cool words.

3. Find other poetry blogs with blogged poetry. Because I believe poetry is personal, technical and artistic, I surf through many web pages before something hits me. I recommend Ms. Hamm’s beautiful poetry blog and my next interview. Though modern poetry breaks with the author’s natural breath, I still have to wonder where is the line between poetry and prose? Mr. Rappleye, for introducing me to the words of Rothke, “I used to think of poets as helping one another; as advancing consciousness together.” It’s difficult to find a community of poets.

4. Go Shexy! After I’m done with this semester (Research Analysis: 100!), I plan to celebrate poetry month by dressing in my hottest black number and passing out my poetry to Asians on the street. In this harebrained idea is the newest member on my blogroll: Epik Justino, teacher, camera dude and human rights activist.

I was fortunate to see Madam Butterfly as a teenager at the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C. I will be visiting the inspiration for this play, the second city to get hit with an atomic bomb: Nagasaki, Japan. I am looking forward to seeing the poetry the place inspires within me and taking lots of great pics from the 9-13th.

Stay tuned for these images and as always, write and send me poetry. Orale! Bali, Bali! The sun sets slower on your side of the world.

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