Having determined to help establish a consul in China, and to satiate the buring curiousity of nations about the forbidden interior of the last great civilized country unknown to Europeans I embarked on the great ship Lion with a crew of 45 men on mission of exploration and diplomacy. History is likely not to remember to her children the story of my part to this endeavor, I being but a assistant to greater men, but thinking it worthy to record, I will write for her my true trials and curious observations of a curious land.

My name is Peter J. Williamson, the son of an the most upright ale-house keeper Peter D. Williamson Sr. of London, and good woman Alice Williamson, formerly of South Hampton. The eve before my departure I took a last drink with my good father, my mother standing by, stroking my pale hair with much pain, and thought what a place I am to leave for the misty terrainn of the unknown. Though, I was not to travel alone, as so many have, and will I think for sometime forward, I felt in that moment surrounded by my family in the ale-house whose roof hung affectionately over my infancy, adolescents, and early manhood, that I was leaving to plunge into a land wholey apart from the world. Would I return? When? God knows, voyages of exploration have a unpredictable appetite for men. That said, I kissed my beloved and parents, took my last strong mouthful of ale and strode off for the east.

Our ship, the Lion departed early the following morning into a gray mass of morbid clouds that seemed to dip down to the very face of the see. Needless to say, what excitement I felt was a bit tempered by this dark departure. I'd imagined setting sail for a golden orb of rising sun. I'd imagined song on aboard ship, and many thrilled looks from the men. I saw niether in this solemn business of departure. Rather, all about the ship were about some specific task, and all tended to their works without so much interest purpose as would startle a fly. Indeed, except for the diplomats who conversed about and planned in anticipation of the great hidden East they were to probe, and with hope establish a station in the rest of the ship seemed not to realize, or perhaps care for the adventure ahead.

What excitement their might of been, even in my own heart shrank by and by as the long voyage stretched on, seemingly without end. The greatest excitement came when, landing on the shores of very stopping points we began to notice a change in the terrain, which turned variously more green or more rocky, and showed in places artifacts of man that suggested a difference in cultural domain. By these moments alone, could one feel our progress. By theses moments alone, could I feel that I was progressing toward a reality, much fantasized about. The dream became more and more solid in the progression of land masses, and yet still formless and shifting. At times I struggled to comprehend the solid earth that seated China, our destination, and doubted much if, even as I stood upon it, I would be able to believe or explain it's solidity.....

positano. going back- inside

What is left but memory to recreate that niche in the Italian coast, its cobbled corridors and alley's, roofed with spindling, leafy vines, that held my life for a moment in dreamy stasis. I took no pictures there, nor bought any trinkets or took any artifact that now endures. Even those gorgeous, horribly uncomfortable sandals I bought to replace my busted sneakers are a mere memory- one whose beginning I cannot trace. When did I loose the thing? When did its shape and weight on my foot transform into a feeling, and image only?

Five years removed from what I sometimes now believe really was the dream it felt, Positano is more a harbor in my imagination than reality. The place itself like its people- whose faces long ago melted- has at turns gradually dissolved, shifted shapes, grown more beautiful, or a times, more ghostly; it is as much feeling and image as the sandals whose place among my possessions is in my mind only. In reflection, I wonder if there is something to be said of those cheap tourist t-shirts and countless pictures of sun-touched tourists smiling in front of some local novelty. At least through these- these things- you can pretend to own a piece of what you really only pass through momentarily on your way to somewhere else. But it is pretense only, isn't it? What is the souvenir but a shred of "evidence" you hold up to remind yourself and others that this place, and you occupation of it, your memory, your story is real. “See, I really did walk the streets of Positano, and touch the sand where the street bleed away into the blue water. I really did taste the salt on my fingers and hear the laugh of richly olive-complected children at play in the drift near by. See, my photo? My shirt? See the evidence?”

The truth is even evidence fails to say anything of the reality of the place you dwelt within. It is only piece, sometimes- as with those t-shirts- a manufactured symbol, that signifies nothing of the local, only the novelty. What I mean is, the trinket- if we will call it that- is a symbol of a place manufactured for a foreigner, intended to be taken away. It has no real connection to the earth, the sound, the energy of the geographic space it was taken from. An artifact, that is a piece of the space (like a rock or pressed flower) is perhaps more closely linked to its source, but it too- once it is taken out of its context- becomes a symbol for the taker, it’s meaning and use permanently altered to suit a new context (that of memory). It is cut from the heart, from its source, and it alone can never recreate the wholeness of the space from which it was pulled. But, unlike the t-shirt or photo, I think it might perhaps retain the spirit of its origin, like a ghost hanging on. Can’t you feel sometimes? When you hold a piece of a place you went that you took home with you, can’t you feel its origin pulse lightly, can’t you feel a sense of the wholeness of which it was once a part? And it there was a wholeness, from which you took a part what happens to that wholeness? It can never be whole- not completely, once it is taken from. Do you feel then, a sense of what you’ve stolen? Do you feel the ghost of what has been broken, sulking somewhere at the periphery of your consciousness? And when the thing looses its potency for you- when it’s symbolical meaning, the meaning you, the tourist, designated to it- and you pack it away in some attic box or toss it out with the trash on a whim of tidiness do you feel anything?

What troubles me further is memory, especially when memory alone is what you take from a place. To think of it, memory seems part manufactured and part truly connected to that wholeness you were a part of once- maybe a foreign part, but still somehow a part of. It seems part tourist t-shirt, part artifact. What do I mean by that? I guess, I mean that memory is in some ways a production, forever in a state of production. As with my vision of Positano, memory is colored by our heart, and desire. Memory is a paper crane, a production created to mean something, to symbolize something. Memory is not a photograph. By that I mean it is not fixed as a single vision, printed forever, unchangeable, but true both photograph and memory are subject to interpretation, and desire. That is, both shift slightly, sometimes dramatically, depending on the way one wants to perceive something- be it an image framed behind a glass screen or the floating images that change color with the weather of our imaginations, and emotions. But memory is also, still I think connected in some very real way to the origin of its creation. That is, if we are still talking about the memory of a visit taken to a geographic reality. The reason I suggest that there is something potent, and connected to the origin of the traveler’s memory of a place is this idea I have that when you create a memory from a lived experience, you take elements of the “remembered” in to your self. The scent, the sound, the weight of the air, the light of the hour, the feel of the crowd or the sand or the living creature at your fingers, as parts of the cognitive processes that are involved in the moment of perception and the creation of a memory imprint themselves on you. They are translated if you will into the chemicals that as much as they will make up your sense of a place when it’s gone, also make up a part of you. You see, so I think (unless I’m wildly off my rocker) there might be something- I hesitate to use this word, but pure or original about a traveler’s memory, as much as it is fallible and shifting, and produced. Maybe, when you come from your travels, with artifacts or with nothing but the imprint of a place (or places) on your memory, you return with these things inside you- as part of you. And maybe in these things, as much as they are cut from their original context, and given new context in you, retain some of that original wholeness of which they were a part.

The place becomes a harbor in your imagination, uprooted from its geographic certainty, drifting within you as a sight for endless recreation. The place becomes a reflection of you, of you remembering, or you (re)remembering a memory of you in a place that is no longer significant because it is a place, but because it is a part of you. Positano was but two days in my life, too sensation-rich, visually stunning, days of my life that I expand and contract according to my place and situation at the moment of remembering, for as long as I remember, and recreate it in me. In a way I think, my location at a given moment of memory has become more important that the location I remember. How have I blurred the lines between my self and this place? How have I recreated that cascading city and its brilliant harbor? Sometimes, the place becomes so gigantic; it expands out and envelops me again. What were vague impressions have at times become gigantic in my memory- the smell of the ocean actually tints the flavor on my tongue and the sunlight filtering through that vine-covered alley shines golden on the backs of my eyes. And yet, there have been years, during which time I failed to practice that all preserving- all distorting- action of re-creative remembering, so that the place shrank, grayed and became a ghost, looming at the rim of my mind. And I think it would be this way, even if I had those sandals still, to remind me. Even if I could still lace their thin leather straps up the length of my calves, and feel my weight settle on the thin leather sole I would have to travel back within myself to that niche in the coastline of my memory, to conjure and recreate (again) the place, the feeling, the moment that wearing them signifies. I suppose that’s it, when you come back with your trinkets, artifacts, or maybe only memories you always come back with nothing, except that which through some strange magic you might endeavor to recreate.

collecting the nest

I nest. Ever since I left home for college, my domestic space (however cramped it sometimes was) represented a sort of chamber of curiosities in which I collected various artifacts (and at least one Cat) that for me represented a key element to the narrative of my sense of self. However diverse, the items that are collected in and represent my home speak to a distinct sense of identity I have been constructing over the years. I have stacks of old photos of families, men, and women from the early 21st century, I have acquired at antique stores throughout Washington. Many of the first photos I collected, interestingly enough, I purchased from what was once the Antique shop that occupied the building where I now live. Little did I know then, riffling through stacks of photos of ghosts, and other's memories that the spirit of my future lay waiting upstairs. But this is leading away from my main focus. I've collected stacks of old photo's- photos of strangers that now haunt my rooms, dreams and writing with startling clarity. I've also begun to collect the photographs of my family from day before I was even a thought, let alone a possibility. Alongside the strange images the stare without recognition at me from sepia and fading black and white, are pictures of my mother as a baby, a young girl, and bride; pictures of my father in a pram in South Hampton, preparing to pick my mom up for the prom, and leaned out outside his first car- an atrociously green VW bug. My youthful grandparents are also present- their earliest photos of a kind with those strange pictures of unknown faces. For me, these photos have a largely aesthetic quality that makes them so alluring. So gorgeous and necessary as collections in the gallery of my home. But they also have an emotional quality, I can't quite pin down. They evoke in me a sense of romance, of eerie disconnection, of wonder, and passion. They are beautiful, and evoke a strong sort of sense of desire in me. Everything in my home does- all my various collections are united by this feeling. Whether it's the collection of graphic designed and silk-screened posters, the strangely alluring photographs of goddess-like women I have to cut from magazines, have to keep, however cloistered in the curious little gallery of my journal. Even my assemblage of audacious dresses and shoes, hung up or set out like works of art on display represent component collections in a "nest" that is I feel invigorated with a sensation of passion, sensuousness and inspiration. I care little for furniture, and indeed my home is fairly minimally furnished. It is my collections that fill the space. It is my collections that give certain electricity to the air. It is my collections and their collective force in my home that reinforces the narrative of identity I have been writing for myself since I achieved the space and freedom to excavate my self from myself. I am not sure I can quite put into words what all these things together are meant to say specifically about me- perhaps that I conceive of myself as somewhat creative, sensual, expressive, and perhaps like my home- all of these things kept inside the walls of my flesh. In some ways through my collections and place in my domestic space, my home represents to me a very visceral image of my self, full up of all these colors, lights, and intention- all this passion- all this wondering- all these ghosts- all this yearning for beauty (and for embodying beauty) and somewhat contained within walls....well, at least somewhat contained :).

notes on an academic bad ass.

Is it horrible to say that I feel profoundly liberated by Dyer's delineations of dusty academics as harbingers of death, as morticians, and desiccators of delicious literary fruits? Not to mention wankers. To be true, a rebellious part of me delighted in Dyer's hilarious vituperations of wraith-like academics that theorize the meaning right out of texts. To read him rant recalled the fantasies that occupied my mind at the holiday tables of my childhood, where I sat each year for decades choking on the diplomatic silence of family get-togethers; fantasies of family brawls, instigated by wine thrown in the face of an up-tight aunt- fantasies of some anal relative laid out on a platter with parsley and spices stuffed up their rear, or an apple jammed in their trap. As a kid I knew even as my mom politely patted the sides of her mouth with a starched white napkin and nodded her compliments to grandma's cranberry salad she was visualizing the old bag with the bowl on her head, sticky red mess streaming down her hair. We all were. But no one said it. No one came out and said: "You're all just wankers!"- no matter how true or relieving it would have been. Reading Dyer "say it how it is" provided the sort of relief I've been waiting for every year that passes in polite quiet. I felt at last like someone had finally said- what we were all thinking. I lived for a moment in his shameless rant, I cooled my face in his flying spit, I fanned my frustrations on his breath, and felt the strain of so much frustration ease on my own laughter. I wanted to give him props: "hey Dyer, whoop! whoop!" "Amen."
But of course my position as an "academic fledge" seems to demand some explanation of my sympathy for him and his- uh, harsh?- portrayal of certain intellectauls as frigid, creatively impotent masturbators. How is it that as one who not only professes to want, but works every day to locate at least her professional identity and energies in the very intellectual community Dyer jabs would exalt in such criticism of that community? My strong sympathy for his criticism comes from an equally strong, and newly born angst for the reality of academic work. Call me naive- I am, I was- but before I came to school I visualized graduate study, and indeed the whole profession of literary scholarship as a bustling realm of passionate- well, geeks- like me, whose work if not always pretty or monetarily rewarding- is mostly a work of great love. As I say, I know, and perhaps I knew in some way then that I am naive- naive and achingly romantic, but recognition does not ease the frustration of my awakening. I say awakening because truly these past few months have felt more like an education in jolts and shocks- like starts that bring you sweating from a dream to the reality of your room, its dark, and limitations, its ceiling staring blankly at your hot face- than an education in books and theories. At times I've felt I was in training for a stale, sexless future- a life in which intelligence is defined by how well you pretend it than by your experience and deep awareness of the pains, the passions, the blood, and sweat that are the progenitors of the books you "study". I suppose the truth is I sympathize with Dyer's frustration, not as a seasoned professional, but as a young thing. A young, young thing struggling to understand and to assimilate to the reality of academia without forfeiting the sweet pulpy parts of her heart. I admit it, I want intellectual work to be sexy, fulfilling, generative. I want to feel my powers as a woman meet and mingle with the powers of my mind and heart in the work I do. I want to teach in red stillettos, and spend hours in passionate converstaion about Rilke or Dove or the beauty of a single word. I want to touch the graves of great artists and commune with their ghosts. I want life and living to fuel the work I do- to get out there, to create, to feel, to write for the purpose of revealing something amazing and important about something beautiful. I guess, I'm just sixteen all over again; the difference is the authority I struggle with now is the authority I want to become a part of.

So maybe, the better use of my energy and idealism is to, like Dyer, channel it into my work, rather than let it seethe, and possibly shrink away. More than the balls he has to call certain other scholars "wankers"- I respect that he channeled the idealism that fueled that "sheer rage" in to his intellectual work. Without the project that his rant I believe intends to justify his criticism would be I think just hot air- still somewhat valid (in my opinion), but largely bodiless. His frustration finds purpose, I think, in the form of his work with Lawrence. Does that make sense? I will put it this way, what is criticism like Dyer's if it does not do something- if it does not lead to something- some project- some creation- some work that enacts and invites the very values he so loudly champions? It's like my Mama always said, "If you're going to complain and criticize, you better offer something constructive." Who knew the advice she gave me as a chubby-faced young child (confronted oddly enough with the same sensation of frustration and stifled desire) would be so appropriate now? I suspect she likely knew this would be the case- though hardly that her advice would come in handy as I digest Dyer's innovative academic work and my own feelings as an intellectual neophyte. In the end, it isn't so much his frustration that moves and lingers with me now but what he did with that frustration. I admire, and believe in the creative potency of the jolts, shocks, and disappointments that accompany our struggle to understand and respond to the realities of our dreams, our work, and our world.


Rock on Dyer. Rock on.

thinking about the things i love, miss, feel profoundly about...

I love graffti. I love murals. I love Montana, the amazing homeless artist who sold a piece of his to me one day at the James St. exit. It was one of few works of art that survived a rainstorm that deteriorated and ultimately destroyed the cubby he dug out under a freeway overpass. I love the Market, even if it is mostly a chaos of tourists. I love the ripe produce and the fish smell- fresh, salty, making the ancient gills under my pale skin stir and flex. My nose perks to the memory. My fingers tingle at the thought of gleaming scales, cold ice, dry flowers, and the smooth and downy skins of ripe fruits. Plums. I love watching the seagulls ride the rifts of air over the 520 bridge on a windy day. I love the way the lake throw sudden wakes over the butress- and my heart- the feeling of it jump in to and burn at my throat when- SPLASH - the water crashes on windshield. I love the sound of things. Even the whistle of dealers. Even the sound of people passing by the studio window when we make love- only the discretion of the flimsy plastic blinds between us. I love the strange intersections of our lives with those of strangers- listening to how closely our distant lives pass by each other. Often there is always only a flimsy plastic blind between us. I love dancing. I love dancing. I love dancing with more than my body. With my heart. With my womanhood in full BOOM. With my heart. I love letting myself out beyond the bounds of my skin to sway and swish and throb and pound and pulse on the humid, sweaty air, to tangle in the music, to cool in the breeze of the heavy breaths of other dancers. I love early mornings in the city, especially sundays, especially in the summer when the light breaks over the tops of the buildings and the streets lay still in shadow. I love sharing the silence with pigeons and garbage and the occasional stranger passing by. I love art. Francis Bacon, Dali, Degas, Banskie, Judith Supine, the pieces left behind to remind me of Micah when he was still searching for himself in his work. I love the strange beauties of urban art that pop up over night and fade just as quickly. The small girl- like a silk screen- printed on the yield sign at the U-district exit. Is she still there? I use to slow down and stare, trying to understand how she was put up there. What medium? The cars behind would honk. A new piece appeared in one of the windows on Bellevue, a beautiful woman with an afro plastered over what must be an apartment window. She smiles out at the street. I smile at her. I think I'm in love with her. I kiss my fingers and blow my admiration up to her every time I pass. How long will she stay? How will it feel when she goes? I love the sudden pop of urban art like the beautiful afro-woman, and how it belongs to no one and everyone at the same time- how it reminds you of the beautiful details of life. Graffti reminds me of flowers bursting through concrete- like a rebellion of color, like a voice screaming out over noise, like a flash of light that catches the eye and just as quickly fades from view. These things inspire me. These things are what I do not want to loose- ever. These things are what I want to make a study of. To contemplate. To understand. To live inside of.

(Pictures to come)

space, place, field, travel, one two three my mind unraveled...

I am not new to this field. Four winters have passed since I came to this wheat, the swath of openness. This, my fifth, finds me here still at the work of excavating my "passion" from the heaps of books, concepts, histories, and possibilities that daily accumulate in the already cluttered space of my mind. Someone once told me, "you go to college to learn what you've got to learn to make a living in this world, but you go also to find your passion- that thing that is the living of your life." The words, writen in a high school graduation card, and other such advice spoken to me over the past few years have served to both liberate me and to weight me to this search- this search for a nourishing, directing passion- which finds me here, still, a student, excavating every conceivable field for the palpitating heart of my purpose. I can hear it beating sometimes, as I write, as I read Rilke or walk through the city (that is, Seattle, my first and truest home) admiring the galleries of grafity on the exterior walls of Jack in the Box and various electrical boxes on Broadway that grow more and more sophisticated, more beautiful each year. I hear it sometimes beating in the palm of Dan's hand when he thoughtlessly touches my face in his sleep. I hear it sometimes in the heavy silence of the loft at night- throbbing, pounding, wailing for me to find it. Every day I'm excating the various fields of my life- the intellectual, the private, the poetic, the dream fields in which I'm desperate to unearth a sense of myself beyond this search. The self realized. The passion. I'm searching for the passion, direction, purpose not for my life time, no, simply the first driving need that will allow me to leave this scowered field, to begin moving, working, and growing my love, my life, my future. It is no easy task. It is no easy task. It is no easy task, but I do it and I hope and I keep my ears open to listen for the beat.

i use to be an verbal exhibitionist. now i'm an academic. now i'm mute. closed. pulling the covers around the body of my writing. don't look at me.

learning to say to say to say
what? learning to say
how
to say what?
learning to speak it,
how? what?
everything
learning everything
to say everything to say
it.
say it
say it
say it,
say what?
how?