i’m reading again.

since christmas i’ve read eight books, almost equal to the number i read in the rest of 2019.

~this is where i tell you this post is sponsored by the san francisco public library~

but really, don’t be a dumdum like me and wait until you’ve lived somewhere for six years before you get a library card.

giving all the credit to the library card (while a _magical_ piece of plastic) would also be an incomplete story.

chapter one would open 572 miles north of san francisco, in corvallis, oregon.

that’s where i met these two:

christina and albert are the caretakers of mt caz, a renegade community art and cultural space.

they hosted me for ten days in december, an artist residency of sorts.

what does one do as an artist-in-residence?

i drew.

i discovered massage balls (up there with library cards as far as Really Excellent Ideas).

i rediscovered luxurious stretches of reading time.

i did morning pages with albert, tapping away on my ipad while he penned small, neat letters in a large hardbound book with unlined pages.

i went on muddy walks with christina where we talked about what happens when you try to introduce chinese parents to your white therapist’s recommendation to ‘set boundaries.’

all the while, i was swimming in a murky, gray headspace. i had just come off of an intense few months at work. creative stuff wasn’t feeling as fun or satisfying as it used to. i knew i was tired but i couldn’t get my brain to shift into a lower gear, to surrender to rest.

i kept waiting for some moment of insight to clear the funk. it never came.

it wasn’t until i got back to sf that it occurred to me that maybe there was no new epiphany to be had. just a lesson i needed to relearn, to feel the contours of again.

christina works part-time at the library, and one of her favorite tasks is shelving books. it’s a good example of an atelic activity, something that can’t be ‘finished,’ which i’ve written about before. she likes it especially because there’s no point in trying to do the thing faster or better or any synonym of ‘efficient.’ in fact, if she does her job too well, she leaves her coworkers in the afternoon shifts with nothing to do.

i love this reminder that maintenance work, rather than being something you tolerate so you can get on with the Important Stuff, can be a source of satisfaction on its own.

because most of being an artist is maintenance work. it’s taking care of yourself by setting boundaries on your time and energy. it’s showing up at the page even when you feel adrift and aimless. it’s finding the conviction to take yourself and your craft seriously.

being an artist is being in an ongoing relationship with art, as christina puts it. you have to keep getting back in the river.

over the break the universe offered me one more sign of this truth —  

a few years ago i had the opportunity to take an improv class with alice wu. at the time, i only knew of alice’s reputation as a teacher; she was everyone’s favorite and it quickly became clear why. the attention to craft that she brought was incredible. she was the kind of teacher who would send you an 800 word email with notes on your scene work (i just went back and reread one she sent me and yeah, still amazed).  

it was only later that i learned more about her story. her first job was as an engineer at microsoft. she wrote a movie script in her free time before leaving corporata (doesn’t that sound like it should be a word?) to try and take her idea from page to screen.

saving face premiered at sundance and was eventually picked up and released by sony. the film’s protagonist is chinese-american and a lesbian, either of which on their own would be rare in hollywood today, let alone the combination and back in 2004.

given its subject, the film was never going to be a mainstream success. in the years after, alice kept writing and teaching improv. netflix recently announced they’re releasing her second movie as a writer/director. she turns 50 this year.

the most inspiring part of her story for me isn’t the ostensible peaks, but the unglamorous grind implied in the in-between. which i realize is not going to be true for everyone. and that’s kinda the point: do you love the thing enough to keep getting back in the river.

What was your residency like?

My time at Mt. Caz breaks neatly into two chunks: before Microbes in Space and after Microbes in Space. 

The before included 

a podcast interview with Dispatches from Mt Caz

a fourth-of-july visit to the house Albert is building

a garage sale art walk

a visit to the library where I checked out ~50 microbiology books and space books

a visit from Lea Redmond, an artist I have admired for years

setup for Microbes in Space

For the event, five amazing artists gathered in a transformed version of Mt Caz, with four different rooms and an outside area buzzing with conversations about art and science between artists and scientists and art-scientists and science-artists, and I read four poems from my upcoming collection of poems about microbiology. Also it was my birthday, and I danced around the house in shoes that slide on the floor.

After Microbes in Space included

writing

zine-making

a visit from Danielle Baskin, an artist I now admire

eating and drinking leftovers from Microbes in Space

Portland Zine Symposium

good goodbyes

What were you working on during your residency?

"Creatures in Creatures in Creatures" is a zine that gathers together some poems that stretch one's mind from the smallest and oldest life on the planet to the largest and newest life on-and-off the planet, including humans. Before coming to Mt. Caz, I'd planned on revising these poems, and I was surprised, challenged, and delighted when that work involved revising the entire format of how people will encounter these things.

Where can people find your work?

Anybody who wants the zine can paypal me $5.55 with their address, and anybody who wants to read emails I send every new moon can subscribe by clicking here <--this link doesn't work as well on tablets/phones, sorry! I'm also on twitter & instagram as "spozbo" (slurred for "it's possible"), and I love being in touch.

In doing research for this event, we discovered a lot of interesting - if disheartening - facts about the state of copyright in America. Christina created a visual representation we could look at in the meadow. Each paper link represented a year.

The 1998 copyright act is the reason we hadn’t seen any new public domain works for 20 years. 

The chain went to the floor.

We saw dances, heard stories and listened to thoughtful speeches.

Christina taught everyone how to dance the Charleston.

Some people made zines of their work!

Albert led a story-building game using screenshots from a Felix the Cat cartoon.

My favorite part was hearing how everyone came to make their piece and what inspired them about the public domain work they used.

Did you know that Reese’s were invented in 1923? What a perfect excuse to eat them!

The road to be able to do an event like this has been long, but however muddled the path, we know that this is not the end of creating new works from old.

What is in the middle; is nature so wild; are roads that bad?

In Santa Rosa I’ve accepted this strange concept, going south to go north, but I’ve learned another thing: the bus station was on the opposite side of a Multiplex (a movie theater with a lot of screens) and my bus was 2 hours late. Waiting and late buses are not always a bad thing!

You can enjoy almost an entire movie with Willie Smith as a genius (how does Aladdin end by the way? It is still paternalistic?) while you’re waiting for your late bus--

You have to go south to go north, and waiting is a good thing.

Yes, there was a giant mountain in the middle..it made totally sense to go south first.

MtCaz was also a place to learn things and put the new lessons in to practice.

I arrived with a lot of things to do. It is always like that--I mean not always but often… But I was really happy that one of the things that I had to do was actually just walking around. So waiting and taking wrong turns to reach places seemed like pretty good advice to me considering my plan. I pictured myself lost for days in the mountains around Corvallis. A great residency was about to begin!

My residency at Mt Caz was actually a residency squared, a residency inside another residency. I’m in the States because I’m doing a year-long residency teaching in an art school in Baltimore (MICA); part of the residency is to create a personal project, and the Mt Caz residency was perfect for that. I think now it is time to talk about my work--otherwise it will be hard to understand why I came to Corvallis for walking?

Maybe not yet, let’s talk about walking.

2.

I like walking because it’s natural (and I’m living a life where there is a lot of artifice); I like walking because is slow (and I’m living a life where everything is freakin fast); I like walking because my body is all in movement (and I’m usually sitting); and I like walking because you can listen a lot and discover stuff (and I’m living a life where I talk a lot). 

By the way, I’m not alone, a lot of people like to walk, especially in nature. Some people don’t like the idea, but when they are there, they like it. We have proof about it--during our walking project a participant said that they were in a very bad mood and then thanks to walking they were good (see? Science!).

My dream job is to be a ranger (and I’m almost 40 so it’s time to go there) and my passion is birds. So you can understand why I like walking so much. But right now I’m a game designer, or an artist, if you will, so I have to cover up my secret plan to become a ranger.

My ideal workstation

Mt Caz helped me with that: neither Albert nor Christina knew about my secret plans, so I suppose it made sense to them that I wanted to organize a prototype for a new conference format: a walking conference.

Conference are booooooring, I mean 90% of them are. I mean 80%. Actually sometimes they are great, but it’s really tricky because it’s almost all on the shoulders of the speakers; if they are great than the conference is good, if they are mediocre…then you have the feeling that someone is stealing time from your life or that you’re locked in a room and you want to escape.

- Intermission -

A good idea for an escape room? A supermarket with bulk goods, nuts, chocolate chips, cereals, pasta, rice, honey, sweet ginger, and organic fruit and vegetables. You have just one hour to leave the place.

Good luck!

- End Intermission -

And I have to say that the 10% interesting part of conferences is the people in the audience and the conversations that you have with them over a coffee or during a break. So, a walking conference: a new format where there are no speakers, or keynotes, or powerpoint presentations, but just people walking together and talking.

“A new format, ahahahah,” says Plato.

“Original, indeed,” says Socrates.

“We use to do that everyday back in the days. I founded a school about it: the Peripatetic school, where peripatetic means walking around,” says Aristotle.

“OK fellas, sometimes you need to apply some new flashy paint over ‘solid’ ideas in order to get people involved, you know? And by the way I don’t care about it, I want to become a ranger!”

Albert and Christina were not present during this dialogue (from Greek: in between knowledge), so they thought, cool! They are really positive people!

The date? The last day of my residency. The trail that we were walking? Unknown.

3.

Books!

At Mt Caz there are a lot of books: some of them belong to Mt Caz, others are just passing by, the majority are amazing. If your artistic practice is all about reading others people books, then come here. You will have a great time.

Among these books there were some about Corvallis and the surrounding areas, forests and trails. The names on the trails are funny and not particularly evocative, but we set our eyes on Dan’s Trail. 

The trail of Dan, Dan’s line, Dan and his walking path. I didn’t know anything about Dan but I wanted to know everything about his path. Also because there was a Lower and a Upper Dan’s Trail. And a Horse Dan’s Trail.

Finally I had an excuse to walk. And I walked. Dan was not there, but his trail was.

The high one? Too high.

The low one? Too low

The horse one? Just perfect, flat, even, equal, equine.

Wander Conference Trail (aka Dan’s)

There was one issue, maybe two (and then we discovered that there were three). Poison Oak, (if it’s three let it be), so we had to be aware of were we were walking, forbidden to leave Dan’s Trail.

I walked home also, it was good. I walked to a 7-Eleven, it was closed.

Naaa joking, 7 Eleven is always open.

I walked in a swamp and later I managed to see a sunset there, glorious. We walked on the street and the moon came out, glorious. We chanted at her and then we bought Ice Cream. We add balsamic vinegar and coarse salt to the Ice Cream.

We enjoyed ourselves. It was sweet and bitter.

4.

“You’ve charged my crystal,” Dylan said.

Best. Project. Ever

Dylan charging

5.

Last night at Terra Incognita.

clouds over Corvallis

I love bread.

I made a lot of bread at Mt Caz, I experimented with seeds, olive oil, chocolate, butter, peanut butter and different kinds of flour. The way it works is that you prepare everything at night, before going to bed, and in the morning you have the bread ready, perfect for my carb heavy breakfasts.

I decided to do a very festive bread: I thought that it would be nice, a farewell bread. A chocolate bread, with nuts and chocolate chips, perfect to have a nice evening delight with ice cream and microwaved banana.

Here is the recipe.

Oh no wait, Albert and Christina are not allowed to know the recipe, is a secret recipe that is sacredly handed down between artists-in-residence (or undercover wannabe rangers).

So if you want to know, it’s in an envelope, on the shelves of Terra Incognita.

Apparently is really good.

6.

Epilogue

On reading other accounts I’ve noted that right now Mt Caz tumblr (http://mtcaz.tumblr.com) has a description that says Ranger Clubhouse. I don’t remember if that description was there in May when first we started having conversations…

If so, then my subconscious is a scary place to go. Or maybe Albert and Christina know more than we believe, they know something about you also if you don’t say that to them.

Or maybe I’m the only one that can see that description on the top of the website? I don’t know, I feel like I’m already a ranger.