we are the people.

i dreampt i was a kite last night,
soaring above the east field.

"If you imagine the 4,500-billion-odd years of Earth's history compressed into a normal earthly day, then life begins very early, about 4 A.M., with the rise of the first simple, single-celled organisms, but then advances no further for the next sixteen hours. Not until almost 8:30 in the evening, with the day five-sixths over, has Earth anything to show the universe but a restless skin of microbes. Then, finally, the first sea plants appear, followed twenty minutes later by the first jellyfish and the enigmatic Ediacaran fauna first seen by Reginald Sprigg in Australia. At 9:04 P.M. trilobites swim onto the scene, followed more or less immediately by the shapely creatures of the Burgess Shale. Just before 10 P.M. plants begin to pop up on the land. Soon after, with less than two hours left in the day, the first land creatures follow.

Thanks to ten minutes or so of balmy weather, by 10:24 the Earth is covered in the great carboniferous forests whose residues give us all our coal, and the first winged insects are evident. Dinosaurs plod onto the scene just before 11 P.M. and hold sway for about three-quarters of an hour. At twenty-one minutes to midnight they vanish and the age of mammals begins. Humans emerge one minute and seventeen seconds before midnight. The whole of our recorded history, on this scale, would be no more than a few seconds, a single human lifetime barely an instant. Throughout this greatly speeded-up day continents slide about and bang together at a clip that seems positively reckless. Mountains rise and melt away, ocean basins come and go, ice sheets advance and withdraw. And throughout the whole, about three times every minute, somewhere on the planet there is a flash-bulb pop of light marking the impact of a Manson-sized meteor or one even larger. It's a wonder that anything at all can survive in such a pummeled and unsettled environment. In fact, not many things do for long."

"why is it like this to such an extent?
even if we die, we want to die outside!
time and again, we return home,
but time and again we come back out.
not a single person doing this,
but a whole generation."
-dagongmei.

my 2 anthropology professors are neighbors.
they grade my papers next door to each other.

heather:
-is from astoria, oregon.
-escapes natural disasters right before they occur
(earthquake in christchurch/tsunami in japan).
-studies relationships between humans and fish.
-doesn't get along with her mother
(she gave up her career and is now a bitter woman).
-changed her major 8 times
(geology, religious studies, etc etc then finally anthro)
-speaks fluent japanese and explores the notion of
"serious" play in race-bending kimono dress-up games.
-enjoys indoctrinating little japanese girls
(as well as our class) with feminist thought.
-brings us cookies so we can deconstruct gender binaries
(provides vegan alternatives as well).

nancy:
-is chinese, was born in taiwan, and moved to louisiana.
-has connections with every restaurant in bhutan.
-thought it would be a "fun little adventure" to
travel from beijing, through mongolia, to moscow
on the transsiberian express when she was 22.
-conducts self-criticisms that are reminiscent of
the struggle sessions from the cultural revolution
(a popular past-time of the sent-down youth).
-likes to show us graphic videos about surgeries that
lengthen knees to promote height growth.

a fwagile game.

idle idle idle protect the nest.
i love the illustration books at the bookshop santa cruz.
i always go and write down the names of the artists &
then look at their sites and set their pictures as my computer background.

must.write.these.papers. :-O

"This little piggy went to market.
This little piggy stayed at home."

"i imagine that yes is the only living thing.

listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go."
-ee.

fairy lights are shining above my head.

i hope i befriend orcs and elves.

a burst of blue one morning.
this moment was so worth the 4 month wait.
may gasped in horror when she discovered her

plants were infested with aphids.
we went outside and scavenged for ladybugs in the grass
and let them loose on the leaves.
they feasted happily on the little green bugs.

CAFE BRASIL

sprinkle some cornmeal on it.
ahh sigh yee.

"wouldn't it be cool if we found wild berries?"
*two hours later*

"be a little deer. i'm a little horse today."

my sister and i went on a four hour walk through

the woods in "pogo-nee-kee" (pogonip).
we brought some snacks:
seaweed, potato chips, mocha marble trail mix,
& a mexican chili covered mango lollipop.

I am "tickled by the absurdity of it all."

fleeting ghosts & faithless translations.

i keep finding rotten vegetables in our fridge.
leaky, dripping, oozing, odorous
puddles of expired onions, spinach, cucumbers.