I haven't touched this in over a year.

Hello.

I'm going to start using this again. I think that I'll talk about poetry, politics, philosophy and the like... You know, the usual.

I think it's part of the ferver around Occupy Wall St, and it's various offshoots that has me most excited right now. I live in San Francisco, and have been closely following Occupy Oakland, and the truly horrific tactics utilized by the police there. I'm excited to see a real populist movement recognize the core of the problems we face, and to see them resisting their reduction to a series of rhetorical figures; the homeless crust punk, the washed up hippie, etc. Those types were what I talked about in my last post, over a year ago: the fear of change dressed as a categorizable person.

I'm also, like many people in the US, unemployed (note that the link posted there, to Shadowstats.com, includes the U-6 measurement, which includes chronic underemployment along with the other, more conventionally seen measures... My next post might be on this phenomenon).

This has a particular effect on a person. I often feel reduced to my 'job-getting' potential. When I receive calls from family or friends, they always ask first, "How's the job search going?" I understand. It's how our economy works. Of course, I want a job. I may be too "privileged," though, (scratch the maybe, I'm sure of it...) because I know I don't want to go back to retail work, or the food industry, or whatever. I received my MA degree. I had the amazing opportunity to teach at MCC in Rochester, NY. I want that! My classes for this fall, though, were cancelled -- low registration. And I missed my ladyfriend, and our little dog.

So, now I'm in San Francisco. I live three blocks from the beach. I walk the little doggy two, sometimes three hours a day. I send out resume after resume after resume. And I read poetry, and criticism, and fiction, and biography. I'm also fortunate enough to be part of the vlog poets, an online discussion group that will discuss topics in poetry over the course of the next year.

I have some poetry being published (along with the one alreayd in Conte) in Caesura, and Pirene's Fountain, later this year (I hope).

I can't guarantee that my use of the blog will be too regular  from here on out. My main goal is to finish my PhD applications in time to submit before the deadlines imposed by the various institutions of which I hope to be a part. So, you know, if you have a friend that loves analyzing SOP's and the such, send them my way.

Goodnight.