OMG PROJECT PROPOSAL

Ok, so I just realized this was due this past tuesday, I thought it was next tuesday. omg omg, ok.

I really love writing spoken word, so I've decided I am going to write an epoch poem, and I will also record it on a cd so you can really hear what it sounds like.  The only book that has really, really stood out to me so far in this class was the Gary Snyder book.  For some reason it really resonated with me because it was very spiritual and soft.  My favorite chapter was, "Goddess of Mountains and Rivers," though I liked all his woman-goddess chapters.  In this chapter he talked about how society has matrifocal roots, and it has only been Patriarchal for several thousand years.  He also talked about yin and yang, which is a symbol that I like.  The moist, fertile, female energy and the hot, dry male energy are the two balancing forces in nature.  "The dance of yin-yang energies in nature... becomes the image vocabulary in Chinese erotic poetry."(87)

Since this course has been a big discussion on the balance of nature and industry, I want to write my epoch poem about that.  I want to write about an "erotic poem" where the female, symbolizing  nature, is in opposition with the male, symbolizing industry and urban planning.  I bought this really cool book on the matrifocal beginnings of civilization and yin and yang called "The Great Cosmic Mother" by Barbara Mor.  I want to use this research to construct a trippy, philosophichal, semi-erotic, epoch poem that captures the contradictory essence of San Francisco as a poetic, organic city and also an elite, urban power.

  This topic relates because, to me, it is the main theme of what all these authors are saying.  I definately can use some Brechin material in this, even Solnit, and I can get erotic inspiration from Brautigan.  The main books I am going to focus on are the Gary Snyder book and my Barbara Mor book.  Some Taoism research will be useful as well.

  My thesis is that San Francisco is a double-sided city, with both the "male" and "female" sides, (symbolically.)  I want to tell it as the story of matrifocal societies being taken over by patriarchy, but it is San Francisco being taken over urbanism.

  My only concern about my project is that I need to make it long enough and with enough depth to hold up to a ten page paper.  I believe that it will be a challenge but if I do a lot of research I can probably write a three or four page poem, and then write a one page explanation. I definately want to include an audio cd because when I write spoken word it has a particular rhythm that sounds a lot better when i perform it. 

Hollow City- MLK

What I was most struck by in Rebecca Solnit's Hollow City was the stuff about race in the "shopping cart and lexus" chapter, and the Yerba Buena chapter.  What Solnit described in these chapters was the white, racist, elitest attempts on: urban renewal and gentrification.  Most of San Francisco, according to Solnit, has been devistated by urban renewal (nick-named 'Negro removal'), where colored communities were speedily annihilated from the city, and replaced by urban, American businesses.  I was really struck by the Maya Angelou example.  Maya Angelou grew up in San Francisco during Wold War 2, and her poetry described how the Japanese businesses and residents all disappeared as the Japanese were taken into internment camps.  "The Yakamoto Sea Food Market quietyly became Sammy's Shoe Shine Parlor..."(44)  

  The author also described how the westside of the town was the "black" side back in the day.  "FIllmore street had become the Harlem of the West, where jazz clubs..."(46)  Their living conditions, however, were much below most of the white and middle-class residents, with a high level of disease and poorly made houses.  Instead of helping the poor families, the city began urban renewal (negro removal) around Fillmore street, and completely turned the area around.  The new population was predominantly white, male and upper-middle class.  There were no more jazz clubs, only raised buildings and parking lots.

  Then Yerba Buena center was constructed.  Apparently, originally it was a vacant lot and then a performance space before it was the Martin Luther King tourist monument that it is today.  Solnit described the monument as, "a fountain of big concrete slabs... the place has a strangely dislocated, airport ambience..."  I used to go to Yerba Buena center a lot.  I used to go there sometimes when I was in poetry shows there, or I would watch poetry shows or go to workshops.  I always thought it did have a kind of blocky, aloof feel to it, though I knew I was supposed to feel pride and allegiance towards MLK.  The fact that Solnit pointed out that inside is a Starbucks and a Microsoft store adds to the irony of it.

Dharma bums, modern Buddhist wanderers

Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac follows some a group of San Francisco bums during the era of the Beats as they climb Matterhorn, enjoy nature, talk poetry, and philosophize about Buddhism and society and other things.  The main theme in this book is the idea of nonconformity to society, which reflects the attitude of the beats at the time.  To an outsider, their lifestyle seems awfully strange, but it is clear by the way the book is written that, to Kerouac, this offbeat lifestyle is normal.  In the first chapter he says that they get around town by “hopping freight trains,” which reflects his unconventional lifestyle.

            The biggest way the bums do not conform is that they do not participate in any consumerism or with the market, and they live poor with almost nothing.  They don’t agree with the ways of the capitalist, money hungry society and they do not conform to joining the competition for wealth.  There was one scene when Ray was mad that that woman was marrying a stock broker because he doesn’t like those kind of people who are so into money and productivity that they are out of touch with spirituality.

            Another theme was spirituality, which went along with nonconformity.  There was a constant acknowledgement of the world and nature being holy, which runs counter the mainstream way of acting where we are above nature and can utilize it and exploit it.  For example, in the beginning when Ray and the other bums were hiking, Morley kept saying that the mountains were all Buddhas and Boddhisatvas.  Later in the book Ray was talking to Christine and she told a story about how the Zen Master said the Buddha was a “dried piece of turd”(173) and then his disciple was instantly enlightened.  This idea of spirit or spirituality in everything opposes the mainstream, coformist image of God in our country as a singular and definitive being.

            Ray often stands on his head in search of the Buddhist “void” or primordial emptiness.  I think this standing upside-down is a good metaphor for how the bums lived.  In our world it is all about speed, efficiency and productivity.  But the fundamental laws of Buddhism are about being in the moment, not having more than you need, and taking time to meditate and not be productive at all.  Living like a true Buddhist is living counter to the ways of western, modern society because it means staying in one place rather than progressing really far out.  Living like a “dharma bum” is following the Buddhist Middle Path: it is not having much so there is not much to lose, living simply so as not to evoke greed.  In our society it is very hard to do what the Beats did and completely live against the grain of developed society.  In Dharma Bums Kerouac described a group of people that truly lived as Buddhist wanderers in the modern time and did not conform to the progressive, productive nature of the West.