Just spent an amazing (sunny!) weekend in Berkeley with an array of profoundly smart and inspiring people.

Among the many ideas floating around in my head as a result of the brilliant discussions and presentations is a new fascination with the radically non-anthropocentric ideas of Object Oriented Ontology.  Thanks to Allison Cobb, Kaia Sand, Jen Coleman and Jen Hofer for their engaging, beautiful, emotionally charged presentation of these ideas.

Thanks, also to Ross Gay and Patrick Rosal for their presentation/performance on remix and reuse in poetry and its ability to disrupt mythologies of individual genius. These late Romantic notions are damaging not only to the individual, but are tied to a capitalist, anthropocentric world view in which the individual is the center of the earth. Embracing the polyvocality of remix can disrupt these “great person narratives,” increasing the artist’s contact with the fertile edge where time and ideas rub against each other, creating new ideas. Our ideas are not, and never were, our own.

The conference and the recent release of Leaf Litter #3, which contains some of my poems, have made me think that it really is time to publish some of my written work, starting with this site. I’m working on making that happen soon…

After the conference, I trekked up to the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden and caught sight of this magnolia, about to burst into bloom.