brooklyn is a long cab ride away (in indiana)...oh just google brenda kahn

I'm back in Bloomington and somehow, the moment I got home, I managed to get sick. Some of my Ledig momentum was currtailed by the illness, but today I woke up feeling moderately more human. There is laundry to be done and lawns to be mown and man I need to get back on that thesis. (So I can move on to the next project!)

Here are a few little snaps of where I was. There're lots of good ones C took of the other people there, but I'm starting to feel funny about posting pictures of people on my blog without asking them. So you have to imagine them. Or ask me and I'll show them to you one-on-one.

Oh, and sorry to renege on the book posting deal. It's a long story (or a short story, depending on how you look at it). Basically, my reading dropped off rapidly as my conversations/adventures with the other residents grew. But here's a bit of To the Lighthouse: "The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through them. And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr. Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach."

dispatches

The only bad thing is the sulfuric water. There is a sound installation in the woods so that when you walk there at night everything is defamiliarized, frightening and also thrilling. The phrase "thrilled and chilled and existentially satisfied." We've written our messages on the slate gravestone. All the baby animals are out; the goslings stick close to their mother. I'm armed with pancake recipes. We are encircled by stud farms. I've met a German publisher who only prints books that have some connection to the ocean. The story is coming. I'm not ready to leave.

a machine that could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour

I'm working on my poetry portfolio and listening to August and Everything After for the first time in god only knows how long - I'm not sure which house I was living in when it disappeared from my collection, but it's been since Portland, at least. Someone here at Ledig has it on her itunes, so I'm listening in. Man. It really was a formative album for me. And one remarkably devoid of associations that make me feel sad, like many other albums I listened to obsessively at various points (see Elliot Smith, Tori Amos, Ani Difranco, Neutral Milk Hotel...).

It's so beautiful outside that I would really like to take a walk through the magical sculpture fields, but the portfolio is already past due, so I'm holing up like a good girl and plugging away.

Apparently Chris and my arrival doubled the number of Americans here. We've got writers from Spain, China by way of India, Austria, Germany, England and the Congo. Indiana? Not so exotic. Interesting dinner conversations, for sure. I have a king-sized bed and ate zucchini with mint last night and organic berries all day. We may stage an informal reading, since many of us are leaving before the next formal reading. I'll let you know how that goes. There's a beautiful wood-paneled library full of all the past residents' books. I also have a big white chair that's good for reading in.

I've been trying to read a book a day, so I might post bits of ones I've read. I started out easy, with a funny book about the personals blurbed by Ira Glass. Now I'm rereading The Great Gatsby. I'd forgotten how much I love that book. I haven't read it since I've been seriously writing fiction; it's so different now. What a brilliant characterization his introduction of Daisy is. I know I'm not saying anything new here, but the narrative perspective is so well handled. I keep being amazed at how Fitzgerald manages to tell a story about such compelling individuals as Gatsby and Daisy without ever losing sight of the fact that Nick's is the central story, and that all the drama of Gatsby's parties is simply one aspect of a summer in which so much more happened in this character's life. Plus, who can get over Chapter 3? "A pair of stage twins, who turned out to be the girls in yellow, did a baby act in costume, and champagne was served in glasses bigger than finger-bowls. The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawns." Wow.

Finally, the aftermath of car accidents is no fun. Although my agent reminds me a little of Steve Carrell on The Office in that he's a bit overly personal (read flirtatious), but he's good hearted and seems like his fierce loyalty might get the job done. Cross your fingers.

temporary home

I am safely ensconced in the Hudson Valley.

I've missed the Catskills.

never enough time

Everything is madness right now! I'd really like to post about:

• The thesis readings. What amazing peers I have, and how lucky I am to take these writers away with me as friends.
• So much family! Spontaneous visits from my aunt and uncle for whom "in St. Louis" means "in the neighborhood," and planned visits from the immediate family. Hooray for moral support and breakfasts out.
  
• Sherman Alexie's reading, which seriously lived up to all expectations. What a perfomer. The dinner aftwards was revealing in many ways that I won't go into. He asked us all what song we wanted played at our funeral; you get mad cred if you can guess what I said. He also kindly recorded his poem from IR's 25th anniversary edition. Bounce over to the IR blog for more on that.
• Blackberry coffee cake.
  
• This beautiful book, The Back of the Line, that showed up in my mailbox today thanks to the inimitable Jeff Parker.
• Motorcyle accidents.
• Small bits of good news that I don't feel like posting about but you can ask me about if you want.
  
• The fact that I'm leaving in 4 days. Seriously.
  

three years later

It's my thesis reading! Tomorrow night! Are you in Bloomington? Do you want to come hear me read?

Come to the Faculty Club at the Indiana Memorial Union! I promise my fiction isn't this full of exclamation points!

Saturday, April 21, 7:00 pm
Tracy Truels, Megan Savage, Carissa DiGiovanni, Monique Harris
(followed by reception at Tutto Bene)

Thank you Nikki Giovanni.

reading between projects

So, it's that time in the semester when I have very little time for anything other than wrapping up the major projects. Maybe you're in the same place? Here are three little reading tidbits for when you need a procrastination break:

• Chloe Hillard in The Village Voice has an interesting article about AGs, or Aggressives, a subculture comprised of predominately African American or Latina lesbians. I saw Daniel Peddle's documentary in last year's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival on the same subject. I have mixed feelings on this issue: on the one hand, it's reassuring to see coverage of the diversity in the gay and lesbian community, but on the other hand, the rampant sexism that seems to be perpetuated in the community (this was stressed more in Hillard's article than in Peddle's documentary) in terms of attitudes toward femmes is profoundly disturbing. Also, while the documentary focuses on the women's limited career choices based on their often impoverished circumstances, the article skews toward the career-stalling choices some of the women from "better off" backgrounds make in order to maintain their appearances/lifestyles. Sample em both and weigh in.

• Having looked at a thousand houses with my parents over the course of my life (we moved a lot), I've often wondered about the appeal of the split-level ranch. Here's a fun little article on the subject. Turns out, wood paneling was once revolutionary.

• There's a new fiction editor at Esquire, and he's making his mark with fun pieces like The Napkin Project. This is an institutionalization of the age-old game in which you write a story on a napkin (if you're Laurel or me, you do this collaboratively while waiting for concerts to start). It's is a good one to sample over the course of several days. Check out, in particular, David Means, Daniel Alarcon and Julianna Baggott. Thanks for the tip, AD.
  

travels

So the Ledig House Residency has worked out after all. I've got my plane tickets, and I'll be heading to NY on Sunday, April 29th. I'll be in the scenic Hudson Valley until the 14th. After that, I'm heading down to the city, hopefully in time to make Mary Austin Speaker's reading with Jessica Baran and Bob Hicok. I'll be in the city until the 17th, if anyone wants to come out to play.

get yourself read to

Pop over to the Indiana Review Blog to listen to Tyrone Jaeger's eerie Civil War-era prose poem/short short, "Specter," on our new feature where IR authors read their work, the bluecast. IR is featuring 3 of Jaeger's pieces in our upcoming summer issue, 29.1. If you didn't get the official tiny teaser chapbook at AWP, consider this teaser #2.

kurt vonnegut 1922-2007

Hey, Kurt Vonnegut. I hope you are somewhere where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. I'm sorry for saying I should see you read because you were probably going to die soon. And I'm sorry that now I'll never get the chance. Thanks for this funny interview with Kilgore and for everything else.

rock 'n' roll days

Last weekend was Boxcar Books' annual Rock 'n' Roll Prom benefit for the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project. The theme was "Under the Sea" - lots of plastic shells and a decadent papier mache mermaid. I wore the most wonderfully hideous dress you can imagine - let's just say, picture the most decadent dress Melanie Griffith wore in Working Girl and add lace, ruffles, rhinestones and cleavage. Mostly we took polaroids, but hopefully I'll have pictures to post soon. Sadly, I missed most of the Pixies cover band. The ersatz "Iggie Pop" was very intense, but he wasn't Iggie Pop. He looked like he should be shooting up on stage, and his big move of night was to show us his wares. The highlight was definitely the "Sweet '80s and '90s Covers by Secretly Canadian's Best." My friend Sarah's husband and the rest of the band dressed up as the kids from The Breakfast Club, including drag versions of Molly Ringwald and a brilliant Ally Sheedy. Emilio Estevez was pretty compelling - earnest and also, "fit" as they say in Bend It Like Beckham - and he sang a mean "Eye of the Tiger."

In other Rock 'n' Roll news, my friend Matt's band Murder By Death is on perpetual tour - Europe now, but soon the US again - and they are also kickass. If they're playing near you, you should go see them. They put on a whiskey drinkin', bottom of the ocean scourin', old west saloon fightin' good time. Here are some of their sounds and moving pictures.

hip action

A few years ago I injured my hip literally "clowning around" with a friend of mine, a former Ringling Bros. performer. He had bright red curls and an imposing physique - a red nose looked startlingly incongrous on him. These past few days, the hip's been all twingy. I chalk it up to the storms. Like any good New Englander, I get the weather in my bones.

Laurel and Seamus came to visit for their birthdays

We saw these:

We ate peppers stuffed with stars. Sometime, I will show you a photograph of those.

They showed me this wonderfully funny animation sequence. And their interpretation of it (note my old kitchen):


We talked about Wittgenstein. Kind of a lot.

We saw Louise Gluck (insert oumlaut) read and she talked about wanting to hear the sound of a poet's mind on the page. I like that thought. I also really liked the first and second sequences of poems she read, the first of which involved horses (voodoo, Laurel says) and a burning field. The second of which involved girlhood and marriage. She proved not as crotchety as we expected.

We ate chocolate-dipped ice cream from the Chocolate Moose.

Laurel and I locked ourselves in the bathroom and sang the Billy Bee song. Everyone else was playing music we didn't know, you see, and singing beautifully and loudly and we didn't want to disturb em.

We had amazing Turkish food (mint in soup!) and I got to hear a story about an exciting but treacherous protest in Paris. Laurel has lots of photos of it on flickr.

We played speed Scrabble.

We ate (yes, we ate a lot) the aforementioned birthday Dutch Baby.

We read Eyeheart Everything aloud. Like this only without the robot and in Bloomington:

snippets from Laurel and Seamus's visit

My friend Seamus made a hilarious movie. It is incumbent upon you to watch it now.

The bloody ends of deer legs are terribly red. Lions' tongues are red too.

I ate a dutch baby yesterday.

grad school is indulgent

I appreciate that I'm taking a class in which we can spend two and a half hours reading "The Prelude" aloud, and only get through the first part because we're too busy digressing about sympathetic vibrations, the Sublime, Atomism and Lacan, or drawing little doodles that illustrate how, when rowing backwards, one can witness a cliff face suddenly rising up to blot out the stars. I had the revelation that I would like to make a claymation version of "The Prelude," but perhaps it's because I've been watching too much Morel Orel.

IR is Time's person of the year

Indiana Review has a blog. It's nascent. It will grow. We'll keep you abreast of what's going on with us and our authors. It'll be all hip-like.

http://indianareview.blogspot.com/

if you lived in bloomington you'd be stimulated now

David Lehman read some beautiful poems tonight. My favorites, I think, outside the incredible long piece, "Yeshiva Boys," were the Daily Mirror pieces and this, which I sort of love/hate.

Here's a tiny Daily Mirror from poets.org:

April 26

When my father
said mein Fehler
I thought it meant
"I'm a failure"
which was my error
which is what
mein Fehler means
in German which
is what my parents
spoke at home

But that is not all you missed because you do not live in Bloomington. Barbez played an amazing set in which poems and incidents from Celan's life were interpreted through their avant-chamber music. Of course, the theremin was a highlight, but so were the excerpts of Celan woven through the hypnotic, kinetic sound. Barbez is touring, but usually their shows are more rock-oriented. I'm not sure if the Celan pieces are part of their usual repertoire, but if you get a chance to see them, go!

palmistry

I used to get out books on palm reading (and napkin folding) when I was a kid. Now I live with a woman whose grandmother made a living during WWII by reading palms; V's got the art down. Here's something you may not know: the lines on your right palm change. Yesterday I learned that my palm is drastically different than it was a few months ago. My life line has utterly absorbed my head line. Thwack. No more twin "M"s. What does that mean? Well...I'm pulling for growing pains. That the head will re-establish itself in a healthier relationship to my life in the months to come.

rememberances

I just found out my friend and colleague from last summer, Lucinda Mason, passed away a few days ago. She was a brilliant, vibrant artist who worked in large-scale, in art as in life. She will be missed. Here's one of her pieces:


Addendum: Here's what I remembered today. One day last summer, when I was having a tough time of it, for some reason that's long gone to me now, Lucinda invited me down to her little cabin by Grey House. She little the stubs of candles she had lying around and fed me plums. We sat on her porch in the warm night and talked. I don't remember what she said, only that it was reassuring. We looked out over the pasture. In the fog a pack of horses emerged and disappeared again.

twilight

Whatever will I do if I don't live near a cemetary in my next life? All those lonely bodies, all needing a kind word, someone to read their names. Cracked stones, fallen markers, granite logs. Handfuls of pine needles. We leave our dead all over the place now. Cemetaries can smell like summer camp, mulchy in the warm air, the crickets whirring. Why hold your breath when you can laugh?

list - you connect the dots

1. Running on the cross country course outside of town. It was hilly, 60 degrees or so, the sun warm and the wind cold. The grass was dry and brittle; the mud tamped down easily underfoot. The fields were scattered with arrows in different colors which were less easily followed than the much more convoluted, mazy public path through the Cotswolds. I hid my car key in my bra like a mol. The golf course was nearby. But it felt like nowhere.
2. My round-offs need some work but my handstand is as good as ever.
3. Cate, reading a poem aloud over delightful cake with sugar sea turtles on it. She said, "the volta, the volta!" I want you all to admire it too, but I can't find it right now. I don't want to give anything away.
   
4. This morning, for the first time in a year, the espresso maker foamed the soy milk.
5. My favorite thing someone has said about my writing lately (context soon): "[the actions of the central characters in the story are] a reflection of their desire...to communicate beyond the limited vocabulary they've been endowed with in Milford, a place that seems diabolically American [emphasis added]." I think that accurately describes the suburbs of Boston, indeed.
6. Sunlight in a public library.
7. The Putney Co-op stainless steel coffe mug.
8. E-mail from Tucker Capps. Yes, Tucker, you sound dangerous.
   
9. The end of a great Bob Hicok poem, "Did I ever tell you about my love/hate relationship with confessional poetry?" Please don't sue me for copyright violations for posting it:

"The other thing/

I get wrong most of the time is caring
about people. For instance: recently blood
collected in my grandmother where blood

shouldn't, everythihng she said came out
like Jiffy Pop on the stove just before
the foil rips, people cried and the hospital

was a factory of indifference and I scurried
home to write a poem about death. This
is an indication that my head's not

in the other room but up my ass and that
my soul's in there with it. I don't mean
to care less about people than what

people do, and could lie and say
I've taken steps to increase my devotion
to the actual limbs that come off and hearts

that stop, so I will. The art
of confession's to focus attention on what's
confessed while leaving the secret

mutations untouched. I once put the hose
of a vaccum on my penis and turned it
on. Honesty makes me feel so clean."

awp pictures

Abdel brought the camera and took some great pictures of which I'm stealing a few and posting for your viewing pleasure. Because my camera went all wonky, I don't have pictures of my own, and most of these are from the Book Fair. Just don't get the idea that I was attached to a giant table all week, because that's sort of what it looks like.


Our motto for the weekend: sex sells. Whatever it takes, as Abdel says, whatever it takes, baby.


Mary's boyfriend Kramer's mother, the amazing Sue O'Neill, was published in IR's collab collage issue. Here she is posing next to Mary's beautiful banner. Can you see the fighting roosters?


We all love Joshua Poteat's poems. But he did promise to show up in an orange mesh tank top, so we were a little disappointed.


One really -can- spend too much time in a hotel bar. Packs of writers sprawled out from the bar's mouth and onto the carpet in teeming or tired masses. On the last night Ben Moorad took a picture of this carpet. It seemed highly symbolic at the time.


Everyone was happy at the Flying Biscuit. I ate the Love Cakes. I mean, really, who wouldn't?


Steven manages to camouflage himself at the Book Fair. Notice the low ceilings and cinderblock walls. I spent the week in a basement.


In the end, everything was gone. Note the absense of the stacks of journals. All we were left with were the pretty bookmarks and our sense of satisfaction for a job well done.


We flew home with Maurice, Mitchell and Micah. That sounds like a children's book. Mitchell's reading on the Affrilachian Poets panel was really wonderful. Thouh I missed Maurice's talk, I heard great things about it. And he bought me yogurt when I was desperate. Micah, she just exudes cool.

'lanta

I'm back from AWP.

I'm reading Ben Moorad's lovely letter-pressed books, The Strange Transformation of Eamon Arble and The Second Dream of The Berry-Nosed Cab and The Art of Chiaroscuro. Strange and wonderful poems. Although I had to repack my suitcase in the airport to make it light enough, there are so many good things to read I don't care. We were told many times that our banner was the prettiest at AWP, thanks Mary. Today I was confused to not be standing in front of a bank of eight elevators when I tried to take one in Ballantine - the hotel was ridiculous but somehow habit-forming. There are too many stories to write. But it's good to be home. Pictures soon.

My family is as wonderful as ever. I wish I could immerse myself in the chaos more often. I don't, however, wish that I could eat such rich food all the time! Collard greens and cornbread, fried green tomatos, chicken parmesan, tiramisu. How did I survive?

Today, for the first time this whole year, I read my first name in a submission. In fact, I read it in two. Back to the routine. Only different.

peter is amazing

I bought a piece entitled "Name it What You Want to Name it." It is very zen, and the lines seem to indicate monsters, crocodiles, dinosaurs and an eye.

We stood around and talked eruditely about the work.

The playmobile piece with its upending of heteronotmative relationships (particularly as localized in the figure of Santa) was a standout.

Peter was almost tossed in the river a number of times, and each time was granted a reprieve.

I was sent to a desert eerily reminiscent of Seven Minutes in Heaven.

Here are some pictures.

if this were This American Life i would entitle this program "stories of being 'foiled again'"

Looks like my attempts to go here, to write and read and bicycle and swim, and also to visit my old stomping grounds may be foiled by unfortunate administrative snafus. I won the fellowship, yes, but sadly they may be booked during the only time possible for me to go. Keep your fingers crossed that things will work themselves out.

Last night the MFA basketball team, The Dangling Modifiers, aquitted themselves beautifully but were ultimately denied victory against their opponents, Some Team in Blue Jerseys with a Less Witty Name. I stood on the sidelines and tried to adapt my football cheers (by the time you get out "move that ball," the ball has been up and down the court five times already), and T wore her team colors, even if it was an accident. A had an amazing backwards lay-up, L scored several handy baskets, and dear sweet R blocked like the fierce woman we all know she is, even if she's usually too polite to show it. I wish I had pictures.

Thank goodness art openings for 4-year-olds can't be foiled. Tonight I will witness the debut of the masterwork, "No Good Things or Bad Things Ever Happen." I can't wait.

more stories from the gym

I can't abide by a Core Exercise teacher who uses music like "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" and who has no sense of rhythm. If only she didn't kick my ass so hard, I'd be out of there. But she does.

escapes

All of my belongings are walking away from me lately. I think perhaps they are trying to tell me I need to be less invested in things that tie me to the material world. First the phone adventure, and now my school ID has headed for the hills of Ohio in the company of a wandering minstrel. Hopefully it will come back to me through the good ol' P.O. in the near future so the gym won't charge me exhorbitant rates to use the services I already pay exhorbitant fees to use. Speaking of the gym, there's been a rash of children there lately. The other day I saw a little girl walking very deliberately, head down, in front of her mother on the treadmill (collective "ohhhh...") and today two little boys were scaling the railing I use for barre work. They climbed all around me and then there was apparently some sort of falling out, because the chubbier boy said, "well, you'll never get to be king, then." This warmer weather is nice, but the resulting floods of slush make it mandatory for me to wear my moonboots to the gym. This entry has been brought to you by the adjective: whimsical.

in the icy world

Last night I scaled the snowy heights of Prospect Hill without slipping once. Everything was iced and I felt like a pioneer as I wandered the silent world, trudging across bridges and fields and placing my footprints next to the tracks of dogs, birds and cars. During the day melting ice had made the trees crackle like paper. But it was cold enough again at night that everything was still and my legs in tights were two popsicles. It's been a long time since I've wandered alone after dark in snow that clean.

In an odd and fun piece of news, The Hartford Courant has nominated my mother as a finalist for letter to the editor of the year. We tried to figure out whether it was for her letter scolding them for their ethnocentric take on housing paint colors, or whether it was for her letter recommending Slim Whitman as a solution to the ubiquitous "loitering teens" problem. More information as it rolls in.

My friends are lovely writers. At the reading last night P read poems as beautiful as she, and V's bank robbery story held me in its thrall until the final, explosive and emotional ending. Marzipan is divine. I watched a cat and dog mate. I also picked up some terminology I really wish had stayed outside the purview of my knowledge. No, don't ask. I'm protecting your tender ears.

Oh, and in case Jamil called you, I have my phone back. No worries. Just one more petit adventure.

the great valentine project 2007

Unfortunately, there are no photographs of the hot pretzels or the hot toddy. No photographs of people actually making the beautiful valentines. And I didn't, as I promised A, actually attempt to make a pretzel in the shape of a sexy lady. That would have made for a good snapshot. But thankfully, there is a photograph of the wreckage (carnage?) of the valentine-making. Check out all the magazines. Can you see the Anthropologie catalogues? The copies of Science? What about Stanford Alumni magazine? CosmoGirl? Hustler? Poets&Writers? SexFever?

The house is still recovering. Next stop, groceries.

p.s. That new Charlie Brown Valentine movie they made was terrible. Stay away. It's no Great Pumpkin.

brushes with fame

This past week I have been stalked by a Famous Artist. I don't know who he is (ok, this is a lie - it's a small town so a little research led me to this conclusion), and I only know he is a Famous Artist because I've twice sat next to him in the Art Museum cafe during my office hours. Both times, professor-types have come up to him and discussed his visit - it became immediately clear that he was in B-town to give a talk, and also that he was much admired. It made me think about how many writers have come through town, and occasions that strangers have interacted with them in my presence in a way that made me want to say, hey, don't you know this is ________ (Mary Gaitskill, Charles Baxter, Toi Dericotte...), and how on this occasion I was the dummy sitting blithely at my table reading submissions while Famous Artist guy sat around being famous. So, I thought it was funny that I ran into him twice at the cafe. And then I ran into him at the union parking lot. And THEN he almost hit me with his car. This is totally unrelated (don't think it an unkindness born of the car incident), but I have to confess that something about him reminds me of Wallace Shawn.

go colts!

We were clearly a room full of writers. The wording of the commentary got us almost as up in arms as the game. At times it was like watching clowns come out of a clown car, at others like that greased pig wrestling I watched last year. And what was with Prince and his phallus? V says she heard gunshots. I'm just waiting to see how many students bother to show up to the 9am class tomorrow.

memo to the salt-scatterers of bloomington

You may think it clever to spread blue-green tinted salt on the road. You may think it brings light, like the pebbles on the bottom of a fish tank, refracted underwater. But here is what else it looks like: broken glass.

climate change, language change

As someone who teaches students about the precision of language, I find these two sentences from a CNN article on the latest global warming research amusing:

"The phrase 'very likely' translates to a more than 90 percent certainty that global warming is caused by man.

What that means in layman's language is 'we have this nailed,' said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who originated the percentage system."

Is Jerry Mahlman really the one who decided that "very likely" = 90%? Does that mean that whenever I use "very likely" in the future, it's going to mean I'm 90% certain about something? And why does "very likely" need to be translated into layman's terms? It it really such technical language that no ordinary mortal could grasp it?

road trippin for poetry?

Butler University has a pretty well-funded reading series. And people from here are always jaunting up to see the Famous Poets, and now that I'm writing poetry again, I thought maybe I might take a field trip myself one of these days. Of course, I secretly want to see Mr. Billy Pilgrim in all his glory, but I've also been trying to read bits of the other folks that I'm sure I ought to know (but too often, only know by name, my contemporary poetry literacy having been stunted).

So anyway, in poem-of-the-day form, here's some nice Franz Wright I came across. Particulary enjoying the turns (verse! reverse!) in the first, "Old Story."

three nice things about shorter hair

When I swim, no melon-sized ball of hair pulls my swim cap off.

After I shower, I can towel-dry (almost).

When I leave the gym with wet hair, it still turns into icicles, but at least they're not waist-length icicles.

another sign i've grown up (kids these days part ii)

There's the fact that I'm now the sort of person who, instead of causing a spritely ruckus in a public place, wants to grouchily quote the New York Times about the young folk causing a ruckus in a public place. One of the boys is wearing an example of those cartoony sweatshirts the Times Style section was reporting on a few weeks ago. These kids are talking outrageously loudly, playing music, breaking things that sound like glass, and singing. The girls are tee-heeing in squeaky voices in order to indicate to the boys how they are good girls enough to protest but bad girls enough to secretly think the boys being baaaad are sexxxxy. It's a public library for god's sake. I read another NY Times story, or maybe it was npr (so old, so very old), about a town that had to close its public library in the after-school hours because the kids were making too many scenes and vandalizing too much. I want to tell these kids to go to the mall. I also want to be shocked that no librarian has chosen to take these kids to task, but in the end, I decide that it's yet another example of adults not wanting to mess with kids who might be considered "dangerous." I mean, the bulk of them are African American, and you know what that might mean. Sheesh. Stove, how's that essay on fear coming? Because I think the aforementioned would be an interesting kind of fear to tackle writing about.

kids these days!

How can a student actually think it's acceptable to read a newspaper in class? I know it's 9am, but man. Get it together. And why is it always the Sports section? I'd love to see someone attempt to read the Wall Street Journal in my class. Or maybe Savage Love. I might even give them extra credit for that.

Today

• I read about meter and breath, bump up against old friends, such as"we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon...," and "two vast and trunkless legs of stone," begin to think in iambs again. Get dreamy about being young and lounging about on grassy fields in the Hudson Valley, memorizing from enormous volumes.
• Stephen Fry demonstrates to me why some people think that the British are more erudite than Americans.
• Someone I know shows up as a missed connection on craigslist, proving again to me what a small town this really is.
  
• I become disillusioned about the politics of the MFA program. Professionalism and art are not mutually exclusive, people!
  
• I laugh, because what else is there to do, about Bush's claim that new innovations will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil: "bicycles!" say I, "legs!" says V.
• I decide I really need to learn more about Jim Webb.
  

hot off the presses

Indiana Review Issue 28.2 is out! The issue features fiction by Richard Wirick, Marjorie Celona and Jonathan Hull as well as poetry by Bob Hicok, Susan Tichy,and James Capozzi and our own Sarah Cohen. There's also a very timely interview with Richard Ford. Check it out.

Christmas in Brooklyn

M's charming street is lined with wrought-iron railings tied with red velved bows, awnings draped in lights, and houses with decorations that blink in time to holiday music. At the corner several Christmas trees lean up against each other, waiting to be bought, and the man selling them smiles at children whose colorful coats sparkle against the white port-o-potty that inexplicably reads, in graffiti,"rollerblade!"

There is always too much to say about these visits. I stayed in Brooklyn this time and saw (and tasted) some of the favorite haunts of dear friends, such as where Maya Angelou, Robert DeNiro and Lil Kim get their red velvet cake. I bought red patent leather shoes in the Green Point, ate Polish potatoes and drank the best coffee (with an amazing doughnut, but not quite as good as Congdon's in Maine, and their maple creams) at Peter Pan while chatting with old people. And then I saw some crazy good sculptures by the man who did the voice of Ludo in Labyrinth. I want to sit him down with Duane Hansen and listen to what they have to say. Only Duane Hansen is dead.

There were so many things I earmarked to record in my image journal, but I should have written them down then. Because now the old man repairing the edifice of the church is blurring at the edges, and the four girls in matching patent leather shoes are fading away.

all is quiet in the suburbs

The upscale suburban plaza with names that end with Walk or Terrace and begin with words like Evergreen or Peacock (then there's the Shoppes at ____ phenomenon) (all of which, for some reason, makes me think of this marvelous list), is taking over my mother's part of the world. Frustratingly, it's one of the few places to shop out here. We noticed the plaza we visited tried to distinguish itself from the nearby mall (oh so working class! garish colored lights! hot topic! santa's playland!) by piping in tasteful classical music rather than muzaked versions of "Feliz Navidad" and that perrennial Christmas favorite "The Heart Will Go On."

But strange and wonderous things do happen in the suburbs, and at this plaza we ran across a cadre of cloaked carollers: teenagers in black, cream and maroon hooded robes singing the Carol of the Bells and other unintelligible, but lovely, seasonal ditties.

Today on to Attleboro and possibly the great lights of La Salette. As I observed to my mother on my return, every region of the U.S. has its own particular take on gawdy, and I've missed the New England Catholic brand of ostentation.

revelations are few and far between, but when they come...

I was thinking the other day about how I needed to go to church again, or perhaps the river, or perhaps read a spiritual text. All this to say, I was feeling out of touch with the larger than my humble life themes. And then I had this epiphany: I have not been reading enough poetry lately.

portent addendum

Driving back from the grocery store, we notice a man walking up the steps of his porch. He is long haired, shirtless, with some sort of tattoo on his back. Vanessa and I are both watching him, in that way you watch your neighbors when they emerge from their dens: recognizing, ok, you, it's you who lives in close proximity to me. Then Vanessa says, is that a gun? And yes, we see, the man has some sort of rifle tucked under his arm. It's sleek and silvery and looks freshly polished.* Its these times we need to remind ourselves we live in Indiana.

*Lest you worry, it seemed likely it was hunting related, and he did not appear hurried or distressed.

portents

From atop the pines comes a scrambling and squawking. I look up to see a murder of crows erupting from and returning to the treetops, barely visible against the dark sky. It is an ebb and flow of conflict, rustling wings and branches in slightly different tenors. I pull my hood up and walk under the possibility of falling needles, shadowed in an old-fashioned silhouette against the sidewalk. No wolves in sight, though.

The next day, a man bicycles past, a quiver of arrows stuck out of the back of his pack. I think about the man in Rhode Island who killed another man, in a road rage incident, with a crossbow he'd pulled from his car.

We eat candy canes at the bar from a small glass cup. None of them are peppermint.

bloomington can be pretty in winter

back to poetry

I'm tired of narrative right now, and yet I can't quite escape it. In honor of this, I'm posting Misty Harper's beautiful poem, "Plot." I just reread Misty's chapbook (chosen by Charles Simic for the PSA Chapbook Prize) and it's so good. She does such wonderful things by impregnating common phrases with unexpected images. Here you go:

Plot
Never Fails. Slick with ice
then thick with blossoms.

Let birds subpoena the trees.
Let Miscellany loosen her ornate plot.

I was born on my due date.
I was placed on a red plate.

A nurse said O Sawbones
this one doesn't look too good.

Arithmatic of pestilence and light,
answer my hands their questions.
Answer my questions their hands.

new dress

The black was becoming oppressive.

oh and also (first lyrics post!)

It's Over
(Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan-Waits)

You must have brought the bad weather with you
The sky's the colour of lead
All you've left me is a feather
On an unmade bed

It's always me whenever there's trouble
The world does nothing but turn
And the ring it fell off my finger
I guess I'll never learn

But it's over, it's over, it's over
I'm getting dressed in the dark
Our story ends before it begins
I always confess to everyone's sins
The nail gets hammered down
And it's over, let it go

So don't go and make a big deal out of nothing
Well it's just a storm on a dime
And I've always found there's nothing
That money can't buy
I've already gone to the place I'm going
There's no place left to fall
And there's something to be said
For saying nothing at all

And it's over, it's over, it's over
It's done forgotten and through
No one cares what it's all for
You'll be buried in the clothes
That you've never wore
So keep your suitcase by the door
It's over, let it go

No one cares what it's all for
You'll be buried in the clothes
That you never wore
So keep your suitcase by the door
It's over, let it go
You gotta let it go
Let it go, let it go

today i am thankful for

good health. And the knowledge that the positive side of the close knit between my mental state and my physical state is that it lets me off the hook for being a miserable wretch these past couple days.

I can't stop listening to Tom Waits' incredible new album(s), particularly the song "First Kiss." Two songs at least on these albums mention Indiana. Holla.

Samrat gave a wonderful reading last night which opened with a sex scene from The Guru of Love in which monkeys interrupt the action delightfully and mischeiviously. His explanation was equally wonderful: I got the two lovers together in the temple and then I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't want to do a traditional love scene. His story "The Wedding Hero" from The Royal Ghosts showed astounding control of time, something which I'm struggling with. It made me grateful again for what I can learn from him.

blog as notebook

I'm taken with this Emily Dickinson definition of art I just stumbled across, in a wonderful little Slate photo essay on Joseph Cornell.

"Nature is a Haunted House - but Art - a House that tries to be haunted."

I like the idea that so much of what I do is hanging around, trying to haunt my house over and over again.

thank you soma

for playing Jerry Jeff Walker.

Pack up all your dishes.
Make note of all good wishes.
Say goodbye to the landlord for me.
That son of a bitch has always bored me.

If I can just get offa this L.A. Freeway without getting killed or caught.

cosmo's moon

Once when I was little I pitched an embarassing fit at the idea of renting Moonstruck, because I wanted something more "age appropriate." But my parents rented it anyway and after much stomping and huffing and slamming of doors, I crept down the stairs and watched the whole thing from the bottom step, peering around the living room wall. I'm sure my parents knew, even though I tried to be secretive.

Now I only want to be as tough as Loretta. I want to sit around drinking strong coffee and eating cannoli and little almond cookies with my mamma. To wear black all the time like a Sicilian grandmother. To exaggerate and turn over tables and compare everyone to feral animals. This is how it goes.

cnn headlines are often absurd

The demise of Encore has forced me to Starbucks where holiday music tinkles and the creepy men who are always here stare at me yet again. The next time the weak-chinned guy stares at me I'm going to tell him to put his eyes back in his head. You think I'm a nice person who is kidding about this, but I'm not.

Thanksgiving worked out! Way too much food, declamations, and Sailor Jerry, but fun was had by all.

I'm creeped out right now about this.

And I'm feeing as though there are an awful lot of stories in the news today about zoo animals. Is that what we turn to in the face of hundreds of deaths in Sadr City?

Hope never seems to stick around.

idle days

Has it seriously been a week? Here's the deal: A says I should be preparing for wintering in, hauling firewood and digging up the tubers and stirring the large pots of preserves. That the mind slowing down and the body speeding up is the natural course of events. I agree and that's been my life this week. Therefore no posts, only Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings and the way they alternately coddle and throttle their guitars. Only surrender to the sound.

Weekend, Weekend

Turns out herding MFAs really does get them out onto the dance floor. What with the rain tents and lights and the serious rock of Steven!, the MFA band, it was quite the time. Would that the rest of the weekend had been as work productive as that was fun productive. V and I have been ridiculous with our chit chatting instead of working (too fun!). I love it when she says things like "befitting her station."

This weekend's distraction was brought to you by The Queen. Beautifully done. It made sense when I saw that the director, Stephen Frears, had made Dirty Pretty Things, which I loved. Even though I'm not going to England this winter, I'm immersing myself in its culture (reading England, England now). This movie made me think about how having a female monarch presiding over the fall of the Empire might have contributed to the monarchy retaining what power it has; the film's illumination of the Rosie the Riveter aspects of the Queen's personality helped me understand the "progressive" element of her postion, which I think I'm generationally and culturally removed from. I've also been wondering what will happen to the institution in the coming male reigns. Which will happen soon, I suppose -- an odd thought.

I would much rather rake leaves and run on a treadmill than read right now. My brain is a floating balloon. But look at me avoid The Wizard of Oz which is playing out there in the living room and focus. Yes, look at me go.

"it's all right to feel things, though the feelings may be strange"

I wonder to what extent (my language is so inflected by teaching comp) my life as it is now could fit into the narratives of "Free to Be You and Me."

Tonight the MFA band (including dear housemate o' mine) is playing a party and I am obliged to go and cheer for them. I'm actually excited about it, though I've been feeling pretty anti-party lately. I need to practice guitar so I can some day appear with them.

All the leaves have dried up in the last week and the trees are shedding rapidly. It's as though Bloomington said, oh yeah, it's November, better get barren. Except that it's been very warm. The temperature in my house is so much cooler that I keep feeling tricked when I open the door.

I met our non-regular (subbing on days off) mailman today. I always love meeting the mailman because of my dad, and also because it's nice to know the face of the person who stops by your house every day. He was super nice, as is the regular carrier. I want to make them baked goods. Can't forget to leave the holiday card out this year.

Some hopeful news on the IR front regarding solicitations. Keeping fingers crossed.

"Let us take a turn about the room"

Is it a seminar foul when the professor has the flu but asks the students to have the class anyway? What if it's an election night and the students would like to watch the results come in?

V and I ate sesame chicken and broccoli and cabbage whipped up on the spot by me and watched the Midterm Midtacular. I was teased by multiple parties for my grimacing and fidgety involvement in the election results, but there is a long tradition of this, from Mary and my marathon Katrina coverage sessions to the Buffy crowd event mentioned over in Stoveland. It was a little bit like the feeling of following the last football game I watched. Familiar, old and exciting. Even if the stakes were ever so much higher. Perhaps I needed to think of it that way so I wouldn't be so sad if the results went badly.

V just wrote this beautiful line: "its wings as grey as timber beat upon the bulb."

I want to write all about Stove's visit, but she did it all. Suffice it to say, all parties including Barnaby are sad that she is gone. And a little worried that too much gossip was had. But mostly feeling the aftermath of her presence that made everything glow a little bit brighter in this dim November.

life starts again today

The Big Presentation is done, rawther well I think, and even though I went on for far too long and couldn't answer all the questions posed, I always feel that the fact that there -are- questions posed is a sign of engagement. Also, faced with concerns about just who is thinking about author intentionality anyway these days, I feel I acquitted myself well as a writer. I'm no fan of interpreting a work with an author's bio. in my back pocket, but when you're a writer, it's hard to argue that the author doesn't matter. I'm trying to figure out whether the author-function is the same as the implied author. It's all knotty terminology.

Anyway. It's chilly and my feet are freezing and I was happy to wake up from a dream of a plane doing barrel-rolls over the Great Marvels of the Western World (Leaning Tower of Pisa, Acrpolis, etc.) and not have to worry about a presentation or reading 25 stories. I bathed and read 10 and practiced guitar and thought fond thoughts of visitors from out of state. Really, it's almost cheerful.

one more delay

The clouds moving across the sky, the few leaves shuddering on the branches fingered out above us, the distant call of the freight train all made me think of Bard, of the Hudson, of Donna and of Dennis's songs about women and cities: "these are my mountains, these are my hills, the train runs through them, fills me with chills...the quiet titans, the monsters sleep, the locomotive, the river deep." The man skulking about the cemetary all in black cut short the excursion, but V and I held close and traipsed through the city streets nonchalantly nonetheless. When a big black dog tethered to an invisible leash leapt barking out of the darkness she became larger than life, told it to back off in a firm deep voice. We are brave girls, we. Forlorn sometimes, dreamy often, longing girls but brave.

I would ask pardon for the sentimentality, but I'm trained not to. No disclaimers. Take it for what it is tonight; tomorrow will be another story.

i feel like i know her but sometimes my arms bend back

Oh Stove, you're going to addict me to this thing.

Neko Case makes me feel like I should be hanging out at the Road House from Twin Peaks. Shaking my hips back and forth and twirling cherry stems like Audrey. It's very very warm out and I should be sitting outside, but I won't be able to see my computer screen. So instead: soft light and mint green variegated walls. Looking at a man with a waxed moustache (for reals) and a woman who once taught me Pilates. Both employees.

I would like to work out the vagueries of my thoughts on unreliable narration post-research into scholarship of The Remains of the Day, but I have a feeling that work had best be done within a paper form. So off I go to be productive.

stick leash:

what the little girl walking past the window is being dragged along with. Slightly unsettling.

As previously mentioned, it's homecoming weekend, and that makes everything rawther surreal (as Nanny would say). Today's example: V and I are having brunch at the Runcible, when a cadre of pleated-docker wearing young gentlemen come in and surround us in a sinuous l-shape. The group, we are told, is called "Straight, No Chaser," and they've come from Hillel House to sing us a ditty or two, after which they're going to collect money for "The Sudan, Israel, and" some other unrelated country that I've forgotten. I have to say, I've never been the biggest fan of acappella music, and their song that involved a distance between the speaker and the narratee, as it were, was a surround-sound version of pretty terrible. I mean, they were "good boys," they had nice voices, but sheesh. V made the highly entertaining observation that if we were a couple in the middle of a breakup, the song choice would have been highly traumatic.

Best Halloween costume gimmick so far: competition between "The Snuggler," the blankie-d superhero who went around the Vid giving hugs, and my friend A's "Intergallactic Love Warrior" that went around shooting folks with a love gun. The ladies seemed to love the love gun.

In a time of slutty "fill in the blank" being the most prevalent costume, I'd like to take the idea to the extreme. Slutty Eggplant, perhaps, or Slutty Trash Bin. Now that I think of it, though, Mary already did this best with her "Baberaham Lincolm" costume.

Saturday is a Work Day

There's something deeply satisfying to me about sitting here at this table in this cafe with all these stories spread out around me to read. Dozens. I'm listening to Radio Free Klezmer. I'm plowing through story after story about father/son relationships, most of which involve a)hunting b)fishing or c)camping. Then there's winter sports. Poor V has to deal with my constant stream of "never do this" in a story. The latest had to do with fabric stretched tight over women's breasts. Christ. She said she wants to write a story in which fabric droops over a woman's breasts. I say more power to her. I'm realizing why Jenna Blum was so anti-child narrators now, and why AGNI has a blanket policy. (That sounds like a policy to issue afghans to its contributers, but of course I mean a blanket policy against child narrators).

It's homecoming weekend and yesterday I passed a float that consisted of two large papier mache yams. How rad is that?

Stove, the leaves on the trees are still bright. I wondered to myself whether that would still be the case when you came, then realized you'll be here in 5 days, and how much can really change in that time? Yee-haw.

my house needs better insulation

I think that my broken power cord is perhaps too broken, because every time I plug it in the muscles in that arm begin to ache, and I can only assume an electrical current passing through is the cause.

V has found my blogs. We've traded so I've sat here noddling through old entries. Had I had my eyes closed, what would I have assumed I'd have remembered and what would I have predicted forgetting?

I've discovered that carrying around The Satanic Verses is quite a good way to meet people. I'm considering taking to reading it in public more often. My friend R once had a weird boxy outlet sort of thing in his room that we decided he should label, "conversation piece," and he did. I would like to label my book, "conversation piece," and wait for them to come. In class today S asked how many of us remembered the fatwah in the news, and I felt old, being one of two beside the professor who did. I felt older when it turned out S had been 5 at the time. My copy is my parents' from Royal Books in Franklin. I remember how everyone was talking about the controversy, and how my mom rushed out to buy the book, and it felt funny to write in its margins all these years later. It occured to me tonight that as awful as the fatwah is (and fun fact - it can never be revoked now that Khomeni's dead...it's an "endless arrow"), the severeity of the controversy is a kind of testament to the power of literature that seems oddly quaint in an age where controversal literature consists of Harry Potter, The DaVinci Code, and Danish cartoons.

I like sitting next to V on the couch and working (or not) together. Last night we dredged up old videos on YouTube, dreamed of playing PJ Harvey's basslines and rocked out to Snoop Dogg. We are total dorks and I love it.

I'm going to think about the postcolonial subject vs. the globalized subject now. And maybe do a little writing, too.

Synchronicity

In my dream I watched one of those "Monster Trucks" (as in Sunday Sunday Sunday at the Arena) drive over a smaller car and get stuck. I wanted to run away from the fire I worried would start, but PC was there and convinced me I should help rescue the children who she somehow knew would be inside. We broke in - suddenly it was an RV - and helped the children out. We had to step on hot flames. We had them jump into the mud and this was soft so they were fine. I was holding a child in my arms, running from the flames, when I woke up.

First thing I look at the news. On the Boston Globe Website, front page news, is a picture of a fireman holding a child in his arms, rescuing her from a fire. Not prescience, but still eerie.

Here at my favorite coffee shop in town, I am working next to a tapestry in the Velvet Elvis mode of Pope John Paul II. His thumb is stuck in a book.

Halloweeny

V and I went to the Grudge II as an effort to drive away the outside world. The theater was all but empy so we pulled up our hoods and watched between fingers and squealed at will. I think the last horror movie I'd seen in the theater was Scream. The scary things were so beautiful that I didn't want to cover my eyes -- only my ears for the crick crick crack sound that was so scary. And the pacing of the two narratives was intermeshed really well so that rest from tension gradually became points of even greater tension. And now it's cold and rainy and I'm going to go get coffee and think about reading and grading and reading some more.

Someone I know carved a pumpkin into a buddha. Sometimes all I want to do is facilitate seasonal fun.

this post is for

stove, who's right that I should be contributing more to the social experiment. So here's what I will say. This day began well, with actually getting up and making breakfast and writing. It began with waking up and not feeling the dread of alienation from loved ones. In other words, a relief of a morning. That the soy milk curdled when the espresso hit it was frustrating, the moreso that the soy latte was part of the treat for the writing, which though not entirely sucessful, happened.

You would do well to note the conjoined frustration and illumination; that was my day.

This morning: dear A sitting on the bed playing his guitar while his son P sat on the floor facing him, playing a recorder. They sang a song about a shark who turned into many different things, including a pumpkin. P did some rockin recorder solos. A kept asking P what happened next, and when P told him he would make up a verse around it. The verse about the pumpkin who drank juice that turned all his teeth red, except one tooth, who turned out to be named Fred, reminded me of one of the Camp Favorite Moose songs. You know the one.

Later P and I sang the most intense version of "Masters of War" ever. We stared into each other's eyes and I sang the real lyrics and he echoed with made up words that ended in the same rhythmic drawn-out growl as Dylan. That kid is one smart cookie. And he makes a good egg. I like that I can play the guitar well enough to sing a song about a museum with dogs on the wall instead of paintings.

I like that P listens to me. A good egg. Stove. I like my good eggs.

first week

Last night we went to the house the sculpture teacher is house-sitting and he made a nice stew, though it was probably 1 am. We went there because he had to put the sheep back in their home so the coyotes wouldn't slaughter them all. But the dance teacher and I miscounted 1o over and over, so everyone had to go mucking about looking for the 11th sheep. There's somthing funny about counting sheep at night. In the end it turned out the 11th sheep was in the pen all along, but we hadn't seen it. I swear we both counted 3 times. Sheep have little brains. It's amazing how they really do have one hive mind, move in a herd. Pee when they're scared. Their tongues are soft.

Today I've been reading Brautigan and The Catcher in the Rye, again. The latter to remind myself where my students are, the former because I'm really into reading fiction that is whimsical/absurd but entirely without irony. It's such an earnest sort of fiction, but it isn't exactly realism. Maybe it's just that it's such a particular reality - that it gives off that "truth is stranger than fiction" vibe. At any rate, I'm finding the sincerity of both first person voices refreshing.

I love my students. I love the fervour with which they reference things like Rashomon and The House of Mirth and Pillow Talk and MacBeth, as if they were the first/only ones to discover these wonders. I love how much they love to write. I love how they feel they've found a place for themselves here. I love their red leggings. I love their phrases of the day (moist gazebo). I love how much they love making little in jokes out of things like the word "meat" or the names of characters in old westerns. I love how insightful they can get about global affairs. I love that they can spend ten minutes discussing the rape line in Harjo's "Horses," unfacilitated. I love that they love each other's writing, even if it's different from their own. I love how amazing their letter poems were. I love their monkey haiku.

good eats

The connection between my Boggle word, "tony," and the pre-Boggle pic-a-nic was serendipitous and illuminating for those who didn't know the definition of the word. A Putney pic-a-nic includes grilled swordfish and pesto pasta, for those who were wondering. How am I ever going to manage to feed myself again?

at the putney school

Last night I saw these amazing mists dividing the verdant mountains. The frogs around the puddle make mating noises that sound like rubber bands. I wished I still knew all the names of the constellations. It's unfortunate that the Hubble has stopped working. The best words I acheived in Boggle were "dais" and "pieta," though someone had the latter. Among the longest was "latest" which I find amusing somehow. The stars here are outstandingly bright and make me want to travel out into Bloomington's open space more often. Everyone here is a Vermonter or is terribly transient or both. It seems to represent the two paths artists much choose between. I mean, not being a Vermonter, but being settled in a vibrant place that's cheap to live. Well, I guess the third path is NYC but everyone knows how I feel about that.

It's beautiful here, an oasis. Someone's utopia.

The kids show up tonight. I have a lot of work to do.

Up North

It's cold in Montpelier, finally, after the storm that blew the breezes from the river up. Miciah's furniture is all nicely arranged in her new living room that is so full of plants it inspires me to be better about getting and buying them. There are mermaids clothed in turn of the century frock-coats and holding parasols over the mantel. I really love river towns, especially ones in old, gentle landscapes akin to that of the Hudson Valley with rolling mountains in layers. But this town is so small that she runs into people literally everywhere we go, and B-town is seeming small enough to me these days. But it's been lovely to have nice coffee in round purple mugs on the porch, to talk all day - four hours accidentally, and now to be reading our journals together in the waning day with the nice music on. If only I didn't have to do the work I've been putting off. In a space like this, though, the work is much easier to do. I'm trying to make mental notes to cultivate this kind of environment on through the year. Please, can I collect you all together?

13 Lately things

1. Finally saw Rashomon. I know the nesting doll structure, the story told from the different points of view was what was supposed to be amazing, but I was most impressed by the baby at the end. Theme and variation - the unexpected that jolted the narrative and allowed the film to end.
2. I'm tired of random carpenters and plumbers in the room next to my bedroom. I don't want to wake up to tiling. That said, I think the new bathroom is going to be lovely.
   
3. I sounded really goofy when I was ten and trying to rock Belinda Carlisle acapella.
4. Devon is as wonderful as ever and he can still pick me up.
5. I'm too nice. Everyone in NYC wanted me to take their pictures. Corollary: digital cameras are a pain in the butt because people can be rude and ask you to take their picture over and over because they dont' like how they are smiling and then they can ask you to tell them Eddie Murphy jokes to make them crack up.
6. Never go to a "jeans" party with a bunch of beauty product publicists if you want to feel reasonably confident about your body.
7. I never realized Toxic would be so fun to dance to. Why is it that I can meet people in one night in NYC at some random loft, but I can't meet people in months in Bloomington? Espanol? No.
   
8. I'm not sure a terrorist zombie movie is such a good idea, in the end.
9. What's a strawberry moon?
10. Two days until Vermont. Farms, lovely Vanessa, good people.
11. I still love public libraries.
12. Mysteries written in the voice of the Prince of Wales circa 1900 are tremendous amusement.
13. An audio tape exists of my parent's wedding reception. My long-dead grandfather (mother's side) is speaking in Spanish to my then 14-year-old uncle (father's side). My father is so softspoken. Still the same rhythms of speech, thirty years later, but a slightly more Indiana accent. I've only listened to bits and pieces of it but the whole thing is a study in cognitive dissonance. There's lots of talk about Italian sausage and bringing in the beer in spite of the rain. It should make me sad, and it will, I know, but it's such a tremendous artifact that right now it simply makes me amazed. My father is 25 (!). But he seems just the same.
    

Funny Eyes

I've had them all my life. They are set wrong, like salt and pepper shakers that want to season each other instead of the food. At the optometry school where the exams should be cheap but are instead pricey and long, they make me a curiosity, a case study. And so I place one hand over my left eye, one hand over the right. Over and over I place and remove demonstrating the rapidity of the jump, how I compensate, accomodate. How accomodating I am. I am tired and my vision is bleary and it frustrates me to say, again, I can't see the two crosses at once. I do not have strong binocular vision and I'll never see the magic eyes. I don't want to be a lab rat any more. And this is all before, long before, the health center. Where unasked for prescriptions are filled and my history is taken by a frowning woman with cold, demeaning eyes.

Kicks

I own pink sneakers now. Sorry, Moose, didn't go for the Roos. But they're cute and you'd like them. The great state of Vermont will not apologize for its cheese.

Wednesday Night at the Harmony School Gymnasium

Contra-dancers all over the country are the same. The same grey-haired boomers with ponytails and shirts with ponies or lizards or sunsets on them, the same elderly men with small visible injuries tottering around too slow for the cadence, the same eco-friendly young-uns with gypsy skirts and bounce like they're listening to Phish, the same engineer-types who grit their teeth through the dances as though they're planning to socialize if it kills them. I get just as dizzy in Bloomington, though I miss Holman's afterwards with Extreme Television and absurd dialogue. It was nice, though, to find that after two years away, it came back easy as pie. That a man said, "I saw that gentlemen giving you directions, but you don't dance like you needed them!" For some reason tonight everyone asked if I sang or played music. Perhaps it's that the community here is so much smaller that people tend to immerse themselves in all aspects of the scene. I sort of got the feeling people were recruiting me. I never know what to say when anyone asks if I sing. Yes, all the time, in my bathtub, in my car, at karaoke, with friends. But not in a chorus, not out, not anymore. Someday I'll buy that concertina and be the sea-shanty queen. But jeez, I'm getting tired of pipe dreams.

too many nights out

The bag is full of underwear and the sweater song is on the player in the warm car. I am remembering the way my friends dance, bending my torso into those shapes, the shimmies and hip thrusts of tall slender women. The double wide gay bar is empty, relaxed, but the Vid is hopping, comfortable if sceny. Will I dream tonight? Old men haunt the crack between my pillows. Days I spend on the internet pricking those who have injured me. I am going to try on my bag full of underwear. The girls ride off in their cars to contact the boys and we string something that looks like love between our hearts like fishing wire.

seasonal change

Upped the weights today. We are all officially gym rats, what with the trash talking by the squat barbells. My arms are sore and it's pleasant and I got all the recycling out so there is that little bit of accomplishment. If only I didn't have the insomnia that makes you uncover pictures of your high school crushes and listen to "Crash" by the Cure over and over like you haven't in ten years. Rather, I should take out Vlad or Ernest or even Marjani, tuck into bed. But the house is so empty with Mary gone. It sings, this emptiness. So that I have to wheedle the ladies into dinner on the pretext of fragility in order to not be alone in it. Summer is a funny time here, full of new discoveries. In the kitchen some sort of rose is falling open fragrantly, reminding me of a moment of attention. There is room for strangers now, for library books and six days a week of workouts and drives down to the lake where billboards of eagles glow eerily in the mist. I saw a heron by the river yesterday. They are, I was told, "our largest bird."

Memorials

Last night the party was lovely, tomato plants in the windows, fragrant. So Portland what with the salvage wood houses and the full bar, the punk rock anarchist kids and the bike art. Bloomington is shrinking. The same people are everywhere, the nighttime people popping up during the day at the library or the coffee shop; the nighttime people look hazy in the light of day, not quite fully rendered. I must look like that as well, though the backs of my pants drag through puddles and the day thumps solidly around in my heart.

My aunt died today. Mother's Day of all days, proving the studies my mother oft cites about how people hang around for the big events: birthdays, Christmas. Her daughters were by her bedside. I remember the photograph of her in the faux fur and the red-tinted sunglasses walking along the Charles beside my far-less-glamorous mother. The diary en francais she sent me special for my birthday in the fourth grade, just after she had become an expatriate. The accent, muddled and continental, that my family mocked for years until I came to understand it, just this year, how she could forget she came from Chicago, Kansas, lands of flat and arid syllables. The scarf I gave her rich against her skin, festive over the purple pajamas. Her feet like a monkey's, little groping things. The separation of spirit and physicality so pronounced, her sharp mind a moving thing within a wizening body. How she was a writer and how important that always was to me. How it seemed to connect us at the end.

It's so cold and rainy out. This midwestern landscape she left behind. I feel very alone today in it. And I wonder again why they all scattered, those siblings, to nest in different parts of the world. What was so much more vital than kin? They're all hearing the news now. In California, Oregon, Georgia. In Connecticut my mother is alone in her little house in the Colonial woods. It just pains me, that solitude. And the solitude it begets.

I went to a cemetary today and read the names to myself. The gravestones without flowers. The old ones, the forgotten ones. It's comforting to me to think that someone is visiting my grandmother that way, her gravestone with the wheat etchings in Santa Cruz where none of her children live anymore. My grandfather in his mausuleum in Chicago -- someone will walk by and peep in and wonder who is buried there, what the stained glass means, who the flag was for. They're scattering my aunt's ashes in the channel. Between homelands, just like she always was.

so full

of pretzels. The Boston Globe didn't know what they were starting fifteen years ago when they published that street vendor First Night hot pretzel recipe. I think it could seriously contribute to peace in the Middle East. We just need to sit down the heads of states and let them gorge on soft and salty goodness.

The valentines were made, though for the most part not by me, who expended my creative energies on the aforementioned pretzels. The kids didn't get into the Hustlers, which was good. The girly magazines did provide for some funny Valentiney jokes. Thank you Kinsey.

Rick Moody is Cream of Wheat

At least that's what he says he's trying to make of himself, in people's eyes, so his work can speak for itself rather than being mediated by the public's conception of him as Author. (I am really tempted to make a Foucauldian Author-function joke here, but that's just too geeky). It's a great image though, Rick Moody and Cream of Wheat all mixed up together, and now the two will always room together in my mind. At the reading Rick Moody sang a realio trulio protest song. He made up lyrics about a soldier in Iraq and sung them to the tune of a traditional ballad that Fairport Convention once covered, which explains where I knew the melody. Later he said he was sad that there weren't any protest songs around anymore, with their directness, like in the old tradition. Well, he didn't say he was sad, he said something more eloquent than that, but I extrapolated a sweet desolation. There's something so brave about someone getting up in front of a roomful of people and singing a song a capella. His voice wavered at first and then he grew confident (there were about seven verses). Toi Dericotte sang at her reading too, just burst into song in the middle of an essay. She sang that heartbreaking Motherless Child song that is probably an old spiritual but that Eric Clapton revisioned. My Dad put the Eric Clapton version on a mix for me once. I wept when Toi sang, it was so beautiful. Rick Moody did not make me cry. But he did make me want to put on old protest songs and get fired up. Later, at the Runcible Spoon, we talked about Elvis Costello, karaoke, how thank goodness the O'Henry prizes are judged blind. He has an amazing Brokeback Mountain anecdote that I would share but this is a public forum and I feel funny sharing other people's anecdotes about famous people on it. But if you ask me I'll tell you. Tonight I have come to realize a sad truth about myself. I have the awkward habit of proffering ridiculous confessions/personal details when confronted with the need to make small talk with semi-famous people. I told Rick Moody about my embarassing experience karaokeing Mercedes Benz. I even mentioned the "soundrack" of handclaps. I told Toi Dericotte about my affinity for cooking with real pumpkin. Toi and I bonded over Icebox Cake so in the end I guess it all turned out ok. The Mercedes Benz conversation led to enlightening Rick about those cheesy videos they run while the karaoke songs play. Perhaps he'll go sometime and see them, and then he'll remember me.

there must be a birthday...

A few nice things about birthdays:
*Waking up to a paper hippo that says happy birthday and a breakfast burrito from a dear roommate who understands that birthdays are important even if they make you feel self-conscious.
*Travel Scrabble.
*A herringbone rosette that matches your herringbone shoes.
*A waiter who's clearly taken some drug that makes him very very happy.
*Two painters painting outdoor Bloomington (town and gown) on a summery fall day.
*The girl with the parasol.
*Realizing a new friend is suddenly an old friend. Being able to talk about melancholy with someone who understands its inherence to fall, to seasons turning, to milestones.
*Getting all the critiques done. Not reading 131 drafts.
*Dinner outdoors at the Runcible Spoon, still chuckling at the feel of its name on the tongue.
*Hearing old, beloved voices.
*Maple sugar candy and all the right presents, none asked for, because Mamma just knows you this year. For example, the cake slicer for the fancy cake that's still emerging from the imagination and the cookbooks.
*A card with a chicken boy. Hooray for whimsical animals.
*Text messages about surprises which turn out to be ferny and rosy and sweet smelling.
*When you freak out about the weird eye problem and it turns your stomach and you think the day has taken a sharp downturn, truly new friends stopping by with cherry nut brownies and photographs of gourds and dogs in trench coats.
*Spontaneous Milne recitations and then the corresponding realization that you've always thought of those books as birthday books. When We Were Very Young. Now We Are Six.
*Conversations on the porch swing, strange things afoot at 813 W. K.
*That the party is Thursday, so it's not over.
*That your birthday allows you to indulge both sappiness and the second person.

Turkey Trot

I've been saying I wanted to experience more of Indiana, since I'm out here and all. So Mary and I took off for Montgomery's annual Turkey Trot. We missed the turkey races, but managed to witness plenty of other kinds of rural fun. Oh, Indiana.