Christmas comes but once a year, thank the gods.

Made it though another Christmas-- barely.

All in all, not such a horrible experience, but one of the most exhausting ones of the year by far. Between me and the boyfriend, we have four households, sometimes more, to hit up in one or two days. Christmas day, we started at 9 AM and did breakfast, lunch, and dinner with three different families, and presents at each one. I had a lurking head cold, which made the day seem urky (that was going to be "murky" but "urky" actually describes it better) and vaguely surreal (and doubly tiring).

Same routine at all the families-- It's great to see you! Oh, you know, school and work. Mm, what tasty foodstuffs you have prepared! Yes, we should briefly chat over some banal subject. Oh, a present? For me? You shouldn't have! Whelp, I'll be heading out now, see you next year!

Just thinking about it makes me head hurt. Mostly the gifts involved money, which was fabulous and much needed. However, my mother bestowed upon me a fabric shaver, a device which removes those annoying fuzzballs from sweaters and the like. (Somewhat surprisingly, it works). I think she has a minor addiction to "As Seen on TV!" products--we get them every year for Christmas/birthdays/other excuses for gift giving. Whatever makes her happy, I suppose.

There was another part to this post, I think, but it has disappeared into the void of my mind/the ether/the internet. I need to start waking up before one in the afternoon.

Lazy resolutions

Winter Break To-Do:

1. Make office into usable room

1a. Get a floor lamp

2. Hit up after-Christmas candy sales

3. Make shepherd's pie (Mmm.)

4. Play with Sculpey

5. Help sister with college applications

6. Produce at least one piece of writing, goddammit!

As with all of my to-dos, who knows what will be accomplished from this, but I've tried to set the bar low enough to actually tempt me to step over it.

Also--Christmas is way less fun as a grown-up. However, despite yesterdays failures and frustrations, I did manage to produce a couple pans of reasonably festive red velvet cupcakes, which were only a tiny bit burnt on the bottom. After burning the crap out of my hand trying to relight the oven, of course. No pain, no gain.

I'm dreaming of a white chocolate Christmas

There is no white chocolate available for purchase in this entire city.

This is a shame, as this was going to be the year I was finally going to make white chocolate peppermint bark for friends and family. Miraculously already having the supplies on hand, I was following my mother's recipe, which was simple enough: melt the chocolate, stir in peppermints, pour onto cookie sheet, let cool. I didn't have the fancy red and green peppermint chunks she always used, but she assured me I could just crack regular peppermints. I proceeded to do so, violently, with a rolling pin. Meanwhile, I was melting the chocolate. Inevitably, it was irreparably burnt. Drove all over town trying to find some damn white chocolate bark/chips--nada. Coming back, made a U-turn on a red light that may or may not have been monitored and in the process broke some of the eggs I'd just bought.

So, in conclusion, I have a three cups of toasted white chocolate in my garbage can, a handful of battered peppermints on my counter, and a potential traffic ticket which I cannot afford (and which is unconstitutional, if you ask me. Damn Big Brother). I'm afraid to even make the little clay figurines I was planning, lest my house catch on fire.

Happy bloody Christmas. I'm going make a sandwich.

School does not equal happy

Down the street from my house, there is an elementary school with a marquee which reads "WE TEACH THE HAPPIEST CHILDREN!!!" And every time I pass it, I just think, "Uh, so?"

Not that schools shouldn't aim for the happiness of children (as much as is feasible, I suppose. Schools by nature are anathema to children). But something about the wording of that sign always just seems off somehow to me. It doesn't so much say that "Our teaching makes the children the happiest" as "These children are (for some probably unrelated reason) happy, and we just happen to teach them. Yay!"

Silly, but just a little thing that is continually a twinge in my day. Also, one of my friends very briefly attended said school, and promptly transferred out after they spent multiple math classes discussing the result of multiplying by zero. So... yeah. Happy children, I guess.

Brain arthritis

At this point I have three different half-finished blog posts saved, all on different subjects, all written the past two days. My thinking has been weird, fuzzy and frustrated. When I try to get around to writing it down, I feel like whatever section of my brain is responsible for writing production has arthritis. This does not just apply to blog posts, but to my writing in general of late.

It was a rough semester, which almost justifies my sleeping until 1 for the last three days.

Also, dammit, the vowel keys on my keyboard are being infuriatingly non-worky. Especially "u". Not a major hang up, but (ARGH) it has been happening enough to make typing a chore. (This is more of a complaint than an excuse).

Submitted to delta. My poems are significantly better than the ones I sent in last year, but despite working on the staff, I am in no way guaranteed publication. This only means I have to see how people vote on my poems. I heard there was drama during the decision process last year, but I suppose that's inevitable when you have a dozen twentysomethings who fancy themselves poets getting drunk on cheap wine and reading each others' work. Looking forward to it! (Actually I really am looking forward to it, we have a lot of great writers submitting stuff this year. I really should have branched out beyond poetry. Less competition.)

I don't know why I feel so compelled to be simultaneously whiny and self-deprecating on here. Holdover from the LiveJournal days, maybe?

Anyway, I really need to get out more so I have more to write about. In general. I literally didn't step foot outside the house today. In my defense, it was a very gray, chilly day.

Goal: Wake up before noon tomorrow. Do something.

My philosophy of writing: The pleasure, the feeling, all through the words.

Frequently the only things in life worth hanging on to are those moments with good friends, good food/drink, and good talk, those moments that burn warmly in the bottom of your soul and make you cozy in your own skin. Language, for all its richness, is a poor medium to capture that feeling, those times made simultaneously of contentment and potential, but goddammit, it's all we have so we have to try our damnedest. Layer your words like flavors, slosh them around in your mouth like a good wine. Make them count; enjoy them. No plot, no thread of thought is going to capture on its own the tingling under your fingernails, the chemistry of interaction boiling over that is true life.

Let your tongue run free, revel in the pleasure. And no, it doesn't have to make sense:

A typhoon of octopus. A glacier of days. Aerodynamic aeolian aesthetic. Drowning challenge. A paragraph of stairways. Glockenspiel (in any context). Simpering sundials, a ton of crocodiles. Sticky checkbooks. Aphids for sale, in-laws for rent. Lapping at sounds like you're drowning in deafness. Fuzzy navy beans.

Jarring carousels, haranguing hula-hoops, a melange of melons. Overtones of overcoats, slithering staircases, offended petticoats. The unceasing demand for doldrums.

Live it!

The Gate is dead, long live The Gate.

So passes another season of the 13th Gate, among the greatest of America's haunted houses. We who work there must have strong hearts and will, for it asks much of us, but so to us does it give much to us: a soul-camaraderie, a delirious glee, pride in striking unbridled fear into the hearts of customers. Truly, it is a boon for those willing to accept and appreciate it.

This year, it almost broke me. My body grew weary, my steps faltered; for a time, I was laid low. Though I am not yet what I once was, I rallied back to carry out the end of an era, to help hoist the show over its final edge. Well, until next year at least.

Seriously though, it was a great year and I had a lot of fun, but I will greatly enjoy having spare time again, and finally getting to do all of those things that I had to put off wistfully until "after the Gate." Like having other friends. Or sleeping. It may, however, be difficult to suppress the manic miming, twirling, etc. that has become a habit--I find myself moving through the Chimes like it was the mirror maze, which is possibly hazardous, and inadvertently sneaking up on people. Also giggling silently with exaggerated gestures, which I may never in fact stop doing.

So, scare ya later!

Um, I like words?

Oh, hi there personal writing. I forgot you existed outside the graded, deadlined sphere that has devoured my life.

Speaking of which, it's National Novel Writing Month. That is but a wistful glimmer in my writer's eye this year due to crazy busy schedule and other writing obligations, but perhaps a miracle...

Current high point of my life: giant bags of Halloween candy sitting in my pantry, bought at discount the day after Halloween

Low point: the mucus-y demon living in my throat and lungs. Oh, and the complete lack of anything other than Halloween candy in my pantry.

Seriously contemplating going to grad school for linguistics rather than an MFA or something of that nature. Career options would be a little better, perhaps (though still hella gloomy probably). Of course, my linguistics professor hasn't actually shown up for class in about a week, so maybe that's God trying to send me a message. Or just get me home an hour earlier. If it is the latter, I sure do appreciate it.

I think that my social-interaction synapses have been misfiring more frequently than usual lately (something about that string of words seems odd, but oh well), and I may have crossed the line from "slightly awkward" into "eccentric". Example: A girl sitting next to me in my short story writing class complimented my story, which we had workshopped a few days earlier.

Girl: I really liked your story; I thought it was really well written.

Me. Oh. Me?

Girl: Um, yes.

Me: Oh. I didn't want to take a compliment not assigned to me, you see.

[awkward pause. blank stare on both sides.]

Me: Um. Yeah. I like words?

The stilted delivery of this, coupled with (that's not precisely the right word, either, but the sentence sounds the best) my glazed stare and the uncomfortable closeness of the desks in the classroom probably contributed to the awkwardness, along with my failure to follow this up with the usual context/explanation surrounding the phrase (i.e., My real interest is in words, what they mean and how they fit together to create different layers of meaning and experience in people's minds, rather than in a narrative or story-arc. That is why I tend towards poetry and linguistics rather than traditional fiction.). No major harm done though, I think. It is, after all, a class for aspiring writers.

Planning on taking 18 hours next semester, which in the fall would be suicidal for me but in the spring is merely ambitious. I guess I don't really need all of the classes right this second (or in some cases maybe not at all), but I'm afraid to not take them lest the chance slip through my fingers. I figured out that I can pull off my pie-in-the-sky triple minor and still graduate a semester early, but it would be by the skin of my teeth. Seriously considering abandoning Philosophy, but I'm going to try to talk to an advisor first. It would make my life a bit easier though, and I would only have to take 12 hours my graduating semester (knock on wood). For next semester, I'm looking at

Pidgins and Creoles, Brit Lit I, Chaucer, Symbolic Logic, Intermediate Poetry Writing. Oh, and Old Irish.

So much reading, but my days would be much less grueling than the 930-430 schedule I'm pulling this semester. We'll see.

Now, to write and revise poetry. I'll be reading tomorrow in front of actual people again, and I don't want to look like a total fool.

Written to distraction

I've said it before and I will say it again (many, many times): Language is a beautiful medium. A stained glass window, if you will, transfiguring what passes through into a dazzling display of aesthetics. But because it is so damn prevalent, its appeal inevitably varies depending on what's being presented and how. Often language (usually speech) is for me a swamp rather than stained glass--boggy, cloying, and agitating. It seems to be omnipresent, and under many circumstances just plain distracting.

I don't care what the woman three places behind me thinks of her husband's cousin's dog. But no matter how desperately I try to immerse myself in the tabloid covers, my brain (conspiring with my usually lackluster sense of hearing) struggles to sift this woman's speech out of the ambient noise to present to me. If I am trying to work with words myself (especially written), speech interference will drive me not just to distraction, but sometimes irritation or anger. Many people I know listen to music while they write or do homework, but this boggles my mind. Any kind of lyric will drive my own word right out of my head, the same if one were to try and compose an original piece of music while listening to something else. If I am reading and someone nearby strikes up a conversation even in a discreet volume, I must move or abandon my book. If I continue to try to absorb the information/story, it will only make me irritable. (There seems to be a loophole in this: If they are speaking in a foreign language, it can be ignored/tolerated. This may be connected to the "foreign toddlers are adorable, American toddlers are annoying" phenomenon I have also experienced.) I just find it immensely difficult to maintain two different streams of language in my mind. Most do, as when you find yourself typing something someone is saying, but I seem to have taken it to the point of mutual exclusivity.

It's odd. I'm a perfectly competent multi-tasker--I wait tables now (moving on up!) and have little trouble accommodating the dozen little things that need to be done at once. But I can't form my own words with the words of others in my head. Perhaps that explains my awkward conversational skills. Maybe I embrace language too wholeheartedly, and it will be my downfall. All of this was circling around to a point, I believe, but I seem to have lost it. Language displacing thoughts again, I suppose.

Bah, I'm tired of my own words; I'll entertain Clive Barker's for a while.

My sleep schedule has become rather unfortunate in the past week--excessive and predominately nocturnal. What productivity I was building up has fallen away completely. Ah, well. Such is summer.

On the positive side, poetry wise, I'm now working for delta, LSU's undergrad literary journal. Also, I'll be reading my stuff in a couple weeks in the reading series they host. Also also, my poetry teacher solicited my prose poem for the journal he and his girlfriend are starting. So things are looking up, I suppose. Now I just ahve to make sure my writing doesn't fall by the wayside, too.

Erasures

Instead of crossword puzzles, I've taken to doing erasures (this is a hypothetical replacement time-waster, since I have not been tempted to do a crossword in months and therefore have not done any erasures instead, but that's besides the point). Erasures, of course, are those nifty little things where you take a block of prewritten text (a book, poem, newspaper article, etc.) and pluck words out of it to fashion new text (which arguably bears the most resemblance to a poem). See Humument, probably the most artistic erasure I've ever come across. Some people/artists are really offended by erasures; plagiarism and all that jazz. I think it's a fun journaling exercise, mind-diddler, time-waster, what have you.

Anyway, one of the first poems I wrote this semester was an erasure of Sylvia Plath's "Tulips". I later revised it a bit to make it somewhat more of my own, and decided to post the results just for kicks.

Oh, and added goals for this summer: grasp a basic understanding of Old English (and possibly Esperanto) and learn how to cook with some kind of confidence. Ambitious!

--------------

Tulips by Sylvia Plath

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ----
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ----
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I hve no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

Between (A Revised Erasure)

Excitable winter—
These explosions have given
my history.
I am propped
between everything impossible.
I am between.
I am impossible.

My body tends to numbness,
needles, a pillbox and hooks,
the slack mouth of my heart
stubbornly hanging bare.

I watch
and seem ridiculous
between the eyes of myself.

Utterly empty,
the dead dream
more quietly than I.
When the echoes of
slack, babbling mouths cavort
between my numbness and--

Enough.

The noise nags and dies,
sunken without committing.

Summer again!

Huzzah, I have made it through my most arduous semester yet. This last month has been particularly tough, as everyone in my life can attest--but it is over. I feel as though I've progressed in various ways (as one hopefully does moving through life) and look forward to progressing further.

I am going to keep my goals for this summer pretty simple, as I'm not good with the whole to-do/goals list thing. So:

Primary goal: Read (and finish) one of the following:

a.) The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky

b.) Paradise Lost by Milton

c.) The Bible by... God? Some dudes? Who knows. (Also, is the Bible italicized, or is it an exception? Screw it.)

Secondary goals include revising some poetry into polished versions, reading at the Highland Coffees/delta series, making a regular habit out of running, experimenting with painting, and taking a trip to somewhere the hell else (preferably the Pacific Northwest, will settle for anywhere more than a couple of hours away).

Currently I'm working on a series of small anti-poems which I will probably post here as soon as they're finished, as there is little to no chance of my revising them. Also, a little rant on mystery/romance novels (Hint: they are my guilty pleasure).

Windows

The windows are broken. I have seen the glass in them shatter and speed towards me like kamikaze butterflies high on buckshot. I have never climbed through them, or opened them. Hoop! I have hollered though their holes—Hoo! Wah! but there is not enough noise to make the blood flow. The limp muscle cannot dare the windows. Still I cling to myself like old cobwebs. My bones are hollow, play them like xylophones. Work on me, stretch me across a rack as a canvas so that I cannot breathe for the tension of the potential. The windows’ teeth gleam. They are waiting.

Obstructions

Just finished watching The Five Obstructions by Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth. An interesting film in a few ways, but it definitely succeeded in making me think about two things:

1.) How incredibly nervous Lars von Trier makes me.

2.) How far and how hard would I/am I willing to be pushed for art?

I don't have an answer for that second one, but I think it's pretty damn important. I accept that in many (most? all?) cases, some degree of externally imposed hard-assery is required. This is why I am grateful when teachers, friends, etc. critique my work--I can't do it myself, at least not past a certain point. But just how much pushing, how much grinding their work into the ground, is beneficial? If you push the artist past the edge, does he transcend, or just fall over? This question lingers eternally in the process of creativity, so I will skim past this general form and ask "what about me?" Can I be encouraged to progess, tempted with a carrot, or do they have to get out the stick?

As I grope along developing my writing, I (however cringingly) am more and more inclined to opt for the latter. I need whatever artificial pride I have taken from me and crushed into tiny little pieces. I need to have my best piece vivisected while I watch, so that I may better understand its organs. Even at my harshest, I cannot tear what I have to shreds as must be done. I want it to be done, so I can stitch them back up. I need a crazy Rocky-esque writing training montage.

That being said, encouragement (without the unfortunately usual high fructose corn syrup sweetness) is a powerful tool in the right hands. But it, too, needs to be applied externally, productively. Otherwise I just look like a crazy person.

I can't do this alone, but damned if I'm going to just hand my pride over. That would defeat the entire point.

I Present to You Haiku

Assorted haiku from my poetry journal. Some of these I like better than others, but the worst I have spared you. I enjoy the form; I am a fan of snapshots.

---------------

The grumbling saw cuts

clean through the budding tree branch

white like bloodless flesh

Woken by a yowl

and porcelain shattering.

The cats are hungry.

Slide swish slice, swish slice--

Endless monotony of

the paper cutter.

My morning pills look

like bright-colored rabbit turd.

I will not take them.

Leaf blowers snarl

and roar, chasing fallen leaves

and deafening me.

The girls are wearing

little but miles of bare leg.

It must be summer.

I did not mean to

crush the magnolia petal.

Its body bleeds brown.

We have overslept

and missed all of everything--

The morning can wait.

Today turned up a

centipede in the garden,

unearthly unearthed.

Words and Words

I am in a poetry mood. No, mood isn't the right word, I'm in a poetry stage. This has probably been encouraged greatly by my enrollment in an actual poetry writing class, but right now I am reading and writing more poetry than anything else. This is not entirely unheard of; I've always been a fan of verse and have even tried my hand at it several times (some of those products are posted earlier in this blog, but I can only view those now with a sad little shake of my head, if at all). But then my interest would drift in another direction, and I would plunge back into fiction (or more recently, nonfiction). Most avid readers/writers I know go through this type of genre cycle. But for me, each time the pendulum swings, it goes higher. I go further into the art. (This, by the way, is terribly exciting--it goes quite a ways towards assuaging my doubts about my motives/attitude towards writing in general.)

And so I have immersed myself in poetry. This, I've learned, often involves a lot of nonsensical grumbling to myself and to other people (usually authors) who aren't really there, and occasionally throwing things. Also, I'm constantly turning up in my purse/backpack/pockets bizarre little image descriptions written on the back of grocery receipts, crumpled flyers, my Italian homework, etc. (Often I don't remember writing these but am delighted by them; it's like finding a $20 bill in the pocket of your washed jeans.) It's a marvelous and frustrating thing I've gotten myself into, and quite messy work if you want to do it right. It intensifies the focus almost painfully on the basic unit of words. Words, these crazy little conflations of sound and symbol and meaning that I've fallen hopelessly in love with, become simultaneously mushy and electrified. And in the end, they are inevitably imperfect. Destined to fail. But hell, that's half the fun. If there were a perfect way to transmit inspiration, I'd probably have a psychotic break trying to deal with it. So I figure I will show my love for words (and their relationship with each other and with us) in the best way I know how--by respecting them and using them to their fullest advantage, furthering their "ends", as Kant would have it. Because for me, words are not just a means from point A to point B, they are things to be worked with and reveled in for themselves. Which might seem a bit odd, considering they're an arbitrary construct, albeit a monstrously important one.

But I'll cease my sentimental gush. Soon I will start posting work I've done this semester. Hopefully it will be revised, but as I'd like to start posting (much) more regularly, I'll probably throw some of the rawer stuff too. But now I must switch gears and work on Serious Critical Analysis, which of course has its merits, but often depresses me a bit.

On a lighter, unnecessary note: Sleeping kitties are the cutest thing in the world. Period.

Riotously Realized Dreams and New Friends

(A bit belated, as I'm easily distracted)

First: I am in no way a football fan, in fact, I'm pretty rabidly anti-football, but there is something to be said for a city, no--a whole state-- so full of electric ecstasy, of pure, shrieking feeling so thick and real you could swim through it, slather it on your soul. In the end, I still appreciate the story of the underdog's triumph. Also, it's nice to have Louisiana come out on top once in a while. So congratulations, Saints.

Second: I have a new best friend and constant companion, courtesy of my poetry writing class: Robert Lowell, father of the Confessionalist movement. Of course, he's dead, so I'll have to get to know him through one of his books, Life Studies, which I am to keep on me at all times. I am to converse with and consult him on various things (pizza toppings, life changing decisions, etc.). Again, this is using the book of course. Reminiscent of Ouija, I'm to ask the question, and randomly flip to a page and point to a line, which is his response. As dorky as it sounds, I was kind of excited when this was assigned. I like making friends! Luckily, we seem to be getting along so far. I'm glad my ghost oracle isn't Sylvia Plath, I heard she can be kind of a bitch. Here was our first Q&A session:

Q: So, Robert Lowell, what’s our relationship going to be like?

A: faced with this opinion, pored over his book of instructions

Q: Way to be literal, Robert. How do you feel about this inhospitable winter?

A: sensationally sober

Q: What did you think about the 50s?

A: At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street.

Q: Rather positive. How would you have lived your life differently?

A: it was the eroding necessity of moving with him, of keeping in step.

Q: What was most valuable to you?

A: Those dinners, those apologies!

Since then, he has also instructed me to go home because I was sick, laughed with my over the drunken antics of my boyfriend & co., and chided me for not doing my homework. I'd say we're off to a great start. In honor of our new friendship, I'll post one of his poems here.

Epilogue by Robert Lowell

Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme--
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All's misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun's illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

Thanks, Robert. Rob? Bobby? Still haven't settled on what to call him. I'll ask him about it later.

Itch I Can't Scratch

Let's play catch-up:

I had a lovely domestic Christmas (there's a rant in there somewhere about the relationship between me and domesticity, but it's gotten all tangled up along the way), a cozy New Year's, and I just passed a year and a half with my boyfriend. I've just started in on a semester that looks like it will be somewhat challenging but informative and ultimately productive.

In other words, everything is going pretty damn dandy. Which means, of course, that some messy complication is about to round the corner full speed and knock everything out of my grasp. But these things do happen.

I won't lie; being content makes me a little itchy. I find myself idling over the price of airplane tickets or craigslist postings for apartments and jobs in more romantic cities. If no one is looking, I crack open unlocked doors just to make sure they don't lead to Narnia. (No, I don't do that--I'm too much a coward, and that's the problem.) I am torn between crazy week-long benders that end with me waking up in Toronto or Istanbul and plodding along to maintain my grade point average that they tell me will get me somewhere someday.

But this itchiness has been mitigated recently by my meanderings back into the world of poetry. If I can climb and adventure and do crazy loop-de-loops with my mind, then surely I can stay where I am with my body... for now.

Creative product wise: Planning to work on my formal poetry, hoping to improve my meter and general sense of things poetic. Taking a poetry writing class will force me to actually produce this semester. ...meybe?