The everlooping Here and Now

Why do I frame so many of my poem drafts with "here" or "now" (or a combination of the two, or occasionally the variant "there")?

Why am I compelled to make a presentation of the immediacy? To convince my hypothetical/ghost reader that these jumbles of words, these linguistic confusions of syntax and body have some root, can be grounded in a world splayed out before us?

Iono, perhaps. If so, I am not even particularly convinced of that grounding myself. But I continue to do it, to insist no look it's right here. As if repeating it enough times (here, here, here, now, here) will make it factual, will make some truth manifest. (Take that "manifest" to be either a verb or an adjective, as you would.) In any case, flipping through my notebooks I see it scrawled across the top of page after page (here, now, there is, here, here); a series of snapshots. Or maybe a present-tense fairy-tale I keep starting to tell myself, one that always trails off...

Once upon a now there is a protagonist-type female who rants herself silly about the flapping of tongues. 


Probably she lives alone with her cats.


The end.

Have been a bit lax on updating; it's not that I don't have things I'd like to write about (I have about half a dozen post topics drafted, actually. Because I always follow through with drafts/outlines), it's just that I've been really busy having a pretty damn good past week.

Job: Great. I have been accepted as competent and not a dunderhead. After a feeble first couple of shifts, had a nicely profitable weekend. Yay! I can eat again!

Friends: Got to see some of these, spontaneously and planned-like. I do enjoy good people.

Writing: Haven't been doing as much of this, but have been doing notes & foundation work for a couple of bigger projects I'm salivating over.


So until a more substantial post comes along here, I just wanted to share my new favorite Tumblr ever: #whatshouldwecallpoets. I'm not even 100% on exactly how this Tumblr thing in general works or trends or reblogs or whatever (It's kind of a thing even critical literary people are talking about? I dunno, a big deal or something) but I do know I love these .gifs more than Internetslife itself.

She's got a chicken to ride

Whew! This week has been a bit hectic, what with job training and all. Actually, the training itself, though pretty intensive, hasn't been that bad...however, procuring the very specific uniform took some running around town, which had to be squeezed in between the actual training shifts. Turns out, it is really difficult to find a white, long-sleeved button-down oxford shirt (for women) with a left breast pocket and buttons on the collar. And it is impossible to find one that fits me at all well. Also, I had to learn how to iron. My mother was all too happy to pass on this piece of domestic wisdom, but turns out I am really bad at ironing. It makes me incredibly anxious; I keep freaking out about re-wrinkling what I've already ironed and have to go back and redo it. Stressful. Anyway, "graduated" from training a day early, so I get to start picking up shifts and making money ASAP. Because I am a rockstar server (warning: impending list-format post about being a server).

Sidebar: It seems like some kind of mild existential defense mechanism that the word "rockstar" gets tossed around so much in the restaurant industry, especially regarding servers. I mean, we are pretty much the opposite of rockstars--all hustle and bustle and underappreciated (I would love to meet some servers with groupies). I will admit it does take a hell of a knack for performance to pull off your third double in a row on no sleep, but the appellation seems just a tad misguided. Yeah, I'll take it, though.

My brain's in a bit of a fog right now, so I'm not sure I can keep this whole word production thing up for much longer tonight. I will close out with a mention of the awesome site Awkward Stock Photos, which I just cannot stop looking at, especially with my earlier venture into that scene. Those inexplicably random images, for me, perfectly capture what goes on inside peoples' heads. I mean, someone had to think of it, but there is just something about an image of a girl writing intently with a comically oversized pencil that smacks of an endearingly earnest attempt at faithful translation of thought. Consider all of those bizarre mental images and misheard phrases (also mondegreens) that flit through your head on a daily basis ("Wrapped up like a douche..."). The people generating these stock photos are making a valiant effort to bring these tangled mind-thread out into the world, in share-able image format. For that, they should be commended. And their results laughed at. Yay The Internet.