Everything's broken

When my family was still living in Belmont, our neighbor, Henry, came to the door one day and when one of my parents opened it he just stood there and said, in a wounded tone of voice, "Everything's broken." That's how things have been since we got back to Beijing.

The list so far:

My sister's new fake Polo suitcase (wheel that won't turn)
The phone (because we spilled water on it, or because we didn't pay the bill?)
The internet
The air conditioner (works but leaks)
The mop we use to dry the bathroom floor after a shower, because the shower isn't separate from the rest of the bathroom
The hot water heater (now fixed)
My new bike*
My sister's bike
The power in the entire apartment complex

AND, by far the most spectacular, MY CAR.

You would think you could leave your car in a Verano parking lot for a month and not much would happen, wouldn't you? But my car couldn't stand the lonliness. When it started bleating uncontrollably at 3 in the morning, the UCI PD towed it away and forced my wonderful, wonderful roommate and me to embark on a crazy and very expensive quest to get it back. And who knows what its mechanical and psychological state will be when I get back.

Moral of the story: have a talk with your car before you go on a long trip. Make sure it knows what to except. Reassure it that you are coming home. Clean up the spilled coffee. Buy it some magazines to keep it occupied.

Now a little bit about Beijing: it is about 100 degrees. The sun feels like a laser beam frying several layers of you at once. It is incredibly crowded, incredibly cheap, extremely ugly, absolutely filthy, and really fun.

*My sister bought her ex-roommate's bike for me to use while I'm here, but when I went to ride it it was (surprise!) broken. So we rode down the street, and on the corner was a man with a little stand out of which he fixes bikes. Everyone bikes here, including most delivery people, who tow huge loads on homemade tricycles, so there is a lot of need for bike fixing and these corner stands are more common than Dunkin Donutses in Boston. This cart was about 3' by 3' and shaded by a huge umbrella. The whole thing was on wheels, so that at the end of the day the man would be able to close up shop and bike it away.

The repairman, with incredible efficiency and accuracy, replaced both tires, both inner tubes, and one set of brakes, and adjusted the seat and handlebars. It took about fifteen minutes, and cost 90 yuan, which is about $10. Now the bike works great, and biking around Beijing is one of the most fun things I've done in China. It is almost total chaos, with tons of bikes, scooters, taxis, buses, and cars constantly vying for position, but the saving grace is that everyone bikes really slowly. Beijing is very flat, and none of the bikes have gears, so the riding itself is just a matter of puttering along. That means you can devote your full attention to seeing the sights and trying not to get hit.

Another typical moment: as part of the car disaster, I had to fax something to the towing company in California. My sister and I went on a ride around a few neighborhoods trying to find a Kinko's (including a huge apartment complex called, in English, "Leisure Garden"). Finally, we stopped off at a tiny little shack on the side of the road. In it were a computer, a photocopier, a drafting table, a no-frills fax machine, a big rice cooker, and about eight people sitting around. To my amazement, based on my experience with faxes in the U.S., the papers arrived just as they were supposed to.

We have also been having amazing food for incredibly cheap. At restaurants, we've been buying meals for three or four, with abundant beer, for about $3.50. Last night we decided to make dinner, so we bought: a bagful of potatoes, two green peppers, a bunch of celery, two leeks, a bagful of edamame, four foot-and-a-half-long cucumbers, and eight eggs for a total of 90 cents. Five huge bottles of beer added another dollar. You can also buy a green-pea or yellow-corn popsicle on any street corner for about 20 cents.

Right now I'm writing this from an internet cafe that reminds me oddly of the Gypsy Den. It's an ex-pat hangout that is about as different from its surroundings as the Gypsy Den is from the O.C. My sister is writing an op-ed piece about the importance of NGOs in Chinese public health. We just had sandwiches, a rare treat in the land of Chinese food. Everything's still broken, but it's okay.

Shanghai with Sisterkins

Sketchy internet cafe in Shanghai. Sitting on a futon normally used for gaming and porn. All is well. Ready for a sandwich but probably going to eat a fish instead, scales and eyes included. Going to the aquarium. Have to stop now because sisterkins jr. is hungry.

Happy special day sisterkins-love sisterkins jr.

China

I am writing this from an internet cafe in Lijiang, a town in the Chinese mountains near Tibet. When I get back to my own computer, I will post a picture of my family in front of a very sad, soaking wet yak who was standing in a river wearing a humiliating headdress.

So far, the trip has been very touristy, but still amazing. I can count to ten in Chinese, a completely useless skill, and my ni hao is getting better.

China doesn't seem to like blogs, so I'm not sure this will work. I was surprised to be able to get to this posting screen, because I haven't been able to see this blog or any others so far. Also, the whole interface is in Chinese, so I am just trying to remember what was where.

More soon!

I Can't Stop

Great moments from student poetry reading responses:

"I recall trying to spell "eland" in my head as she read her piece, "E-L-I-N-D?" or "E-L-A-N-D?" I was sitting next to writers, and I couldn't even spell."

"She [Alison Benis] certainly is not one to be parsimonious about using imagery."

"Andrew Winer really stole the show in my opinion. Though I believe he used the words "F$%K" AND F$5KERS" approximately 5 times. Juxtaposed to those $50 words that he couldn't even pronounce in his piece, the profanity seemed to stick out more. For the better? Maybe. For the worse? Probably not. I know this for certain. I am never fishing with James McMichael. I am a Coffeepot pimp."

"At the poetry journal launch reading in the UCI bookstore the first poet Diane read a poem that had a child's imagination with animals having tea and so forth. She made jokes about lesbianism at first and then she began to speak about it in a much more political way with a different voice." [This was about a short story. Animals having tea? What?.]

"Zach the final poet could probably be described as the urban street poet type who had a very distinctive style and whose words seemed to have a many levels of meaning. Everyone seemed to be stressed out about his lateness, but I was happy for the time to grab a cookie."

And from my math genius student, a paper entitled "Donald Justice Knows Fourier Synthesis." It concludes, "Men at Forty" is a short poem. But these "men at forty" were able to make their way around a wide emotional, spatial and temporal map. I would defintiely say Fourier played a part in that." If D.J. were still alive I would send him a letter about this.

Writing 30. Such a fine line between brilliance and insanity.

Public Service Announcement

There is an indoor palm tree at LAX under which you can sit and use free wireless. It's quite luxurious. Perfect for submitting grades.

Also, Devin is the best. Hope you're home by now...

Itinerary

Monday, 5:00 pm: Hand in 21-page seminar paper. Feel proud, done.

Tuesday, 8:45 am: Typhoid. Bruised arm, $85.

Tuedsay: 9:00 am-8:00 pm: Feel too keyed up to read or write 24 hour exam. Fritter precious time away.

Tuesday 8:10 pm: Become lost in Fountain Valley. Discover streets don't connect. Note number of fountains, slightly higher than normal.

Tuesday 8:50 pm: Call for help.

Tuesday 9:10 pm: Arrive at Japanese restuarant for Unbirthday dinner. Eat Wiener tempura. Not too bad.

Tuesday 10:00 pm: Discuss geological disaster, end of world, sheep in the singular.

Tuesday 12:00 pm: Make coffee. Begin writing on exam, laundry.

Wednesday 4:00 am: Talk to sister riding Beijing subway. Phone keeps cutting out. No idea what time it is there. She says, you don't need to bring anything, I'll take care of you.

Wednesday 5:30 am: Greek word count in exam about 6, including megalopsychos, suphrosone, arete, moira, apate dikaia, and dissoi logoi. Hopefully all used as correct parts of speech. Laundry done. Running on fumes. Can't close eyes.

Wednesday 9:00 am: Drop Goetz at SNA, proceed to Mother's Market for No-Jet-Lag. Contemplate ridiculousness of this when jet lag is least of worries. Mother's Market lousy with vegan PhDs eating fake eggs for breakfast.

Still to do: return 8,000 library books, grading, dishes.

Clarification

LOC SHOULD already know poets have brains. I have personally seen poets be extremely brainy in her presence. It's just that these professor types can be a little slow on the uptake.

I, however, no longer have a brain. I hope to fill the absence with grass beer once I get to China. Meanwhile, when I try to think about Greek tragedy, all I get is a piney wood smell.

Tra La La

The paper is done! I feel so accomplished. I even think it will make LOC consider the notion that poets might have brains. Of course, she'll probably just throw it down the stairs, but even so, it's pretty heavy: 21 pages! And 7 footnotes, so I think I get to stay in grad school.

I'm looking at it right now from across the room, and it looks so finished and beautiful. As Larry Raab once said about one of my thesis efforts, "Well, it looks like a poem..."

Speaking of which, in addition to Vendler, I also used the Kay Ryan line I quoted here a while ago: plucked it right off the blog. That's intertextuality for you.

And now, off to class and then a 24 hour exam. Why do my ends-of-term always get so insane? Am I a crazy person?

Paper Update

Just finished revising the introduction. Much happier with it now.

I decided to quote Helen Vendler at some length, and I have a feeling I'll have to revise that out when this becomes a writing sample or they'll never let me into a PhD program. In a way I wish I didn't know that. My problem is that I'm trend-obsessed enough to reject things I like because they're not cool, but not quite enough to adopt things that are trendy if I don't like them, so I end up just kind of lacking.

Here in the stove, we do like Helen Vendler, although we think she's wrong a lot (and sometimes crazy) when it comes to particular readings. She taught us a lot back in the day.

Earthquake

I was woken up this morning by my bed gently shaking. It was pleasant, but unmistakeable.

After two years in California, my first earthquake!

Blogolith

This afternoon I went for a run that almost did me in (even a day removed from last week's events, I still feel like I inhaled all 10,000 lakes of Minnesota) but during it I had a brilliant idea.

About teaching. This past year, I had my students create a "personal anthology" for which every day they would copy out a poem of someone else's and write a short response to it. It was a good assignment, but it was annoying to collect and respond to, and between messy handwriting and being in my bag for weeks, it didn't end up being something that students would want to keep. So next time, I'm going to go online and do an anthology blog. Everyone will be able to read everyone else's, so fear of embarassent should improve the quality of thought a bit, it will be super-easy to keep track of, and I think it will actually be fun, for me and the students. I have to work out the mechanics, so if anyone knows a good interface for a combination individual/ group blog I'd love suggestions, but I think this will be great, and that everyone else should do it too. I would even post entries myself, which would be good for my reading habits.

I often have brilliant ideas when running. I usually have them right after cresting a hill; going up is better exercise, but panting too much distracts me from thinking. The anthology blog idea came as I was running through mountain lion territory atop University Hills, looking down on the 73 winding its way through the mega-churches and identical housing developments of Irvine. In Williamstown, I used to figure things out on the steep part of Gale Road going down to Water Street, a pretty, small-town route lined with old houses and with autumn leaves crunching underfoot. It's funny how similar these two runs feel to me, because they have nothing in common except a big hill.

No Longer Ungoogleable!

During a break from my seminar paper this evening, I did some random googling, and found out that the first listing resulting from a google search for my name is actually me! (It's my Atlantic interview with Alice Fulton, the stupid title of which, by the way, was not my idea.) This makes me surprisingly happy, as if my existence has been confirmed.

It's funny to read one's own name applied to other people. Some of their claims-to-fame I'd like to keep. For instance, I would like to have won the Pulitzer Prize, and I would also like to have won third place in the California 9th grade poetry contest, for a poem about the ocean being salty. A surprising thing is how many of my name-sharers also share my interests: lots and lots of writers, but also cellists, sailors, etc.

Maybe names are destiny. I like the idea of things being destiny.

Thesis Reading Scorecard

Number of Attendees: A quorum.

Number of PhDs who came to hear the reading: 6.

Number of PhDs who showed up after the actual reading ended and admitted they'd gone drinking instead: Too many.

Number of faculty members invited: All.

Number of faculty members present: 0.

Number of large animal balloons: 2.

Age of youngest attendee in weeks: 6.

Percentage actually consumed of 2 Buck Chuck bought: 25.

Fraction of Keg #1 Albertson's bothered to fill with beer: 1/5.

Percentage devoured of Joe's custard conconction: 100.

Average height of fiction writer plus party hat: 6'5''.

Set of songs Barach, Haines and I all know: Nil plus Beatles.


Final Score: Poets 4, Fictioneers 4. A draw. Rematch required.

S-O-L

8 days until I leave for China. I can't believe it, nor can I believe the unbelievable amount of stuff I have to do between now and then.

Today I went to a really funny doctor to try to get immunizations for my trip, except, oops, the Hepatitis A shot doesn't take effect for another six weeks, and the others aren't covered by my insurance. So the doctor said I was "pardon my language, S-O-L." It took me a while to figure that one out (shit out of luck is my guess), but it also made me wonder: if I've already pardonned her language, can't she just go ahead and cuss? Also odd was the fact that she said my name about three times per sentence, which gets a bit uncomfortable after a while. Sarah, my friend, she says, don't eat any raw fruit, because, Sarah, you're not immunized.

I think I'm also S-O-L on writing a decent seminar paper. It's not as easy as I'd hoped.

Revenge Tragedy

In addition to being kind of boring and being way too obsessed with cuckolds-wearing-horns jokes, revenge tragedy seems always to be a total bloodbath. I feel like I shouldn't admit this, but I don't like it when everyone dies. Can we have a happy ending, please?

(This assesment based on reading 3 acts of "The White Devil" and synopses of everything else, for those keeping score.)

Who do we write for?

I was saying pompously to someone last night that I don't want to be the kind of poet who only writes for other "poetry professionals," that I want my poems to appeal to and reach people who are "normal." And that's all well and good, except for a few problems, in particular that no one other than professional poetry types really reads contemporary poetry at all. Maybe a few poems in general interest magazines, but beyond that . . . probably even the Billy Collins books that people buy don't actually get read. Even literary types--even fiction writers--say they're intimidated by poetry and don't know how to read it, or that they think it's boring and stupid and "dead" (depending on what kind of people they are). So there's little point in declaring a populist strategy. Poetry is obviously not dead, but it's obviously not a mass movement either.

Or at least not as we write it. Democracy is a weird thing with the arts, and with writing especially, since anyone literate can do it. As many people have pointed out, poetry is flourishing, it's just that most of it wouldn't be poetry the way I define it.

My mom (Hi, Mom) is a professional musician and composer of contemporary music (a discipline totally plagued by definitional issues--not "classical music," technically, but in some ways that term best communicates the information). When we're talking about popular music, she always says it's not music, it's something else. And I decided that what she means by that is that there's no drama in the music in a popular song; there are no events; nothing happens. Nothing's at stake in the ways the different musical parts relate to each other. That's not an indictment, I don't think, just a straightforward statement of how the form works. But to my mom, that drama, that possiblity of change, is the essence of the form, so without it what's left is not music. I feel the same way about "bad" poetry. As Joe says, "if surfing is so great, go surf," because it's not a poem unless there are mixed feelings creating tension and movement. But there are many, many people who love something they call poetry that doesn't adhere to this definition at all, that celebrates unilateral states of mind, and these readers are therefore probably not that interested in the dense little nuggets of introspection that I try to eke out.

I've had the same conversation a few times with different poets about the bigger roles poets play in countries wtih oppressive governments. There's always a tendency to envy those poets: the access to important subject matter that doesn't require self-loathing, and the ability to speak for and unite a people looking for a voice (and, of course, the absence of the mass media that everyone, including poets, gets really distracted by).

No American poet is going to have a cheering stadium full of people at every reading. I don't think I'd want that anyway, or rather, I don't think I could be that poet. But the other day, I was thinking about the middle ground between the cheering stadium and the audience of professionals who are basically only checking out the magazine to see if they want to send their own stuff there. The funny thing is that we all, before we become scheming, jaded professionals, are ordinary people. The line between reader and potential writer is always going to be impossible to define, and that's the amazing thing about a literate society. But rather than writing for the small coterie of connected careerists, we can write for the lonely teenager reading late at night, discovering something that speaks to potentials she doesn't know how to categorize or define. I remember my early days reading poems, and sure, they made me want to write, but also to live, and go on a bus ride with a moose, and wear my trousers rolled, and sitting well in order strike the sounding furrows. It certainly had nothing to do with hoping Jorie Graham would blurb my book. I miss those days, but I like writing for that teenager.

Hi Mom

Hope you got here okay. How was the Mall of America?

UPDATE: Mom emails to say she has not checked the blog, and will not until she returns from one of the 10,000 lakes later this week. Having a life contest: Mom 1, Sarah 0.

So long, neighbors

Oh happy day, they are loading up a moving truck. This may be my last neighbor post ever.

But I couldn't let it go unreported that Else likes to move it move it. She really likes to move it move it very much. She also sincerely hopes that we will all stop in the name of love.

Jacob, meanwhile, has gone into more serious training as a screamer, and was doing reps on the lawn at 6:45 this morning.

Oh neighbors, I guess I'll miss you a little.

A Cure Has Been Found

For insomnia: revenge tragedy.

Seriously. Last night sleep was very improbable, but two pages and I was gone.

The Grand Banquet Hall of Palo Verde

HenHen just booked us the Grand Banquet Hall of Palo Verde for the first annual MFA Thesis Reading, which will next Thursday, June 9th. I think it will be awesome and everyone should come.

Now I have to go win a slowest-runner contest, which I should do with no problem, since I have a twinge in my dorsal fin and a nose that's still runny.

Try to Mend It

"There has to be some private path the reader just can't follow all the way. There must be a crack in the poet of some sort. It has to be deep, privately potent, and unmendable — and the poet must forever try to mend it."

--Kay Ryan, from an essay on Marianne Moore; the kind of smart, entertaining essay you shouldn't read while trying to formulate your own ideas. But this quote really struck me.