New York II

It's been years since I've felt up to the challenge of New York, and today I do. I had breakfast with two friends; one I used to think I might never see again, but as soon as we met it was like no time had passed since we palled around in Boston. Then the other friend took me to Labyrinth Books and St. James the Divine, an Episcopal cathedral/curiosity cabinet where we saw sacrilegeous collages and a giant crystal-geode thing. Now I'm going to have a swanky drink with my swanky sister. I'm finally feeling the New York loves you back thing.

On the downside, Labyrinth Books has a lousy poetry section, and I've decided to save myself for Grolier.

New York City

It's 10:30 in New York and no one is asleep. I'm so excited I want to walk around and look at things. People in cafes. Fruit. My sister is totally blase, but I'm all agog to see them at this hour. See what Irvine has done?

Just for fun, we set my grandmother up with an email account (although she still thinks she can't use it until some "puts in an internet" in her apartment) and this is the first email she sent me, making fun of my short but sweet initial message:

youare very creatveyou chould be an english major
lovegrandma

So sarcastic. I love family.

Dreams of Blog Stardom

The blog of one of my fellow waiters comes up immediately after the official site when you google Bread Loaf. That's craziness. Her thoughts about the Loaf are, I guess, a little more accessible than ours (these here, and 28T'dH, and the Nice Belt, I mean), but therefore also much more generic.

Could a thousand or so of you link to this site so we can displace her?

From the Loaf to the Ridge

I would really like to write a long Bread Loaf post-mortem wrapping up my take on all the aesthetic, social, and waiterly stimuli into one witty and coherent package. Right now my memories are quite fond, despite the exhaustion, Blars, and having all my ideas about writing broken into tiny pieces. Arthur Sze told a story of a visitor to a palace being particularly impressed with an urn that had actually just been broken and then poorly reassembled by a servant, and someone (I think our honorary UCI MFA, Jessica) said that Bread Loaf made her feel like that urn. I agree. I feel a little crushed, but stronger for it. Also, I miss the people, and feel a lot of new sympathy for and professional interest in waiters.

I'm writing this from the of course empty computer lab of Meadow Ridge, my grandparents' new retirement home. A strange transition. Our whole family is crazy, my sister and I are stressed, worn out, and at each others' throats (but mostly still having a great time together), my grandfather is completely deaf and my grandmother is a little traveling cloud of gloom, but the visit is still going surprisingly well. In the dining room we had a five-course dinner and then between us my sister and I had carrot cake, chocolate cake, chocolate pudding and vanilla ice cream for dessert. Then we met my grandparents' sweetly nutty neighbors who have lived here since May but haven't yet unpacked. They have a sign outside their door that says--and I happen to know that this is from The Lord of the Rings--"No Admittance Except on Party Business," although as far as I know there is no party.

The sun shines on cold Vermont

Things are looking up. My 3 minute reading is over, and went really well. Before I came, Goetz told me that people look at you differently after the waiter reading, that they start to see the individual behind the apron, or something, but I thought that that was probably just true for him because he read his nipple poem. But no. Today, I keep hearing things like "I really like your poems, and is there any more soup?"

The soup, by the way, is always the same kind, cream of butter. Mmmmmm.

What do I want so much?

Everyone says, "Do you have a book?" "I need to find an agent for my book," and that kind of thing, and I feel this absence. Sometimes it seems so impossible to have even one good poem, let alone a whole book of them. And why is "to have" the verb we use for "to have written," anyway? Oh, our acquisitive culture!

What I don't want so much is to go to the dining hall and load dishes, supervised by an angry fifteen-year-old. If only I had a book to keep me company!

Very Minor Poet

Still Blarsy. Still raining. Saw Robert Frost's writing cabin, and longed for one of my own. Was diagnosed with a lyric sensibility. Hoped not to dance, but danced anyway. Imagined one of those MasterCard commercials: Plane fare to Vermont, bunch of faculty books, etc, etc, moshing with Michael Collier, priceless.

One of the many great lines from G.C. Waldrep's reading: "I must be a very minor poet to want so much."

BLARS

The Bread Loaf version of SARS, otherwise known as a cold. I have it. Also have already had first embarassing emotional breakdown. It's raining. My laundry's all dirty. The poem I workshopped may be unredeemable, and I have probably never finished any other poem ever. My work at the coffee station this morning didn't measure up to my headwaiter's standards. I skipped the party but still stayed up till 2:00 drinking wine even though I had to get up at 6:00. My saturation point for literary insight has been reached and it's only day 5. When spoken to, I can only jibber in response. Plus there's a dance tonight in the barn.


Why does all this this add up to such a good time?

Morning Loaf

I have now met a million and ten people, many of whom I really like a lot. I am already tired and dehydrated and am living in fear of breaking Vermont state liquor law and getting kicked out of the conference (apparently, it only became okay to dance with a beer in your hand last year, not that I would ever be dancing beer or no).

I reached a low point of hatred for the where you from conversation, and then became okay with it again. With two writers' conferences and two family reunions under my belt, I should really be coming out of this summer with a PhD in small talk.

Face Time with the Squid

Last night I shared my bed with a Squid. Before we went to sleep, I invited her over and she batted at my pencil and sat on the clues while I did a crossword puzzle. As Emily says, Squid is both friendly and strange. She is small and gray with ripply fur, and gold-rimmed black eyes.

This morning, she made me think of Christopher Smart's cat Jeoffrey. As she energetically chased her mouse at five in the morning, I kept dreamily thinking, "She rolls upon prank to work it in," and I was grateful for what I had learned from the poem of feline morning habits:

For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
For then he leaps up to catch the musk, which is the blessing of God upon his prayer.
For he rolls upon prank to work it in.

I was disappointed that none of my students took to this poem, which I found really exciting in college. I mean, how can you not love lines like these?

For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.

For he can spraggle upon waggle at the word of command.

For his motions upon the face of the earth are more than any other quadruped.

Or, as Sammy J would put it, Hodge shall not be shot.

Boston

I love flying from CA to Boston, because it starts feeling like home as soon as people start gathering at the gate: the people somehow start looking like people who wear big, heavy winter coats half the year. On my most recent flight, I noticed immediately that an unusual percentage of the people were reading real books. Best-sellers, mostly, but not mass-market airplane books: The Corrections, Empire Falls, stuff like that. And the flight attendent commented on my book and we had a whole conversation about it. When we arrived, a significant number of people were still reading at the baggage claim. SFO to Boston may be the most literary air travel route in the country, and I looove it.

However, they've changed the T all around since I've been gone. The Silver Line? What is that about?? And the new BART-style tickets?* I don't approve. Luckily, all seemed back to normal as soon as I left the airport vacinity. *I am loyal to the token, but the new paper tickets do have Charlie, the man who never returned, on them, and I think that is kind of cute.

I got off the T at a station I'd never been to before, Stonybrook, and felt a huge wash of happiness as soon as I saw the three-story Victorians quietly absorbing summer rain under a row of tossing green trees. Those houses really do a number on me in a kind of primordial way. They say "home," and "why don't you rearrange your life right now so that you can live in one of us, because what else could be more important?" My friend Emily G lives in a wonderful apartment in one of those houses, in what seems to be a really great neighborhood in Jamaica Plain called Hyde Square (because every place in Boston is a square). It's funny that it's so familiar even though I've never been here before.

As soon as I arrived, I fell asleep on her super-comfy couch (which she made) listening to the rain outside the window and feeling incredibly content. Exhausted from family reunions and a night on the red-eye, I slept until 4:00. I'm trying to bank up some sleep for the Loaf. Does it work that way if you really, really try?

Right when I left the T at Stonybrook, the man giving away the Boston Metro thanked me for my smile. I am home!

Children

Family Reunion #1 was very crowded in the Under 5 division. All of a sudden, we have lots of little cousins. Most of them are second or third cousins, some in-law, some many times removed, but we still get a lot of face time.

This is Leah, of Portland, posing for a glamour shot* with her hippo:



And these are Sammy and Emilie, of Paris, eating ice cream:



(Not pictured are Emilie's twin, Benjamin, and also Beth, Daniel, and Arielle.)

Someday they will be grown-ups and they won't even remember that I thought they were cute when they were little.

*According to Sharon Olds, glamour comes (etymologically) from grammar. She discovered this as part of her preparations for speaking to Glamour magazine about publishing poetry. Alas, they passed on the whole thing and never called her back.

It's No Palm Tree, But

I'm now standing at a little counter with a few other laptoppers, on free wireless in the Phoenix airport. I think the secret (to the palm tree, too) is getting within range of a fancy-fliers-club lounge.

It's raining in Phoenix. Nice. My mom's flight has delayed and delayed because of bad weather in New York, and I'm feeling just a little teeny bit nervous because of that plane that went off the runway in Ontario. But the rescue of the Russian sub makes me feel reassured. Is that too crazy? I'm finally reading The Triggering Town (bought for $2 at the library bookstore, huzzah) and Richard Hugo seems to think the nuttier the better.

I'm on my way to this little slice of paradise to reunite with mom, sisterkins, and various Epsteins, Hounzas, Buriens, Koistinens, etc, including some I've never even met. Then on to far less senic Walnut Creek for the Merryman side of things, and then the Loaf.

Poems Are

Poems are machines for holding contradictions.

Or they are terraria for keeping contradictions.

Or they are birdfeeders for attracting contradictions and getting a good look at them while they're flying around eating.

Logic can't hold a contradiction. It can acknowledge it, it can resolve it, it can decide it's irrelevant, but it can't keep it, turn it, hold it to the light. That's its limitation. Because unresolved contradictions are behind pretty much everything that's interesting, right?

The Ostinato

I realized today that I've been trying to write poems that have a clear surface that is mostly sensory, and then a lower level that's emotional. Without really defining it, I've been thinking of that emotional tug as an ostinato (a repeated musical phrase, usually somewhat urgent, under the melody), and also as a tidal pull or undertow, a current below the surface of water. Is that a way to be emotional but not sentimental?

Blog Days of Summer

My friend Katie, one of the most interesting people ever, just started a blog! Its introductory post features breaking news about the first Palestinian Oktoberfest.

Little Clamshell Phone

Not that I believe in magic, but I'm sensing a convergence in my life.

JJF sent me this op-ed (with the comment "lamer and lamer"). It says that we're getting to the point where soon more people will write blogs than read them. And I thought, oh no! Sounds like poetry! With poetry, this observation that people would rather write than read always distresses and perplexes me and makes me feel guilty. I'm so happy that I don't have to care or worry about blogs.

My delinquent professor LOC has still not managed to return my paper, but she did email an end comment today which was actually very astute and helpful. My poetry professor PBE (Piercing Blue Eyes) hasn't been heard from, and I'm afraid he called me back while Bad Motorola was broken earlier this week.

I like to use a headset while talking on my cell phone, but I'm always concerned that people will think I'm talking to myself. I realized today that that's kind of a silly worry, because when I'm not on the phone I do talk to myself.

And then I decided that I think that's okay, because I'm an INFP. So I have worlds in my head. When I took the Myers-Briggs test last spring, I scored as an INTP, which meant, according to the type descriptions, that I was such an abstract thinker I couldn't dress myself in the morning. I was really--irrationally--upset about this, and quietly had a crisis about it during a bizarre weekend in Laughlin, Nevada ("Founded on Fun"). Then I took the test again, and became an INFP, and suddenly everything was better, even though I am only 1% of the population and will have trouble finding a mate.

Footnotes

I thought it would be fun to footnote my last post, even though Lucille Clifton says you should make the reader work to understand things. So:

It's Always Winter and Everyone Drowns is the provisional/jokey/but really it's so perfect how can you resist it title of the manuscript of our friend and colleague Leslie, who is leaving the arid pastures of Irvine to bask by her lake in the Berkshires. I can see why she wants to go, but I wish she wouldn't.

The red tide is what happens when rust-colored phytoplankton congregate in a small area of the SoCal shoreline. They really do glow a spectacular blue when agitated.

The Persian fire jumping festival is exactly what it sounds like. It takes place on the beach, and all the Persians for miles around come to build little bonfires and jump over them, listen to music, and run around and be crazy. Equinoctial and I stumbled upon it one evening after buying some firewood and loading up our nalgenes with gin and tonics, and a mishap that evening resulted in the spraining of my dorsal fin.

Sara Robinson is my wonderful Faultline co-editor, and we were discussing our hypothetical progeny because of a misunderstanding someone had about the nature of our partnership. I maintain that it is better not to date someone with the same name as you, if possible, even if it is spelled differently (remember Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz?).

The porno cave existed under the bed of one of her college dorm-mates. Ick!

Blue Tide

IT'S ALWAYS WINTER AND EVERYONE DROWNS! It will be winter, hopefully frequently, all the way across the country to the Berkshires.

After Leslie's goodbye dinner, we went to see the Red Tide, which--whodathunkit--turns the ocean a glowy blue at night. A wave would crash, and the surf would become all bright and flourescent. Plus you could write shining blue disappearing letters in the sand. There were bonfires all up and down the beach, which brought back memories of Persian fire jumping and my damaged dorsal fin, transmuted, by some Proustian process, into feelings of extreme fondness. Of course, with Equinoctial, even spraining your ankle can be fun.

At dinner, we planned to construct a "porno cave" out of Ikea furniture like the Longbang, and decided that if Sara Robinson and I have a daughter she will be named Sara and her middle name, which I think she will choose to go by, will be H.

Why Not More?

I love walking at night. I'm so glad I live somewhere where I can just tumble out of the house at any time of night and walk around for as long as I want. Sometimes I walk up into the hills and worry about the mountain lions, but I figure as long as I'm not getting off a school bus, I'm probably okay (thanks, Signal/Noise, for that lion-happy-meal factoid). Plus it gets so nice and misty, and I find mist to be good meteorology for thinking. There was this crazy guy who was always trying to get the Atlantic to publish his essay about being a person who likes to walk, and I feel like him whenever I think about how much I enjoy my late night constitutionals. He sent Mike Curtis the ultimate insult: a recycled death threat, a photocopy of one he'd actually addressed and sent to Roger Angell. My future!

Anyway, I always want to write in the morning, and fret that I won't be a real writer unless I get up early and do a few good hours, coffee cup in hand, but on my walk I decided that I'm just a night-time writer. I like to write at night and revise in the afternoon, which may have been why Squaw was so perfect. After I thought that, I went home and wrote something I hope is salvagable. But the point of this thought is that HenHen and I had such success writing in a bar at night that I think we should continue that tradition when everyone's back in Irvine. After all, Steelhead captures that fakey, overpriced vibe that was so productive for us almost perfectly.

Many Happy Poets

Please note famous poets, my insane grin (a new strategy for dealing with unphotogenicness) and the sad, sad, sad gender ratio. Note also how happy and healty everyone looks. Go Squaw!

Behind the Orange Curtain

To celebrate my return home, I have been watching "Arrested Development," which just gets more wacky and hilarious with every episode. My favorite joke is probably the most Orange County thing about it: the family owns a real estate development company, and they live in the "model home," which is this faux-fancy mansion standing all alone on a completely denuded hillside. It cracks me up every time they show it. Oddly enough, a model home is also a plot point in "The O.C." They really know their milieu at these shows.

But one thing I have to say for the O.C. is that people here are really nice. I expect it now when I go other places, and Boston-brusque has started making me crabby. Today, for example, people at the cell phone store (Redpoint Wireless at the Insta-Mall on Bison, if you have any cell phone needs) were super nice after my cell phone turned out to still be suffering the aftereffects of its immersion in MFA beer culture at Gina's. They figured out a way for me to save money on replacing it, even though it involved them making a whole bunch of phone calls and then sending me to another store in a process I'm sure they made no money from. I was happy because I got rid of my Motorola, which I had never really bonded with, and got a cute clamshell of a Samsung instead. And then I took Spacey to get smogged, and not only did we pass--by a hair in some categories, but hey--I had a really nice conversation with the guy who did the smogging. Although I think the whole situation may have been helped by the case of Bud that's still in the back seat from Squaw...

One thing about that conversation, though: I lied about what I do, again. I can hardly ever deal with telling people I'm a "poet," but this time I also sat out the round where I would have explained that I want to teach college, not high school. People, especially nice, chatty men, make the high school assumption all the time. I usually "correct" them, but I also feel weird about that, like, why should I care if they understand the way that the creative arts and academica are structured as professions? But this time, after I felt guilty for my silence, I realized that gendered assumptions about ambition also seem to be playing into these interaction, and that I would be sticking up for others besides my own ego if I didn't shrink back from claiming my actual ambitions. Still, it's hard to decide to wave the flag for gender equality when you really just want to chat about going to the beach.

Sloth and Whimsy

I want to write a song about my two favorite vices.

I came back from Squaw all ambitious, but there's something about Irvine that sucks that spirit out of me. Neither LOC nor Piercing Blue Eyes has gotten back to me, plus my LOC paper turns out not to be, upon rereading, very good. I did get a bulletin board so I'd have a place for Brenda Hillman's business card.

A few weeks ago I got my bike tuned up, and they replaced the big moutainbikeish back tire with a little road bike tire. It rides fine, but looks ridiculous, so today I'm going to ride down to the shop to get it switched out, and then, I think, jump in the ocean. And then it's time for Spacey's Big Smog Adventure.

Also, I have this idea for a sangria slushie.