My brilliant idea

Palo Verde is a huge complex of orange grad student apartment buildings that are exactly the same. Christo and Jean-Claude should totally wrap it. That would be way more meta than anything they could do in New York.

Flow Chart

Last year, at a particularly low moment, I decided to make a flow chart of my neuroses. It cheered me up a lot. Anyway, last night Sisterkins was telling me that I need to toss the flow chart into the fireplace and be done with it, and she's so right. Life is way better without feeling neurotic and anxious all the time. With a couple of weights off my mind I feel so much more competent and ready to face the world. Although I'm keeping the actual flow chart as an artifact. I don't have a fireplace anyway, and no one except Equinoctial has managed to make me get off my ass and have a beach fire (and that time the experience led to a sprained dorsal fin).

In tutoring news, how did I get TWO classes of 12-year-old pairs? Benton and Ariel are adorable; I want to speak at their wedding. The ESL kids I'm not sure about. I said I wouldn't teach the class unless they paid me more, because I don't really want those hours anyway, but I don't usually try to negotiate that kind of thing. I felt weird until I realized: they're Chinese. They're totally used to bargaining.

My new UCI students are cute, but used the word "caress" to describe leaves way too many times. Still, I'm excited to be back in it. Check out their blog! (There's probably nothing on it yet, but there should be soon.) Homework meets the blogosphere.

The Weekend

I took the weekend off from . . . what do I do again? This time around I wrote no poems, returned no phone calls, and generally just let the time slide over me. I'm not sure, but it might have been a good thing to do. Things are finally starting up this week, beginning with 9:00 am tutoring tomorrow. I feel out of joint, unprepared, but if there's anything this summer has taught me it's that readiness is not all. I don't think I can ever feel ready for something until I'm actually doing it.

In teaching, I've decided to scrap my syllabus from last year, just to keep things interesting for me, but trying to plan a new first week I realized that I'm really attached to teaching a Dream Song on the second day of class. I think I like to get in some early damage to everyone's preconceived notions of what poetry should sound like. Sometimes I decide that under all the complexity the Dream Songs are sentimental, and that I'm a cheap reader for loving them, but right now I don't care. That's why it's great to be the teacher.

Anyhow, shit is only crazy in the usual ways now--ot at least I hope that's the case. I think I'm in an overdramatic frame of mind. I've noticed that I have a sort of a time-lapse reaction to the famous Irvine lack of weather. My mental state could really use some fall right now: bite in the air, smell of leaves, cold wind in the early dark, people trying to get me to go apple picking. Melancholy makes sense in a fall that feels like fall. It's one of the real New England pleasures.

Vino

Not always a good idea.

Shit stays crazy

Could we have a little peace, maybe a couple of normal days, please? Or maybe I'll join a convent or something. Anyone know any good convents?

Grizzlies and Pirates

Just saw the grizzly bear movie. Timothy Treadwell always brought a stuffed animal bear with him when he went to Alaska to film real bears. We see him cuddling with it in his tent, and then later his mother holding it, nervously moving its paws, while she's being interviewed. It looks a lot like a teddy bear I used to have named Beary Bear. How strange to go from stuffed to actual bears but to continue to love the stuffed ones. I've always thought it was healthy and delightful to project a certain amount onto stuffed animals (whereas dolls are just creepy), but with Treadwell it really doesn't seem that way. He's sort of a victim of the Velveteen Rabbit fallacy, that if you love it enough it will become real for you, that love can actually transcend projection and transform the thing that's being loved. Though as I remember, the real rabbit doesn't stay with the sick child... or does the child die? I remember finding that book incredibly sad.

In other news, Josh reminds me that tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate day. Maybe I'll go to Tarrrrrrget. Or go work out at the ARrrrrrrrrrC (the Anteater Recreation Center, that is, i.e. the gym). Or see if I've been assigned a smarrrrrrrrt classroom. Also, tomorrow is the first episode of the new Arrrrrrrrested Development, isn't it? Ah, the pleasures and possibilites of life in Irvine.

Penguins

Everyone should read about the gay penguins. It's a really cute article, especially when your sister sends it to you.

Speaking of which, I got an AIM screen name so I can talk with my sister in China more easily. It's marvelstove. Does anyone else do this, or want to?

Food

I used to think I might be serious about cooking. To illustrate how far I've fallen: I just put frozen peas, fresh spinach, fresh green beans, some tuna, goat cheese, and some grated Romano into the microwave and cooked it for a couple of minutes. These ingredients were basically all I had left in the house. The only dishes dirtied were a bowl, a fork, and a cheese grater. The results, I thought, were delicious. Meanwhile, my college friends are all tossing off homemade calzones and coconut chicken masterpieces like they are nothing. What happend?

Week of Crazy Shit

That's what this has been. It's weird how once life starts rolling in an erratic way it just keeps getting more and more unpredictable. Like a pool ball with an uneven weight in it. Earlier this week, before the crazy shit even started, I wrote a poem about this that used the word ecliptic. What a great word, huh?

Just saw The 40 Year Old Virgin. Hilarious goofy fluff. Many chuckles. Perfect for a weekend of crazy shit. Although I really do want to see that grizzly bear movie too. Grrrrrrr.

Sluggish

I just almost fell for an email scam. I won the lotto? Really?

I also just misread ringtone as rigatoni. I think everyone needs totally free rigatoni.

Tutoring is beginning to seem like a rabbit-hole down which all my free time is tumbling, helplessly, head-first. I agreed to work Saturday mornings, and I haven't even seen a paycheck yet!

What is it about Irvine that makes it so hard to get anything done? I don't think I've spent a single productive minute in my apartment the entire time I've been home. Though outside the apartment I have had lots of fun.

Shackleton

I have tried to describe to some of you the unique eloquence of the Atlantic's new captain, but it's been hard to capture. Here, finally, is a perfect example, in print for all to see. Read it, read it and be glad you stayed at home when the lures of polar exploration called.

Or just read this excerpt: "This may be too finely tuned a sensitivity, but I worry that I have left behind the wrong impression: that is, that I might be of two minds about the talent of The Atlantic’s editorial staff in Boston. It would be hard for a communication to run further from my belief. At least in this owner’s eyes, The Atlantic’s staff in Boston is extreme talent in the extreme."

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Jury Duty

Jury selection is funny. No one wants to serve, but still no one seems to be able to resist falling all over everyone else trying to seem fair-minded, rational, and intelligent. The lawyers ask stupid, stupid questions, like "Do you have common sense?" My number was never called, but I had my escape clause ready since unlike EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS ASKED, I don't believe that you can always definitively tell what someone is thinking from his or her actions. The more annoying of the lawyers kept asking that question, among others that seemed designed to help people make fools of themselves. Although we had been told no details of the case, she got several jurors to claim to understand that race had nothing to do with it. I was glad to leave the room, and have spent the afternoon praying never to run afoul of the law in the O.C.

Book-length narratives

For my class this quarter, I think I'm going to have my students write a paper about an entire book, and I thought it would be interesting to have them write about a book-length sequence rather than a regular book of unconnected short poems. So I'm looking for suggestions of good, relatively student-friendly books with continuous narrative threads. Any ideas?

I have a job

Teaching (cue jaws music) . . . middle schoolers! Somehow I got the job, even though the interview started with the woman saying, in an ominous tone that made it clear that this was a bad thing, "You're very smart."

On the way home, I saw a man crying in his car. A middle aged Asian man in a Toyota Corolla with dealer plates, really crying hard and wiping his eyes. I felt bad for invading his privacy, but also thankful. Seeing strangers in their own moments of intense emotion is a gift, I think.

I thought about whether I should blog about seeing him or try to write a poem about it. I once heard a lecture (which included many wonderful thoughts, including the fabulous Walter Benjamin quote "Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience") that said that if something is good material for a dinner party anecdote than it is bad material for a poem. I'm not sure that's entirely true, but I think there's a lot to it. It's easy to get too delighted by one's own voice telling stories and miss out on whatever poem alchemy needs to happen. And it's the same here, I think: good for the blog, bad for the poem.

Are they hot?

Two new poets coming over in a few minutes. That's good, because no old poets are here. Old poet M.B. had just one question, when I reached him in Philadelphia trying to invite him.

A philosophical proposition

That the soul exists in the body is the mystery from which all other mysteries, problems and things of beauty stem.

I've often thought this. Thought it again today while swimming in the clear, turqouise waters of the UCI pool, which are always exactly the right temperature.

In other words, would we be better off, or not, if incorporeal? My Uncle John and I once had an argument about this. 1992, Paris. I had a bad cold which was making me miserable. Now I think he was right. I wonder if he remembers.

Home again

All is well. No interesting mail. My rolly suitcase is looking forward to settling down in the closet where it's dark and comfortable and resting its wheels for a while. I am looking forward, maybe, to getting started trying to accomplish things, trying, like my friend's ninth-graders, to be my best self all the time.

Speaking of which: Soliel Moon Frye, aka Punky Brewster, has named her first child Poet. Poet Rose Sienna Goldberg. I can't decide whether my approval (go poets!) or disapproval (ridiculous!) is stronger.

Back to the 'Vine

Leaving Boston this afternoon. Will I even recognize my own bed after all this time away?

Open Letter to the Grolier Poetry Bookshop

You've always been a little intimidating, a little insiderish. We've never felt comfortable around each other. So please excuse my boldness here, but I have a piece of advice for you. If you are going to change your hours so that you are only open on Saturday afternoons, you might think to mention that fact on your website.

Talent Destination

Today I visited my old workplace, the one named after a major body of water or perhaps a seaboard. The ship of the magazine is preparing to sail for a new harbor and most of the crew will be left behind. Morale is very low. It makes me sad. I think of Shackleton, who left his crew on the freezing Elephant Island to spend a year living on penguins and seals while he sailed for help, and, well, the man in charge here is no Shackleton. Not only will no one be coming back for them, in order to receive their few month's supply of penguins and seals the crew has also had to sign a non-disparagement clause. They can't tell anyone how they and sanity were plowed over on the way to a "talent destination" in D.C. I am itching to disparage, but am not sure who is interested.

Before hitting the old offices, I helped set up a chemistry lab in a charter school in Dorchester. I love beakers, and volumetric flasks, and that back-to-school feeling. Excited about my poetry class now.

On the way to the T, I decided to blog this inane (but true!) thought: being single is no fun, but one advantage to it is that you stop taking your friends for granted and realize how wonderful they are. That's pretty nice.

Ruskin

Yellow-stockinged and cross-gartered. With my mom.

Overheard in New York

This is a few days old, but so great: "...and then he wanted to write a show called "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead..."

I love cities. Which is not to say I'm not ready for a few months in a hermitage somewhere.

Melancholy happiness

Today I sat in Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square people-watching, drinking a mammoth iced coffee and feeling melancholy, until I was interrupted by someone I vaguely remember from camp stopping to say hello. That reminded me of the ways Boston is different from other places, and how deeply you know a place where you've spent years there. Despite the melancholy, it's been a good few days: lots of feline face-time with Squid and her new sister Hermione, walks around new J.P. haunts and old Cambridge haunts, a sail on the good ship Vim! and tonight hard-boiled eggs at a hipster/grad student bar and the kind of last-minute hospitality that makes you feel like things are okay after all.

And maybe they are, but it's hard to decide. My great-aunt's late-life husband, Ruskin, died last night of a heart attack. I want to post a terrific picture I have of him in a bright yellow sport coat, taken only three or so weeks ago at the family reunion. He was 93, but spry enough to play badminton. I never knew him well, but I did know him to have extraordinary verve and good nature. As I understand it, he died at a luau, enjoying the food and entertainment, surrounded by his family. I picture him wearing a lei. It seems sad, and absurd, and maybe the perfect way to go.