I admit it

I am addicted to advice columns. And now this one seems to have been written by someone in our department Does anyone know who? Hee hee hee. There is NO ANONYMITY in this bubble.

Exorcism

Last night I had another dream in which I had to tell everyone I didn't get into any PhD program. I figure if I do a mock-confession here and now--I got rejected everywhere! Boy, I'm a dummy!--I'll be less likely to have to do it for real. Ah, magical thinking. Sometimes it has a clear basis in psychology.

Two or Three Suits

Wow, I just taught my worst class in a long, long time. Beforehand, I ran out of time grading, and then had to spend the first few minutes of class photocopying the article I wanted them to read. Then I was a blibbering mess as I tried to manage the assignments, meetings, etc. Wow.

Although, actually, when we finally talked about the article itself things came together and I started realizing how I can run a close-reading discussion (which is something I CAN do) with journalism instead of poetry goals. That was pretty nice and I'm looking forward to doing it again. We were able to extrapolate basically the entire profile from the phrase "two or three suits."

Now I'm being stood up by a potential Faultline intern (not a good move, kid!) and getting ready to embark on the misery of self-transcription. But you know, the Faultline computer is doing something very strange. When I go to type an internet address (but at no other time), the comma and the period are switched. I mean, I hit the comma key and a period comes out, and vice versa. Huh?

Mutinies

Things are not right with my schedule. I woke up today at 2 pm, having gone to bed at 1 am. I set my alarm for 9:30 and it really didn't break through at all. This makes me nervous as I have to teach at 11:00 tomorrow. Friday I taught without coffee, and I really can't do that more than once a month or so or my students will probably mutiny (just like the passengers on the QE II, I learn from CNN).

And so it has been a day of work but of too much left to do and too little inclination to sequester myself in the library. I think I might be becoming an extrovert. But I'm supposed to be "lonely, lonely / I was born to be lonely / I am best so." Oh, good old poems.

Quote from a student paper that made me laugh out loud (please don't be reading this, students...I don't think you are): [In the context of the female student's interest in a male bartender] "I trust my friend's gaydar because her sister is a lesbian." I mean, how do you even comment on that?

Someone, buy this girl a clue!

It's been an interesting weekend.

I've been thinking about how for the last few terms I've been doing work in areas where I'm as expert as I am at anything. Now suddenly things have switched and I'm a novice at everything I'm doing. It's uncomfortable. I've thought in the past that I'm happiest with the low expectations and steep learning curve of new projects and I hope that that will be the case again. I guess there are different challenges to knowing what you're doing and being totally clueless.

Rear Window Moments

Last night, as we sat outside on a patio, MH described us getting told to shut up by a person he'd been watching in her window as a "rear window moment." And this morning, I realized that that's totally what happend to me on Friendster!

See, I thought I had turned on the anonymous feature, but I hadn't. And now all the people I was watching are watching me! Several weird things have already happened because of this, but beyond any individual outcome I'm just feeling creepified in general. I'm glad Hitchcock has provided us a term for this phenomenon because it's extremely disconcerting.

Why I love poets

Describing the horrors of life in 1484 Vicky Silver says "It was a twilight world, lit by candles," and as I write the phrase down verbatim I hear poet-pencils around me doing exactly the same thing.

Something's Afoot

I just can't help thinking that something's afoot here at UCI. Something's brewing. I bought a firepit to keep it placated.

Congratulations to me...

...I'm a teenager. Now I'll finally be able to drive, go to parties, and maybe even live on my own!

This is to say that I feel like I'm regressing. I feel about seventeen. Except that at seventeen I didn't have to read Milton and the Malleus Malleficarum (the Witch's Hammer*) although I did learn about the MM in the course of my "so goth" paper on witch trials for Mr. Moltz.

*That got me Irvinating the title and wondering whether a Witch's Hummer could possibly exist--would any pagan buy a Hummer or is that just crazy?

Intelligibility

So when you are going to a lecture about how Americans need to represent themselves as less Christian, maybe it's not a good idea to bring your reindeer mug. You feel a little obvious, somehow. Of course, to you the reindeer mug is far from a symbol of Christianity--it's just goofy. But how can you predict how the symbolism will be "read" by someone with a different colonial history or non-whimsical parents? Obviously, the only way to avoid being an imperialist is to go back to bed.

In other news, I reread my personal statement only to find that it is practically unintelligible. Uh-oh. I'm trying to rewrite it for the school I'm already at and concluding that the whole thing is NO FUN. NO FUN AT ALL.

Today

I took a nap... I ate cookies... I made a gaffe on Friendster... and I'm thinking to myself, "Stove... this is not your beautiful house. This is not your beautiful wife." I'm thinking, get it together, Stove! It's a new year.

I did just download Eudora so hopefully I'll be able to answer email again without it getting caught in people's spam filters. I love Eudora. I really had an email management system that worked back when I used it at L'Atlantique. It involved turning important messages pink.

Where have all the sisters gone? Back to China, every one! When will they ever learn?

Gaaaaaa!

Up way too late last night listening to the shrieks of the party downstairs, and now I'm a little ball of nerves and stupid questions with time running out before my interview. Um, your poems are cool. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Fingers crossed for sisterkins, who is at Disneyland taking the GRE right now. Luckily, she got to soak up good vibes in the henhouse.

"Southern California Needs to Get a Grip"

New class: Punctual, enthusiastic, outgoing, and they even nod politely when I talk. No one seemed to notice that I'm not a journalist even though I thought I had written that fact across my forehead in glitter paint. Thumbs up.

Sisterkins: Battling the evils of the GRE and soaking up vitamin D before returning to frozen Beijing, which is having its coldest winter on record. Has declared room "cozy."

Rubber plant: Trying out life on the patio; moving several times a day to keep in the sun, and seeming to enjoy this.

Chiminea: Soon to become the new home of the rubber plant?

New chiminea: to be purchased with Christmas money for Sisterkins-is-visiting party. Or probably a firebowl, actually.

Faultline website: looking fine!

My first Faultline interview: To be conducted tomorrow, concurrently with evils of GRE.

Us: Ready for hanging out after stresses of Saturday.

A Killing Spree of My Own

I've spent much of the New Year so far on a Capotathon: reading In Cold Blood all the way home from Minnesota, and then going to see Capote as soon as I'd finished. Later, I got to act out a few murderous fantasies of my own, since I came downstairs this morning to an ant invasion. As in my trailer park days, I started off squeamish and was soon crushing the little punks with my bare hands.

St. Paul Delights

New Year's passed with an abundance of St. Paul delights, including a Prairie Home Companion show with free champagne, two really nice visits with a new poet friend, and plenty of face time with slightly tipsy members of the Macalester College music department. As the family knows (to the detriment of their ear-drums and patience) I was unimpressed with Billy Collins, a special guest on the radio show: the poems he read seemed to me schlocky, prosy, and often a little mean-spirited, though with occasional tingles of something more. Even though his poems are famously accessible, I think they do more harm than good in terms of poetry's standing with the general public because they are almost totally without urgency or ambition. All they could ever provoke would be a wry chuckle, and who wants to invest a lot of time for that when Garrison Keillor (with the help of Jessica's punch-ups) can deliver the same thing so much less pretentiously?

Anyway, I think I'm pretty much alone here in Irvine, me and the downed trees. I'm reading furiously in preparation for starting to teach Lit-J in only 4 days!