Spring Break

How strange to be loving Irivne, but I am. The mountains are out and the people are special (though most are out of town right now). I think it's being about to leave that's bringing on this surge of affection. Because I am officially 90 percent sure that I'm moving to Seattle and really excited about that, too--getting into the mood by scoping out cute 1-bedrooms on craigslist. Anyone want to influence the final decision?

Ran into a poet in the half price shoe store (in Tustin!) and suggested a table-sharing agreement for AWP next year. Then I heard Jorie Graham interviewed on the radio on the way home. She is really earnest--she thinks small acts of creation form a "numinous envelope" around the earth--but also smart and nuanced about politics, much like BH whose work I'm trying to describe in the intro to my interview with her. It's an interesting feature of our poetic-historical moment: poets trying to make passion and urgency coexist with an ironic sensibility and a sophisticated understanding of the pitfalls of political speech. It seems awfully difficult to pull off, but they get a lot of points for trying.

Quiet in Stoveland

But everything's ok: I've just been busy superivisng an important Boston editor's Soutern California tour. I introduced him to the best green beer and karaoke the west coast has to offer, and we also averted a terrorist threat*. So it was an eventful visit.

Today I heard a mystery writer speak. He has (indirectly) become a patron of Faultline, which I think is pretty cool. The event was full of his eager fans, and even though they asked him over and over again how he gets his ideas, it was interesting to get a genre fiction perspective on the writing life. He said that you have to work hard and consistently because if you don't write for a while you get bad at it. And I thought . . . maybe that's my problem!

*I've just learned that Jack Baur, along with most of the other CTU bad-asses, was an English major. Go us!

Strange Month

I've always found March to be one of the stranger months, and this one is no exception. I'm ready for it to be over, ready to be dealing with a lower level of uncertainty--but the good news is, an internal impulse to be optimistic and to stablize, to control what I can and figure out a way to be less buffeted by what I can't (as the cheesy plaques say, I guess) is emerging out of the chaos.

This weekend we had breakfast tacos at "Gospel Brunch" and I fell in love with live oaks and Austin's trailer-park-like neighborhoods. We heard really bad poetry read in a fantastic venue, and I realized that I want to write like me but hang out in places like that, which, odd though this sounds, is kind of a breakthrough. The experience also increased my admiration for my poet-friends and their work, because it's no small thing for a poem to excite me, and their poems so often do. The random encounters were unstressful and the planned ones were really wonderful. It's nice to be back to my room and my introversion, but also I miss the trip pretty bad.

Rainy Stove?

Stove in Seattle?

It could happen!

In a Tizzy

I am going crazy with this school admissions stuff. It's hard to think of anything else. GAAA!

Klutzotic

I just burned both of my palms making breakfast. Not too serious, but PAINFUL. I really don't want to have to teach clutching an ice pack, but it may be necessary. By far the stupidest thing I've done ALL DAY.