Pleated Trousers

Today C and Z and I went to The Gap and in a farcical mix-up all ended up with each others' purchases. It seems that all the Future Literary Figures are feeling the effects of our struggles with fermentation last night.

Theory for the night: A television show is only as good as its supporting characters are interesting and fully realized. The main cast is the most important for emotional attachment, of course, but the people around the edges are where fascinating depth really occurs. Funny thing is that the same is true of life.

I was just nostalgically rereading the first two months of 28-toed-hen and Nice Belt. That was an idyllic time, but if we try we can have as much fun again. Yes, we can!

Brushes with Fame

1. Sebastian Junger ("A Perfect Storm") is from my town. I know because his new book, about the Boston Strangler working in his childhood home and then going down the street to kill someone, is called "A Death in Belmont." Belmont is such a common name I never think it's referring to my town, and then I get a little thrill. Belmont is famous!

2. After the MFA reading in LA this weekend, a whole bunch of future literary lights almost got run down by Mrs. Governator, aka Maria Shriver. She was driving a black Escalade and looked like she was made of FIMO.

Rubbing Against the Other Cows in the Barn

That's what writers are doing when we go work in coffee shops. Isn't that wonderful? It completely explains a behavior of mine that's always puzzled me. I don't want to listen to or interact with other people, just to chomp an adjacent clump of hay.

Of course, I am also working in coffee shops these days because all the common space in my apartment is covered with shimmering plastic. Our pipes leaked again and they had to jackhammer the floor, again. Our neighbors have begun a legal crusade against mold, but I'm just using my usual coping mechanism and heading for the hills.

Faultline is on its way to being a real boy! It's still a big, daunting slice of stress pie* but it is also amazingly fun to watch it take shape. I haven't had a project to work on in I have no idea how long. Since WAND** I guess. I've worked on things with other people--like last year's MFA reading series--but this is the first time that in a long time that everyone's actually working hard and admitting that we care a lot how it comes out, and it's so much more fun that way. We (and by we I mean Collier) are starting to lay it out, and it looks beautiful. It is going to be irresistable.

* (thanks for that concept, EG)
** My first job. Really. It was an acronym.

Someone (I'll let her reveal herself if she wants) helped me get over my PhD problems this weekend by saying that Judith Butler's writing is sexy because it's smart as hell. Right! Writing can be sexy-smart-as-hell in any genre, just like it can be rote and dull and pandering in any genre. I do get an aesthetic/emotional rush from really good criticism. And if I'm in it for the rush more than most academics, well... I've always liked to think I approach life with a dangerous intensity.

FAULTLINE!!!

Now exists at our new website. Yeah!!!

The Scholars

Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love's despair
To flatter beauty's ignorant ear.

All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
Lord, what would they say
Did their Catullus walk that way

--W.B. Yeats


I have staked a lot on not buying into this distinction. But the scholars make it hard, man. Maybe W.B.Y. had it right after all.

We don't need no water let the motherfucker burn

I am a person who doesn't burn bridges. It runs very deep. Even though I am dying to burn some right now, I know I'm going to keep my little incisive criticisms to myself. And soon I will be glad I was the bigger person. But really, is there such a thing as being too big a person? Wouldn't it nice to be small?

It's final

I'm going to Seattle next year. I am basically a little puddle on the floor right now. This didn't turn out to be a nice process and I am just glad it's over.

Last Minute Seder

I left the house at around 5:00 to find a Haggadah, food, everything. I'm still sort of mystified that it was able to come together in time for sundown.

But it occured to me that rushing around to put the dinner together seems true to the spirit of the holiday: I mean, the ancient Jews didn't have time for their bread to rise, I didn't have time to make my own gefilte fish. I'm carrying on the tradition, see.

Obviously having to read a zillion mediocre poems is not in the same league in terms of excuses for not-getting-started-sooner as esecaping from slavery in Egypt, but you know. We live in diminished times.

Why to Blog

I was talking with Emily G. recently about the difference between reading a friend's blog and getting an individual update on that friend's life--and concluding that blogging has its own merits beyond just convenience. When you're talking one-on-one with someone you're tailoring your version of your life to the other person's interests, knowledge, and all the experience you have in common. That meeting-in-the-middle is kind of an amazing thing we humans can do, and in a way it's what makes friendships worth having.

But on a blog, where you're writing for a more amorphous audience, the tendency is to represent your life as you yourself actually experience it. Even if you're not saying anything that seems particularly revealing, you're building up a picture of the texture of your life that is almost shocking in its inability to be inaccurate (because whatever the truth content of the actual narratives you're writing, you're automatically showing what's on your mind). There's a level of intimacy that this creates that is very different from what you get from an in-person friendship--reading people's blogs, you get to know them as they know themselves.

And by writing a blog, you get a peculiar kind of insight into your own life. It makes you notice what you notice. For instance, I was thinking today about how to blog about what I was doing, which was utterly insignificant and nothing I would have any reason to talk about or remember: laundry, wearing my new sunglasses, nostalgically listening to Jimmy Buffett who was in my life a lot in my freshman year of college (because I was on the sailing team and also because my timid and anorexic roommate played "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw" on repeat for an entire week), thinking about the camp I used to work at because it was very important to me during that period of my life, and feeling because of all of these things the good mood that I always have when it seems like summer is coming. And because I was thinking about writing all this down for others to read, I was feeling a kind of tenderness toward my own experience as I was having it that was very pleasant.

And that's why you should start your own blog.

Insomnia

I can't believe it's four am. Shit. Why can't I sleep? And of course tomorrow is the one day all week that I have to be somewhere before noon.

Permanent Vacation

I just wrote this little gloaty song. I'm embarrassed to post it, but I can't resist.

The quarter has started
but I'm not teaching
doo dah doo dah

School is on
but I don't have to go
oh doo dah day

Seriously, I do have to go to school several times this week, and have tons of stuff to do on many different fronts, so it's not really a vacation. But I think it's important to enjoy the nice things you get handed. And this is probably the last time, maybe ever, that I will get ten weeks to do only my own projects that I care about. Faultline! Thesis! Surfing! Mexico! Taxes .... shit. Oh well. It was a nice carefree vacation while it lasted.