Another Year

On my way to teach today, I walked through seas of incoming freshmen involved in some kind of extended orientation that requires them to do summer-camp like activities. Most of them were doing what we used to call the "Boogaloo," but they were calling the "Gigolo." It goes like this: "Hey [Name]!" "Hey what?" "Can you do it?" "Do what?" "The Boogaloo!" "I'll try!" "My hands up high, my feet down low, that's the way I want to go... Boogaloo! Boo Boo Galoo!" Etc. It was very odd to see cynical UCI student types in their mini skirts and Ugg boots doing this in their cynical yet obedient way.

Anyway, I walked past one group that hadn't gotten started yet whose leader (a current UCI student) was giving a little talk about how to succeed in college. She said "Just kiss a lot of ass, professors LOVE that," and as she said it, she caught my eye. Suddenly, she and everyone else thought she was in trouble--she actually put both hands over her mouth in a posture of having made a bad faux-pas. And I thought, this is the way to celebrate turning a year older: now I can finally strike the fear of authority into the younguns just by walking through the park.

First Day of School

I couldn't sleep last night and kept having anxiety dreams, and eventually I realized... it was because of going back to teaching. Even though I was excited and not nervous, I still had the back-to-school jitters. My mom says they never go away. But class went fine. Two hours is long, and my room has no windows, but everyone talked and they seemed good-natured and fairly knowledgable. Now I'm just drained. Drained. Drained.

Also, Emily discovered that I'm no longer in good standing at the gym.

Brought to you by the letters "Poetry" and "Research," and the number "Neuroscience for Kids"

Happy 107th Birthday to the Golgi apparatus! In 1898, the famous neuroanatomist Camillo Golgi reported that he discovered a ribbon-like apparatus inside neurons of the cerebellum. This structure now bears his name as the "Golgi apparatus."

Frustration

I revise, the poem gets worse. If I keep working this hard, I won't have anything left by the time I have to hand in my thesis.

Summer schedule

Wake up-late afternoon: Work wicked hard on stuff you like.

Late afternoon-early evening: Gym. Try to get buff.

Early evening-wee hours: Go out. Get crazy.

Wee hours-wake up: Sleep like a log.

Repeat.

Doesn't this sound idyllic? I hope we can all keep it up.

Goodbyes

I hate them. Hate them, hate them, hate them. I can't begin to count the number of times I have snuck away to avoid having to say goodbye to someone I cared about.

Summer

Home again! I started feeling happy as soon as I put on my flip flops. I was also happy in the northwest, though. I really like Seattle. My mission was to find a neighborhood I wanted to live in and it failed, because I want to live in all of them. It is nice to have confidence that one will be happy with any decision one makes.

Still in Seattle

It's a lovely city. I drove around without consulting the map too much, and felt very pleased to be getting to know it. I think the person who invented Seattle must have spent some time in Boston, because it's similar... but that might just be because when I get tired I can only reason by analogy.

This is an experiment: is anyone reading this in the OC and interested in picking me up in Long Beach tomorrow at 5:07 pm? That would be the best thing the blog has ever done for me--and I'll buy you (the friend, not the blog) a nice beer or two or seven. Call me.

Seattle

I'm in Seattle. So far it's great. More on that soon.

Meanwhile, on myspace someone sent me two messages in a row, first (referring to my hometown) "belmont close to where I'm from waltham," and then a couple minutes later "I see your a snob like someone from belmont." I mean, what the hell? My response (which I'm not going to send because I don't reply to random people on myspace even when they're nice): "I see you're an asshole, but I don't blame Waltham."

Oregon

Lovely to wake up in a wooden house to trees and clouds and know that you have absolutely nothing you need to be doing. The 28toed cat is full of love and the 28toed person is a wonderful host.

Owl the Anteater...

...is my new good friend. I love him, but he's not replacing any old friends. Let's review:

1. Fuck! I don't want to turn 28. I like 27.

2. Tomorrow I'm driving to Portland with HenHen, then going to Seattle to get the lay of the land, and then taking the train back. I get to go to a party at the pub! I'm very excited.

3. I realized talking with D that some of my poems are in a different category better than the rest. I write the rest as a way to be at the desk when the good ones come. It's a frustrating way to work. I've thought this for some time, but he came up with it independently.

4. Saw the trailer park movie last night. Time the Destroyer definitely had a credit on it.

5. Goodbye, Irvine.

River in Egypt

Things are winding down here. I'm trying not to think about that too much.

Today I corresponded with editors about two different things I'm writing for two different publications. I felt like a real freelance writer! Of course, they're the only two things I'll have published all year.

Tonight we were talking about gender in poetry, about poems that strongly announce themselves as "male" or "female." It made me think about how in most poems by men, the "gendered" aspect even of very "male" subject matter is in tension with the unmacho--even delicate--act of putting that subject matter in a poem. In other words, the craft of poetry has a natural--or at least conventional--tendancy to balance out the excesses to which stereotypical maleness is prone. Very "female" poetry, on the other hand, doesn't have an automatic mechanism to undercut its own seeming limitedness, so female poets who are drawn to gender-specific subject matter have to work harder to seem inclusive.

Not fair, but interesting. It seems connected to me to the fact that, I guess as a consequence of feminism, a woman can't exactly dress in drag. She can impersonate a man, but that's different. If it's just the clothes, there's not a lot that because of its genderedness you would have to say was being worn in an ironic spirit.

Actually, though, that may be less true than it was last time I thought about it because of the way fashions have changed. Even an outfit I've seen a million women wear, versions of which I've worn myself a million times, like Carharts and a big t-shirt, would probably now "read" to me as a statement. Interesting.

Kafka in the sun

Well, I spoke too soon about the Spaceship. There are some more hoops to jump through. For instance, I just opened my registration renewal notice from the DMV and discovered a fine for a mysterious offense on October 18, 2005. $100 for a Park/Toll Violation, whatever that is, in the city of Irvine. Now I've never skipped out on a toll and, as far as I know, Irvine has no restricted parking on any public streets. In any case, I've never gotten a ticket. So what did I do wrong?

Luckily, the citation includes a number under the heading "Code." Excellent! Except that I looked at the Vehicle Code, and NO ITEM WITH THAT NUMBER EXISTS! The closet thing--and I couldn't make this up--involves the improper transport of baled hay. So I am being fined for violating a non-existant law. Thank you, Irvine.

...and there's gonna be trouble

The bird is back!

Goodbye, Spaceship

The Spaceship has been with me since I was 20. I drove it back and forth to Williams a thousand times, back and forth to the cape over the Bourne Bridge and the Sagamore Bridge, and finally across the country. I parked its cute little squareish backside all over Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and later Berkeley, and later in the wastelands of Orange County strip malls. It busted a tire in the Fresh Pond rotary, and left its horn in Sacramento. It has seen the Badlands, and Yellowstone, and has even been to Seattle, my future home. It has transported numerous bicycles, cellos, the makings of Emily G's original furniture, and people, people, people. Most people I've loved in the past seven years have ridden in the Spaceship.

I remember soon after I first got it, taking it to Central Square with Emily P, Katie, and, I think, Jon Russell (who I just heard play in a bass clarinet quartet). I don't know what we were doing in Central Square. Probably getting coffee; we didn't go to bars yet. I remember the exciting feeling of getting to drive my friends around in my own car. As I drove, Katie kept pressing the big red hazard-light button, and I pretended to be annoyed but really it heightened the fun of it--but a couple of days later, I still labeled the button "self-destruct."

Spacey is going to the best possible home, but I'm still a little sad. The end of an era. Cheers, Spaceship.

23

Is the number of poems that I definitely want in my thesis, as they are, no more revision. This is a huge relief. With a little work and a little padding I should be able to get to 30 without too much shame. Still a meager output for three years of writing, but I'm slow, I just am.

Also, I got excited about ordering them. Right now, there are three sections: 1. Time the Destroyer, 2. Drowned Girls, 3. Time Again Plus Dogs. Scarily, there is only one poem in the Group of 23 that doesn't fit into one of those categories, a new one in which I call my ex-boyfriend a Yeti. But I am hoping that adding some more poems will necessitate some new categories.

Red Red Blog

The blog is a little over a year old, and I thought it needed a new outfit.

Tis the season

for people to have lovely life events like engagements and weddings and births, and congratulations to them. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with my feet up on my desk blogging and biting my nails and thinking about how dangerous it would be to have a beautiful house. It would be like a giant anchor and I might never think about anything else. I would rather be a vagabond with no tea towels. I've been thinking a lot about how life seems to be going on somewhere else, somewhere I'm nose-to-glass to. That's how I've started thinking of myself, like it's an identity. I don't buy the shit about needing to be miserable to be a writer, not at all, but I don't see why anyone would write if they didn't have a big store of regrets.