In Full Swing

Well, school is launched, and that means... homework! I just spent much of the day reading Adam Smith. Now I'm off to the gym to read a history of Reconstruction on the elliptical trainer. Way back when I was taking classes at Irvine, I discovered that the gym was the once place I could concentrate well enough to actually get my reading done. Of course, you can't read something dense that you need to take notes on, but history usually glues itself to the brain pretty securely on a casual reading. I have a response paper for that class due Tuesday, and I'm a little... well, not nervous, but I want to do it well. I mean, normally I eat ungraded response papers for breakfast, but the first paper in new school, when I haven't written anything academic in a year and a half...

So I'm staying in tonight, reading and making soup, but... don't worry, I have been fulfilling my social obligations. Another pub night, a return to the pub last night after a department reception, and then a house party with amazing tapas and awkward sitting on couches with all the lights on. All surprisingly fun (well, the awkward sitting at least held promise for the future).

I will not be attending, except maybe as a ghostly shadow-presence, the party being held tonight in my old apartment in Irvine. But I'm glad it's happening, and am hoping for a drunk dial or two.

Sold!

Okay, that was easier than expected. I'm taking a class on ... well, it's a long course description, so I'll just say that I get to do a presentation on a guidebook Wordsworth wrote about the Lake District.

Doesn't that sound awesome? Of course it does! I think maybe I'm supposed to be in grad school after all.

First Day!

I have been reduced to shopping for classes, and have so far determined that I am not going to take "Richardson and Fielding." Why? Because it was Boring. Dull. Not a spark flew anywhere. I am a hyper-critical class shopper, perhaps the one concrete result of my excessive education.

I just ran into one of the UCI transplants fresh from teaching his first class ever. He was anxious, and I felt qualified to reassure him, which was nice. It is weird to be around so many people teaching for the first time; I am coming in with them, or behind them in the program, but my first class feels like a really long time ago. It makes me feel old and gray, not in an entirely bad way.

Also, I think that was my first time running into someone here, which is a milestone of its own. When I was just in Boston, I was theorizing that there are two qualities that make a place feel like home, 1) an accumulation of memories associated with particular spots, and 2) the possibility of running into someone you know. (In Boston on this most recent trip, I felt I had 1) but not really 2) anymore. Also, I guess now that I think of it, knowing where to get things you need, like revolving sushi or fabric for your toga, would be a third continuum of homeiness.)

Anyway, progress, progress. Watch this space for further course reviews and the eventual cliffhanger ending where I am forced either to choose classes or to drop out of school and become an interior decorator.

Promotion

Voila! I shamelessly direct you to my first publication on actual paper (of course, it is also online). I'm really excited, especially because a) it's in a magazine as cool as Boston Review, b) my amazing friend Josh managing-edited it, and c) my amazing friend Jessica wrote a great review on the same page.

You should really subscribe to Boston Review if you don't already.

Apartment

Now, I like to nest as much as the next person, but it's hard to ignore how utterly solipsistic a process it is to move into a new apartment. In my case, especially so, since I'm putting so much energy into a place I'll use primarily to sit by myself and read. (And, of course to be visited by YOU.) I'm not really capable of not caring if my space is nice, but I kind of hate myself for caring because I can feel my aesthetic energy getting channeled into which lamp should go where.

I feel boring and I HATE that.

My Day

Meeting with graduate advisor: Almost the first thing I noticed about her was that she was wearing Sevens, which threw me off a little, but she was totally nice. Unfortunately, she didn't have much advice about what to do about the fact that no courses being offered are remotely related to what I "do."

Grad pub: Totally fun. The PhDs here are affable dorks, and the MFAs drink by themselves (whether as a group or individually is unclear), so I felt pretty much at home. Also, actually, there's a huge Irvine contingent. Most of them were undergrads while I was a grad student, which feels a little weird, but whatevs. If Irvine teaches you anything it's to get used to weird. The only other student (I think) on fellowship was rejected by Irvine, and he seems awesome, so ... think about that, suckers, next time you see E.A., admissions coordinator extrordinaire.

I also swung by the gym and was amazed, as Harrison predicted I would be. I can treadmill away while looking at a beautiful body of water whose name I forget (there are so many sounds and inlets here).

But more strikingly, the gym is huge. In fact, everything is huge. I feel dwarfted by the stadium, the library, the size of the campus itself. It's like a little city and gives me the "I am part of a great institution" feeling more than on any campus I've ever been on, more than Harvard or any Ivy.

The campus reminds me most of Berkeley; the Ave is like Telegraph, which is obvious if you've been to both places, but also the campus has the same way of being grand and then suddenly woodsy, landscaped but with the possibility of geese in the fountain. I watched a whole flotilla of them just standing there, some on one leg, some on two. It's a funny contrast to Irvine, which, for all its sterility, is actually a lot more homey, not only because I feel at home there but because it is much, much smaller and therefore more personal. And less exciting. Well, duh.

Also, what you can forget about rain is that it is cold. BRRRR.

Local Color

I bonded with the awesome contractor working on my apartment, Joe, (he is involved in a multi-day tiling project in the shower, rendering the shower not completely unusuable but definitely a pain to use) over our shared love of public radio. He listened while he tiled, and I continued listening while I painted. Thus, the color of my bathroom walls (blue, "Provence") will be forever associated in my mind with Hugo Chavez calling Bush the devil.

Menu

Last night, after I had painted my kitchen cupboards but before they were dry, I had my first meal in my new apartment: veggies we bought for snacking at the rodeo but didn't eat because we were snacking on big hunks of meat instead at our favorite local establishment, The Hut, put in my car as a nice surprise from HenHen and Nicebelt (thanks, guys), with melted string cheese (from the same source) on top, cooked in the microwave on a paper towel and eaten with chopsticks leftover from the previous night's takeout. Today I painted my bathroom and then unpacked my dishes and had Chard of Many Colors cooked on the stove (I think walking into a Trader Joe's is one of the world's most comforting feelings--all those delicious familiar products). So things are coming along. Tomorrow I have to meet with the English graduate advisor and somehow deal with the fact that the department isn't offering a single course I want to take, and the ones that seem most appealing are the least relevant to my so-called period (any advice, anyone?).

All the English grad students are going out tomorrow night (apparently they do every Thursday). I am inordinately excited to finally meet these shadowy figures. My goal is to barrel through the awkward phase of new friendships as quickly as possible and be into the fun phase by Oct. 1.

I want to write a long post about the Round-Up (motto: "Let 'Er Buck!"), and with further updates from Seattle, but I've been around this blogging thing long enough to know I shouldn't make any promises.

Why did no one tell me about the freakish niceness?

Example of the day: My flight was delayed and I arrived at the airport too late to take the bus route I'd looked up online. Not knowing how to find out about the times and places to transfer (it's a weird system; you often have to walk a block or two downtown, and I missed a bus on the way to the airport while trying to locate the stop) I picked up one of the random courtesy phones that are in airports. I reached a woman who had no idea what the bus schedules were, but she sat there, with me on the phone, and looked them up online for me. She wasn't the web-savviest and it took her a long time, and it clearly wasn't exactly in her job description, but she eventually found everything I needed to know. And then she made me promise to get off as close to my house as possible because she watches the news and wanted to be able to sleep that night not worried about my safety.

It was like I randomly called someone I didn't know at work and instead of getting me off the phone as quickly as possible (as a northeasterner would do) she helped me simply because I needed help. Freakish niceness.

Also, it's finally raining in Seattle. Shedding light rain is a go!

(Shedding light rain is what my going-away present jacket claims to do and in fact does do very well so far.)

Traveling Zombie

In the past 11 days I have visited 7 states (not counting layovers or going through on the train). I have spent 7 of the 11 days mostly engaged in getting from one place to another. I am completely fried, and will write about some of my many interesting experiences when I become a real person again.

However, I am writing this from my lemon yellow ("Cornmeal") study, which is totally painted and ready to go. This also means that my guest room is ready, so come on, guests! Book those tickets.

I had written a...

...long post in Darwin's about memory, cities, and walking five miles through a Boston night filled with hordes of new freshmen going out for the first time ever (I went from BU to Tufts via MIT and Harvard), and then Darwin's faulty wireless ate it. Maybe just as well, as I know it was cryptic and sentimental. It lacked the quality LG described in my poems (not entirely as a compliment) as "an 'I was raised by wolves' clarity." Which I want as the jacket blurb of my so-called book.

Now I'm in Connecticut with the grandparents at their retirement home slash circle of hell. Every few minutes I find I've spaced out of the conversation to repeat like a mantra "please let me never get old." I have never been here before without a nuclear family ally (mom or sisterkins) and it's hard to try to keep everyone's spirits up. I keep making lasting, significant eye contact with the nurses and aides--ports in a storm of slowness, deafness, and irritability. I really, really, love my grandparents, but they're not easy to be with these days. Officially I am looking at train schedules right now in the (of course empty) computer room, but really I am just trying to feel the motor of life going forward again.

The East Coast...

.... is wonderful, but they don't seem to have discovered free wireless. Right now I am sitting in the hipper-than-though Diesel Cafe and I am paying to be online. That seems wrong. And it's weird to be back in Boston because for the first time Boston is not the place I most recently left. I don't actively miss it anymore. I just want to be home, but I don't know where home is.

Oh, but I wanted to say that the shedding-light-rain jacket has been coming in very handy already. Even though it's meant for Seattle, I'm wearing it right now.

Nestmaid

Emily (see below, with the man in the Hawaiian toga) came to Seattle with me and invented the concept of "nestmaid"--like a bridesmaid, but for moving. She helped me with a million little tasks plus with the large task of feeling settled. We also played some fantastic games of Botticelli ("Krishna?" "Not blue.")

Seattle is full of pros and cons. Cons: my apartment is covered with dropcloths and is only barely begun to be painted, so I will be camping out for a while. Pros: the people here make "Minnesota nice" seem like open hostilities. For instance, I was buying a drink at the little cart at Lowe's, got chatting with the woman running the place, and got offered a part-time job. That would so never happen in Boston or the OC.

My landlords are super-nice, but ... they go running for transportation. I'm not sure that's right.

Toga!

My last night in Irvine: