It's snowing in Seattle

I really don't like getting out of bed into the cold air. Almost every morning I have to tell myself, absurdly, "If Robert Hayden's father could do it, you can too!"

Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

I do it anyway, but

buying "vitamin water" always makes me feel dirty.

Feast or Famine

Tonight the tutoring center is empty. Last night it was crazy--some architecture class had a paper due, so we got an embarrassment of badly written essays about pilasters and emblatures. Who knows what tomorrow will be? Now that the quarter's drawing to a close, the tutor alert level has been raised to Orange and we all have to work extra shifts (next week will be Red). It's a good job, but it makes me tired.

I'm going to talk about this book in one of my final papers. One of the poems, "Bunny Tract," makes me think of Irvine, for obvious reasons.

Primarily by zigzags like a poem,
bunny moves . . . Certainly, bunny
has much figured out . . .
The ancient poet wakes, a bit hungover,
footprints of his friend in new snow
going down the hill, bunny dances
on the edge of the abyss . . .

I miss those days of running down the hill late at night, coming home from D and M's place.

I had some smart things to say about these poems, but then I talked to an ESL student about soil samples for 45 minutes, and during that time my brain floated off somewhere. I hope it's on a beach sipping a fruity drink, or maybe hanging out at a swim-up bar with Sisterkins's brain.

Ooh, I just remembered a new pet peeve: paper prompts that are a whole page long, single spaced, OR LONGER. It takes wizardly concentration powers to read through one of these things, and according to my informal poll, 4 out of 5 dentists prefer to write a paper that doesn't answer the question rather than close-read hundreds of words in which important instructions may be buried. It's no fun at the writing center to slog though the War and Peace of assignments and then tell a student he has to tear down the pilasters and start over. No one should create a need to (as they say at UCI) "unpack the prompt." If you do this, consider yourself scolded.

Culinary and Athletic

I've been a huge homebody these days. It's kind of nice. Right now I'm making Indian cornmeal pudding for brunch tomorrow and writing (not just writing this, I mean). I also resourcefully upgraded my curtains with dowels from True Value, so no intruders even know there is pudding in here.

In other news, I became a true Seattlite today by voluntarily exercising outdoors in the rain. I explored Seattle's arboretum, which was nice but muddy, and which deposited me onto a road that I swear was the Jamaicaway. Are arboreta and their surroundings the same everywhere?


I also discovered a trail system that jumps around between islands. From there, you could see approximately this view, as well as another view out across the water. The giant binder clip in the background is Husky Stadium, where the Dawgs perpetually lose at football. In the other direction I think there are houseboats. I really want to explore this area by water, as I always long to do when I'm around lakes or bays. When it gets a little warmer, I'm going to join the sailing club.

The run ended up being longer than I'd planned: 7.2 miles. And yesterday I ran 7 miles on the treadmill. That's a lot for me, so I'm proud.

Little Envelope

No one else puts good writing news on their blogs, I've noticed (though I wish you would), but I'm going to throw good taste to the wind and say . . . oh my god, insta-acceptance! Three poems! I sent out my A-list to a lot of journals, and my three maybe best poems are now, after so many trips through the mail, TAKEN! (Heart, Dog, and Web, if you're keeping track at home.) It's awesome and weird--I feel like I need to write some more, stat. I also need to withdraw the poems from 5,000 places. EEEEE!

Old Ones crack--

I was walking through the library and I just got this Emily Dickinson poem in my head:

I cannot live with You --
It would be Life --
And Life is over there --
Behind the Shelf

The Sexton keeps the Key to --
Putting up
Our Life -- His Porcelain --
Like a Cup --

Discarded of the Housewife --
Quaint -- or Broke --
A newer Sevres pleases --
Old Ones crack --

And it goes on . . . I love this poem. It can seem trite, but just below the surface it's all strangeness--and yet, still, the commonplace feelings are part of it too. I've been talking about scansion a lot recently. Meter gives you the opportunity to suggest and then destroy order, a process that can, as in this case, break your heart.

Knowing the things you don't know you don't know.

That is the problem with bibliography assignments. It's my problem with all intellectual work, and I actually find it kind of terrifying. I mean, how can you know that you need to know something you don't even know about? I'm the kind of rat who likes to sit in my hole and gnaw on one little piece of knowledge for a very long time. Easily zipping around the whole perimeter of a debate? Not good at it. And of course, professors always assign these things in their own fields, where they've had their clear vantages for so long that they don't remember that you start off struggling through the murk, casting little pieces of worm into LexisNexis and hoping the big one bites.

(Count 'em, four mixed metaphors in that little paragraph.)

"Actually, relatively few Vietcong know the work of Cole Porter"

In the early days of Doonesbury, B.D. wants to get out of a term paper so badly that he signs up to go to Vietnam (where he meets the delightful Phred).



I have another stupid bibliography assignment due tomorrow, and, well, I know how B.D. felt. Because of an email glitch, I didn't get confirmation on my topic until yesterday, and then I had to go to work until midnight (where I procrastinated, but still). So now I have to find 15-25 sources tonight, and all the books are checked out, and my topic is falling apart, and a can of rice in the jungle is looking kind of good right now.

(The title phrase is my favorite from this sequence. You really should read early Doonesbury if you haven't already. I have the first three volumes--courtesy of Josh, again!--on my coffee table, so there are no excuses.)

New Look for (the year of the) Pig Pig

Welcome to the stove's new look. It's a little early for the third annual anniversary redesign, but what the hell. I like these colors.

The new quote is from, to paraphrase a link in the sidebar of a blog Josh introducted me to, OMGTHEWAVESOMG! What a book! I've read it before (and left marginalia suggesting that 19-year-old Sarah was also a fan), but didn't really remember the feel of the experience. It creates a fully realized world of incredible complexity, idiosyncrasy, and wisdom--one of those books, like Ulysses but in a very different way, that's so 3-dimensional you can disembark into it and wander around and find everything you need to survive.

And yet, and this is a strange conundrum with important implications, this whole world is trapped in a little paperback book that sat on my shelf for ten years without me even remembering it was there. Even now, flush with my love for it, primed to cry at the smallest tenderness between, say, Bernard and Neville, or the most forseeable of Louis's disappointments, some part of me would rather post on the internet about how I love this book than read this book.

The book handily contains a compassionate and open-eyed and wise discussion of this very problem, but it is sitting closed at my right elbow as I type.

A creepy sense of violation, part 2

First, a couple of disclaimers:

1. Mom, I did put up the curtains.

2. I ALWAYS lock my car. In this I follow my father's philosophy, which is that there's never a decision to be made about locking the car, you just always do it. And I always check; it's a very ingrained habit. I can think of two times total in the past few years that I've forgotten.

Well, one of them was last night. When I went out to the car today where it's parked right off the alley my apartment faces, about ten feet from my door, the glove compartment was open and the stuff was strewn around, all the little change holders were open, everything had been sifted through. Luckily, there was nothing valuable in the car, and for some reason the thief left behind several perfectly good used coffee cups.

Still . . . like last time, this is creepy because there's no way to tell if it's a weird coincidence or if someone is regularly patrolling the alley trying doors and windows. Whoever it was didn't do any of myriad things they could have done just to screw with me, like leaving the dome light on or taking the registration, which makes me think it's someone who means business, not drunk college kids.

I'm not really scared, more just icked out. But Mom, don't worry--yes, I am planning to move.

Furniture High

Okay, Clocky is pretty amazing, but he may not be the best thing ever after all. I mean, a) I don't actually own Clocky, and b) I think that Clocky is probably better in concept than in reality . . . the principle that makes Clocky work is unbearable irritation, and really, is that how you want to start your day?

Plus, I have a new candidate for the best thing ever: when new financial solvency allows you to fix up your study, and you buy a super-comfy chair at a thrift store, and when you're loading it into your car you see a spring and realize . . . it's a RECLINER! This chair makes me ecstatic. I wish I had a digital camera so you could see the wonder.

Chairy was one of a pair, and before I even realized its full glory I was feeling bad about separating it from its twin. Now I'm seriously considering going back for the other one. I don't really have a place for it, but as soon as I reclined in Chairy I felt an overpowering urge to watch TV, so I think maybe the living room.

Also, I was stressing out about thinking of paper topics and then, as then as soon as I sat down in this coffee shop with a mug of coffee and a slice of mango pound cake, my ideas instantly crystallized. I've been trying to find topics that fulfill both the requirements of the class and my personal writing ambitions and, voila!

Secret Agent

So far I've always been one of those people who uses my current school email as my main account . . . but now my academic heart is so divided that it seems wisest to leave the .edu for more stable pastures. Therefore, my new email address is sarah.ann.stove@gmail.com. So far, I like it. So you can email me there, though both my academic emails also still work. IMPORTANT NOTE: It's not really "stove." It's really my real last name. This is a ridiculous precaution, yes, but the stay-anonymous game appeals to the secret agent in me.

Tomorrow I have to wake up at 6 am to register for classes. In a major innovation, new this quarter, we can now do the registration online instead of acually having to go to campus at 6 am. There is suddenly an embarrassment of poetry riches and I don't know what to choose.

Tonight is the last night of HenHen's 20s. Earlier today, I picked up a copy of The Iowa Review that was lying around my department and read her poem in it, and loved it (again), especially the word banister. Happy Birthday, HenHen!

My Funny . . .

One of my classes is called "The Cultural Politics of the Emotions." It was cancelled today. Because of this, my calendar entry for February 14th, 2007 says NO EMOTIONS. This amuses me.

The Kindest Form of No

Today I sent out poems to fourteen journals (but one email got bounced back to me--I'll have to figure out why and re-send it tomorrow). I love sending out poems. It's a laborious process--it took me four days--but so soothing, all those envelopes full of things you made, lined up neatly and ready to go off and encounter other people. I don't even mind the inevitable rejections--as anyone who's been on the receiving end of a slush pile knows, that's just how it goes . . . submissions flow in, rejections flow out, in a natural process, like tides. I've been spending some time in the not-unpleasant purgatory of the personal rejection, so I hope this second round to those places will help me claw up to the paradise of getting published, but at least now it will be fun to check the mail again . . . it's addictive, watching for those little envelopes with your own handwriting on them.

Mit Schlag

SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- Dozens of dolphins and sea lions trained to detect and apprehend waterborne attackers could be sent on a mission to patrol a military base in Washington state, the U.S. Navy said Monday. I love it! My question is, has anyone bought the film rights?

In other news, I just finished my usual marathon Monday night tutoring shift, and I'm now eating dinner and feeling very loquacious. Among the things that are on my mind: there aren't very many authors I don't like, but I don't like Milan Kundera. Being in that man's head makes me depressed. It's like being trapped in the refrigerator of a ship headed to Antarctica, cold and getting colder.

I've been thinking about this blog and how much I wear my heart on my sleeve. Not because of any temporary emergences into googlability (though I should be careful not to mention the Ethicist by name again if I want to stay anonymous)--I don't think of myself as someone with Future Employers, at least not ones who would care if I sang too much karaoke in my youth. But these posts are a real-time record of what I'm thinking about--a drastically, even comically, incomplete record, but all the more authentic for being spontaneous and untainted by perspective. Plenty of reflection, but none in tranquility. It's sort of an experiment--what does life look like in stop-motion?--and implicit in that is the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing. It reminds me of the moon journal I was supposed to keep in sixth grade, except that I actually never do know what the moon is going to do next. I suppose someone had to pay attention to figure that one out too, once.

Hey, by the way, Emily (who is going to blog soon) and I were trying to think of a German suffix that means the feeling of dread you experience when you realize you have some horrifying relationship to whatever the suffix is appended to. For instance, the feeling of dread brought on by looking at what everyone else in your college class has been doing with their lives would be alumnireviewschlag. The feeling of dread brought on by catching yourself writing about your eagerness to commit previously unthinkable acts of electronic self-disclosure is myspacegenerationschlag. Schlag means whipped cream (at least in my family, and we had it on pudding cups). Does anyone know the real suffix?

Round-up of the weekend's events

Lately I've been trying to master an entry-level bar chord (F) on the guitar, a quest that has consumed an absurd number stove-hours over the years. My guitar--though wonderful--is huge, so all the fingers have to be placed and torqued just right or the chord will come out as a thunk. I like to think that if this wasn't the case I'd actually be able to play by now, but oh well--practicing one chord endlessly is a nice distraction, better than Tetris. But the problem is, it took me about two weeks to callous up my fingertips and now I can't stop playing, or feeling will return.

Last Thursday at the pub I apparently called someone in my department a "twenty-twoist," which led to jollity and indignation for the rest of the weekend. The kicker, though, is that those who were joining me in making fun of the indignation were all ALSO BORN IN THE EIGHTIES! Of course, many people dear to me were Reagan babies, but I just get sick of always being the eldest. I think I will join a canasta league.

Today I went to the gym and ran, sweaty and panting, in front of a big window past which people were walking in a steady stream on the way to a basketball game--I thought they would entertain me, but it was the other way around; I felt like I was a lab animal overdoing it on the hamster wheel.

I also went to an ESL training for writing tutors where, no joke, the grammar section consisted of us being told what nouns, verbs, and adjectives were . . . I feel like nothing in my life is at the right level. Either I'm too clueless to take part in the discussion at all (ha ha, he DOES need some Derrida!), or I find myself silently grumbling about being earnestly instructed in the remedial and/or obvious. However, there was free pizza. And cookies!

Poetry is very serious

I just started a poem "We're each allowed one poem about a mystical badger, and I am using mine now." Probably not one for the ages, but it made me happy. The mystical badger thing actually comes from a reader's report, and was said about Robert Bly.

Now I'm off to drink some pre-biggroupdinner wine in a manner so Henhenesque it makes me miss her terribly.

Resolved:

My newyears resolution for this month is to stop not sleeping. Therefore, it is midnight, and I am in bed. Of course, in bed with the computer is how I've been spending at least 75% of my at-home time lately (for reasons involving post-break-in security and the strategic use of radiators, not just laziness), so it doesn't necessarily mean much. I do have my mouthguard in so that counts for something.

Tomororw morning I have to go back to deal with my little shithead again, which I'm not looking forward to. Especially since the hobbit implied that the cheating was my fault because I hadn't had my student make flashcards--a criticism I accept up to a point, but that point is several miles away from vocabulary lists in the bathroom. Anyway, I don't really take the cheating personally, but it does sour the whole relationship.

I've been trying to figure out why I hate one of my classes so much. I feel like the lone asshole; someone else actually told me after class that it flies by, whereas today I think I was aware of every individual second, and spent most of the time alternately doodling and writing "hate it hate it hate it!" and other insightful comments in my notebook. The class is like storytime (the professor mostly just reads out loud from the book), but if it were actually storytime that would be great--after all, the book is one of my absolute favorites ever, and I was too angry at the class to reread it. But she stops every sentence or so to explain things to us, like that there might be something Freudian about the lighthouse. And sure, this is silly and it's a waste of time, but it shouldn't make me livid. I think it makes me livid because I struggle so much over whether this whole enterprise of reading and talking about what we read is worthwhile, and I hate confronting an instance where it clearly isn't.

Best Thing Ever

Clocky!

But don't take my word for it--here's the New York Times: "This alarm clock doesn’t just make noise, it breaks the snooze-button habit: after the first snooze period, Clocky rolls off the nightstand and runs away."

To gild the lily, he also comes in shag.

Rains, Pours

Obviously it was bad karma to post about how I like my homeschooling student . . . today I discovered that the little shit tried to cheat on his last vocabulary test by hiding word lists in the bathroom! You open the cabinet looking for toilet paper, and then, hey what's this? And then your heart sinks . . . For a second I considered not saying anything, just going to the hobbit (my boss) with it, but then I transcended my nonconfrontational personality and told the little fuck-up that he was caught, and how disappointed I was in him. I was proud of that.

Now I have to go do a presentation. Last night new friend Emily (#4 in my phone, breaking the time-honored 3-major-Emily limit) and I went to a sold out reading at Richard Hugo house, a local poetry center--we couldn't get in and spent most of the event having a beer in a nearby bar, but then we snuck in for the end. It was three poets and Sherman Alexie talking about rhyme . . . entertaining, but it didn't make a formalist of me.

mondaymonday

Seattle is the land of four hours of sleep. Amazing that I just got back from the partiest city in the world (Irvine), and I'm more tired now than I was all weekend.

I'm enjoying a rare quiet moment at the tutoring center. I just had a good session, one where someone who came in because her teacher required it left feeling really helped. She was one of the kinds of students who is most fun to work with, someone whose thoughts are interesting and coherent but whose paper is a mess--so there's a lot of room for improvement, and also a lot of potential.

When I left my homeschool tutoring job this morning I thought, as I often do, that this might be my favorite job I've ever had. It is ridiculously easy, while still being stimulating and fun. Today, for instance, I decided as I drove over that I would have my student write an opinion piece (about the death penalty, I decided once I'd gotten there); while he wrote, I read Act II of Julius Caesar; then we talked about what he'd written, which led to a discussion of justice, the reasons we have law and punishment, and what it means about psychology and epistomology that we think shoplifting is totally lame; then we read, slowly but thoroughly, a couple pages of JC, with breaks for talking about how the characters are lying, mistaken, deluded, vain, etc.

One of the best things about today was that it wasn't pitch black yet at 5:00.