THE VANITY OF INSANITY

Get Out Of My House

2012-01-11T17:02:00.000-05:00

I've got some beef with the internet that I'd like to express. And I use beef because it's something tangible. We can or cannot pick up a piece of beef. Thinking about a couple conversations I've had about writing recently, I've come to realize how much my profession depends on the internet, how much information is living on the internet, and how big and gooey the internet really is. I just recently "found" a website called jacket2.com. And I even hate to use the word "found" because all that means is hundreds of people have already committed themselves to this website and I'm the new kid showing up too late. In many ways, this website is exactly what I've been searching for in terms of a website about writing and literary theory, but at the same time, I didn't know I was searching for it in the first place. How do I know what I need until I find it? This is exactly what our culture depends on--things you don't know you need until you stumble upon them.

The reason I get so fed up with the internet in terms of writing is because I constantly need to be linked in to get published. It seems like everyday there is a new hip online journal popping up that I should submit to, or there's that old online journal that I just heard of today that I should have already submitted to, but regardless of whether I submit or not, there are hundreds of other people submitting against me. And anyone can submit! There's that guy who is actually a truck driver who thinks, "Hey, I've got an interesting life, I'm going to write about it, submit it to any journal I want because there are no limitations, get lucky and put into the editor's yes-file, and get a publication instead of that guy who studied writing for 7 years, his degree says he is a master of writing and has submitted to 50 or more journals but didn't get considered because there are just too many stories to read". So not only do we have a plethora of journals to consider, we have to find that journal where our writing will be a "good fit", and we have to fight off all those laymen breaking into our writing house. Get out of my fuckin house already! Put down that crowbar and go back to bar tending, fighting crime, saving babies, fixing furniture, or whatever you do to actually make money. You don't see me taking your blood pressure, do you?

It really is a lot to manage, and if we're not on the internet all day, we miss all that information, but if we are, we only realize how much we don't know. How is one supposed to focus in this great big digital eco-system?

2011-12-29T23:39:00.001-05:00

The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us by James W. Pennebaker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I would recommend this book to a writer, poet, intellect, psychologist, or anyone interested in human interaction. The reason I bought this was because of a cliff-hanger review on Slate.com. The hook is that this book will help you to identify a liar from a non-liar by detecting cues found in the pronouns one uses in conversation. This turned out to be so much more than that. What's interesting to me as a poet is Pennebaker's study of suicidal poet's use of the "I". In some ways I feel like he is talking to me directly, warning me against using this pronoun. I've always had a goal to write a series of poems without using the "I", but it's difficult, I'm not sure why.

Regardless, this book will make you aware of the words you use everyday, especially the really small words, but also how you interact with different people and how these interactions affect how others perceive you. And though I took Psychology 101 three times in college, I'm not a psychologist, and even I can easily grasp the jargon and data presented in this book. I've still got some reading to do, but my one gripe is how he quickly jumps from one topic to the next. Just when I'm really getting into something juicy, he drops it and moves on. This could be a positive criticism, but for a book this long, I think he could have done a bit more lingering, but perhaps the book itself is some skewed brain pattern test for the reader.

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Prairie Voles

2011-12-27T21:45:00.002-05:00

Holidays are a disruption. I don't really need a day that's different than all my other days because that's what vacations are for. I don't like when I realize that my mail isn't coming that day or that the only restaurant that's open at 11pm is a Denny's and I have to eat a shitty meal with all the other depressed people who may wonder why the server is wearing a funny red hat, or why he's been working for 24 hours straight. It's all terribly sad and makes me feel even worse for those people who have nowhere to go, when any other day they are perfectly content being by themselves. Just like Valentines Day is a reminder that our mates love or lost us, and maybe they still love us now, but it's really not all that romantic. No one has been able to fully make sense of love, not even the poets.

This Christmas I held my grandmother up as we walked her into the house because her life did depend on me and my dad to move her. She cried because she was so grateful for us, but she also cried because she has become an infant, and yet she's so aware of her humanity and her dignity. My day ended with a call to an ambulance, not for her, but for someone we found bent over on a curb by the gas station. His sweatshirt was unzipped and underneath he didn't have a t-shirt. His chest was right up against the cold. He had trouble breathing and speaking. He was old. Whether the ambulance was the best place for him or not, I didn't want to imagine the home he would have been going back to anyway. Turns out he had just gotten out of the hospital the day before and he decided to walk to the gas station food mart to buy cigarettes and an orange soda. And this is a holiday.

What's interesting about this, and my trip back to Cleveland, is the affect it's had on my writing. I've been working on a somewhat epic poem, a poem longer than two pages, because I've decided that the good poets write long poets, and the bad poets write haiku. Yes, I said it and I mean it. Ahem, Garrison Keillor. This feels good to finally say that out loud. Anyway, by working on one poem over a course of a week and through a medley of emotions and events, the story turns into a strange one. It is also a great way of documenting my time here. Everyone will be present in my poem.

A Question of Art or a Question of Life or Both

2011-12-12T22:06:00.001-05:00

I just started reading Miranda July's short story collection No one belongs here more than you, partially in preparation for reading her new book It Chooses You, which somehow I feel will blow me away though I have nothing other than a few relatively kind reviews to make me think that. Regardless, I can't help seeing Miranda July in every story I've read so far. That Miranda July, the person, is acting as the narrator. In some ways this makes me feel uncomfortable, because it seems like Miranda July is in my house, she's in my bed next to me telling me how to read or interpret her stories. Do they need to be interpreted? I feel like they are quirky for the sake of being quirky, which I suppose is fine because that's her way of commenting on the human condition, it is an insight into her human condition. It got me thinking about my own writing, and how much of my personality appears in my writing. I think to some extent, we don't have to meet certain writers in order to get a sense of their personality. Is this true for all writers? Do my classmates feel like I am sitting next to them in their desk overwhelming their personal space with my breath and words when they read my poems for workshop? I wonder if our personalities come through in our art, and if so, is it how we perceive ourselves or is it how others perceive us?

In thinking about the pottery I made years ago, it was always messy and somewhat slanted to one side. However, there was still a precision to it, a purpose to the lean. I perceived myself this way, as messy, ill-functioning, yet mathematical in my motions, and still do. But is this how other's perceive me? Do we all battle to find the right place between our own notions of ourselves and the outside world's? Do I worry too much? Sometimes when I pluck one hair from my eye brow I feel good about it no longer being there, knowing that no one else would have really noticed anyway. But in the end, this, along with those other beauty secrets (ahem), add up to the body I present to the world around me. So I leave you with this: is our true being found within our own perceptions or within the many perceptions surrounding us?

How You Percolatin'?

2011-12-02T12:32:00.001-05:00

So I'm at the cafeteria again. The friendliest cafeteria lady asks this question to everyone with a huge smile on her face. She serves chicken fingers and turkey burgers, which she likes to call "love burgers". She loves her job. The reason I like it here, the cafeteria specifically, is because of all the movement. There are freshman who are only vaguely aware of our recession. They are not yet disappointed by the state of our economy and are instead embarking upon their real adult lives, without having to act like adults. I think this sense of whimsy is lost in graduate school. Many of us are in graduate school because we can't find jobs, and yet we are told to act like adults. What a bummer place to be. At this point in my educational career I feel like many of us are just trying to "get through it" so that we can put on our grown-up shoes. Yet, we're not taking advantage of this vital system that we are a part of.

Last night I went running and after about a mile and a half my stomach start to hurt (too much dinner) but my legs felt like they could go another 5 miles, like they are little machines attached to my body. It made me think about how my mind works versus what I actually do with these thoughts. My mind is a little machine but my body is a typewriter...if that makes sense. I remember junior year of college I was still an art education major. After a conversation with a friend, it dawned on me that I will graduate with an art education degree. This would have been fine for someone dedicated to art education, but to me I thought, "I am limited to only being an art educator, really". I only got to do college once, and most literally because I only had 8 semesters of subsidized tuition at a really great university. That's when I changed to English. Hm, not much better, I know. However, it gave me more possibilities. I saw the world in a less limited way. Back to my running analogy, again, I think that I get really excited about doing something great with my life, something my university always told me in one way or another, and yet I'm writing poetry. People make fun of poetry. I even caught a glimpse of a bad sitcom, my first mistake, and the driving school instructor says, "And I'm just proof that you can get a job with a PhD in poetry". Harumph. What's wrong with poetry, asks the poet? It doesn't necessarily create forward movement in a corporeal way. It is the mind without the flesh.

I just finished reading an article on an interesting technology investor, Peter Thiel. He also feels that Americans have lost their whimsy, their inventiveness, and that our progress in technology only happens on a micro level. He says, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters...You have dizzying change where there's no progress". Take a look at the technology of our phones against the fuel economy of our cars. I'm pretty sure my 1995 Jetta got the same or similar mileage as today's Jetta. So what if my phone can get me to the nearest gas station, but why aren't we getting to the nearest electric outlet to charge up the battery? Yes, yes, I know we have electric cars. But who can afford them? And isn't it already 2011? Shouldn't we all be driving electric cars, or even flying cars by now?

CAFE-TERIAS

2011-11-21T20:40:00.001-05:00

I don't know what's so comforting about college cafeterias, but there are times when I crave the food. And perhaps it's just not the food. It's the whole experience. I just in fact overheard a girl say, "We're at the fresh right now", because the name of this particular cafeteria is The Fresh Food Co. I love the nicknames and the stigmas and all the young people in sweatpants and flip flops. I put on my sweatpants just for the occasion, but unfortunately, I don't own a pair of flip flops. I like being here in the corner, getting up to get food whenever I want, and taking in all the social interaction, awkward or otherwise. I saw one of the USM "hipsters" (and I use that word lightly; we're talking hipster vis a vis 2008), glance at me twice. He certainly wasn't checking me out, it's not like I'm wearing skinny jeans today, but he was almost nodding to me in a way that made me feel like he had figured out my disguise.

Part of me envisions running into one of my students, telling them that we would have been friends back when I was in college. I would have had my skinny jeans on, freshman 15 sticking out somewhere that I didn't notice then, sitting in a corner with my headphones on and a sketchbook. I would have been hopeful to run into some of the upper-classmen who seemed so cool and untouchable, someone would have rigged the jukebox to play Meatloaf over and over again (that was about the funniest thing Case kids could think of, aside from IM-ing their roommate while in the same room). I would have glared at the pretty girls and their overpowering confidence. So what's changed? Now I'm the untouchable upper-classman, I mean upper-upper. Though I don't think anyone can tell. My doctor tersely told me that I look younger than 26. I think I responded with a "thanks". Not sure if that was a compliment or not. I'm still fascinated with confident girls, though I can't say I feel threatened by them. I just like how they spin on their heels, or wear make-up on a Monday, or how they tuck their sweatpants into their tall expensive boots. Instead of a sketchbook I've got this laptop. I don't care to run into anyone I know, and chances are, the other PhD's will not be wandering into the "fresh" anytime soon.

Good News is Good News

2011-11-17T12:28:00.001-05:00

Dear Elena,

Thank you for sending us your wonderful work. After some discussion we decided that we really love "Acquiescence" and would like to publish it in the next issue of Hayden's Ferry Review. Please let me know if this poem is still available and our Managing Editor will be in touch shortly with a more formal letter and details.

Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Dexter Booth
Poetry Editor
Hayden's Ferry Review

You Wake Up Hungry One Day

2011-11-14T20:39:00.001-05:00

(who is reading this? the numbers are rising...)

I have chocolate under my fingernails and I'm yelling at the cats to stop scratching all the boxes of books in my closet. They want those books. I'm feverish for things too. For stimulation. For things that make my blood boil and burn. That light my fingertips on fire. These cats just aren't enough. Some writer on NPR today said that writing about solitude makes sense because writing is such a solitary act. A scarily solitary act. I hate to bring up Charlotte Perkins Gilman...ugh, but I did just grade about 50 essays written on The Yellow Wallpaper. Good thing my walls are painted. Instead I'm clawing for chocolate.

I imagined myself today amongst a vastness of land and water. And then I imagined myself jumping, legs bent, and hollering at the emptiness. But if given the chance, would I holler? I remember being at Muir Beach off highway 1 and feeling on the edge of the world.

I am searching for something cold and empty but full of power. Here I feel powerless. I feel my legs pressing into dirt. I'm on a treadmill. I run on a treadmill everyday! What am I really doing? Where is the blueness, the vitality, the hills that only go down so you can't walk you have to run or else you'll tumble to the bottom in a comic book, stars around the head kind of way. I remember a statue I saw in a museum in Sweden that was massive, but unfinished. It looked down on me. It was a statue built to remember the dead soldiers. They died in battle. Sometimes I imagine building this statue, covering steel with plaster, climbing up on a ladder and realizing how big it is, that so many people will have to look up at it and admire it. This is vitality. It captures the essence of life and death all at once. Sometimes I want nothing and sometimes I want everything and I don't know how to deal with it. I don't know what's in between and if that's acceptable. I want to be as big as that statue and just as unfinished. I want the plaster to eventually crumble. Lot's Wife, that's another piece of art that's alive. It's massive and because of the organic materials, it's always shifting and changing. I think sometimes the pieces fall to the floor. It's terrifying and beautiful at the same time. http://www.clevelandart.org/exhibcef/consexhib/html/aboLots.html

this is the edge of the world, this great big space.

Panels

2011-11-06T19:05:00.000-05:00

(so what's up with this new blogger format? )

Today I'm feeling strangely nostalgic for a time I never really liked anyway. I've never felt nostalgic about anything because I'm always so eager to move forward. Here I am, away from Cleveland finally, and I'm looking forward to my next move, whatever that may be. Slow down! I say. But it doesn't work. Next think you know I'll be looking forward to retirement. Or is that what I'm already wishing for?

My dad just told me that he found some home movies from our trip to the UK when I was 17. Yes, we were the family with a video camera on the Underground. I wouldn't say it was the trip of a lifetime, because I ended up having many more lifetimes after that, but it was memorable. It made me think that I was pretty cool back then, especially because I got to come back to school after Thanksgiving break and tell my 2 friends that I ate British food (yuck) instead of turkey and drank blue cocktails at a club with some random men. And lived to tell about it. I even got a chance to phone my pen-pal, who I ended up actually meeting years later. And years, years later, becoming friends with on Facebook. So that led me to looking through photos of my other trips which meant looking through photos of college and such, and it really made me miss those incredibly vital people that helped me in some way to get where I am today. In those pictures are my crazy art projects that really meant something to me because they were big and tangible. There I was welding, vacuum forming, drilling, and working the pottery wheel and becoming a part of my work. I know that poetry is a part of me too, and strangely enough the body is always a theme in my work, but it doesn't have that physical power that art has. Poetry is the maturity of all this, using my brain instead of using my hands, but I still desperately miss throwing my entire self into art. And sometimes I did physically place myself in the art. Below is an example of this, a piece where I sat in the middle. When I spoke, the plastic disks emulated the speech coming back to me. It created this echo environment.

No use pining. I've got work to do, and I know it's not cool, but no one knows what that means. We're all too aware of the entity of cool when we really just ought to stop looking at ourselves and do something. This is why I own a pair of khakis with a tummy control panel. And what the fuck, the panel is INSIDE. Only my tummy can see it. Even then it's not doing anything but helping to prevent my pants from sagging. It's just like talking to my cat. No one really knows that I do it, so does that make me less cool because my BFF has a tail? Well now you know. There goes my cyber-cred.

2011-10-13T19:31:00.002-04:00

The Beginners by Rebecca Wolff
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Don't judge a book by its cover. A really pretty book jacket may turn out to be just a really pretty book jacket. I'd say I'm a fan of Rebecca Wolff, she's certainly a well respected poet and runs a successful journal. I met her once and was even slightly annoyed by her modesty and reticent demeanor. Regardless, I'm always curious about the poetry-fiction crossover. In terms of a novel filled with beautiful language, this book succeeds. In terms of a believable plot, this book could use a makeover. It is written from the point-of-view of a fifteen year old. She befriends a hip young couple who mysteriously moves into her small town. Not only is she basically living with them despite dedicated parents, she is sneaking into their house at night to sleep in their bed, and is welcomed, drinking wine with them, and then later, being seduced by the husband. Is this what every young girl must go through in order to attain maturity? Yikes. I guess this makes for an interesting story, but what bothers me is the amount of insightfulness this young girl has. To me, I just found it hard to buy. On top of it all, I couldn't help hating her for her lack of consideration and awareness for the situation if she did possess this air of sophistication.

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This is what I saw on my walk home today...

2011-10-11T21:06:00.001-04:00

A sewage ditch, where theroad isn’t sophisticated enough to meet its opening and in it, a whitememorial cross decorated with some dirty blue flowers. Someone must have diedthere. He or she must have also considered jumping in the ditch and then did. A few feet away on a lawn is an empty purple condom box, trampled a few timesover. In a door that opens out to an empty garage stands a little girl backlitby the yellow light inside. I run across the street, there aren’t anycrosswalks, so I run awkwardly, holding onto the straps of my book-bag,as it brushes up and down on my jeans and when my music pauses, I can hear thesound of friction. I get across the street and walk over a tunnel with lightsinside, and I think it’s funny that it’s a pedestrian tunnel, but I am notinside. Today I am a pedestrian. I am not a machine. I step over a barelylegible bird, but now we could barely guess its name. Only one green feather looks different from the dirt. I walk along a grassy hill next to theroad and a cemetery. A grave is gaping open and a green tent probably used to cover mourners on Sunday now covers its wound. I finally see a piece of sidewalk,though even then it feels strange to walk on it. It wasn't meant to be walked on. The cement is closer to whitethan to black. The sky hangs thick like flannel, feels soft and heavy at the same time. I get to my front door, my cat has been waiting for me all day. I walk into the kitchen, take off my boots. And Machado de Assis agrees--the best part about boots is taking them off.

Fried.

2011-10-10T20:06:00.002-04:00

Today

2011-09-26T11:26:00.001-04:00

Today is September 22

2011-09-22T19:40:00.002-04:00

6:15 am, I manage to get to the trail on time to go running with the group. The air is heavy and so is my body. Am I wearing rocks for shoes? The trainer is running in the opposite direction and even when he sees me walking he tells me that I'm doing a good job. He manages to walk faster than I can jog. The 70-something year old couple is running ahead of the group again, the woman in her purple ensemble, the man wearing some sort of fight for cancer t-shirt....okay, okay. I didn't get there on time, meaning I didn't have time to stretch. It was 6:25, still commendable I'd say. My body feels taut and it feels good to finally stretch.

7:02 am, I don't have to pick up the visiting poet and take him to the airport just yet, but if I go home and shower (which I still have not done, at 5:54 pm), there's no way my butt will be out of the door in time. I drive to Walgreens and purchase 2 protein bars, because that seems like the right thing to do after a run. A lady in a pink blazer and black pants almost bumps into me as I'm leaving, and she gives me the dirty look. I guess it is early, and maybe she was searching for a caffeinated beverage. I get into my car, and somehow the woman is already in her car, and she speeds out of the parking lot. She drives off in front of me and for the entire drive down Hardy towards downtown, she is right beside me. Maybe no energy drink?

7:21 am, I still arrive at the poet's apartment early, call him about 2 minutes later, he says he still needs to brush his teeth. I reply, no worries. I am here a bit early anyway. I wait until 7:32 am and he throws his luggage in the back seat. By doing so, he must move the front passenger seat forward and I know from past experience, that passengers never remember to tilt the seat back to a comfortable position. Then, they're stuck having to sit upright, in a perfect-posture sort of way, until they later figure out that the lever angles the seat back. Normally I might have done this before the passenger gets in, but I felt a little awkward doing so this morning. And once he sat down, it looked like he was comfortable, hunched over kind of like a little kid in an airplane seat. Then of course the inevitable happened, perhaps about 45 minutes into the drive, I think we were passing the shoe store called The Watermelon Patch. He discovers the lever.

8:08 am, So he pulls the lever up, and this is when the seat shifts more backwards than the passenger always expects the seat to move. That's when the seat shoots towards the backseat and the passenger falls along with it, and slightly chuckles but still tries to continue conversation, until the seat is properly handled and put back into a comfortable position. Often times, the seat will shift right back to that upright angle, and due to the lever mishap, the passenger will remain there once again. Then maybe a little later, with their knowledge of the lever, they will finally put the seat into a comfortable position. I'm not sure what the poet did, now that I think about it, but I do know that he sank farther down into his seat, making me feel tall and motherly beneath my seatbelt, hands at 10 and 2.

8:31 am, We stop at a Shell gas station, and discuss its reputability. He has to "release his bladder" and get something to eat. He opens the door of the gas station with the bottom of his t-shirt, despite our conclusion that Shell is, in fact, rather reputable, even in Mississippi. We attend to our bladders by going through the proper doors, mine has a triangled lady on it and the room inside smells of bleach. I exit, find him circling the Krispy Kreams, he notes, "They have Krispy Kreams!" I wait for him in the car, after mentally noting that a Ford Explorer next to me does not have an interior. It instead reveals the metal of the doors. I get into the car, he also gets back in not 2 minutes later with cigarettes, a chocolate glazed Krispy Kream, and a bottle of orange juice. I guess one donut is enough to cure his hunger. We drive off and he asks if I locked my car doors while inside. "I think so," I reply, though I admit, I'm pretty sure they were open (which I'll say isn't usually the case, so this was a strange case that I didn't lock it). He admits that he was worried someone would poison his coffee while we were in the gas station. Then he admits to having OCD. He was probably serious. Makes sense. He asks how much longer until we get there. One hour and one minute is what my phone admits to.

9:11 am, We pass Jerry's Catfish House that's shaped like an igloo. We are now in Florence (Mississippi). He mistakingly calls it the Catfood House. We chuckle. Mostly because we are in Mississippi. I say that it would make sense if they served salmon. I've made this joke once before, but it's really not that funny. He asks if we're almost there. I know that we are, and that we'll get there in about 15 minutes.

9:28, We get to the airport. Part of me wants to give him a hug or something, like I normally do with my loved ones when I drop them off at the airport. Obviously, he's not a loved one.

9:49, I drive to a bookstore in Jackson and soon tell myself, "This may be my favorite place in Mississippi so far". I buy a couple books.

10:21 am, Decide to drive to the New Balance store, seeing that there is not one in Hattiesburg and I've been dying to try on these new Minimus running shoes. I do, and the salesman seems weird. He also advises me that "There is no cushion in them!" He seems to stare. I ask him if he runs, because he looks fairly lean, but he doesn't run anymore. He has bad feet, he says. He prefers shoes with cushion.

11:00 am. I am in this vastness of superstores and chain restaurants. "There has got to be a Fantastic Sams or a Great Clips here," I think to myself. This looks like the type of landscape that would have one. If I were in Ohio, there would be a Great Clips there. This looks like Ohio, but it's not. And my phone tells me that there is no cheap hair salon nearby. But I'm determined! So I get ice cream.

11:35 am, The ice cream girl tells me there is a place called La Cru in a shopping center that will say "shoo shoo". "Shoo shoo?" I ask. "Shoo shoo," she repeats. Um okay. I drive up highway 25 and find it. It actually says "Shoo Choo". Still doesn't make sense. Anyway, the price was right, the girl was, as usual, well-maintained and somewhat friendly. According to the photo at her station, she has a baby girl. She does a great job. I feel great about myself. And I drive home to Hattiesburg.

If I actually looked like I imagined I looked today--

2011-09-20T21:41:00.001-04:00

Outgrowing These Jeans

2011-09-18T20:04:00.000-04:00

So I've been "getting back into shape", or at least taking a few steps towards the endeavor. I write about this not to prove anything, but because I think of running in much the same way as I think of writing. Lately, a lot of things have been hard. I don't mean hard in the sense that I've been getting rained on with bad luck, but I mean hard in that some things have been uncomfortable or uneasy. This week, I woke up by 5:45 am so that I could make it to a 6:15 am training session for this program that trains the couch potatoes like myself to eventually run a 5K that will take place on November 5th. This is hard. The reason I do it is because I like the way my muscles learn new things. Parts of my body ache that I never knew existed. I get home at 7:15 am, don't actually need the coffee buzz though I usually want it, and I feel good about starting my day. Similarly, this week I was given the task to edit a poem for class based on an "obstruction". The obstruction was to make the poem into a narrative. I don't write narratives. I find them difficult. I find that the music leaves the poem when I make it sound like prose. But I did it anyway. It went through two transitions until it, not only became a narrative poem, it became my poem. There indeed was music in it, which made me feel good about it, more than any poem I have written lately. I wouldn't have gotten there if it had initially been an easy task. I said to myself that day, "Today I learned something. Today I felt my brain change".

This whole PhD thing is putting a strain on all my muscles, if you don't mind me continuing on with this cliche of a metaphor. I'm up against something big here, and I'm up against everyone else who's up against this big thing. There's a part of me that can't believe I'm in this place in my life. I remember working on some homework at a coffee shop with my roommate junior year of college. I leaned over and said to her, "We're in college". It sounded so obvious, and maybe even funny, but that day it really dawned on me. College was somewhere that people with privileges get to go. Though I never felt slighted in life, I also never felt privileged. The whole notion of college was so efficient and necessary, and graduation day seemed surreal because I never actually predicted myself getting there without screwing something up. So now I'm in my eighth year of higher education, and it's hard. All my life I was told that I needed to get a job, and getting a job seemed like it would be pretty easy. It's the culmination of all these years of hard work, it's the single-sided achievement awarded to you with a salary. But this program isn't necessarily teaching me that. It's something more complex than that, something that expands beyond a four-sided frame. I'm not really sure I'll ever be rewarded a salary because of this. I may be rewarded a salary eventually, and I certainly hope that's the case, but it won't be because of the education, it will instead be an extension of the education. And a thought like that is difficult to grapple with.

Into the Lives of Adults and Children, in Mississippi

2011-08-29T21:02:00.003-04:00

Saturday day. Perhaps one of the most college days of my life. Inflatable slip and slides. Cans of cheap beer. Bad cover band. Bathwater pool. Tobacco in the pool. Every single girl in a bikini. Except for me. I looked around and seriously laughed out loud. Yes, that's right, I spelled that out because I have the time to. I ate free pizza and drank wine and took a nap at 5 pm. How did I get here at this place in time? How did I get to a Mississippi pool party? Seriously. I had fun while at the same time wondering if I should be having fun. Or trying to remember the last time I had fun. Or trying to define "having fun". Or wondering what fun is worth, if anything at all. And wondering if I really am the old lady now that I'm 26 and living amongst 18 year olds. And teaching them. And then wondering if I should be teaching them at all if I'm 26 and enjoying myself at a pool party and sliding down a slip and slide in my one-piece suit. And then thinking about the potluck for all the masters of writing that I was planning on going to, but then physically couldn't make it to because one aluminum water bottle half-full of wine and the sweet Mississippi sun forced me to cuddle the pillows in my air conditioned cottage. But upon waking up at 8:15, even then I'd be late for the soiree at the visiting poet's lofty apartment (the only "loft", probably, in Hattiesburg), I wondered if I had really missed anything or if I just missed a few bags of chips and some awkward, but intellectual conversation. The only reason it being awkward because I was there.

So after rubbing my groggy eyes numerous times, and eating some dinner, I decide to go to this soiree about 2 hours late, and I only go because I am reassured by my roommates that going to a party late is exactly what you do in Mississippi. So I show up late, at least with a bottle of low-priced Pinot Noir. I'm once again assured by some exiting colleagues that there are a "ton" of people there. Okay, I feel okay about this. There were a few people there. Actually there were a few professors there and one student on his way out. And there was an infant there. A real live baby, who belonged to a professor/administrator. And so I chatted with these mature folk with a plastic glass of wine in my hand, giggled at the baby, and felt completely illegitimate when a certain New Yorker music critic's name was dropped and I had no clue who he was, not because I choose not to read the New Yorker, but because a grad student like me has not received disposable salary enough to even subscribe to a digital edition of The New York Times. It's true. I can say to them however, that I've proudly deactivated my Facebook account, but even that gets blown over because I've forgotten the sparkling novelty of Facebook to the +30 crowd. Oh yea, that's right, it's cool to post quotes from the purchased New Yorker on your Facebook friends' walls.

And that's all in one day's time.

2011-08-18T21:01:00.002-04:00

I'd like to call it prairie dog syndrome. As I sat through day 2 of 3 of PhD orientation, I pictured myself sticking my head up and sniffing the air, wondering if it's okay to wander out into this great vastness. There are 17 new people surrounding me in this tiny room. I wonder if they can see me, or if my collegiate uniform provides enough camouflage. Not only is this place new, the people are new, and though this realm of academia is familiar, the southern system is uncharted territory. Perhaps tomorrow I'll actually wander out of the hole, but my other senses are still adapting. E

Disassembled

2011-06-23T21:51:00.003-04:00

There's really no easy way to move, especially from a fourth floor apartment. Turns out I can't just throw boxes out of my windows. I'm thinking about how often someone asks me, "Anything new?" And how often I say, "Nope, nothing much". I guess that's my default, or anyone's default answer, but can I really tell some stranger what's going on in my life right now? Then they might follow up with, "No really, there's gotta be something going on". Maybe if they didn't sound like they were actually just prying, I'd tell them. Really the answer is, "Everything is going on. Everything". I'm in this great space of uncertainty at the moment, in the midst of moving both physically and mentally. I'm not quite sure what I'm standing on or what I stand for at the moment. I want to care about things, but a big part of me doesn't care at all. I'm also completely uncomfortable in this space of uncertainty. A couple days ago I was at my school, which I guess I can say is my alma mater now, for an event. I stood inside the building to make a phone call while everyone dispersed. I noticed a crevice between the soda machine and the wall. All I could think of was how perfect I would fit in there. I found myself about to move into the space until another part of me put a halt to it. I've found myself really eager to hide these days or to wear fake mustaches. In a way, it is necessary for writing, but at this point, I still only have fragments. Perhaps because they are my own fragments. Hopefully once I make it to Mississippi, I will be able to clean up these shards and put them back together. Hello Emily Dickinson.

Your Life

2011-06-19T10:11:00.003-04:00

I recently read a lovely little book called "Suicide" by Edouard Levé. Despite its morbid title, I assure you, it was lovely. What struck me the most about it was his use of second person point of view throughout the whole book. I was the deceased. By pointing a finger at me the reader, and telling me what I was doing with my day, Levé created this somewhat generic persona. At some moments in the book I thought, "he knows me well". Which is my segue into the question I've had on my mind today, which is, "How much of your life is your own?" "How much of my life is my own?" In many ways, a person can never know another person's completeness. By knowing my mother, for example, I know her as a mother, and perhaps I can say I know her as a wife as well, but even then my knowledge is limited. Similarly, I think about how these projections affect our lives. Today I was mother of two and owner of three dogs. (Okay, and squirrel killer, but I swear I tried to swerve without hitting it.) Today I became these "characters", because to the outside world, I might as well have been those things. Everyone at the BMV saw me there with a child, so why would their initial guess be that I am the nanny. I'm an adult now, I could quite possibly have a child, maybe not a blond child, but most people don't think that deeply anyway. I think in some ways Levé is commenting on this idea of ambiguity, this idea that perhaps we don't really know ourselves. Similarly, I think we absorb these personas, so that each experience we have with the outside world becomes a part of our personality. Each of us are amalgamations of our environments in a way, both physically and mentally. You can never look in a mirror and really see yourself.

A Room Inside Myself

2011-06-11T01:37:00.003-04:00

These are the nights for writing. It's dark and quiet with a cool enough breeze to tuck a toe or two under the comforter, and there's something in the back of your mind causing you to feel disconcerted, and therefore awake. It's enough to make you feel restless. Isn't is strange that "reset" and "rest" are such similar words? You wonder what causes so much anxiety and depression despite having a fairly easy life. Sometimes I think that writers are built differently than other people. They are like the last few moves of Jenga, looking for other ways to make the tower taller but realizing the tower is just going to become weaker and less useful once those blocks are added to the top. Writers are towers unglued. Writers recognize the complete absurdity of this place and the delicate balance that is open for corruption. In the greater realm of things, a sharpness to the heart means little or nothing.

Suitable

2011-05-30T07:01:00.003-04:00

It's strange being here in Sweden, yet being completely aware of the fact that in about 2 months I will be in a completely different place: Mississippi. I can only compare the two because both places require me to be an unknown individual. And do you notice all this use of the word "being"? I'm just "being" something, or "being" somewhere. Yet that being is what changes a person, both physically and mentally. The place where I cannot just be is Cleveland, strangely enough.

While traveling in China two summers ago, I barely wrote a thing. All I could think of was the richness of culture around me and the inspiration it should have had on my poetry, but instead I wrote one dumb poem titled "I Am A Visitor". This poem now sits on my hard drive somewhere, unedited and completely useless (like the dead dog that appears in the poem). To some extent, I think I was just playing dead. When faced with unfamiliar people and surroundings, I become immobile. In attempts to avoid that here in Sweden, I decided to simply write in a journal, and not worry about forming my words into poems. It causes less anxiety. The benefit of this is that I can say, "I got a lot of writing done", even if it may not be suitable for publication. I can also look at it later and find things that might work in a poem. The freedom of writing in a journal format led me to write a bit of fiction as well.

Despite this lack of substantial writing, I've concluded that these travels become beneficial to the depths of my poetry. Though I may not write a poem titled, "My Trip to Sweden", I may find traces of this experience as a whole within a future poem. And that's exactly where my writing and my travel intersect, when dealing with topics of displacement or identity. One thing dawned on me while in a museum here called The Museum of Sketches. It is a small building, but the walls (and ceiling) are covered in art. It's completely overwhelming, but really interesting for someone who enjoys the process of art. I found a plaster sculpture there, which was a model for a potential monument dedicated to some dead soldiers. It was incredibly tall and majestic, and made me realize that art is all we have left when we're gone. These soldiers died, and the only way to make their death concrete or to honor their death is to build a statue. So although I didn't have to travel to Scandinavia to discover this notion, I know that it will find a place within my future poems. Death and art are comfortable are quite comfortable in my writings. Hopefully my return to the states (are natives allowed to say that?) will give me the space to get back to putting my words in short lines with line breaks.

(18.)

2011-05-06T14:57:00.004-04:00

Does anyone else find this interesting?

http://www.slate.com/id/2292588

Updates, A List

2011-05-06T14:07:00.003-04:00

1. Cleveland: 54º. Rain. The grass looks even greener against the grey sky.

2. Hattiesburg: 79º. Sun. I'm not there yet.

3. I'm thinking about giving up cheese.

4. Was looking forward to Rae Armantrout's reading last night.

5. Result: disappointed in Rae Armantrout's reading. She won a Pulitzer, two books ago, and is currently working on another manuscript, tentatively titled "Just Saying". "Just Saying"? Is she the next Wanda Sykes? I guess when you've written more books than you can count on two hands, you get the opportunity to give up on language. You're given the right to write about your grandchildren, CNN, your favorite old chair, or how your dog/someone else's dog relieves himself on your front lawn. You're also given the right to write about a sunset, or pretty much anything else that comes to your rambling mind, and everyone giggles when you say a dirty word.

6. I got another random publication, in a new journal called "Red Lightbulbs". I received an acceptance even before I entered it into my submissions excel file. Does that mean they're desperate, or were my poems actually "stunning".

7. That brings me to four publications under my belt.

8. Literally.

9. I still need a publication in The New Yorker to feel like I really exist.

10. I wonder what it feels like to be "hot".

11. I've received more information about registering for classes at USM, but part of my feels disabled. Part of me thinks, "What the hell am I doing?"

12. I leave for Sweden in 11 days and have nothing yet planned. I was waiting for the summer to plan it, but I guess it's already here.

13. I desperately need a vacation.

14. Are there beaches in Sweden?

15. Found a place to live in Hattiesburg, rather, it found me. Another girl in the program is renting a house 10 minutes away from campus. This is excellent news. (And yes, adorable kitties are permitted.)

16. I will be accepting two awards from Cleveland State today for my excellence in creative writing. I will receive both money and fame.

17. Seems like a good place to stop.

Close But No Cigar

2011-04-02T19:43:00.002-04:00

Almost is better than no, right?

I got this lovely letter from CutBank Literary Magazine today. Though I didn't make the finalists, they didn't send me the default decline letter, so to me, that's good news!

Dear Elena,

Thank you for submitting “There are Little Hands”, “A Hum”, “More Serious”, and “The Body”. to the Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry. We received an unprecedented number of submissions and faced a formidable challenge selecting the final pool to present to our judges. Your work was among our top picks, but unfortunately it was not selected as a finalist. We very much enjoyed reading your work, and encourage you to submit again.

Our editorial staff was blown away by the quality of this year's contest submissions. Many thanks for sharing your work with us. We hope you'll think of us again in the future.

Sincerely,

Cutbank Literary Journal

I'll Blame the Cat

2011-03-28T15:30:00.002-04:00

I'll blame the cat for scratching my arm or walking all over my laptop. I'll blame a dirty house. I'll blame too many jobs or too much homework. I'll blame family obligations. I'll blame social obligations. I'll blame dirt hair or dirty laundry. I'll blame the plants for drying out. I'll blame hunger or thirst.

I'll blame everything else besides myself when it comes to writing. For many of us who love writing, we also hate it at the same time. I think one would have to be obese, lonely, and unemployed to be the greatest writer. If I were obese, lonely, and unemployed, I could sit in my chair all day, eat cheese puffs and chocolate chips, and not worry about having to do anything. I'd probably even get pizza delivered more often than I do now...What a lovely thought! I've always been an active person, believe it or not, which means I always need to be doing something. Perhaps the doctor's misdiagnosed my ADD or maybe it's just in my nature. If ever I'm at the cafe not working, I feel uncomfortable. I feel like I need to be washing dishes or something. This is the reason I wrote more than read as a kid. Writing to me was more active. Sure, I liked to read, but I more enjoyed creating my own stories, because it wasn't as passive. Even if it was just the movement of my hands, I felt like I was accomplishing something. And gosh, if I could have back all those summer days of boredom and all those days when I finished my homework before dinner and had hours of nothing to do before the setting of the sun. I read something today that said, "I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger". It's true!

In college, I got into ceramics and it was the one thing that kept me up at night, or at least until the building closed. The feel of clay is incredibly visceral, and with every movement of my hand or fingers, I changed the outcome of my piece. I guess the only reason I stopped was because it wasn't as cerebral as writing was. I needed brain stimulation just as much. I can still look around my house and see my accomplishments. They are physical and they are holding my napkins and plants.

So now here I am, I've chosen my writing path because of my love for it and whatever that big wind is that's pushed me towards it. I'll host the poetry readings, make the fliers for them, contact the readers, edit poetry, talk about poetry before I write my own poetry. Because when I sit down to write my own poetry, it's just me and my words. It's me and this big white space on my laptop. It's a terrifying thing. There's so much pressure from the voices in my head telling me to write something great, write that one poem that will be the poem of all poems, write that poem that is going to finish your thesis, write that poem that can be sent off to The New Yorker. Sometimes it seems so lonely and so stagnant. How is this poem going to help the world? How is it even going to affect even one other person?

Once I get past the jungle of all excuses, I can write a lovely poem and feel proud of it. And in the end, I don't just feel proud, I feel like a mother who just sent her son's school portrait to all the grandparents. And even if one eye is squinty, she will still look at this picture of her child and feel so pleased that he exists in the world. This is my thing that I've created, isn't it beautiful?

"Perfect timing"

In recent writing news...

2011-03-23T18:39:00.002-04:00

I set my thesis defense date for April 28 which means it must be finished! It's coming along fine, though I've had a difficult time writing new poems. Though the weather is still dreary, I find it difficult to be inspired. On Monday I'll be taking a long drive to Wayne, New Jersey for a short stay. Nothing like an 8 hour drive through Pennsylvania and a cheap hotel (preferably with a pool) to get those creative juices flowing!

One More Exciting Event...

2011-03-21T15:20:00.000-04:00

Monday Monday

2011-03-21T15:11:00.002-04:00

So I'm realizing more and more how integrated poetry is in my life. Even if I'm not sitting down writing every day, it's still very present. I help edit poetry for Whiskey Island magazine, which can certainly be a hassle, but at the same time I'm able to voyeuristically read poems from people I don't even know. It is an insight into all these strangers' lives. I also just booked the next Sunday Roast event for April 24th which will feature a writer published by a great Cleveland press. I like the opportunities I have to contact people I don't know, but also have a connection to via the writing world.

Anyway, things are going well and the warmth of spring makes it easier to escape depression, though somehow harder to write a poem!

And while I'm at it...

2011-03-20T09:57:00.001-04:00

Come check out the next reading--

Good Morning

2011-03-20T09:46:00.002-04:00

So I just received an acceptance email to a journal titled Blue Earth Review. I originally picked an issue up somewhere because of its attractive cover. Though I currently have 2 acceptances to journals (and one on-line from a long time ago), this is my first non-NEO MFA related publication credit. Due to the nature of my program, I have the ability to take classes at four universities, which means I have friends at three other journals other than Cleveland State's magazine, which I edit poetry for. That's not to say I don't have skills, it's just that it helps to have gonnections. Now that I have one poem out in the greater world, though still in the midwest, I can reassure myself that I am doing the right thing with my life. They actually chose a poem I wasn't thrilled about, but you never know what people are going to be into.

With that under my belt, I have hope that perhaps there will be more publications are in my future.

PHD HERE I COME

2011-03-18T23:07:00.002-04:00

So I'd like to begin documenting this academic journey I will soon be embarking on. Though it's already been a lifelong journey already, this will be a totally new experience for me. I got accepted into University of Southern Mississippi's English doctorate program with a creative emphasis, which means my dissertation will be a manuscript of my own poems. Since I never left Cleveland for college, this will be my chance to "start new". What's different is that I'm doing this on my own. It's not like leaving high school and experiencing what all your friends are experiencing. My news has been met with mixed reviews, or even skepticism. I think it's hard for people to imagine spending three more years in school when the most important thing these days is getting a job. "You have a full time job? With benefits?" WOW! But when I decide to move to Hattiesburg, MS to live on $10,000 a year, I probably look like a lunatic. Well at least I'm not howling at the moon.

Anyway, I've decided to document this via text and photo. I thought a daily photo-biography might be interesting. Maybe then I can keep track of my greying hairs.

2011-02-09T18:05:00.001-05:00

new blog

2010-12-26T11:40:00.002-05:00

So why would I have two blogs when I can barely keep up with one? Well mostly because I am on winter break and I will have lots of time on my hands. I'm getting busy, so check out what I'm getting myself into.

http://collinhooduniversity.blogspot.com/

What's The Point Of Having A Blog If You Don't Update It?

2010-11-20T11:35:00.003-05:00

So it's 10:41 Mississippi time, and I'm sitting in a Holiday Inn Express imagining all the things I should or could be doing right now while on vacation, but a big part of me loves the manufactured comfort of a hotel room. I remembered a time my family went camping in Michigan. We had survived for a few days in constant rain, but my parents finally broke down and said, "Let's just get a hotel room". I felt this tingle of excitement in my stomach. "Wait, we can do that?" I thought. I guess I grew up learning how to just deal with things, even a downpour. Hotels were always a bit of a novelty, because most of our trips revolved around camping. Because the other rooms were booked, we somehow scored a luxury room with a whirlpool tub right in the room and a gigantic bed. Now that I think about it, the tub was a bit strange. Either way, it was the greatest thing to be dry and have cable TV. I think the next day, the sun came out and my mom was probably pissed that she had spent $50 on a hotel room.

The strange part about being here, in Gulfport Mississippi, right on the coast, is that there's really nothing here. It's both sad and lovely at the same time. Obviously the hurricane took over everything down here, swept it away and left nothing. Any structures down here are post-Katrina, including this hotel. What makes it lovely is the fact that there is nothing here. It's white beaches and trees, really old sturdy trees. As a minimalist, I love the nothingness.

While down here, I met a woman a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi PhD program, for English with a creative dissertation. I think it went really well, and made me excited about my (possible) future education. The whole thought of it is really exciting. The community down here seems great and I think I could deal with the muggy weather for a few years!

Welcome to My Day

2010-07-13T22:18:00.005-04:00

I've been away from the blogger lately for a number of reasons. Probably the biggest is because of stage fright. I've felt terribly incompetent lately, and writing anything requires me to be strapped to a chair with bowls of coffee nearby. So instead of running from my incompetency and lack of motivation, I've decided to face it. Hello to my 8 followers. I'm back.

So to get back to blogging, I thought I'd simply write about my day. This morning, I wake up after realizing how difficult it has been to wake up lately. I wash my face and put in my contact lenses. I brush my teeth reluctantly, though I debate with myself each morning whether I should brush before or after the coffee. Today it was before, because if I decide "after", that usually means never. And maybe today I felt like being fresh. My mood today is lackadaisical, so I look around for any clothes that are lying around on my floor. I find a pair of jeans that need a belt, so I grab the elastic belt off of another pair of pants. I'm tugging the belt out of its loops, when suddenly it snaps up and hits me precisely in the eye. It is the worse pain my left eye has ever felt and I start to feel faint. I look in my eye, and see that only a piece of the contact is floating around in my eye. It is sharp and my eye is red. I get it out and lay on the couch for the fifteen minutes I have until I have to leave. I finally think I'm okay, so I get in the car and drive drunkenly to the east side, where I will have to care for three children. How will I care for three children when I can't even care for myself? I call my mom, like every adult would, and she schedules me an almost immediate eye exam. She picks up me and the children, and we all go to the optometrist. He tells me that I only have an abrasion and that I probably need a new prescription. He probably also told his nurse that I was an incompetent imbecile. But that's fine. Everything is fine, so mom takes me and the children to the grocery store, where me and the children decide that we want pudding cups and salami for lunch. So mom buys us lunch. We get back and I sit around watching Man vs Wild while one child sleeps and the other plays on the computer for most likely a longer than allowed time period. I don't really care as long as they're fine. Oh yeah, and third child is already at grandma's house, so that's even less worrying for me. The dad gets home, children scream, and I leave. I stop by my mom's house to pick up a couple groceries and eat a piece of pork.

For the second part of my day, I head downtown to print about 400 pages of reading materials from my friend's office at CSU. Somehow this is the only solution for printing these materials, but I now feel like I've accomplished something and can start absorbing knowledge. I should probably just end my day here, but I don't. I move my useless self down to a poetry reading in the same building as the office and listen to a relatively enjoyable reading. I'm now carrying the pages in a box and my laptop and a large purse. I've realized that I often carry heavy things as though I were carrying a child, perched on the hip with stomach out while slightly swaying. I guess I'm trying to put the box to sleep. Reading is over so I follow the crowds down to the reception, where my job is apparently pumping and pouring the keg. As you can imagine, I'm not so good at this either. I sit down after doing my job for 15 minutes to enjoy some coleslaw and corn. I get some coleslaw on my box. I leave the box on the table, but guard it, in case someone tries to take it or move it. I'm still carrying my laptop because I'll never let it out of my sight. Sometimes when I'm feeling paranoid, I even stash it under my bed at night. So I walk off and attempt interaction with friends, but realize I have nothing interesting to say. I begin to feel apprehensive, so I go back to the table to get my box. I now feel a little more confident holding my box. Now maybe I'll have something good to say. Or if not, I'll just pretend that I'm looking in my box. Or maybe even read something from inside my box. Finally, I realize that I should just leave. I'm simply no good here, and my arm is getting tired. My friend tells me they have too much food and hands me a Zip-loc baggie. Yes, it was a baggie. I fill the baggie with coleslaw, wipe the outside off with the napkin that I had wiped my face with, and leave with my box, laptop, purse, and small baggie of coleslaw. I get home,grab the groceries from my trunk. Grab the box, the laptop, and an old tupperware container and head to the mailbox. There I pick up about the only thing that ever comes, the Val-Pak, and climb up three flights of stairs.

Now here I am on my back fire escape because I also discovered this morning, amidst the chaos, that I get a hip 2 to 3 bars of internet. Somehow the smell of garbage, that I clearly couldn't take down the stairs this morning, and this stiff metal seat make this the perfect place to write. It's my lucky day.

Let's Get Roasted Again

2010-05-27T12:17:00.000-04:00

may-4

2010-05-09T14:42:00.000-04:00

A Boy on the Bus Meets His Bigger Self

Did your mother feed you glue or did your mother feed you honey? How would you like to be when you grow up? Question: She had long hair too Question: She had long hair growing out of her past. Past her feet Question: She answered the ad and your father called And that’s how you were made But don’t hold it against her today Sure, maybe tomorrow When you’re still riding the bus And your fingernails have eaten all the filth that got in your way And you’re still trying to find a way out And you’re admiring the man with the suit You like all that black, don’t you He’s reading a newspaper folded in fours And your grocery bag is full of your mother’s wigs Some oil soaked towels And all those unidentifiable Things you’ve collected.
Because medicine was never free And medicine never eased the pain And medicine would have put you To restfulsleep for a long while And your doctor would have kept you on strings just far enough below the window where your toes were too short to ladder yourself a view And your mama was too short to lift you up Your hair is too long Did you meet the man with the briefcase who keeps his hair long too? Question: What would you like to be when you grow up He asked He stooped to ask So the boy was just below his chin I don’t have any solutions he replied
The world is big Answer: My hair is too long too My mama tried But she never cared
for white fences anyway.

Don't be an Idiot...Support the Arts

2010-04-21T00:16:00.000-04:00

And I Have Mike Doughty to Thank

2010-04-03T01:15:00.002-04:00

I was just driving home on this first warm Cleveland evening, sun roof open, and Soul Coughing seemed to be the only appropriate music to be listening to. I was thinking about how intrigued and obsessed I was with this band in probably about 8th grade. Mike Doughty always seemed like an anomaly to me, especially because at this time, they had already broken up and stopped touring. However, when I saw Mike Doughty later on as a solo act, he seemed less magical. But that's besides the point. My main love of this band was because of the lyrics. I loved how words were put together, and I believe I often used their lyrics when asked to bring to class a poem we liked. I was probably just trying to be difficult/different, but listening to them now, I realize that Soul Coughing lyrics brought me to my love of language. Perhaps Soul Coughing turned me into a flippin writer.

This song just makes me ecstatic, here are a few lines from "True Dreams of Wichita":

And you can stand
On the arms
Of the Williamsburg Bridge
Crying
Hey man, well this is Babylon
And you can fire out on a bus
To the outside world
Down to Louisiana
You can take her with you

I've seen the
Rains of the real world
Come forward on the plain
I've seen the Kansas of your sweet little myth
You've never seen it, no,
I'm half sick on the drinks you mixed
Through your

True dreams
Of Wichita

Brooklyn like a sea in the asphalt stalks
Push out dead air from a parking garage
Where you stand with the keys and your cool hat of silence
Where you grip her love like a driver's liscense

I've seen you
Fire up the gas in the engine valves
I've seen your hand turn saintly on the radio dial
I've seen the airwaves
Pull your eyes towards heaven
Outside Topeka in the phone lines
Her good teeth smile was winding down

There is a Ridge of Clouds Somewhere in Between

2010-03-25T11:33:00.003-04:00

So at some point, I had a lot of great things to say. But sitting down at this blog gives me stage fright. To some extent, I feel like I've gotten this far--almost 2 years blogging about insanity, and the vanities of it--so I should probably keep it up, for the sake of my 3, maybe 4 readers...including myself. And I have the internet to thank.

So I recently returned from a lovely 10 day vacation in California. A change of scenery was definitely what I needed, and while I didn't write at all on my vacation, I feel like I have enough information to process and spew out when I do finally get a chance to write. In many ways, I feel like my writing is vomit. I injest a lot of various things, and when all those things come out on a page, they end up being unrecognizable. So while on vacation, I had 2 long train rides (which ended up being unexpectedly long, thanks to LA Metrorail). Somehow trains induce more contemplation than planes because you get a chance to see the things you're passing. And when it's dark out, and you're not sure what lies beyond the tracks, you only see glints of light and reflections of your face in the window. There's also this feeling that you're either running away from something or torn from something unwillingly. Maybe it's the steady sound of the train, and you can count how many beats are between A and B.

While in California, I felt like I forgot about all the things that I worry about here. There were times I even forgot about brushing my teeth, and I wasn't even worried about decay. I guess that's the point of vacation. I always realize when traveling that I need so little. I've got one duffel bag full of possessions and a debit card, and aside from my favorite pair of boots, I never felt like I was missing something.

I'll be graduating most likely this December, and I'm looking forward to packing up my LA Gear duffle bag and heading out somewhere. It's slightly terrifying to realize that in less than a year, I'll have no walls and no school to give me direction. Which is why I'll probably need to enroll in more school.

Today's weather report:

In Cleveland, temperatures are low and rain is expected. The sky is the color of worn out jeans and the holes in the knees aren't quite big enough for light to shine through.

Los Angeles has currently stolen the sun and they are keeping it just far enough away so you can see its rays, but can't quite feel the warmth.

An Economy/of Words

2010-02-03T19:38:00.002-05:00

I usually need one of those lightbulb moments in order to write one of these posts. Often times I'll try to sit down and write, anything, but nothing clicks. Today, on the bus, I had one of those moments. It is yet another reason why I believe that the bus is great for my mental health, not to mention my punctuality. I've also realized that I'm interested in making connections. I think we all do it, perhaps subconsciously, because we want to know what something is "like" or similar to, and we like familiarity to some extent.

My slight epiphany that I'd like to discuss today is the fact that I need boundaries. We all need boundaries whether we like it or not. I think about how beneficial some "fences" are to me as a person and to my creativity. It's those moments of freedom that we crave, yet they are somehow terrifying. Growing up as a kid, I didn't have it all. I'm not saying I was a po' folk, but I had some limitations. For example, my mother never spent a lot of money on clothes. She wouldn't come home with a whole new wardrobe for me and my sister. This was fine, because we never really asked her to anyway. In turn, my sister and I would go to the thrift store or ValuCity where we were forced to dig around in all these clothes until we A. found something that actually fit us B. found something that wasn't expensive and C. found something that didn't smell of have stains (in most cases). Because of that, we would walk out of the store with something unique. And if it didn't quite fit or something was wrong with it, we would fix it ourselves. Maybe we would cut off some sleeves, make a V-neck out of it, or make some too- tight jeans into a skirt. In the end, we either looked like freaks or like unique individuals. I'll go with unique individuals for the sake of this argument. In a sea of mall shoppers, I often felt good about myself. Because I was forced to be creative about the things that cover my body, I therefore gravitated towards creating other things, like art or stories.

When I was in art school, I often did my best work when a very specific assignment was given. If the possibilities were endless, I would start to imagine everything I could do, so it became overwhelming. In the end, I would just do something that was comfortable, or something that I had done before. And now, in my writing, I'm thinking about why I'm best at poetry as opposed to prose. It is for the same reason, because I am given limitations. You have to create a world in only so many words, or perhaps within the confines of a form. Let's say, iambic pentameter? Or maybe a villanelle? EIther way, the less I have, the more creative I become. It even applies to time. I do my best work at the last minute, or when I'm extremely busy. I do my best work within walls.

A paper sculpture I made a few years ago which no longer exists, and a great example of using what you got to create something beautiful.

The Monsters Are Out From Under the Bed, and Eating Sauerkraut

2010-01-11T23:09:00.003-05:00

I've had some terrifying dreams the past couple of nights so I thought perhaps writing them down would prevent me from having yet another thriller-action-drama dream sequence. Should I blame the sauerkraut before bed? Full moon? Leaving the closet doors open? Or just plain insanity?

On Saturday early morning I dreamt that I was in a classroom. Yes, I know, it's scary already. At some point, we were practicing a fire drill, or what we would do if there were to be an emergency. Suddenly, there are loud cracking and explosion sounds outside. Or maybe they were in the room. It was hard to tell. I run outside for cover, which seems smart of me, and the only thing to hide under is the hand of a statue. Then 3 planes fly over me and start shooting at everything. Big Ben, which is for some reason the tallest building in Cleveland in this dream, topples over. A man tells me that I must take care of the children first before taking care of myself. I run back inside to find kindergartners screaming. So I try to help them but find myself useless. Then I wake up.

Sunday night I dream once again that I am in a classroom like room. Clearly, I'm just terrified of school. You'd think after 19 years of being strapped to a desk I'd be used to it by now. So in this classroom, there are a bunch of people of all ages. We are watching the countdown to the year 2012. There is a, what seems like, significant box in the room with a number 3 or 4 written on it. We started counting down out loud from 4 minutes. We finally get to the year 2012 and I closed my eyes. Everyone stopped and waited and nothing happened. It reminded me a bit of Y2K, and yet we're still here. I leave the room to go outside and I find it completely barren. It sort of looks like the set of a bad western combined with war in Iraq photos. Most of the buildings are gone, the terrain is that of a desert, and a couple is sitting in their car that has a smashed windshield. They obviously look distressed. It looks like the whole place was destroyed by the people because they thought it was going to be the end. Guess not.

So let's see what tonight brings. I just don't get it. I don't watch movies, the books I read are far from violent, and I keep up on only enough of the news to be informed. This imagination of mine sure has gone off the deep end. What happened to pleasant dreams of puppet shows?

In No Particular Order or Relevance...

2010-01-04T20:31:00.005-05:00

Merry Recession, Charlie Brown

2009-12-23T22:53:00.003-05:00

Is it wrong of me to want to compare the Christmas season to the recession?

So first, there's the obvious. At the end of a recession, you're pretty much broke but still alive. When Christmas is over, those moths come flying out of your pockets, and you're left with that same questions of "So where did all my money go?"

Secondly, you're forced to do things you don't really want to do. Like this past year, I can think of a number of jobs I took that I didn't like. I think my past blogs highlight this pretty forwardly, so I won't go into detail. But the whole time during these jobs I thought, "I don't really like this, but I guess I have to do it to make it through". And with Christmas...okay, I'm not going to say that I get stuck doing things I don't want to do. But maybe I'll say that I get stuck doing the same thing every year without stopping to think if I really want to do it or not. But the best thing to do is follow tradition. Just like doing your job, it keeps the peace.

Thirdly, during a recession, you may have to leave your house and travel elsewhere. This happens mostly out of necessity and the search for jobs. Perhaps you travel a long distance out of state, maybe get stuck in rush hour traffic while you get more nervous about what is ahead. Sound like the holidays? I think, yes. During the holidays, people drive around looking for a place to park their butt in front of a ham and some Christmas cookies. And they never stop anywhere in between.

And lastly? Yes, I have one more point to mention. One more point to let you know that I'm not really bitter about the holidays. I'm not even bitter about the recession. I think the biggest thing these two things have in common is the opportunity for all Americans to stop what they're doing (even if they are still working) and do something that's not a part of their everyday routine, even if they don't want to do it at all. It's a chance to step back and assess your life and the people around you; to think about what really matters. So you didn't get your little brat a Webkin. Maybe you couldn't afford it, or maybe the stores were sold out. So now what do you do? You take those Tollhouse commercials as a trite inspiration that the holidays are all about family, dammit. You get to take a few days off from that job you tolerate and put everything else aside so you can force feed yourself to a foie gras perfection because "why the hell not when the rest of the world is doing the same thing?"

So go on, it's okay to celebrate the holidays or the recession. When all is said and done, you may have less money in your pocket book, but you'll still be alive and maybe even a bit happier than before.

Bora, Bora

2009-12-22T14:31:00.003-05:00

This is where I'd like to be right now.

Things that Change or Disappear

2009-11-23T22:11:00.006-05:00

So it is around this time of year that I start eating processed food and peanut butter daily and thinking about the way the world works, or doesn't work, and I wonder where I fit into it all, if at all. It comes as a mixture of reminiscing, wishing I had my Our Lady Peace CD and a feather blanket, contemplating what I'm going to do with my life, and thinking I'm lucky for having one. I fluctuate between the hopes of living a status quo lifestyle, making enough money to buy a boat and flank steaks, and living one on the edge, having enough money for maybe a used Honda and some Steak'ums, but looking cool regardless. I'm not sure I'll ever find my medium, but I suppose that's alright. I'm interested in attaining both, if possible.

I got a new computer, and when I installed my e-mail client on it, all my e-mails from the beginning of time, I mean my gmail account, began downloading. There are thousands of them, and I couldn't help browse through them as I deleted the spam. I thought about all that's changed even in this past year, and I thought about what has stayed the same. I'm curious to see how long I last in my current situation, but I must admit it's pretty comfortable, just enough leg room and the leather seats are heated. I found e-mails from all the jobs I took, applied for, or almost took. One job that I almost took involved lying on a bed tilted at 15 degrees for 12 weeks, which was supposedly doing research for NASA. I would have gotten paid a load of money and been able to be in a bed for 3 months. And why didn't I take it? Still not sure. Another job that I almost took involved moving to Miami. Why didn't I take that one? Oh right, because they would have paid me $11,000 a year. Well, good thing I passed that up, because now I'm living in Cleveland making $7500 a year. And then there are the jobs I did take. Selling cars, being a server's assistant at Luxe for 2 weeks, bartending Beer and Burger night at TavCo, web-maintenance for a web company that lost clients daily because their web developers didn't actually exist. Then came the e-mails congratulating me on being accepted into Cleveland State, again, and feeling somewhat saved from the work world and somewhat stuck in a vortex of mid-west academia.

Not sure what will change in the year to come, though I'm sure I'll be in the same place thinking the same things, listening to Our Lady Peace, or wishing I could find the CD, because it seems to be missing.

Keeping Up With the Johnsons

2009-11-17T22:57:00.001-05:00

Hello two thousand four!

Because It Takes me Longer to Get to Work

2009-10-26T21:38:00.005-04:00

So I've been resisting writing about my new favorite thing, because I wanted it to be something "that I just do". I didn't want it to seem like something I actually like to do. But I can't help myself...

So I've been riding the bus. For all you anti-RTA people out there, let me tell you that it picks me up directly in front of my apartment and takes me right to East 22nd, which is precisely where my office is, and most of my classes. And CSU gives me an RTA pass with my tuition, which gives me just about every reason to use it. Having said that, I've begun to feel like a legitimate human being. Or else, it makes me feel like that kid you went to high school with who failed his driver's exam too many times and decided he liked being driven around anyway.

But dismissing the latter, there is something about public transportation that makes me feel like I am fully interacting with the world around me. I can't help noticing the woman putting her make-up on while the bus jostles around corners, the short man who uses a flat-iron on his hair and carries a briefcase, the boy with bright blue eyes who studies his Prego! book on the way to class, the four-foot tall great-grandma type who passes out calendars, the hippy-wannabe who wears Simple shoes but washes her hair, or the pale, pale boy who gives the other pale boy a second glance because he wasn't sure if it was his reflection or not. In a sense, it's this strange community of people with thin walls in between them. I'm beginning to recognize people, and I'm sure people are recognizing me, especially when our hips tap each other's hips on the crammed morning bus, but still there is no interaction. Not even a nod to say, "Hey, I see you".

I have a picture that my cousin took of my family candidly, while we were on a train in London. We all look relaxed yet inquisitive. Today I saw my reflection in the dark windows, and I looked the same, inquisitive. And I thought, "I need this." This time on the bus to sit and stare, and no one will tell me I can't because for the next 35 minutes, I'm stuck on here. All I can do is listen to my music and watch, and admire our city for what it is.

Today the sky was purple and red and through the silhouette of the moving bridges and big metal things I could see the lake. Then the bus got off the shoreway, onto Clifton, and there were no more colors. The space behind the windows turned black and for a few moments, I didn't know where I was. I intuitively pulled the cord, and it stopped just for me, and I got off, directly in front of my place.

Conscious of Consciousness

2009-10-05T18:57:00.003-04:00

Lately I've been having a difficult time with consciousness. Perhaps my own consciousness, or awareness, and that of others. I'm reading novels for class, but cannot enjoy them because at every page, I notice the choices the writer is making. I notice the detail, and I start to think about the writer and how he has struggled with every word, or how his editor nudged him farther and farther until each word became a written word, and therefore not real. Because the writer is making conscious choices because they want you, the reader, to feel a certain way and only certain words will pull the reader into their imaginary world. And therefore I wonder if there is any power in immediacy. Because when I write, I need to be aware of every damn word I put on the page, just like you have to be aware of every damn word you speak.

Today, for the briefest moment, I looked out of the window while on the bus downtown. I saw a girl walking along with a guy. They split when they came to a lamp post. He looked at the ground as she spoke to him. What I noticed was how her mouth and eyes were formed and I could tell that she was aware of her situation. That she is spending time with a guy she is fond of, and while she is enjoying every moment, she acts like she could care less. We've all done it; taken note of the moment though actively denying the moment, as to make the moment less significant or normal. I remember a time in high school, I had two great guy friends who I felt overly lucky to have. I also felt completely self-conscious and aware that this was temporary, our friendship. One cool summer day, we walked to the lake, hung out on the pier, and randomly (though predictably so) jumped into the water with our clothes on. We walked back home, down the center of the street and it started to rain. I remember the cuffs of my pants filled with water so that when I unfolded them, a pool of water flowed out. We laughed as we picked tiny stones out of the bottoms of our feet, and I noticed the indentations they left behind in my thick skin. This entire day, I was conscious of what I said. I wanted to keep them entertained, because I felt like, in a way, I was merely grasping at water. That soon enough they would leave, so I needed to say the "right" things. Everything I said had a purpose, so that my inner workings could somehow be known. They would find me smart and intriguing, and would hang on my every word.

We are all conscious, and aware of our words because our words define us. Our words are in direct contact with our brain, and since our brain is not visible, our words must be. I remember working with poet Alicia Ostriker, encouraging us to write what we want to write because we all "carry poison around", and we must get rid of that poison and project it onto paper. It's true. What a strange world it would be if we always said what was on our mind. I'm not certain it would make this world any more terrible. So whether I am against consciousness or not, I'm not sure. I'm carrying with me a lot of poison, so I better get rid of it.

Today I'm Angry

2009-08-23T23:18:00.006-04:00

I remember someone talking about their boss, who was probably some meat-head, and their comment was that "He probably never contemplated anything in his life". I think about how many people this applies to. Today I'm angry about dense people: people who have never contemplated anything, people who don't know what contemplation consists of, people who can't stand to sit for one moment without a television on and think. "Does this make me a pussy because I think about things?"

In my day to day life I encounter too many people who have never thought for themselves. Their skulls are so thick because plaque has built up around their brains and I want to take a chisel and chip it out. Bad television, bad music, useless celebrity knowledge, name brands, textings, money, malls, myspaces, digital cameras, etc. have taken over and become the most important things in people's lives. Suddenly not having the newest touch screen Crackberry is like losing an arm in the war. It's unbearable! It makes me sick. Someone told me that our economy today is just as bad as it was during the Great Depression. My question to them is, "Are you wearing shoes?" Well sure you are, it looks like you've got a nice pair on your feet there... THEN NO, IT IS NOT AS BAD. Why don't you ask my grandpa why he was selling sausages or American uniforms in Germany to make a few dollars to live on. Or maybe why he is missing half of his foot. Or why not stop by a place called Inner Mongolia and take a whiff of their bathrooms. And while you're there, take a drive through the miles and miles of grasslands where you'll find rows of crumbling bricks that people call their homes. I wonder if they complain about getting a stale pork rind, a scuff on their loafers, or a limit on their credit card.

Certainly I'm no saint here. I like my creature comforts just as everyone else does. I like the smell of clean sheets and a fresh towel once a week. I like bread that costs $3.49 and organic milk. I've got a closet full of shoes I don't really need and 5 or 6 cardigans. I even like to watch Ellen when I can. But I also feel like I'm spoiled. Maybe we're not all spoiled, but blessed.

Our economy is certainly on rocky ground right now, and things are more difficult than they when my parents were 20-somethings, but we have to sit back every now and then to be thankful for what we have. If you have a job, things must be okay. If you don't have a job, don't completely blame the economy. We all have to give up our pride every now and then and take those jobs pumping ketchup into a cup or serving hot dogs to fat slobs. Or is that just me? Regardless, there are plenty of opportunities out there. My boyfriend is perfect example. He is currently moving things, pretty much anything, for $15/hour. You got legs and arms, you can move stuff too! Turns out, most people don't like moving things, especially heavy things.

So I apologize for this rant, especially because the world is moving around me and I'm running in place being bitter about it. And because there are so many wonderfully thoughtful people out there. Maybe I oughta just stop thinking and give in. Who wants to go to Applebees after the Rob Thomas concert? Or we could watch "Are you Smarter than a Fifth Grader" and eat Hot Pockets?

Steve Buscemi in Ghost World says it best, "You give these people a Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and they're happy".

China

2009-08-17T18:09:00.003-04:00

July 27, 2009

I am 7,800 miles away and eating a pretzel. I felt so lost until I thought of the pretzel--unaware of its existence, no say in my travel plans. It sat patiently in my luggage until able to live happily inside of me. It felt out of place when realizing it was different, no longer surrounded by other pretzels. Everyone stared at it, because upon first glance, they knew it was a pretzel.

August 2, 2009

Sitting like a dead dog at the side of the road,
a man with bruised fruit squeals
as he lifts a pear to my nose,
speaks to me in Chinese,
and tells me he is not dead.
He makes a living
selling the fruit of his ancestors.
His wife shifts her gaze
from the ground to my eyes,
then up to my hair
because I am the size of a tree
in the desert, the one that guards
the flat earth, and she wants
to pluck something from me,
fruit maybe,
because she is otherwise unaware
of why I am here
or why her husband is sullen
and eating his own fruit.

August 3, 2009

I'm thinking of a vacation I took with my family as a child. We were camping in Vermont. We got there to realize the tent poles were not in the truck, therefore still in the basement of our house. With nothing else to do, and a family vacation to save, dad went to the nearest hardware store, bought some wooden dowels, and whittled the ends to fit into the tent holes. It worked fine and we were able to continue our camping trip.

I was probably around 7 or 8 years old at the time, and still remember this. I remember this vacation even more than others. Why? Because my mind was most active then. We were in a situation that caused some panic and the friction of the situation added a necessary element to the vacation. A perfect vacation would have been fine, but there would have been nothing to remember. We felt a sense of empowerment when we realized we could overcome the missing tent poles. Aside from that, it made for a good story.

Hohhot, it will make for a good story. I feel incredibly privileged to visit a place I never knew existed, a place many Americans are still oblivious to. Wandering around an abandoned horse race track, exactly what I've come to expect on my vacations. Yak cheese stored in my hostel bedroom? Exactly. I've been losing my tent poles here in a daily basis and holding my tent up with stories, experiences, and writing. What I'm trying to say here is unexpected experiences turn into irony, and irony turns into the pieces that build up one's character. A more complex character gives one the ability to stand strong against the things life throws at you. And perhaps this is exactly what I yearn for.

Even If I Did Not Know You

2009-07-18T21:03:00.007-04:00

I've been very interested in this artist lately since reading about his mysterious life in a book. His name is Ray Johnson and he is most famous for being unknown. I dug through my old art history books looking for his name, but couldn't find one piece by him, though he was a big influence on many famous pop artists and worked alongside such artists as Warhol. I was pretty disappointed because by then, I wanted to know everything about him. So I went to the bookstore and sat down in the meager "art" collection at Borders, yes my fault for going there. I looked through every art book, including a book called something like, "Pop Art, the Ultimate Collection". Turns out, most people are greedy only for Warhol, and why? Still, I was disappointed at his lack of familiarity, yet intrigued by his complete disappearance from modern art books.

His final work of art was his suicidal death performed by jumping off of a bridge into a bay where the water was 39º. Prior to this act, he managed to revolve the entire death around the number 13 for no apparent reason. This was what brought him the most attention, even moreso than his body of work. His death is what helped to reveal a large portion of his work, thus shining some light on his peculiar life. However, what his close friends and family learned about him was that his mystery was not intended to be solved.

So I've been thinking about this while cleaning out my aunt's house after her death. I've learned so many things about her, and it makes me realize that you only know so much about a person when they're alive. So much is hidden and so much has been buried in the past. All I knew about my Tante Sofie was that she was German and gave me candy and $20 every Christmas Eve. She always smelled like Chantilly Lace and her house was meticulous. What I've learned now is how meticulous she was. For example, I found 4 pieces of paper in her dining room display cabinet. On it she had drawn every wine glass, crystal vase, and pitcher that was in the cabinet. She had sketched out how the glasses in the cabinet should be arranged on each shelf. In a way, I think of her as the artist. She had a peculiar way of doing things but in a way that made sense to her. She hid this life from even her closest friends, though not purposely so. And through the boxes and boxes of photographs I'm discovering more about her, yet still searching for answers. Sitting down with all the boxes of pictures, I wish someone could tell me who everyone is or where they were.

Even though I'm still young, and aware of my youth, I'm wondering what I will leave behind and if people will wonder about it, or put those pieces together to figure out my life. Because we're all going to leave a trail behind.

Get Yer Paycheck Here, Hot and Fresh

2009-07-10T23:22:00.004-04:00

n
So I think I might try to include a photo for forthcoming posts, because pictures are nice right? This is my newest place of work, or at least a view from where I stand, in the stadium, the Avon Lake Stadium...at Stomper's Grill. It sounds terrible, but it's actually the greatest thing. It's not like the "Prog" or anything, which is fine because the people in Avon expect less than they would at the Prog, complain less about the prices, and are generally plumper and friendlier by nature.

So tonight I got to help the staff with the soda fountain.
I guess the reason I like it is because I don't care about it. If I got fired, I would laugh. If I quit, the reasons would be obvious. I get to work with fine young boys who ask me how old I am or if I drink or if I'm in school. It's pretty cute. "Yes, that's right. I am 24 and a grad student. And yes, I'm working at the ballpark stuffing large hot dogs into foil sleeves. So what? I got bills to pay and habits to keep up." I think of these jobs as though I'm playing a character. Like I'm the smart girl who got stuck working the cheese machine because my parents wouldn't give me money to pay for my prom. Or like I'm the mysterious girl from the big city who came to see what life was like in the sticks. Or that I'm an undercover reporter doing a story on health violations at a local ballpark. Either way, it makes life interesting. And a free hot dog here and there ain't bad.

My Time at the Institution

2009-06-22T12:07:00.004-04:00

So these photographs just about sum up my experience at the Chautauqua Writer's Conference. Though, a picture of a coffee pot and a senior citizen might also be necessary. I came in extremely skeptical and unsure of what to expect. When I first walked in, I thought I was at a retirement home instead of the Chautauqua Institution. Then I thought, wait, why are they putting me in an Institution? And who decided this?

The workshops were pretty much not helpful, though I enjoyed hearing praises of my poetry. A one-on-one meeting with poet Alicia Ostriker was the most unbelievable part of the whole thing, because I've admired her writing since college. It was a once in a life opportunity to have her commenting on my poems, though I was a bit concerned when she had few criticisms on poems that I know need some work. Did she not care, or did she think my poetry was perfect? Hmm, don't answer that.

Aside from working with a recognized poet, I also learned a few things about myself. Of course I would learn a few things about myself at a writer's conference! A major realization I came to when I got back is that I have a strong hold on my independence. I got to the conference knowing no one, and my biggest fear was sitting down at dinner and not wanting to deal with anyone, and thus eating awkwardly alone. That didn't happen once, and I even enjoyed talking to people. What a great thing to wake up and find a community of writers in one room. In the evenings, the whiskey and wine came out which brought the few young folks together. An apple pipe helped to make the discussions of art and life the most heavy thing one could experience. I even recall one man saying, "America should have a holiday where everyone just takes a good shit. Cleans everything out. We'd all feel so much better the next day." Yes, that was a writer. An intelligent man...

I think I even got over my fear of reading my poetry to an audience, though I attribute most of that to the whiskey as well. My only fear of reading was that I was going to get nervous. Once I started reading, I only felt exhilarated and finally heard. So now I look forward to my next opportunity. My only regret about the conference was that I got little writing done. But it wasn't like it was a writing conference or anything...

I do...

2009-06-14T19:23:00.003-04:00

So the weird part about catering a wedding is that I get to experience the happiest day of two people's lives, and yet I am not affected by it in any way. I am a voyeur in every sense of the word, and I must say, I enjoy it. I get to wear a "costume", which some might call a uniform, that consists of black pants, an ill-fittin' blazer, tuxedo shirt, a bow-tie, and white gloves, of course. There is nothing on me that says I'm an individual, and in a weird way, it is quite refreshing. Maybe it brings me back to my Catholic school days when I could get ready for the day in less than 5 minutes, because fashion was not an issue.

So I'm standing at the wall with my silver tray feeling incredibly sober and watching the bride and her cronies swing their dresses awkwardly around in front of their mates. My favorite move is when the girl who has never acted crazy gets up for "Love Shack" and throws her arms in the air to show she can be fancy-free, too. Then I let my mind wander about what my wedding plans will be (when I get married 18 years from now). Even this wedding, which was a four course meal at the Ritz and could've easily cost $50,000, was entirely unoriginal and the pastel everything made it evident that the groom had no say in this event whatsoever. And in the end, all anyone remembers from a wedding was how heavy-handed the bartender was or was not.

My first daydreaming idea for my wedding is making all the food myself. Sounds crazy, I know. But for a party of about 100 people, it'd be easy enough to make a few big pans of rice and chicken, then you pay someone to make it look nice on a plate and you've already saved yourself $50 a plate. That's all wedding food is anyway, plus you can brag that you made it yourself. Next is my idea for a paper wedding dress. Okay, again crazy, but I got a few seamstresses in the family who know how to make things look good. Even the finest paper is going to be cheaper than an $1000 gown you'll never wear again. Then the plan is jumping in the pool, that will be on the premises of my wedding reception, and the entire dress disintegrates and a practical white dress is beneath it, so I can continue partying comfortably. I'd also consider covering the tables with brown packaging paper and letting the guests write on the table and throw peanut shells on the ground....okay, kidding on that...maybe....

So I guess you could say I enjoy my job. I get to work with people from around the world and learn about different cultures, I usually get to eat the same $50 plate that everyone else is eating, and most of the customers are friendly when I smile at them. It's a lot of hard work, but I'll tell you what, when or if I do get married, I'm letting all the caterers sit down and enjoy the meal with me, because it would really freak out the managers!

A Few Fine Things I've Photographed

2009-06-07T01:25:00.002-04:00

I Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

2009-05-21T00:02:00.002-04:00

"Hey," I said to my boyfriend on the phone, "Can you do me a big favor?"
"What's that," he says.
"Can you come pick me up?"
"Sure, in two weeks. Right?"
"No, I mean now. Can you pick me up now?"
"What? Why?"
"I don't have a Visa."
"Well, can't you just take out money?"

So today, instead of flying to China, I scrambled to find a solution that would allow me to save my vacation. But swine flu would cause a delay in receiving my Visa, even if it was expedited. Then my dear boyfriend invited me to go to work with him. He puts away wood at Lowe's. So I put away and organized long strips of molding and wood planks. Then he bought me ice cream at the Stone Cold Creamery, because ice cream makes any gal feel better, right? We went home, and I passed out long enough to feel groggy. Then my mother called and told me to get a job, because she already felt sorry for me long enough this morning. Then I ended up at the worst possible place I could be that wasn't China, a Buffalo Bill's watching the Cavs (lose). Sure it was a fine time, but knowing that I was supposed to be on a plane to China made the entire event seem useless.

Turns out I was the only one who didn't know I needed a Visa to travel to China, even for a mere 2 weeks. I got to the airport on time, had my bags packed to perfection, and was just tired enough to sleep on the 14 flight. In all my travels, a passport has always been plenty. Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Mexico, Canada, Austria, Italy...no matter their feelings towards Americans, they still let me into their country. Apparently China's got beef with me, and my country, but that's cool. Things are still going to happen. The nice guys at Continental waived my change of flight fee and will allow me to book for a later time. Now my job is begging the consulate to give me a little ol' travel Visa to their country. So please don't ask about it. Now you know, so if you see me, please don't say, "So wait, why aren't you in China?" Turns out instead of vacationing, I'll be looking for a job. So let me be the one to say it, "Everything happens for a reason!" Or how about, "It wasn't the right time", or "Well now you can work a shitty job and make some money".

Okay, so maybe I'm just bitter. I'm just upset at a whole country and at the people who failed to inform me of my ignorance. Otherwise, I just need a day to feel sorry for myself, but this day is coming to a close.

It was kind of like Christmas, where the excitement builds up all year and then it finally comes and all the family is around and you can feel the love. Then comes about midnight, everyone starts to leave and you realize you're left with a bunch of dirty dishes and some crumpled wrapping paper. Kind of a bummer, but the fun has to end some time, or else how would you know what fun is?

And Yet Again

2009-05-11T12:15:00.002-04:00

I cried in my mother's arms in the same place I cried over ten years ago after hearing similar news. Perhaps I'm easily affected, or perhaps I find myself asking too many questions that cannot be answered, or perhaps I am simply going to miss him. It's a terrible thing to realize that someone has been plucked from this world in a way that could have been prevented. Or was it inevitable?

Over ten years ago the drummer in my father's band took his own life. He told me that a week doesn't go by without thinking about him. It wasn't a car crash, it wasn't cancer, it wasn't the wrong place at the wrong time. It was, "how did we not know?" We all want to be that one person who saves someone from jumping the cliff, and we all like to think that we are good enough friends with someone that they would be able to talk to you when times are bad. Unfortunately, it is a mental illness that we cannot identify until it is too late.

When I got a call from a friend yesterday morning, all the pieces came together. I hadn't heard from him in a few months, he did not return my e-mails or phone calls when otherwise he would have responded within hours or even minutes. He wasn't seen at his usual local establishments and of course, I got swept away with my own west side life. I just thought that maybe he responded to his dreams of moving to LA, and I was happy for him. I wish I could have seen him one last time but now I'm trying to grasp onto any vivid memories I have, though this hurts even more.

Wherever he went, he knew someone. I think of all those people and wonder why he couldn't have talked to any one of those people. I wonder where he's been these past few months, or if he was already sinking slowly. I pray for his soul, his family, and his friends who are left with questions. I have to think that in a strange way, it was his time and he's at peace somewhere, listening to punk rock and drinking a Blue Moon.

Bad Math

2009-04-26T23:18:00.003-04:00

It's funny how the same feelings resurface once the weather becomes the good weather, the weather we'll be complaining about in a month or so, the weather we all love to hate or hate to love. And suddenly people you thought got swept away with the snow and rain crawl out of the gutters and give you a call and ask what you're up to. And I tell them, "Nothing much, just the same".

I'm sitting around alone and sweating, attempting to get through those last excruciating assignments. The song "Float On" came on the shuffle, and I remembered that the first time I heard that album (about 2 months before it came out thanks to DC++) was at this same time some 4 years ago. I probably felt that same way when I heard it then, hot and confused. I think I'm still trying to get rid of those 5 extra pounds of winter weight that I was then, though I'm pretty sure I haven't gained a pound since high school. And a pimple appears in just about the same place this time of year, as if to say, "You're not a grown-up yet". I'm smoking the same brand of cloves I did four years ago, listening to the same music, but just driving in a different car. I even found myself on my old college campus this weekend to see The Black Keys, and I ran into the same people I would have seen there four years ago and thought about the people who weren't there, but would have been there four years ago. I always wonder if things would be different if the me now was the me four years ago. But I think the Small Faces covered that question already.

I've been with the same dude for just about 3 years now so the strangest part is that my three-years-ago calls me twice a day. Anything prior to him was four years ago. It's a comforting thought to know that despite all the changes I've made in my education or life plans, he's still a brick wall. He's seen me at my worst, including these awkward times of post-college puberty, and he'll still tell me I'm wonderful. He might even see me in my worst than the worst that is bound to come and he won't flinch. Part of me feels like he's stuck with me now.

So here I am, writing on the same computer I had four years ago listening to the same song I liked four years thinking the same things and wondering what will change four years from now, and if I'll remember.

Time To Go To Bed

2009-04-10T00:01:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure what changed in me in the past couple of days, but I sent away for 3 magazine subscriptions (Nylon, MotorTrend,and Russia! for those of you curious) which means I'm committed to living here and being here for another year or more. Because if I'm not, I have to fill out those annoying change of address forms, and in the meantime, a pile of your magazines build up at the place you no longer inhabit. Scary, since I'm always on the move, or looking for my next move. Can I say that I'm now content with my life? In class today we talked about if it's possible to successfully write a happy ending into your story. I said, "Happy endings aren't realistic". Then I thought that a realistic ending is one that is a sense of contentment, a Raymond Carver ending. The characters reach a plateau rather than a mountain top. The characters get to the point where they say, "Yep, this is my life, regardless of how screwed up it may seem." Beyond a reasonable doubt, I can say that my life is not how I predicted it, but I'm only in control of so much of it. I leave it up to the writer to take over the rest.

Tonight, I spoke up in class and said, "Hey, we're getting a beer if anyone is interested". Here I am, the self-proclaimed shy girl speaking out and becoming the social organizer. People actually showed up and then told me they were glad that someone initiated something. Well how about that? What has changed in me? What I can tell you, unofficially speaking, is that I got a pecuniary offer from my university that has told me, unofficially, that I should stay where I am and make the best of it. So that has changed in me. I'm proud of myself, but at the same time, I'm wondering how I made it this far and how I am actually functioning at this point in my life. It's an amazing thing really. And though I never predicted my life to be this way, I predicted myself to give up sooner. And yet, here I am. Ok, so it might be a full moon tonight and I might have had a couple beers earlier, and yes, I am listening to Coldplay and eating chocolate pudding. So what? You know what I mean.

Taking Off The Binoculars

2009-04-09T01:04:00.000-04:00

So I took off my binoculars.

Updates March 2009

2009-03-30T12:53:00.003-04:00

So I've got lots of catching up to do, and today is about the last day I'll have until next week to do so. It's hard to do homework when I have no or little interest in it, so I thought I'd warm up this morning...err afternoon...by doing what I enjoy, blogging!

First on my mind is that I woke up this morning and my boyfriend told me he had a dream about me. I was driving the car with binoculars on, and he was mad because on top of my driving being bad, I was obstructing my vision by wearing these binoculars. My driving scares him in real life, so this was probably more of a nightmare to him. Right away I thought, "how symbolic". He laughed when I said that, probably thinking, "you damn poet, trying to make everything into a metaphor". It made me think that I'm always trying to look so far ahead, but I don't see what's right in front of me. I wish I wasn't so dense to know what that actually is.

Other things going on: my adviser has made me rethink my school situation, telling me to look around because my current university is doing little to progress my writing. Thus leading me to get back in contact with a school in California that I got accepted into last year, but had to defer enrollment because of financial setbacks. I e-mailed them a new portfolio in hopes of getting more scholarship money, but I won't get the results until April. However, the head of the department called me right away after he received it and told me that my portfolio was really strong. Give me money!! The only problem with that is if I do get more money, I'd have to go there, and part of me is scared to step out of this complacent, yet comfortable life I've set up for myself here.

Lastly, with my newfound fortunes, I've decided to take a visit to Shanghai at the end of May. My dearest friend lives there, and I've been trying to make it over there for awhile. Thanks to Continental's lowered rates to China, I can probably get a ticket for under $800. Amazing! While there, I hope to do lots of writing and take a long weekend in Thailand, where I've always wanted to go since I heard that 5 star hotels are around 20 American dollars a night. Is this a myth!??! I will let you know. I also heard their beaches are beautiful.

That's about all I have to report for now. Thanks for reading!

BEDS

2009-03-10T00:28:00.002-04:00

This is part of something I've been working on. I'm not sure what its final state will be. Regardless, I need to post it on the net to save it because my computer is just about at 0 KB.

The Dogs Are Barkin'

2009-03-02T22:52:00.002-05:00

So I never thought I'd find myself in the basement of the International Exposition Center at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, riding around in a golf cart with a garbage guy I never met before. He drove me around until I found the place where I was supposed to be. (Will I ever find it?) Yet there I was, and how come I am not surprised?

"I've been with them 20 years."
"Are you Union?" I ask.
"Yep," he says.

I finally found Olga, the manager there, and got my caterer's jacket and met the other misfits I'd be working with: the 6'4" Serbian who used to work for a pharmacy company, the ex-business adviser and financial consultant, the ex-coke head who has cancer, the long-haired Army grad, the mousy, socially awkward middle-ager with no wedding ring, and me--the hard-working, slightly bitter college grad working on a master's in creative writing and always looking for the opportunity to be inspired.

I've been on my feet all day, and I'm broke, I tell ya.

The greatest thing about this job is that we are all equal. I don't care where you've been, where you worked before or who are you are what kind of degree you have (a-hem), because we are all here working the same job and we are all making $9.00 an hour. So don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you what to do unless you ask because we are all wearing the same black pants and white jacket that look like we might be in a cult.

Luckily I'm back working my butt off 7 days a week and making positive strides to living my life soon. I know it will be greatly satisfying to work a job that doesn't require scraping someone else's food into a garbage can or pushing around any sort of cart. This will happen in hopefully 5 years, or less? Either way it's a refreshing new period in my life and I'm curious to see how this chapter will come together. I'm banking on not getting fired from this one!

...and our hope for you is firmly grounded, knowing that as you are sharers of our sufferings, so also you are sharers of our comfort.

2009-02-18T22:18:00.004-05:00

For my sake, I feel it necessary to discuss the fact that I had to attend yet another funeral. She was my Tante Sofie, a dear and lovable woman who called me Girly #2. She was always laughing and on Christmas Eve she would drink one Manhattan and that was all she needed. The day today was raining and it seemed appropriate, yet somehow too predictable, to be at a burial site. I'm thinking of looking at her body, her "tent" as the gospel calls it, and how it was completely there yet she was not there, and somehow it would have been easier if her body just completely disappeared. One day she was gone. However, we all know that it is her spirit that has disappeared. And after she passed, I went to work. I went to school. I came home and went to bed. Things keep moving and fill in the space she left behind. And I mean this in the most respectful way. Perhaps The Flaming Lips say it best, "Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die".

Having said this, I feel this Mark Strand poem is most appropriate (and one of my favorites). I think this poem says more in just a few words than a book could say in thousands of pages.

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

Things I'm Having a Hard Time With Lately

2009-02-04T20:57:00.003-05:00

1. Making friends at school.
2. Speaking up in class.
3. Being inspired by school and the people around me.
4. Keeping a job.
5. Finding another job.
6. Being happy.
7. Showering.
8. Spending time with friends.
9. Getting out of bed.
10. Going to bed.
11. Reading.
12. Writing.
13. Learning.
14. Cooking.
15. Talking.
16. Being nice.
17. Staying patient.
18. Being appreciative of the wonderful things around me.
19. Saying how I feel.
20. Dressing myself.
21. Saving the planet.
22. Cleaning my room.
23. Staying inside the lines.
24. Wearing gloves.
25. Finding my purpose.

Job, Take 3

2009-01-30T21:41:00.003-05:00

So I got fired. I went from hysterics to anger to questioning to thank goodness to who gives a fuck in a matter of an hour. The best part is that they had no concrete reason and in restaurant business you've got to be a robot to handle it. Luckily I have a few robot genes. I really could care less about working at this non-descript pub and chug, but my good fortunes have led me to paying rent, so it pretty much came at the worst time. I guess now I've found the bad luck in all of this good luck. I'm sure to get right back on my feet and I'm not concerned. I'm just glad I'm not 30 and in a career. Everybody is feeling the burn, man. All I have to say is the owner was always high as a kite and my boss was and always will be a BIG MEANIE!! Take that! At least I'm nice and pretty, right? I'm gonna stick this beast on them, so they better watch out.

New Year's Resolution, Resolved

2009-01-26T15:09:00.002-05:00

So I finally took the plunge and signed a lease for an apartment. It's been almost two years since I've lived on my own, so the novelty is still astonishing to me. 2009 and I'm feelin fine. I found this great little one bedroom, and I think a big part of me chose it because the landlord is a retired cop and cracks bad jokes. He showed me all the entrances into the building and said it's great to have a back entrance "in case you're being chased by the FBI". Then he handed me the keys and the keychain said, "I wish my car retained as much gas as I do". Then I knew, this is the place for me.

On top of that, there is a lovely built-in desk where I picture myself writing at all hours of the night with a pen in my mouth and some jazz on the stereo. If only I were really that cool. I seem to be the coolest when no one is watching me, or like I'm in a movie and everyone is watching me. Because everyone loves movies where a girl is walking around her apartment in seven layers of sweatpants and glasses on writing for hours, and wandering into the kitchen every hour or earlier to see if anything has appeared in the refrigerator besides the cheese and cucumbers that have been the only thing in there for weeks.

Everything will soon come together and I look forward to lovely gatherings and making food all day, then inhaling in within 15 minutes. No one can yell at me for lying in my pajamas all day, similar to what I'm doing now, at 3:17 on a Monday afternoon. It takes pajamas and buckets of coffee to really get any writing done. I've already invested a little more than $100 into fun house things and useful house things like garbage cans, silverware, and a tray that will hold the silverware. I have anticipations of being more creative, and maybe picking up painting or collage again, though school will take up much of my extra-curricular time. Either way, good things are coming and I'm truly excited to be an adult. It's about time.

Teeny Tiny Victories

2009-01-07T01:47:00.003-05:00

Somehow I've trained myself to psychologically shed a skin when the new year comes. For me it's like taking a shower. I always feel like I need to reinvent myself, and the new year is a great opportunity for this, but I think I end up just maturing instead. Today, I had this realization that I am capable of having friends, and keeping friends. It takes a while for me to understand that people like me and we end up entwining ourselves into something like a human to human connection. Some call this a friendship.

I put myself completely on autopilot and forget about the world around me. Most of the time I'm just trying to "get through" something so that I can relax, but when I try to relax, I only worry about what is coming up next. Like right now, I'm trying to get through my masters so that I can get a PhD. Then I'll try to get through that, and then I'll just have to get a job and get through that until I'm retired. Hopefully I'll get a great job that I like, but so far I haven't had a job that gives me more than money. I contribute this great realization partially to taking a vacation. It was one of those vacations where I physically could not remember what my life was in Cleveland, and when I tried to think about it, it didn't make sense. Granted, I was only in Philadelphia, but I found that I really adapted. If someone moved me to Philadelphia, I would probably take it completely for granted and accept my life there. If someone moved me to Prague, I would say "this is my life now". There is something scary about the fact that I am so malleable. I wonder what I would be like or where I would live if it were up to me.

So anyway, we all make tiny victories and the new year is a great place to start. All these victories lead up to something, even if it is just maturity. It's a great feeling to realize that you have grown and can understand much more than you did even the day before. Good thing for teeny tiny victories, or else I'd still be wearing broomstick skirts and combat boots. eee

Discounts and Easy Money

2008-12-23T15:05:00.002-05:00

Sometimes my life comes together in strange ways. These items appeared on my dresser this morning, of course I was the one who put them there, but it's moments like these that cause me to ask, "so God, this is my life, huh?" This picture kind of sums it all up. Notice the price tag on the sunglasses. The pile of money is from work the night before and the card beneath it is a Christmas card from a couple who frequents the bar where I currently work. The tennis racket is a gift from my sister, a necklace, which when I first put it on, the chain broke. Then of course my myriad of hair care products and smelly things appear in the background. Well this is my life, and while I'm on it, I'll express my New Year's resolution. In four words" GET THE HELL OUT.

Tonio Kröeger

2008-12-03T02:57:00.002-05:00

So I've come to this conclusion multiple times over, and it's not quite a conclusion at all, but I live this dichotomy of a life that is beginning to drive me personally insane. Perhaps the conclusion is that I am Tonio Kröeger, living in a northern world and living in a southern world.

I know I've written about this before, but it is difficult for me to be fully content with my life while living here in Cleveland. Part of me feels less successful having formed this comfortable, yet too tight around the ankles, dwelling here. But that is another story. The story I'm considering this evening is the fact that I tell my intellectual friends that I'm from the 'hood (true), yet I tell my 'hood friends that I went to an intellectual university and studied art and literature (also true). I never want to present myself in a way that would throw off their impression of me. I'm neither an intellectual nor a hood-rat.

The problem is that I embellish the part of me that might interest my acquaintance. I tell them the strange part of me life, though to me makes sense. Am I making any sense? I think I've discovered too much of myself that it's all coming out at once and is beginning to clash with one another. In Cleveland, I have the ability to spread my wings because being slightly askew from average gives me the room to do so. I'm terribly average and that's the problem. People give me strange looks because they feel like they've seen me somewhere (and they probably have because I go everywhere in the greater Cleveland area). I've been told by multiple people that I look like someone they know. I always ask them what that person does. So far I'm Stephanie, living as a painter in NYC, and Rochelle, living successfully in New Jersey. Pretty great, I think, because that means my face will get me somewhere. I'll be Elena, poet in Colorado. Or Elena, race car driver in France. Or by 2020 I'll probably change my name. So I'll be Lola, glass blower for the Duke of Iceland.

I'm writing to you from Art School

2008-10-26T17:06:00.000-04:00

Here is an (abridged) letter to my sister about 5 years ago that I just found. I'm not sure if I was cooler or crazier then. I think I was just in art school. Some names may be changed or deleted...

So the question is: if you had to choose between opening a can of soda while trying to steer a train from another train heading towards you, or being chased by a fleet of evil construction workers holding jackhammers who heard that you think eating lunch out of a pail is barbaric--which would you choose? Clearly the decision must be made immediately!

It's okay, I'm just joking about the deciding part. You have too much on your plate already, that means that you have a lot to worry about. I know that you'd eat everything anyway--no matter how much was there!

I have to interject---what? What the hell am I talking about?

I took a drug test the other day. I'm still waiting to see if I passed or not. I kind of don't want to work at all though. I want money, but I sort of do have money anyway. Plus I'll be babysitting and working at the florist once a week. I've been pretty fond of not spending money anyway. I kind of want to become a seamstress and make clothes even uglier than the shit out there anyway. In fact, my short-sleeved, bright red sweatshirt is my new favorite "piece" this season. Ugly=intentional. Luv it, Luv. ("Luv" is the new "heart")

In this part of the letter I write about some nasty dude, who was actually hot, who was after me at the time, and I write in response to something nasty that this dude said "It was down right NASTEE and not goodnastee. City of Douche Bags, I tell ya. Now I can move on to better, nastier guys. Someone write me a check for STD's, because here I come".

Well there is not much more that I can write that wouldn't be invented. Life in the heart of America is slow. What can I say, you know?

(Enter: jaded attitude. The need to seek for more.)

Oh yea, one more thing. I'm not making this up--but I found a really old penny. Well no, the story goes--the "variety bucket" at KFC was $9.99. And yes, I felt like a steamboat when I said "I liked to order the variety bucket". Eww. But anyway, I gave the chick a $20 bill, and she gives me back this $10 bill and a single penny. This penny from 1936! can you believe it? The back looked like this [insert drawing of penny], but a little dirtier. Kinda awesome, you know?

Then I end with kind words. Something like "I will always need to bother you and complain to you because I can't name one other person who understand me like you do".

Love,
Elena

Mind The Gap.

2008-10-12T21:39:00.000-04:00

I had a friend comment to me today that I should update my blog. I must say I'm flattered that someone actually reads this. (Thank you for reading. You know who you are.)

I can't say that I have much to write about these days. I'd like to avoid going political, although that's the first thing on my mind at the moment. I just spent the past few hours reading TIME and watching Sarah Palin interviews (for entertainment). I must say that it's really difficult to read anything because I'm afraid that I read what I want to read. And I think most people read what they want to read. My only comment on this election (ok, I'm going political) is that it's highly "people" based. For me, this is the first election I can fully participate in and be aware of what's going on, so I'm not sure if this election is unique in that there are a lot of young people getting involved.

An article highlighted a small town in Missouri (which actually has some significance to the election since the town's majority vote has chosen the winning candidate every time in the past half-century) and the town's people. Most people were positive about the future candidate and almost every single one of the people interviewed were thinking about themselves and their family and the little things. It made me realize that we are depending on, dare I say, Obama, to help our daily lives directly. Personally, I do not have health care. And I'm wishing and wishing that someday I will be granted this privilege. Obama seems like your grade school class president who says, "I'm going to put a candy machine in the hallways" because this is what everyone wants. So part of me is thinking, "I love this guy" and the other part of me is saying, "It hasn't happened in the past, so why should it happen now?" We have so much to get through before we can get to the candy.

I grew up, and still live, in a blue collar world and I like that Obama is thinking about people like me and my neighbors. But we are so small and I wonder why we matter and aren't there things that matter more than me? I like Obama because Obama likes me. I'm not saying that he's only involved in trivial affairs, I'm just thinking about what the people are thinking about, and what they hear and what gets passed around. The only conversations I hear about the election are "gas prices", "more jobs", "health insurance", "better life", etc. And I think this is amazing because we have gotten so focused on simply living that we have forgetten that America is a land of opportunity. Right now America is a land of staying afloat. Candy machines in the hallway sound great right now, but maybe we should get a drinking fountain first.

Richard Billingham, Photographer

2008-09-20T18:47:00.001-04:00

So amazing.

2008-09-17T02:45:00.000-04:00

My grandpa died last night, he was 93. My first instinct is to write, although my thought is that the things that seem like they should inspire, instead incur fear. Perhaps it's more the fear of writing. I never knew what would happen if a close family member died, as I've only experienced the death of my pets. I had this preconceived notion that I would learn a lesson from the entire event or on the retrospect of my grandfather's life. In fact, he was a writer himself. I should tell myself, "Life is short. Experience it while I can". But his life wasn't short. It was very long and his brain held so many generations of memories. Not just his own, but from his parents and grandparents. And they all cannot be written down. I was told when he passed, the nurse gave my aunt a bag full of all the things in his pockets. He always had so many things in his pockets. One of the things in his pocket was a stack of old photographs. It's kind of nice to think that he held those things so close. Yet, I also think that my grandpa held onto to so many things. Too many things. My grandpa was always prepared for everything.

It's a strange thing to cry for someone who dies, because we know they are in a better place. But we all do it and we can't help it. Or we can help it, but it feels better when we do. I know he had one great goal in life, and that was to be a good person. He certainly accomplished that and in the greatest way because he was good to the many people he knew. Though I may have thought I knew it before he told me, I never really learned it until after he told me so many times, "The more people you know, the better off you are".

She's cool, though she doesn't know it

2008-09-14T01:44:00.000-04:00

So I went to check out a friend's band at Pat's in the Flat's tonight, which may be the only music dive bar left in Cleveland. Aside from those places that claim to be "galleries" or "byob's". This place is a bar, and the bartender is the bar. She's the only person you can depend on during any given show. She'll tap her foot or she won't tap her foot. She likes punk rock, though you'd never know it. She's cool because she doesn't care. She doesn't advertise and she doesn't need her friends to tell her that she's cool because they are most likely at home watching Cash-Explosion-Double-Play. She wears an Ohio State T-shirt because she probably told her grandson at one point in time that she saw them on TV once, so he thought she might like a T-shirt. She doesn't need to wear skin tight jeans to impress the bands because the bands love her already. She pours a great drink if they have it, and she doesn't need to say a word.

Cool is so uncool, and those kids looking over their shoulders at the people in retro t-shirts behind them never knew the generation of cool. Unfortunately cool was worn out in the 70's. We can live in the wakes as long as we want, but the thrift stores are going to run out of ironic stained t-shirts and bell-bottomed jeans soon enough. I was cool in high school when I wore my mom's old clothes, but people in high school were too afraid of cool. They didn't know where my clothes were from, so they decided to ignore me. By college, I got armpit stains in the cool so I had to shop at American Eagle or the thrift stores. Not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't afford anything else. My cool was starting to look like everyone else's cool so I was screwed.

It turns out cool is comfortable shoes and day jobs. Who would have thought? I'm still trying to catch up. My shoes still cause me back pain even though I know I'm going to be on my feet all day. I'll get there eventually. Just as long as I don't look behind me. Someone is trying to catch up and they've already lapped me.

Route 66 (and I'm not talking about KMart)

2008-08-30T12:46:00.000-04:00

I've come to this conclusion over and over again since I was in high school. I've come to understand that certain things last only as long as they're supposed to. But I do so with such a reluctance. I realize that people, events, things float into your life at a time of need. Should they last any longer and you'll begin to question their existence. The problem is that I then blame myself. Constantly in life we ask "what if". It's a dangerous thing, but let's face it, we're living in a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel.

I think it's like buying a lottery ticket. You know you're never going to win, but in the back of your mind you think, "Well, plenty of hillbillies have won the lottery, so why can't it be me?" Then comes the time to check if you've won. Well you didn't win. Because you didn't have any correct numbers, or you only had one. But if you had picked the "right" numbers, or thought ahead of time that 14, 15, 45, 03, 25 seemed like good numbers, your life would be different.

But the truth is, your life isn't supposed to be different. The truth is, your life is supposed to be different in the ways that you cannot choose. I have to promise myself that 3 months, 1 year, 10 years down the line I'll say, "A-Ha. It makes sense now".

There's still a place in my heart that asks, "Why did that 2002 Volvo S-60 sell the day before I was going to buy it?" "Why am I driving a 1999 Toyota Solara with a tan leather interior?" I still cringe when a Volvo drives by, or when I see a Volvo logo, even if it's on a semi-truck. Pathetic, I realize, but I'm sure there will be one day when I will see a green Volvo S-60 at the side of the road with smoke coming off the engine. It's paint will be peeling and my Toyota will be smiling. Let me say this now, "I'm sorry, dear Volvo owners, I hope it's not too expensive to get your car fixed. But if it is, I recommend the Solara. I know they look like a car your great aunt would buy after divorcing her husband of 47 years, BUT they are very dependable."

So here I am living a Toyota Solara kind of life. And I really can't complain. I think my car is a lot like me. It may look beige on the outside, but take it for a drive and you'll realize that it's V6 will have no trouble settling in at 110mph on the highway (if given the highway). One day I'll make it to the empty roads out west, and I'll make it to 120.

Wait, are these "life is a highway" metaphors too much for you?

Faux Leather Shit

2008-08-24T12:13:00.000-04:00

So I often have people say to me, "You don't look like you're from around here". But I suppose bartending lends itself to strange conversations anyway. I had one woman comment on my teeth and tell me that I was lucky to have vampire teeth. I have 2 mildly pointy teeth that you can hardly see unless I smile. She said to me, "Those could definitely tear flesh", and I thought, "This is terribly disturbing, and also do you really think that I'm going to use them in that manner?" She also said that I looked like I was from the west side. Because, you know, people from the west side typically have pointy teeth.

It's also fun for people to guess my nationality. Which reminds me of a time I was walking down Detroit Ave. past a Save-A-Lot and a guy in his car leaned out to ask me something. I thought at first he needed directions, so from a safe distance I said, "Yes?". And he asks "Hey girl, what's your nationality?" I was tempted to respond "White". Instead I just continued drinking my coffee. Fortunately for me, I do have an ambiguous nationality, I could even argue that I have an ambiguous personality as well. Send me to the Slovenian Gun Club and you'll have the old men asking me how much Slovenian I am and then they'll try to put a Slovenian spin on my name. Send me to the Greek festival and I can drink retsina with Stephanopoulos and Papadopulos like I'm one of their people.

In the same way, I'm thinking about what I did in the past two weeks. Last week I had a fine dining experience downtown at Brasa. I put on a nice dress, asked for Hendrick's gin because Hendrick's gin is the finest of gins, got my car valeted, and even had a guy find it hard to believe that I'm from North Collinwood. Then this week, I found myself in East Cleveland at my uncle's body shop. The paint on my car was peeling so I told him I'd do the prep work myself so I could save some money. I put on a work shirt with a "Casey" name tag embroidered on the shirt, got down on my knees to wet-sand and power sand my car door. Then I took some chemicals and scrubbed the side of my car without gloves. I got home sweaty and with dirty shoes. While there, a nice man with 4 teeth and 50 cents in his pocket told me he'd marry me. He asked "Where I stay at" and I told him North Collinwood.

I feel like in some ways I try to become everyone. I'm never sure of what I am that I instead blend myself into the people I'm surrounding myself with. Somehow I'm so generic that people wonder where I came from. Next time they ask, I should tell them that I came from a factory.

2008-08-06T20:41:00.000-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/books/04solzhenitsyn.html?ex=1375761600&en=9b373aec19d687ca&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

2008-08-04T11:28:00.000-04:00

Here's about the only thing I've written since out of class. I usually despise italics, but I thought I'd give it a try here.

The Caretaker

I found the place
where two waves meet
and lap against the stone slab
that is etched with Charity loves Ben.
White stains left by seagulls
seem to say (at least the ecosystem
is healthy) thank you.

Gone Truckin'

2008-08-01T13:56:00.000-04:00

It was a beautiful day for dumpin'. I decided to meet my good friend during his truck route so I could ride along for the day. He told me he'd pick me up in a shopping mall parking lot in the heart of Parma. Imagine buying a couple of useless goods and anti-itch cream at a Valu-Dollar (in Parma), then picked up outside by a Mack dump truck (in Parma). Yes, this is a little like my life.

I'm not going to say that it was a terribly inspirational day, but I will admit that I had a lot of fun. It may sound like a 4 year old boy's dream, or a Discovery Channel show, but how could you not enjoy taking a tour of the back-end of our city? Lately, I find that I purposefully submit myself to many back-ends (and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, mind your manners). Almost like not taking a shower for a few days because you know how good it will feel on that third day...ok, fourth day. I like driving through the skirts of downtown Cleveland and basically gawking. Maybe it makes me feel a little better about myself.

Anyway, the job is simple. The truck gets filled with some garbage mixed with dirt that was seeping into a river, then we drive it out to Oberlin to a landfill where it gets dumped on the very top of this Mars-like mountain. It's pretty amazing to see first hand how much waste we make. What's also amazing is that there are pipes stuck down into these "hills" that pump out the methane gas produced by the garbage. The methane is then transported to the Stouffer's factory to cook your lasagna. By that I mean your lasagna is cooked with your garbage, in a way. Something else you may have not known (and may have never wanted to know), is that large tarps are placed over these mounds so that the water doesn't penetrate the landfill and become contaminated. Then, the water runs into reservoirs where special bacteria rid the water of any contaminants. Cool, yea?

Moral of the story: Don't be afraid to learn the things you never wanted to know, because you may have never known that you wanted to know them.

I'll go back with a disguise, or a vengeance

2008-07-27T22:29:00.000-04:00

The Plan:

I'll make a nice sandwich (salami, bologna, pepperoni, goat cheese, with honey mustard and lettuce on a fresh Italian roll) put some juice in an insulated container, pack a couple good books, and a towel. I'll throw on my bathing suit and bike down to the lake. It is the perfect day, 80 degree weather and sunny for a day at the beach.I can sit on the beach, listen to the waves and enjoy my sandwich.

The Reality:

I've got a pretty big fluffy beach towel, but the problem with that is I'll have to clear a larger space on the sand for it. Clear what, you might ask? Things like drift wood, cracked shell pieces, ketchup packets, straws, a broken flip-flop, tampons, tampon applicators, cigarette butts, small children, etc.

Yea, but at least the sandwich was great. The only reason I wanted to vomit was because the air smelled like dead fish. I have a hard enough time eating bologna, so I was feeling a bit uneasy. But who cares about all these things when you have the sound of the waves crashing against the surf. Well, that is if you can hear the surf over all the children screaming. And it doesn't sound like these children are having fun when their parents are telling them to "shut up", or to "just go in the water", or "we're not going home".

So I might as well take a swim. The reality?? As soon as I get into the water, the angry lifeguards are telling me and everyone else to get out of the water. So now this huge body of water is only for looking. Did I contaminate the water? Were there sharks? Time to leave. I'll make a stop at the bathroom. I'm sure you'd understand my gripes here without words. Yea, I'll just leave it at that.

What a great day at the beach.

Sweaty Streets, Peeling Paint

2008-07-17T21:39:00.001-04:00

So I ride up and down these lakeside homes on my bike, and could stare for hours at these big sturdy homes with children playing basketball in the driveways, and it's quiet otherwise, and I can see through the windows and through their paneled curtains and I can see right into the lake and right into the sunset. A cool breeze blows yet the air conditioners groan and only one man is watering his lawn. And I think the neighborhood is staring at me and my bike that was found behind the Speedway, but I ride as quietly as I can as to not disturb this bucolic, yet somehow eerie neighborhood.

Then I return to my neighborhood, and my bike starts to rattle again because the sidewalk is cracked and shifting, and the pedals click, and it is not quiet anymore. No one looks at me or if they do they look below my face and they wonder how a white girl like me will react if they were to holler at me, then they holler. And then the boys ride by on their low bicycles and act tough, or they pile up into clusters on the street corners and in front of the dairy treat shop and I think they are the reasons all my childhood friends moved to the neighborhoods still being built, away from the city sirens or lazy neighbors.

Then I turn down my street and I can smell pasta cooking and hamburger helper is helping, and fabric softener seeps through the walls, and the tv's glow hotter than the 90 degree weather outside. A group of men sit restlessly on their front porch and look into the driveway where their friend or roommate was taken away by the police only days earlier. And the overweight people don't have enough fans to cool every part of their bodies, and they stick to the couch as if they've forgotten it's even there. And no one knows I'm there. And I think, my life would be great if I could accept these things.

I know I will have succeeded when my weekends are actually weekends

2008-07-15T22:25:00.000-04:00

So lately I've been meeting people that I find familiar. For example, I met this elderly man with an American flag t-shirt at a tavern the other day. He was eating a burger and drinking Rolling Rock. There was something about him that reminded me of a college sweetheart, if you will. Although this "sweetheart" never wore an American flag t-shirt, there was something in his smile that made me think that the two men inhabited the same quality. I'm not sure what that quality is, but it makes me wonder if there are, say ten major qualities, and we can categorize everyone by these qualities. Maybe by qualities I mean spirits. And we are attracted to those people who have our spirit. Kind of like being attracted to someone who has the same nationality as you. It also makes me think of people I know who have a hard time letting go of someone. They think "This person was so perfect, and when I was with them, I felt so good. I can never find another person like that again." But I believe that perhaps that person had this spirit you connected with, but you will encounter that spirit again soon as long as you have a keen sense and awareness.

I find myself attracted to certain people, whether they be in the car next to me, checking out my food at the grocery store, or whether they are actually my friends. I find it harder to make friends than to have a conversation with a stranger. There comes a point in a relationship where I realize that they want more information out of me. That they want me to talk and begin a bond of sorts. This is where I usually drop out. I don't need to talk and I don't care to dive into my emotions so that we can discuss something that is not actually there. I'd rather talk about cars or school or authors.

Don't Mess with Kharma

2008-07-08T19:04:00.000-04:00

I still feel like something is not right. Perhaps it is the fact that Bally's Total Fitness fucked me over. What a bunch of bastards. What an idiot I am for thinking that they weren't going to rape my checking account for the next 1.5 years. Basically, I thought I could get out of a contract because they have a 2 month "Promise" as long as you send a letter to say that you tried it out, but it's not for you. I guess I didn't know you had to sell your soul to Bally's Total Fitness. So now at this point, I can either beg the manager to sign a waiver to get me out of it or I can take it as a sign that I'm getting fat and will need 1.5 years of fitnessing to take it off. I actually have this secret dream of becoming a...ahem...model anyway. So maybe I'll take this as a sign? Although I could always be a plus size model. I wouldn't mind wearing a moo moo in a Blair catalog for those 60+/ 260+ pound consumers. Then my agent would say, "Elena, we're a bit concerned that you're not putting on enough weight. I thought I told you to eat Toaster Streudels every morning? Not just when you want! So please, start using cream in your coffee, butter on your biscuits, and Crisco in everything else!" I think if I was a model I could wear a paper bag and everyone would think it was Gucci. I'd save a lot of money on clothes. Rags, scarves, or towels would fit great as dresses. What a life!

Besides that, I begin my new job tomorrow. I'm moving up in the world, or just to the westside. Hopefully a time will come when I can live on my own. I see dumbass people living on their own and paying rent and I wonder what I'm doing wrong. I also think about people with shitty jobs. The girl who made my Jamocha, the guy in a van staring at me while I filled my tire with air, the guy who almost gave me a speeding ticket had I not been wearing a bathing suit, the guy trying hopelessly to sell my boyfriend a $160 pair of shoes and the $60 orthotic inserts while his belly bumped into my elbow, the garbage boy at Marc's, the garbage guy at Mickey's Dairy Treat, the man who wears the sign that says "$40 CELL PHONES, FREE TXT MESSAGING!!" and stands on the side of the road in the sun, the same man who holds the sign on a pole that says "$20 OIL CHANGE AND TIRE ROTATION", the UPS guy who gets caught in the rain, the girl who cleans the bathrooms at the gym....
And all these people I think, well at least you have a job. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get one of those. Even my college educated boyfriend couldn't get a job at KMart, and there's still Help Wanted signs up. Honestly, my dream job would be folding paper. Here's a stack of paper and a radio, go nuts. That's all I need right now. That would keep me going, my blood rushing.

Well I just finished yet another Bukowski, which explains this bitter post. Now I'm moving on to something even more riveting, "The Sexually Adequate Female", by a man named Frank S. Caprio, MD. I guess Frank knows more about my body. Good thing.

It Would Have Been Perfect, Had It Been Me

2008-06-22T19:31:00.000-04:00

The rain was pouring down in sheets and collecting in the cracks on the brick road. It came in seconds with no time to run for cover. We were caught on our 1969 Triumph, or something similar. I was wearing a cotton dress and sandals and he was wearing an old t-shirt and jeans. We had just left our studio in the city and were driving back to our loft on the west side of town. Drenched and soaked just about to the bone, the clouds broke and the oncoming waters shifted on. We were laughing at how wet we were, driving down the side streets, when a Sigur Ros song began playing from a nearby car. The sun was barely sticking its fingers out when we drove down our street. Of course, I wish the ran had persisted.

It would have been perfect, had I been the girl on the bike. It would have been perfect had I not been the girl sitting in my car shuffling through my iPod.

Birthday wishes vs. birthday happenings

2008-06-10T19:41:00.000-04:00

So I feel it necessary to outline my birthday party. I'm only going to give you the facts here, because I don't find it necessary to make any interpretations or implications.

1. Sunday afternoon, sent out text message to friends informing them that I will be drinking cheap wine at my sister's house while she is away for the summer in Idaho. If they would like to join me, they can. If it ends up being that awkward quartet of disconnected acquaintances, then let that be my fault.

2. Sunday 8:30pm, check out 2 six packs of beer (Heineken and Red Stripe), and 2 bottles of wine (Cheap and Cheaper) from Discount Drug Mart. Decide to invest in some gourmet snacks (Lime flavored tortilla chips and Buffalo Blue Cheese potato chips, actually spelled Bleu Cheese). Go to my sister's house, "set up" the snacks in an oversized dish, turn on the fridge so that the warm beer can be less warm.

3. Sunday 9pm, sit on the couch with my iced soy latte that ends up being chunky on the bottom (and $4.05). Dump the rest of it in a coffee mug so that the chunks don't leave the bottom of the cup. Wait for guests.

4. Sunday 9:30pm, very good friend shows up..."Thank you gawd"... She sits with me, we recap our awkward Saturday evening, I offer wine or beer, she declines, I express some grief in actually attempting a party, she laughs.

5. Sunday 10pm, bike bells in the driveway. Schizophrenic Ken (who's 47 and drinks too much), the barber, and Dumb Danny arrive at the door with PBR's in hand. I offer them "good beer", they look nervous, the barber offers to bike to the gas station for more PBR's. No-nonsense, not amused friend arrives and finds my friends strange. Probably wonders why I'm friends with a schizophrenic drunk and barber, also declines an alcoholic beverage, I attempt to take-in as much alcoholic beverages as possible, in attempts to make this situation seem... "normal".

6. Sunday 11pm, Ken rolls a cigarette, begins smoking it inside despite my requests for him to "go outside", ashes his cigarette on the new wooden floor. The motorcyclist/mechanic arrives.

7. Sunday 11:10pm, I continue drinking wine. It doesn't help.

8. Sunday 11:30pm, have a $13 pizza delivered, leave a $7 dollar tip because I feel worse for the pizza guy than I do for myself. He tells me he had a rough evening, I commiserate.

9. Monday 12:00am, pray that no one else shows up so that I can go to bed.

10. Monday 12:30am, boyfriend and friend show up to find that the schizophrenic, the barber, and the dumb Danny have left. One piece of pizza remains. Close friend and motorcyclist/mechanic also remain. Boyfriend eats the last piece of pizza.

11. Monday 2am, everyone leaves.

Old Journals, timeless thoughts

2008-05-25T21:32:00.000-04:00

I found a journal from 2005 and found some really moving thoughts, and so correct me if I'm wrong. I believe I may have been smarter and somewhat less jaded back then:

August 25, 2005

So that was our entire relationship, summed up into one awkward hug. It is times like that where you finally come to the realization that nothing really ends. We never quite had a beginning and the time that we knew each other was only a way of keeping a track of our own lives. Our conversations were known to go around in circles with one useless piece of trivia bumping into the next. He and I "together" acts as only a bit of historical trivia, the history that know one cares about until it is brought up.
Despite his dull finish, I could always find inspiration in him. He managed to have an honest heart because his heart had nothing to hide. The first time we met I felt that perhaps there was something about me that he could take and hide from everyone....

October 20, 2005

My Angel Drives a Gremlin

At a time of love and lost, crossing bridges and burning them, the only place that seems most comfortable to me is in my head. Despite its chaotic tendencies and isolated thoughts, my mind holds such deep nostalgic chairs that would be sturdy enough to hold up my gigantic weight. But you see, even though I live through my mind, my mind creates a world only from this realistic one. Every home I see becomes my castle, every car I see turns into the one that I designed, and every boy staring deeply into his novel becomes my one and only love.

It's the Energy that Makes us GO!

2008-05-14T10:05:00.000-04:00

A priest recently told a story about when his car broke down, and this is not the beginning of a joke. He was very aware of how far he could get on a tank of gas in his vehicle, and he knew precisely where a gas station was when his car would be close to the light. Turns out this gas station no longer existed and had closed for business a while back. Therefore, his car ran out of gas and he was stranded on a quiet road. There is no real conclusion to this story, besides some guy driving by and picking him up so he could get gas for his car. He wasn't an angel or anything like that. The point of his story was that this 2000 pounds of metal, his car, is useless without the gasoline that gives it the energy to run. I think you know where I'm going with this, or at least you should. I've made the metaphor here, so now you can make your own.

The "Beautiful" Atlantic City

2008-04-27T14:29:00.000-04:00

My thoughts are better in the car

2008-04-27T00:47:00.000-04:00

i saw three birds yesterday, two were brown and one was a brilliant blue. the blue one grabbed the food then dashed off. the two brown kept milling around eating the food on the ground without even noticing their brilliant blue friend. the blue seemed completely out of place, especially on a gloomy day. yet here they were, all three birds in one place. it kind of made me sad.

so i feel like i'm starting to lose my friends, or i am losing my friends, and i am completely aware that this is my fault. i often feel that i am not cut out to have friends. there are friend people and then there are drifters.i'm the drifter that's beginning to feel suffocated. i have my good friends that make me happy, but in the end, i look forward to coming home and sitting on the couch with a book and a cat. plus my dearest friend is currently overseas and i'm afraid that when or if she gets back to the states, nothing will be the same. and i suppose that i'm okay with this, because i've come to realize that there are reasons for the changes in life, and it's much like shedding a skin. but right now i'm in this place that doesn't feel comfortable. i feel like i haven't found the right sweater yet. but this happens to me every season. i just keep vomiting up new midlife crises at every corner. i hate my job, i have no friends, i have no job, i need a new life path, i need a new home...

Lastly is my song pick for now:
Altamaha by Seely.

What?

2008-04-10T00:43:00.000-04:00

And guess what? Now I don't even work for a web maintenance company. What a failure. I quit my job because, long story short, a hot Polish chick named Olga was sitting in my desk Friday morning. Now I'm left to face all the possibilities that this world holds. I just got a phone call from some dude who received my resume for a teaching job in Asia. Do I do Asia? Or perhaps do I head to Cleveland State and finish my masters. That would be the comfortable thing to do. I think the problem right now is I'm taking advice from everyone else, but I have not had a conversation with myself asking me what I want to do.

Anyway, we all deal with it. Lastly I'd like to talk about my experience of joining a gym. Actually, I could talk about the trainer (stranger) who's in your face while you're sweating and lifting things in ways you don't normally lift them. Or I could talk about the old people who give me funny looks. But really I'm just going to talk about the fact that I joined a gym....What?

I Spilled Blue Ink on my Collar

2008-03-23T22:07:00.000-04:00

So I'm a bartender at a local joint, and I mean local. My college friends have gone onto bigger and better places and here I am in the same neighborhood I grew up in, actually, in the same house I grew up in. I'm not a fan of familiarity either. So now I'm the bartender at the first bar I'd actually consider going to in my neighborhood. Let's see, I could go to the bar where all the jackasses who graduated from my high school go. Then I could run into them, they'll take a few minutes to remember my name, not remember it, sort of remember who I was then be offended when I don't recognize them because their scruffy facial hair hides their pre-pubescent features. Yea, then they might be impressed that I graduated from a college now ranked 38th in the country (without getting pregnant/sent to rehab during that time) until I tell them that I work part-time at a "web maintenance" company and a local bar. Then if we have time I'll try to sneak in the fact that I'm on my way to graduate school, but without telling them that I'm going for a masters in bullshit...I mean Creative Writing.

But who needs a masters in Creative Writing when you meet a guy named Dave. He comes into my local bar, orders a couple glasses of wine while he leans in and enjoys hearing about my weekend, even if he knows I worked all weekend. And why would that be interesting to him? Because he has worked at Lincoln Electric for 30 years, never married to my knowledge, has always vacationed alone, and said he would never move to Pittsburgh where his family is "because his job is here, and [his cat] Fluffy". He may be the nicest guy I know. He likes that I remembered him telling me about visiting his mother in Pittsburgh after having to clean his basement all morning. Or how about Jim. He never shows up to the bar without a library book in hand. He's an electrician who likes French films. He is divorced and has a daughter who is 24. He usually buys Budweiser's during happy hour but switches to a can of Pabst after 9. If he's in a good mood he'll buy the locals some shots. And then there's Tony, the Plain Dealer reporter who drinks Campari and soda and is somehow very charming. Then there's Rick. He's the token jazz man who lost his weekly gig at a local restaurant because they are attempting to change their image so the yuppies feel safer about dining there. He smokes a lot, eats a lot of sandwiches and donuts, has a fat cat probably reminiscent of himself, and a Bukowski fan only because he is Bukowski.

So I can keep this up. But what about myself? Where do I fit in? Well these men believe that I'm the most beautiful girl they've ever seen. Maybe the lights are dim and they've thrown back a few, but who would complain? Maybe it's hard for me to admit that I feel more comfortable around men twice or three times my age then a group of girls who weigh in as my peers. There's something amazing about their fascination. It's not even creepy. They are just a bunch of honest guys who need some company. Dave even told me that his day just got better as soon as he saw me. I'm just like the rest of them. Looking for some validation. I had this thought the other day, when an average couple told me about their love for each other. He is a construction worker and she rolls burritos. Because she is in love, she feels her sense of validation. I'm sure she felt beautiful and poetic as she stroked the average body of her t-shirted mister.

Even though I'm left to tend to my average life, I'm also left to tend to those people my friends will never meet. Although gone to better places, they're missing out on the bigger story. So big this short story has not even sparked the cigarette that got smashed on the bathroom floor.

And shut up if you think that all this is me validating my crappy job.

2008-03-16T23:11:00.000-04:00

So I've been thinking a lot about these two birds I saw fighting. They were on the ground pecking at each other and when I stopped to look at them, I thought, "Are they mating, or are they fighting?" Then I continued my thinking and realized that these may in fact be the same thing. Such a vicious closeness can only reminisce two things, and I think these are obvious. So I continued walking, with a half-eaten chocolate croissant in a paper bag, when I saw a short and thick man walk by with a gaze towards nothing but the ground. Then, loud enough to hear yet under his breath, he said "Fatass", without missing a step. This is when I realize that you can't distinguish anything as being real or non-real. It's just not a valid concept.

2008-01-19T12:45:00.000-05:00

2008-01-14T19:05:00.000-05:00

I'm worried that my years will start to run into each other, so that each special year slowly becomes not special, and suddenly I am that person who argues that this event happened in this year, and it did not happen on the year that you said, and why don't you look it up if you don't believe me. And then suddenly I trip and everyone runs to catch me because I cannot, or they think I cannot, stand up on my own. I've suddenly become an infant, yet aware of my own weaknesses.

Is this what I have to look forward to?

2007-12-09T15:09:00.000-05:00

A List of "Dead" Bands

2007-11-30T17:36:00.000-05:00

1. Dead Kennedys
2. Dead Milkmen
3. Dead Boys
4. Greatful Dead
5. Dead Hookers
6. Dead Elephants
7. Dead Can Dance
8. Dead Prez
9. Dead or Alive
10. Dead Poetic
11. Dead Dolls
12. Dead Schembechlers
13. Murder by Death
14. Megadeath

Bands Associated with Death
1. Carcass
2. The Coffins
3. Coffinberry
4. Flesh Eaters
5. The Zombies
6. Destructor

I'm sure there are some I've forgotten, but just a few to ponder.

My First Speakeasy

2007-11-25T13:15:00.000-05:00

So the funny part about a speakeasy, besides the fact that the door into it is disguised as a mirror, is the fact that it's just a bar. So you get to act cool without anybody knowing. Imagine a group of regular 20-somethings walking into classy bar, but ignoring the bartender's "Can I help you?", because instead they were going to the secret part where people with money hang out. I probably drank $100 worth of drinks last night, having only drank 2 drinks and an espresso. Obviously, I didn't pay for this. What I can't help wonder is how one becomes a speakeasy member. Obviously, you need to have some millions of dollars, but on top of that, you have to be special. Somehow, you have to know someone who knows someone and like to drink. And you have to like to drink rare and delicate spirits. Now that I've had a Hemingway made with only fresh ingredients, I'm not sure that splurging on a whiskey and ginger ale at the local pub is going to compete. Perhaps this will lead me to quit drinking.

And here's the other thing. Earlier in the evening I was in the suburbs at my boyfriend's house mingling with his aunts and uncles and cousins, also from the burbs. And when one cousin was leaving, she says to me, "Nice to meet you, and good luck. I heard you live on the skirts of the bad area, that things are getting bad". Have I ever gotten shot at, or stolen from? Well maybe my dad got his car stolen once, but we got it back, twice! But what baffles me, and frankly pisses me off, is the fact that everyone is so afraid even though they've never stepped foot in my neighborhood. I turned out just fine, and the only thing that suburbanites know about my neighborhood is that black people live there. And who says "good luck"? As though I have to wade through thugs with guns and drugs on my way to work, so I need all the luck I can get. Maybe we have some interesting characters around town, and maybe some of them are my friends, but I say that with pride. What a better way to build character than corresponding with "people of all kinds" and people who don't even know what a speakeasy is. On top of it all, this speakeasy was located in an undesirable part of town. So how come all these old monebags and hags can come out to the ghetto to have a drink, but they can't live there? Here I go again about Cleveland, but maybe that's why our city has become so dispersed. thanks.