Who’s Next?

“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.” ― Erich Fromm

This is the quote of the day relating to the daily meditation I’m doing through the Oprah/Deepak 21-day challenge.

Strangely or not, it’s what I was writing about in my morning pages before I logged into the meditation. The idea of uncertainty, of letting go of what’s known. And how very close to that I feel right now.

I found out yesterday I didn’t get the job I was in several rounds of interviews and mock sessions for during the last two weeks. And all for the better, I think. In fact, I’d reached out to an old schoolmate I’d seen on LinkedIn had worked there to ask her thoughts. And when I wrote back that they didn’t hire me, she wrote: You are better off. That place is a shit hole.

So there’s that!

But, this morning as I reflected on where I am, with the one avenue I was pursuing more actively than others cut short, I find myself without an exact destination. Which is where in fact I’ve been, but I've been distracted with the possibility of this employment.

What brought me to considering the question of Who’s Next was my bringing out an old reader packet of poems from an undergrad course I took. I’d brought it down a few days ago; I was 22 when I took the class, finishing up from the lost semester when I’d been otherwise engaged in a padded room.

The day after I brought the packet down, a friend of mine mentioned teaching again, putting together a C.V. (a teacher’s resume) and syllabus. I went online to higheredjobs.com yesterday to poke around and see. And again, I sort of went all blank about it. I see titles like Professor of 18th and 19th Century Romanticism or of Rhetoric, and I call myself uninterested and unqualified.

And then after a while of poking around online anyway, my computer overheated and shut down on me, which was probably for the best!

But, today I opened that packet labeled Twentieth Century Poetry II, and I read the names and poems of Robert Bly, Gwendolyn Brooks, yes, even the ubiquitous Plath. I read my margin notes, and was amused to see that my handwriting looked as it does now.

I was interested in the poems, but I wasn’t sparked. These were the dreams and longings of a different person. The person who ate these poems up, who devoured and analyzed and waxed prosaic marginalia.

I remember the classroom I was in when we read Spenser’s Faerie Queene. I remember being the one student who was really intrigued by his epic traitorous, political poem hidden in monarch-approved meter. I remember the classroom where the professor told us stories of the poets’ lives, who’d met who and exchanged letters, the relationships behind their lyrics.

I remember the room for my make-up semester, on a different campus, since my cohort had graduated. The computer lab where I wrote short stories and saved them onto the new smaller, square floppy disks that were actually hard.

This morning I reread the same works that meant so much to me then, a woman who felt she had no voice, and poetry was a quiet art that could conjure hurricanes, that could release those that were teeming in my body.

But, I don’t feel it in the same way now. I of course want new generations of students to hear tales of those smoky rooms where creativity was incubated and smile in camaraderie at Spenser’s thinly veiled subversion. But, I don’t know. Is it me? Is it me now?

There’s a quote from a Yogi tea bag I have taped over my kitchen sink, along with all the others I felt necessary to collect. It reads: Empty yourself and let the Universe fill you.

I haven’t ever really known what that meant, or how to do it. I haven’t known how to let go of all I know, of all my plans, of labeling what I know and feel and have done as relevant or useless. I haven’t been able to answer the call of that tea quote until today.

I do feel emptied. I feel emptied of direction, of specific ambition, of perspective on myself. But it’s not a negative feeling.

I feel like a student in a new class, but one I don’t know the course title to. I don’t know which of my skills will be useful in this new class, what of my knowledge will be relevant.

I don’t know if I'll need a paintbrush or a calculator, what I'll grow to learn, or who will be my teachers. I don’t know who else I’ll meet in class, and who I’ll never see again. I don’t know the iteration of myself who will be called upon to show up here, or who will be created from being here.

I only know that this nameless class is the only one on my course schedule for the foreseeable future, and that perhaps at the end of it, I may be able to answer what iteration of Molly is next.

pome.

Tour de Coeur

Here.

  Place your fingers — Here.
   Lower your head, breathe and

  press them in.

Do you feel it, soft and

  warm and — I'll arch my back —

  pliable. How the muscles shift around you,

learning you, too.

  Here,

Lay your head here, and I'll

  breathe, not freeze

  as you explore the hidden

edges and ridges.

I will try 

  to keep my eyes open

while you read my collarbone like Braille.

8 6 14

"Person-To-Person"

Of course it is a pity that so much of all creative work is so closely related to the personality of the one who does it.

It is sad and embarrassing and unattractive that those emotions that stir him deeply enough to demand expression, and to charge their expression with some measure of light and power, are nearly all rooted, however changed in their surface, in the particular and sometimes peculiar concerns of the artist himself, that special world, the passions and images of it that each of us weaves about him from birth to death, a web of monstrous complexity, spun forth at a speed that is incalculable to a length beyond measure, from the spider mouth of his own singular perceptions.

It is a lonely idea, a lonely condition, so terrifying to think of that we usually don't. And so we talk to each other, write and wire each other, call each other short and long distance across land and sea, clasp hands with each other at meeting and at parting, fight each other and even destroy each other because of this always somewhat thwarted effort to break through walls to each other. As a character in a play once said, "We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins."

Personal lyricism is the outcry of prisoner to prisoner from the cell in solitary where each is confined for the duration of his life.

[...]

Of course I know that I have sometimes presumed too much upon corresponding sympathies and interest in those to whom I talk boldly, and this has led to rejections that were painful and costly enough to inspire more prudence. But when I weigh one thing against another, an easy liking against a hard respect, the balance always tips the same way, and whatever risk of being turned a cold shoulder, I still don't want to talk to people only about the surface aspects of their lives, the sort of things that acquaintances laugh and chatter about on ordinary social occasions.

I feel that they get plenty of that, and heaven knows so do I, before and after the little interval of time in which I have their attention and say what I have to say to them. The discretion of social conversation, even among friends, is exceeded only by the discretion of "the deep six," that grave wherein nothing is mentioned at all. Emily Dickinson, that lyrical spinster of Amherst, Massachusetts, who wore a strict and savage heart on a taffeta sleeve, commented wryly on that kind of posthumous discourse among friends in these lines:

       I died for beauty, but was scarce
       Adjusted in the tomb,
       When one who died for truth was lain
       In an adjoining room. 

       He questioned softly why I failed?
       "For beauty," I replied. 
       "And I for truth,—the two are one;
       We brethren are," he said. 

       And so, as kinsmen met at night,
       We talked between the rooms,
       Until the moss had reached our lips,
       And covered up our names.

Meanwhile!—I want to go on talking to you as freely and intimately about what we live and die for as if I knew you better than anyone else whom you know.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, preface to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1955.

Connect.

I haven’t much to say today, so I’m going to pull a Melissa and give you one of my favorite poems.

I first heard David Whyte on the carride home from my annual women’s meditation retreat perhaps 5 years ago. My friend, in her new and exciting Mini, maybe even with the top down, decided we were a little too altered at the moment to listen to music on the drive down the mountains of Napa, and so put in a CD of David Whyte. I’d never heard of him. Or his Irish accent. Or the way he repeats his own lines when he recites them, the way he pauses to savor and emphasize words. But, I did that day.

The next time I heard the poem recited, it was in the hospital, maybe a year and a half ago. The same friend brought a slightly battered, second-hand copy of the David Whyte book named for the poem. The nurse that day, with her Hawaiian flowerprint scrubs and her own Aussie accent, saw the gift exchange and exclaimed her own love of David Whyte. So I asked her to read this one aloud to us, and reluctantly, shyly, she assented. It was so still and lovely in that room then.

When you get a chance to hear him, do it. Till then, reading will suffice.

            Everything Is Waiting For You

            Your great mistake is to act the drama

            as if you were alone. As if life

            were a progressive and cunning crime

            with no witness to the tiny hidden

            transgressions.  To feel abandoned is to deny

            the intimacy of your surroundings.  Surely,

            even you, at times, have felt the grand array;

            the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding

            out your solo voice.  You must note

            the way the soap dish enables you,

            or the window latch grants you freedom.

            Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

            The stairs are your mentor of things

            to come, the doors have always been there

            to frighten you and invite you,

            and the tiny speaker in the phone

            is your dream-ladder to divinity.

            Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into

            the conversation.  The kettle is singing

            even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots

            have left their arrogant aloofness and

            seen the good in you at last.  All the birds

            and creatures of the world are unutterably

            themselves.  Everything is waiting for you.

                    David Whyte. listen. (start at 1:19; so good!) read.

Grandfather/advised me:/Learn a trade/I learned/to sit at desk/and condense/No layoff/from this/condensery ~ Niedecker

For reasons unknown, I reached for the book of “Modern Poetry” that I bought for a class during my undergrad days. It lines my shelf with the Norton Anthology of Poetry by Women, one by Langston Hughes, and even a book on Greek Mythology that I haven’t wanted to part with in the 10 (jeez, can’t believe it’s been such a short time!) years since undergrad.

Maybe part of this memory-lane path was struck by my friend’s photo on Facebook of an abandoned shopping cart in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where I spent my undergrad years. Maybe I just wanted to read some poetry this morning.

It was interesting to me in grad school, one of the teachers asked us, poets all, if we had any books of poetry at home. My shelves, besides those few relic anthologies I rarely look at, pretty much housed some novels and a bunch of “spiritual” books.

I kept a few of the mandatory books we were required to purchase during those two years at Mills, and even found myself going to the poetry section of the bookstore once, purchasing from titles alone, Mary Karr’s Sinners Welcome and one with this lovely title:

            If there is something to desire,/

            There will be something to regret./

            If there is something to regret,/

            There will be something to recall./

            If there is something to recall,/

            There was nothing to regret./

            If there was nothing to regret,/

            There was nothing to desire.

by Vera Pavlova.

Tell me that’s not a great title! And message.

Poetry is a strange thing to “read.” There are some books you want to read page after page, because it does read like a novel, and you are impelled forward through the pages of the “story,” the landscape.

But, much of poetry insists that you sit with each piece, each page for longer than 30 seconds.

Much of poetry, in my own limited estimation, calls you to allow the words to melt like a fine piece of dark chocolate. You sense the bitterness, the sweetness, the texture, the mouth-feel. You turn it over and under your tongue, attempting to pry all the secrets out of this square bit of matter before it is gone. And afterward, you notice around inside your mouth where the taste remains, what it reminds you of. If you “liked” it.

Poetry is like that.

A marathon, not a sprint. An 8-course meal, not fast food.

Here is a piece from Pavlova’s book I shall choose at random, because I actually haven’t read the book, though I bought it two years ago – because poetry requires that time, and most times, us modern folk won’t allow it. So, here’s to taking a moment to savor the delicacy of language:

Eternalize me just a bit:

            take some snow and sculpt me in it,

            with your warm and bare palm

            polish me until I shine…

Normal Functioning Levels

In an effort to “put my needs first,” I’ve decided to change this to a weekly, instead of a daily, blog. So, Sunday will be our day together, folks. Two buses and an 8:30am clock-in time will make weekday blogging a little bit like killing a wildebeest before breakfast – highly unnecessary.

So, I have a job. ! This past week, starting on Wednesday, I began working in the front office of a synagogue in Berkeley. This, will be an adjustment. Honestly, my commute was easier when I was crossing the bridge! But, I have a job. I needed one, and now, finally, I have one. I’m still not clear on wtf it took so long to find one. It certainly does fall into the "underearning" category of a job “below my education and skill level,” but, then again, the first bit of advice in the How to get out of debt… book is **Get A Job, ANY Job** So, I have a job.

It’s not going to be that bad either. There are a lot of systems in place that are way wonky, i.e. ten-step processes, when they could be 3, but that’s sort of why I’m there. In the rest of life, usually when I want to help others streamline things in their lives or make them better, it’s usually none of my damn business and I get to practice holding my tongue and trusting they're on their own path. But, luckily, here, it very literally is my business, and so, I’m going to get to organize and streamline, and “correct” what’s really silly.

That’s part of the advantage of coming in to a new place, you see things that other people haven’t noticed, really, in years. Why do you click these three things instead of this one? Oh, I don’t know, it’s just how I was trained, so that’s how I do it. Why is there an old, dusty dead Foreman grill in the kitchen – does anyone use it? I don’t know, it’s just always been there. WHY do you print off paper calendars of the entire year for the weekly staff meeting that barely get glanced at, and then thrown away?… So, I do get to come in, with fresh eyes, and be like, whoa, uh, this is stupid.

That said, there are going to be a lot of advantages to this job that are not monetary. There’s a pre-school, and this week, the little kids were getting their intro week, so I got to see all these two and three year olds come in the front door, all nervous or excited. I got to encourage them. There’s a very sweet, wise-ass kid studying for his Bar Mitzvah who comes to hang out almost daily with the youth group advisor, so we get to wise-ass at each other. There’s a piano in the chapel off the main sanctuary that once I get keys, I was told absolutely, I could come in there and play during lunch.

It’s not a bank. That’s an advantage. It’s a synagogue. This means people coming in looking to volunteer; retirees looking at the gift shop for cards or mezuzahs. Kids coming for Hebrew school; adults coming for Torah study. It’s a community that I’m getting to become a part of. And that’s not something every job has at all.

Even though, I’ll tell you, I was highly disappointed that I didn’t get the Marketing job I wanted, (and I got a letter from the IRS this week saying that I owe them money from 2010, likely because I didn’t report my student loan money properly), this isn’t going to be that bad. Am I still going to be living a bit meagerly? Likely. It’s not a high paying position in the slightest. Is it more than minimum wage? Yes. Am I waiting tables? No. Am I making sales calls all day, like one of the jobs I interviewed for? No.

It could be worse. And, it can only get better, I suppose.

Mostly, I am glad that my stress hormones are in retreat. Returning to normal, without the barely contained underground river of how am I going to pay my bills??? I slept almost the whole day yesterday. It’s like, with the stress in retreat, the whole system floods with a great big PAUSE, system shutting down now, crisis averted. Yesterday I woke up, ate breakfast, thought about going to the farmer’s market, and climbed back into bed, waking up 4 hours later. Took another mini nap after trips to the library and grocery store, cooked dinner, watched a dvd, and went to bed at a decent time.

I needed it. Obviously. I’ve been stressed, man.

In that/this period, though, I’ve also started to do some other things. I’ve begun to soak my own chickpeas to make hummus from scratch. I’ve begun to marinate tofu so that I can bake it. I bought quinoa from the bulk section at a way cheaper price than anything packaged. All of these organic, all of them cheaper than buying ready packed or ready made.

I’ve really enjoyed doing this. Experimenting with different flavors in the hummus, roasted red pepper (jarred, but one day, maybe my own), garlic, pine nuts, lemon. Using the tofu marinade to pour onto veggies I’ve steamed to go with them. I’m getting healthier in my eating habits. More interested, and more creative. Part of that creativity was borne of necessity, the need to buy things cheaper as money has run out during these months of unemployment.

Coffee is no longer in my cabinets. This makes me awfully sad. But, it’s not good for me, so I’ve been reading, so it’s going the way of the dodo. That, I will miss. But it’s not like coffee’s moved to England, and I’ll never see it again. I did, indeed, get some decaf with some caf this week. There’s just nothing quite like the texture of coffee.

One place I had coffee was at the poetry reading on Thursday, at which I read my rather explicit new poems. I didn’t preface them by saying the experiences described were mostly not current, which I sort of wish I’d said, as what will people THINK of me??, but it all went well. I got good feedback on my work. The words “bold,” “brave,” and “funny” were thrown around. I’m glad I read the work, even though I was nervous about it. Every time I perform, it makes me want to do it more, and again.

I wasn’t able to “get it together” to make broadsides of the poem I wanted to, but there will be time for that. I had a few other things on my mind this week!

All in all, it was a highly emotional week. The anticipation of whether I was going to get the job I wanted. Interviewing for it at 9:30pm Sunday night via Skype and finding out at 11pm that I hadn’t gotten it (the other girl had more “proven experience”). Waking up Monday morning, knowing I was about to accept a job that has the same title and pay rate as a job I accepted 5 years ago. Calling a friend to ask if I could ask them for more money. Crying, mourning the loss of where I think I ought to be, and what I ought to be doing. The loss of my ability to save on any significant level so that I might move back East some time this century.

And then calling to ask for more money, not getting what I asked, but a token amount more than what they offered. The new chaos of commuting to a new job. The first few days of a job when everyone is still evaluating you. The knowledge dump into my brain from the girl whose job I’m taking and training with. The highly anticipated poetry reading where I was bold and brave and scared as fuck. And the crash, like air let out of a balloon, a deflating of all the energy, worry, and stress as I crashed out yesterday.

There are still going to be challenges, of course. This is a new job. There’s a lot to continue to learn, and the girl I’m replacing leaves on Thursday. I still do have some financial issues to contend with like the IRS letter, and the fact that I don’t get paid till the 15^th. But, by the way, I did sell my electric guitar and the amp for the price I never thought I would get (thank g-d for asking for help). So, it will be ok. But, I still feel deflated. I’m going to need time to bulk back up and refuel to normal functioning levels.

Til then, and in order to get there, I will TRY to be kind to myself. Get out of my head, and my own problems. And be grateful, if even for a moment, that I am finally employed at a job that is far from atrocious. 

We Have All Overpacked

hey dudes. burning candle at both ends, with early work commute, and late night job hunting, so, please accept this poem in place of today's blog. it's what I read at the "spiritual send-off" graduation ceremony two weeks ago. imagine me being emphatic. xo,m.

                     * * *

There is a train departing shortly.

All the people in this room will be on it.

This is lucky because you have overpacked.

You have brought

scarves

and sweaters

and knitted hats.

You have anticipated your journey

will be wintered

and icy

and hard.

Your neighbor has also overpacked.

His suitcase is filled with

stilettos,

and boas

and a katy perry mash-up.

He has anticipated his journey

will shimmy with ease

and levity

and laughter.

As you look around this room,

each person comes here overpacked –

with ideas

with plans

with scars.

Each person with

a dream,

or prayer,

or plea.

Each of us comes here hoping

we’ve prepared for our journey properly.

Hoping we’ll

have enough or

be enough or

do enough.

Hoping that everything

we’ve put in

and gone through

and let go of is enough

to move on from here.

But, I am sorry to tell you,

we haven’t got everything we need.

See, I need your feathered boa

to remind me

not take myself too seriously

 – and that glitter is a verb.

You need my winter boots

to help you walk through that one

moonless night.

The person in front of you would like to know

if you have a bandaid she could use,

or a book that you love,

or a love that you lost.

The person behind you would like to know

if she could borrow your arms for a minute

so you can enclose her in an embrace

-- something none of us can pack.

There is a train departing shortly.

All the people in this room will be on it.

And this is lucky because we have all

overpacked.

May 2012

Rituals, Rites of Passage, and the Spindly Lines of Fate.

Here.We.Go.!

I’d written last week to some of my fellow cohorts to ask if they wanted to mark our graduation with some kind of a “ritual” or ceremony. That very afternoon, I was invited to read a poem at the “Spiritual Send-off” graduation ceremony at school. Apparently, I really do and am meant to have a ritual around this. To mark and honor and acknowledge what a privilege this is, and to mark and honor and acknowledge what we've done and how we have shown up and completed something sort of major.

When I got into school two years ago, a friend of mine suggested we have some sort of ceremony of our own to celebrate and honor and give thanks for having gotten there, to wherever there was – an answer to a stated and unstated prayer or longing or wish. For years, when I’d ask folks what they did for a living - trying to vicariously divine what I ought to be doing for a living - when folks responded that they went to school full-time, invariably, I said that I envied people who could do that. Who did that. Underneath envy, is longing.

I knew for some time, and said it occasionally or often, that I wanted to “go back to school.” That I wanted to go for some advanced degree, but I had no idea what. I toyed with many ideas. Rabbinic School. Cantorial School (the singers in synagogues). Masters in Education. Masters in Jewish Education. Clown School (just kidding). Master’s in Literature… that always seemed to make the most sense, what with my undergrad in English Literature, but I had no inspiration for what I'd study in that or why.

Through a series of “coincidences,” I’d heard of Mills College. Although well-known here in our little Bay Area enclave, I hadn’t heard of it prior. What happened was, in about 2008, my friend in Brooklyn, whom I’d met here in SF, started a magazine. An arts and culture journal. She called me and asked if I’d interview a writer for the magazine who lived out here in the Bay, and despite my lack of experience, I said sure.

Yiyun Li was working as a visiting professor at Mills College, I found out in my research about her before our phone call. This was the first I’d heard of it. I toodled around the website, and something somewhere in me sighed, Yessss….

Every six months or so, I’d revisit the website. I’d never been to the college campus (The first time I even saw the campus was orientation day!). I’d hardly ever been to Oakland. But, I’d read the description of the English Department’s Masters’ program, and I felt …well, like I knew. Like I knew, but dismissed, closing the browser for another six months. That’s for other people. People who can afford to go back to school, or who really know what they want to do.

I found a notebook recently that has scribbled notes from a phone call with my Aunt. She’s an English professor at a university in Virginia, and has been doing all this for a very long time. My notes are probably from 2008 or 2009. They’re asking me to check out programs, and seek out writers I like and see where they’re teaching. They’re asking me to take action to help “figure out” what I want to study.

See, my above list of my options for Masters’ degrees remained. What did I want to study? Desire and action are two different things. Vague desire and clarity are as well.

But, at some point, all of those peekings at the Mills website came to a head. And in the Spring of 2010, I called the English department admissions coordinator to talk it out.

Huddled in a side office at my job, I sat on the phone with her, and she told me about the requirements for the Masters in Literature Program. The problem became, that I didn’t really do so hot in the last days of my undergrad (read: Pulling a Britney), and I didn’t have any connections with my professors from then, and I certainly didn’t have any academic papers on hand.

I called my brother, and asked him to go through my room in New Jersey, to see if he could find a paper of mine. He said he didn’t see anything like that as he sifted through a few years' of my papers and creative writings, but that “It is obvious that you are, and have always been a writer.”

This phrase helped more than he knew. I called Stephanie at the English Department, and as the deadline for application drew voraciously nearer, I asked her what I should do. I asked her, then,… what were the requirements for the MFA in Poetry Program….? (insert full body chills)

Those requirements, I had. 15-20 pages of recent poems. I had 16. No lie. Letters of recommendation – my gorgeous and supportive women Karen and Kristin who’d seen my evolution over a number of years and were aware of my poetry (go Facebook). And an essay. My essay. An essay which wove together the disparate streams of chance and circumstance and fate which brought me to the cave of longing for a Mills’ degree – about Yiyun Li, and the thread of creative writing through my life (thanks to Heather for that phrase), and about a mission statement I’d heard from a friend of mine – "To use my gifts and talents to be of maximum service to [G-d and] my fellows." That although I didn’t have my own mission statement yet, mine would be something like that.

It continues to be something like that.

The threads of fate conspired, faint as gossamer, lost as a cobweb in the dark at moments. At other times, bright and obvious as the red criss-crossed string of a movie manhunt over a map. Termed as I’ve put it, “an answer to a prayer I’d never have let myself utter,” instead of the MA in Literature, I applied to the MFA program in Poetry, and I got in.

In my friend’s living room a few weeks after I was accepted and in process of heading down a path I’d no idea to where, cross-legged on the floor, we wrote down all the things that we wanted to let go of – things that had brought us to the point where we were now, but which we believed weren’t serving us any more. To honor those characteristics and beliefs which had been necessary ‘til then, and then to burn them as a symbol of surrender and release of them.

So many of my “let go of” qualities were about doing it “on my own,” feeling like I needed to or had to do it alone, or that I had to figure it out.

I wrote down, “I can’t” and I burned it.

When the ceremony was at its end (“ceremony” being us burning several strips of paper over a bowl!), we wrote down what we wanted to take with us, as we headed out from there. On one square of blue lined paper, I wrote what I wanted to take with me from there, to Mills, to my future, to the world as I engage it more fully:

We Can.

Pulling a Carmen: 2

When I began this blog-a-day back in November of last year, my first post was called “Pulling a Carmen,” as I'd been reading and was encouraged by her own blog-a-day postings. In the time since, sometimes I just find it hugely funny how parallel my path is to my fellow blogger and friend.

For recent example:

• I also just starting going back on to the internet dating scene. In fact, I have a coffee date today with someone I met on JDate

• I too have said fuck it, and asked out a dude yesterday. Unfortunately, turns out he’s married, but it felt really good to do so.

• Several of the books that are lining my desk and bedside table are travel books about Europe, underlining my intention to take a real freaking vacation some time this century.

• And, I also rented a camera and video camera from the school’s A/V department to begin taking pictures again. 

Sometimes I feel awkward about our exceedingly similar trajectories, as if I’m copying her, but the reality is that independently, we come to these things, and then come here to write about them. It’s really funny, and also somewhat comforting to know that there is someone who is traveling a similar path toward “To thine own self be true.”

On that note, I went to see my friend’s band play in the city last night, and then headed with my girlfriends to go out dancing in Oakland. Prior to both these… we went to the Dharma Punx meditation – nothing says spiritually fit like meditating for 40 minutes before downing coffee with an add-shot. ;)

But to relate it to the ‘self be true’ part – each of these are places where I want to feel more connection. I hadn’t been to see live music in MUCH too long. It’s on my current list of “Serenity Moths” on my refrigerator (a list of things that aren’t cataclysmic, but slowly and subterraneaously eat away at my serenity and foundation). Yes, “Absence of live music” is on there, and so should be “dancing.” I’m a white girl. I have no ambition or goal to be anything but a mildly flailing Elaine Benice, but … i love it. The absence of self, the absence of self criticism or posturing or need to be anywhere or anything else. Lost in the music.

The band brought something else up for me. Like the “dropping” of the whole acting bent at the beginning of this year, what I’ve dropped more often than anything is the “being in a band” idea.

As you may know, I have 2 guitars, a bass, and a small USB plug in keyboard. Each as dust-covered as the next. The bass amp sits as a monument to abandoned dreams in my apartment.

Last night, watching my friend’s band, I remembered that this is something I want to do. In fact, I’d emailed one of the guitarist’s wife about 6 or more months ago to talk to her about her own process of getting toward singing in a band - embracing her inner teenage rock chick. If I had my … well, if I had my own back, I guess, I’d play bass, and I’d sing. Talk about vulnerability.

This week, I stood practically naked in front of an audience and spoke my poem into a microphone in a moderately full theater. That isn’t nearly as frightening to me as standing in front of an audience, singing, or playing.

The truth is that for several years, I’ve been gathering information about the whole bass playing thing. But, no, I haven’t been playing. A few years ago, I asked a guy I knew for bass advice, and he sent me a long list of places to start (which I didn't pursue). About a year later, I contacted this other guy about bass lessons (which I didn't pursue). … And the guy I asked out yesterday is also a bass player. Apparently, I have a thing.

Every few years, I’ll troll craigslist, and I’ll answer a few ads for singers. I even recorded myself a little on my computer’s Garageband to send as a sample. I got a “not a good fit, but thanks anyway” from one, and no reply from another. And, hey, I don’t blame em. When I’m terrified, it comes through. I don’t know. I’ve written here about it kind of frequently – and dismissed it and been “embarrassed” by it just as often.

However, once again, the thing that occurred to me last night as I watched my friend’s band was another case of “I want to do that” … followed by “I can do that.” There is no one stopping me, obviously except for myself and my fears, and that critic that says “Not good enough” and chops me off at the knees before I start.

One thing I’m working on releasing at the moment, a pattern and belief and behavior that is just not fucking serving me anymore, is my need or habit to stay small.

When I was living in South Korea, my friend nicknamed me “Ballsy Mollsy.” I had the absolute chutzpah and hubris to ask anyone anything, go anywhere, and do pretty much whatever I felt like doing in the hedonistic way most drunks do.

However, there is a quality of that Ballsy woman who still I am, somewhere, and who I want to resurrect or reveal or uncover or let loose – or even just let into the light a little tiny bit.

I find it’s happening in some ways. And I know to have compassion for myself as I try to aim in this direction which has been a Siren song for me (uh, no pun intended) for … oh, 15 years.

But compassion for slow progress, and acceptance of stagnation are two different things. And I’d really like to move forward from here.

So, for your reading pleasure, here’s a poem composed about a year ago. Reading aloud is encouraged.  As is recalling the line "So let it be written, so let it be done." Cheers. m.

Band Practice

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"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life"

When I was growing up, when my family went on long car rides, my dad had instituted a rule. My brother and I could only ask the question “Are we there yet?” three times, combined. Not three for him, three for me. Not phrased differently to bypass the rule. Three times. Are we there yet.

I’m sort of glad the Universe doesn’t have a rule like that, although I suppose it sort of does. For the number of times that I’ve asked what’s next, the answer remains as vague as the Magic 8 ball’s “Reply Hazy – Ask Again Later.” Apparently 3 seconds later is not later enough, and you get, “Cannot Predict Now.”

But, it’s sort of comforting in some ways I suppose. A friend said to me recently that we don’t know what’s next because it reminds us we’re not G-d. I also heard that G-d loves us just enough to not let us know what’ll happen next. The perpetual “SURPRISE!” type Higher Power. But, really, I think that if I ever knew really what was to happen next, I’d spend a lot of time manipulating to my way of thinking – if I’m meant to go in direction A, then I’ll start to pack for that direction, not knowing that perhaps I’m supposed to go to A, but with a byway in L, Q, and H in order to learn what I need by the time I get to A.

I was out with a group of us school poet folk last night at dinner after our performance poetry … performance. Which went highly well, I’d say. Pretty full theater, no technical problems, and, me, in my makeshift nudesuit – because really, when the else time would I have the opportunity to do that??

So, we’re out at dinner, and the women who are finishing their first year are asking about my experience there, if I took cross-courses at Berkeley, if I’ll stay in the Bay Area, and what’s next. And they’re just curious. I say that I really took school sort of as a walk – I looked into taking a GTU cross-course, but didn’t. But, I took painting, and singing, and acting. I mean, it is a liberal arts college (though you may not guess that from the highly funded business school it now hosts). I did take the school experience as a bit of a walk. It wasn’t academically rigorous. I think I took one class that had a lot of reading on theory and criticism. I took one that had moderate reading like that. And the rest, well, they were pretty much, write poetry, read poetry, discuss poetry. Period. It was sort of awesome.

I suppose I feel a little chagrined at not having taken more advantage of the opportunity, but then on the other hand, I think I also took great advantage in ways that weren’t as “rigorous.” I did just find out yesterday that you could rent the most awesome a/v tech equipment for up to two days – even lighting and high tech cameras and video cameras – so I’m a little bummed I didn’t take advantage of that – cuz it sounds AWESOME. I guess I do have a few days left! Maybe I’ll be a filmmaker for a few days, as I continue to send out tendrils into the work world.

I have one more class to complete. I have a class time on Thursday for Acting Fundamentals, and then our class performance next Wednesday. It’s just a scene, each of us students paired with someone and doing a scene assigned by the professor. But, I feel really comfortable there. I forget. I mean, after that flurry of activity in December and January around headshots and auditions and monologues, I let it all go to focus on school, which was appropriate, but now that I have a little more breathing room, I hear it. Like I hear the painting studio.

Stress and creativity aren’t quite compatible I suppose. But, in any case, being on stage last night (though I wish I’d reread my piece before I got onstage, as it was quite distracting to know I was/appeared naked!), and practicing my scene with my class partner, I mean, I just feel like I know this. There’s an incredible amount to learn, but I know about blocking, and staging. I helped the two of us create movement in the scene, to listen to the text and let it inform us. I also tried to not be bossy ;) as this was a joint effort. But I felt in my element.

I have an invitation to have coffee with an acting friend of mine – something that’s been pushed down the pages of the calendar like a shuffle board disc, and I intend to ask my acting teacher to coffee for an “informational interview” type conversation. But as I continue to look for work, to find out where and how I’m supposed to earn, and embody the question “what can I give” rather than “what can I get,” and let go of the Am I There Yet, I can also take FULL advantage of what I have in front of me – advocates, peers, and a wicked a/v department. 

Poetic Noise.

I was all set to write a blog about 7 years. How really when someone is 6 years old, they’re beginning their 7^th year of life. How I’ve been here in the SF Bay Area 6 years to the day, and so I begin my 7^th year in the Bay. And how, further, and don’t quote me, that our cells are said to regenerate every 7 years – all of them – so that I am now beginning a set of 7. Any and all cells that I had in my body when I arrived in San Francisco have absolutely been purged and regrown, replaced.

I think about this, and intended to write about all the things that have changed in these 6 full years. About where I am not as I begin my 7^th – about how I feel it’s completely cosmically appropriate that I stand ready to graduate from a Master’s program and contemplate a return to the East Coast, and even maybe a career.

I wanted to list things like getting my teeth fixed, a several-year process that I started here, after 10 years of having a few molars pulled in high school but never replaced, which made me self conscious in photos, though few others noticed (I certainly do now, as I smile entirely with every ounce of my cheeks).

I was going to write about my return to art. About taking up the pencil after several years' neglect and the first tentative and judgmental sketches which I shoved away for another few years before warming up and into myself – culminating in selling a painting last year – me?! of all people.

The last 6 years witnessed a return to the stage, auditions, head shots, community plays. Two acting classes, and two performance poetry classes, and some modeling to further my return to being present in my skin.

They also signaled a return to writing, the scribbled in margins and the back of notebook hobby of mine. Who knew that beginning to post my poems as Facebook notes for several years would morph into what it is now – reading in public, (almost) owning my mantle of poet. 

I got a cat, for chrissake. Something I was loathe to do – my first pet-able animal I’ve ever owned, and having her hasn’t make me a crazy cat lady… so I’m told.

I put up curtains, set root in San Francisco, didn’t run away, cut and run, shrink or hide. I’ve emerged slowly, shyly, tentatively, reluctantly and painfully for sure.

I took guitar lessons and voice lessons. Which I dropped, but the piano creeps in these days, sending crescendos of joy into my marrow.

For years, while I’ve been here, whenever someone told me that they were in school full-time, I looked at them as though they were a movie star, a little starry eyed and goofy and admiring, and said (I remember so clearly), I envy people who do that – go to school fulltime. And now I’m one of them. I forget that I really asked for this. I asked for it often and deeply.

As each of the cells on this corporeal form have dived their swan song into the ether, I have changed. People sometimes use the term inwardly rearranged – how literal it is here.

Yes, I intended to write my blog about that – about the nature and surprise of continuing to beat a heart consistently for 7 years.

But I read my email before I came to write this, and there’s some poetic noise in the interwebs about some highly public class tension that occurred last night in the direction of a classmate, and I’m just sort of sad about it.

We are all human. We are all trying to be free from suffering and doing the best we can. 

How we act and react -- teacher, student, classmate ... parent, co-worker, acquaintance, dude who cut me off on the highway -- is simply and ultimately the best we can offer for that day. We may not like it or approve - we may reprove ourselves for how we acted or reacted or neglected to act - but we also get to reflect and change what isn't working for us, whether that's our perspective or action. 

So mixed with the awe and gratitude I feel for not being the sloppy, grubbing, manic splash of a young woman I was when I arrived in San Francisco 6 years ago today, I also feel a melancholy compassion for last night's wounded artist (who for all I know, may not be), and for the reality that we are all somewhere in the process of this perpetual self-renewal.

I Get By with a Little Help from My Friends

As I sit across the wide wooden table, slightly wobbly, with “world music” of some kind emitting from corner speakers, my friend holds out her hand, lays her palm up, crisp milky white against waxed mottled mahogany, and I take it. She places her other hand atop our pile of digits, cocooning them, warming them as tears make unbidden trails through the invisible down of my cheeks and under the hollow of my jaw.

Reframe.

In a stroke of inspiration, I have produced both disappointment and excitement. Disappointment, as I’m not sure I’ll wear a nude body suit for my Performance Poetry class final performance. Excitement, as I think I know what my piece will be about.

As I’d mentioned, I needed to see if the whole brazen nude body suit thing would be supported by the content of the work – why wear that if you’re going to tell lyrical poems about cherry blossoms? This morning, however, I believe I was struck with the inspiration paddle, and think I know what my piece will be about.

Originally, it was to likely be about a woman’s relationship with her body, how it waffles between ownership by self, and ownership by others, including mainstream media, etc. But, I feel that I’ve covered a lot of that for now in my thesis work, and although, sure, that’s an issue that’s present or “up” in my life, as I began fleshing some of the new idea out in my morning pages this morning, I think I’ve found something riper, funnier, more relatable, and interesting. I’ll keep you posted.

I’ve started using a different morning pages notebook, as I’d finished my last a few days ago. It’s thinner than the last, but much larger pages, which equals much longer writing in the morning. (It’s also made from post-recycled materials, so it’s not new growth trees being cut down so I can write, I wonder what the Harry Potter stars are up to now – which, yes, occurred this morning along with all the else.)

I was a bit intimidated to be writing these 3 long hand pages much longer – would I have enough to “fill” it? What more could I possibly have to say. But I actually think this new length is just right for me. It’s longer than the last, and is giving me the room to get further into stuff before I wrap it up or end. Which is partly why I think my new idea for my performance came about – there’s more room to work it out, and watch it stumble across my page.

On another note. My friend left yesterday, and my little space is my own again. Driving to the airport at 5am will a) make you appreciate a rental car, and b) cause the skipping of my morning blog yesterday, so please forgive. I was a bit pooped and outward energy depleted from the trip.

It was very good practice, though, I believe. To wake up and have a person there. To go to sleep and have a person there. Granted, on the pull out couch, but still. I’ve been a solitary bird here in my apartment for a long time, and having another human here … well, was interesting to notice how I act and react.

Part of me is enormously proud that I got in most of my morning practices, and I stayed within my spending plan for her trip, and brought lots of snacks and meals with me so I didn’t have to eat out very much at all. Part of me is very acutely aware of how other-centered I become in the presence of someone a) so close to me, and b) who's in my space almost 24/7.

But, the good news, is that I noticed it. And I began to do my best to reign back in my codependency. I don’t need to complete your sentence. I don’t need to add in my two cents about your story with my own. I don’t need to be thinking of how to respond or what I’ll say next to keep the conversation interesting and exciting.

It was hard, honestly, in the few times that I consciously thought, I can let this thread lie. I don’t need to pick it up. It wasn’t that I was being cold, or uncommunicative. But when there came moments when I certainly had my opinion, or an alternate opinion, I didn’t have to voice it. I could let my friend state her opinion or share her story without having to add in my own or contradict or augment what had already been said.

Some moments, it felt to me like there was a huge, blatant gap in the space when I was usually "supposed to" say something. And it felt awkward and uncomfortable for a moment – within me. Surely, she didn’t realize anything, and a new thread of conversation would be picked up immediately. But I noticed. I noticed, basically, that I was holding my tongue.

Which, I suppose, leads me back toward my own center. I don’t have to put out every idea or thought in my head. I can let myself rest in the calm of a conversation, or someone else’s story. This isn’t a very frequent habit of mine, usually. Although, I do tend toward the loquacious side, with my friend from New Jersey, we’ve spent so many years as the other’s half, it’s “natural” to want to just chitter chatter away. But, I realized it’s exhausting.

She, again, was not asking me to contribute in a way that was depleting. And it also comes back my former habit of accepting jobs I don’t want, when they’re not asking me to give from my dregs. If I take care of my center, notice that my focus is somewhere in between me and another person, me and a job, and can bring it back to myself, and sit, sometimes in the discomfort of not engaging in a behavior that leaves me feeling depleted, then I get the chance to give from my best, and also, to simply rest in the companionship of another person.

Of indeterminate weight

I met with my thesis advisor for my last meeting with her before I hand it in to the school library to be bound and put on a shelf with all the other theses that won’t be read ;) No, but really, I see the light at the end of the tunnel finally. It sort of looks like a disco ball, or headlights – in other words, it doesn’t look normal. But I suppose none of this is normal for me.

The general feedback I got from both my advisor and my faculty reader were both rather generic. One said, This is indeed a poetry thesis (great, it’s not an aardvark). The other said, It was actually interesting (great, glad you didn’t drool sleep spittle on it). But, really, I didn’t get much constructive feedback, which is a) a little relieving, and b) not very constructive.

For all the work and mental crises, a check mark, basically. But, c’est la vie. I have a few things that are room for improvement to edit/revise before she sees it again for the final sign-off before April 20^th. Also, I have it out to two poetic friends of mine for their eagle eyes on it – for, hopefully, some specific feedback.

But, for all it is now, it’s a bit anti-climactic. Which, is better than drama I suppose.

Drama will come both literally and figuratively in the two final performances I’ll have in May. The performance poetry piece I’ll write (….???) and the acting scene. I met with the poetry teacher yesterday to talk about performance persona vs. character. Theater vs. performance art. And it was helpful. If only to confirm that the “amped up version of self” that I consider performance art is actually what he also means. He clarified that it doesn’t mean to do as he does and dress as a chicano in drag with a sombrero and a dog collar. That’s his amplified version of self – for me to do something like that would be … well, who knows, maybe one day – but for today, something else.

I’m not sure what the work will be about. But I know how I’ll dress. If you remember from the Performance Persona blog, I said that the most authentic persona I could be right now was myself – well, I intend to wear a nude body suit, only.

I’d had this thought way earlier in the semester. Something about both the vulnerability and yet boldness of it appeals to me. With so much work that I’ve been doing to get comfortable with my body, present in it, a part of it – well, why not?

The only stipulations the school has, he told me, was no full frontal nudity. And he said he’d never tell me to pull it back. So, now I need material that will warrant that. Do I need to go that far? Is it sensationalism? Does it matter?

I wrote a few poems for performance yesterday, but they don’t have quite enough meat to support the visual. But like a great pair of shoes – sometimes you build the outfit around them instead of the other way around -- and so I will just have to build a performance around this visual, costume/non-costume.

I had the strangest dream that two friends insistently brought me over to do my laundry at my ex’s, and I was reluctant, as his new girlfriend might be there. She wasn’t there, but he was on the phone with her, and I felt all awkward, but everyone else seemed to think this was fine.

Random side-note. 

Performance Persona

The first week in May, a few things will happen. On the Tuesday, I will be performing some of my poetry with my creative writing class in an end-of-semester performance in the actual theater at school – for somewhere between 3-7 minutes. And on the Wednesday, I will be performing a scene with a partner for my acting class final performance, where people will be invited in to come see us.

This reflects back to me something I sort of already know about myself and my passions – I have a hankerin’ for perfomin.’ Some folks do; some don’t. – I do.

In my creative writing class, we’re supposed to, or invited to, work on a “performance persona.” I’ve been marinating on this, and not to use what’s apparently become my catch phrase – “Yeah, but…” – I have realized that so much of the work I’m doing and have been leading up to is to drop the persona.

Most of my life, I’ve walked with a persona on of some sort – the shy girl, the drunk wild girl, the promiscuous girl, the “nice” one. I’d like to come back to center for a moment. Or longer.

Basically, I think that my greatest performance persona will actually be my authentic self – that seems to me, for myself, for now, to be the bravest person I can show you on-stage. Now, of course, it is performance, so it’s a bit of an amplified version of self, but it’s not obscured, which I think is how I’d been before.

So, I love the intention, and think it’ll be simply fun to play with a persona, that’s, to me, what acting is about, not performance poetry. In acting, I am someone else, with a different history, mannerisms, inflection. I am shy or wild or promiscuous or nice, and I call on those parts of me that understand that experience, but it’s also acting.

An interesting distinction was made by my performance poetry teacher on Tuesday between the two – he said that he likes to use the microphone and the music stand still in his performances as opposed to without it, as without it he thinks indicates theater, and with it indicates the tradition of poetry and writing. I don’t know that I fully agree, but I understand his point, and it was interesting to then ask myself what do I consider the difference, if I’m using my own work?

What is performance poetry, and what is theater? Do I consider them different if I’m speaking my own work? I actually think I don’t. I think it’s, like I said, an amplified, perhaps more emphatic self, but I don’t think it’s removed from the writerly tradition to not use pages and a stand. When I’ve performed… there it is – I was intending to say “when I’ve performed my poetry in the past,” and that’s what I consider it. I don’t really consider it “reading,” unless, really, it’s reading.

Even when I stand with my papers in front of me, and a podium and a mircophone at a poetry reading, it’s still performance. This isn’t just “reading,” as I would read to you from the phone book, or a text book. It’s enhanced, it’s intensified, it’s amped up inflection and emphasis and meaning and pause. I want you to be moved to emotion. 

Seems like theater to me. 

Although, it’ll also be nice to let myself play with the extremities of a performance persona, just to try it on and have fun with it (who doesn't love a good wig) – I still maintain that my boldest persona is just me, micced. 

Cacophonous Joy

Yesterday, I finished my draft of my poetry thesis. It is dark, and humorous, and sad, and scared, and thoughtful, and loving, and aimed toward health. It represents a period in my life, which I’m glad to recognize as not current, even though the feelings may arise as current.

This is a memoir of sorts. It chronicles a period of time which, I see now, I do have a degree of distance from, in order to be able to write about it so fully. I know too it leaves gaps and holes, but I don’t mind – it’s show, don’t tell, right?

Yesterday, I sort of fell apart around 3pm, as I knew I needed more time to edit it, little visual changes and some word sorting here and there. But, I was also supposed to be at class from 4-6:30, and be at a poetry reading/open mic at 5:30 – 9. How was I to be in so many places at once?

Well, I couldn’t. And the reality of that fell on me at about 3pm. I made some phone calls; I was told that my main job right then was to finish my thesis – perhaps you remember some of the craziness when I hadn’t turned one in, and may not have been graduating in May? Yes, the thesis was my main job – all other things were secondary.

I spoke briefly to a few friends, wrote emails of apology to my class teacher and to the organizer of the open mic, and got back to work. I was not to use the club of self-flaggellation on myself, I was told. I was not to think that I’d done it again and over-booked, and I’m a bad person, and here was this opportunity to put my work out, and I’ve missed it.

I had one job. Thesis.

So, I left those internal critic voices at the door. Strangely enough, when I did, something miraculous happened.

I finished my thesis. I sent it in multiple document formats for maximum readability; I cc’d and bcc’d to ensure maximum accountability of the documents. I sent it off. It was now out of my hands.

I called two friends, let them know that I had sent it, as I’d told them 3 hours before that I would. And I felt relief. I felt relief as though it were that cartoon image of someone getting hot, and the thermometer level inside them fills up with red from the bottom all the way to the top and bursts out their head. I felt swallowed with relief.

I told my friend, Now, I’m going to drink some water, make a nice healthy meal, and watch a Disney movie. – That was going to be my celebration. She found that hilarious: “I’m going to drink … some water.” How times have changed.

So, I did, but as I was cooking my chicken and broccoli and yummy organic pasta, I had my iPod on shuffle, playing my joy into the kitchen. And Metallica came on. And for why, who cares, it was that moment. I began to bob and jam and jump around as I stirred that chicken. Then I abandoned the chicken to just rock out in my kitchen to the raging flare of electric guitar and passion.

The song finished. But I wasn’t done. I placed my delicate, hearty, thoughtful meal on a plate, and went into the main room of my studio apartment. I proceeded to happy dance. That thermometer level radiated out of me and I DANCED – I shimmied and kicked and ska danced and booty danced and jumped as very high as I could. I waved my arms like a lunatic and smiled till all of my teeth shone bright.

This was more than relief at finishing a project for school. This was pride and gratitude incarnate. This was my joy at having released a clog in my emotional arteries. I’d moved something. Something big. And I danced until I couldn’t dance no mo’.

I have released something big here – truth, despair, hurt, trauma – I’ve let it go. And I’ve opened it to you. I’ve let it have its own purpose outside of my experience. I’ve given it, and myself, life. It feels like I’ve surrendered something I’d been holding on to. The clogged artery metaphor feels pretty apt. But more, it was my throat, my voice, constricted by these stories – and now that they’re out, birthed, something new can be said, or seen, or felt.

I am humbled by the process of putting this out into the world. I do hope people enjoy it, or get something out of it, or find their own voice through reading it. But the personal gift I have gotten, I could not have predicted: the grin of sheer bliss as I tucked into my bed last night. … and woke up with again this morning. 

Toodling Along

So, perhaps it’s the marked decrease in my caffeine intake, but I feel pretty good. I’m about a 3 or 4 cup-a-day girl, and have been for a very long time. But, since Monday, I’ve been trying to make… 1 cup a day. I’m supplementing as much as I need with black tea – but that’s been not all that much. And although I was in bed at 8pm on Tuesday, and had a massive nap on Monday, I’m wondering if the worst is over or not?

Partly, this is a health thing, partly this is a vanity thing – I read a few message posts from people saying their skin cleared up without caffeine, and as embarrassing as it is to say, I still have mild to moderate bad skin on my back and shoulders, and have since I was a young teenager. In fact, when I was about 13 and at summer camp, I was so embarrassed to take of my shirt at the pool that I made up a story that my best friend had recently drowned and now I had a fear of water. … I don’t think they bought it, but I never had to go in. I will say, at this point in my life, I've given up the hiding - it is what it is, and I do my best, but c'est moi.

The health thing is pretty obvious. Despite the copious amounts of water that I drink a day, it was recently suggested that I’m still not hydrated enough – Whaddya want me to do, mainline it?? Caffeine is one of the main culprits in cancelling out my hydration level.

And so, here we are. It’s an experiment, and we’ll see. But I liked reading things like “I don’t crash at 3pm anymore” or “Once I was past two weeks, I felt fine, like I had energy throughout the whole day.” I’ll let you know.

Other things that may be contributing to my general sense of calm or low brain activity may be:

I’m almost done with my poetry thesis draft, and will hand it in TONIGHT! It’s basically a book, is what we have to turn in, and although there are some things that may be objected to (“It’s not long enough”), I’ll take my chances with what I’ve got. I actually -almost- like it. Although I’ve been washed overboard by some of the emotions it arises in me at time, I’ve also found a few moments when I’ve actually been able to look at it like an editor – with a mildly detached eye from the content, and more to the flow, what works, what's extraneous, etc.

That brings me a great amount of relief. And maybe was/is what this whole project was about. To allow me to get to a place of detachment, not rejection or dismissal, but of curious observation. Hm, that’s an interesting poem. Or, yes, I remember that – I’m glad it makes a good piece of work now. Sure, it’s still my experience, and at the moment it’s still got the capacity to chuck me off my groundedness, but, I’m learning to dance with that a little.

Coincidentally, I’m using the “20 minutes on – 5 minutes off” technique I learned when I was training to be a live art model, although I didn’t pursue that. But the technique works for writing for an hour (or an hour and 15 minutes, to be exact). Enough time to get into the work, but not long enough to get mired by it. And then, 5 minute break. Sometimes I’ve just sat and stared, glassy-eyed and spun for the 5 minutes. Mostly, I get up, make tea, use the bathroom, move around a bit. It’s been a useful technique.

And just to round us out, other things on my mind are pretty positive: I am reading at a poetry/open mic on campus tonight – although what I’m reading I have NO idea, and I haven’t advertised or invited people mainly because I’ve been so concerned about what on earth I’d read – not sure if I want to read from my thesis or not, in a 3-5 minute slot, but I might. But I’ll be happy to be up and out there again.

Also, today is the day that I perform my monologue for my acting class. It’s Dennis Shepard’s speech from The Laramie Project, about Matthew Shepard’s murder in Laramie, WY back in 1998. I still remember when it happened, a few folks in the class do, but most are too young to know about it, being 10 years younger. But the teacher chose this play, and we each chose a monologue, and I’ve actually, SURPRISE!, been practicing and reading it over the last two weeks – as a marked difference from previous auditions when I tried to cram the few days before.

And last, just to say, my very best friend, whom I’ve written about here before, is coming out to visit from New Jersey in just two weeks. I’m really excited. Also a bit nervous. 5 days in a studio apartment with anyone is a lot, but I’m sure it’ll be alright. I’ve learned that Enterprise Rent-a-Car is actually cheaper than Zipcar if you need it more than 4 hours, and it also takes a debit card, so we'll be some mobile cats around this fair city.

So, that’s about it. Feeling generally good. A mite nervous about what on earth I’ll read at tonight’s open mic, but I’m sure it’ll work out just fine. (I’m even bringing my old chapbooks from last year’s Art Show to sell – who knows!)