trying to channel this more, maybe in a slightly less cheesy way (or not)

what you need is an imitation of home

I've spent the last three days cranking the dehumidifier and sucking spiders into the vacuum cleaner. New England humidity is different from Michigan humidity and New York humidity, and I still can't really put my finger on the exact difference. Living in a basement complicates things, too. On Thursday I came back from a two-week stint in the Midwest to spiders chilling in every corner and white mold on a pair of my shoes. The air in my apartment was like breathing carpet. There are so many spiders continuing to surface here that I'm starting to feel like I'm the intruder. But I guess this will make me tougher as I adjust to my wood-paneled, astro-turfed basement home.

Someone sent me this video the other day, mistaking me for another person. Somehow I think it's better--and funnier--coming from a stranger.

bye, etc.

I will miss our Princess Palace on Macdonough Street. And the whole city, too, I'm sure. And the people I allowed myself to cozy up to over the past couple years. I guess I'm just starting to realize how much is altering, and not just for me or in this particular situation. I think, throughout this whole process, I've been a bit dismissive until now. Maybe it's not as bad since I didn't realize it, or maybe it's worse. I'm not sure.

Tomorrow I am moving to a strange new place, again.

17 dreams for you

Hi, I made you a mix.

yes, have some.

My first boyfriend, Joe, gave me the very first mix I ever received. It was in his GMC Safari, right after he--very prematurely--told me he loved me. At the time, I remember feeling embarrassed that someone would even conceive of compiling a mess of songs with solely me in mind. I eventually got over that, and then I tried to get over joe by tossing the mix after he dumped me (for the second time). After that, I handed over my only copy of his band's album to my next boyfriend, who was none the wiser about its origin.

For whatever reason, I seem to keep a firm hold on things that I'll never use or look at again, but all the artifacts I actually want to resurface are now unrecoverable.

Anyway, enjoy.

the stuff of nightmares

The first vivid dream I can remember happened when I was 4 years old. It was very soon before my dad moved out, and he had started rocking me to sleep in the living room every night (I think it was more for him than it was for me). He would always fall asleep before I did, but that was our routine and I think we both liked it that way. On one of those nights, I dreamt that I had been separated from my family. I walked for hours in a nightshirt, crying, stumbling through the woods behind our house, until eventually I came face to face with an enormous tiger. Through some hazy sequence of events, it was revealed that the tiger was actually my dad; he said that he had eaten the rest of our family, and if I wanted to see them again, I'd have to crawl onto his tongue and be swallowed, too. So I did. When I woke up I was staring into his sleeping face.

I've always had many, many more nightmares than regular dreams, and I've grown so accustomed to them over the years that I can often control the endings. If, for example, someone is chasing me with a knife, or a gun, or some other weapon (which is usually the case), there comes a point near the end (when I'm usually trapped against a wall, or I'm stuck running in place, etc.) where I can just stop, catch my breath, and realize that the way to make the situation disappear is to simply acknowledge that I'm asleep. I rarely have to fight back. The worst cases, not surprisingly, happen when I discover that I'm not the one in control after all. These always end badly.

I'd like to know about other people's dreams.

It's been this way for as long as I can recall, back to that rocking chair nightmare. Most of the time I don't realize how unsettling it is to others that I've just grown to accept my subconscious for the way it is. Really, what else can I do?

letter to lorca

from after lorca:

Dear Lorca,

I would like to make poems out of real objects. The lemon to be a lemon that the reader could cut or squeeze or taste--a real lemon like a newspaper in a collage is a real newspaper. I would like the moon in my poems to be a real moon, one which could be suddenly covered with a cloud that has nothing to do with the poem--a moon utterly independent of images. The imagination pictures the real. I would like to point to the real, disclose it, to make a poem that has no sound in it but the pointing of a finger.

[...]

Things do not connect; they correspond. That is what makes it possible for a poet to translate real objects, to bring them across language as easily as he can bring them across time. That tree you saw in Spain is a tree I could never have seen in California, that lemon has a different smell and a different taste, BUT the answer is this--every place and every time has a real object to correspond with your real object--that lemon may become this lemon, or it may even become this piece of seaweed, or this particular color of gray in this ocean. One does not need to imagine that lemon; one needs to discover it.

I love Spicer's letters to Lorca--the simultaneous care and wrecklessness with which he writes.

I've never written about writing too much. At least not in this way. I always think about what to say if asked what my poems (or anyone's) are, or try to be, or are there to accomplish. Those are abstract questions, and maybe they're not important anyway, but I've always felt anxious about explanations. Maybe I just don't piece things together this way. Most of the time I vacillate between feeling wholly inarticulate and justifiably observant, and somehow I always get stuck trying to explain something when I haven't fully processed it yet. But then again, maybe I just never really finish processing anything.

sweeping down the plain

I'm not so good with this, I guess. The upside, however, is that I've been focusing more writing energy on poems. This is good. Very good. This is especially good because in just over three months, I'll be sitting in my first graduate poetry workshop with some brilliant writers and I don't want to embarrass myself. In other words, I'm moving to Amherst, Mass., in August to start an MFA program in poetry. I will also be adopting the teacherly legacy passed down from everyone in my immediate family (read: everyone); this means that I'll be teaching a section of freshman writing. I am honored and thrilled and nervous about all prospects. More about this later.

In the meantime, I'm going to Oklahoma. Tomorrow. When I land in Tulsa, Brian will greet me and I will be whisked away to meet the rest of the Jones clan. Already I have been promised the best barbequed meat of my life, the best steak of my life, and a very epic tour of Oral Roberts University. While I'm excited that multiple promises involve meat (and the other involves a nefarious Charismatic Christian institution with a 200-foot-tall "prayer tower"), ultimately I'm looking forward to finally meeting his family. To quell the pressure and anxiety, brian insists that they already think lowly of me, so really I can only rise in their estimations. Inspiring.

this is the day

I like noticing when people stop, mid-thought and mid-step, to change direction. The precise moment when priorities or desires shift. I always wonder about the one that's winning.

walking the cow

A few weeks ago I had grand aspirations and plans for this month. But none of those will probably happen, partly because I spent this whole week writhing in bed due to the whims of some mysterious stomach demon, and partly because my ambitions usually get the best of me. Uplifting, I know. But I will write more! And read more! Pictured above is my to-read and to-finish list for this month, but, you know... ambitions.

In other, irrelevant news, today I am lusting for the very epic picnics that spring and summer will bring. Special thanks to our (well, Brian's) new wine/dishwear/utensil/cheeseboard-toting picnic backpack. Oh the alfresco adventures we will have.

intermission

We almost spent three days trekking through frozen, snowblown Montréal, but ended up on a bus to Philadelphia instead, from one city's Chinatown to another. On mornings we studied maps, then set out with half-formed plans for the day. I think, now and then, the best vacations are spent dodging museums and monuments and more museums in an effort to discover the more intimate, tucked-away histories of a place. We wandered Center City, Old City, up and down South Street, then in and out of neighborhoods I can't name, dropping into bars and shops and record stores. We saw Oneida play, watched a bedraggled dive bar jazz trio, watched a zombified Jesus strutting around on Easter Sunday (hilarious? inappropriate? both?), sought out cozy restaurants and ate well, drank well, slept unexpectedly well in a hotel bed. Then, on Monday, we left on another bus back to another Chinatown. I don't know, maybe the weekend was uneventful in a storied vacation sense, but hey, sometimes the lazy and impromptu and unscripted respites are the most sorely needed and all that.