Daily

I've been sucked into facebookland conversations about the Rethinking Poetics Conference. If I lived closer to New York or actually had some kind of academic job that required me to go to such conferences or if I'd been invited or if tickets to New York were really cheap and I'd had a place to stay, I might have gone. Conferences are all slightly doomed. If I ever get to/have to throw a poetry conference, it would be 1) interdisciplinary 2) mix readings/performance/art with critical discussion 3) have time for dancing and parties 4) have good food available--either on site or easily accessible off-site 5) there should be at least one good bar nearby, and preferably several 6) there should be some time for sleeping in and some time for napping.

Now that I think of it, both Post Moot I and II as well as Positions were pretty close to fulfilling all of my criteria. And Press was fun, too. I think it's also notable that Post Moot and Positions didn't call themselves conferences. Post Moot was a "convocation" and Positions was a "colloquium." What about festivals? I know the word "festival" brings up, perhaps, images of people dancing around in the California wilderness, wearing motley, and juggling--but hey, a lot of those motley-wearing jugglers are my friends, and they often throw good parties. I mean, if I had the funds to spare, I'd definitely be going to at least Wanderlust and Burning Man this year.


Enough of that. Mark and I ate the last of the apricot-blackberry tart I made for my birthday, and it was delicious. Otherwise, I've been eating a lot of strawberries. I also made a killer roasted-potato salad with corn (also roasted), zucchini, red onion, green beans and tomatoes. Dressing was made of of tarragon, apple-cider vinegar, mustard, olive oil, hot sauce, etc. Yum.

On Sunday, I managed to get into a full version of Eka Pada Rajakapotasana, with both hands and my head on my foot. Here's a picture of what the full pose looks like for those of you who aren't yogis. Of course, my hips weren't perfectly square or perfectly on the ground, but still, moments of physical opening like that make me hopeful

What else? I did decide to get a pair of Toms. Gold ones.

"I" "Am" Still "Here"

1. Spring quarter at UCSD is finished. Which means my first year of my second time in graduate school is finished.
2. I am reading in Oakland on June 20 with Jeffrey Schrader at The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand. I will remind you of this next week.
3. My birthday is this Friday, June 11.
4. I did type up my notes from Post Moot, but they are not even in a bloggable format.
5. Most of you have, by now, seen my Post Moot Photo Set on Flickr.
6. I'm working on a prose piece about Papua New Guinea, fruit, mining, and manifest destiny. The whole project creeps me out.
7. Also still working on my "White Girl" project, which now includes many footnotes.
8. I've been hooping more again, and it feels good.

Friday Lester

Lester has a thing for pulling paper over his head.

Want to impress me? Throw a really good party.

I have finished the introduction for Ben Lerner.

I attempted to practice my lacrosse ball choreography piece, but I couldn't practice too much, because my hamstring is really, really still messed up. I hope that I'm in decent shape for tomorrow, and I hope that performing tomorrow doesn't mess it up even more.

I did get some suggestions about what to do for my pedagogical performance, but no thanks to you all, my dear blog readers. Facebook, twitter, and listservs are where it's at now. At least in terms of advice about conceptual pedagogical performances.

I graded.

I did not write a poem, but I will write one after I write this post.

I was reminded of how difficult it is to organize anything. And how I like to organize things anyway, because I like things to happen. Want to impress me? Throw a really good party. Even if you don't want to impress me, throw a really good party, anyway.

Workshopping is Weird

I've decided to think of workshopping as like a reading where one doesn't always read but people tell you what they think in detail anyway.

Currently reading, for class Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Woot!

It's raining.

Filmed today. Editing tomorrow. Using a camera isn't as awkward as I thought it would be.

I had two vaccinations yesterday, and my arms are sore. Ouch. Ouch.

My happiness is largely dependent on my ability to express negativity and to feel crappy

I don't trust people who don't express negative emotions. Of course, there are a variety of ways of expressing negative emotions that don't always involve heated arguments or punching and being punched.

I have similar feelings about sarcasm and irony--both tend to make me feel comfortable because they're a form of sharing social negativity and combining it with humor. Humor itself has to do with social and aesthetic values. The world is full of incongruities between our understanding/expectation and what actually happens or exists. When I'm sarcastic and someone else gets it, we're having a moment of a shared understanding of some particular incongruity or another. What could be more comforting?

But I've been thinking about all of this a lot recently, especially in light of my feelings about my residency here in the San Diego region. There are numerous things I deeply dislike about my life here, but this weekend has been a good weekend, because it was a combination of almost everything I love: talking with friends about stuff that is irritating and stuff that isn't, time outside, movement, art and food. The only thing missing was a poetry reading--a big gap, certainly, but also offset but the fact that the art show was good.

It was also a three-day weekend.

Happy hour on Thursday! I won't sing the praises of D Street Bar and Grill in Encinitas. It's big, it was in a good location for most of us, they serve a variety of different drinks, have solid food, and a reasonable happy hour. So, it's fine with me. Happy hour is a perfect environment during which to express negativity in an energetic, friendly way. Dinner again with friends on Friday--more talking, more friendly negativity. Stayed up too late.

All that socializing and friendly negativity put me in a good mood for Saturday: Mark and I went to Batiquitos lagoon for a leisurely walk and some birdwatching: unusually peaceful crows, a juvenile northern harrier, a very large flock of semipalmated plovers, whimbrels, several terns (maybe Caspian? I couldn't tell), lots of little bushtits, a golden-crowned kinglet, several brown pelicans who were fishing, and an anna's hummingbird. We also saw some other kind of hummingbird--I couldn't identify him, but I know he was a male because he was doing display dives. He'd fly up really really high and then dive down really fast, making an ark at the bottom and a kind of whistling sound.

That afternoon, I went to Swami's Beach for a hoop class and jam. I had a gorgeous time and learned a variety of new ways to break--but now I have weird bruises on the insides of my upper arms, very similar to the kind I used to get on my hands when I started doing more off-body work. Next weekend I'm going to a workshop with Julia Hartsell at the Circus Fund in Del Mar. If I had my way, I'd be taking just about every class they offer there!

On Sunday I saw the splash from a whale breaching (I missed the actual breach), but a few minutes later s/he did a fantastic tale slap.

Today, we somehow avoided the rain (well, almost) and took the train down to see the Tara Donovan exhibit at MCASD Downtown. I'd seen the piece made with pins before, and I still love it, but my favorite was Haze, made entirely out of clear plastic straws, and completely beautiful:

After the show, we walked around, and I eventually ate a hamburger. On the way home from the train station, it rained and rained. We actually got soaked.

Now, I use it with some regularity--when appropriate.

1. Before moving to California, I never used the word "motherfucker."

2. A new quarter at UCSD has begun. I am taking 1) a multi-genre workshop that all MFAs must take with Anna Joy Springer 2) The second class in the movement for theater sequence, still with Charlie Oates, 3) a seminar in the Visual Art Department on subcultures with Ruben Ortiz-Torres.

3. Beyond that, I'm TAing for an intro poetry class with Michael Davidson and still RAing for the New Writing Series. And I'm teaching online, and doing bits of contract work here and there.

4. I have blisters from playing Zen Chaos in movement for theater. Someday I will describe Zen Chaos in detail, and write down all the rules. It's a bit like ultimate frisbee with two hacky sacks instead of one frisbee, and cartwheels are a regular part of the game.

5. In the multigenre workshop, I said that my goal was to make my work somehow a combination of the Bee Gees and Sun Ra. I got very excited.

6. No doubt you have all seen the video of "Stayin' Alive." But just in case you haven't:

Eying or Eyeing

1. This is the first holiday season since we moved to California that Mark and I have spent together. It's been a nice combination of laying low (cooking, movies, walks) and socializing--we spent a nice Christmas Eve with the California branch of Mark's family, and this evening we're going over to the Rothenbergs'. In a few more days, we're headed to Ensenada. I've long fantasized about blowing off the entire winter holiday season and instead getting out of the country, so this is a step in the right direction.

2. All the climate change involved in the travel from here to Florida and back again has irritated my skin. I've got a patchy red rash that almost resembles hives. It's uncomfortable, and it makes it difficult to wear makeup.

3.Back from a hoop class with Michelle. After a year of thinking that working with more than one hoop would be completely impossible, it's so much fun to be playing with two and have it start to make some kinetic sense.

4. My attempt to keep my hair short is finished. Having short hair requires getting regular hair cuts by stylists who actually know what they're doing, and stylists who know what they're doing cost money. My hair is neither super curly nor super thick, so nearly any fool can cut it when it starts to get long. Therefore, I am growing my hair out again.

5. For Christmas, Mark got me: 1) Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds, by Bernd Heinrich 2) Feelings Are Facts: A Life, by Yvonne Rainer and 3) The Silk Road Gourmet: Volume One: Western and Southern Asia, by Laura Kelle. They're all super cool books that I've been eying a long time.

Headed to Florida on Thursday morning.

1. Backbend (wheel) with feet at the wall into a backbend with feet on the wall into handstand into a walkover. It feels good to have a super challenging Sunday yoga class.

2. Still playing around with some off-body moves with two hoops. Coordination with on-body moves comes a lot easier.

3. Nearly finished with my paper on Nightwood. I didn't really have time to do anything especially ambitious. I wonder if I could do a critical independent study in the winter or spring quarter? It's interesting how an image search for "Nightwood" doesn't immediately give me any results that have anything to do with Djuna Barnes' novel.

4. In the last movement for theater class of the quarter, I sprained my toe, but I also stood on someone's shoulders and tossed a ball back and forth between my hands. It was kind of amazing when I finally relaxed and settled into the posture--my bones were perfectly lined up above the person basing me.

5. Dear professors: please tell your TAs about your plans for grading at the end of the quarter early so that they can schedule their travel plans accordingly. Dear TAs, ask the professor you are working with about this at the beginning of the quarter so that you don't accidentally make plans that mess with the professor's plans.

Yesterday, Lester demanded a shower

The Sufficiently Hierarchical New Sir Sequels

This is the first complete week of classes at UCSD--but I don't have to be on campus on Monday, so I'm here trying to clean and organize my desk and put away my clothes.

Thus far, the only class I've attended is a graduate movement for theater class with Charlie Oats. It was incredibly fun, and the mime/walking exercises we did were challenging. On Tuesday I have a poetry workshop with Rae, and on Wednesday a class on Modern art movements with Michael. I'm TAing for John Granger's nonfiction class and one of two RAs for the New Writing Series.

Even though I've barely started, I'm already feeling exasperated--not with classes, but with being back in the structure of a university and having to deal with the irritations of interacting and being confined by said structure. Please note, I don't wish that I were still teaching ESL, or that I were still working in business, or even in public policy. It's just been a while since I've had to deal directly with the particular passive-aggressive type of behavior that academic bureaucracies (and probably most types of bureaucracies) enable. In a university, communication tends to happen indirectly and is always filtered through a variety of complicated channels--rarely does someone tell you directly what to do. Of course, there are things that you are absolutely supposed to do, and there are hierarchies, but one can't admit them directly (at least not in the humanities). It takes a while to realize the difference between a suggestion and a command.

I won't bore you all with the details of all the running around me and the other RA have done for the New Writing Series thus far, but it's been quite amazing. I'm looking forward to the Winter quarter when in theory we'll both know what we're doing, how things work, and where things are.

I organized my manuscript files, and found a half-finished manuscript called The Death of a Toad that's a kind of mashup flarf conceptual piece. I don't know what it is. As a manuscript, it suffers from theory head and a lack of energy, but it's full of ridiculous language. One section is called "The Sufficiently Hierarchical New Sir Sequels."

I feel dramatic and melancholy, and like most of the people I love and events I want to go to are on the east coast. It's been too long since I walked home from a party.

Tengo preguntas

¿Por qué el perro está raspando y en qué está raspando?
¿Hay un perro en la piscina?
¿Cuándo alguien escribirá una review del Tarareo Terminal?
¿Come se dice "How long will it take me to master hoola hooping around one leg?" en Español?

Summer is over, but I went to the beach today.

1. SPD sold out of my book, so Rod has sent them more!
2. I am impatient for reviews.
   
3. Or, at least, stop telling my friends and my boyfriend what you think of my book and tell me instead.
4. No autumnal clothes for me for a few more months. The best I can do is wear jeans and sometimes a light sweater, but that's pretty much true all year round here.
5. Remembering how funny Dada is: "Dada will kick you in the behind and you will like it." I like the fact that they say "behind" instead of "ass."
6. Jerry is coming all the way from Amherst to visit!
   

Now that I'm beginning something new, it might as well be over.

1. Not bored with Language Poetry. Not bored with John Cage, either.
2. I haven't even started classes at UCSD yet, and I already have to look for funding for next year from a grant database made for PhD students, not MFAs. Oh well. If I don't get funding for next year, I just won't go back.
3. Been grading all. Day. Long. That's why I couldn't meet with you at 4pm.
4. Convinced that real estate limits mobility. Unless one is rich or bought one's real estate in the 70s, 80s or before.
5. Missing good bookstores.

Countdown to MFA Land

I don't start classes at UCSD in earnest for two more weeks, but I have plenty to do in between now and then with orientations, paperwork, and obsessively calculating the best bus and train routes to get me from Carlsbad to La Jolla sans car. When I lack blogging energy, I resort to lists. So, a list:

1. The picture above is of Lester, of course, on his jungle gym in my study. He's been especially happy and defensive of his jungle gym, and the small stuffed elephant he's perched on, ever since he realized that he could pull paper over his head there--just like he does in his cage.
2. I've been teaching a weekly hoop dance class with Kristen every Thursday from 4:15-5:15 pm. We meet at Magee Park (258 Beech Avenue Carlsbad, on the West side of the 101 before the lagoon). I think I have about two readers from Carlsbad, but out and hoop with us. Bring your friends. The class is offered on a donation-basis through Bodacious Living Yoga.
3. Speaking of yoga, two nights ago I dreamed that I was practicing on a very large flying carpet which was flying over a jungle landscape.
4. My father's other brother, David, passed away last week from cancer. David's always been a bit of a mythological figure for me. When he and my dad were kids, David drove a railroad spike through Dad's shoulder (not long after they had started Sunday school). In the early 90s, a horse fell on his head and he was in a coma for two years. After he woke up, he came to live with me, my brother, Dad and Mary in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The night before he arrived I dreamed he barbecued our dog, Cabal. In fact, he and Cabal got along well. For a period of several months, David slept in our living room and wore his cowboy hat to my brother's cross country meets and my flute recitals. Eventually, he left when a woman got in touch with him about his son. He ended up living in Angle Fire, New Mexico, panning for gold and carving walking sticks. My aunt said that he passed away peacefully, surrounded by friends. I am dedicating all my yoga practices to him this week.
   

A post about the last leg of our trip, again in Paris, is coming. In the meantime, please read Mark's post, Maintaining Quality of Education in California’s Public Universities, which has several links to information about how to become more involved in the struggle to maintain a quality education for California students enrolled at state universities.

Warning: the editorial in the Sacramento Bee is totally maddening.

I Have Questions

Does anyone perform the Ursonate slowly (Schwitters' version sounds slow, obviously, compared to Christian Bök's)--or the Presto like a Largo and the Largo like a Presto?

Does anyone ever perform the Ursonate with non-German pronunciation. Today on my run I was humming a particularly catchy section of the Presto and amusing myself by thinking of all the non-German ways I could pronounce it.

Why is my left eye all twitchy?

Is it possible for a normal human being like me to one day be able to do full hanumanasana (aka the splits)?

Will "people" like my book?

Still Looking at Proofs

It was pouring rain when I left on my bike this morning. For my morning commute, I wore converse, blue-green shorts, a thinly stripped black and white v-neck t-shirt, and a large, cream-colored rain coat. It was one of my least stylish bicycle outfits to-date. At the end of my morning commute, the hook thing that secures my bike bag to the rack of my bike broke. The office was not open when I first arrived, so I locked my bike up and sat at a picnic table under the trees a bit and wrote. I saw the small bunny that frequents that particular picnic table and ate the toaster waffles I'd packed as my breakfast (which were no longer crisp, but tasted fine).

The rain stopped and then started again. Someone came and opened up the office. I went in and taught my class. The sun came out, sort of. At the start of my afternoon commute, I attempted to tie my bag to my bike with the lace from one of my shoes--there was no rope or string or even strong rubber bands anywhere at the office. So, I tied the bag to the rack with my lace. Then I started to ride, but my shoe kept falling off. So I went back to the office and taped my shoe together with clear packing tape and started off again. The bag fell off the rack, so I walked my bike to the nearest bus stop and waited for the bus. While waiting, I wrote in my notebook and there was thunder and lightning--both rather unusual for this area. The bus came, and I had an unusual amount of difficulty getting my bike onto the bus bike rack. It also took me a while to undo all the knots in the shoelace that I'd used to tie the back to the bike rack.

The bus driver was not especially patient or sympathetic and told me to hurry up. I said, "I'm having a really shitty day" and he didn't respond. I don't usually swear, but I was tired and frustrated. I road the 302 bus back to the coast without incident, and got off. I used my raincoat and a scarf to attach my bag to the bike. This worked for about 7 minutes, which means I was not quite home before it fell off again.

After I got home, I ate some watermelon. Then I put on my backpack and got on my bike to go to the farmer's market. About 75 seconds after I left the house, it began to pour. I continued on to the market anyway. It only rained for about three minutes, but I was soaked. At the market I bought bread, arugula, asparagus, artichokes, corn and strawberries.

I'm curious about the origin of the handshake snap.

1. I have a UPS tracking number for the proofs for Terminal Humming. I am doing a bad job not being nervous and excited about it all. Excited is good. Nervous--not so good.

2. It has not been sunny here since Memorial Day weekend. May and June here are the SoCal version of February: people are overwrought because they want it to be summer, they go swimming without wetsuits even though it's 65 degrees and the water is even colder, they drive worse than usual.

3. Being a woman in a microbrewery or bottle-shop is very similar to being a woman at an avant-garde jazz show, although the former is, admittedly, a much more social environment.

4. I'm not a skillfull handshake snapper yet, but I've only just started to get practice. Whenever someone goes in for the handshake snap with me, I kind of want to yell "whitey" at them, or at least have some third observer yell it at the both of us.

More recents

Birds: indigo bunting, western bluebird, nesting egrets, nesting house finches

Food: farmhouse cheddar and strawberries and apricots

Drink: Tetleys

Asana: Marichyasana F; drop backs

Reading: French grammar review book, still reading the Sunday paper