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.
   

I need games to play while I'm waiting for the bus in the fog at 6:45 am in the moring.

In part because of a current writing project, and in part because of recent thoughts/discussions about the gurlesque and the grotesque, my recent game is this: if everyone in my family were characters from a horror film, novel, or short story, who would they be? I'm not going to tell you my thoughts just yet (or maybe ever, unless I finish the project and someone publishes it). But the question lead me to think about female characters in horror, and then female perpetrators of violence in horror, and then to dynamics where the violence is specifically or mostly female-female OR where the major dynamic in the film is a relationship between two women.

The two that immediately came to mind were Alien 1 (Ripley vs. the female alien monster) and Suspiria (female protagonist discovers that her ballet school is really a cover for a coven of witches). Below is a list of others that immediately came to mind. Tell me what I'm missing--and yes, I know that this list is full of mostly films in English from the Western part of the world, but I suspect if I started looking at some of the recent anime other's have pointed me towards, I'd find more:

• Carrie (girl with telekinetic powers is abused by crazy Christian mother, eventually destroys her school, is stabbed in the back by her mother, but then telekinetically crucifies her mother with kitchen tools)
  
• Succubus (duh)
• Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (female vampire!)
• Rosmary's Baby (Not so female-female violence, but it is a pregnancy horror)
• It's Alive (Also about the horror of babies)
  
• Friday the 13th (it's actually Jason's mom who is the killer, not Jason)
• The Ring
  
• Psycho (maybe only half makes the list, because the mom is dead, but she still exists as a taxidermied version of herself and in her son's head)
• "Ligeia," by Edgar Allan Poe (also only half on the list--a woman inhabits another woman's body, but it's a male fantasy)
• The Brain that Wouldn't Die
  
• Lair of the White Worm (mostly female-male violence, but some female-female violence)
• Dagon AD (The fish girl--although it's mostly about her trying to convince her brother that he should mate with her so they can live under the sea together forever)
• Dracula's vampire women should get a mention, even though they are clearly subordinate to him.
• The Exorcist (Definite mother-daughter thing)
  

Happy Birthday Bryan!

It's my brother's birthday, and since I couldn't reach him on the phone, I will offer my birthday greetings here (and in the card that I think has already reached him)!

Today is my father's birthday! Happy Birthday, Padre!

I have hives, probably from the fabulous dim sum I ate with Lisa and Bill on Sunday. No doubt my very overexcited socializing is contributing as well. But other than that I feel quite good. I head back to San Diego tomorrow. Once I'm settled, I'll try to make sense of some of my notes from the conference and the readings. I've met people I wanted to meet, hung out with people I already knew and liked, and spent some quality time with old friends and with family. After much poetry and socializing, and many late nights out, and a thoroughly enjoyable New Year's Eve party, I'm feeling a bit sated and ready to go home.

Last Day of Summer

At my cousin's wedding in Maine, several of the men wore Nantucket Reds, and the women wore pearls (I brought some pearls with me but didn't end up wearing them). It had been a while since I'd been in a polite, yacht club environment, but I was able to draw on all of my sailing and preppy vocabulary to make conversation. I remember in high school that I vaguely wanted to get some boat shoes, but they were rather expensive, especially for someone who didn't sail very often. But even the people in Maine who don't sail can sail--the coastline and waterscape demand it. So, I took lessons at the Blue Hill Yacht Club for a while in high school, raced a little, and went on sailing trips, etc. But I never became comfortable with sailing with a spinnaker, and I wouldn't feel comfortable now navigating on a long trip, or even a short one now. I've forgotten a lot.

There were several graduates of my high school at the wedding, all friends of my cousin. I knew some of them because I'd taught them swimming lessons at Nichols Day Camp. One confessed to having had a crush on me during camp and said that I should come "party with them" after the reception was over. It seemed good natured enough (his girlfriend was there and thought it was funny), but I was tired, and didn't have the stamina for more alcohol. I admit that, ridiculously, I was feeling old, and felt weird about partying with a bunch of guys wearing Nantucket Reds reminiscing about their days on the sailing team at Dartmouth. And the fireplace in the cabin where Mom and I were staying was quite nice. And it was pouring rain.

The oldest daughter of my oldest cousin on my mother's side is getting married

I not really a wedding person, but I'm not not a wedding person. Either way, I'm going to Maine tonight on a redeye. Think of me at 6:30 am on the east coast, when most of you will be asleep. I'll be in Newark trying to get some breakfast and waiting for my flight to Portland. It's been ages since I've been in the Newark airport. Ah, nostalgia.

San Diego to Maine is about the longest trip one can take in the continental US--but Maine can be beautiful this time of year, and I'll see family that I haven't seen in a long time. Maybe 10 years for some of them. I'll post pictures.

And I'm still, yes, still, writing up notes from Vancouver, which will appear here eventually.

xo

Mom, I couldn't reach you by phone,

but I dedicated all my handstands and back bends to you today.

Breathing Again

My nephew is nearly 2, and is already talking up a storm. He's energetic, inquisitive, and sweet. And he's proof that toddlers aren't always picky eaters: he has his favorites, of course (blueberries) but he'll try almost anything. And he doesn't like potatoes, which means that he doesn't demand to eat fries all the time. I also discovered Quorn, which is really one of the best meat substitutes or meat-free foods I've ever had. I think that I had the "chicken style tenders," which were toothy and had a nice texture.


I stocked up on sumac and dried pears at the Berkeley Bowl, and also bought a copy of The Transformation from Pegasus Books. And I'm going to read it. And I'm also going to take a nap.

Off to Berkeley

But not for poetry, dear readers, for family--four generations of it, in fact.

(Not so) secretly, of course, I want us all to go to Tartine on Saturday. I've already over planed food options. I have to go to Cheeseboard, at least, even if I don't make it all the way across the bay.

Ba ba etc

Last night I dreamed that I'd actually taken that job. I woke up in a sweat and had thrown all the blankets and pillows off the bed. That job haunts me every few months. I make plenty of money, but I'm not making $60,000 a year. Thinking about that salary really does make me want to throw up, for several reasons 1) $60K is a lot of money, I think 2) I'd really, really have hated the job, which would have involved me managing a combined design and writing department and encouraging them to work really hard and really fast so that the people upstairs could make even more money, and 3) It's hard for me to imagine a world in which I could make $60K doing something that wouldn't make me want to vomit. I don't mean getting 60K doing something that would make me happy, I really do mean something that wouldn't make me want to vomit.

Honestly though, at times I wish that I did have a tolerance for office work. It would make things easier. But nope. I prefer having a crazy, precarious schedule. Because with that crazy, precarious, and totally unsupervised, uncubicalized schedule and income, I can still:

be an artist, pay my bills, save a little, sometimes do some traveling (more of that in the future, after said bills are paid), practice yoga, bike along a lagoon each day that has several excellent birdwatching spots, walk two blocks to the beach, go to readings (not as often as I'd like, but more than I thought I'd be able to around here), publish chapbooks, write, drink wine, go out to dinner sometimes, get Lester new toys every few months...

Hey hey, it's my sisters' birthday!

They are nine!

I missed their call from Australia. I tried to call them in Australia, but no one was home : (

There are many reasons why they kick my butt, but here are three:

1. They have passports from both Ireland and the USA. They can live and go to school anywhere they want.
2. They're super intelligent, and funny, and cosmopolitan.
3. There are three of them: they have their own built-in posse.

We did not discuss "May gray"--I didn't want to upset them too much.

Today the weather is more like what people imagine when they imagine San Diego weather. "Gloomy" was a vocabulary word today, so I taught my students about "June gloom."

Still reading Hannah Weiner and loving Code Poems.

My sister Sarah sent me a card from Adelaide with a lovely picture of a rainbow lorikeet on the front--and also one on the inside that she'd drawn. She inquired about Lester and asked if I ever "try to draw the birds I see." She signed the card "All the dearest colors of the rainbow, love, Sarah."

Sympathy and Empathy

So, today, for the umpteenth time, I explained the difference between sympathy and empathy to my ESL students. (Aside: I remember the first time I heard the word "umpteenth." Dan Rather said it during coverage of the first Gulf War. I don't remember any more about the context, but I went and looked up "umpteenth" in the dictionary. I have a problematic soft spot for Dan Rather because he gave my Dad topographical maps that helped him backpack out of Baghdad to Jordan).

I think the word "sympathetic" has a bad reputation. As in:


We tend to focus on the concept of "pity" (pathos, etc) relative to sympathy, but I think sympathy can be about the capacity to imagine someone's experience while at the same time recongizing that you cannot possibly accurately imagine someone's experience--especially their suffering. It's the combination of the willingness to imagine and the recognition of the impossibility of imagining that is important. When my Dad's dad passed away nearly 10 years ago (I never new my grandfather, all I know is that he ate wheat germ and was once hit in the head with a wrecking ball--mythology) I didn't know what else to write except something along the lines of "Dad, I have no idea how you are feeling, but if you want to talk, let's talk."

When I explain sympathy to my students, I talk about it in terms of identification. Sympathy is when you can imagine or identify with someone's experience, even if you've never had a similar experience. Somehow, there is an affinity--even if it's only imagined. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (if some kind person with access to the OED wants to send me the entries for sympathy and empathy, great), sympathy is "almost a magical notion at first; e.g. in ref. to medicines that heal wounds when applied to a cloth stained with blood from the wound." Sympathy as a way to connect to someone else, even though true connection is impossible.

Empathy is a much more recent term, coined (again, I'm citing the Online Etymology Dictionary) in 1858 by Rudolf Lotze. Empathy is initially about identifying with art, not with people. (The art object as a mirror of self, bla bla). When we talk about empathy relative to another person, it's still largely an intellectual concept: empathy is a kind of intellectual vicarious experience of the feelings of someone else. At least that's how I explain it to my super smart advanced ESL students.

So, I think of empathy as being intellectual, and sympathy as being imaginative. Yes, I know, it's a false dichotomy, but still. It's truly impossible to understand someone else's experience. You can't really know what another person is experiencing any more than you can know what a parrot is experiencing. What you have is your ability to imagine someone's experience based on your shared interactions. This is how Lester and I interact: we have our own knowledge of ourselves, and our own knowledge of our shared interactions.

Probably I am supposed to model qualities of "excellence" and "leadership."

I typed up a poem. I wish html rendered spacing better.

I'm grading. Oops, I mean I'm "providing feedback." I keep forgetting that I'm not actually a professor or a teacher, I'm a "facilitator."

The student who has missed four out of the past ten classes told the evaluators that my class moves too quickly, and the student who dropped down from the advanced class and never does the extra assignments I give him (and which he requests) said that the class moves too slow.

I bought my brother a gift membership to the Audubon Society. I can write that here since I know he doesn't read this blog.

I'm going to make tea.

The working title for this part is called "The History of Aunt Ug."

Here's a section from the now epic collage/flarf story my sisters and I have been writing.

Ah ha! Nancy returned to her chicken-belly convertible. He felt tired and worn out, small and pathetic. When she was born, my mom couldn't say Margaret, so she called her Ug and the name stuck. We're supposed to turn our money over to the earthly beings who makes spiritual communication over their cellphones at the play station to make the pieces fit right. When Ug buys a bag of cookies, she licks every one so that nobody else will want them. My guess is she's here with Mr. Motto again for some more chicken and turkey dressing--my, he sure likes chicken. The cage was wheeled through one--a wide columned hallway that lead into a small room. Sometimes it gets noisy and Ug starts a quiet contest. Three branch ranch, three branch ranch, with a little bit of chicken dressing on the side, Mr. Johnson said. Do you know your identity is not in them. Be quiet. It's a quiet contest, starting now. Oopsy daisies, the tea is ready. Shh, said Nancy, I think the prowler is outside the window. Only shouting seemed to keep it from overwhelming him.

Various New Years Past

1990: I was living in Sedgwick, Maine, and I spend the evening with with my mom and my best friend from middle school, Jocelyn. We stayed up until midnight and then my friend and I gave each other a New Year hug. We joked that it was an "old lady" hug. I don't know why.

1999: Crashed a debutante ball in Nashville. I wore black leather pants and a gray cashmere sweater. Then we went to some club afterwards. The next day, we went over to a friend's house to watch football. At the time, I didn't understand that New Year's Day is a football day. I became very frustrated and bored when I realized that I was going to have to sit around and watch football all day with people I barely knew. I ended up walking to a donut shop down the road just to have something to do.

2000: I was with my Dad in an apartment in Gaithersburg, MD. We'd just returned from Ireland--I'd gone to take care of my sisters while Dad and Mary attended a funeral. Dad and I came home early for reasons I don't remember, and Mary and my sisters stayed through the New Year. I was very, very sick, and spent a feverish night sleeping in my sisters' huge crib. I think that the both of us were too sick to properly celebrate my Dad's 50th birthday on New Year's Day.

2001-2005: Many happy New Year's Eves with Mark

2006: New Year's Eve bash at Dan's house in DC. Most of my friends were there, all in one place, and we toasted to everything, including several obscure colors.

2007: At the Shangri La hotel in Oman.

But of course, I don't want to live here

We went for a walk/hike around a nearby lake. Looking at the map, I don't know if it was Lake Dallas or Grapevine Lake. The last time I was here was July, several years ago, when it was hot, humid, and thunderstorming. It was actually quite nice to drive past the exurban housing developments to where the horsefarms and trailer parks begin. Of course, most of the farms are forsale, and I'm sure the city has plans for the trailer parks. I'm only saying that I'm feeling kinder about the towns north of Dallas.

Tomorrow we are going to go to a resturant just east of here that only serves chicken, chicken-fried steak, and sides. I remember I once got into an argument with an ex from Nashville about whether or not it was "chicken-fried steak" or "chicken fried steak." The argument wasn't about the dash, but about the emphasis. I argued that the name refered to the technique--i.e. the steak in chicken-fried steak is fried in the same way that fried chicken is fried. My ex failed to understand why I felt the need to think about such distinctions. I've never had chicken-fried steak.

I have fixed the internet, I think.

Noemi press rejected my manuscript, but I'm not suprised. I am just doing my duty, submiting poems to presses that have published some work I like and don't charge a reading fee.

I like the day after Christmas better than Christmas. In Maine, the 26th was often a day for visiting close friends, playing with new gifts or reading new books.

One of my sisters is mad about Nancy Drew, which makes me very happy. In fact, as usual, all of my nervousness about "will they like me" and "will I be able to talk with them" was unwarented. We spent nearly two hours during the late afternoon making collage stories with lines and phrases from two or three Nancy Drew books, Hanna Montana Lyrics, the Spiderwick Chronicles book 4, and Ellie McDoodle: Have Pen, Will Travel. The collaboration is something of a continuation from a story we started last year about a peanut man on the Great Wall of China.

My father gave me his old Cannon camera that he bought in San Jose in 1983! I don't have it in front of me now so I can't talk about the specifics, but I'll be soliciting advice from my photographer friends about it. The base is solid, but some of the lenses will need to be replaced or repaired.

There is a fireplace in the living room. It's nice to sit and read in front of the fire. I also like being surrounded by so many familiar objects--the spears from Papua New Guinea, all of Dad's old maps, the textiles that Mary has collected and framed, the small chests and cabinets, and especially the stringed insturments from Asia. I attempted to tune the Chinese harp yesterday evening, but was afraid I'd break it--it's really a task that would require more concentration than I had at the time. And I can't play it. I just know that it works on a pentatonic scale. I understand stringed insturments conceptually, but I've never gotten a good feel for them.

Madness Madness

Well, I survived the Christmas Eve slumber party with my sisters, and we've already unwrapped the huge pile of gifts and had brunch. I haven't seen my cousins and aunt and uncle in ages, so it is fun and rather overwhelming! Our internet connection is slow here in the wilds of north Dallas...

I'm making beef stew.

My students went to a country club in Temecula last night. Where? I said. Temecula, they said. Oh, I said. Tem-e-cu-la. I've driven through there. Then I laughed in a way that made them look at me strangely.

They wanted to know if I know how to "country dance." I kind of do. I can sort of square dance, but I'm better at contra-dancing, which I did in Maine fairly frequently in high school, while wearing 80s-style hippie floral dresses, even though it was the 90s. I will not go to bars and go surfing with them, and I will not teach them to square dance. I'm certainly not driving out to Temecula with them. But I want them to tell me their stories.

Today we researched film noir. My Vietnamese student gave a pretty awesome presentation on German Expressionist influences on film noir, and he hadn't even seen any film noirs. I miss my DC students, but my students here have their moments.

I sent a manuscript to Futurepoem today, but not Fence.

Bought tickets, courtesy of my father, to Dallas. I'll be there from Christmas Eve until January 3rd. Quite a while. But it's my last chance to see everyone before they head off to Adelaide. Of course I want Mark and I to visit them in Australia, but I can't count on it. I've been researching places to get fried chicken and BBQ and chili con carne. I'd like to make gingerbread houses with my sisters, but since I don't arrive until the afternoon on Christmas Eve, I'm not really sure that will work.

It rained today. A lot. It was a San Diego storm. It rained from 4 am until now, although it's only drizzling now. The roads here weren't built to drain. In the mountains I'm sure there will be floods and landslides, especially in the places that were burned.

I like some Stevie Nicks songs from the 80s, but I'm not into the 80s hippie look--hers or anyones--since I was a victim of it myself. Oh, those velvet bourrets!