Lester is practicing a new song

--a version of "who's my good baby b?"--one of the many silly things I say to him all the time. He's now learned it and is experimenting with incorporating it into his repertoire. If I go into the living room to look at him or even talk to him, he'll stop--when he's practicing, he likes to be alone. On Mondays, Mark works late, and I work here in the afternoon and eat a very early meal so I have time to digest before my 6:30 yoga practice. Lester and I eat together; after I go back to working in the study, and Lester practices his songs.

Lester will spend weeks perfecting a new phrase or song. He often will get the tone or rhythm of the vocalization first before he begins to enunciate it. Moreover, Lester likes to develop several different versions of the same song. For example, he has several different laugh sounds that he uses in different situations. When Mark or I talk vigorously on the phone or with each other, he'll make a loud, guffawing sound. He also has two different higher, more twittery laughs that he uses.

I've blogged before about how Lester says "peep," which is a version of him imitating Mark and I imitating him. However, Lester's favorite song is "salt peanuts," followed by a three-note salt peanuts whistle. He does at least three different versions of "salt peanuts," one that is like me, one like Mark, and one like our friend Dan, who met Lester as a baby bird and spent a lot of time talking with him. Lester also does the three-note whistle in multiple keys, depending on what he's just sung before it and what he plans to sing after it.

I think he might also be learning "I love you," but it's hard to hear clearly from here.

After Lester has incorporated a new song or phrase into his repertoire, he likes to riff on it--he'll combine one part of a song or phrase with another part, or sing everything in a different order.

My understanding of domestic happiness and order has been deeply influenced by Lester's afternoon practice sessions--and by birdsong in general. A vocalizing bird is a healthy, happy bird. Mark's parakeets would sing vigorously at sunrise and sunset, whenever there was music on, and whenever anyone sung or talked with them. They liked to join in the party.

I remember taking a nap one afternoon in our old apartment at 1401 N Street NW in Washington, DC. Lester thought I was asleep, so he felt free to practice. At that time, I knew he was vocalizing, but I hadn't clearly picked out any of his specific sounds. In a sort of half-awake daze, I listened to him practicing some of the first vocalizations he picked up living with Mark and I--"salt peanuts," "Lester's a pretty bird" and their corresponding whistles. Of course, when I got up from the couch, he stopped practicing.

Lester does vocalize when people are around, especially when people are talking energetically or there's music on--but he doesn't practice then; he practices in privacy, on calm afternoons or early evenings, preferably after we've both eaten a meal.

The reading was fun

The reading was fun.

Tomorrow is Monday. Before I wrote "Monday" I wrote "Munday." I think I was thinking of "fun," and the general lack of it on Mondays (though I think Tuesday is actually a worse day than Monday). But hence the "mun" in the "Munday" I erased. I suppose "mun" could be "money," too.

The reading was fun.

NEW Triple Threat Reading Series

Mark has a good blog post about the ways in which San Diego is and is not a poetry city. I'm simply posting the information about the reading this Saturday--I'll be there, hopefully with freshly manicured hands and pedicured toes. Yes--a reading in San Diego is that exciting.

NEW Triple Threat Reading Series--sponsored by 3 San Diego Small Presses: 1913 Press (ed. Sandra Doller), Kuhl House Press (ed. Ben Doller), Tougher Disguises Press (ed. James Meetze) announces its inaugural event...

Come one, come all to the first reading in North Park's new and explosive series. We begin with Noah Eli Gordon & Joshua Marie Wilkinson who are reading in support of their fresh new collaborative book Figures for a Darkroom Voice.

Agitprop Gallery in North Park
2837 University Ave. San Diego, California 92104
(entrance to the gallery is actually on Utah)
7:00pm Saturday, March 1st.

Noah Eli Gordon's first book, The Frequencies, was published by San Diego's own Tougher Disguises Press in 2003. Since then, he has had five other books appear, including Novel Pictorial Noise, which was selected by John Ashbery for the National Poetry Series, and published last year by Harper Perennial. Last year also saw the release of Figures for a Darkroom Voice, a book
written in collaboration with Joshua Marie Wilkinson. He writes a column on chapbooks for Rain Taxi: Review of Books, and his reviews and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Publishers Weekly, Boston Review, and Denver Quarterly. He teaches creative writing at the University of Colorado in Denver. See him reading with Joshua Marie Wilkinson here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=aSENrRf0pNw


Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned Rooms (Pinball, 2005), Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk (U of Iowa, 2006), and The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth (forthcoming from Tupelo Press). He holds a PhD from University of Denver and lives in Chicago where he teaches at Loyola University. His first film, Made a Machine by Describing the Landscape, a documentary about the band Califone, is due out next year. He curates Rabbit Light Movies, a website devoted to short poem-films, and recently co-edited an anthology of conversations between younger poets and their elders, which is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press. See him reading with Noah Eli Gordon here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aSENrRf0pNw

It's definitely blowing the top of my head off

"There is a difference between fashion copy and our 'poems' which are imitations of fashion copy. There is a difference between a real fashion show and our imitation of a fashion show. We are interested in these differences in spite of the fact that we have tried to eliminate them.

"We want to show the difference between presentation and representation by bringing presentation and representation as close together as possible."

--Hannah Weiner, from "The Fashion Show Poetry Event Essay"

So, yes, I've been reading Hannah Weiner's Open House. I bought it at Bridge Street last October, and I'd been waiting and waiting to read it until I could actually read it with attention.

Recently I dreamed that Mark and I were in the last house I lived in in Sedgwick, Maine. Fish started floating out of the sky, and eventually jellyfish. A large apartment building space ship came down, and a military man said we had to come with him. I was skeptical, but also nervous about the fish in the sky. So I ran back into the house and grabbed an already-packed suitcase, and also Hannah Weiner's Open House. We got into the apartment building space ship, and things got weirder from there. The last part of the dream included Mormons and ballroom dancing.

It's still February, after all

Read a student essay today that suggested being a hippie was, for the student, about making better style choices and having more interesting conversations. That particular student is a good conversationalist, and does a great sense of style.

Another student said that you could rent a one-bedroom apartment in Milan for about $400 a month. I don't really believe it, but still.

Today a student asked me the difference between "reality" and "real estate." In San Diego county, there isn't a whole lot of difference.

Also, I want this; this would also be nice.

Going to yoga this evening to pry my shoulders out of my ears.

Altered States

One of my coworkers at one of my many jobs asked me for advice about sensory deprivation tanks--did I know of any? Apparently the only one this person had found is in at Full Circle Yoga Institute in San Diego. My coworker knows I practice yoga, and that's why this person asked me--if one yoga center has a sensory deprivation tank, why not another? I had trouble focusing on the question, because the moment this person said "sensory deprivation," I thought of a scene in "Altered States" where the main character Edward Jessup has regressed so far back into collective consciousness that he's become a kind of Neanderthal who goes on a killing rampage at the zoo. Later he says something like this to his wife: "Last night I hunted, killed, and ate a goat. It was one of the most sublime experiences of my life."

I have trouble remembering facts if I don't understand them.

No rain today.

I ate a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. It was good.

I am tired.

It is Monday.

My students said several interesting things today about their ideal neighborhoods. Many of them would like to live on an island in the Caribbean. One student wants to move to Anchorage. Another student wants to live in a city in southern Europe. My basketball playing Turkish student is being recruited by a school in Edmonton, Alberta. Their utopias were all basically mixed-use, economically diverse urban communities near a beach (except for the student who wants to move to Anchorage).

How is it possible that tomorrow is Monday? I had a three day teaching week last week, so now I feel like every week should be a three-day week.

A yogurt went bad. We had to throw it out. Quel dommage.

Mark and I watched an episode called "The Lost Child" from the 4th season of Prime Suspect on Friday night. It was tense. I remember my mom liking the Prime Suspect series. The episode felt very 90s pop Feminist. Detective Inspector Jane Tennison is woman in power, but the rest of the bureaucracy is all men, and she's often at odds with her superiors. The episode begins with the suggestion that she's had an abortion, and the plot revolves around the problems of motherhood and having a career. The murder victim is a toddler and the murderer turns out to be the mother (who was crazy, tired, studying for law exams, and frustrated with bourgeois pressures). Interestingly, there's a character who's a (former) pedophile--he's the main suspect, but completely innocent. In some ways he's a rather sympathetic character, even though he's also disgusting.

Anyway, the episode made me think about 90s Feminism, and Hilary Clinton, and the Democratic debate in Austin on Thursday. I drank almost too much and stayed up past midnight--both of which are pretty hard to do in San Diego north county. I want the primaries to be over.

We went to the zoo today.

Last night I dreamed that the house was a huge maze jungle gym for Lester.

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.

I was confused about many things

Alas, there are no readings this evening.

I am going to make a lentil stew thing with greens. Lentils are good with greens. Also, I have a rather large amount of lentils in my cupboard, and also a lot of greens in my fridge.

I want to brine my own corned beef for St. Patrick's day this year--all in practice for one day spending St. Patrick's day with my sisters and Dad and Mary in Westport (we'd have to climb Croagh Patrick the next day to work off the corned beef). This will likely never happen, but I want to be prepared. Mark and I will eat leftover corned beef on sandwiches and in breakfast hash.

I wish that Jean Rhys had written more. I wish Jane Bowles had written more. I have to stop myself from rereading Good Morning, Midnight and Two Serious Ladies every month. When I'm tired and frustrated with reading, those books are all I want to read. I think it's probably time for me to reread Nadja. Maybe I'll be able to appreciate it without feeling so hostile towards it and endlessly comparing it to Nightwood.

Here are some books I would like to read:

• Insel - Mina Loy
• Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of the Fin De Siecle - Elaine Showalter
• Trauma: A Genealogy - Ruth Leys
• The Open: Man and Animal - Giorgio Agamben
• The Blindfold - Siri Hustvedt
• CALAFIA'S CHILDREN, The California Heritage Poetry Curriculum - Oakland Unified School District
• Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society (Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity, 4) - Joel Robbins

And a lot of other books

Riding in the Rain

I should get rain pants. It turns out that they would actually be very useful, even here in southern California. Also, riding in the rain would be easier if I wore contacts. I've tried, but I don't like them. I should also go to a real eye doctor who can fit me with contacts that aren't irritating. I like the fact that my glasses cover up the circles under my eyes.

I have a new ESL class this week, and so I no longer have the very vexing and scary student I had last month. Apparently, he complained about having a new teacher and told the director that I was the best teacher he'd ever had. He's like a guy who beats you and then says how much he loves you afterwards.

Edwin Torres arrives tomorrow to read at Cal State San Marcos. Leslie Scalapino is also reading down in San Diego. If only there were two of me!

Off to yoga. My open-floor handstand is much stronger now. My quadriceps feel like they're shrinking, though--one downside of cycling, so I need to work more thigh stretches into my sequences.

Missing Cupcakes

I can't find the cupcakes we brought home from Auntie Em's Kitchen. I think I remember taking them off the train. Maybe they are in the car? I am sad.

LA + Poetry + Poet Friends + Art + Armenian Food + New People + Me + Mark =

Big, big love.

And I love the sleepy, somehow not quite hungover train ride back to north county, too.

Today it was 41 Degrees

And there was hail.

And yet many people are still in T shirts.

Tomorrow Mark and I are going to drink cava, but that has nothing to do with the weather.

I'm pointing you all towards what Nada Gordan said about Hilary Clinton, gender, and the recent primaries.

I admit that I voted for Edwards by mail before he dropped out.

I will not complain about my students.

All I want to yap about is how difficult and challenging (in a boring way) the current group of students in my ESL class is. I'm also in the midst of three days of insane final grading for one of my online classes, which is just ending. I'm testy.

The shower won't drain.

A few weeks ago, I finally potted the clipping from the jade plant that Mark and I had in DC. It's doing quite well, and it's nice to have a little plant here in my office.

It's nice to have an office.

I found my old English grammar book from the first half of my sophomore year in high school in Mexico City. On the back page is a list of potential gifts for people, a note that says "remember Lord of the Flys" (my spelling was even worse then), and a cheesy quote from the song "Fragile," by Sting.

Here's a quote from the grammar book:

"To people who speak standard English, an error in the use of even a single verb is as conspicuous as a smudge on one's face. These additional drills are included to clean up any remaining 'smudges' in your use of the irregular verbs that you have studied so far in this chapter."

or, a favorite sample sentence:

"After Elmo added raisins, he put the cake in the oven."

I'm not sure how studying English grammar in an environment geared towards non-native speakers of English at the same time I was learning Spanish resulted in me enjoying grammar, but it did. Spelling has always annoyed me--grammar I like. It explains structure. Thought. Logic--or lack thereof.

I'm going to name my style: it is called the My New Style is Your New Style Style. Alternatively, it could be called, "I hope this doesn't feel good"

or also "it pains me."

I have a new student who really really wants to talk about condoms. He's 28. I fear that his presence in the class will mean that I have one overwrought young man too many. They all came to California because they thought it was warm all the time and they could go to the beach and meet girls. It's cold now. Too cold for the beach, and most of them don't live near the beach, and getting to the beach takes an hour on the bus, even though it's only five miles from their house. They are overwrought and lack the ability to pay attention to detail. None of them even bought a guidebook before coming here. They didn't look up the weather, they didn't even really research where Oceanside is located. No one gave them any useful advice before they arrived and it didn't ever occur to them that studying English in California would NOT be like starring in an episode of the OC.

In general, I like and respect my students, but I'm having trouble doing that this month. I don't respect them. I want to, but they need to give me some indication that they are thinking. I feel like everything I say to them is a disappointment: they're so fragile. "California is cold. No, not all women are sluts. No, there is no street life in Oceanside. No, you will probably never have the opportunity to go to a house party while you are here. No, the public transportation is terrible. No, you can't go to a club until you are 21. No, there aren't really any clubs to go to. No, the water here is cold all year round. No, the weather isn't nice here in May and June--it's cloudy and overcast every day" etc....

I'm nostalgic for my DC students, who were, in general, tough, polite, funny and independent.

I'm in a pissy mood, so I'm not going to conclude this post with my usual sympathetic counter argument about how my students really are OK sometimes.

how much I like being upside down

This morning I woke up with an Alfred de Musset poem in my head--"Tristesse"--one that I had to memorize for a French class in high school. Most of the poems we had to memorize were by Musset, Jacques Prévert, Verlaine, sometimes Rimbaud. Nothing really surprising. Although I guess we did do a whole unit on Apollinaire and caligrams. And we also read Ionesco's La Cantatrice Chauve and Beckett's En Aattendant Godot. My French teacher had us reading Beckett while I was still hung up on T.S. Eliot and writing imitations of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Meanwhile, in French, I was writing awful but strange poems about salamanders and gypsies. You will never see any of those poems.

I'm not sure I have anything else to say about the "Numbers Trouble" article that I haven't already said before. Doubtless I have much to say about gender and avant-garde art. Yes. Much to say.

I've been reading back issues of Elsewhere and also Hanna Weiner.

I've been trying to figure out what I did to my neck.

Rat Year

Dim Sum over at Delirious Hem. I was too overwhelmed with student behavior problems, plagiarism issues, and two annual reviews to contribute to this forum, but do have a look. If you're even here, though, you probably already know about it. I'll be blogging/commenting on it soon. Maybe.

This was an awful week. I taught my students the verb "whine." Soon, I'll have to teach some of them how to say "momma's boy."

road rode wrode

It is difficult to learn English in English class if you are never in English class. I don't care how much money your parents foolishly paid for you to come here.

However, today was a good day. I rode my bike to work this morning for the first time in weeks. I saw a red-tailed hawk in one of the acacia trees near our apartment, and three herons, and two feral parrots. I rarely see feral parrots around here, so I was very excited. They were smallish, green, and loud. Some kind of conure, probably.

I also now have my California drivers license. At last.

Lester's been in a pissy mood because he's going through his spring molt. Today I gave him a shower/steam bath, which helps take care of the pinfeathers, and he's in a noticeably better mood now.

Ce Soir

Poets in the Galleries
6:00 p.m.

Focusing on women poets living in California, SDMA and the UCSD Department of Literature are proud to present award-winning poets Sandra Doller and Fanny Howe.

Sandra (nee Miller) Doller's first book, Oriflamme, was published by Ahsahta Press in 2005, and her second book, Chora, is forthcoming from Ahsahta in 2009. She was a Distinguished Visiting Writer at Boise State University in spring 2007 and a recipient of the Paul Engle-James Michener Fellowship in 2004. She currently teaches in the literature and writing department at California State University, San Marcos.

Fanny Howe is the author of more than 20 books of poetry and prose, several novels and prose collections, short stories, books for young adults, and a collection of literary essays. Additionally, she has won several awards, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Council for the Arts, and the Village Voice.
$5 members/$10 nonmembers/$7 students

It's not my assignment

Oh, I wish my sinuses would just explode--that would feel nice(r).

I would never design an assignment that requires developmental English students to write a cause-effect essay on global warming. It is a boring, uncreative assignment, and someone plagiarizes every time. It's bad for the student, obviously, and it's an administrative nuisance. I tell students, "it's easier for you to write a solid essay than it is for you to plagiarize and not have me notice." They do not listen. If someone plagiarizes so well that I can't tell they are actually plagiarizing, then on some level I don't care, because it means that they must have pretty good writing skills.

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.

things between me and death at the hands of two simultaneous performance reviews

are

• 8 year anniversary
• dinner
• beer
• Fanny Howe et Sandra Dollar reading on Tuesday
• pay raise
• tedious community college job applications
• California drivers license test
• cava

All Problems at All Jobs All Together

And all must be solved, even though all are a waste of time.

I've been writing poems, which must mean that I am a poet.

I feel like reading the Plays of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim. That can't be good.

Measuring "ahh"

The commercial promises 365 days of ahh, but how do you measure ahh?

Are we enjoying our task

For the most part, we are.

And I typed up and revised the first part of a new manuscript I'm working on this afternoon. That felt good.

And I felt nearly normal during yoga class this evening. Even during inversions.

Rain (Shel Silverstein)

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I sleep very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can’t do a handstand,
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy thing I just said—
I’m just not the same since there’s rain in my head.

I am downloading a PDF version of Fun With Grammar.

It's raining about as hard as I've ever seen it rain here.

I am writing an exam for my ESL students.

My voice is still 70% gone.

But...there is hope! The "Parrots in the Land of Oz" Nature special is on tonight--I've been waiting for this for quite some time. My little sisters in Adelaide sent an email about how they feed the parrots in the park near their house...

and

I have a good recipe for a grown-up version or Rice Crispies treats, one that involves almonds and dulce de leche.

I am wearing slippers

And they are warm. Slippers are useful, even in San Diego. My voice is half-back, and after teaching all-day yesterday with no voice and a sensation similar to having a golf ball stuck in my throat, I feel significantly better today.

I have no voice

Well, maybe I have like 15% voice. Teaching tomorrow is going to be "interesting."

Mark and I ate at Terri Cafe in Oceanside for lunch, and the shoyu ramen was quite good. All their noodles are made nearby. Yum.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Etc.

Continuous sore throat and messed-up sinuses. Lots and lots of ginger lemon tea.

A mostly good ESL class, which is good.

More flexible and complicated offers from yesterday's interview-a six-month contract? A three-day work week? I'm asking for details, details.

Numerous design and typesetting deadlines today. Some mine, mostly other people's.

Jerome Rothenberg and Steve Willard at UCSD this afternoon. Will Mark and I get out of our offices in time? What interesting/strange/shocking/boring problem will prevent us (or, hopefully, only nearly prevent us) from going?

Showers. Rain. Inevitable accidents. Rainy rides in the, er, rain.

Everything at once!

I started teaching another ESL class today--they're more advanced beginner level. I haven't taught a lower-level class in a while, so I was nervous. But I'm glad to have this class. They are friendly and motivated. They know they need to work on their skills, they're not yet resentful of the fact that they have to work on their skills. Plus, my tendency to pantomime and use really exaggerated body language to explain vocabulary is actually necessary and even appreciated.

Today the wireless router got all weird. All the security settings that Bill Howe helped me set up and which I actually managed to maintain went away, and the network defaulted back to being called "Linksys" and having no security settings. I can't access the router IP to change the settings. I reset the router and somehow changed the network name and made a WPA Key--but I did that all through the software interface program thing on my computer, not by going in and changing the settings manually. I still can't access the settings manually. In theory, when I reset the router, the password should have defaulted to "admin," but it didn't. And the old password I used doesn't work. And now that the network has a new name, I have no idea how to change things manually. But it is encrypted, and working. I guess that's good, but I am uneasy.

Today I decided that I have to turn down an almost formal (they want to check my references) full-time job offer with a salary that is kind of shocking (in a good way). I felt a little sick about it all riding home, but I just can't do it: I make a living, pay my bills, eliminate debt, save, and travel with my freelance work and teaching. I'm not getting rich, but I don't feel insane about my work, and I have a flexibility that could never be matched with a full-time job. I can go to yoga in the middle of the morning or afternoon. I'd have to use all my vacation time to visit my family or travel for poetry and art things, and I don't really want to have to do that. I don't want to have to explain to my boss why it is essential that I leave work at 3:00 pm so that I can make it to a 4:30 reading. I want to work like crazy, but work the late hours at home, with Mark around and Lester on my lap and jazz music playing. And mostly what I want is to have work interfere as little as possible with writing and art. So, no to the full-time job.

I did have a very nice bike ride cursing down Palomar Airport road and along the 101 though, just before sunset. (And riding down Palomar Airport road after dark would be nearly suicidal, especially where it crosses the 5). It was one of those "oh, it is very beautiful here" moments. It isn't always beautiful here, but it was this afternoon.

No one drove into the lagoon.

I'm listening to (but not watching) Chris Pusateri read ("If Martians exist, then so do presidents," he just said) over at the Continental Review. I'm learning to enjoy all of this recorded poetry--just please, If you ever have a party, and I ever come, please don't play poetry on your stereo or whatever slick or crappy sound system you have (and also, don't play any avant garde jazz). I love poetry and avant garde jazz, but if you play either at a party, well, it's about the same thing as just telling your partygoers to go away and party somewhere else. Now I know that some of you "partygoers" would rather party alone, and that's ok with me--just stay away from my parties.

Anyway. Thank you Continental Review. I like to listen to poetry. Alone. When I'm not at a party.

The Chargers didn't win. No one drove into the lagoon.

I made pizza for dinner. The last time I made pizza, I forgot that I actually own a rolling pin, so rolling out the crust was difficult--the resulting pizza was tasty, but the crust was uneven and doughy in places. Tonight, I remembered that I own a rolling pin, so I rolled out the dough--the pizza crust was even, slightly crunchy, and uniformly cooked.

I have complicated feelings about most PBS adaptations of Jane Austen novels (and complicated feelings about the novels (marriage, wealthy, wealthy men)), but I am going to watch the PBS adaptation of Northanger Abbey this evening.

I kept thinking (in a smarmy, mean, unyogic way) of Charles Bernstein's poem, "Thank You for Saying Thank You."

I don't enjoy working with partners in a yoga class. I know, I know there are some things you need a partner for, and it's good to learn to trust and support other people. I guess. However, when I am upside down, I'd rather be left to my own devices. If I'm going to fall, I'd rather fall sideways and land on my feet instead of A) falling over backwards into a deranged back bend to avoid kicking my partner or B) just falling on my partner. I rarely feel supported by a yoga partner. Instead, I feel like I have to support them, which is most vexing when one is supposed to be the recipient of support. This is why I'm not a big fan of support.

Or maybe it's just that I'm not good at moving in and out of "teaching" mode quickly. When I'm at yoga, I need to focus very precisely on what I am physically doing. I don't want to help someone else understand that, for example, they should hold my hips or my feet when spotting me in an inversion, not my knees (ouch!). Giving directions while upside down and everyone in the room is also talking is impossible--you have to yell just so that your poor partner can hear what you are saying.

When I'm not in a kind, teacherly mode, I'm not a very good partner because I'm timid. I don't really want to touch someone else, and I don't want to be responsible when they get injured, or when their rotator cuff tears. Many people will simply not tell you if you are doing something that makes them uncomfortable, so I probably sound overly paranoid when I say "how does this feel? Are you feeling any pain in your lower back?" etc every five seconds.

Of course, receiving a really good assist is fabulous. A good assist can help you open up your muscles, or gain a deeper, more embodied sense of alignment. Giving an assist correctly can also do the same thing. But first you have to get through the interpersonal weirdness of assisting someone (or being assisted) in the first place.

I want a writing MFA I don't want one

Having an MFA would do almost nothing for my publication possibilities, but it would help me get adjunct work. Wow, that's motivating!

I'm feeling arrogant and impatient: I'm a really good writer. I'm a really good teacher, I can help you learn grammar and writing and theory, I'm extremely intelligent and totally cute--and my social skills are top notch. Plus, I can do a really solid handstand. I am sure I will have a book out in the next year or so. Most writers I respect, even ones with MFAs, say MFAs aren't necessary (or they say that everyone needs a PhD now). Necessary for what? Apparently, an MFA is necessary for adjunct work. Blech.

I am considering, again, doing an MFA in art. Not writing. I don't want to be anyones academic superstar, I want to be able to make a living and not go crazy. I am feeling impatient about my writing and professional careers because, I suppose, they are actually going quite well. So I want them to be even better. Now.

The new year has begun for real! The holidays are over! All worries that I have not worried for weeks are beginning to return!

I Made This

I like the fact that the man thing in it has no head.

My neck hurts. Again. Etc.

I was productive today. Yoga. Work. Grading. Walk in the sun. Reading in the sun with Mark.

Excess Qualities are Important Because

The Chargers won and someone drove into the lagoon.

We went bird watching

And then we took Lester to the park by the lagoon to read. There is a significant echo off a building just west of the little park--Lester was at first frightened and then excited by how the echo made his calls seem twice as loud and twice as long.

My North County

is nice in the winter. I am glad that I do not have to take all the asthma and allergy medication I used to have to take (ooo, a many modaled sentence).

The interview went quite well. It looks like I'll get to work on a small initial project, and then we'll see how it goes. The people at the firm are from New York. In a professional context, I do find it much easier to communicate with people from back east. I appreciate the directness.

Cross your fingers for me.

I have a meeting tomorrow for a possible design freelance job.

I am thinking more than usual about what to wear to this meeting.

And, of course, I'm biking to the meeting, so that makes it even more challenging.

Recipe Radar

Some kind of a Spanish-style fish soup with white beans and saffron. I've seen lots of recipes that use clams, but I can't eat shellfish, so maybe I'll make it with halibut or monkfish.

I have two more whole trouts in the freezer courtesy of our neighbor. Anyone have a favorite way to prepare trout? I'm getting bored with my various fish preparations.

A lentil and sausage soup. I make a version of this a few times every winter. I saw one recipe that calls for fennel, which could be interesting.

A very basic but tasty brunch recipe: baked eggs with potatoes and chorizo. Mmm.

Winter greens: I tend to make some version of braised greens (maybe with beans and prosciutto, or a more middle-eastern version with chickpeas, or a spicy version with sausage). Does any one have any favorite winter green dishes/recipes?

Something with eggplants. Eggplants are good in the winter.

I'm a bit sick of winter squash for the moment, so I'm taking a break.

I'm writing poems, so that must mean I am interested in things.

I'm doing the last edits on my submission to the Press literary conference at Evergreen coming up in May, which promises to be a yee haw time.

I received a tagine in the mail today. Thank you.

Goodbye, Flash

It's Raining!

We're all slowly adjusting to being back at home. Lester has a lot of pin feathers, and it's too cold to give him a bath, which means he's been getting extra head scratches and preening--not that he minds.

Beyond cooking, food, and fluffing around, there's not much happening, and that's fine with me. I'm working up to a post on Jennifer Moxley's The Middle Room and perhaps a paragraph on Lester and post-structural Wittgenstein.

And also how many designs from McSweeney's were featured in the recent Print magazine annual.

And also about how Peter Gizzi is the new poetry editor for The Nation, which most of you probably already know.

I'll have to start working again on Monday, but until then I have a few days to mellow out and prepare for, well, Monday.

I'm back in SoCal with Mark and Lester.

We're feeling well enough, but not super well, so I decided to make chicken soup--quite the project as it turns out. I made stock from scratch with sauted onions, leek, and hacked up pieces of chicken--bones and skin, too--braised and then simmered in water with bay leaves and salt. This is the most hands on stock I've ever made, but the cooking time was only 40 minutes (20 braising and 20 simmering). I put the chicken breasts in with the water, and they were perfectly finished at the same time as the stock. This was nice, because I just cooled and shredded them and then added them to the soup at the end. After that, the rest was easy--potatoes, parsnips, carrots, etc. I also added some savory, because I have it, and fresh ginger, because ginger is good for every kind of illness. The end result was very good.

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.

Rising Star of the Metroplex

Various Chicken Fried

At the time I thought these two birds were hawks--I didn't have my binoculars. In flight, they looked like hawks, in this picture, they look like they could be turkey vultures.

Today we drove to Roanoke, a town of less than 5000 people just west and south of Flower Mound (on the other side of Grapevine Lake) to eat fried chicken at Babe's Chicken Dinner House. Although Babe's is a bit of a Texas chain, the Roanoke location was the first. Roanoke was a nice little place. I liked the fact that it is right on the Missouri Pacific rail line. Trains are soothing.

Babe's in Roanoke only serves fried chicken and chicken-fried steak. My sister Sarah was disappointed that they didn't have chicken-fried chicken.

Chicken-fried steak is like a Texas version of wiener schnitzel, except that it's made with a fairly cheap cut of steak instead of veal. It's usually pan fried, where as fried chicken is frequently deep-fried (but it can also be pan fried). Chicken fried chicken has the same preparation as chicken-fried steak but with chicken.

I don't really understand the differences between chicken-fried chicken and fried chicken. It's very confusing. Can anyone offer insight?

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...

Our neighbor came over with a bucket of trout he caught today

and gave me three of the medium-sized ones. I often cook fish on Sunday, so I'll make one tomorrow and freeze the rest.


I took this picture in mid-November while riding the 302 bus from Oceanside to San Marcos. It is a very long, boring bus ride. I like the Primo Food Market, though.

It's always strange to be home without Lester. A friend from yoga kindly accompanied me to drop Lester off to be boarded this morning--I don't like driving on highways, and it was good to have company. This will be the third (or the fourth?) time Lester has boarded at the vet, so he's quite comfortable there, and the staff know him. When I walked in the door of the vet, the woman at the front desk said, "Oh! Lester's here!" Another woman asked, "Is Lester the one with the little bucket?"

Lester does have a little bucket--he sometimes gets overly attached to it and will defend it aggressively (or attack it), so I remove it from his cage sometimes. However, I thought he should have it while boarding. He likes to sit inside of it and relax.

After brunch, I had to get the front bike tire repaired again. There is some law about people wanting to smash bottles of cheap beer near water. In Maine, people smashed bottles by lakes and quarries. In Carlsbad, this means that people drink beer and smash bottles on the road by the lagoon. There are cops and lifeguard people at the beach, but none by the lagoon, so people drink and smash bottles (or sometimes throw them out the window) by the lagoon. I try to avoid all the broken glass on my bike, but it's more or less impossible.

One of my students was telling me about super tough tires, so I will look into this in the new year. That and a basic bike mechanics course.

I did go see The Golden Compass this evening. It wasn't bad, although obviously not as good as the book.

I got an email from an employer (an institution, not a person) encouraging me (and all other employees) to participate in two contests. The first contest involves interpreting the goals of the institution in an artistic way. I don't even understand what the second contest is for.

I'm nearly finished packing. I'm trying to limit myself to my carry on sized suitcase and a backpack, but this is a bit difficult because I'm carrying gifts for seven people. I was going to mail them, but it would have cost too much.

We're going to party!

Today is my last evening with Lester before he goes off to his bird hotel (with on site vet and valley view) tomorrow.

I'm continuing to read Jennifer Moxley's The Middle Room, and actually enjoying it more the more I read it. The San Diego she describes seems very different from the one I live in. Or maybe it's just that I have trouble visualizing Douglas Rothschild outside of New York.

On the way back from ice-skating my students got into a conversation about Enjo-kōsai. By the end of the ride, I'd explained the words "fetish," "pervert," and "dominatrix."

I think I will dress in an excessively festive manner.

I was going through my desk drawer at work and found a poem written on an index card. It is probably a year old, and discrete, as far as I can tell. It is very much a Lorraine poem.

Tomorrow is my last day of teaching for a few weeks. My head is a foggy balloon. Anyway, the whole school is going ice-skating. I haven't ice-skated since last year in Oman (which was great--they were playing Christmas carols, and "O Holy Night" was interrupted by the call to prayer). Before that, I hadn't been ice-skating in ages. My ice-skating skills are not up to par. I admit that I find skating in rinks weird--most of the ice-skating I've done has been on lakes and ponds.

I've been listening to lots of girly music.

I am going to see The Golden Compass this weekend and maybe I am Legend.

Forpus Pacificus Surveys his Domain

Lester has discovered that the top of my desk chair is an excellent place to perch. From there, he can survey the entire room.

My students are all writing movie reviews of I am Legend.

The regular crowd outside of Planned Parenthood is growing. One sign read "Sex Partners Lie."

It's Raining

It also rained this morning, but it was secret rain. I am awake and can clearly see it is raining, so the evening rain is not like the secret morning rain.

Today I struggled to define the word "ilk." It was a tired ESL teacher moment. I attempted to rattle off a list of "synonyms" that included eel and elk. Good job, Lorraine!

I drove to work today because of the rain and for other reasons. It was strange to drive to work. I enjoy listening to music in the car, and it was nice not to get wet, but everything else about it was weird.

My friend and I were talking about the things we like about being here (we've had plenty of conversations already about the things that we don't like). Here is my list:

• I like the winter weather.
• I like the birds.
• I like the ocean and the natural living and nonliving things in the ocean.
• I like the lagoons.
• I like the weather in July-September.
• I like the yoga studio.
• I like the fact that a mountain lion has been seen recently in the parking lot at Cal State San Marcos (I also worry about the fate of the mountain lion, but this is supposed to be a positive list).
• I like Carlsbad. It is a nice little town.
• Even though I feel like I socialize less than I did in DC, this is not statistically true.
• Lester has a good vet.
• I enjoy having people over more than I used to (true, this is in part because people cannot drop by casually the way they did in DC, but still.)
• We are close to Mexico.
• My work life is pretty good.
• I have become a better cook.

There are other things, too.

Even though today was Monday, Lester and I are feeling calmer and more relaxed.

I made black-eyed-peas and greens today. They were good. Braised greens are always good if done correctly. Quality pancetta helps, too.

I'm more or less recovered from my deranged headstand accident of last week. I've gotten over the fear of attempting handstand (not headstand, which I actually find more difficult) in the middle of the room. I can't exactly balance for very long, but I can jump up into it with straight legs without overshooting it. And one of my teachers taught me how to fall out of it, which is, of course, very helpful.

Mark heads off to DC tomorrow, so Lester and I are on our own for this week. We'll finish up some projects and probably listen to a lot of female jazz vocalists (most of the female jazz vocalist CDs I own were gifts from Mark).

Over half the students in one of my online classes received Fs

because they just didn't do the work. This is normal, more or less, for online classes, but it is depressing. I'm done with the heavy grading for a few weeks now, until the next session starts up after New Years.

Today was a better teaching day.

In my ESL class, we read what turned out to be a stringent Christian article about Christmas (it started out as being funny and light. Oops).

I grew up everywhere, but I spent several winters and Christian holiday seasons in Maine with snow and the hippie parents of all of my friends. I sang Christmas carols at Quaker meetings. I went ice skating all day and drank hot cider afterwards. And yes, my cheeks were rosy.

My ESL students gave informal informative (not persuasive) presentations, and we ate donuts and talked. We talked about possible connections between certain kinds of German dessert pastry things and donuts and the US Midwest. Today was the last day for three of my students. Two of them were only in my class for three weeks (but that's 3.5 hours every day, five days a week for three weeks). Still, they are creative, intelligent people, and the class always suffers when people like that head on their own way. The third student didn't show up--I was rather sad about it. He'd been my student off and on for more than seven months, and I wanted to give him a proper "ra ra good luck in community college" send off. Or at least I wanted to give him a donut. Oh well.

My students take up more than 50% of my time and account for more at least 50% of my livelihood. My creative work effects my life. I shouldn't even have to note that, but I'm noting it. I get annoyed by and jealous of my fellow writers who say that teaching has no effect on their writing. I don't / can't compartmentalize my life in that way. I spend more than half of my day talking to students, and that effects my life, and so that effects my writing.

I made a lasagna this evening. Yum. Mark heads off to DC on Tuesday, so we need to get all of our holiday celebrations in this weekend.

End of Semester Teaching Rant

Disclaimer: I'm tired. There are a lot of typos, probably. It's the end of the semester. I fell over backwards while attempting a fancy headstand in yoga class last night. I think I've given myself a minor neck and upper back strain. It's minor, I've decided, but it hurts. Ok, now on to the post:

There's a fairly substantial conversation happening on a professional listserv I'm on about Millennial Students. Technically, the Millennials are the generation after me--1982 on. According to my colleagues who have actually read about it, Millennials tend to be:

• Relatively sheltered
• They tend to feel positive about their economic future, because the economy has generally been positive during their high school and college years.
• There parents are extremely involved in most aspects of their lives--through college and beyond.
• They view themselves as tolerant, positive and upbeat.
  
• They grew up in an era of fairly intense kid safety rules and public school lock downs.
• They are technologically sophisticated.

§

I know these characteristics are generalizations, but I find them helpful. When I moved to Carlsbad, I started working with a ESL student body very different from the one I encountered in Washington, DC. In DC, I was working with students who were mostly my age or older: mostly generation Xers and a few Baby Boomers. Now, most of my students are my age or younger than me by about 5 to 10 years. Many of my students work hard, and many of them are intelligent and fun, but on the days that class is terrible, these are the things I complain about:

• My students do not read directions. They become actively indignant when I tell them that the answer to their question is on the syllabus and that they need to read the syllabus.
• They are uncomfortable with flexibility. They have intense trouble deciding on a topic for a presentation, for example. They prefer it when I tell them exactly what to do.
• They either have no opinion, or they refuse to support and elaborate on their opinion, either verbally or in writing.
• In fact, they appear to have a deep lack of interest in most things. If they are interested and passionate about things, they do not express it.
  
• They expect me to go out of my way to accommodate their schedules. They expect me to be available constantly to answer their questions. They would rather write me long email explanations and questions than read my syllabus or talk to me during office hours or on break.
  
• They have had very little personal freedom. Most of the traveling they have done, if they've done any, has been with their parents. Many of them still live with their parents, even if they are 25 or 26.
• They have a very vexing sense of entitlement. They pay for the class, they expect to pass the class. Of course, most of them aren't paying for the class, their parents are.
  

Probably, many people my age could have done with a bit more parental involvement, and we probably would have gotten fewer injuries if we'd been forced to wear helmets on our bicycles and wrist guards while skateboarding. It's good that my students get financial support from their parents--also something that many people my age didn't get to quite the same degree.

Still, I can't help but feel that my students might be better off if they'd had more out of control experiences: a few more close calls, a night or two smashing mailboxes, part-time jobs they didn't want to have, drugs. They seem to understand that a lot of rules and norms are arbitrary, but they don't seem to care. Sometimes I feel like the passive-aggression I encounter in my classrooms is a way for the students to rebel against their parents. But G-d, what a lame way to rebel.

But now I'll be kinder: I have no idea what it's like to have that kind of overbearing pressure from my parents. I have no idea how I'd feel about school if it was something that I was forced to do, or if there were a specific field or business that I was expected to go into. I can only imagine how beholden I'd feel to my parents if they'd payed for everything for me my whole life. I'm sure I would be more positive about my future economic prospects if I had no debt. Etc, etc.

And, of course, there are exceptions. Right now I have several fabulous students: it's true that most of them still live with their parents and have had everything paid for their whole lives, but they seem to understand that they are lucky to not have intense economic pressure. They don't all feel that they are entitled to everything. They do have personal and intellectual interests beyond getting a job and making money and pleasing their parents. They're learning to be creative and take the initiative. Some of my students have just left their homes for the first time, and they're realizing that all the day to day decisions that their parents have been making for them are actually quite complicated...

Sarah, my sister, has decided that Texas is not environmentally friendly. All three of my sisters (Sarah, Michelle, and Allison), are debating with Mary about whether or not to buy a tree. Mary suggested that they could plant a tree in the yard, but they are skeptical about that. They want a fake plastic tree like the original one they had in Australia.

There was a short rain shower and after that a rainbow this morning. It was so pretty.

I wrote a poem about light emitting diodes. They are, after all, the unsung heroes of the electronics world.

It's hard for me to say these words in a way that more appropriately corresponds to my WASPy looks.

This post from Nicholas Manning's blog called "Things Never to Say to an Expat" made me laugh. I agree with him on most accounts, but I admit that I miss the clear sense of displacement that being an expat gave me. Unlike Nicholas, I've never been an expat in a place where there was even a remote possibility of me blending in.

It's quite strange now to find myself actually living in a small beach town in Southern California--a place people frequently assume I'm from. For much of my life, people have been saying obvious, stereotypical things about women, the US, and California to me, often while leering or asserting moral superiority.

I got in a debate with someone at a bookstore in La Jolla about whether or not I'd gone to high school locally and whether or not I'd been a cheerleader. I didn't and I wasn't, but the man thought I was insulting him and didn't believe me. That same man also said a variety of other stupid things, including "Spanish is a language for children." He owns a coffee plantation somewhere in Central America.

On some level, I'd probably feel more comfortable, or at least just as uncomfortable, spending more time in the Spanish-speaking communities here. The fact that the Spanish and English speaking communities are so segregated was something I didn't expect before moving here--I expected it to be more like LA, but what did I know. I think the conservative culture and the close proximity of the Mexico-US border make some Spanish speakers justifiably touchy about who they speak their language with and where and when they do it. In DC, I spoke Spanish in places where other people spoke Spanish. No one at the market around the corner from where we lived was offended if I asked what kind of tamales they had in Spanish. I'd never do that around here.

In some ways Spanish and the various cultures that come with it are mainstream here in San Diego--more than half of our place names are in Spanish, and most of the geographic terms for this part of the country are Spanish words. When I first arrived, I pronounced all the place names as if they were Spanish words, which they are/were, but no one understood me or people involuntarily corrected my pronunciation.

It's a survey!

Should I send a manuscript to Litmus Press? I'm skeptical, but someone I like and respect told me at a party that I should.

I slept a lot this weekend. Until 9:30 on both days, which may not sound like much but at this point in my life is significant sleeping in. I was exhausted after this past week.

I made broccoli in a new way. I roasted it. It was good.

I connected the external hard drive and put some things on it.

I'm going to do a few projects for International Arrivals in the new year--probably designing a journal and some file folders. Yay! I want more jobs like this.

I'm wearing tons of eye makeup!

Off to dinner and festivities at Sandra & Ben's in San Diego. I debated whether or not this should be the night to debut my ridiculous silver knit dress. It is not the night. It's a rather strange and beautiful dress. Perhaps I will wear it on the plane to Dallas--I think it would fascinate my sisters and confuse the family.

It's a dress that requires heels, and I have a nasty blister on the top of my big toe, so that settled it. I need a dress I can wear with slouchy boots. So that's what I'm wearing.

The rain continues. The surf is up.

Tired

The reading was good. The rain was minimal. Not like last Friday. More party tomorrow. Quadriceps hurt. Nail polish chipped. I'm starting to associate tasty tacos eating in bare surroundings with the end of poetry evenings. I'm often nostalgic for now. Reality is so hot.

I Made This

I am either high spirited or fried

But I'm ready. For. The. Semester. To. Be. Over.

I know that we need rain here in San Diego, but I hope that it doesn't rain on Friday. I want to go hear/see Nathaniel Mackey read at UCSD. I've never actually heard him before, and it's not as if San Diego is so bursting with readings that I wish to miss one.

Being a teacher is great.

After teaching and grading all day, I often wish to self-destruct. I say things like "let's party" and "pour me another," even if I'm not drinking.

Sunday is Sunday

Mark got me a 500 GB external hard drive as a Christmas present. I am so excited! Now I can transfer all of my graphics to it! My computer will run better!

!

We wished Mr. James Meetze a happy birthday yesterday at his flat in Mission Valley. It was fun. I had a piece of red velvet cake and played around with a computer program that his friend had that was like Photoshop except with video. You could layer things and apply effects to layers and also change the speed. It was cool. We also called the 800 number of some slick evangelical LA church.

Jame's band, Dreamtiger, has a myspace page!

I had an aggravating exchange with a coworker I've never met--we both tutor for the same virtual writing center. I sent out a message to our discussion list noting that I was looking to pick up some extra hours this week. This is a fairly standard kind of message to send. Most people either ignored it or sent me messages with possible hours to substitute. But one woman sent me an email that began "I hope you won't take this in the wrong way, but..." The email was about how she had to work her hours, and if she didn't she couldn't pay her bills, and how she wasn't getting any support from anyone, and on and on. I believe her, but the implication was that I was some prissy house wife looking to work a few more hours this week while my servants did the cleaning or something. That's obviously not the case, but few things bore or annoy me more than two marginal yet still bourgeois people arguing about who is more working class and desperate than the other. In some contexts, I think it is perfectly OK to assume a certain level of desperation. For G-d's sake, no one who has buckets of money and time is an online writing tutor.

It's Sunday, so I'm thinking about what to do with my students tomorrow. I think I'm going to have them write music reviews, but I can't ask them to review albums, because they probably don't think of music on the level of the album, so I've rewritten the assignment to be about the song. But I don't like it. I'll see what happens.

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!

Happy Sunshine Blond Girl of Death

The conversation over at Nicholas Manning's blog is interesting. Lately all I've been doing in my notebook is recording things. I was going to type up an example of how I am just recording things, except now that I've looked, I'm not sure what I'm recording: "I don't want to tell you how I made it. Throw up. Am you solvent? You know, SOLVENT. Like that." Recently there are a lot of recorded vocabulary explanations that the ESL teacher in the next room gives his students. I listen to him when I'm giving my students exams. It feels like a cheap shot to use the explanations, though. I'd be a very different sort of person if I were a man in my mid-30s.

My students want me to come surfing with them and take them to bars. I said no. Obviously. They are men in their 20s so no one will speak to them when they go out. I'm really a jerk when it comes to giving advice about how to meet people.

I'm reminded of a Janet Song from, I don't know, maybe five years ago (back when I was still taking, ahem, hip hop dance classes on a regular basis), called "Someone to call my lover." Here's the chorus:

Maybe we'll meet at a bar
He'll drive a funky car
Maybe we'll meet at a club
And fall so deeply in love
He'll tell me I'm the one
And we'll have so much fun
I'll be the girl of his dreams
Maybe

These lyrics irk me in so many ways. I guess people do meet at clubs and bars and fall in love. I wonder where people in North County meet each other. At school, work, at bars, on the beach, in malls. "Maybe." Yeah, good luck with that. See, I told you, I'm a jerk about it.

I pained my nails then messed them up. Really, what is the point? I ride a bike every day. I type all day. I use my teeth and nails to open things--my parents might have told me not to use my teeth, but only half-heartedly.

I am debating about whether or not to send manuscripts to Fence and Futurepoem Books. Deadlines are tomorrow. I don't really think that either one of them will publish my work. Of course they won't if I don't send it. I don't want to not send work just to justify my own alienation.

I will send work to Futurepoem, which has no contest or reading fee. I actually don't have a real problem with reading and contest fees, but I don't have extra money now and didn't plan well, and Fence is even less likely to publish me more than Futurepoem.

I should write more love poems, or love poems that don't become gruesome, although I'm not sure I could. After my first reading in New York someone said to me, "you're a little sicko, aren't you?"

I need to clean my bathroom

As a child, I made endless diagrams of horse barns and bathrooms. As I've probably said before, I never fantasized about my future wedding, but I did imagine building the perfect horse barn and one day having a very large bathtub in a clean, sunlit atrium with lots of plants.


I wish I still had some of these old diagrams--sometimes the bathtubs were basically swimming pools. Blame it on my early experiences in the blue baths in Rotorua, New Zealand. Apparently the buildings surrounding the baths are also amazing, but I remember nothing about Rotorua except the water.

Grading is my life, apparantly

And it hurts. It hurts.

It is OK. Wait here.

Of course, in the movies, it is never ok, and waiting here is always a bad idea. More about that later.

I'm having a nice Thanksgiving weekend, here. It's my third in SoCal.

Agressive Optimism in North County

I put my bike on the bus today to get it fixed. I need to take a basic bike mechanics course so I can do these simple repairs myself. Or I need to get a book and a few tools, at least.

A man got on the bus a few stops after me, put his bike on the rack, and entered the bus singing in a dangerously high-spirited manner. I was only on the bus for about ten minutes, but he managed to yell "EVERY DAY IS A HOLIDAY" or "EVERY DAY IS A FUCKING HOLIDAY" three or four times (in between the singing) at everyone who got on or off the bus after him. As I got off the bus I said, "calm down, man, today isn't a holiday."

The manager at Alan's bike shop fixed my bike in less than five minutes, and I was home fifteen minutes after that. A nice day for a ride.

I have never actually interacted with fresh cranberries before. They are like tart little apples.

I am making cranberry sauce (with oranges and figs and citron) to take to Mark's cousin's in Hemet tomorrow. I'm hardly a family girl, but I'm looking forward to the family gathering quite a bit.

Also I made a dip with acorn squash and roasted garlic, onions and nutmeg and crème fraîche. Also a dip with sun dried tomatoes and cannellini beans etc. I was thinking about making a crazy layered cake that involves bananas, but it wouldn't travel well and the bananas aren't ripe.

One day I will host a potluck Thanksgiving. You know, when I have my large house/art gallery/performance space/studio in Armenia/Bulgaria/Bucharest/Budapest/Istambul/Spain/Portugal/Mozambique/Cairo/ with enough space for 20 people to come stay for extended periods of time.

Why I want a tuxedo

I think I am going to bake a cake today

I had a very brief but concentrated feeling of nostalgia today for Sunday afternoon readings at DCAC. Especially when it is the Sunday before Thanksgiving and the readers are Kevin Davies and Rod Smith. I guess the feeling wasn't brief, since I had it right before brunch, and that happened four hours ago.

Lesson Nine

From yet another series. It's easier to see if you look at the larger file on flickr.

Typing up some old poems

This is of the same era as Terminal Humming but a different manuscript:

What I want most is to not want,
but not as a virgin martyr
challenging pagan rulers with my
astounding wit and logic. Not
wanting to want is still desire:
desiring death. Write me into
the cannon. What I want most is to be
shot out of a cannon, and then
have someone take documentary pictures.

Fun with Pulp Fiction

The layout lacks imagination, but the images and the text are absurd.

Reasons to have children

Today I enjoyed my bike ride home from teaching. There were about 30 white pelicans on the lagoon and many ducks of various sorts.

I am teaching a Public Speaking class for non-native speakers of English. I have to teach persuasive speeches, so that's what we were working on today. Students came up with potential topics, etc. One group chose "children" as a topic, with the argument that "everyone must have children." However, when it came to coming up with reasons why, they were stumped. Eventually they said "we must stop the declining birth rate" and "children take care of you when you are old."

One of my yoga teachers has been having us do hanumanasana a lot. I'm not even close to being able to do a split, but I'm much closer than I was. I like inverted hanumanasana at the wall.

Them! Them!

Susana Gardner at the Continental Review

Susana Gardner is the most recent poet featured up at the Continental Review, a video forum for contemporary poetry and poetics curated/edited by Nicholas Manning. Other poets featured include Ali Alizadeh, Jean-Michel Espitallier (G-d how I want a copy of that video of "Les amis des mes amis sont mes amis...." but for now I'm quite happy with what Nicholas has put up), Reb Livingston, Cole Swenson, and many others.

The recording of Susana is great--it sounds like she read from some work that I knew as The Lapses and also To Stand to Sea. The bookstore environment and Susana's reading style work well with these poems, and I admit that listening to this I got just a little nostalgic about Susana's old apartment on 7th street in DC, and those parties, and her dogs.

It was a good party

Charred Camp Pendleton from the train


People dance and are blurry


I am content after the party and late-night tacos in Pasadena


Grab shot outside of LA from the train the next morning

We're going to LA tomorrow for a party

to celebrate Joseph and Rita's recent marriage. I'm excited, it will be a fun party, with many people I know and don't know from a variety of contexts.

I made hamburgers this evening. My interest in red meat always corresponds with chemical shifts in my body. Oh well. Lester had some burger too--it was probably only the second time he'd ever had beef, and he liked it.

I've decided that I don't like riding the bus in the middle of the day. Perhaps it's bad luck, but thus far, the mid-day bus drivers have either been crazy or mean. I'm mentioning this to remind myself to blog about it later. I'm used to encountering crazy passengers, but yesterday the bus driver was crazy, too. A new development.

Kristy Bowen's Brief History of Girl as Match

I've been both enjoying all the chapbooks that came my way through the Summer 2007 Dusie Kollectiv project--a good percentage of them are by people I've never heard of. That's not saying much, perhaps. It's taken me a while to recover from moving to North County San Diego. But now that I'm done staring at the beach with a perplexed expression, thinking, "what is this doing three blocks from where I live and what do I do with it?" I've been trying to pay closer attention to the poetry worlds "out there." Or, at the very least, to all the cool stuff I get in the mail.

I love participating in the Dusie Kollectiv, but much of the time I feel like I don't really understand what that means. I can't quite describe the social or aesthetic parameters at work. My generally happy bewilderment with Dusie is, I think, indicative of my bewilderment with all the various poetry communities I am and am not a part of. When I left the East coast for this strange corner of the West coast, my connection to the poetry world flattened and spread out in all directions. I have, in part, the internet and my relative geographic isolation to thank for that.


Anyway, this post is supposed to be about Kristy Bowen's Summer 2007 Dusie Kollectiv chapbook, Brief History of Girl as Match. I really like this book. The poems have an awareness of gender that doesn't make assumptions, and often they link personal experience to form. They're often funny but not trite. The first stanza from "language theory" is indicative of much of what I like about this chapbook:

You say nice and I hear knives.
We take precautions:
A taxi, a pregnancy test.
I am mistaken for a shovel.
A calla lily in my ruined dress.
A brunette. A barn fire.

Kristy Bowen edits an online poetry zine called Wicked Alice, as well as Dancing Girl Press, whose catalog is full of chapbooks all by women I've never heard of, which is fabulous--I'm looking forward to reading them.

I have not clearly articulated the logical connections between ideas.

Reading and thinking about this post on Silliman's Blog about the body in writing, procedural work, Langpo and Oulipo.

Why always leap from body to erotic. Not all bodies are amatory always.

When I think of bodies in language poetry, I don't usually think of them erotically. Maybe I just don't find langpo sexy. (I guess that begs the question of what kind of poetry I do find erotic).

I could go back to grad school and write a whole dissertation about erotic bodies in Language Poetry. I'd rather UCSD actually start an MFA program, though. Then I could get an MFA and pretend that would help me get better adjunct work.

As you may have noticed, this post is not an essay.

I'm not prepared to back up this statement, but the eroticism almost seems like a sense of duty--and here I'm mostly thinking of Silliman's Under Albany--so that hardly represents all of Langpo, I know.

I do need to get a hold of Carla Harryman and Lyn Hejinian's collaboration, The Wide Road.

More Recently Read and Enjoyed

Truancy, by Sarah Anne Cox with drawings by Paris Cox Farr (Dusie Kollective 2007) for moments like this:

something must be done
we shall have a meeting
we shall share concerns
we shall beat it over the head
until it reads
throws a ball
makes a friend

Aaron Kunin's Secret Architecture: Notebooks, 2001 (Braincase Press 2006) for moments like this:

I want to hurt you; it hurts me that you're not hurt.
--It hurts me that you're hurt; I didn't intend that.
It hurts me that you didn't intend to hurt me.

Julia Drescher's Dreamscape or-- (Big Game Books 2006) for poems like "And She Listens and Said--":

Never
be
en
empty

secretly
nayther

had
you

99 Concerns, shared by Deborah Stratman and Jen Hofer and self published, I believe, in June 2006.

Feral Thing (Big Game Books 2006), by Michelle Detorie

Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse (Effing Press 2006), by Anne Boyer

Poems I read and liked

I am going through the piles, reading as I go. Here's what I liked today:

Alana Madison, Basho's mild tourettes (Dusie Kollective 2007)
Nicole Mauro, The Contortions (Dusie Kollective 2007)
Poems by Marci Nelligan and Jeannine Hall Gailey in Foursquare Vol. 2 No 1 June 2007

Survey Says

My Ideal Pet is a Bird

You're both very smart, very expressive, and very temperamental. You're as likely to bite your bird as it is to bite you.

I am not really sick anymore.

I am not 100% but I'm close to 80%. Good. Now I can go to Kasey's reading this afternoon at Cal State San Marcos, and we can still have people over for dinner tomorrow.

I am going to connect with my Texas roots (from my Dad's side of the family) and make Chili con Carne. Correctly. With the right kinds of chilis, and no beans, as is traditional. I do use some tomatoes though--which is kind of a violation of tradition, but they make the chili taste better.