Becky Bradway's Central Standard Blog

the blog has moved!

2006-09-09T18:18:00.000-05:00

My blog has moved. (I figure, move to Denver, move mentally, move cybernetically) -- really, though, my sad old Mac died while on the road and I have a cool MacBook Pro w/ a web publisher that I like. So go to the link above (by clicking on the title to this post), or to http://web.mac.com/beckybradway

Good luck--

on hiatus, as in TV but not

2006-07-02T00:53:00.000-05:00

I hate to post when I'm so in between things. Stories of packing, of disposing, of creating handy ways of keeping and preserving. I will also say that I actually went into a Michael's store so that I could create a scrapbook for my daughter for graduaton. (I believe that Michael's is a national chain, but just in case: this is a crafts store, filled with everything from plastic flowers to picture frames to glitter. It's somewhere between first grade art class and Saturday morning at the nursing home.) I have also felt myself to be very bad at such things (in part out of lack of interest; in part because my mother was obsessed with crafts and felt that the rest of her family ought to share in this obsession and we did not--especially since she had her way of doing such things--so the scrapbook idea was rather intimidating at first. But it seemed important to me to create some kind of book that would bring together some of these snippets of my daughter's life that were floating around the house demanding to be placed into some reasonable display (beyond a shoe box)). I had this fear that in moving I would somehow lose all of that.....And I actually had some fun putting the thing together, and came to understand a bit the kind of club that one finds in a Michael's store. (the secret handshake shared by hassled moms, post-menopausal ladies who obsess over Beanie Babies, and savvy grandmas.) What's not to like about scissors, glue, and paper? My scrapbooks are colorful and my daughter seems to really like it. She looks at it and tries to realize some things about her life. When you're moving the very randomness of our stuff and our artifacts is so apparent. I'm been trying to find the patterns in these.

I saw the scrapbooks as a kind of filing and a kind of book production. I was glad when I finished it, because it was very painful, looking at those old pictures. Facing the inevitable move out day. I think I have mostly come around to it, but it was especially hard for me in those weeks before graduation. Moving ourselves only reinforces the actual permanence of that jump, and the recognition that those silly kid patterns of high school will be gone. Even if we see those kids again, it won't be the same. This has already come true this summer, when Paige and Lauren and Eric are all on the outs and everyone is waiting to see what their upcoming year of independence will bring to them. There is considerable waiting at hand for everyone. For me, it has all come down to a series of hard choices and the joy of emptying out one old life.

I've let the blog grow quiet what with all the emotion of the time and the tedium of the acts. I haven't gotten to write much at all and I am very much missing it. I went out to teach at Wilkes about a week ago and that actually helped a lot. I remembered that leaving this place is okay.....That I have wanted to leave here for a long time. But leaving will never be easy for me.

aesthetics of berries

2006-04-26T17:59:00.000-05:00

I spent a good bit of the day throwing away old files and scanning some of my old students' portfolios. I've got about 25 of them that I want to keep, from all different levels of classes, from different schools. I've kept the ones from the students who I liked the best, or whose particular bit of writing meant something to me at the time. Of course, I can never confess to any former students just whose writing I kept and whose I didn't. Sometimes it got dictated by who did and did not pick up a portfolio. I have all of Katie Malcolm's, from a span of four years. But I have none of a few others that I sort of wished I had. I like to think I keep them for job purposes. But mostly I keep them because I'm nostalgic.

I hate looking through old files. There's something about paper that brings back the sharpest feelings. (I feel the same way when I come across my daughter's old drawings—they're harder to look at than photographs.) I had to throw away quite a bit of the research I'd done on the environmental book. And I don't feel bad to see it go, exactly—but it makes me re-irritated about wasting so much time on a project that I did from duty, and not from joy. I ran across a few old notebooks, which made me feel slightly embarassed and also somewhat shocked at how mundane lists can truly be. Teaching is just a string of rather dull lists on the teacher's end, when you come down to the nitty-gritty of it. And then the stuff I found on my dissertation! Oy vey! Now that was a waste of time. And I disavow 95% of it. I was deluded. And again, it was a duty thing...I kept trying to do what I thought other people wanted me to do, and in so doing did badly. Never mind winning the dissertation award, blah etc., not badly in that way, but badly on my own terms. The dissertation put me out of pretty much any field of English, pissed off Dave Wallace, and was exceedingly naive on multiple levels. And I wonder why, now, I felt compelled to write something about the state of creative writing in academia? It's so boring, so off point. Sometimes just wrong. I should have written about Paul Auster or Sam Clemens or just about anybody, for that matter. Or gotten a history degree, or one in the preparation of meat dishes. I should have gone to a school that didn't demand an academic dissertation—where I could have done the creative dealy—I would've ended up with a book—oh, but these shoulda's and wishta's can go on forever, can't they? It's done, got the diploma, and am throwing out about 8 big bags of paper. There is, after all, something to show for it. Oh, and especially my big brain. Let's not forget that.

Old paper gathers a lot of dust. If I were phobic, I would have been envisioning all those dust mites drinking tea on my typefaces.

I also started thinking today, for some reason, about what fruit I would be if I were a fruit. (Filing lends itself to odd thoughts.) I felt that I was too old now to be one of those luscious symbolic items like a peach or an apple. I'm not really sure I am a representative of femininity, or of masculinity, either. I'm not an orange, I'm not that bright, or much of a grape, though I can't say why. I finally decided that I was closest to a raspberry. I thought about blueberry, but they are so darn cheerful. I'm more bitter than that—and raspberries also have those crunchy seeds that go down fairly easily and do not have to be spit out (as in watermelon). I don't have a pit or a core. I think I'm randomly scattered at this point, more or less uniform, not carrying any particular potential and not very fertile, either. (At least I hope not.) A raspberry has unity, of many circles composing a whole. And that's fine.

I'm sure that reading all of those intro to creative writing papers made me start thinking in these ways.

Saw V for Vendetta. Sex Pistols—that's the story.

Am listening to King Oliver, the new Calexico, the new Bob Mould (he was the front guy for Husker Du—I loved his old band Sugar), more Decemberists, and this CD collection of black fiddlers from the late 20's through the 40's. Oh, and the Carter Family's 5 CD set from JSP. (The legendary...you know...from the movie.)

I'm reading some books about medicine shows, circuses, silent movies, and quackery. I could read them all day.

And sometimes I write on my book, just pieces here and there.

This weekend, we go up to DePaul to become acculturated to Paige's future home.

tunes, mostly

2006-04-19T10:15:00.000-05:00

Paige signed the forms for DePaul's theater program--it's a done deal--her friend Will is going there, too--and some of her other friends are also going to be in Chicago. So that's a good thing.

I'll be spending a lot of time between Denver & Chicago, I expect. That's okay. I like Chicago.

What I'm listening to now:

right now: Stevie Wonder's song "Signed, Sealed, Delivered."
I love computer technology for playing songs. I have these little Harman Kardons hooked up and it is quite all right.

Some good albums I've heard--new to me, relatively recent in vintage:

The Decemberists. Picaresque. (British old style--kind of like the Kinks crossed with Barenaked Ladies. I know that Barenaked Ladies are Canadian. I don't care.)

Thea Gilmore. Loft Music. (They are all covers, but they are very odd and sad covers. I love her voice.)

Neko Case. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. (Still absorbing this one.)

Frank Black. Honeycomb. (Frank Black sounds like Aaron Neville at times, almost like Al Green, and sometimes like himself on his other solo albums. Soulful. This is the polar opposite of his Pixies days. I really have a thing for Frank Black. He's so defiantly pudgy, crabby, romantic, and Catholic.)

I'm in a music phase now. And have no time to watch movies (or work out). Yet I am losing weight from walking up and down the steps, throwing things in sacks, and no doubt internally freaking out over the life changes. I think that change is better than dieting.

busy and django

2006-04-11T17:13:00.000-05:00

Been way overwhelmed with moving stuff & theater stuff, so haven't been able to post....

What's up: Paige got offered a nice little scholarship from DePaul's theater conservatory--in playwriting. She is thinking seriously about that.

Songs from Pirates of Penzance are stuck in my head (it really doesn't matter (mattermattermattermutter)

At the moment, listening to:

Django Reinhardt's JSP box set. This must be purchased by anybody with an iota of soul.

Django was a gypsy, an astonishing jazz guitarist who as an adolescent developed his own genius picking style after his hand was badly burned....The work he did would be innovative no matter what his story. I like the stuff with the Stephane Grappelli and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France.

I've had some of this on albums for years, but it's great to get this complete set.

less primitive than gut wrenching

2006-03-21T08:29:00.000-06:00

I'm writing a book set in the early 20th century, right--about 1890 to 1935--and I've already done some of the standard research about the writers in my book, and overviews of the time period, and memoirs, all that. Lately I've been shlogging through the music and theater and film, because I wanted to get more of the sense of what was actually playing out on the street. I've found that there's an enormous difference between reading about something (say, the feel of early blues) and actually hearing it. I find that I often disagree with the writer's conclusions as they define, dissect, analyze, etc. what that music is--or that my interpretation is just very different. Besides, all that's subjective, and if I want to conjecture how a character might have witnessed say, a song, I'd better know how I hear it myself.

I've found, though, that it is difficult to find the originals. They were not recorded, or recorded and lost, or recorded very badly. They are still under copyright (and what the hell is that?! these people are long dead and most of them weren't paid to begin with and at a point shouldn't folk/street music be truly "popular" and not a commodity? The problem this creates is that the music is then not easily disseminated--. The current copyright laws extend way too far back; they get in the way of anyone studying a distant era. And there's this gray area. If I publish the lyrics of a blues song from 1910, do I have to pay rights? How do I know? Who would I pay?--and it isn't that I don't have sympathy for the artist or her family. However, I would gladly have my family give up the paltry royalties that they'd receive on an obscure piece of writing than to have it completely removed from the public sphere.)

But enough of that. I've dug around and found some cool things. Things that everyone should know about, because they are fascinating and great listening no matter your own time. So I'll review them across a few blog entries.

I highly recommend these two collections:

American Primitive I and American Primitive 2.

Both these CDs are filled with spooky sad raunchy ecstatic prophetic rhythm driven wailing and whoopings. Some of it is witty, some of it sweet, some of it sounds like a woman dying. There is nothing old about music like this--. Contemporary overproduction does not make art better. This is slice you up and eat you on a platter stuff. Don't be put off in #1 about the gospel label. Rock and roll, blues, all that emerged from gospel structures, call & response, all that. So it may talk about Jesus, but it's talking about sex and pain and death.

It's all obscure, drawn from the musician John Fahey's collection of old 78s.

And the liner notes, written by the novelist Scott Blackwood, are some of the best I've ever read. Full of little details, highly entertaining in style.

***

oh, and here's a picture of my new house in Denver. Paige calls it "quaint."

austin is peculiar

2006-03-11T11:22:00.001-06:00

About Austin:

It has an obsession with stars and asses.

This is obvious from their gift shops, which feature postcards of bare assed cowboys in pants-less chaps and nearly bare assed cheerleader types. There aren't many breasts and crotches to be seen in the racks. What's this about? Is it that riding horses hurts your ass, and thus somehow draws attention to that area of the anatomy? Is it the tight-assed jeans that cowboys wear? I don't know, but in Austin, they also are into jackalopes and dead armadillos. A lot of the kids have rather scruffy looking mohawks (yes, this is possible) and they somehow manage to complement all the state worker guys in suits who saunter down the sidewalks with their anorexic Southern woman staffers. I gathered this mostly by walking around the state capitol, which actually is well worth seeing (although nobody I've told this to seems to believe me. But they are too busy hitting the book tables and hanging out in the hotel lounges to waste time on the local color. Which might ,after all, indicate an interest in place, which is just so goddamn uncool). Texas has put a butt-load (of course) of money into the capitol's restoration which features a lone star dome and lights that spell out Texas. There is a surprising amount of freedom to walk around the building, so I got a good peek at the old Senate and House chambers. Since my internal life is mostly centered circa 1885-1925, this was all suitable and I felt like I fit in nicely. Everyone that signed the guest book was from Texas. The lawns there have a Confederate monument (for the fallen) and also a rather odd statue honoring volunteer firemen.

Texas is odd.

Someone tried to derail our train the night before. They piled fenders and metal rods on the tracks (I could see them from my window, after they had been dislodged from the jammed wheels of the train). My room was right above the train crew's lounge, and you could just hear this silence after we hit it and then a whole chorus of cussing. All the passengers on the train were pissed off because we got held up for five hours, but I was mostly busy thinking, Shit! We could have derailed! My computer would have been crushed and I not only would have lost some work, but I would also have lost my newly downloaded blues music of the 1910-1925 era! And my damn iPod! And I might even have hit my head. We were about 20 minutes from Austin.

Austin is strange. They even advertise it on their Tshirts.

AWP (where the writers go and talk about their subject areas and their careers and their enemies and their friends and how they're going to get another job)-- is still AWP. It feels scattered this year. Since I'm not on any particular teaching track (that track derailed and I don't want to take a ride to any permanent destination), I really find myself feeling more like a freelance journalist who is checking out the proceedings with curiosity but lack of attachment....? It makes it all easier, but it is somehow not at all mysterious anymore, or dangerous, or threatening, or even boring. I can't get any feeling about it. I am glad to see Sandi and Barry and to run into other people and to meet people at tables (like the folks from Denver), but I still just can't get the old intrigue going. I guess that's mature...? I wish in a way that I could feel that driving investment that these people have in their academic advancement. There's a nice kind of security in that, a sense of involvement and purpose. Yet I wouldn't go back to it, either. Because it is great to know that if I want to, I can just leave and it will not make any particular difference.

Because Austin, you know, is weird.

AWP

2006-02-25T11:41:00.000-06:00

Anybody going to the AWP conference in Austin? I'll be around (probably lurking among the book displays or going to the concurrent South x Southwest Film Festival or perhaps just walking the streets), so look me up.

p.s. Paige got into the BFA writing program at the School of the Art Institute.

another new place

2006-02-23T15:09:00.000-06:00

I think we bought a house in Denver.

About a week ago I made a last minute excursion there—Doug had to do something there with the university, and pointed out to me that we really had no free time for the rest of the spring, and if I was going to look at houses, this might be the time....I was resistant. 1) because I'm always resistant; 2) because I didn't know about the trip until about 3 days before, and I am not good at quick changes, especially if my plans had involved hanging around,writing, listening to music, hibernating, or otherwise pleasantly entertaining myself; 3) because I was afraid that Doug and I would just go out there and fight about location. Here's the thing about Denver: you either choose to live in the city, or you choose to live far outside the city, because the inbetween is blocks upon blocks upon blocks of new subdivisions and condos. (Now if anyone from Denver reads my blog, I will have alienated 3/4 of them before I even hit town. No, no, of course your subdivision is lovely, but...it's not for me.) I decided that I would not live in a subdivision or a ranch house. I already live in one and I find it claustrophobic and depressing. Doug, on the other hand, wanted two things: he wanted some space in the house and he wanted to live close to the university. These are two contradictory desires in Denver, where housing is at a premium and very expensive. So I was worried about finding a compromise--. I think I also had a better idea of the reality, because Paige and I had already done a run out there a few months ago, when we were unburdened, without the kind of job pressures that Doug has when he makes a visit there.

I'd had a fantasy for a time of living in Evergreen. This is a quirky mountain town. I still do have this fantasy, but I am also willing to look reality in the eye. And the reality said: it's too far to drive, it's too cold, it may be too redneck, and it ain't gonna happen. So, fine. I filed that one away for fantasy days when the light is hazy and it's too cold to do anything but daydream. This made me quite perplexed, though. I couldn't see how we could find anything that would suit the both of us.

But me going out there last week turned out to be fortuitous. Doug's friend Ann Dobyns hooked us up with a laid back and groovy/cool realtor named Susie Best. Well, I liked her name. And she was terrific. She seemed to sense that I was the one that would have to be convinced, so while Doug was busy, she drove me around. And she got it (unlike the realtor who drove us around months ago, right by Columbine High School). And she didn't laugh. She got that I wanted an older house, not a ranch—that I wanted lots of windows—that it would be nice to have a little yard for the dogs—that I wanted to be in a real neighborhood, not a mall-burb—and that we needed at least enough space for our computer equipment and a spare bedroom. And we found just that. Because it's the kind of place she lives. (I know this because I ended up hanging around her house watching Hustle and Flow with her and her husband and eating organic candy bars. My train was six hours late....They had an artful set of tarot cards on their table, and a cat. She lives in what might be our new neighborhood.)

So we are arranging to get a bungalow in the West Highlands. This used to be the Hispanic neighborhood, and now it is a gentrifying Hispanic neighborhood. It has a really great downtown strip with ethnic and other restaurants, and a coffee shop, and all the things that you expect of a small urban neighborhood area. As a whole, the area reminds me somewhat of Wrigleyville without the Cubs. That is, there isn't an influx of tourists there, but there are similar kinds of homes. The area is also more of an ethnic mix than Wrigleyville. The place is speckled with Mexican restaurants, and I am not talking about Taco Bell. And the house is, well, it's cute, thank you. It's a bungalow circa 1928, with lots of big windows, and it's brick, and it has three small "bedrooms" (two that are just a bit bigger than the bed) and dining room, living room, 2 bathrooms, and a finished basement. The basement is actually finished quite nicely, which had some attraction, given that the kids and friends would be visiting and we needed a place to put some of our office stuff. The windows in the basement also let in quite a bit of light, so it lacks the cave quality of most. And it had a fenced in yard, not a bad size, and a garage, and the neighborhood is clean and quiet and actually feels like a neighborhood. Sometimes you can just tell.

So now we're going through the stressful process of working towards closing. Everyone hoping that nothing gets screwed up. But even if this doesn't work out, at least I found a liveable area in a city that I was having trouble finding a place in. This was a relief.

As soon as I got back, I had to finish the taxes and even more financial forms for Paige. If you have never gone through this, you would not believe the layers of bureaucracy. And the east coast schools are on top of it, wanting all kinds of info and be quick about it. Doing the business taxes was quite difficult—well, maybe tedious is a better word.

So this has been a month of numbers and all of the practical things that have to be done prior to monumental change.

Oh, and here's a picture of me. I took it myself.

maybe she should work at McDonalds

2006-02-02T18:20:00.000-06:00

No, of course my daughter shouldn't shovel cheeseburgers just because if I ever see another financial aid form I'm going to....

I had to figure out all of my 2005 taxes. Including the business.

This was very time consuming.

I've been listening to some new music. Yes, I really have. Here are my big recommendations:

Sufjan Stevens. Come on and feel the Illinoise! That's the title. My God, is this a great record. Like Simon and Garfunkel except not pretentious or precious or folky. Not that Paul Simon didn't do some wonderful things...of course, they did...I'll shut up. I even like their very sappiest songs. Like For Emily and The Boxer. Buy Illinoise. He deserves the money.

And then the Hey! Live Pixies! It's the Pixies! It's the best live album I have maybe ever heard. I mean that. It's better than the original Pixies CDs. I love Frank Black's voice. I love the intellectual wordplay and warpedness. And I love the way that Kim Deal's voice comes in behind Blacks, and the way the jangly guitars interweave. And these two didn't get along? It's hard to believe. I think they are soulmates.

Paige and I went up to Chicago the weekend before last to look at DePaul's theater program and the School of the Art Institute. They were both really great in very different ways. I won't go on about that except to say that the Theater Arts people at DePaul were very nice and the light at the School of the AI was bright. Paige also got accepted into one of the East Coast schools, Hampshire College, & got a little scholarship. It's in Amherst. Emily D and all that. That's the only one she applied to early, so we'll have to wait to get the results from the rest. It's all pretty exciting, pretty stressful.

I've been throwing away everything and selling the rest. We're moving soon, soon. I have even sold a lot of my CDs. After backing them up on my computer. Had to get an extra hard drive to do that. But it feels very light; that is, I feel like I'm shedding.
I have to go eat now. I have been on the computer all day trying to set up a new email account and trying to edit some not very exciting writing. I have words and numbers & I think I just want to have some Indian food or something.

Paige is at rehearsal--she got the role of Ruth in Pirates of Penzance. Ruth is the Angela Lansbury part. She gets to dress like a pirate in the second act and sing a difficult funny song with the Pirate King. Kevin Kline is in the film of the Central Park play w/ Lansbury and it is actually quite hilarious. Oh Gilbert, oh Sullivan, you postmodern British twats drinking tea.

2006-01-12T21:19:00.000-06:00

Lately, I have really not felt like keeping up this weblog.

I'm tired of reading about weblogs and how cool they are, how cutting edge and youthful, how they're mined for writers, blah de blah blah. I'm tired of hearing about the demise of books and the irrelevancy of the peer review process and I'm tired of celebrities. I'm tired of transience and I'm really tired of the trendiness of blogs. Or did I already say that? Does it matter? It's a blog, why edit it?

I know that the people who read a weblog like this are mostly people who know me—probably want to know what I'm doing or what my daughter's doing. Probably want to know if I'm writing about them. Or if my dog is writing about them. Maybe they did a google search and their name came up. (This happens all the time—people tell me.) So if it's day to day or I rant or what, does it matter?

I actually like the idea of blogs—or I did before I had to read about them in the paper every day, and hear them mentioned as authorities on NPR. Oh, I do like the net technology: email gets people to write letters, and amazon.com gives me access to books I'd never be able to find otherwise. And creative people without any money can start up cyberpresses, which is exactly what I would have done twenty years ago. yay!

It's just that I'm tired of how instant everything is. If it's so fleeting, how do you know it's true or real or meaningful? Maybe I am just slow. Maybe it takes me a long time to know or comprehend. When too many things come at me, I just don't function—I no longer think. I do ten trivial things at one time and never finish one good thing. I wonder if it is this way for everyone. I wonder if this is why we are all so stupid.

I would speak for myself here, except we are all in this together. There's no way to avoid it. There are so many random words out there, all the time, in lights on posters and overheard on subways and even the grocery store aisle insists on talking to you (or rather the TV above the produce yammers, while in the backdrop some neo-Christian Jesus song plays—and here I just wanted to pick up a goddamned kiwi fruit!). It's all static, it's all INFORMATION or OPINION, and it makes NO DIFFERENCE.

I've just given myself a headache, going on this blogsuitable rant. Forget it. Let me focus...fohhhhcussssssssssssss......what?

Here's what I've been reading:

The Assassins' Gate. George Packer. This is the kind of book that puts me in a state of awe. Because I can't do it—I can't do it in any dimension—not structurally, or stylistically, emotionally, or practically. It's extremely well written under deadline conditions AND the guy spent months in Iraq AND he manages to remain consistently intelligent and insightful. This book is unremitting. After reading reams of the New York Times, I never entirely grasped the situation in Iraq until I read this book. It isn't easy or quick to read—and it will begin by making you wonder if you've wandered into right wing territory, with the author's seeming almost admiration of Paul Wolfowitz. But this beginning is just the set up to make the decline even more horrible. As the author loses faith, it only confirms my own lack of faith. All those times when I thought, "Oh, there must be a conspiracy—they can't really be this stupid"—well, I was right on both counts. The administration's utter idiocy and ineptitude is far scarier than any of their transparently machiavellian tactics.

I also have been reading—or,rather looking at—this sumptuous book called All American Ads: 1900-1919, published by Taschen. Okay, it's research, but it's a huge lovely full color book that is just cooler than a mini movie on a mini cell phone.

Oh, and: Have seen many new movies. Munich took nerve; King Kong has that great substory about movies and entertainment. I thought that Peter Jackson made it clear how much he loves the original—and it took a lot from this early movie he did back in his New Zealand days. It is a mock documentary about a bad early filmmaker—and I don't remember the movie's name. It wasn't great—it was quirky and very New Zealand-esque and clever—but it was interesting to see Jackson reuse the same themes. Walk the Line was good—not as good as Cash, not nearly, and not as interesting as his real life—and my daughter loved it. She went out and listened to my Johnny Cash records, so the film is doing a public service. AND this movie did an honorable job on June Carter, who has long been neglected by the Cash fans. For me, I was bugged as hell that Phoenix did his own singing, no matter how good of an impersonation it was. Come on, it's JOHNNY CASH. YOU CAN'T FAKE/BE JOHNNY CASH.

oops—was that a rant?

christhanukkwanzaa

2005-12-27T15:14:00.001-06:00

Okay, it's almost over now, these holidays--but not quite, got a trip to Chicago to make with teenagers and then a party and then a period of burning old wrapping paper, discarding old clothes, returning new clothes, filing receipts, and then trying to figure out how the hell we're going to move to Denver at the end of summer when we still can't throw anything away because we are not good at throwing things away with any degree of permanence. We're trying to figure out a way to keep some hovel in Chicago--this is how much we want to hedge on this move--but it all must be faced and I have run out of excuses. Although it has to be after the holidays & then after the recuperation from the holidays and maybe something else, who can say?

I got all of my stories revised and ready to ship into the world again. I am beginning to think that the stories are like Elizabeth Bishop poems--that they were supposed to, for some reason, take 15 years to reach fruition. Is this possible? maybe it is really 20 years or 25 or 30 & I'm still jumping the gun. I think that they're really done this time, though. I think to do anything more would be too much. I hope someone publishes them. Or, if not, I'll have to leave it with the heirs, make them take on the burdens. Because, really, some of these stories are good enough that it might be nice if people read them. And I rarely actually feel that way about anything I write, even though this never seems to prevent me from sending out the most lameass crap.

Tomorrow Paige & Lauren & I are going up to see a Murakami play at Steppenwolf. We'll do some other Chicagoish things, too, like eat, then eat again, then maybe take in a few museums, and walk around being cold. Doug is at MLA and then he will be on the road for weeks after that--he nearly always is--so he misses out--but this is more a thing that matters to the girls & me, at any rate. We'll be urbanites together....

I'll post more later, when I get a little time.

goodbye burb, hello old brick

2005-12-04T12:44:00.000-06:00

I'm back. I got sick for awhile, just from doing too damn much, I think. My class is over now and I'm all packed up and moved out of my dorm--goodbye Evanston, goodbye MUD coffeeshop and Whole Foods and that strange dark sidewalk that wound around the ghostly sheets put up by frat kids advertising whatall and the flyers they would tape to the cement--and Chicago architecture--and the Metra--and my dorm room where you could hear workers pounding all day and yelling to each other in Mexican--and the Dick Blick store--and the churches that I never entered--and my students who were so smart and so easy to work with. That was the strangest experience, to come into a group like that, get ten weeks, and go again, knowing that you won't even be running into anyone in the halls, because my halls are not their halls.

My halls are in the old Bloomington school building, which was bought out about six months ago by an African American church. Some of the same businesses are still renting there, but a lot of people have moved out. The tone of the place changed rather dramatically. It's pretty interesting to watch. I don't really care, except for having my rent raised. Near their office, they painted a mural that talks about Christ Jesus. It's a nice mural, but I wondered how the Muslims and Hindus feel about it: For awhile, there seemed to be some subtle conflict between the people whose kids go to Kumon, which is a tutoring center and located on the first floor, and the new owners. The thing about Kumon is that nearly all the kids who go there are Indian, from India. And the parents like to come and hang out in the hallways in the late afternoon, waiting for their kids. And they all talk, sit on the stairs and this desk that's near the front door, and lean against the wall--it's not unusual to see twenty-five people just hanging out, talking with each other, kids running all over the place. To me, it's festive, and I like it (although, admittedly, my office is not on that floor). But signs went up by the owners, telling people the new building rules. And the signs were ignored. And they made a little room for the people to wait in, and that was ignored. Because they LIKE hanging out in the hallway. This went on for a few months. Finally, the owners got rid of the waiting room and put a bunch of folding chairs out into the hallway, set in a square, with a rug. And the parents sat on those at first. But now they seem to be ignoring them--or, interestingly, sometimes the women sit on them, but the men never do. And the kids, of course, are still running around. It is the biggest hoot.

That's just one thing going on in my building. Man, I love my building, even though I am truly the resident hermit. Last week, I heard someone playing hymns on the out of tune piano in the auditorium. It's right across from my office. So I looked through the window and it was just the one person, all alone in there, in the dark with just the end of the afternoon light coming in through the narrow windows inside.

Now in former Kumon waiting room that was never used is an African American barbershop that caters to Christians. I am not kidding--the place is called Beauty From Ashes, and it promises to deliver scripture and truth along with the cut. I love that. It just went in, and so I sort of saunter by and casually glance through the door. I haven't gotten a good sense of it yet, although it does seem to be a real barbershop that caters to men. I'm kind of puzzled that a man would go to a barbershop that has Beauty in its name, no matter how Biblical it may be.

And so I'm trying to get back into my old working rhythms. I've gone back to one of my Vachel Lindsay chapters. I think I've finally figured out how to construct that book. How much recreation, how much history, how much poetry, how much me--how the time flows, and what should stay and go--and what's important and who. I realized some time ago that truly to do only a limited third person from Lindsay's p.o.v. or Teasdale's, and setting it up as fiction, just wasn't going to work for what I needed to get across. They both had such limited perspectives (as we all do with our own lives, in our own moment). And their social class, really, was so different from mine, so that in some ways they seem impossibly naive (and they were). But I think I've figured out how to get around some of that. Now the trick will be limiting it so that I don't end up with a thousand pages of trivia.

I think I need to go ahead and finish that book before I lose all of what I've learned about the period. I'd honestly rather work on revising my old novel, but this seems to be more pressing somehow.

Not to mention that I'm still working on that creative nonfiction textbook.

And buying crap for Christmas. Well, not crap, of course. Perfect items catered to individuals while trying to block out the barrage of ads from every conceivable source coming through every media hole (outlet, I mean). Jesus.

Oh, one last thing: the play that my daughter Paige directed ("The Actor's Nightmare") got chosen to be performed at Illinois TheatreFest, which is this statewide theater gathering for high schoolers. She's going to do a workshop, too, on how to student direct a play. She feels that it's sort of the triumph of the underdogs on multiple levels, and it is.

hectic days

2005-11-07T11:44:00.000-06:00

Hectic days. Paige & I went to Boston and to Amherst to look at colleges. The trees were lovely. We went from the thick of the old city to the hilly roads of rural Massachusetts. It is quaint there. I always think of E.B. White, Robert Frost, and the wealthy vacationing in their cabins. We stopped at a diner for gas. There was a group of old guys sitting around the counter. They were laughing at my shoes (which are very comfy modified Berkinstocks). I think they thought we were going to Amherst or Northampton or something. I always had this illusion, growing up, that the East was very different from the Midwest. Small towns are small towns wherever you go. The donut I bought was good. The coffee, okay.

Paige and Lauren had a good time at our Emerson visit, though we couldn't stay long. Mostly I expended energy getting around and making sure it all got done, all this "it." Official, life advancing it-ness. The negotiation of subways, the campus interview, the tour. Paige made some friends in the dorm already. I will not admit that this is vaguely strange, a whole year of setting up for goodbye. Anyway, Hampshire College was equally great, but in a different way. It's a quirky liberal arts school that does a lot of interdisciplinary work. Very independent in spirit. Visitors could sit in on any class. Paige went to one on irony. They talked about the Daily Show. Paige approved.

And so we got back, I taught my class in Chicago, I went home. Then after a couple of days I went back to Chicago and on Thursday took back the early train so I could see the play that Paige directed. Between the two of us we had dug through all these one acts to come up with a good one—but a difficult one—by Christopher Durang. It does all this pomo intertextual stuff that meant that the director had to have some knowledge of play references and theater conventions. So she had to do some back research. That was good. And then other things were difficult, like having no tech crew (she learned to do it) and having to contend with a shortage of actors (one of her teachers was putting on a concurrent play, and would not allow the cast to act in both shows). But with all of this, the thing really came off. It was really good. The cast all formed this bond and worked with Paige, and they really did do it without any help. Watching that whole process was quite exciting, although being the parent I had to share in the stress along the way. So bravo, many roses, many bows.

And now I'm off to the Nonfiction Now conference in Iowa City. After I go to Chicago to teach my class. I'm working on working up the requisite talking energy. If I were a normal person, I would not have to put special energy into verbal communication. I would just talk. I would feed off the energy of others, as extroverts do, generating energy upon energy to keep me connected for weeks. Instead, I have to gather it up from some psychic well so that when I get there I'll have a bunch of endorphins surging and I can coast along congenially, until the drop off when it's all done, when I crash into an exhausted mess and get a cold.

And then something else will happen.

2005-11-06T23:35:00.000-06:00

It is late on Sunday night and half awake, and so perhaps not the optimal time for clever blog. OUR brief trip out east to check out schools had elements of fun and adventure. Limited by time constraint and the nervousness of doing such things as the formal interview. Boston had much rain. We did nothing noticeably for a tourist nature. Emerson has cool old buildings in downtown Boston. It has five different theatres for student plays.....I will return to this topic later.

off to Boston

2005-10-18T16:58:00.000-05:00

Goin to Chicago to teach tomorrow...then late on Thursday it is off to Boston for us, big urbanites that we are, me & Paige hanging around on the train once again...then rent a car and on to Holyoke Massachusetts and then a little drive up to Amherst for Hampshire College where we will do the big campus tour day & we will both of us look damned nice. Then right away back to Chicago where I'll teach and then the day after that I will go home (wherever that is--oh yeah--Bloomington).

Movies to see: A History of Violence. And Polanski's Oliver Twist (stayed in town about 3 days, apparently because they thought it was a kid's movie & showed it only in the afternoon!). And music to hear: the new White Stripes (not that I can really go around buying new music) and some old music to hear: REM's Document (got stuck on that one again, but it's newly good every time).

And now it is time to pack.

Mud

2005-10-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

I'm in my routine now in Evanston. Routine...good. Wednesday: Take the train up in the morning, walk around, nervously get ready for class (nothing unusual there), drink coffee, look at books, kill time. I have no internet hookup up there, which is not a bad thing. Buy a cool graph pad for writing and an art pen (sienna; $1.79) at Dick Blick. Drink coffee. Teach. Go to a dorm, think about when I went to Columbia and was in that grad student world. (Did some writing about this and may post it eventually. It's in scrawl.) Watch Kurosawa movie on my computer. Sleep. Wake up several times recognizing that the springs are poking me in the back. Sleep. Wake up. Walk around. Go to the library at Northwestern, where you can check out your own books, directly, by scanner. My exciting book: The Sociology of a Race Riot by Roberta Senechal. I've used it several times before, but is rare and expensive to buy. It's about the Springfield Race Riot of 1907. This is what I do for fun.

No, actually: I found my coffee shop: it's called MUD, and it is right across the street from the dorm. It's next door to a Fine Foods store that looks just like Apu's convenience store on the Simpson's, except it has less stuff. None of it fine and little of it food. But Mud is nicely new—they're struggling in the day time, or so the owner told a clutch of chatty middle aged women out for a clatch—and so hardly anyone is there. Which I like. Last week I got to sit on a couch in front of an open window and feel very good. Feel very urban, start thinking "why live in the mountains or the fields when I could sit in a city coffee shop and watch people walk by?" This is the conundrum of my life.

Hang around. 2 p.m., catch the Metra. Go downtown. Drink coffee at Starbucks, oh so conveniently located across from Union Station.

Depart.

brain pops

2005-10-02T22:26:00.000-05:00

I wrote this at about midnight last night. It really blithers.

My brain is exploding.

I'm so busy I don't even notice that I have allergies anymore. I can't obsess about whether the plants get watered two or three days prior to the time their leaves will start to wilt. Sometimes I even leave things on the kitchen counter before I go to bed. Yes, that busy.

I'm on the road. I like the road. I even like it more when I can see it from the window of my train car. My routine now seems to be up early on Wednesday morning, there in Evanston in my little grad student apartment, get ready for class and attempt to find something acceptable to cook in the microwave, and then walk downtown to see if I can find more books on the Chicago Renaissance, just to confirm my impression that most of the published work about the Chicago Renaissance is male-biased, and then I keep walking and find out that healthy dishwashing detergent can be purchased at Whole Foods. Counting blocks between destinations. Forgetting to eat. Thinking deeply about churches built in 1842. Thinking about a class with fully adult students coming from apparently interesting lives. I wonder how stories that have a shape can coem fromsomething so messy as a life.

The Renaissance. Working on a presentation to cover all the missing Chicago Renaissance writers. You know, the women and the blacks. The ones who get forgotten. Two days after this day of walking around Evanston, I gave my presentation. Nobody seemed properly wowed or even much interested. Why should anybody read Marita Bonner (little known multi-genre writer from the 1920's)? The only magazines for her were Black ones. Surely Poetry and the Little Review--the magazines of the day-- had little interest. Folk were supposed to be quaint, not smart.

And during all this, all this walking and researching, Paige is getting ready to go to college. She has some east coast schools she likes, like Emerson and Hampshire and even...Bennington. In two weeks we're going out there for the crash course business. Right in the middle of P's play directing and my teaching.I haven't a clue what I think about this. Going out there. Her going out there. Also in the mode of assisting with the college apps, Paige and Lauren have their web page up, http://www.10yenmanga.com. It is impressive.

This year, we're just faced with so many levels of going away.

On the art and entertainment front, oh yes, I have seen two movies to see: Sanjuro (an old Kurosawa of the wise but homely hero) and Yu Mama Tu Tambien. Both are beautifully filmed. ...Tambien (directed by the man who did the most recent Harry Potter film) features lots of cute little male butts. And it's a road trip movie. It has it all, I believe.

fall la la

2005-09-16T14:27:00.000-05:00

Fall has suddenly appeared--overnight, it seems. I don't mind. I love the fall. It's far more real and full of nuance than the spring, which always seems out to delude you. With spring, you think the crocuses will stay alive and the trees' buds grow and then EVEN THOUGH YOU KNEW IT a still sudden and shocking ice storm kills off everything around you. With fall, the ice storms, being expected, seem far less dangerous. Fall is contemplative and quiet. It's come to suit me.

This is part of my office. These are all the reference books I have piled around--almost all for the textbook chapters, oh crafty craft it is. Note the box of Krispy Kremes.

This is not a bad fall project.

On Wednesday, it's up to Northwestern for me, where I'll spend the night in family grad student housing. I've been told there is a bed and a private bathroom.....I'm hoping there will be a blanket. I'll not have these books with me. On Thursday, it will be bumper cars! And so for the next ten weeks. Fall is school time. We all go back.

nah-leans

2005-09-11T09:31:00.000-05:00

New Orleans is gone.

NEW ORLEANS IS GONE.

I've read and listened to whatever I can find. Here are some of the best:

Listen to the report done by This American Life, aired yesterday, September 10. Absolutely incredible, terrifying. You have to listen through to interviews about the bridge. This is important. As of today, they don't have the live audio set up, but they say they will next week. You can probably catch it airing locally for a few days. A way to find live audio feeds of most public radio shows is at the Public Radio Fan site (I use this a lot).

The angriest, most immediate reporting is being done by the New Orleans Times Picayune. Go to nola.com and click on the link to the Times Picayune.

American Routes, which used to air from the French Quarter, is playing a New Orleans show. This is a fine radio series in normal times. Roots music done by a folklorist who is not condescending. There will be good New Orleans music on this episode. Let's cry.

I keep thinking of all the random people I met there. You know, the hotel bellguy and such. The waitresses. The clerk selling fake shrunken heads. They were laid back and wry and I wonder what happened to them.
***
Here's part of an piece I wrote about New Orleans a few years ago. It was part of this book I was working on that never really came together. This piece isn't finished, really--it rambles-- I never did try to publish it. Who would have thought.

Bourbon Street and Royal Street, sugary beignets and frosted pecans and decadent lattes led to crazy dreams. What dreams must the drinkers have? --I walked and walked and walked. I was supposed to be at this creative writing conference, but I'd hardly gone to anything. I'd driven down with some students, listening to ambient techno punk music until I realized that it was starting to sound the same, and that as the body slows down so does the beat. I walked, I didn't run. I didn't have the energy to network, the way you're supposed to at a conference. I didn't have the necessary hunger. Instead, I escaped from the book displays into the New Orleans humidity and that beautiful decadence.
I ate sushi. "Are you sure there isn't something in this?" said my student Gayle, underscoring our awareness that everything in New Orleans was a soporific, a stimulant, and/or an aphrodisiac. White rolls wrapped around raw fish. We consumed, getting fat and sassy and giggling in our straight-backed chairs. Later, I went with Sandi to the coffeehouse, where we talked of truth and the fear of being outed. "They'll know my book is fucked," said Sandi. "What if they put me on NPR with the scholar and the journalist and they'll know I said Prussia instead of Germany. I'll be exposed." We talked of being written about and writing about other people, changing their names, we talked the pull between using people and doing what is daring and necessary. Do good intentions matter? Does the need to create art and explore truth override the responsibility to individuals? Do you have to have a release? Next morning, I walked and walked alone, in sun and downpour, watching tourists taking pictures of the sordidness and costumes and fun--it was fun, it wasn't all a lie. We were all tourists together, even the locals who laughed at the tourists, the locals who became the tourists of the tourists on their own tourist-marketable streets that advertised Authentic Cajun and Voodoo Love at Discount. I was starting to feel like I was at the Spicy Sex Disney World. Then I went a block and turned down Royal Street, an avenue for well-off sightseeing tourists and the minimum wage workers who served them. Antique shops and boutiques for the upscale professional. The bars offered a constructed authentic ambiance of old jazz and blues where nobody could really get hurt. I didn't go in them. I wanted just water, but couldn't find any.
On every corner were the bluegrass boys or doo-wop quartet. Oh, there were mimes, too, but they creeped me out, so I didn't look at them. My favorite panhandlers were an old-timey Bayou Americana band, with the dread locked white guy, barefoot woman with washboard, bearded hippie on mandolin. They were so good, I wanted to learn to play washboard.
I lingered on the island of old bluegrass songs. The band looked hot, like they needed a drink but couldn't afford one. They were tanned, tough, making a hard living. I leaned against a light post to catch my breath.
"That gal, she got a sweet smile," said a man next to me. Flashback to those small town square dances, and to the college-aged time that I spent in the hills of Southern Illinois. I could've hidden among those Southern bluffs, running naked in summer, sweetly stoned, stringing beads for income--I could've done that, I should've been the washboard girl instead of stuck in a New Orleans hotel hustling my name at an academic creative writing conference (shouldn't this be a contradiction in terms?). I even wore my nametag, the kind that at the sexual assault coalition we called bulldog whips, a tag on a cord that left the placard dangling between our breasts. I don't know why they called them bulldog whips, I was never let in on the joke--the strongest feminists always had the inner-circle jokes. I thought all this while watching the plucking girl with her transported smile and winding Medusa Hair…I wished I had tattoos like hers, and bare feet, too.
My feet weren't bare. I wore tennis shoes, once white, dingy now after walking. New Orleans was a dirty city, especially Bourbon Street after a night of drunken parades. My students--Adria, Phil, David, Jason, and Gayle-- took me to that party avenue and then proceeded to get smashed on this drink called a Hand Grenade served in a tall green plastic bottle right on the street. By the time they drank to the bottom, they were stumbling. They tried to get me to go on a balcony where women were showing their breasts for baubles. I didn't want to remind them that if I showed my breasts, the frat boys below would retreat in disgust and shock, and besides, I was too old. Besides, I was chickenshit. I watched the drunkenness from a distance, not parentally judging, not envious, just gazing at innocent decadence and what we'll do to feel excitement. "Show me your boobs!" the guys would yell, and the girls would be coy, until one would do a quick flip of the shirt, a one-second shot of white flesh for a handful of dollar beads. The students told me that Adria had done this the night before, but she denied it. "I really didn't show any skin," she insisted. "I just showed the bottom of my top." This display by the girls was mostly flirt. The real skin was right down the street, in the Triple X clubs, and it was cheap.
" bill monroe ". Between my feet, near the curb where I was standing, I found a penny. Lincoln burnished from heel prints and who-knows-what picked up off the beer/puke/semen streets of the French Quarter. This was near Jackson Street, home of the Café Du Mond, near Lake Ponchatrian; I felt the pull of water and the pull of music. I'm looking for luck. I just can't get rid of anything, even when I know I should. The head of the penny was dark, but the underside shiny, seeming new, as if someone had actually cleaned off the thing and then lost it through neglect. Pennies are useless, why bother? What will you win by carrying around the old lost currency? They're only added weight, accumulating in pockets and the bottoms of bags, loading us down. I can't carry much, I have a bad back, I'm too thin. But I'm still attracted to the coppery coins, especially the feather-backed kinds, and the older I get, the harder it is to notice them, knowing what a waste of time they are to collect. I've almost trained myself get rid of whatever unuseful thing holds me. It takes focus and decision; you tell yourself to keep to the essentials, move past the trinkets and the pretties. If you keep it, you'll neglect it or misuse it, drop it into the sewer grate or roll it among the dust balls under the bed. And if you do manage to hang onto it, you just die anyway, and then some hapless heir has to throw out all your crap. Innocence and joy are new games to buy on time, better saved as a memory than anything real. But instead of the dead chicken and the bare-breasted women and the voodoo necklaces found in the shops, I picked up this penny. I rubbed it on my shirt for luck while the banjo player picked out "Foggy Mountain Breakdown." I felt kind of lonely, there alone, but then not. It was easy this way. I could listen to the band, pick up my silly penny, and no one would know or care whether I was making a mistake or wasting my hours in nostalgia and hope. This penny, it could be the single rare one, the lone survivor, worth, oh, fifty dollars or a million! The kids would laugh if they saw me picking up a filthy coin. They know that value lies in the home-away-from-home that you can always depend on, especially in the hotel in front of the TV. Someday they will put pennies out of circulation.
But what the hell. What else did I have to do that day. What would it hurt, to hang on to one cent--it would be better than wasting my money on a magic skull or book of Haitian Love Spells: Guaranteed! I folded my hand around it and sat on the curb and listened.
Twang, pluck. The lost American harmonies are another trend in 2002--it took a movie to make it that way--but it'll pass. Except in my heart and the record collections of retro people like me. On the curb I claimed it as my time, not a pop moment--as I sat among the trash, as the men across the street stared my direction as if I were some whore, so what. The upright bass player plucked the old notes, and I felt as home (however briefly) as when we were all alive and the subdividing road crew hadn't yet moved in to push us in our scattered directions. As when we hung out on the porch and spilled into the yard and onto the cement steps, the way I still like to sit on the concrete and not in a decorous restaurant. The washboard player with the matted hair caught my eye and she knew I wanted to be there instead of her, but she didn't hold it against me. I almost forgot that the tourists were watching, and that I was a tourist in my own home, and that a penny isn't worth shit. I put it in my pocket anyway, to hold until I lose it in the jar among the others.

impending interactions with the social realm

2005-08-28T11:59:00.000-05:00

It's lovely to be back to the remembrance of fall as a season for manically getting one's shit together.

Preparing a class is such a bureaucratic task. When you've done it awhile, it's hard to see it fresh. I decided to start from scratch with my workshop class. After a year without teaching, I found that I didn't like all that I'd been doing before. Writing a syllabus means trying to see into the future, predicting this event and that, this accomplishment and that complaint. When you're working at a new institution, it's really feels like an open field.

Of course, when I'm writing this blog, I'm not working on that syllabus.

I've been chugging away on the textbook/anthology thing, too. I've absorbed so many essays and interviews with writers and such. I don't generally like those kinds of articles in which Writers Talk About Writing--(they always feel self-indulgent to me)--but I've actually found this interesting and I've learned some things. Of course, it makes me think about my own writing and various decisions I have made and how I do things and such. And in discussing processes, genres, techniques, blah blah for other people to read, I've had to really synthesize all kinds of things that I knew but had never articulated. It isn't particularly easy, but it's been a useful act, at least in a personal way. If it works, maybe it will be useful for other people, too--or at least they'll find some of it as interesting as I do.

So Work is taking precedence over "The Work" right now. Since there have been a lot of times in my life in which Work took precedence for long stretches, I can't complain.

My art-consuming life does not involve much deep thinking at the moment. I really love this British TV series, "The Office," which you can rent on DVD. This show is so funny and so painful. It's a mock documentary (one of my favorite forms) about, well, people who work in an office. But it's all so true. I have known so many people like these, and my own life has been just as fundamentally embarrassing as they are for the people at Slough. (I worked in an office--more than one--for about 15 years before going back to school and leading my current life of relative freedom.) These people have these alter selves, their real selves, that they wanted to be but aren't. They really just fall into a kind of inaction--which is imposed, too, because we have to eat, but is a choice, too, because we give up at a point. The show is just unsparing, but it's generous, too, because it doesn't condemn anyone. They're all just so flawed and so trapped. Well, it's a terrific show and painfully real.

I'm reading a terrific novel, too. It would take paragraphs to review it, so I'll just refer you to it: It's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. Surrealistic and beautiful.

big, big rocks

2005-08-02T09:37:00.000-05:00

Every time I sit down to write a blog entry about moving to Colorado, I'm up against this giant rock of inadequacy. We will do it, yes, in the summer of 2006. We don't know where we'll live exactly, or even approximately. I liked this little mountain town of Evergreen, which is on the route between Denver and Colorado Springs. This is what I'm rooting for.
There's a spectacular variation about the cities around Denver that I found almost as enticing as the mountains. The schizoid distance between Golden and Boulder rather sums it up. Right and left united by kitsch? One extreme of religion to another united by a string of strip malls? Each place seems to be scrambling for identity. Boulder: Laid Back, Cutting Edge, Easy Pot. Denver: We're a City, Even If We Look Like an Extended Suburb And Look: We Have a Crumpled Paper Art Museum Designed by the Guy Doing The World Trade Center & a Real Stadium Owned by a Beer Magnate. Golden is We Claim This Show Biz Indian Killer (Buffalo Bill) Because We Have His Grave and We Won't Tell You He Really Wanted to Be Buried in Wyoming Buy This Bad Ceramic of an Indian On a Horse. Colorado Springs Does Not Really Announce that It is a Mecca for the Christian Right Because The Christian Right Already Knows and Is Just Kind of Slipping Around and then Huddling In Its Satellite Dish Monster Church. And all around the mountains are going, We Don't Care Because You'll Just Die. Oh, it's just fun.

What we found out on our weeklong extravanganza of colleges and hotels:
Paige prefers liberal arts colleges, even if they are in the same town as Focus on the Family (**shudder**). Actually, Colorado College had the best theater department and was the most welcoming of all the schools we looked at. Still, she's probably not persuaded enough to actually go anyplace in Colorado at all. Colorado Springs did have a great used book store and an excellent spot for cheap drive through tacos. So it's surely far from all bad, even if there were a suspicious number of a Christians and crew-cut military types in our motel.

My favorite school was Naropa in Boulder. I want to become a Buddhist. It was a little too out there for Paige—and the undergraduate end is far too small. I loved it, though. It had Allan Ginsberg's books. What can I say. It was peace & love. (credit: this photo here came from http://www.identitytheory.com. It's of Ginsberg.

We spent three days in Boulder; it was our base. It was fun, but it also seemed to be trying way too hard to prove its hippie/hipster/hipness/postmodern credentials. After the fifth Nepal goods shop, & the huddled masses drinking espresso outside the Whole Foods Chain, you begin to wonder how much of it is genuine. We were there for three days, though, and it was summer, and it was the hottest it had been for 123 years, so maybe we weren't seeing it at its best. I very much liked the mall in the evening, where a band was playing and there were street musicians and jugglers and whatnot every half block. I never had to feel that I looked too strange for the place, which is an unusual feeling for me.

I could buy any kind of natural food or cosmetic I wanted. Having had cancer, I take this seriously.

The place, all of it, was full of possibilities.
It would never be boring. It would be that close to inalterable beauty. How reassuring that is—is hard to express.
My friends won't be coming with us, or former friends. I like to think that they will seek us out there and visit us, but I don't know that I expect that. I thought when I moved to Bloomington that people would visit. But that rarely happened. I like to think that the mountains will be an enticement for people, and they'll want a place to stay out there. We'll see. I've learned not to expect anything, but just to rock with what happens. Fewer bruises that way & more optimistic.
We'll be further from the kids, and that will be a problem. I expect to be on the road a lot. We'll deal with all of that when it happens.

I probably won't stay there forever.

Speaking of forever, they killed off Nate on Six Feet Under. This seems to be disturbing me more than anything in my real life. It means that the show is reaching the end of its final season.

collegiate quilts

2005-07-10T10:02:00.000-05:00

I am so so sick of traveling. Seriously. Yet I love traveling. I don't like getting ready for it, don't like cleaning up after it, but once there, I like the challenge of it. Unfortunately, though, I am at the moment in the simultaneous state of cleaning up/getting ready and so what I really want to do is hole up in my little studio and write like crazy.

Next week Paige and I are going out to Colorado to look at colleges. She's a high school senior next year and we have to be scoping out life after May 2006. We're going to schools in Denver, Boulder, and Fort Collins. We're going to look at mountains and look at neighborhoods and look at the inside of coffeeshops and observe the lovely decor of Ramada Inn. Paige & I travel well together and so this will be fun. It will also give me a chance to spend time with her, just us, which is rare and special.

BUT in the meantime I'm working on the textbook, which I don't at all mind, and writing about quilts. Sometimes I just fall into things. I've been revising some of my stories and I went after a piece I wrote about a quilt buyer. I always liked it, but I saw some things that could be done with it that would make it both more real and more visual. That is, I felt I'd fudged on actually showing the quilts. So I worked on this as a challenge, I guess. To see if I could get across the quilts and what they mean, and their story (as they represent all kinds of their makers' stories) while also doing this more linear story that already existed, about the quilt buyer and her friend. I ended up cutting a scene that I'd always liked, about the friend's stoner husband--it just didn't fit anymore. Maybe I'll put him someplace else, who knows. So I finished this story and am pretty satisfied with it. But then I had all of this leftover information and leftover thinking, I suppose, about the quilts. I had some leftover pictures and something needling me about it. So I wrote an essay--or at least I think it's an essay; since it has some fictional recreations set up rather as stream of consciousness prose poems, maybe editors would prefer to call it a story. It is funny how you can just be called upon to write something and you don't really know why. ** my husband would see this as impractical & irresponsible--yet he would tolerate it**

And so. Went to a family wedding in Iowa (Doug's family, not mine; my family doesn't talk to me. boo hoo). We spent some time in Dubuque, which is a very cozy town on the Mississippi. They're trying to make it presentable in order to sell it to tourists--and good for them, I say, particularly as no doubt the manufacturing is struggling. The extended family stayed at a combination Casino and Water Park! I was very disappointed w/ the casino. You can't really play poker on those machines. It's all luck. And the tables where they really play poker were far too expensive. Honestly, I thought the machines were boring. The people all reminded me of my mom--these tough old bats puffing on cigarettes and having a great time on the nickel machines. The average age was about 60. It was a hoot, but not quite a big a hoot as I had hoped.

I have no good conclusion to this blog entry. Oh well.

road trips

2005-06-30T08:20:00.000-05:00

All right, too many road trips. Another one this weekend. I applaud myself for driving alone to and from Wilkes Barres PA. (the bus just seemed too much of a pain in the ass). Preference is to go down the two lanes and look around, but I didn't have time to take the whole trip that way. Highways can be a challenge, though--all that jockeying w/ trucks and idiots toting U-Hauls. Fun if you see it as a game and forget that you can be killed. I rather enjoyed the adventure of it all, although it wiped me out for the week at Wilkes.

Wow, was that interesting. The low residency thing at Wilkes, I mean, the hanging about and listening to other writers tell their war stories (literally, in this case, with most of them being Vietnam vets) and hearing the Irish writers sing songs all night long (also literally). This was a real immersion experience, I'm sure everyone there would agree. The teenagers back at my house were only impressed with the fact that I met one of the writers on the cartoon Thundercats. Which links into my ultimate point that it was refreshing to be around screenwriters and playwrights and essayists as well as the usual fictionists and poets. It's a world about which I know little, and now know more.

All writers in groups consume mass quantities of alcohol (*in my experience, this is not a myth, though I'm sure some writers would argue it*), and so did they here in Pennsylvania. We're just so damned happy to meet people as weird as we are, and so excited to get out of our alcoves. I was the only person there, I think, who didn't drink. The only way I can get by w/ this is to hint that I'm in AA, which is cool (except I'm not). I try to explain that I had to stop drinking because of the meds I was taking at one time and then just stayed off, but nobody really buys it. I'm kind of a permanent designated driver. But there's something guilt-inducing and vaguely embarrassing about being the only sober person in a room of people tossing down whiskey straight. People get paranoid about me standing there like that, so that Jan Quackenbush told me I should just start lying about it ("say you're drinking vodka! it will make them all feel better!"). I've reverted back to being a girl scout. Well, guys like that....Er. There's a real toughness to this program, as there is with Wilkes Barres itself. This is Appalachia, this is the decline of the industrial East, and I liked that. Mike Lennon, my old professor from twenty some years ago, had invited me there, and he is a Mailer scholar. So some of the writers were connected w/ that world. Mike also put out a documentary (a good one) on James Jones, and so others were connected w/ that world. It was East Coast, not the national MFA literati, and this was quite interesting. Haven't been around it since I lived in NYC. It all (getting over) seems easier for them, since a contact can lead directly to a publication. I'm sure I'm romanticizing it, though. (um) The real organizer of the program is Bonnie Culver, a playwright. Not only did she run the whole show, but she had writers over to her house every night until the wee hours (as the Irish would say) of the morning. She has a bar. I mean this literally. Except nobody gives her tips. This is a woman with dynamic purpose.

I have so much more to say about all of this, but need to go do some other things now. I'll try to add more in a few other posts.

Anyone who wants to hear about the Denver trip should probably contact me directly.

Denver, florals...

2005-06-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

On Saturday, I'll be taking the grand tour of Denver. I don't know yet whether we're moving. People ask me what I think of the idea, but I truly don't have enough info—having never been in the city proper (except for getting stuck in the airport during a snowstorm). And we don't yet know the terms of Doug's position. So I'm riding along at this point. My daughter says it would be good for me to get out of Bloomington Normal, and I'm sure she's right about that. My experiences at the university here certainly seemed to be storm-cursed—but it looks to me that this was true for nearly everyone who passed through there. My friends here are already considering their own moves. (That's our world. Larry McMurtry had a great book title for this: All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers.)

When I get back from Denver, I'll be turning right around to board a Greyhound to the writer's conference at Wilkes U in Pennsylvania. The bus is actually the most direct means of travel. I bought a clip on book light and have resigned myself to not sleeping. And when all of my travels are over, I intend to sleep for several days.

As for my writing, I'm doing what I was doing in my last entry—. I found that one of the most common quilting designs, an eight-pointed petal, is a symbol for Venus. And that the Wandering Foot design was considered so dangerous that young women would never include it in a dowry, and mothers would never let an infant sleep beneath it. This is because wanderlust was considered a disease—most often caught by men, considered downright deviant in women. The design has become one of my favorites. I generally like the simpler florals, particularly the tulip design and the cockscomb—when they are repeated throughout the piece—and there are periwinkle, bluebell, and pomegranate—really, any flower that can be represented. and there's this terrific design called Broken Dishes that demonstrates all of this splintered turmoil. The Crosses and Losses is usually eerily simple. There are hundreds of basic designs, hundreds of variations. Learning all of this changed that old story I was revising pretty dramatically. Well, it's a new story, closer to the real one, I think.

huck and hoke

2005-05-21T10:30:00.000-05:00

I Heart Huckabees. Rented it, loved it, identified with it. Fortunate thing to see after having my environmental book rejected again. Too bad I didn't write that book as a novel.

What else? Reworking old stories. In some cases, fairly drastically. I'm very happy with this. Something happened. I can best explain it as no longer caring whether people get it anymore. And this has freed me up to do all kinds of very peculiar things. I don't want to change the way anyone thinks and I have no particular political point to make. I made it and people still don't really get it or if they do get it they just get mad, so hey *the fault was with me and *maybe it's better if some people don't get it? And: I'm almost fifty years old, it's time to have some fun w/ this.? -- and maybe *fuck it!* - so. And my parents are dead & I've psychically moved away & all my relatives hate me anyway & the university system is generally corrupted by institutional paralysis and it's almost impossible to publish anything political anywhere anyway and so *why try so hard to do things that I am not suited to do anyway? and so...and so....I'm writing what I want to write (in these stories, anyway, and my novel) and since the basic structure is already set (most of those stories were pretty solid to begin with) it's a matter of really cutting loose here & there & fully visualizing--I can't explain this & don't want to. What I meant to say is that one of my old stories has to do with this woman who is a quilt dealer. And so rather than doing this halfassed job of trying to guess at what quiltmakers do because I don't want to do the research, I am reading all this cool stuff about quilts. And this has given me this wealth of imagery and symbol because quilts are that while also being utilitarian (at least originally). And so I am reading books like Old Patchwork Quilts by Ruth Finley, published in 1929. And also writing on the story.

I'm thinking about my novel, too, but I'm not actually writing that down at the moment. I decided to make some of the main characters theater people rather than singers, because I feel that I'm less prone to hoke it up and because I actually know a lot at this point about how theater works, and far less about how rock musicians work. And, I don't know, I used musicians too much? What is fun about doing this is that I am a much better mediocre playright than I am a crappy songwriter.

What else. Not much time to read. I am finishing up a novel by Edwidge Danticat, reading some essays by Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs-ha), a bit of poetry here & there, and a graphic nonfiction (as in, it uses graphics) by Joe Sacco called Palestine. The latter is an incredible book, and anyone who thinks that graphic books are a trivial form ought to read it and wake up. It's powerful.

too bad

2005-05-14T11:55:00.000-05:00

Alas, my poor environmental book didn't win the American Studies contest. They thought it sounded too much like Michael Moore because I blamed corporations for the environmental disruption in my old stomping grounds. And that I was too angry. (I'd actually toned that down quite a bit after I sent it to them--I'd written a lot of it under deadline--but I don't really regret being angry, either.) I won't get into my reactions to this. I'll just send it out some more, and if nobody picks it up, then that's that. The book is an elegy and perhaps it will have its own death. I have other things I'm working on now. I think I have finally finally learned that the world doesn't want to be saved (going to hell isn't so bad, especially if you think you'll get sucked up in the rapture) and that trying to mesh art and politics is a constant frustration.

dogs

2005-05-10T13:54:00.000-05:00

A few significant life events.

But first—I'm watching this movie, Amores Perros -- in English, Life is a Bitch. It's unremitting and violent and are not constructed in an ordinary linear fashion. (The director, Inarritu, also directed 21 Grams, and this has a similar organization.) Amores Perros is all about dogs, the need that people have for dogs, and of course it's about passion and love. It has a multiple story line structure in which every segment is separate but converge at the end, and converge at a number of subtle points throughout. I wasn't sure I could watch this film at first because of the graphic dog fights. I'm glad I didn't look away.

You see I'm delaying discussion of my significant life events. I don't particularly want to talk about them. Not that they're bad, but that they seem almost mundane, a bit too abstract at this point, to put in a blog. It's always more literary to tell a story, and that's generally a post-event reality. The most significant thing is that Doug was offered a job at the University of Denver to begin in a year. So we will be going to visit Denver in the next few weeks so that we can make this decision. I've decided not to contemplate it too much until I have more information. I've spent only a few hours in Denver, stranded in the airport. I went past Denver on the train, but I was asleep. I love the mountains. I know very little about that particular city. I would miss some people here, and I would miss Chicago, but then Denver is only a day away by train. And it's the kind of place that people want to visit, and so they might want to visit us. The positives and negatives balance....So that's all I have to report on this right now. Considering moving always makes me feel regretful. But also filled with anticipatory scenarios of potential outcomes, which is exciting.

A smaller-impact life event is that I'm going to be presenting at a conference for Wilkes University, which is expanding a non-residential writing program. I'm going to sit on a couple of panels and give a reading. I enjoy writing conferences—they force me out of my usual buried-in-my-alcove state of being. This will all happen next month. Cool, no? I'll have a busy June.

And now I have to stop farting around and rebury myself in the state of fiction. adios.

transition

2005-05-01T08:58:00.000-05:00

A few interesting things are happening. I'll explain in the next couple of days.

One thing I can say is that Paige's friend Lauren is living with us for awhile. She's been fun to have around. She's got a few months left in our town and then she's off to Emerson College. And Paige will be in her final year of high school. It's been fascinating to see everyone change and begin their lives. Speaking of, we went to a Peoria Symphony concert last night because Andrew Hesse (my stepson) was playing cello in it. It was Mahler--bombastic! dramatic!--I've been to a great many concert performances at this point. Toss in all the plays. And I'm someone who was never particularly interested in either. There is something about a live symphony, if the performers are good and the acoustics decent ,that is thrilling. I would never have had the discipline to perform music in that way (which I knew when I was learning the flute) and I've come to respect it, while still having difficulty understanding how people have the patience to practice the same prescripted piece and blend beautifully into a full group. There was a Tchaikovsky piece that I had heard Andrew practice over a period of years and then eventually saw performed w/ piano, then w/ full orchestra. It only truly made any sense with the orchestra. What a long, painstaking evolution that was for the individual musician.

Next year Andrew will be looking at grad schools or conservatories, cello performance. Monica is settled in as an editor at AARP in Washington, although she still seems to be restlessly wondering about other places in the universe. Paige is thinking about colleges, as are her friends--with some friends, like Lauren, moving on soon. Well! That happened fast! What, will this chaos end? No more giggling? Next page!

Meaning: it's time to go to the grocery store, buy peanut butter and a Sunday New York Times.

acting

2005-04-21T08:26:00.000-05:00

Some people look on this blog to see what Paige (my daughter) has been writing. So here's a poem she finished not too long ago.

Paige Osburn

[Method Acting]

He looks something like December.

He is pale in all his places, and it is strange to me.

As if he’s been trapped in netting,

Or coated in glue,

Or served with two lumps and English cream.

He swings his feet in little arcs,

as if his boots are filled with bronze,

as if I’ve caught him in the act of being cast in his own statue,

and his attention twitches from person to person to person around him;

like people are interchangeable;

like people are changes in and of themselves.

He needs a change.

He acts something like November.

The most surprise life could squeeze from him is a raised eyebrow,

and a smile,

and maybe an exclamation,

but delivered like he’s read it from a sheet of poster board offstage.

He ricochets off the walls of other people;

He takes his cues off the words on other faces.

He sings to himself when he has the time,

And when he doesn’t he looks for the other people,

As if without something to react to,

He will cease to act at all.

He is a talented actor.

He is something like September;

He seems always on the verge of molting—

either into a passion fruit,

or into shards of brown leaves crushed into a patch of snow.

He seems always on the verge of knowing something I can’t,

Of doing something I won’t,

Of looking better than I ever will,

Even in my half-hearted, flashcard dreams.

But he is always still sixteen;

He is always left melting on a shelf;

He is always acting to an invisible audience;

He is always a reaction to an action that hasn’t happened yet;

He is always mixing blood and electrics;

He is always interchangeable;

He is always a change in and of himself.

He is a change.

return from tidepools and salmon

2005-04-17T09:48:00.000-05:00

The problem with vacation is that when you get back, you spend all your time trying to catch up with what you didn't get done while you were gone.

I also don't have the descriptors available to do justice to what I experienced out on the coast of the Pacific Northwest. People write books about that. All hassle and guilt were worth it to witness the tidepools on the Oregon sea. I'd love to go back. The Columbia Gorge had its moments as well, but maybe this was more in the predictable, awe-inspiring vein of waterfalls. Checking out the old whorin', shootin' town of The Dalles has its charms, too. We stayed in the best B & B/hotel ever, The Lyle, across the river from The Dalles.

(I did write up some descriptions of the trip, though they're not as complete as they could be. Once I get my pictures downloaded onto my computer, I'll try to post some of that onto this blog. Maybe.)

All of this made me want to go back to the West. I spent the first nine years of my life in Phoenix. I think I like the flatlands until I see the mountains again. Then I realized that I have gotten it all wrong.

Seattle had the best bookstores in the universe. Elliott Bay Elliott Bay! I spent my whole 4 hour train layover on the way back there. I stayed near the university strip and went to some great cutrate bookstores there, too. All in all a place with a kind of upbeat, wry energy. But by this leg of the trip, I was getting rather fried & didn't really experience it quite rightly.

In Vancouver, the Canadians are sick of Americans. It's clean, sweet, upbeat, and more British than I expected. Warning: The border crossing experience is a pain in the ass, esp. going from Canada into the U.S. Get a passport.

The creative writers' conference, AWP, was at the very end of the trip, and by then, I coulda cared less. I had an interesting time, though, and I worked hard, so I guess I did care more than I want to admit. Let's say it was a bit hard to make the shift from rustic traveller to focused semi-academic hardball artistic sort who wants recognition. (I'm speaking of myself here, not everybody at AWP.) I met some great people (that's the real reason to go to things like that, eh?see how I sound Canadian, eh?), and while it was technically in the manner of "networking," it was even more in the manner of "friendship?". I went out with my city chums and the people who gravitate to their circles. One night, with Sandi Wisenberg and a circle of women writers, every one of whom was intriguing, and the next, I went out with Sharon Solwitz and Barry Silesky and a cluster of their friends. S, B, et al went to a very expensive glass-domed restaurant in the park where I spent way too much money and had one of those classic unforgettable experiences. Again, every person at the table was generous and lovely and fun to listen to. And the food! the food! ..... At this conference, I also ran into Mike Lennon, one of my old professors from my first round of college days--not a person I would ever expect to see at AWP, as he is not a creative writer. I had to walk past him twice (going to Starbucks in between) to make sure it was him. Turns out he is now one of the people running a low-res program at Wilkes U. So we renewed our acquaintance, with me feeling like a different person and him no doubt remembering the time I housesat for him and killed all the plants. (I think I overwatered them. I have a lot of houseplants by the way, and they are mostly doing very well. Go figure.) I ran into other people, too, along the way, making this all in all a working conference. My days of being a stop-at-the-book-table-and-run person are gone. I did do considerable walking, though, since I reserved a hotel far from the conference site. (I actually did this on purpose and mostly regretted it. It rained on my trip every single day!) I ended up across from the hockey arena, which was a real hoot. I found out where the actual Canadians go--they go to pucks! The scenery evolved from the downtown department stores to the hockey arena--getting cheaper by the block, much to my happiness, and far less touristy. And then walking in another direction, I would get to the Gastown district (haunted junkies) and then to Chinatown, an absolutely enormous Chinatown with at least twenty open air food markets. All of this, the city and the conference, made this last part of my visit intensely people-intensive to the point where I had to cast away all thoughts of pines, mountains, tidepools, Mt. St. Helens devastation, waterfalls, spewing water, etc. This was a land of concrete, a different directional lineup. I'm still adjusting, I think.

On the train ride home, I was beat. I even slept through part of Glacier National Park. An old friend from my ISU student days, Cecil Giscombe, was on the train, too. (He and his family are train people, like me. This is a distinct breed, and I need to write an essay to explain it.) I enjoyed talking with him again.

And now I'm back, trying to get laundry done, trying to work on my story collection so I can get it out to an editor (this is a real self-confrontational experience*), working on the anthology/textbook I'm putting together for St. Martin's. (This sounds like bragging, but if you've ever done this kind of work, it's really quite nitty-gritty stuff.) I'm still assimilating.

*in looking at these, I realized that what I thought these stories were about, they were not about at all. It's like staring at this elephant that's sat its fat ass down on the comfy chair of my existence. It's surprisingly easy to make the elephant disappear, thereby finding said chair relatively intact and possible to repair. Is this the stupidest analogy you've ever heard? If you know my stories a little bit, I think you'll get it.

the survival of Amtrak

2005-03-21T14:06:00.000-06:00

the train: snips of places:

Brookfield, Illinois Monday, March 14, 2005...2:48 p.m.

Through someplace you've never seen. Every town has a name, one that can be seen from a window. A water tower, a weathered hospital, a Borders and a Walgreens in red brick, an illusion of the small town square that has not existed for a generation. Although they try; they are proud of their quaint look. Like every Chicago suburb, they try to assert their own sense of distinction, though it looks like suburbs everywhere. No doubt, living there, it is distinct from the suburb a highway over, certainly different from the city. I know that most of the people who live there rarely get into Chicago, unless they are commuting to work—and even then, they will have a four block square of familiarity no different from the way people have always lived. A town, a city, a suburb, we generally surround ourselves with the familiar, turning the sporadic venture forth into an adventure, a vacation, one usually centered around the same familiar sites (the stores). When we fly, we may not even notice a transition. Only liftoff, comedown, clouds, turbulance.

Ottumwa, Iowa 7:18 p.m.

I can't see Ottumwa, Iowa. A sign marking the train station is blocking my view. It's dark. I only see the teenaged boy who walks his blind father's Golden Retriever. He is a sweet boy; I'd seen him earlier in the Metropolitan Lounge. Observant of his father; always offering his arm, willing to walk the dog (he never wears a jacket). I wonder if the father became blind recently, or if the son has always been this dutiful. It seems like, if it had been a lifetime, that the teenager would be more surly. I want to hook my daughter up with him.

At dinner, people are hooked up together at tables. Usually this is an entertaining experience; four strangers, forced to sit together, can sometimes reveal things about themselves. This time, though, I was seated next to a man about my age who was as quiet as I am. This made for awkwardness. Sometimes I can come up with a gregarious, question-asking mode; but tonight, I'm more in a writing mood, happy with being alone. Minutes went by; nobody was seated with us. They didn't take our order. We still didn't speak. I got embarassed. I left, the only time I've exited a dining car. Luckily, I have a bag full of Pria bars and some chocolate chips cookies downstairs in my bigger bag. I won't starve.

Now the train is moving. I can see a bit of Ottumwa. They have a red glowing American Legion sign for their hall. And a red glowing Budweiser sign on a warehouse. This seems to be all there is in Ottumwa.

A series of ranches...passing Indianola. 6 a.m.

I try to remember the state for Indianola. According to my handy route guide to the California Zephyr, we're just past the border of Colorado. But it might be Nebraska. Trains get held up; they get ahead. They get put on tracks used by freight trains, which put them at the whim of industry, which leaves them open to accusations that because the trains don't run on time, they don't deserve funding. Whether Colorado or Nebraska, I'm sure the scenery melds. The Super 8 and the Mexico Lindo restaurant will be coming up in six miles, I'm informed; I'm sure I'll find out then.

A wonderful joy of taking the train is opening your eyes to new scenery. After hours (possibly sleepless) of darkness beyond the window—McCook, Nebraska, I hear!—in the morning, it's all revealed as a different world. No more cornfields. Yes, it's still flat, but it's a place of squat buildings....

Oh, to hell with it. The plains are boring.

Granby, Colo. (western side of the Rocky Mountain National Park)

Another covey of peaked rooves in the Rockies. The Rockies are startling. So utterly graceful. The many shades of brown, the snow scattered or falling among the brown. The peaked rooves want to echo these mountains but they only seem cheap; toy houses. We are inadequate even when we destroy. The wires and poles usually don't seem out of sync, but maybe this is because I long ago came to like a certain thin elegance in them. I can't imagine the landscape without them. The river beside us feezes in swirls of tensities. A green fir rises scattered among the brown sticks. No animals. Except the cows, which have just appeared even here. The silence is unsettling, pressing on my eardrums. They say it is fifty below in these places. They say the wind sweeps in at 70, 80, but nothing stirs here at all. I have to type blind because I can't look away.

It was the Colorado; we follow it 238 miles.

We just went past a POW camp from WW2, the second we've passed today (so says our friendly train guide, whose voice emerges from the speakers. This is the first train I've ever ridden that has a guide.). We're cutting through a granite canyon. The Upper Gore. Straight up, dotted w/ green firs; colored w/ green markings on the rocks (yellow green) and rusty orange. The sky above is silver and circled by an eagle. It is so so beauitful. We come so close to the rock and can look straight up and see just rock rock rock. and a tiny patch of sky.

Oh, then we went past dead man's curve & supposedly could be able to see cars at the bottom of the mountain. Didn't see the cars, but it did look possible.

Red Canyon—red rock, red dirt, Colorado means the color red, we are right beside the river now. It is shallow here. The rocks have straight-up tall fronts, like mesa rocks; this canyon reminds me of Arizona. I was thinking that here I am, finally going through the Rockies, and I still can't throw my mother's ashes.

If jesus came back today, he'd be crucified on a telephone pole.

probably by a republican.

Red Canyon was the most perfect place on the route. I saw pairs of eagles. One eagle flew parallel to the train window for a time. The river ran within view of the train, rimmed by a lovely red canyon low enough to show sky. The light is especially pretty (late afternoon) and makes the water shine. The colors curve from sand to red sand to the silver curves where water touches dirt.

But now we are nearing Aspen and I see this highway. The houses are getting more frequent and bigger. Nobody is farming here.

Glenwood Canyon, Colorado:

This was once a majestic canyon. The walls the highest of any we've seen. It takes imagination to see it, because of the fucking highway to fucking Aspen. The tour guide told us that this was considered a great compromise, this highway; originally they were to cut into the canyon walls and wipe out a scenic lake. It took twenty years of court wrangling to get it built at all. It is a nicely done highway, but still a four lane, piloted by semi trucks and SUVs. The rustic isolation of all I've seen since Denver has disappeared into something that looks like Pacific Coast Highway. From what I've read of Aspen, this is exactly what it is. A resort area for the rich and those who wish they were. I can see why Hunter would have killed himself over such a change, but why didn't he move?

We have red slide signals going. The train is crawling along. Slide fences detect vibrations. They malfunction, says the guide.

Smells like cigarette smoke in here. At least I hope it's cigarette smoke.

Grand Junction. 6:45 p.m.

A funny little station, this. The first one with a gift shop. Not to say it was an exciting gift shop, but its goofiness makes it special in a run down sort of way. Some very expensive jewelry (pseudo-West style), and some big expensive stones (i.e., polished rocks), and some small polished expensive rocks. Lots and lots of people crammed into this tiny junky space. I love to watch the people. I've gone out walking every break, and commune with the smokers, even though they probably suspect that I'm a jogger or some other insidious health nut.

Dinner tonight was fun. In the dining room, they seat you with random strangers. It's fun if you have a full table; it's the two person tables that hurt. This was three guys. (What's with all the businessmen on this route?—there are always a lot, but it just seems an unusual quota this time. Each traveling alone. You can tell they carry the fantasy that random women alone are on the train to sleep with strangers. Har.) All of these guys were from Iowa or from the Nebraska side close to the Iowa border. A coincidence, since they didn't know each other and were going different places. One guy was a farmer; the other two, indeterminate businessmen types who talked about the gambling laws in various states, and about train travel (Amtrak wasteful and should be cut from federal funding?—yet all rhapsodized about the train.) The Iowa farmer had some good typical Iowa farmer type stories. He yakked about how when he farmed he never got out of the tractor. It was all done with lasers and satellites. Soon it can all be done from within an office. I didn't want to say, "soon it can all be done without you, and that's the goal of the multinational food companies who are dictating your methods." He would have thought I was talking like Michael Moore, would have reassured himself by listening to talk radio. I found it sad. He saw it as inevitable (although I didn't let on that I knew anything about farming—not that they would ever have believed me, anyway). He then told this story about how his grandfather had died a millionaire by farming only 160 acres and didn't even own a high tech tractor, yet invested his money wisely. Now, said this farmer, you have to farm 1400 acres and have a fleet of high tech equipment. I didn't want to tell him that the people who survive now are the ones farming 160 acres.

Random people on this trip:

The couple two rooms down who look like standard mid-twenties hippie types but who can afford to take the sleeper. She had some kind of good job, and maybe she was going on business. He was a shaggy smoker w/ a beard, walked around the hall w/ his shirt open. She had short dark hair, efficient, bitched about stuff, bitched at this guy.

The coach class has a lot of hippie sorts and African Americans. I think the hippies are heading out to the West Coast; they're a different look than the kids who take the train home to the Chicago suburbs over spring break. I haven't seen a lot of little kids, but maybe nobody takes them outside when the train stops on breaks, or maybe this trip is too long distance for people to haul their kids. The luxury and the problem of sleeping cars is that there is no need for us to ever cross into coach. My cars are on the upper level; coach is ahead a bunch, and I think on the bottom level. I am glad I'm not in coach for a trip this long; I probably couldn't do it. I feel like a this snob. But I would get tired, really arthritic, and would probably get sick. Older people tend to take the sleepers.

someplace, probably in Nevada past Reno. 7:59 a.m. Pacific time

Desert and scrub. At least, I think this is desert. A brown low mountain. Coming upon a town, squat houses, no peaks. When I woke up this morning I saw green and realized I was coming slowly toward the Pacific. Now it looks like Nebraska again with a mountain in the background. The place I thought was a town is more like a few houses and a rambling junkyard. I have never seen so many junkyards in one trip.

Oh, I take it back—it is a town. A town of trailers, shacks, and the small boxy houses where struggling rural people raise their children the best way they can. It is surrounded by nothing. We go past a baseball diamond; it looks like the sign says "Lou Reed Museum," but I know that can't be right. We go past more junk, go past a gravel pit. Now more tan, darker tan, and a line of fencepost protecting something, but I can't imagine what. A nuclear range?

Winnemucca, NV. 9:30 a.m.

The train takes a five minute break. Out I go w/ the smokers and the dog. The farmer I had lunch with and I conjecture about what people in this armpit town do. We wonder why we have seen no kids in these towns. What do the teenagers do? "It's hard, it's got to be real hard here," he says. The place has no platform; it's dirt and rocks at the side of the train. The only communal place we see from the train is a bar. We conjecture that we're only seeing the ass side of the town, but we aren't optimistic.

I think Winnemucca is in the song "I've Been Everywhere." I'm crossing the names in that song off my list as I go through each one. Someday, I'll get them all.

Reno, Nevada

Shabby, shabby. Good signs: Sands Inn Casino, Sands Motel. Variations of tan—burnt sienna. Almost pink. Once in awhile, a dark blue awning. It looks like an extended fifties strip mall. I'm sure there must be something good about it. It reminds me of Branson: entertainment on the way down. For people who want/need to gamble but can't afford Vegas. Depressing. "Crystal ice and Oil!" ha. El Tavern Motel in fake Southwest design. A trailer park (the trailers around here all look beat, like the ones people hide in, disappear). The Mountain View Mortuary with the MOM sign. The Tombstone Territory Motel. A giant white cross on a hill. (maybe a cemetary? Not sure. The view is blocked by evergreens and scrub).

I think of that girl, Janne H, who moved here and dealt cars at the casino. I wonder if she still lives here. I know she got divorced ane remarried and had a baby. I would not want to raise a baby here. But maybe there is something good about it, something I can't see. An array of cheap motels, going on and on out of town. Without the casinos, there would be nothing here at all. I wonder if people retire here.I wonder if there are people who dream of retiring here. This is something I don't understand, this place. Why would anyone ever stop here, why would anyone ever create a city?

between Truckee, CA and Lake Tahoe, 2:40 p.m.

The terrain has turned from tacky to pretty. This area is unsettled, which is surprising, since I know we're nearing a ski resort. Well, okay—I just spotted, between the trees,a bustling highway. If I weren't on the train, I would have no way to see this fresh and unbroken place. The mountains are covered with snow and firs. Not long ago, at lunch (our last meal until we reach San Francisco at 10:30 at night), we passed Donner Lake. What a horrible disappointment it must have been, to die as chow in such a beautiful place.

At lunch I was seated with the same silent Asian man who I had fled in a bout of shyness two days ago. Today I was much more accustomed to talking to strangers, and decided that it was stupid to be embarassed. So I began asking questions. Turns out he's Japanese, with a good, but not perfect, grasp of English. He had trouble understanding my speaking, which apparently leaves off a lot of consonants. So I had to slow down and enunciate and try not to mumble. He turned out to be interesting. He had travelled all around the world on business, and had been to the states quite a few times. But this was his first time on the train. We talked about Japan. I tried to get some info for Paige. I learned which consonants aren't used when speaking Japanese. I learned that Kyoto is the place to go. I found out that New York is more sophisticated than Tokyo. And then about halfway through lunch, another guy was put at our table. (I haven't talked to a woman this whole trip.) This was another middle aged guy, maybe older than me. He was liberal (for a change), grew up in Minneapolis, and lives in Northern California. He approved of my idea of travelling up the Oregon coast and then told me, in B.C., that we should go to Victoria. We bemoaned the lack of mass transportation in general and worried over the survival of Amtrak.

I would never have talked to people like this if I hadn't taken this train.

Colfax, CA

Colfax looks like a fake town. A fake visitor's area, all set up like a quaint small town. It's the first place we've stopped in awhile where I've seen teenagers—two kids on skateboards hanging out on the steps of a fake gazebo. It actually looks very pleasant. The street slopes uphill into fir trees. What if none of it is fake?

*****time passes*****(bad clip art)

Seaside, CA. Monday, March 21, 10:30 a.m.

(Eventually I got to San Francisco. Now I'm sitting at Kim Dozier's table in Seaside, California, near Monterey. She's got a bunch of interviews coming up at colleges, has to juggle her meetings like an East Coast businessman. I'm glad it isn't me.)

Stray Dog

2005-03-07T08:17:00.000-06:00

Not much happening w/ me beyond preparing for my west coast trek. I'm a terrible traveller. I have to pack everything. I have to take home w/ me, otherwise I feel like I'm going to get lost. So I end up lugging this huge suitcase around on the train and storing it--because if it's a long trip, I of course need my valuable things (like, I dunno, that sweater that might possibly be needed in the event of a sudden freeze on the train, etc.) and they can't be placed into a boxcar for two days. And of course I have to take a portable coffee pot in case the hotel doesn't have one. And earplugs and shampoo for oily hair but in a not too big bottle, etc. And at least three diff books, covering multiple genres, like a history of San Francisco, a book of essays by someone fun to read, like Paul Lisicky, and maybe some short stories. And then wherever I go I will find this inadequate so I will buy some poetry, a few magazines, etc. and intend to read those on the way back and then spend my time staring out the window instead. My family reacts to this w/ quite a bit of ridicule, as well they should. I never did backpack across Europe.

Other than that. I'm writing some radio essays. A real challenge for a chronic overwriter. It's good for me.

Watching some movies. Saw Hotel Rwanda. My friend Susan went to see it w/ me, because neither guys nor daughter had the guts. (I like movies that trouble me.) My god, was Don Cheadle incredible in it. Dignity. The movie had an undertheme of shame. I would say the movie was ABOUT shame and also the lack of shame. The most stunning scenes: the road in the fog (I won't give it away). The attempted tying of the necktie.

All the other movies in town are horrible, exc. Sideways, which I love, and Million Dollar Baby, which was very good but which I did not particularly love. (come on, it's Marty w/ a girl) On DVD I just saw a peculiar Kurosawa movie, Stray Dog. I was fascinated w/ the transfiguration of the hard boiled cop genre in a postwar Japanese landscape. Parts of this movie are breathtaking with this seamy beauty. It's the only Japanese movie I've seen so far that showed the homes of the poor. Not in a romanticized way. It was brutal and wonderful.

Dragonflies, Bears

2005-02-20T11:35:00.000-06:00

Hey, folk. I have comments to comments from Jenna and David on the previous two blog posts, so if you are Jenna or David, then I have visited your reply.

My daughter wrote this poem that I really like, so I'm posting it below.

********

You move so fast.

You flounce on by as if your twitching fingers are what lead you;

swollen pink spiders’ legs, spasming so pretty in the fluorescent light.

You move so fast.

You were made to shift in Technicolor and laugh in two dimensions,

made to cause seizures in the elderly, summers in the young.

You move so fast.

You stare into the sun and you don’t blink;

you witness your own glory, whenever your thoughts are sad.

Which isn’t often.

Just often enough.

You move so fast.

You flicker everywhere, you dance everywhere;

You look like you move like you bounce like you think

and hardly we can see you

and hardly you can see

and

you

move

I think I saw a dragonfly.

On the front of your shirt, all in blue.

And it stood so still that in the fluorescent lighting I thought

that that was all there was.

You move so fast.

******
I do like that poem.
Hey, my Northwest trip is definitely going to happen. damn the money, who needs it? My friend Kim has a little house in Monterey, and we're going to stay there a few days after 4C's, and then we're going to camp up the coast until we get to Vancouver. Then I'm going to go to AWP and do some schmoozing and walking and not buying any books and seeing friends. Then I'm going to rush out of the hotel and walk outside and look at things. Then I'll go back and hear a reading or something, then will run out again because by that time I will be about to implode. (I really don't care much for conferences. Except AWP is okay, usually...if you can overlook...oh, it's all just peachy. Now that I know enough people.) Then I'm going to take the train back through Glacier National Park, which is an amazing trip. The train goes on through these desolate and wild parts of the park, and it's astonishing. I recently read an old essay by Laurence Gonzales about the park, and he describes the experience really well. Except I personally hadn't known that the place was full of bears that eat people. I can't say I blame them; if I lived there, I would keep the people out.

No big news here. Working on my novel. I love it. I feel like somebody lifted a boulder off of my head.

Writing is a frustrating, wonderful thing.

life as novel

2005-02-12T13:46:00.000-06:00

I so rarely get a chance to get on the internet now that when I do, it's especially fun. I can waste hours and hours doing this.

I've been working in a focused way on my writing. Less with an idea of aiming it at a certain kind of publication (which I had to do, to some extent, with the environmental book), but on writing what I feel like writing. I've been spending mornings working through my old novel, and afternoons reworking a chapter in my environmental book. And mailing out pieces, which always takes longer than it should. And pulling things together for the anthology part of the textbook I'm working on. It's very pleasant, but grueling. I haven't gone to the coffeehouse since I've had this office space. Most of the time, I just work through lunch, and I work about a 9 hour day. (Well, okay, taking time out to eat chocolate.) I get immersed in it. I don't like to leave in the middle of anything. I understand how writers become hermetic. If that's all you're doing, that's what you have to do. It isn't like you can switch on and off between the focus it takes to write and the kind of attention that you give to people socially. Or I can't do that very well, anyway. I know that I am probably becoming an even more boring person than I was before, but eh.

Next fall, I'll have to go out...I'm going to be teaching a graduate creative non-fiction workshop at Northwestern up in Chicago. It will mean an overnight in Evanston. I'm very excited about it, and appreciative, too.

Back to writing. Looking through that novel has been an emotional experience. I really like parts of it--the funny parts and the lyrical parts. Other sections try too hard to hinge upon a particular plot, and those just don't work. I went through and kept hunks and tossed out hunks. At least 200 pages went into the discard pile. Like cleaning out the closet. No regret. Part of the reason I never revised the book was because I knew some things in it just didn't work, but didn't have to distance to see how to fix it. Now I think I do. It is odd, though, like looking back at a person you know well--know them as well as you know yourself-- but is not you. And in that stretch of time that person has changed and aged.

One wonderful surprise in this book is this character based on my daughter. I captured some traits she had when she was small that I would have nearly forgotten had I not grabbed them for this book. It's so much deeper than a photograph or a video would have been. But reading those passages are sad, too, because she's nearly grown up now. Bittersweet. And while nobody in the book is real--nobody is just a fictionalization of one actual person--each captures a certain period and atmosphere that was true and is gone. I don't feel nostalgic about that time, but it puzzles me just how suddenly and incontrovertably life changes. So going through all of this stirs up feelings. It seems right to be doing this, though. The book had been nagging at me, but I couldn't work on it until I had the time. I knew that it would need that if I wanted to make the piece cohesive. And now I have this window of time.

I had to choose whether to work on this or work on my book about Lindsay and Teasdale. That book relies to some extent on research, and I wanted to get a break from that kind of writing for awhile. By the time I'm finished with this book, I'm sure I'll be eager to have someone else's history to fall back upon.

So that's my life. Everything else is pretty routine. Paige is in another play, this one an adaptation of Rushdie's children's book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Two of Paige's friends wrote the adaptation. Doug is getting a bit frantic with 4C's coming up. (The Big Speech.) The animals are getting wiggy because they want spring to come. There have been school events, movies, went to the Peter Schickle concert last night (disappointing). My most recent Netflix movies were Miller's Crossing, The Good Girl, Stranger Than Paradise, Maria Full of Grace. I'm catching up with all those movies I missed. They were all great.

snow

2005-01-29T18:08:00.000-06:00

Another pleasant day of workaholism. I'm really fond of my office space. I can see the snow out the windows. And I don't have to clean up after anybody but myself.

A lot of being a writer has nothing to do with being creative. This week, it mostly had to do with secretarial work and accounting. I did taxes. (For businesses, a lot of things are due in on January 31.) And when I was tired of taxing sorts of activities, I edited, typed in changes, edited again. Now that I have more time to "write," I believe I spend most of that time editing more carefully. When people think of writers in garrets, they never think of this. I've been sending out a lot, so there is the time spent figuring out where to send things, and sending them. If you're a writer, you already know this, so why the hell am I telling you?

It did snow today. It was a pretty snow, small flakes. When I look at the snow from my second floor window, I don't see the streets, and it all appears very pastoral. I have trees outside my windows, so it's etched quite prettily.

Hm. I did some vacuuming today. I did some thinking, but not much.

I think I'm going to go to AWP in Vancouver. I have to go to 4C's anyway, because Doug is giving his Big Speech, and that is in San Francisco. I have a friend who said I could stay with her in those few days between the two conferences. It feels like a huge expense to me and I'm reluctant to go. Doug really wants me to hear his Big Speech, though. And it would be fun to go to Vancouver, and also fun to hang out with my old friend Kim. It's been a hard decision. I will probably worry the whole time, but it will be no less of a good time.

I did rewrite one of my older stories and got that mailed. I hauled out that story collection (oh yes, the one that isn't published...) and I saw all that I could do with that, and I hauled out my novel (the one that I finished in grad school and never revised because it intimidated me) and I saw all that I could do with that, too. I began small, with the first story, and I enjoyed that. It ended up completely different. I've changed.

2005-01-10T10:14:00.000-06:00

My scary book project, Fishing for Polyester, is now mostly finished and is swimming around the offices of Ohio University Press. The epilogue is bubbling around in my head and I'm going to drag that flapping sucker to shore--all right, enough of fish. I hope the press takes it so I won't have to send it out anymore.

We're nearly to a state of normalcy after the holidays. The whole Christmas thing is tiring and seems to go on for months. I'm always glad to return to my dull routines, no matter how decently it all goes.

This weekend we're all going up to Chicago. Doug has a swank room at the Drake because he's got meetings up there. Paige and I will hang about. I have a radio interview on Friday, so I can justify it all to myself as being (sort of, in a minor way) business-related. I like radio interviews. I never allow myself to think about how stupid I must sound. I haven't thought about my published books for awhile, though. I usually forget about them until someone asks me. And then they don't seem like my books anymore. It's odd, to know a book that intimately and then to feel as if it's a stranger.

I've been updating my web page and have posted some pictures on it. Check it out, if you like, at http://www.bbradway.net

checking in

2004-12-08T13:55:00.000-06:00

Sorry for not updating in ages. I'm pushing hard to finish up the environmental book. I have a deadline of the end of December. And, really, it's good to work under deadline for this, because it was always a project that could easily go in too many directions. Now I have to keep the focus going--and, in fact, edit out all the places where the book went astray in the earlier drafts. It's felt good to work on it. I didn't like leaving it hanging, knowing it wasn't quite right. Now I'm able to get it to be more of what I had intended it to be all along. I know I'm on the right track, because I've already gotten two sections of it published since I started revising it.

And so I can't really say much here in my blog until the book is finished in a few weeks. All is well. We've nearly finished w/ the many kid Christmas activities, including a monster-sized cast party that was held at our house last weekend. I have been most entertained by all of it.

Speaking of entertainment, I have also been renting a lot of movies from Netfliks and I watch them when I'm working out on the treadmill. Saw a Renoir movie over a few nights, The Rules of the Game. Saw another movie recently, The Devil's Playground, about crack-using Amish teenagers. That's my usual fare--documentaries, certain animes, and movies with subtitles. This seems to have replaced my music obsession for the moment.

Back again in a few weeks.

the land is turning into a puddle of goo

2004-10-31T09:01:00.000-06:00

Everything's been very busy. There's a lot of responsibility attached to freelancing. I'm driven to make it work, so I work. I write all the time, but most of it isn't "creative" in the sense of time on my novel or poetry. Right now I'm busy revising Fishing for Polyester. Some good news: it's a finalist for the Great Lakes American Studies Association/Ohio University award--one of two. So I'm at work reshaping it and updating it. I've also taken out most of the memoir material, which really didn't work well, anyway. I've decided I don't have the abilities to really meld reportage and personal writing, at least not in this long form. I've learned to accept that I have certain limitations as a writer, and I think this is one of them. I just can't make the tone consistent, for the most part. And the personal parts just came too close to my parents' dying and my surgery. I don't think they really work as anything that anyone else would want to read. Even I don't want to read it. I've thought about all of this for some time, and I knew I either had to do it this way or just abandon hopes of publishing the book. This award competition forced me to get off my butt and do it, and I feel good about finally working with it. I still find the topic disturbing; the situation for the environment is so bleak and so scary, especially now, three years after I did that original research. The only good thing is that I'm now so pissed off about it that I'm no longer depressed.

The manuscript has to be turned in by the end of the year, so I've been cutting and redrafting and doing new research. I like having a hunk of time to really focus on it; it makes the project much easier, because I don't lose my thread of thought. I'd like to see the book in print because I think it says some important things. Things nobody seems to care much about, but I care, so I suppose that's enough.

I've also been doing some little projects to pick up drops of money. It all feels like groundwork. To make any money, you have to do the work, and you have to publish it. There's a time lag. I feel fairly guilty for being such a financial drain and I worry about how long I can do it. On the other hand, I feel that if I can last out the beginning that it actually will build into something. It beats the hell out of walking around with halls of Illinois State having to deal w/ everyone's pity or contempt. And I like being away from the intense competitiveness, which does not energize me the way it seems to energize most other people. It saddens and tires me. So it's an enormous relief not to have to deal with that endless futile bullshit. Don't people know how soon they're going to die and just how much it doesn't matter?

On a different note, Paige and I are hoping to get up to see the Pixies in Chicago. I have the tickets, but it may not happen, timewise, since she's in another play. (She kicked ass in Into the Woods, by the way. She was a very funny stepmother, although I was a little concerned in the part where she cuts off her daughter's heels and tosses them over her shoulder...she seemed to rather enjoy it. No, I wasn't worried, it was funny.) Her new show is a holocaust play, so I don't think she'll be able to be too comedic. She plays a teacher, in keeping w/ her series of roles as adult authority figures. So we may not be able to get up and see the show at the Aragon and I'll have to sell my tickets on ebay and cry. Boo hoo. I never was much of a concert-goer, anyway. I never had the money and always saw music as more private. I have mostly stopped listening to it. I go through phases like that. Paige is always playing it, and our CDs are always mixed up, and I feel like I passed it along to her and let go of it. Most of my spending money (not much) goes into books now. That has much to do with it. And not having the internet in my office, I can't hook up to good online radio. I've never been able to listen to music and write at the same time. I just end up listening to the songs. So...I don't listen to it.

Speaking of, saw the movie Ray last night. I loved the stuff about Atlantic Records, my favorite Ray period. It was cool to see Ahmet Ehregun and Jerry Wexler, as played by actors. I'm glad they got mentioned in a mass market film, because they were just so visionary. The movie had a lot of the usual biopic cliches (silly ending), but Jamie Foxx was great and it seemed to be accurate in the details.

But enough about me.

historical analysis of St. Louis, Missouri, 1904-2004

2004-10-08T07:29:00.000-05:00

first, catch up

I've really had a difficult time making myself do anything online beyond random searching. The communication part is the part that's hard, unless it involves ordering a collection of poems by Swinburne or Christina Rossetti. My mind is in the 19th century, in Japan, and Into the Woods, with occasional ventures into The Daily Show and The New York Times (just to remind myself that the 21st century is even more horrifying than it was the day before).I actually watched the entire first Presidential debate all the way through without a bathroom break, a real sign of patriotism. I don't know that I've seen anyone debate as cleverly as Kerry did, and I was able to apply all that stuff about rhetoric that I learned when I was getting my doctorate. I just watched in fascination, desperately wanting him to kick weasel-man's ass, delighting in watching Bush reveal his stubborn essence of lemon. I did catch part of the VP debate, too, though I was hardly so dedicated with that because Cheney is far more boring that Satan, despite their surface similarities. Cheney is just one of Satan's henchmen, a thug. Anyway: I vow to catch up on all communiques this weekend, of which this blog must be one.

next: all about St. Louis

I went to St. Louis last week to give a reading at Left Bank Books w/ some of the anthology crew. This was a very peculiar trip from beginning to end. I have nostalgic feelings about St. Louis. It was the big city destination for all the Springfield people; above Springfield in Illinois, everyone heads north to Chicago--below it, they all head to St. Louis. Assuming we head anywhere, which I certainly never did when I lived there. It's also the city where Sara Teasdale grew up, so I've been immersed in its turn-of-the-20th-century form now for about two years. I had places I wanted to see. I wanted to get a feel, so I knew I would do a lot of walking while I was there. I also scheduled in a venture to the St. Louis historical museum and the library.

If you look at a map of St. Louis, it looks like any other city. The kind of place where you can walk or take a subway. Chicago and most Eastern cities are built for walking--they feel like cities, they are condensed. St. Louis is truly Southern. It is not easy to get around in. The blocks are long, and as you walk them, it is clear that people are not accustomed to walkers. They look at you like you're going to rob them. Nobody else is on the streets, unless they are the obvious lunchtime office workers getting a triple cappucino with soy milk. So to walk from my small hotel to Forest Park was, well, trying, and difficult to estimate from the map. What a sedate place--I went through University City, which is the neighborhood near Washington University. And I walked through the campus. Strangely, the only students I saw where a few Asian students talking on cell phones outside their engineering buildings, and some rather intense and harried-looking guys walking the long walk from Skinker up to the school grounds. The campus was beautiful but cold. Even Harvard seemed happier. I'm not joking.

To be fair, there was a lot of construction going on in the area and it was noisy. Maybe this is what kept people from being out enjoying the day.

When Sara Teasdale lived there, she was part of the protected aristocracy. The class lines were visible and they still are. All cities break out this way, but it seemed more obvious here, because I saw no mixing. The only black people I saw on the entire trip were blowing leaves off the sidewalks in U City. Well, except at our reading. To me, the best thing about any city is the mix of types--the way people from anywhere can appear, en masse. I saw no mass here.

The history museum was fantastic. One of the best I've been to. A great display on the World's Fair of 1904. The people there were friendly. I was able to pick up some books about St. Louis that were on sale. happy happy joy joy.

The reading that evening was okay. I wasn't up for it. The piece I wanted to read from, one of the Sara sections of the novel, just wasn't ready to condense for ten minutes. I've been rethinking that part of the book and I decided not to go with it. So I read from the anthology introduction and bored myself and probably everyone else. Richard Newman, Mary Troy, and Ricardo and Rodney Cruz read, too. They were all really good, really effective readers. It was good to see Richard again after such a long while. I knew him back when I was friends with Tony Fafoglia. And have been both published and rejected by River Styx (which he edits). He's so deadpan and cynical that I enjoy hearing him talk. We went to a bar/restaurant and a bizarre thing happened. I ran into this guy who I was involved with years ago, years years ago, a guy who I thought would be dead by now, given the density of amphetemines he put in his system. But no, there he was in this bar. It freaked me out. It frightened me. This part of my life that I want to wipe away, a part that almost seems like someone else's life, and there it is saying hi? I could go on into this, but I won't. I turned away from it, because that's what I did so long ago. I do think sometimes parts of ourselves die.

So St. Louis brought back my past when I didn't expect it to do that. On my last visit there, Tim (Paige's dad) and I had spent a weekend with our friend Tony. We went to Forest Park, to the Jewel Box, and I have a delightful sense of all of that. I found it hard to match that day with the St. Louis I saw when I walked it alone. So many things have happened in between. The cab driver told me that later that Forest Park is nothing like it was back then. It's improved, he said, and then told me about the free Shakespeare performances that are held there in the summer.

It's strange to me that I don't want to go back to those old times in my life. I don't try to revisit those times, even the good ones. I don't revisit Springfield often, either, because it feels so different to me now. It isn't that I feel I've gone beyond it, or that I'm better than it; it is just that I have a distance from it, and it's hard to match that with the feelings I once held for it. I don't want to run from those past places or embrace them. It's the feeling of neutrality and uneasiness that is most disconcerting.

Well, enough. I'll be going into my little room today, like almost every day, listening to the cars go by on Washington Street and the air conditioner kicking on and off and maybe the drone of 580 WILL public radio talk, just for company. Whenever I'm there, I feel content and have no urge to do anything but write. I don't listen to music there. But that's another blog entry.

Bridge vacuum

2004-09-16T11:57:00.000-05:00

The most interesting thing I've done lately (since I'm a workaholic who generally works) is to go to Chicago and give a reading for Bridge magazine. It was at a bar called Rodan. Like the big lizard? Or was that an artist? Do you know how long it's been since I've read at a bar?....A dark and smoky bar, at that. Almost everyone there was around 30 and under 30 and they were all even hipper than I was when I was 28, which is not very difficult. Everyone was very nice, though, especially these diligent people (uh, the word "kids" went through my mind) who run Bridge. They work their asses off for no pay. And their magazine looks fantastic--it's inventive and they publish interesting things, and it would probably be famous if one of them was as famous as Dave Eggers and could get paid for promoting it like he does McSweeneys. The fiction editor, a guy named Mike Newirth, teaches five classes and is a grad student at Northwestern, AND he does Bridge, AND...well, I don't know what else. The bar was in Wicker Park, which just added to the adventure of utter modness. We went to a bookstore called the Mystic something and walked by a record store that looked really good but I've sworn off spending money on music for awhile and we walked by quite a few bars and we walked back to Rodan and talked to Bridge's art editor who was from England and had a great accent. Then back it was to Sharon's and so ended my adventure on the border of somebody's edge.

I stayed with my friend Sharon, as usual, and we watched a movie from East Germany. The two days otherwise passed uneventfully. I got to eat at good restaurants, Thai and Mexican. Not like the Normal, Illinois Applebees! (actually, I don't go to Applebees...well, okay, Doug and I took his parents to an Applebees, but that's all I will admit to). We had a multicultural experience in the limited way that middle aged white women generally have one.

I have another reading in St. Louis on Sept 28. I feel more like hibernating in my studio/office space and just writing and writing, though. When I'm there in St. Louis I thought I'd go to the Historical Center and dig through their archives on Sara Teasdale. Maybe to find some odd thing I can use in my book. St. Louis is so Southern. I haven't been there in such a while. I know I'll see it differently. It's been more than 10 years since I've done anything but skirt the city.

I need to get some work done. And buy a vacuum cleaner. Such are the demands of life. The vacuum can only be avoided for so long.

rambling on the net

2004-08-28T15:04:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of entries. I've decided to avoid hooking up the internet in my new space. And since most of my free time (that is, time when I'm not home letting out dogs, cooking, or dodging adolescents and/or anime) is spent in the space, I've been lax about my blog. Philosophical digression: I like not having the internet in my space. I don't have a phone, either. Well, I have my cell phone for emergencies, but that doesn't count. I hate the phone. I love the internet too much. I've had to learn to think all over again, now that it isn't here to distract me.
Surely we must be raising a world of children who have endemic ADD. They (the kids) like to call this "multi-tasking." Even I liked to comfort myself occasionally by thinking of internet roaming/email checking as "multi-tasking." But you know what? It's avoidance.
Not all the time. Not for everyone, maybe. But for me, 95% of the time, it's avoiding doing the things I know I really ought to be doing: like writing. like reading. like having lunch with someone. like doing anything but satisfying my restlessness and curiosity cyberspacically.
Sure, it's all research. It's all life research. It's all research of the big web world. It really is. But that's the thing. There's always something else to click. Another place to go. Another laugh. I can look up and two hours will have passed. (By the way, there's this really cool thing you can load on your browser, called "stumble upon," that brings up random web sites under certain categories (like Art, Humor, etc.). That's a real hour-killer.)
There's so much I love about the internet. And so I miss it when I'm at my office. I miss being able to roam on it when I least feel like working. Which is actually fairly often.
I would have really loved it when I was a kid. I would have found out about so many things I didn't understand. All the forbidden would be there. I would have had so many choices to make. I don't know how kids can filter out all of their options. I had no options as a kid, so my choice was pretty simple for me. I read whatever I could get my hands on, and when I couldn't get something new, I read something I'd read before. If I'd had the internet, it would have always been new. I would have had no reason to read Jane Austen. I hate Jane Austen. I still hate Jane Austen. Maybe I should never have had to read her. I don't know. I felt that I should, though, if I was going to be a writer someday. Just because...because she was about the only female writer from that era in print in our school library. It made the choice so simple. It was read the "classics," or read Encyclopedia Brown again. Maybe you really have to be bored to read Jane Austen. I don't think my daughter or any of her friends have read her—and unless they become English majors, they probably never will.
I would not wish my sixties/seventies childhood or those circumstances on my daughter for anything. It was not pleasant in any way. I don't think it was necessarily "good for me." It may have been good for me as a writer. I was forced to get to know people I otherwise would have avoided (as in the British upper classes). I learned about a certain sort of wit. This may have helped me in my later understanding of Monty Python.
Now I could just get online and find encyclopedias full of information, never sorted by value, explaining Monty Python. And (if I was sixteen) I could get on a chat room and talk about my own opinion in hopes of having it validated and maybe meeting a cute cyberguy who was not a pervert. I could get reviews of all the shows, and quotes from the cast, and histories of the Middle Ages. I wouldn't have to figure out a thing. It would be so easy.
There's all of this information on the web, but so often it doesn't really mean anything. It's a game in itself, collecting all that. And I do have a collector's streak. Sometimes it's an end in itself to own things, just to have them. Like music, the sense that if I don't have a copy of Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power, my life and especially my collection will be incomplete. I really would like to have a copy of Iggy's Raw Power and every other Iggy CD, but I can't afford it, and I'm afraid of the MP3 police, so I don't download it. And I guess the point is that there will always be something more to want and have because the collection will never be complete. And this is the same need that makes the internet so hard for me to leave.
And this is why I have no internet connection in my new space, and why my blog keep languishing. I've been writing some other things, though. Finally.

random philosophy of August

2004-08-16T10:34:00.000-05:00

My god, is it really the middle of August? It's cold outside and I am scattered everywhere--yup, just like the leaves that are turning orange on the tree in our front yard. What kind of trick is this to play on our trees? I read today that pesticides will no longer have to go through any kind of formal evaluation process before they are approved by Bush's appointed Environmental Protection Agency. And I wonder why I can't finish the final chapter of my book about the mess we've made of the land and our bodies. I am completely despairing about it and have absolutely no hope that we will ever get our shit together to remedy what we've done. And nobody wants to read an environmental book that simply ends on notes of death and despair. People want hope, but I have no ability to come up with a good lying note on this. Isn't that terrible?

Yet...yet I have a distinct belief that I will soon get everything sorted out in my new writing space in downtown Bloomington, and I have every belief that this is a rockingly wonderful spot with big windows! All hope is personal for me, and I'm glad enough for that much.

And now I have to get my daughter out of bed so she'll get over to work at Dalkey. She's already registered for high school, during which I had that trite realization that I have one more time to register a kid for school and I will never do it again. I feel so much loss and excitement about what will happen to us all. What a story our lives are.

off to Baltimore

2004-07-28T06:20:00.000-05:00

Anybody looking for me, I'll be off in Baltimore until August 3. Doug, Monica (my stepdaughter, off on her own, working for AARP in Washington) and I will be staying at a bed and breakfast, so I probably won't have access to any of these gorsh-damned machine things (i.e., computers). Which is fine with me, as they seem to be taking on a living presence in my life. A distraction, a constant one. I keep finding more interesting things that just create this great multiplying cyber-entertainment. And I also found netflix, where you can pay a monthly fee and order movies and send them back and never have to get off your butt to actually communicate w/ a tired clerk. I have seen some movies lately that no one else in my family would watch, like Frida and The Red Violin. I turn them on in the basement while I'm "working out," which means the working out actually is a distraction from the movie itself, and the movie a distraction from the working out. I love it, but why do I need to do anything but watch a screen? Ever. I have it all.

toodles

2004-07-15T09:28:00.000-05:00

Hey, life altering events going on here.

I'm not going back to Illinois State. Instead, I'm going to write. I hope to make some money doing this.

At least enough money to not be a total dependent.

I'm assuming that the money part will not come from my fiction or poetry (yes...yes poems) or even creative non-fiction. No, I'll be writing a textbook and some articles and such. I'm not without thoughts in this area. And, if this doesn't work out, or if I miss teaching, I'll hold some workshops.

Aside from the relief of having freedom in so many ways it is almost impossible to describe, I have a space. An old junior high school building in Bloomington has artists' lofts, and the rents are reasonable, and I'm getting one. It's a done deal--next month I get to move in. And it's a beautiful space. It has windows! Actual windows! -- this after years of working in the damp basement (all right, my office room in the basement has its definite elements of den-like cub-living coziness, but yet--)--the new space has windows! Lots of them, rows of them, and natural dark woodwork, and everything is old. It has a hardwood floor and an old walk in safe where there are shelves (a brain vault). And a sink. And it's on the second floor. My daughter used to take dance lessons in this building; the McLean County Dance Studios are there, along with a lot of rooms for music teachers, small businesses, and the like. I have long loved this building. I used to wait on the stairs for my daughter, watching the people going in and out. It is deep, silent, meditative. I can hardly believe the whole thing is coming together, and it scares the hell out of me that it somehow isn't going to work out. I feel like Paul Auster or one of those other real writers who actually get to go to work at writing. Of course, the hard part is that it puts upon me the responsibility to actually produce and to bring in enough money to be able to keep doing it. And it will be interesting to see whether or not this is something that makes me pleased. And if it something that I can pull off. I've had to write on demand and stay organized for most of my adult existence. This is the way I work when given the opportunity. I am not very worried. I'm ready to try.

I'd love to show off a photo of the building, but no luck. Bloomington doesn't have much of a sense of its own history. There are no images of this old place on the web.

Doug thinks this whole thing (the idea of writing all day) sounds too lonely, too solitary. To me, it sounds like bliss. Writers need time--I need time--and that time is alone time, but it really isn't alone. It's communicating, going out through the words somehow. I feel much more alone in my office before class; I feel more alone in front of a class, when nobody is very interested and it all feels almost futile & constantly muddled. I can never articulate as well verbally. I don't think I really exist verbally. I know I exist in writing.

I will probably miss teaching sometimes, though. I was good at it. But Illinois State was depressing. And not just because I was an adjunct spousal hire (although an assistant professor--see, I have to defend it. I'm tired of defending myself against these bullshit categories when I've published two books and have a Ph-fuckin-D. All right, that's exactly the mentality I mean. That's the rut of being there, and no more needs to be said). Ego ego all is ego, ergo, I will go.

incorporation as an official something

2004-06-28T15:39:00.000-05:00

I sent in articles of incorporation today so I could write off my freelance work as an S corporation. It's probably amusing to see me wading through books in the Business aisle of Barnes and Noble. Luckily, no one did see me, because anyone I know would not be anywhere near those aisles. This is by far the biggest section of the Bloomington-Normal B & N. This says quite a lot about where I live.

I will not bore you with the details of developing an S Corporation. Only to say that it was easy.

Other things going on:
Sandra Steingraber and I did end up driving to Illiopolis together. The high point was talking w/ her. Strange it was driving down there with someone else when I was accustomed to going alone. I don't want to belabor the experience too much here, especially since I have to write a whole chapter about it. I'll just say that it was spooky as hell on a number of levels. I kept thinking of the movie Silkwood. Sandra kept saying, "I'm so glad I didn't have to do this by myself! I would have been scared!" The air smelled vaguely sour. Much the same way the officials looked at the public meeting.

Sandra named her son after the abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy who lived in Alton. We had a long conversation about Lovejoy, about whom I knew quite a bit from my research on Edward Beecher. I don't think I've ever had an extended conversation about Lovejoy with anyone else. Elijah Lovejoy was a fanatic, and a brave one, at that.

What I've been reading:

Triangle, by David von Drehle. This was the story of the Triangle Factory Fire in New York City, during which more than a hundred young women died because of unsafe working conditions. The book was gripping. Also useful for me.

Reading Lolita in Tehran. Azar Nafisi. Sure, it's a best seller, but it's quite well written. The section in the middle, on politics, was revealing. I also thought it was amusing the way that university politics are the same everywhere. We're not that far from it.

Joe Gould's Secret. Joseph Mitchell. Yeah, this is an old one, written by the New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell. Joe Gould was one of those writer-alcoholics who wandered the Bowery bars...his life's work was the oral history of New York. I haven't finished the book, but I suspect Joe Gould never met his goal of writing down the story of every single Manhattanite. As I recall the story of Joseph Mitchell, the journalist who wrote the book, he simply quit writing one day, yet kept his office at the magazine. I assume that they no longer let their writers linger about out of respect, now that they've put in advertising.

Eleonora Duse: A Biography. This would only be interesting to someone who has a curiosity about the history of American theater. I'm reading the book because all of the writers I'm researching were obsessed w/ her to the point of going to every performance they could, writing poems about her, etc. I haven't decided yet what I think of the book. So far, Eleonora Duse just goes around saying very pretentious things, rather like Katharine Hepburn does in her interviews. Except without the humor. I'm trying to overlook that. Anything that adds to my picture of the period counts.

What I'm watching:

Six Feet Under!
It's back. Sex sex sex. High flown soap! Michael C. Hall is my hero. Every time he looks perturbed (that is, every time he's on screen) I just break up laughing.

The Terminal. Hanks was good. The movie left me oddly flat. It was like AI's tone without the edge. Which means...I dunno. a vague shrug? the shots at Homeland Security were pleasing.

the exploding historian brain

2004-06-24T10:24:00.001-05:00

Yeah, it's been awhile. Here's my last hour: I've been online trying to find out how the Leland Hotel in Springfield, Illinois was heated in 1905. You'd think this sort of thing would be simple. This is the kind of detail that is absolutely infuriting. Also revealing in that it is about the mundane matters that we keep no records. Yeah, just try to find an easy reference to the way that people heated a large establishment in the days when there were transitions between various energy and communication forms. Especially when you are me and have no knowledge whatsoever about how anything mechanical is done beyond plugging it in or turning a key. Did someone run a large basement boiler or stove, and was it coal-fired? I know that buildings were coal fired in Springfield, but I'm not sure when the switch came. And this is of no interest to anyone but me. And so I know I will have to troop down to Springfield and try to find references in the archival documents. I'd avoid it all, but I have a scene set there, in the damn boilerroom, in the basement of the Leland Hotel, and it would be very unfortunate if it turned out that the heating wasn't centralized, or wasn't in the basement, or wasn't coal, or wasn't....yes, you see my point.

Whoops, Paige is home & wants to tell me about the presentation she did w/ a friend in Oral Comm. on a fake announcement for Extreme Backpacks. Got voted best presentation in the class by the class & she is happy. So gotta go indulge in some maternal praising.

Some big (good) changes going on in my life. To be continued.

Oh, here's the fake ad Paige wrote and performed w/ a friend for her speech class:

P: ATTENTION STUDENTS OF BLOOMINGTON-NORMAL!

Tired of those sissy knapsacks? Sick of dealing with breakable backpacks betraying you and your books?

Jansport’s x-treme hardcore backpack leaves all those other backpacks…in the dust!!!

L: The X-treme Hardcore version 6.0 2004 edition Sappho features super double padding action. More cushion for your pushin’! A pair of sleek 3.0 liter V8 dual overhead fuel projections propel you forward into the future!! Available in nuclear laser red, metallic onyx black, flaming phoenix yellow and x-treme pulsating vein purple!!

P: Super wicked sweet zipper action; fifty pockets for all your hardcore holding needs!!! Twin 1000 watt headlights when traveling in the deepest, blackest night! Plus (for a limited time only) a super blood-sucking vortex CD player and compact disc holder!! And a rubber exoskeleton, absolutely free!!!! Get your favorite catchphrase stitched on the front—

L: “bitchin’!”;
P: “what’s up, son?”
L: “word!”

P: -- for only five dollars more. Display your own independence.

For a limited time only, buy a Jansport X-treme Hardcore version 6.0 2004 edition backpack and you’ll have a chance to win any one of these fabulous prizes!!

L: A Jansport x-treme logo water-receptacle, for after those draining workouts! A Jansport arm or wrist band, personalized with the Jansport logo to show everyone that YOU are X-TREEEEEEME!!!!

P: So what’re waitin’ for, punk?! Go out and buy your Jansport X-treme Hardcore version 6.0 2004 version Sappho TODAY!!!!

Chicago

2004-06-13T10:52:00.000-05:00

I'm up in Chicago (Wrigleyville) staying w/ Sharon Darrow (children's book writer) in her third floor apartment windows open w/ the breeze blowing in from the lake (as it tends to do). Had my yearly followup mammo at the U of Chicago clinic--all clear with no more checks for a year--I was so lucky. The room where women wait to go in for their xrays is like this den of tension. Nobody will look each other in the eye because everyone is so afraid. And then, after it's done and the radiologist and/or doctor comes out and says it's all okay you can just feel the relief. The last time I went in I'd had to have more extensive tests, so getting out of it all so quickly was definitely exhale-producing.

Last night I went to a celebration of Sandi Wisenberg & Linc's wedding. (I don't know Linc's last name. Sandi professionally goes by S.L.) It was a big Jewish party in Sharon Solwitz's city back yard--truly, Sharon and I were the only goyim, even though Sandi has said that I have been granted the status of Honorary Jew. Sandi and Linc got married in a coffeehouse attic w/ just their mothers present, which I thought was a very sensible approach. I am always in favor of more coffee. I met some interesting people at the party, although I don't remember most of their names. Mostly, I just stood around and listened. A lot of writers there. I met Paula Kamen, a writer who I used to talk to on the phone when I worked at the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault years ago. She is a non-fiction writer who has published a couple of books about young women and sexuality. She was trying to decide if reading a chapter on Monica Lewinsky would be inappropriate at the Jewish Book Fair. Or should she read a chapter about oral sex? It was, we said, a hard call.

I met two rabbi's wives. I met someone who writes children's books. Rosellen Brown the novelist was there. David Michael Kaplan, the fiction writer, was there. A professional journalist was there, whose name I don't know, and we talked about the explosion of the chemical plant at Illiopolis. He senses a story. I told him that Sandra Steingraber had had lunch w/ me a few days ago and was wanting to know everything I knew about the plant. Nobody seems to understand that there is no story; the place blew up, it's poisoned, and people died. They'll rebuild the plant and it will happen again. End of tale. I do wonder whether everyone publishing about the plant is going to hurt the sale of my book, which publishers already feel is "too much memoir" or "too much environment" or "too depressing." I did hear from Sandra Steingraber that nobody wants to publish anything about the environment since 9/11. We've all filled our quota for potential disasters. But there are still weddings!

Anyway, I think I'd better give Sharon's computer and online connection back to her. I'm going to walk over to Graceland Cemetary and hang w/ the dead for awhile. It is the home of famous Chicagoans and I want to have a few visions. Adios.

the rules of nonfiction, as practiced

2004-06-04T12:19:00.000-05:00

Nothing personal can ever be written for public consumption. Rule A.

Never mention the name of a real person in a piece written for public consumption. Rule A.

Never write anything that might be construed as memoir, as it will be a lie. Rule A(b).

Never write anything that might be construed as gossip, especially if it means something. Rule A(c).

Only trivial items may be said about real people, and only things that reflect upon them positively and reflect upon oneself positively, even if the subject is confusion. Rule A(d).

Confusion is not a reasonable subject for the essay. Confusion ought never to be confessed. Rule A(e).

Or confessed in fiction, either. This undermines the stance of absolute authorial confidence. Rule A(e)(2).

Confession is self-indulgence, even if confession serves as commentary on self, society, blah et cetera. Rule B.

If you piss someone off, immediately edit self from this and all future and past writings to whatever extent is in one's power. Rule B.

All belief must exist in the abstract as applied to the concrete, and may never be confessed to have personal genesis or personal effect once belief is understood. Rule C.

Or acted upon. Rule C(b).

Do not confess that you have ever broken these rules.

Andy Kaufman returns

2004-06-01T19:58:00.000-05:00

For old fans of Andy Kaufman (or fans of the old Andy Kaufman) and those who just like to observe popular culture, there is a bizarre blog that purports to be Andy Kaufman's. The comments are fun to scan.

Dalkey, DFW, poetry, paint

2004-06-01T13:52:00.000-05:00

assorted stuff:

response to Jenna's response (which appears under Paige's poem)--hey, Jenna. Nope, haven't read that one, but I'll take a look at it. Which gives me the opportune moment to mention a useful literary link to links. I know a bunch of these & will add more in the future. (Eventually starting one of those handy lists down the side of the page that the REAL webloggers do. You know the ones.) A list I used just a few days ago was:
Web Del Sol's Portal.

Mighty handy.

I have to admit (in a slinking sort of way) that I've been revising some poetry that I wrote while working with Paige on her creative writing for class. It forced me to dig through this dry as hell textbook their class was using and try out some of the exercises for fun. They were tedious, but I actually got a few things out of it that I liked. So I'm working on them. Don't know if they're worth a damn, but I found that it was good to stretch out & experiment a bit. Especially since I'm now writing this difficult chapter for my book on Vachel Lindsay; this chapter's about the Springfield Race Riot of 1908. A lovely subject to study on a sunny day. I also had a few poems I'd done for my own creative writing class, & I thought that since I'd sketched them out, I may as well rework them, too. I like the focus.

Anyway, to Jenna: have you left on your Teach for America adventure yet? I really want to hear what that training's like.

general news: My daughter Paige started her first day of employment today at Dalkey Archive Press. This feels to me like a more significant passage than getting a driver's license. It was strange, dropping my kid off at WORK this morning. Not possible...not possible....old....oooolllldddddddd. At least I didn't have to drop her off at Dairy Queen, which was my first job, manufacturing crooked ice cream cones in a stand that didn't even serve burgers & where the managers were throwing buckets of strawberries at each other in the back room (they were married; the wife was murdered 15 years later, but not by him) & this sixteen year old coworker w/ a daughter was tooling away on a cycle w/ a 35-year-old tattooed bald guy. Yeah, Paige has it better. She just has to work with Tim Feeney. (only if you are Tim Feeney or know Tim Feeney will you understand this joke....Tim Feeney, ten cheers & a David Foster Wallace secret handshake to you!)

Speaking of DFW, his latest book, a collection of stories, got a slam review in the New York Times. Brief quote:

This is sick stuff, and Mr. Wallace works hard at making things even sicker by repeatedly alluding to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, reminding us that such and such a character has "10 weeks to live" or referring to "the tragedy by which Style would enter history two months hence." The result is not black comedy but a story that manages to be stupidly sophomoric and morally repugnant at the same time, one that bears less of a resemblance to the prescient media-age send-ups found in this author's first collection, "Girl With Curious Hair," than a nauseating combination of the "Mondo Cane" shockumentaries and National Lampoon, with the real-life horror of 9/11 grotesquely sandwiched in between.

I'm sure that seen another way these could actually be compliments. I'm sure similar condemnations have been leveled at John Waters.

I feel happy about this reception despite myself--I feel terrible for feeling happy, but I just keep having this flashback of the graffiti he scrawled in red ink across my dissertation--& my own horrible jealousy that he is rich in Pomona now & has students to chauffeur his dogs--but he was still the very best writer I ever worked with & damned funny, too. I still cherish the plastic cups he spit in.

****And speaking of art, I painted the bedroom green over the weekend. Well, half painted it; now I just have to paint the other half. I have developed a domestic familiarity with Lowe's, an affection for its many screws (***stop it, you know what I mean) nails Whirlpool washers & fertilizer in aisles that go on forever and forever. I gathered together about a hundred of those paint sample strips which make very handy bookmarks. We're also tearing up our basement rug and painting the basement, too. Which if you were to know us, you would know what a monumental moment this truly is.

All right, I hear my book calling out to me, condemning me: "Sinful procrastinator, get your ass back to 1908." And so I will.

rose red - paige's poem

2004-05-24T13:34:00.000-05:00

here's the poem that was written by Paige (by daughter)...it goes along w/ the forwarded graphic. The credit for the graphic is Charles Vose, 2003,
http://www.greenmanpress.com/new/newpaint.html

******************************

Rose Red.

Once upon a time the snow squealed at dusk-time,
a little girl wearing dead things tied over her feet with string,
trudged over the hills and the three feet of snow-side,
and was followed by two papyrus-brown hound dogs,
and reacted accordingly, which is to say, that she didn’t react at all.
And so Rose Red ignored them, and kept up her pace,
sweating yet frozen on down to her marrow,
panting through clenched teeth and open chapped lips,
staring ahead through the air and the snow,
at nothing at all.
Any ordinary person, seeing Rose Red at dusk, would’ve pursed their lips and shaken their heads,
and said, to their friends, “My goodness; what an odd child!”
and reacted accordingly, which is to say, that they wouldn’t react at all.
And Rose Red would ignore them, and keep up her pace,
cutting through silence congealing like candle wax,
forgetting to breath until she missed the fog-puffs,
staring ahead through the air and the snow,
into nothing at all.
A shadow slid over the fallen, dead snowflakes,
two miles behind a little girl and two hound dogs, who didn’t turn around,
and it howled, long and low, a horn of a hunter at the dusk-time hour,
and Rose Red ignored It, the great horned shadow, and kept up her pace,
singing to her dogs in a garbled pink tongue,
dreaming of something not possible, but true,
staring, unblinking, ahead through the air and snow,
and seeing nothing at all.
~Paige Osburn

the shins, Rushdie, and the art of fine art of filmaking

2004-05-24T09:52:00.000-05:00

RECOMMENDED TUNES:

The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow. I love this! Albuquerque band that sounds like the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and Kurt Cobain if he hadn't been terminally depressed--in the same vein as Death Cab for Cutie (a band I also like a heap)--sounds like themselves, great lyrics, good lead vocalist, a knack for a twisted, humorous phrase--fun fold-out CD liner notes--on SubPop. Buy it.

RECOMMENDED BOOK:

Step Across this Line, Salman Rushdie. A collection of essays from 1992-2002--ten year span, folks, generally covering the post-"I'm gonna kill you, Rushdie, you infidel" days. Essays are on all kinds of subjects--some deep, some not, probably mostly done to pick up spare cash & kill time between projects, but this makes them no less absorbing. The best ones are the ones about the Wizard of Oz, his almost-hippie-British past, Lady Diana's pillar-crash and the press, and, of course, exile. There are also some interesting pieces about India, although really his fiction will show much more than these pieces do. I love Salman's bitter, observant humor, even though I'm sure he's probably an arrogant bastard. I see no reason to hold that against him. What I do get a little tired of are the essays that tend to drop names in his bid to remind us that he's a celebrity. But you can always just skip over those.

BIG ACTIVITY of the past weekend:

Paige & her buddies ran around the house filming a movie, creating chaos & high hilarity. This was a project of her friend Justin Palm's involving, well, assassins, tough chicks, & fake karate. Marion & Paige hung around quite a bit the week before helping on this script, which included lines along the lines of "Die, Evil Assassin!" and "The life of the assassin is a lonely one...." Marion & Paige saw this as hilarious, but Justin apparently was serious, which caused creative differences near the end of the project when they were all sick of each other & bruised up from falling on the ground, kicking, & pretending to hit one another with these karate sticks that have a technical name. Everyone was wearing black, of course, and Justin (the director) wore sunglasses & sat on the couch in our front room telling everyone what to do. Will was running around in biker shorts & his name was something like Spastic Assassin, which everyone agreed was appropriate. They ate a pizza and a half from Micheleo's & drank about ten million cans of Coke. At one point they all went out to shoot a night scene on a country road, which didn't go well because Will had to pull off the highway in his junker VW convertible to answer a phone call from his girlfriend, causing the car that was following him to also pull over, and everyone was mightily infuriated & came back throwing things. I saw part of the footage when Paige & Marion were fighting. Reminded me of the Batman TV show, except in this one, all the women are Catwoman (Julie Newmar version).

Abu Ghraib

2004-05-20T10:11:00.000-05:00

Amusing that the government starts at the bottom of the food chain (the serviceman who took some of the photographs but didn't actually participate in the abuse--the one that removed himself from the holding tent so he could inform on his buddies) when prosecuting the Abu Ghraib abuses. Obviously they're hoping that by setting a few low-level examples the furor and fuss will die down, the Iraqis will be appeased, and they'll never have to take down the idiots who encouraged these abuses and who decided to invade a country without having any concrete vision of what they were going to do once they got there (besides kill Arabs). How typical it is to go after the barely educated working class whites & African Americans who enlist in the lowest ranks of services while the Ivy trained brass deny deny & pretend innocence. Send Fredrickson and Granier to jail in an Arab prison, and toss in Karpinski, Rumsfeld, the "anonymous" CIA operatives, the corporate contract bosses on top of them. Nobody is innocent in this.

Jim McManus' poker shuffle

2004-05-18T13:04:00.000-05:00

I'm always behind the curve in terms of the ultra-contemporary, mostly because I don't have time. This is not a discussion of a brand new shiny buy this book. Well, you could still buy it, I suppose--just not if you need to have the newest thing.

I read three or four books at a time. Sometimes it's because I have to prep for class; usually, though, it's because I have a short attention span. Because I really need to work on this chapter I'm writing about Langston Hughes, I will keep it brief.

My current read-before-I-snooze book is Positively Fifth Street by Jim McManus, a New Journalism-type compendium about the World Series of Poker. This book was sectioned into at least one article that appeared in Harper's a few years ago. (seque to rant: why the HELL does Harper's still have to be so freakin macho that they only publish MEN who think they have big dicks? It's that same stance, over and over again: I'm cooler than you, tougher than you, smarter than you, cockier (yep) than you, more masculine than you, & much more political. seque to the nice, generous side: yeah, but it DOES have good in-depth new journalism pieces & has that great list of facts in the front. seque to rant: yeah, but they won't publish ME because they don't publish women. seque to reason: yeah, we knew it all along, ya whining rejected schlub.)

And here I was going to just say good things about McManus' book. It is ALL THAT mentioned above, but at least he makes fun of himself about it--he acknowledges his masculine dumb-buttness while still writing masculine (or is that mascu-linearly?) & being funny & not being apologetic about his old school qualities (quite). I like his crabby tone. I also like knowing more about poker, which I do watch on TV & grew up playing, even though I am not that good at it. I liked finding out what makes a poker genius and makes a poker mediocrity. (I learned that I will never be a cool-headed math genius, which is necessary.) The style and situation bounces around in time, becomes digressive, has an almost off-point subplot about the murder of the guy who used to run the Horseshoe Casino (I think this was for the kinky grabber first chapter, which did effectively drag me into the book, but is later mostly dropped for the intricacies of the gambling obsession). It was kind of cool that, except for scenes during which the author swims laps on the hotel roof (in its pool, of course), the book is set entirely indoors. Behaving like Hunter S. Thompson might without the drugs and the car. (Would HST even exist w/out the drugs & the car? okay, maybe not.) This is also a book that's easy to pick up & put down without maximum confusion, brain strain, or loss of entertainment quotient. I decided that I wanted to become Annie Duke (see? another Thompson reference), the poker queen who plays barefoot. I was surprised that the casino was such a mild, reasonable, chess tournament-type place when the stakes are high. It's funny to me that people can win and lose a million dollars & still be pissed off when people smoke in the room. Only goes to prove that poker is a combination of science & aestheticism.

Jack White-sopranos dream sequence-bitter simpsons

2004-05-17T13:05:00.000-05:00

quick positive reviews:

yippie to Jack White for producing and playing on Loretta Lynn's new CD. She's a classic. He was genuine in Cold Mountain and the White Stripes kicked rock's rut in the ass and across the fence. He also slugged a dickhead & admitted in court that the guy deserved it. Of course he did.

The Sopranos dream sequence, which must have lasted at least a half an hour, on last night's new episode was the most bizarre & inventive thing I've seen on a show scripted for television. Last night I had a dream that involved walking and walking and walking in a city that I keep revisiting in my dreams, but have never actually visited. I also recently had a recurring dream about trying to find an old friend, but instead having a disjointed but not unfriendly conversation w/ the friend's wife while laundry waved in the breeze & I was motioned w/ a wave of her hand toward a grey fifties sedan. the dream, also, was in black & white & was oddly stark & beautiful, all in light & utterly silent. i felt very lonely, just moving along in it, not knowing where to go. i don't know what it meant.

other good thing I saw last night:

this angry edged episode of the Simpsons in which the family is sent to Alcatraz after Bart accidently moons the flag. they are sent over on December 25. in the rows of cells is Michael Moore. i've come to realize that the only way to be shown on Fox while remaining liberal is to become very, very powerful. duh, but. this applies to publishing & every other distribution venue used in artistic expression. even then, it doesn't always work. (see Disney's refusal to distribute Fahrenheit 911 over Miramax's objections). i suppose there is always someone more powerful who will try to stop your ass. i suppose the only option then is obstinance, public, & backers.

Kill Bill's coffin scene

2004-05-16T13:13:00.000-05:00

I haven't seen Kill Bill 1. On Friday night, I broke down and saw Kill Bill 2. Paige, who has never been able to watch scary movies & still doesn't, was finally initiated into its cultness through her friends, who are all obsessed with it & can discuss all of the filmatic references, even though they have never seen the cheesy 70's movies with which Tarantino is obsessed. I knew all the references to the movies, too, having read a slew of reviews...and having seen a few of them at drive-ins...really, I was beginning to feel like a coward for not seeing the Kill Bills. I have seen Pulp Fiction several times, but always feel fairly creeped out by it, even though of course I can appreciate its cleverness & wit & Travolta's ponytail, blah blah, but still....And I hate Natural Born Killers. And I love Jackie Brown. The guy has a larger than normal sadistic streak, let's just be honest about that; this is not all tongue in cheek. So while I thought Kill Bill 2 was lots of fun, there is still something deeply, deeply warped about having characters buried alive, dying of snakebite while a one-eyed woman recites its effects from a small wirebound notepad, and a fetus that is, what, born of a woman in a coma & raised on Samuri Assassin? I mean, that's awfully funny, but it's not. Uma Thurman was a goddess; I can see why the smart teenaged women are all wanting to be her, going around their houses practicing their kicks. She's beautiful, but in a strange way, not in that puffed-lip, Anjelina Jolie way. She's strong and wiry and smart. Had to like that.

So Doug & I saw it toward the back of the theater while Paige & a string of eight other teenage girls sat together in the second row going "yea!" and "gross!" and applauding and sliding down in their seats. I was sliding down in mine.

I'd go see it again as long as I could walk away from the coffin scene. I thought I was going to pass out. I'm too claustrophobic and that scene was truly frightening. I kept trying to think, "Now, isn't that a terrific effect the way he is able to use sound and the absence of light," while really going, "Oh SHIT. OH SHIT. Get me out of this box." I do think it is the most terrifying scene I have ever seen in a movie. Not in that shocked, ew sort of way, but in a gut level, flashing back, spooky, encased way that made me think about what happens to dead people. I'd have to watch it again at home, where I can walk out and do the dishes or something. I don't even want to hear that scene again.

Hearing this would make Tarantino very happy with himself.

The theme about motherhood was right on target. Uma Thurman played it all wonderfully in her interactions w/ the little girl. Credit to him for genuinely getting into strong women without making them cartoons. In fact, Uma Thurman was the only character in the movie who wasn't a cartoon.

I thought the sub-story of the guy in the trailer was poignant because his life was so pathetic. Great touch to add that scene about his work place. A lesser director (or one with less power) would have cut all of that. It made the whole scene about its death more than just gratuitous violence.

I wouldn't mind hanging out and talking w/ Tarantino. I admire Charlie Kaufman's work, too, but I don't think I'd want to be alone in a room w/ him too often. He's got a bit of nerdy stalkerism about him. Tarantino would just be fun.

**** and now I must get to work.****

apologies for the lack of formatting of this new blog design. I'll be working on it--after it gets too hot to sit outside.

frightening, dangerous hillbillies

2004-05-09T09:47:00.000-05:00

gearing up by discussing oeuvre

The sounds of the lawnmower on a Saturday morning. Me, skipping out on work duties to get in a little tapping. On the back porch in a metal chair, resting my ass on a blue cushion lined w/ cat hair. My favorite place to sit will inevitably also be a cat's. Allergy count of ten this morning, but I can't bring myself to stay in the dark of my basement to write when spring has first come. You have to grab these few days before the humidity lays down and the heat becomes weight.

Sometimes my husband gets jobs dangled before him. We always end up not leaving because Paige is in school. Soon she won't be. The latest was from California, the agricultural beltway. I'm tempted. It's not so different from the Midwest in that part of the state, except you're near the mountains and it's warm. Warm is good. When I lived outside of Los Angeles for those few months, I liked the strangeness. The artificiality was humorous, like trying to live in a sitcom of failed but cheerful adventurers. Everything was like candy, like Sweettarts or Nerds, bright and pointless and dangerous. Northern California is quieter. Not so much smog. I'm tempted. I've begun thinking more and more about the West, where I did live the first nine years of my life. Sometimes I nearly forget that, given the weight of the fields and family here, but now that I've finally moved from all of that, I find myself thinking of my identity as desert. And the desert is beautiful: stark, begging for the notice of detail, and the detail rewards. I would like to see mountains on the horizon again. I would be reminded that this doesn't go on forever.

When I consider moving (and I think it will happen eventually), I don't like thinking of leaving behind my good friends up in Chicago & downstate & the sort of secure web of acquaintances that have been spun by me and around me. Strange to go someplace & know nobody. I wouldn't be able to just jump on the train to visit my friends. It isn't that I do that every day, but I think I like knowing that I can do it. In some ways, though, it would be good to go where nobody knows me at all. This has been a tiresome year at the university, all the snipping and sniping and plain meanness. I've stayed out of it all, but I get bored w/ hearing the same twisted metallic pins and blades of old stories, distorted by jealousy and bitterness into gossip presented as truth—same old shit, year after year. It can be entertaining, but it's always the same, finally, and therefore tedious. And it filters down into the students so that they act cranky and restless until ultimately it just is not fun to teach. And I don't like feeling this way.

I wouldn't mind a new story. I'm ready for that.

Uh, oh. Doug is mowing in the back yard now. He's going to be annoyed w/ me for sitting here. (Actually, he tolerates this sort of thing very congenially; let's just say, I feel guilty that I'm sitting here while he is sacrificing his morning to the gods of the lawn.) I'm also temping fate by letting the grass pollen fly up into the air and straight into my nose, to be followed by straight into my brain setting off a monster headache & a snot explosion, so why am I not going inside? Is this my fate-tempting adventure of the day? Can't wander West, so will take the wild risk of the evil pollen? yeah, so what.

and then that prison
Speaking of evil—and this will make my life trivial as any spoiled Westerners—I can't get those pictures of Abu Gharib prison out of my mind. I am not surprised by this at all—I've read enough Vietnam stories to expect that people will abuse others in war. What I find surprising is that they documented it with photographs, and this is the only reason this situation is receiving any kind of worldwide outcry. It is undeniable, photo proof, the only thing we can let ourselves accept. There is no way the government can claim that the photos were altered or exaggerated (as they did in Vietnam, alleging that the picture of the girl burned by napalm was somehow set up by the photographer that took it). They can't say it wasn't so bad, as they did w/ My Lai, or that the villagers were exaggerating for political effect. No, there it is, a hillbilly chick w/ a pretty wide smile leading around on a leash a suffering prisoner. Everyone in that prison group was from the same Appalachian area in the Cumberland Mountains. They all knew each other. Think about that. The guy that turned over the photographs to authorities knew the man who was apparently the gang leader. They probably went to high school together. And I think of people who I grew up around—hunters and fishermen, just like these people—going to war, ending up in this torture chamber. Would they behave this way? In a second they would do it. Because they're used to thinking of everyone outside their town as dangerous, as different from them, as threats both better than and lesser than themselves. Dark foreign people? My God, they're scarier and less human than New Yorkers!—they would not, unless they were somehow willing to reveal and admit to their sensitivity, think these people were like them. Perhaps as individuals they would have doubts in the night, but in a group? It is much harder to defy the group, to even think; the act of power abuse breeds its own thrill and you can see that in their joy. They were into it. Domination. We don't like to admit to this in ourselves, but it's in everyone. You can see it played out on the smaller scale in classrooms, in offices, on the street. How can we still be wondering how these things can happen, after World War 2 and every other public atrocity, after every war and kingdom toppling, do we really not get it? How secure and safe it is to express "outrage" and "horror," to ask why why why and do nothing to change ourselves.

Living Downstream

2004-05-02T15:32:00.000-05:00

When I got back from my Chicago trip, I had an email from Sandra Steingraber, who wrote the book Living Downstream. The book that reawakened my environmental interests. She wondered if I might want to work with her on a piece about the disaster at Illiopolis.

I was so gratified to get that email, but it put me in a real quandary. I hope I made the right decision, but I told her I couldn't go down there. I don't think I can bring myself to talk with locals who I know won't want to talk with me, and I don't think I want to see the detritus. The place was quite spooky enough before the explosion; I can only imagine how dead and horrible it must be now. A decision like this is probably a good part of the reason I'm not famous.

I have to say that, barely two years past my cancer surgery, I don't think I ought to expose myself to that kind of chemical fallout.

It was a hard decision for me to make. I wish I could believe that a trip down there could do some good for other towns, other factory workers. But I just don't believe that anymore.

My stay in Chicago was hunky-dory. The Willows is on the upper edge of the Lincoln Park neighborhood & is right off of Clark Street. It turned out to be the perfect spot for me, as it was small & funky. I did a lot of walking up and down Clark, and that's about all I did. I did walk way down to the Historical Society, but it was disappointing. The only thing there that I could really use was a photograph of Harriet Monroe. So it looks as if any future digging will have to be over at the University of Chicago. This is difficult because of the distance involved from Sharon's condo, so I'll have to learn to master the public transportation. I know it's worthwhile, though; I've seen enough of the files to know that they have things that will be of use.

When I walked down Clark Street, I went past Hull House. It looks like it's about to fall down, but I was still glad to see it. The other high point was buying a pair of black and yellow bowling-style tennis shoes; oh, and having the best latte of my life at Intelligentsia Coffee, the place where I order all my mail order beans. Now THAT was exciting.

Yesterday evening, back in Normal, went to an ISU party over at Chris DeSanto's house in Lexington. I had a good time talking to Elizabeth Hatmaker & some other folks, most of whom were sloshed on tequilas. It is weird talking to drunken people when I don't drink; I'm always half afraid they'll cry or try to pick me up. Elizabeth was more of a weeping type, but I thought it was impressive that she would be weeping about true crime books and point of view. And I talked to Nathalie op de Beeck about anime, and that was fun. She is very shy, but when she talked about cartoons, she looked for a minute like a fifteen year old. Lucia Getsi played "name the peppers" with Doug and me in an attempt to win a pinata full of...stuff? But we left before we found out who won, so I guess Lucia got to claim the prize.

transport

2004-04-29T08:13:00.000-05:00

I was hoping to be able to upload photos of the Borden Chemical (now Formosa Chemical) plant explosion, but that function on blogger is down for the moment. If you'd like to read my original article on the hideous bulbous poison-producing monstrosity, you can check out my article in E magazine http://www.emagazine.com/september-october_2002/0902feat2.html. (I'll create this as a link whenever I figure out how to create links on this program. I'm working on it.)

*****
This afternoon I have to take my daughter up to Midway Airport so she can make a run to New Hampshire for a family event on her father's (the ex's) side. So I'm staying over at a place called The Willows Hotel on the Near North Side, so I can walk over to the Chicago Historical Society on Friday. I'm eager to start sifting through their stacks. I know that the day will be spent just figuring out what materials they have that I might need. The actual notetaking will have to wait for some point in the summer when I can spend a week--I'm hoping to housesit for Sharon Darrow in July, when she goes off to teach at Vermont College. I don't think you can grasp a city unless you're there awhile, walking, and it's the same w/ trudging through the archives.... Today wasn't the best time for a trip, but now that it's in the works, I'm looking forward to it. As I always do...I overplan, worry it, but once in it, love it.

and so...to Chicago.

the coffee hound

2004-04-21T11:22:00.000-05:00

and so I am off to The Coffee Hound, my lovely little quiet dark haven for paper grading. i can face those puppies w/out distraction, w/out doodling around posting little bloggy things, checking email, any possible diversion. i can sit at my table w/ my cup of coffee (caffeinated, of course) & glance up occasionally to see who is coming in and out the door, eavesdrop on conversations once in awhile (they are really not very interesting, to be honest; most people come in the Hound to work, not to talk, and the people who talk are often groups off on a break from work or a break from class and so are speaking in low, conspiratorial tones. there are a few strange people who are always there. a woman who haunts the feeding spots in downtown bloomington & just sits, staring at people. at least i have papers to look at. sometimes i run into people i know, other people who don't want to be in Normal, close to campus, but who want to be in public. like charlie harris, or sometimes people from Dalkey Archive Press, or people from Ill. Wesleyan, like the poet over there, Mike Theune. (he was an acolyte of jorie graham's at U of Iowa). these are people who i like, because they are more like me (of course). i also like the people at the Hound who work the counter, the young trendy guys w/ ponytails & that girl who looks like liv tyler & the owner who looks more matronly than i do. no smoking. it is the palace of all of the fallen angels, which means it will probably eventually fill up w/ migrating jerks from the good side of the double-sided boundary-biased city (that is, the isu people from normal will leave their tables at barnes and noble & invade my sanctuary). anyway, no more delaying/howling & off to the Hound.

correction & addendum

2004-04-21T11:10:00.000-05:00

The correction:The political weblog published by my daughter & friends is http://pardonyourstupidity.com.

the best streaming radio site I've found so far (w/ alternative tunes--lots of them--and an online site list that evolves as the song plays): http://www.kexp.org from Seattle. and now i want to buy some music!

my mother's foot

2004-04-21T08:44:00.000-05:00

thin bleeding skin holding
rope breaking through transparent
hide stretched over bones creating
webs of translucent blue

this is mine?

tuesday morning 9 a.m.

2004-04-20T09:13:00.000-05:00

Great stormy morning. The dogs are upset by thunder. "Morning Edition." Printing. Updating web. Coffee in Intelligentsia cup. Fifteen minutes.

Tick! the profound: on "American Chopper" last night, Paul Jr. and Vinnie build a liberty bike. It's copper plated. They kept losing pieces. They're really worried that the bike won't get done on time. Paul Jr. goofs off & Paul Sr. yells at him & tells him to clean the shop. They finally show off the bike to photo flashes, autographs, applause. "It's all about freedom," Paulie says.

Tick! new journalism uses literary techniques such as those used in fiction: personal point of view (sometimes), dialogue, description, immersion, immediacy, "you are there." take notes on this.

Tick! cut back the extra language. don't tell me, show it. show it, damn it. there are no rules.

Tick! view blog. mostly, find a really good list of books for next year's class on literary narrative. i'll get that done today.

the printer is going tick-tock, or maybe it's more like wuh-wuh accompanied by high pitched nerve damaging whine.

item on NPR: the drinking water will kill you. since i found this out two years ago, i want to smack my head against the wall. "the environment will be an issue in this year's election." - yeah, if we live that long. As George Bush said to Bob Woodward, "History...we'll never know, we'll all be dead."

i feel really good today. i hung out with U of I people over the weekend, since I gave that reading down there. They don't have to try as hard. I did see a great reading Friday night w/ Steve Almond & an intense lesbian poet named Gabrielle who had a Stegner, and an entymologist who is in the National Academy of Science. The scientist was funny and embarrassed and the poet was profound and Steve looked like a guitarist in a hair band. everyone was chatty afterwards. the lesbians clustered around the poetess, the rest of the students were taking the fiction writer to a bar, and the entymologist hit the road as soon as possible. i talked to Phil Graham & to Phil's wife Alma and then to Jodee Rubins, who used to be the editor at New England Review and has been brought in to edit the U of I's arty 4-color graphics-heavy mag, Ninth Letter. she always wrote long letters when she had to turn down a piece she liked. she was shy. Phil Graham's wife is an anthropologist who has written several books about Africa.

i had Richard Powers pointed out to me at the party, but was too nervous to go up and talk w/ him. Besides, I haven't read his book, so I couldn't make a pretense of approach other than celebrity-seeking. and this is wrong, eh. he looked like the cliche of a computer geek. this was so reassuring, somehow. dave had always looked like a former geek gone cool. it was good to see someone embrace his true persona.

i have to get ready for school. and teach. and this, that, and then at four, serve food to the actors in the high school's production of Les Mis. this is far more intimidating to me than any writers' chat-and-smile fest. the woman who is serving w/ me, Donna A., is the wife of a pilot; she's a professional Mom, a powerhouse organizer, a person who has GRTKIDS as a license plate. i've had to be around her before; she really dislikes me, as all of the highest-powered moms tend to do. (I think I insulted them way back in Paige's grade school days, when it got out that I referred to them all as Metcalf Moms.) I like the thespians, though. They run up to me and go, "I LOVE you!" because I let them hang around & feed them.

and so my day of service begins.

something like Howard Stern

2004-04-17T09:31:00.000-05:00

I did my first live radio talk show yesterday. It wasn't really Howard Stern--it was public radio (what else would talk to a writer?) in Urbana, WILL-AM. Do you know that there is a button that you hold down if you need to cough? Phil Graham, the fiction writer over at the U of I, set it up and was there with me, and then my friend Sharon Solwitz was on the phone doing the interview, too--we could hear each other over these boffo clunky headphones. Everyone at the station was terrifically nice--they chatted before we went in, offered coffee, et cetera, and the guy that does their internet work and Phil and I talked in the lobby about the House on the Rock in Wisconsin. These descriptions of the House, along with being in this building that was all railings & windows, made everything feel a kind of downhome surreal--not uncomfortable, but not quite normal, either. Phil is a talker & he invited me to stay and come to the reading that evening to celebrate the launch of U of I's lit magazine, Ninth Letter. This magazine is stunningly beautiful & expensive, artwork & four-color display. When I was at AWP, Michael Martone literally pulled me over to their table to show it to me: "Did you see this?!? Where do they get their money? You have to send there!" And Phil invited me to send there. Which was gratifying. The magazine is standard magazine size & beautifully designed--what Tim & I were trying to do w/ our magazine years ago--except U of I can actually afford to do it. Anyway, I had never met Phil Graham before, and I was impressed that he was so down to earth. He did, after all, set up the radio interview for the anthology (In the Middle of the Middle West), which he did not have to do. Honestly, he wouldn't have to give a rat's ass about the anthology, even though he is in it. But apparently he truly thinks it's worth promoting, which is all and all exciting.

So I'm in the radio station and we're all talking about the midwest and midwesterners and art. I find this easy to talk about at this point, having answered so many questions about it at readings and in classes. And then we got the callers, and that was also surprisingly easy & fun. A photographer called in and went on at some length about the light in the fields. And a guy w/ a vague brogue talked about lost little buildings, like the switchhouse in Wapella. A woman called and talked about how, when you work on a farm, you realize how small you are among the large; how insignificant we are as humans. I like this idea of having the audience talk back.

After it all was over, I drove around Champaign-Urbana, getting lost, and then drove out to the bookstore where we're giving our reading today: Pages for all Ages. It's an independent bookstore modeled after a Borders. It even has a Borders-type sign & it borders a mall. It's in the usual mall outpost in something that may once have been a separate town (Secor), but now is a chain-store-attached extension of Champaign. In Urbana, I ate in the Courier Cafe, in a rehabilitated newspaper office, and ate half of a fine Bennett Burger, which is cream cheese and olives between a bun. Great fries. Eat there.

Next post, I'll talk about the Ninth Letter reading I went to last night and about the reading at Pages today.

decks & jacques

2004-04-14T12:35:00.000-05:00

It's almost warm outside, here on the first spring day when I can take out my computer and write here on the supposed deck, which is really more like a splintery octagonal slab raised an inch off the ground. I never particularly liked decks, which seem to be some suburban expression of the longing for a dock, or maybe for a porch, but don't come close to the satisfactions of either. This friend of ours, a theater professor, built this monster deck last summer that is just right for him—it's a stage, built to display about fifty players along with a fairly elaborate two-level Shakespearian set. I guess there will be a grill out there, too. It's raised quite high, with an expansive view of the lawn that Lorraine takes care of, tooling about on her riding mower. He, Kim, is very happy with his deck—it's the height of family achievement for this particular Indian immigrant, w/ his two talented children & wife, a book, a tenured professorship, and friends who can come over and have a beer on said deck. Friends who transcend several departments, at that.

This is the kind of city in which everyone owns a deck. The only porches are over on the West Side, where the poor whites and the blacks live. So our thin, weatherbeaten "deck" marks us as sloppy, in-the-hole, or possibly borderline bohemian. And everyone knows that we aren't really bohemian, because, hell, we live here with sane children & look too average, don't talk about Derrida or Ron Silliman, and...we live here. I think that the sheer mess of our lawn ought to count for something outre, but if we were really bohemian, we would be very artful and minimalist gardeners. Somehow, bohemians manage to control the weeds. They manage to clip without looking like fathers in sitcoms. Their pets are pure bred (but not elitist or lonely, like ladies w/ their tiny yappy dogs)—they are rare cats or free-flying birds. Although my house seems to me rather free in its disorganization, it actually gives away its working class roots in its flaking paint and that damned basement rug that really desperately needs to be pulled up. Even I would have to admit that it isn't that we're too cool to work on our house—we just never quite feel like it.

And so, pardon: I'm gripped by my usual spring restlessness which borders upon an incipient malaise. That is, I get a lot of nervous energy that has to be channeled into the demands of the time, like grading. Deep thoughts make quick near-appearances, only to swiftly fly over and make a large dropping on someone else's deck. I instead try to focus upon a student story, only feeling myself falling further and further behind, re-reading the same paragraph in an effort to see the...the big picture, the insight that will change it all for them. And so instead I get a headache. You know the kind, the simply vague annoying ones that threaten to blow into something truly incapacitating, and so become enough to freeze out much that's productive without ever becoming fruitfully dramatic. I have an urge to sleep in a hammock, which is not possible, as I don't have a hammock or time; and so, I focus on the student paper, which absolutely has to be read. And I reread the same paragraph and....

I used to get dreamy in the spring. I don't do that anymore; I'm not really sure what I would dream about. I've grown so good at turning away the peskiest dreams that I have taught myself not to have them. Or maybe I've gotten to a point of reality. When I was younger, I used to feel like I was waiting for something to happen. And when the time was right, this something would be big, astonishing even, a big astonishing red carpet-type moment. Or wonderfulwonderfulwonderful—but deep—romance. Better than earthshattering: it would be profound. I no longer wait for things to happen. It all happened, and now I'm in my life. And it's neither good nor bad, it isn't even "just is," it is simply this. I've given up writing stories of it, looking for the trajectory or the sense in the thing. The moment is the story; or there is no story, or at least no story like the ones I used to read. No expectation, no failure; all tragedies are common. My reassurance comes in the similarity of the stories across time & some recognition that I understand things that I was too young to see before.

And so how many other springs have been like this: white dog on porch, dogs running at the fence, making the dogs come in because they're harassing the neighbor's dog, coming back into the house to hear music, checking the clock, imagining trees. Every spring pushes me to get into a car, to kill time in driving—to chores, jobs, readings, all that—restless energy going straight to the tires. Waiting, I guess, for the time when I have time to write.

Easter weekend creates teenage invasion

2004-04-09T16:45:00.000-05:00

It's very difficult to write from the point of view of Langston Hughes when simultaneously buying two large pizzas (one cheese, one half-cheese/half-pepperoni) and five breadsticks from the College Avenue Pizza Hut for five starving thespian adolescents and one child actor (or someone's little brother, I'm not sure). In fact, these things can't be done simultaneously, which is why I am now eating said pizza and writing in this weblog. It just doesn't feel like 1925 to me today. I did take a lot of notes earlier today, though. Which is, of course, very important.

I actually like teenagers quite a bit. anyone who knows what a pollyanna i am would only expect me to say this, assuming that i'm hiding some kind of existential bitterness about it. i actually do like the teenagers, though. i think they're smart and funny. quite a bit funnier than most people i know. or they aren't afraid to be silly about it. teenagers are accused of angst, but the ones i'm around appear to be at least as silly as five year olds, if not more so. they giggle a lot. even the boys.

i was never in theater, so i just watch it all with a kind of fascination. i've come to like getting on stage to give readings, but still can't imagine trying to leap into a role without holding onto the pages. the theater kids all like to be the center of attention, which makes for a lot of loudness that is, like i said, very funny. today it's kiri and her older brother justin, and lauren (who is known to be a very very angry and intelligent girl), and paige, and then that little kid i don't know. another day, it might be a somewhat different configuration, although it usually does involve kiri, who looks a little bit like that girlish hobbit, you know, elijah wood? it's the elvin thing. some of the thespians do look like elves, and they are all girls. the boys think the elves and hobbits are too gay, and will never admit to aspiring to look like them, even if they do.

paige & her friends are very wired in. they even have a leftish blog, http://pardonyourstupidity.com. they watch a lot of surrealistic, occasionally violent, undoubtedly bright anime. they read anime, too, & draw it, even though they are not japanese. paige does some really good illustrations of this type; very stylized & still much like her. she always has had an eye for design. she hated art class, though, because he kept making them draw boxes. she isn't at all interested in technique, unless it is the technique of something she wants to do. all of her friends write stories and poems, paige more than the rest (although the others may be writing things in private that I never see). they are humans of strong opinion; luckily, their opinions are usually like my own. straight thespian boys have girls falling all over them. at least, the boys think they are straight; they probably are. there is one boy to every five girls, a much better ratio than that held by athletes. there is also occasional lesbian/gay experiments between the girls or the boys, but only one confirmed relationship. i don't think paige has had any between girls or boys yet, though who can be sure? this is a public blog, & i shall not say more. her friends are all kind of bubbly cute admitted nerds; or at least, they seem so to me. just like nearly every other artist i've ever known. Nerds, i mean. oh no, intellectuals, i mean. not cute.

i used to feel old, being around teenagers all the time (well, actually being around students, who are just one step from being teenagers). but i'm used to it now. i passed through that phase and went to the other side. rarely consider it, even when it's pointed out to me (as teenagers will do regularly). i'm mostly just glad i'm not fifteen.

when i was fifteen, i had a lot of contempt for mothers, who had to stand around cleaning up after everyone else. i think i am supposed to feel bad that i am doing this now, but i don't feel much like erma bombeck (remember her; maybe not). i have to do all of the domestic things & they swirl around constantly as reminders of the physical world and then become just tasks, but again, i don't think of it much unless i am tired. it's just a responsibility, a thing, a string of things, that have to be done. my mother used to make such a big deal out of all of that, and i used to feel so guilty and sorry for her and would swear that would never be my fate. now i do it, but it doesn't feel like fate (usually), and it doesn't seem like a burden. if it wasn't this, i'd have some other tedious responsibility. at least this one is comfortable. i know that i could be better at it, and this is probably because i'm not paying much attention. doug used to try to train me when we were first married: "do you really fold clothes that loosely?" or "i load this dishwasher like this for maximum effectiveness." until i told him to load the fuckin thing himself. and now he doesn't tell me how to load it, because he sure as hell wants to avoid it as much as possible. he likes to pay the bills, which is fine by me, because they are even more boring and tedious than the laundry.

adult life is a string of tedious tasks, as least the shell of it is. this is what my parents hated, the tedium, but they dared not think of anything else, and so they hated it.

teenagers are as uncontrollable as cats. accept it, & it is all easy. they like to be petted & occasionally fed & talked to. they talk back when they feel like it & never when they don't. they are willing to talk more if you buy them pizza & let them sometimes crank up Rasputina & steal your Blur CD's. i have given up control over these physical things & let the interruptions fly past me, knowing, you know, that it won't last long. and then i'll be thinking how quiet the house is, loving it & hating it, & wishing someone would come in & take me away from a project occasionally. teenagers will either break you or force a condition of perfect zen mastery.

like death, teenagers put life in perspective. acceptance is the final outcome.

2004-04-07T10:02:00.000-05:00

music riff: ladysmith, kurt cobain

We finally got this fast digital whatever capabilities on our home computer system & suddenly I have discovered that I can play pretty much any radio station in the universe & that it actually plays in this uninterrupted "stream." funny how this elemental spring in the physical world becomes a cyber stream of another element. and so one stream from my childhood is replaced by another of sound here in my mid-adulthood. i wouldn't say i prefer one over the other or even feel much nostalgia about losing the stream of water anymore....i think i've come to accept these changes as literal, solid; that is, why not roll w/ it? outdoor silence v. Ladysmith Black Mozambo? hmmmmmm. these are equal in value & finally not so very different.

since the media has lately been going on about the tenth anniversary of kurt cobain's suicide, i thought it might be appropriate to also say a few words about cobain. after all, i certainly wrote plenty of words about him after he died. first comment: if i see that goddamned tortured photograph one more time in rolling stone i am going to scream. why not advertise the crazy joyful kurt? we just love our stories of tortured artists w/ tortured personal lives. i haven't heard much of the music played during this "anniversary." and i haven't played it lately, either.

i never fail to be moved and jolted by it every time i do hear it, even it's just the obligatory clip of Smells Like Teen Spirit. that nirvana music just chills me...excites & frightens me. it is that silence & the rush of noise?--some of it. but don't all crap bands pull that now? i think it's this kind of bluesy, kid-like, stripped-bare quality in the voice that seems so immediate. i know that he was probably calculating about it, but it sure doesn't feel like that when he's yelling. it's almost as if he is completely unaware of audience in that moment. van morrison in the old days was like that, too; you know those stories when van turns his back to the audience and plays that way for 45 minutes, not giving a damn whether or not they were booing him? -- it's like that, that voice that can just slice through the sinews of bullshit, the obtuseness of defensive thought. it's just wham--someone laying it all out on the line. and with this absolute rage and vulnerability that seems to be laughing at itself a bit--and of course the jangling guitar and dave grohl's driving drums (which I still like now that he's in foo fighters)--those three guys were just sweet. this sweetness that doesn't make a big deal of itself. it's kind of like those sweeter sorts of folkies like Michael Stipe or Roger McGuinn--not sappy sweet, but more just unguarded sweet. i guess w/ kurt cobain there is a little of that lost soul sweet--like, who didn't know that this person was doomed and knew it? he was celebrating his doom, and that was kind of glorious. it was really close to death, the way a dying person can be when they begin to consider their life & how quickly it went away; a kind of frailty--that's the quality of kurt that people have latched onto, with that "i'm pained" photograph, but that was only the smallest poignant part. if he had lived, we would have forgotten all that, marked it up to adulthood transitions. not all abused children die, of course. we really need to stop celebrating the fact that kurt blew his brains out.

why not celebrate the date of the formation of the band? why celebrate the anniversary of his death? what is wrong w/ us that we love the tragedies more than the energy? americans.....

i am furious about being deprived of new music by kurt cobain. it's selfish on my part. i have a ferocious anger toward the dead who ought not to be dead & who in a sense choose their deaths. i'm mad that this guy would kill himself to leave his ex-wife to neglect his child while she whips up her shirt to David Letterman. it really isn't fair that someone would kill himself, making the choice to leave himself as a poster child for the neglected and abused. obvious cycle repetition here. i have a hard time forgiving him as an individual for that, & i hate to say that this legacy is getting in the way of me playing his music the way i once did. it is probably that i fear this in myself & i fear it in others.

a great neglected cobain song isn't his: on the live album, that version he does of the classic Robert Johnson song "In the Pines." If this is not the scariest song in the world....(alright, there are others, but this one is packed w/ ghosts & a voice from beyond the grave). he was going to be a great bluesman, too, cobain. i guess he scared himself, too.

2004-04-05T10:46:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple of journal entries from my old site.

Springfield: after too many readings

I have been doing maybe too many writerly things lately.

I went to see Marge Piercy give a reading in Springfield. I'm in this kind of rolling-along state, going from one reading to another, either ones I do or ones I see. Or I email writerly friends or worry over writerly public matters. At any rate, it is all in my bones at the moment. I went to see Piercy mostly to go to dinner w/ my old friend Martha Miller from Springfield, who has a really cool book coming out on Haworth Press--I know it's cool because she was writing it years ago during our old Springfield workshops, all about the Springfield Levee and the gay folks and the prostitutes and the life there, which I only mostly saw from car windows. All torn down now. And I haven't seen Martha for awhile, because I have been so weirded out about going back to that city since my parents died and I sold the house. I am a little spooked at the thought of maybe running into an old relative, or just feeling sad at something very long past to me. It is strange how the place changed so much for me after my mother died--not just her being gone, but so many losses after the falling out w/ the relatives over the estate. At least I will never ever have to do that again. And so going back to visit Springfield is full of spookiness. Not nostalgia anymore, but more shock at how much things have changed there, and how much I have changed. I feel a little bit embarrassed, as if I have transgressed in some way by changing so much. But I also know that I could not have helped but to change. And have learned to accept all of these many forces.

Maybe it had to do with visiting Chicago and staying w/ Sharon & seeing all my old buds up there. But Springfield now feels smaller and shabbier and a little bit paranoid. I mean, I don't feel paranoid, but it seems that the people there are very watchful and some of them rather rough. It is almost a prejudice against people who are different, which of course you find everywhere, but not nearly so much in Chicago. And B'ton version, I'm just accustomed to. It is glaring to see this in a place that I once knew so well.

Anyway, (as I have papers to grade & ought not to be writing here at all) the reading was not very good. Peg Knoepfle said it was good, but I was very disappointed. I wanted to hear some fiction, like the old novels that had made such an impression upon me when I was younger, to see if she was doing new good stuff. And she read a lot of hit and miss poetry. I kept wanting to edit it. It fairly well ignored me, although there were some bright spots. Mothers can smell like cinnamon only so much before I want to throw the pie out the window, you know? She was very close to her mother and her cats. She really did do a fine job of describing the cats.

it was fun to see Martha. Strange to talk to Peg. I have this odd feeling from them that I maybe insulted them in some way, or that they know something that I don't, or that for some reason or another they are just not comfortable talking to me. Maybe it was because I was wearing a blue hat that almost looked like a beret? Naw, I'm probably reading into it. It just wasn't much the same, though; or maybe things that I overlooked before, I saw. I am just not sure. I was not unhappy to leave, there in that building where I went to school years ago, years ago when the hippies were there & is now so bureaucratic industrial that it fucking just depresses me to step into it (wondering: why did I stay here? was it really different then, or did I just not see?). And I drove to Barnes and Noble to get a large large coffee (latte, no sweets) so I could make the drive home without going into a ditch (it is an hour and a half to get home, via I55). And so I went there, into this absolute freaky light laden neon jungle of trash crap chain stores and strip malls. Every time I drive to that end of town in Spfld it has extended even further toward the farmland & I was stunned. And the Barnes & Noble was jam packed there on a Friday night with all of these middle aged people ordering their Venti Cappucinos. Go figure. I had to get out as soon as possible, as even as it was I saw someone I recognized but could not for anything remember who it was--I think it was a woman named Barb, but I wasn't sure--and it was like deja vu except that we had all grown plump and soft and middle class---------ye godds!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and I drove home. and enjoyed it.

****************

a reading at Illinois Wesleyan

I took part in a reading yesterday afternoon at Illinois Wesleyan, the private college that exists right in the town where I work, Bloomington-Normal...down the street from Illinois State. Where I teach. Strange reading--strange reading in the town where you live, unless you are with a group of friendly friends. It was odd to read at a school where I went to my first writers' conference. Yet I didn't feel like a student; didn't feel particularly young, didn't even particularly think about who I had been those twelve years ago. The audience was mostly students from IWU, the white hopeful faces of people whose lives have been largely protected--and good for them--we want this for our children, right? To have them not get TOO hurt. Read w/ two student writers from IWU whose work Gabe Gudding & I chose for the "contest"--and these were good writers who read well. Gabe was hilarious, as always, and also serious, as always--sometimes people laugh when they aren't supposed to and probably shouldn't. It's that surreal juxtaposition, that strangeness, but I feel odd when people laugh. All right. Gabe is 37, I think, but everyone thinks he is 25 because of this kind of slender, tennis-shoe-clad charm & general coolness, the fact that he speckles his speech w/ words like "dude." I like him, but I think he's been trying to put me in my place at the university lately--lord knows why, as I'm a non-entity in that sphere w/ no power, being not really in "creative writing," not really in "comp," definitely not in anyplace else, but still teaching good classes at the 300 level and nobody knows what the hell to do w/ me or think about me (esp. as I am married to Doug Hesse who was head of the Writing Program there for awhile & had this brief stint as grad director, thus seen as something of a power threat even though that was a long time ago) except the students, who seem to just take me as I am. The margin is sometimes a good place to lurk, esp. if one is observant, esp. in a state of blissful not caring...I am both glad of and offended by the sheer freedom of being a political non-entity in the ice house of the supposed-ultra-pomo....it's a struggle for identity there, so I relish my non-entity-ness, yet when I go out & hang out w/ the poets, people seem suspicious, as if I am a spy & not really w/ any right to wear my black leather jacket. yet when I go to Chicago & run around there, i fit in & everyone assumes i will wear something peculiar & probably say something peculiar & so go figure? every group designs itself & the rules evolved by the group mean so little, designed by gossip & stories, dragging into itself deeper & deeper until everyone believes that one line devised by the group is truth when it serves a purpose & conveniently forgetting....that's who we all are....There is quite a sad battle going on in my university over the withdrawing of financial support to the Unit of Contemporary Literature by the university. This has been a long story, long in coming, & the result is the demolition of the last vital moment at that school. As pushed to the edge as I have been by the "experimental" writers, as much as I feel inhibited by them and labeled, I still see the loss of this independent literary force as a deep, deep shame. I did my part, I had my say in support of Charlie Harris, the creative students, and the Unit at a public meeting--but I can't do more. And I fear that the internecine quarreling among the writing faculty themselves has finally done the final work of ending the Unit. Every institution I have walked through has done this to themselves, finally....the most liberal/radical push themselves to the other side, meeting their alter-selves on the conservative end, both resulting in statis & finally the slide toward destruction. fear fear fear, protection protection protection & the idea just gets lost & people lost their positions and their jobs. and me? heck, they don't want me there anyway, and I have a book to write.

Gabe Gudding thinks the book I'm writing about Sara Teasdale & Vachel Lindsay will attack poets and promote romanticism. "but I'm defending...I'm defending poets," say I, thinking, "but man, it's such a good story." I guess if someone else wrote on this subject, he'd see it as ultra-radical & anti-establishment, what w/ all that genre blending & critique & stuff. why are poets so quick to find offense when I write about Sara Teasdale's suppressed lesbianism? when I think it is so human, complicated, and interesting. she's just a person, after all, a complicated one, not "Poet Representative of All Poets." when I read the same thing at Roosevelt up in Chicago, they thought it was cool & had all kinds of questions & no sense of threat. Dave Wallace used to tell me he would never read on his home turf....so much of what he used to casually say, i now understand.

and speaking of writing....i will now get to work.

**********

Got back from the AWP conference just Sunday evening...am still in this weird ancy daze of wanting to keep blithering to people & being very happy very very very happy to meet everyone & trying to refocus on something that looks a lot like my everyday life. I'm very very very happy to be there, as well, perhaps even happier, except when I am grading papers, which of course is what I am preparing myself to do right this very second as I figure out how to do this web log.

I think that journals are probably inherently just boring. Even famous people's journals are boring, unless you are an archivist, celebrity obsessed, or both. Writers have this compulsive desire to chronicle everything, or to avoid chronically at all in the fear that someone will want to actually read what they are chronicalling and thus they will be exposed for the shallow silly people we really are. Except, of course, when we are being profound, which is so hit and miss that this is no doubt instructive to all students and archivists.

I am not sure what I think of the blog idea, except that it does play into this very sense that writers have of being very public in their most private moments. It lets non-writers do this, too, because who at heart does not want their inner thoughts to be revealed to an appreciative audience? I like the populism of this notion, even as I can rarely get through a blog unless it is written by someone who I know. It is odd that I am impatient about such blog matters in the now, yet have no problem poring over pages of Sara Teasdale's receipts & calling cards, her long love letters to people who she never knew. Minutae becomes fascinating when the daily lives and cultures seem so far away and no longer familiar. I would like to know what Sara ate every day & her favorite restaurant and which neighbor annoyed her most. But all of this is gone. In reconstructing Sara's life now, I suppose this gives my imagination a bit more freedom, but some historian in me truly wants to know something that appears to be the mundane truth. Yet my own life is so filled w/ mundane details that I can't at all blame Sara for only writing about her own heart.

And so I would say things about my conference adventures here, but I have to grade papers. If I make this a daily diversion, then eventually I will piece together some rambling single story abode of what I'm all about--the kind of place, no doubt, that I would get lost in.

**********

I'm not sure how to set a title...I guess I'll just say it here, and call it Charleston, Illinois, 2004.

I'm in an anxious state the last few days. Not sure why. I'm in Charleston & read too long—I never do that—but I tried to do what R wanted. I mistimed my reading. I got really rushed and behind. I feel like my timing's off in general this semester and it isn't that I feel overwhelmed, exactly; I just can't get the rhythm right when teaching this night class. I like the night class, but....I feel insecure my presentation of self somehow. Not that this is new! But more so....Strange. Charleston is a strange flat kind of place, although the people here, the teachers, are very nice. They have more here than I might expect...a nice little coffeeshop. Old houses. Restaurants that look like they're good ones (hope I can get to one today). I'm hoping to head out to get breakfast soon, before I teach class w/ Marty Scott. All about cnf. The students have read my book; I'm sure they'll have opinions and that will be fun. I feel odd about that book, though; I feel as if I'm writing about them somehow, and I'm not as comfortable w/ that as I used to be. I feel that in writing about place I have made myself two steps outside the place. And now I don't much want to talk about it anymore--but since I wrote a book about it, it is now my Topic. I think I am always in my mind in some new place, but always, with readers, back in the old place. It gives me a sense of disjunction. Like workshopping something years ago (when my work was the one on the block) and feeling almost as if they are talking about someone else. (Or wishing it was someone else's!)

I wish I had more time to spend here, to drive around the area and poke into the corners. Got lots of work at home, though--piles and piles of student writing and worries about Paige. Her getting sick, them getting their schedules messed up while I've been gone this day. Being a parent and spouse is a contract for guilt, I think....Or maybe more just a constant sense of responsibility. It's hard to balance that with a desire to just wander about and ask questions of life.

Had a great time last night at this reception at Marty and Evelyn Scott's house. A nice group of facult ystopped by, and some nice students, too. Everyone was so gracious and so fun to talk with. It seemed so comfortable here; not like the constant tension and debate of ISU. The pace was slow and amiable. Marty and Evelyn reminded me of other of my writer friends who live in Chicago and Springfield--casual and messy (like me) and arty (playing great music in the background) and cats. The best thing about giving readings is being able to hook up with all kinds of people. To have this legit reason to go here and there and find people who are like me (outcast writers; aren't we all?).

I also got to have coffee w/ David Radavich, who I bet I haven't talked to one on one in about ten years. He is really a nice man. Turns out he's also doing some research on Zoe Akins, the playwright. Now who would figure you'd run across someone who is also curious about the same obscure and flamboyant playwright of the 1910's? I'm glad he's looking into her; I hope he finds out some good stuff, because she's so neglected and I sure won't have time to dig into her life more than I already have.

And this is how people like us are so odd: that we can become thrilled because someone else recognizes the name of a long dead poet/playwright who has somehow come back to life in our own visions? Isn't that, well, a bit mad in practical terms?

Maybe this is part of the reason I also feel anxious when I stand in front of a crowd or class and sometimes see those blank faces. And you wonder: do they really hear me at all? Or are they just noticing my silly nervous habits, like when I wave my hands? Do they feel any of this at all? Am I even making any sense? And somehow I feel it is my responsibility to do so. And with that feeling comes an inevitable sense of failure or frustration: of course, I could have done it better and I need to do it better. I suppose that's what keeps us working, if we don't just give up.

Maybe I should amble out to the Charleston world for some eggs or something? The house I'm staying in, here at the Queen Anne B & B, is so old fashioned and comfortable, with its quilts and brocade, that a part of me (a big part of me) wouldn't mind just spending the day here taptaptapping. But, hey, check out is at 11, and I have a class to teach. And the nice woman who runs the place, Annette, will need to clean up; I can see she needs it all just so. Every little vase in its proper arrangement. I'm staying in her home, after all.