Why Hello There

Hi, smallish group of internet denizens. Apparently when Amanda gives me orders, you know, TWICE in the same comment, I'll go ahead and follow them. So here's an entry.

Shoot, I guess a lot has been going on since I was last here. Since giant paragraphs are scary (nevermind that that's NEVER stopped me in the past, hooooeee), let's make an enormous list of Crap What Kim's Been Up To:

1. Went to Austin, Texas, wherein a ton of incredible food was consumed, along with as much or more alcohol, bats were seen, a story was told regarding seeing Tupac alive in Cuba in 2003, and it still wasn't nearly as hot as that one day up in Bulacan last summer.

2. Riding the rejection wave. At least more of them are personal now. I'm moving up in the world.

3. Had an incredible Adam's-bday-also-Fourth-of-July weekend wherein silly hats abounded, and during which apparently I decided very late at night that sprawling out in the middle of the street on the way home would be a good idea, or at least something that would work, upon which decision almost-but-clearly-not-quite-as-intoxicated-Daniel had to stand over me and tell me "Kim, this is not going to work. Mostly because there is a car coming."

4. Had an equally incredible, but maybe for different reasons, realization that in fact my summer has consisted of about forty bajillion incredible evenings with incredible people (omg Anna/Adam/Geffrey/Daniel/Patrick/Kimmel/Lynne and many more) that I love incredibly dearly. In all states of mind.

5. (Related to both 3 and 4) Doubled the number of pictures of my sorry mug up on Facebook (made significantly less sorry by the singularly dedicated nishmael, whose camera is usually kind of forgiving of my ridiculousness).

6. Begun poking around for, and subsequently panicking about, materials for my next manuscript which, despite my best intentions, will probably have something to do with Bethlehem Steel.

7. Still trying to break the love poem into a million pieces. I'm not that good.

8. Played Mario Kart for the first time in a longish time. Also cooperative Pac Man. Also am up to finally watching the entirety of the last two episodes of Deadwood (what, four years later? I'm slow.) Also saw Harry Potter at midnight. Also Citizen Kane and Sin City for the first time. No Country for Old Men for the second time.
8.5 DISNEY SINGALONG PARTIES. Aladdin, followed by Lion King. Yes.

9. Played a whole lot of ultimate frisbee, to the detriment of my hips and my left ankle. Probably not to the detriment of my cardiovascular system, though.

10. Strolled ArtsFest for the fifth time or so. This time, however, I actually saw music. Said music was fantastic, especially THESE PEOPLE. I have one of the most severe fan-crushes on Ty that I have had in a while. I'm sure she probably gets that a lot, even from completely straight people.

11. Potentially published another bullshitty piece about creative writing pedagogy - this time with a coauthor who makes a lot more sense than I do, so it's REALLY obvious. Am in the process of redoing two syllabi from the ground up in order to practice what I preach.

12. Have become intimately reacquainted with the effects of tequila.

13. DAAAAAANCED!

14. Celebrated pigs' 2nd birthday. They still look like potatoes. They are now officially adult potatoes. D'awww.

15. Traded "have-you-seen-this-internet-thing"...uh...things...with Daniel for hours and hours. Reference to the subject of this post goes here, about which Daniel made the comment "I realize that he is supposed to be, like, emerging from the earth or something, but really he just kind of looks like a crazy zombie that's just toppled over a cross-shaped headstone. ARRRRGHHHHH."

16. Read Deleuze and Guattari's What Is Philosophy? and might have actually understood it BETTER than Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer, which I totally thought would be easier. Starting Barthes' The Pleasure of the Text soonish. Also in the process of tackling some fiction, because I don't usually do that, and because I'm insane, the work of fiction I'm tackling is Infinite Jest. I'm a few hundred pages in, I'm actually reading the footnotes, and I'm enjoying it IMMENSELY.

17. Living entirely, deliriously, ecstatically, and probably stupidly, in the present.


What have YOU all been doing?

...because Fall Out Boy comes up with better titles that I can, apparently.

I couldn't bring myself to call

I'm trying to do too many things at once here. I keep typing sentences into this box and erasing them, and then I keep working my way through the reading that I'm going to have my class tackle tomorrow, and then I get dismayed because not only am I not getting a journal entry done, I am realizing that my class had trouble handling the philosophical implications of Sim City, and that this essay deals in some depth with dialectical materialism. We're all totally fucked.

Not that class has been bad. It hasn't. But as usual, you run up against a handful of minds so tightly closed that it makes your head spin just a little, and so you go through this hopeless phase, because you are an idealistic young instructor, where you bemoan the state of the whole planet because your students are unwilling to try and wrap their brains around things. That was a convoluted sentence. Shit, so was the second sentence of this entry. Do as I say, not as I do. Apparently.

Actually, now that I think about it, I should actually be doing blogs along with my students right now. That was probably a bad move on my part, the whole "hey I'll keep up with YOU GUYS" thing, because I forget that I really have too much other crap to do to also take my own class.

I don't even know what I'm saying anymore. I'm actually pretty glad that I gave up the 365 blog thing; I had this moment of my life where I was convinced that the internet was going to be my ticket out of oppressed academic-dom, but it's not, and I'm not oppressed, and I think the more time I spend away from the internet, the better. I am such a pendulum.

Except to call it quits

So, yes. Not a whole lot else is going on, except that Daniel is back in town and Geffrey, damn him, is leaving, but I get to trade one best friend for another, and now nishmaelkimble will not have a hetero-life-partner in town and so maybe we'll hang out more. (Yes, Adam? YES. In fact I think I'm going to see you tonight. This is exciting.)

Regular poetry meetings, I think, will resume in their independent summer form at some point next week. Also terribly exciting. Because I am going to need to carry that through the whole year next year, if I can rope people into doing extra-workshop work. I think being outside of workshop is going to be about the best thing, but also harrowing, in that I am going to have to make up and KEEP my own schedule. I am bad at this, because I am, apparently, still in high school when it comes to temporal regulation. I need someone else to do it for me in neat little blocks. Alas.

Back to friends, however: am looking very much forward now that I am not traveling ANY MORE THANK YOU this summer, to really get back down to the business of hanging out regularly, kind of like the end of the semester when I was just about the happiest person alive because I could feel all these good communities solidifying around me - back at that, thank you very much.

Greetings from Vassar.

Huh?

...which is where my sister has just become an alumna. I've been here since Friday, admiring the soaring Gothic library and bemoaning my lodgings, which are in a single dorm room in an ancient residence hall that looks like a Medieval hunting lodge. That last bit is patently awesome, but the "single dorm room" bit is patently awful, and so I'm sitting here surrounded by bare white walls, post-commencement, post-picnic, post-awards, waiting for the next thing.

Commencement itself was lovely, though hot - took place on a big grassy slope overlooking a little pond, complete with geese and goslings. All Vassar's undergrads get to wear bachelor's hoods, which is great because it makes them look a little more regal, and hilarious because Vassar's colors are PINK and SILVER. Poor boys. My sister kept remarking that she thought her mortarboard made her look like an hors d'oeuvres tray, because she's so short. It didn't. She was beautiful. Of course. /sap

It's been two full weekends of commencements for me, thus, and I'm not sure if that's what's stressing me out, but I am stressed out. As a result, I'm constantly tired and wound up at the same time. This has got to have put a dent in my productivity. Oh well. Monday is a new week, and though I tell myself this every Sunday night, maybe by tomorrow night I'll have figured some things out and settled some things down. Because then I'll be back at home (State College) with no foreseeable travel plans, and that, my god, is refreshing.

In Which I Continue to be Bad At Photography

Took out the big camera for the ceremony and picnic today, and while I got some great shots by accident, there were just that, by ACCIDENT, but what I did manage to do was learn a whole lot more about how to take good pictures. At least theoretically. Now, why I couldn't have done this BEFORE taking pictures at one of the more significant events my sister's had in her life thus far, I dunno, but I suspect that she probably doesn't really care if she ever even sees those shots, so it's all good. (I also suspect, and this is related, that she wanted to kill me after a while for taking all these pictures in the first place. Alas, TOO BAD.)

We'll see if this pans out (my learning, that is) whenever it is next that I tote this camera somewhere else to document something else. I should start doing it more often. I learned that, too.

What Else

I am tired of holding myself up against other people.

...at least, I seem to MAKE it tiring because I care so damn much. I think next semester I am going to pare my classes WAY back, so that I remain sane. Because seriously? This is ridiculous.

I could also be saying this mostly because it's summer session and I'm teaching five days a week, with a paper due every week. That's insane. And I kind of pity my students for having to do it - especially the ones that are taking more than one class. But oh well. It is what it is, and we have to get five assignments out of the way whether they like it or not. Yaaay, University policy.

Anyway so now I have actually PLANNED for class tomorrow, as opposed to doing it while half-asleep at 7 in the morning over a cup of mint tea. Yay for sleep?

Anyways

Saw nishmaelkimble and his orchestral collection yesterday down at the Brewery, which is always a good time, especially as it means I get to see people that honestly think that it's neat that I'm going to be around next year. I probably have an ego problem (POET. CAN'T HELP IT.) but it's nice to hear that sort of thing now and again. Makes me think that I won't, in fact, become a horrible grumpy hermit by November.

Digression

Not really. It's about a million hours late (I am bad at finishing these kinds of tasks, apparently), and I'm sitting around, awake and restless, responding to student emails and seething a little. Not about my students. About other things. I guess this might make for some horrifically bad writing tomorrow. It's always good to get THAT out of the way. Makes room for stuff that's only bad, as opposed to horrifically.

I am not a fan of needlessly complicating my life. So I suppose I won't - not that I have, and/but I refuse to be convinced otherwise, either. Because good lord, yo, things are looking up. Screw what anyone else thinks. (Not entirely true. I like my friends. I care what they think. So ignore the annoyed ramble.) I'm...going to go to bed early. Because why not. Because it's simple, and I'm after simplicity, all appearances to the contrary.

GUESS WHAT

Two things, really.

ONE: I managed to earn a degree. I have a sheet of paper now, that I obtained on Sunday, while wearing a ridiculous wizard robe with a hood, that verifies that I am, in fact, a complete lunatic and have earned that title in the form of a Master's of Fine Arts. I am a MASTER. OF ART. Art art art *seal clap*

TWO: The department, unless one of my colleagues turns out to be a convicted felon, or some other horrible thing happens (I'm not ruling it out; I mean, the first time I thought I was good to go the dept head called me and was all "NEVERMIND!"), gave me back my 2-2 job. That schedule I posted is now, more or less, back on track.

HEY THAT'S PRETTY COOL, ME.

So I'm pretty deliriously happy, for these things and for other reasons. I have a whopper of a headache right now, though (note to self: SELF, bring water to class or you will get dehydrated from running your mouth), so I'll cut myself short (the audience: "yaaaayyyyy").

Here's to the next thing.

I won't make the same mistake.

Today I locked myself out of my office and had to break in through a window.

(OH WHICH, for those of you who can see that entry, was actually how psycho-ex got in, we found out later - the *crash* wasn't the door, it was the now-BROKEN SCREEN. Holy hell.)

That was a fun game! I nearly sat on a dead moth in the process. I hope I don't have dead moth on my butt.

I'm dying not to hurt you.

So it's supposed to be summer over here, and I guess it is except it's kind of cold, and I kind of have about fourteen tons of work to do, and I reealllly ought to get back into this whole poetry-writing thing except PAPERS and TEACHING and I HAVE TO GET OUT OF TOWN THIS WEEKEND.

Off to New York, recharging the ol' batteries on a healthy diet of the most heartily pulsing city on the planet. Ought to do a body good.

After that, I have to walk down an aisle with a ridiculous hat on, and then I start teaching which is the point at which I think I'm going to actually have a normal schedule here, because wtf. I'll get up at 7, teach from 9:30-11, then head back to my office and GET SHIT DONE, y'all. Writing three days a week, freelancing three days, one day to studiously do absolutely nothing but read and sit around outside. I can handle that.

In our dreams, we can be complete.

So I saw Star Trek. And I was VASTLY entertained by it, even though I am by no means an actual, real-life Star Trek fan. There were a couple of ST in-jokes that I had to be informed of as they were happening, but other than that, I got it.

OH EXCEPT. Here is a question: does anyone ELSE think that the scene with the giant red THING on Delta-whatever-planet was a parody of the Shelob scene from LOTR? I mean, it was practically the SAME FREAKING THING. Including scaring the thing off with a light source! And then Spock's all Gandalfy at the end...I dunno. I mean, it was just tooooo similar. Maybe I'm crazy. But I was laughing kind of inappropriately through the whole thing because I was like "...they can't be serious about this. This has absolutely, positively got to be a gigantic cinematic rib-jab."

But yes. Overall excellent. I assume that the interwebs is already populated with really creepy Spock/Kirk now-that-they're-hot slash. Great.

Again.

Okay. Must go prepare for cooking/wine times with Daniel, as I owe him major face time. Off I go.

Okay, I officially CANNOT get over how funny this shit is. Sorry.


ANYWAY.

Probably Should Have Cut My Nails

So I went over to Gram's yesterday to help her out with stuff and to do my laundry, because when you live down the road from your awesome grandmother, doing laundry becomes the exact OPPOSITE of doing laundry, really - instead of paying for it and sitting around in a laundromat, I get to sit in a kitchen and RECEIVE food and money for my efforts (lack thereof). Brilliant! Anyway so while I was there I decided it'd be a good idea to redo my nails, because apparently I'm now on a nailpolish kick. Unforunately, I don't think I cut my nails short enough, because now typing is a little weird. I forget how incredibly short I usually keep my nails. I think I need to get one of those skinny Mac keyboards that barely require any pressure. Maybe I can use some of my newly-earned "you're a decent poet" money to buy myself that particular bit of shiny.

Wow, THAT was a fascinating story.

Done?

So, here's a thing that hasn't hit me yet: it's actually going to be a year, more, or indefinitely until I can call myself a student again. As of Friday, I ceased being a student, and so now I'm just faculty. This is depressing! It also means that as of tomorrow, I'm really going to have to step it the hell up regarding my use of unstructured time, because I'm going to have WAY MORE of it now that I'm no longer in coursework. Ughhhh.

Like right now. I have a social thing to go to at 2, and there are about four million things I could do up until that point, but no. Facebook. WTF.

Tomorrow. Good things, but mostly work, because it's going to be MONDAY and that's going to be the first day of the rest of my life.

Good LORD, slow day. Thursday's drag like...like something that drags. A drag show? No, the opposite of that. Anyway.

The Internet Is Also Boring

I can always tell when I should probably be doing something else when I have thoroughly exhausted all my usual internet options. We all have this, right? The 4 or so sites that you immediately open up when you open FF or whatever other program buoys you along the sea of the tubes, and while I *could* actually read the news, or caption animal pictures, I don't really want to, and so then I just get IMPOSSIBLY BORED with the entire world wide web.

I ALSO *could* be doing a couple of, like, real things, like finishing up my revision portfolio for shop, but really that's like 99.9% done. So!

Let Me Fill You In

Or rather, let me dump a whole bunch of shit here that's really only for my purposes. Scroll on by, now.

So it looks like I'm loved around here and I get what I want because of it - the department gave me a reduced teaching load (with less money, but the hysterical thing is that when you do the math, they're actually paying me 25% MORE given the amount of work they're asking from me. Working the system? I CAN HAS.) and on top of it, I will get to teach more poetry and possibly a course of my own making. This is all terribly exciting.

I got honorably mentioned for RHINO's Editor's Prize, which is cool, comes with dinner money, and means that HEY that publication is finally coming out. BUY IT. We need all the help we can get.

Next year is lookin' a little like the following:

SUMMER
Teach comp
Complete Teaching w/ Technology certification
Redo Ashbery article
Figure out this whole PhD application business (DISSERTATION IDEAS I NEED THEM)
Start work on Developing Ecological Consciousness, 2nd ed (? I hope)
Go canoeing!
Travel: New York, Lehigh Valley, Colorado (in that order, I think)
Submit poems
Submit manuscript
Compile Bethlehem Steel chapbook (yikes, that's like 15 more poems)
Begin drafting ideas for next book


FALL
Teach comp and poetry
Apply for PhD programs (WTF)
Finish Ashbery article, send off
Begin redoing one of three articles: Williams, wikis, or David Mitchell
Send off Bethlehem Steel chapbook
Begin work on second manuscript
Continue work on DEC

SPRING
Teach comp and POSSIBLY food ecology course
Finish whichever article I've tackled, send off
Send off poems
Continue work on second manuscript
Finish work on DEC


Man. I have my work cut out for me, I guess I do. That's probably a good thing. Beats having shit-all to do but wait tables. After spring? Oh, I have my ideas if the PhD thing doesn't work out. But if it does, I suppose, RINSE. REPEAT. x4. Ho-lee-crap.

I'm so tired I am going to make tea and then watch Deadwood until I pass out

So guess what.

I just handed in my thesis.

I've given my reading, I've gotten my signatures, I've handed it in. Oh, you know, and I wrote the poems, too. And my grad regalia is hanging from my closet door.


...DO NOT WANT.


I mean, I do. This is a momentous thing. But I don't think that the word "bittersweet" has ever been more appropriate in any context in my life, ever. People keep congratulating me, and I just keep being...sad. But not quite sad because really, I am happy! I am also large and contain multitudes. Et cetera.

I have to go RIGHT THIS SECOND because upon arriving home, I have to go to the grocery store (again, argh) and pick up some kind of dessert-thing for a going-away party tonight for one of our fiction writers. He's going to Canada. Oh, Canada.

Anyway more later. That mortarboard, man. I hate it.

Atchoo. And not because I have allergies, no, I appear to have contracted a literal case of spring fever.

Oh well. There are certainly worse things.

Oh, Knots

Tie me up in them, because it's the end of the term and oh, oh, oh.

Tomorrow I'm headed off to the printer's to get my thesis plunked out (I need something like 6 copies for various people! That is a lot of trees! For shame). Then, a million other things, but THEN, summer! Which for all practical and meteorological intents and purposes, appears to already be here. My shoulders are mad sunburned from spending the day outside yesterday. Wouldn't trade THAT for the world, however. For many reasons.

Hmmm. What else. Nothing, I suppose. In all these ways that I typically write about, my life is regular. This is patently untrue, but you know, there are some things.

Hey I'm still happy! If sniffly. And confused. But happy. In my skin.

...has SLAYED me. But in a good way. Can you be slain in a good way? Oh, killing me softly.

Chumble Spuzz

So, now that my thesis is ready for the printer and will go off on Monday, I'm a little concerned. Mostly because I have all this other crap that's been brewing all semester that I've just put off, due to, you know, thesis. But now no thesis! So I no longer have this singular, huge, monstrous THING to pour all my energy into.

This is momentous and sad. Mostly sad! I think?

I am clearly unsure of how I feel about all this. What I am PATENTLY sure of is that I feel GREAT about this frigging weather. I bought a frisbee golf disc today - my first one - and Daniel and I went out and just processed some vitamin D for an hour or so. This was in lieu of him cleaning, and me figuring out what the hell all these projects were that I have to get done in the next week or so. Because honestly, my poetry has been so all-consuming as of late that I'm not even sure WHAT all I have to do. I just know it's a lot.

There are worse places to be.

The downside to all this reading/finishing/celebrating/friendship-having is that for some reason I've managed to find myself getting into, like, 6 hour conversations with friends of mine until bizarre hours in the morning, and as a result, I have this throat thing going on where it's all swollen and sore, even though I'm not sick. This does not make me happy. But it will probably make other people happy, as I will now have to shut up for the next few days in order to get over it.

What Else

Indian food tonight with the editor of The Indiana Review. This probably won't go as well as the LAST time I met an editor of a major publication, because last time, I landed in it. (This is actually recent. I'm going to be in the next issue of West Branch! So much joy!) This time, it'll probably just be some good food and wine. As with the rest of my life, there are way worse things.

It's blue and white weekend. This just means "hey let's put a fall football weekend SMACK AT THE END OF THE SPRING SEMESTER." One of my neighbors has a bull horn. I'll leave it at that. *headdesk*

Tomorrow it's going to be even warmer and sunnier than it was today. I am not sure how in the world I am going to accomplish anything. I probably won't. That's probably all right.

Oh My Goodness.

I'm full to bursting with gratitude right now.

I've also maybe had a glass or two of wine, so bear with me. Apologies in advance.

So, as I'm sure I've blubbered on about already, my thesis reading was this afternoon. This event is, for all intents and purposes, graduation for PSU's MFA candidates - they give us full introductions and 30-45 minutes to read. It is, in other words, a big deal.

And today, Lesley and I packed the house (small house, granted, but still) with friends and colleagues who actually wanted to hear us read from our first books. I cannot tell you how incredibly wonderful it was to read in front of a group of my dearest friends and most respected teachers - and although I'm not quite sure how good a job I did (there is always a lot of stammering during these sort of things; personally my hands were shaking so badly that I'm surprised I didn't spill water all over myself every time I went to take a drink), the simple fact of being surrounded by so many loved ones and so much love makes the actuality of the *poems* that I read kind of fade into the background.

(Don't make me think about the poems, btw. I have to cut over 20 pages tomorrow, which is fine, but right now I want to BELIEVE that I'm kind of done. Blehhhh)

So I feel like just about the most thankful person on earth right now. I'm truly blessed, and dude, it kicks ass. I've now got a backlog of the kindest, most wonderful notes/emails/various-social-networking-messages to read and respond to. I can't ask for anything better than this.

So Okay. Home Stretch, Mental State, Et Cetera

Oh, I'm totally crazy. So what else is new.

My new obsession - blatantly suggestive songs! I think that that kind of raw, slightly-taboo energy is currently the pushing me through the days way better than I could do on my own. Is it an energy that leaves me VERY frustrated most of the time? MAYBE. But hey! It's energy. I'll take what I can get.

(This has led me to do some interesting, next-poetry-project drafting, btw. Now *there's* a bad idea.)

Next Friday the semester ends, and then I get to draft a short essay for a book on pedagogy, graduate, go to my sister's graduation, come back and edit/edit/submit/edit/submit/figure out the rest of my life. That latter one is only partially true; I need to figure out my shit for PhD applications, which may actually dictate the rest of my life. Good times.

Meantime, however, I'm going to float around on this little cloud that excellent people have placed beneath me, and continue to listen to bad-idea music. Onward!

Hm. I appear to be at one of those points in my life where I feel like I need a forum in which to post a whole series of devastating song lyrics.

I'll refrain. I just wanted to see you jump back from your chair.

This is Genius

I was skeptical of the Genius feature on iTunes - by all accounts, "playlists-based-on-this-one-song" programs have historically been pretty awful - but so far it's produced decent playlists for me. The only reason I'm doing this right now is so that I don't end up listening to the same song all day for want of a particular key and time signature. Cavashawn's 4-song EP can only get me so far, really.

The mildly alarming side-effect of the program, however, is that since it riffles through your whole library, it can (and does) come up with stuff that you forgot entirely that you had, and that consequently brings a whole bunch of nostalgia rushing right up behind your eyeballs like the world's most emo tidal wave.

I am unsure whether or not this is a good or bad thing.

SEE?! Like right now it just started playing "Banquet." And now, in my head, I'm doing all sorts of crazy things right before going to graduate school, when it seemed like I probably needed to get a lot of crazy things out of the way (I think I mostly mean stupid here. Stupid things).

Anyway it's kind of terrible and kind of awesome. (The sublime? Hardy har har harrrrr)

I Guess My Life Is Less Messy Now, Or Something

So the department all but guaranteed me a position next year. This is exciting! BUT. (Sweet tapdancing Christ, WHY must there always be a "but?")

They're unsure if they'll be able to give me a reduced teaching load. This is kind of hysterical, as we went from "you're out on your ass" to "we might have to pay you more than you wanted, and you'll have to do way more work for us." Yay, economic pendulum-swinging. I don't honestly think I can handle a full adjunct load; not with the projects that I have lined up for the next calendar year. But they're not sure if they're going to have enough interested people to be able to offer me the "postdoc fellowship" deal, which is less money but more free time, and at this point in my life I value time INFINITELY more than I value money. Okay maybe not infinitely. A girl's gotta eat. But you know what I mean.

Anyway so that's...interesting. But I have teaching!

(Side note: I just had a Twitter-conversation with the author of House of Leaves. He told me to go put on some socks, and reassured me that I'd probably be okay for my reading tomorrow. Most of the time I kind of hate the internet, but this time right now is NOT ONE OF THEM. Fangirl glee!)

So I didn't sign a lease for nothing. There's that.

On Feeling Like You've Just Been Beer-Tapped

Have you ever done that to someone? You walk up to them, because you're a giant jackass, and clink your beer on the top of their beer bottle, which causes it to foam crazily and them to drink quickly, lest they end up with booze on the shoes. It's a good game.

Anyway I kind of feel like my life lately just did that to my brain/body, because life is a giant jackass (even though I love it so), and so now I'm trying desperately not to overflow. With all KINDS of feelings! Foamy feelings. That might be gross.

In a hyperactive, hyperventilating, hyperbodily way, it's great - in the same kind of terrifying, brink-y way that being on too many stimulants is great. Everything is tinged with just a *little* bit of nervousness, but other than that, you feel like you might just be floating a few inches above your chair. I'll gladly take this pop-art state of mind over crushing depression any day. Hopefully the inevitable comedown will be gentle with me.

Happy holidays for you that celebrate. I'm listening to reggae and craving chocolate in your honor.

No really. I'm stopping at 11:45 even if I'm in the middle of a damn sentence.

Today was beautiful. I had mood swings accordingly.

I received an award for a poem, and the undergraduates who also received awards at the ceremony, um, a few of them had poems that were far and away better than mine. I am both happy for them and sad for myself. I'm not envious though. This is improvement!

Bad idea: coming home late at night and then putting on Iron & Wine. Do not recommend unless you want to blubber into your cup of tea.

I got a summer teaching appointment. Moolah. Problem, though - now I have to make up a syllabus, and the book that I was all psyched to use is actually kind of crappy (Norton! Why must you betray me so!). So now I have to figure out - develop a new syllabus, or just use the old summer one I have lying around? I am bored of my 15 syllabus, but I am not sure if I am bored enough of it yet to redo it. I am unsure actually if this is non-boredom or just laziness. Probably both.

If I get to stay here next year in the department, I may well get to teach another poetry workshop. This makes me do this: !!!!!! and also this ARRRRGH because I know for SURE that I'm going to have to redo that syllabus to make the course suck way less. Intro poetry workshop is a hard fucking class to teach well, y'all.

Ooop. Five minutes are up. Off to go freak out about something else for a while (sleeping? Hooody harrrdy harr hooo)

...I think, since I've done some good old fashioned writing anxiety blogging!

Ohhhhh yeah.

Never Do This

So I have not been the most diligent of thesis-workers as of late, which is both problematic and ass-backwards, seeing as how the thing needs to go off to the printer in TEN FARGING DAYS and I have about a million things yet to do with it. It's okay. These things are not perfect even when they earn you a degree.

That said, however, tonight I made the incredibly dim-witted decision to read Poetry magazine after I'd just completed a draft of the final poem in the book.

WHOPPER OF A BAD IDEA, THAT.

I think that I get inspiration from reading books of poetry before/during/after my own writing process because books don't seem like a thing that's within my grasp at this point (yes I know I just finished one. SHHHHH). Reading journals in that same capacity, however, just makes me feel like a giant load of poetic shit, because journal pubs *do* seem accessible to me (I've even got a couple under the ol' verse-belt), but so incredibly remotely that I just slump over in my chair like I've been hit with a "this poetry is WAY BETTER THAN YOURS" tranquilizer dart.

No good!

Now all my poetry seems normative, egocentric, and slightly petty and/or myopic.

Nnnnnrrrrrrggghhhhhhh

Let me elaborate?

The "I"

...is my main problem. All the poems that are in my collection that I really remember (fondly, anyway; not like that stupid accentual-alliterative thing hanging out in there somewhere that I remember but only because it makes me go "ARRRRGH WHY") are the ones where I'm not just nattering on about myself.

Okay, that's a lie - I mean the ones in which I AM nattering on about myself, but I don't let on about it because I use "I" sparingly or not at all. I'll direct the poem towards a "you" or "we," but the minute I start sprinkling "I"s all over the damn place, I'm finding that I'm looking at it and trying to picture it in a journal somewhere and FAILING because it's just so damn "me me me me MY LIFE me me me" - there's no transference, no ability for the poem to move off the page from my personal life to the reader's.

I am not entirely sure how to get over this, considering the fact that exactly 100% of this book is about my parents. Not YOUR parents, my parents. Not theories of language, nor the deadly ramifications of _______ <--insert noun here, nor bizarre stories involving "he"s and "she"s. My parents.

PERHAPS THIS WAS A BAD CHOICE IN SUBJECT.

But I couldn't help it. I could have tried, probably, to write about 1341 other books, and this would have been the one that would have come out anyway. And now I have to deal with that fact.

But it's hard! Waaaah! Sad trombone!

I.e. it's going to be really hard to place these poems and, by consequence, the whole manuscript. I am determined to see this thing through to print, but I can say that blithely right now while not actually, intellectually, grasping the concept that it may not be at all printable.

GUYS. Don't ever let me read lit mags after writing ever again! Christ on toast!

OKEY DOKEY. Radio silence until Monday, unless something truly awful happens, in which case total radio silence. It's the woods. You never know.

Gonna go back out of a lease, try not to think about it, and then go put one foot in front of the other, literally this time, for three and a half days. All RIGHT

I suspect it is time to write a poem. At like 9:30 we'll give it a go.

Here's a list of shit:

1) Today I looked at no fewer than 7 apartments.
2) Of course, I picked the most expensive one. But I have a place to live next year! Even if I cannot afford it and have to beg my mom for money. Hardy har har.
3) I have also developed a whopper of a sore throat, in what might be the onset of the first real cold I've had in over a year.
4) RIGHT IN TIME for my hiking trip. Fughwghads.
5) My house is kind of a mess.
6) But I don't have time to clean it right now because I have to write a poem.
7) After this weekend, I will have two weeks to finish my thesis.
8)....
8)....
8)....

WAAAAAT

I also just now developed some fun new anxiety over my existence next year, if this all works out. How the hell am I going to stay friends with people? I mean, half the interaction I have with my colleagues is, you know, in a collegiate setting. If I'm never in the building (which now, depending on what I'm teaching/where my office may or may not end up, is a possibility), how do I avoid descending into bitter, isolated townie-dom? YOU GUYS I DO NOT KNOW. Mostly I will just have to make sure that I end up at social events. Yeehaw.

So that's the update. Still don't know if I'm sticking around, but if I am, I'm not out on my ear. Baby steps, because NO, I am NOT an adult STOP TREATING ME LIKE ONE

Boy, I'm tired. Still getting up around 9ish. Still mildly surprised every morning. Still a good thing.

Cementing some kick-ass friendships as of late.

And by as of late, I mean TOO LATE

Right, Because Everything Else Is Like A Series Of Mid-Air Juggling Pins That Are ON FIRE

I keep allllmost-thinking of what is going to happen to me next year vis-a-vis this whole stick-around-and-keep-at-it thing, the forecast for which is currently looking like a 50% chance of FAIL, and if I had any clue at all what it felt like to put your arm into a meat grinder, that's probably what I'd compare it to. Excepting that the excruciating pain and gore is METAPHORICAL, PEOPLE, ACADEMICS ONLY *METAPHORICALLY* EATS YOUR ARMS.

I'm proceeding as if I were to stay, which basically means scrambling around trying to find a place to live and not really looking for other jobs. The first part is a pain, and possibly risky, except for the fact that I'm entirely aware that people are always looking for places to live and worst-case-scenario, I lose some money by breaking my lease and transferring it, or I sublet for a year. The second part is probably just a bad idea. So I might get on that after Easter weekend.

Speaking of Which: DEATH MARCH

So it's a good thing that I got minimal work done this weekend, because I am going to be GONE from Thurs-Sat in the WOODS.

That's right, Kim's going camping again. Good thing I've done this what? Twice in the past three years? Ugh, kill me. My priorities! They are on BACKWARDS!

The senior seminar that I'm co-teaching is Appalachian Trail Lit (yes), and so our major project of the semester is a 45 mile walk in the woods. Over three days. You do the math. Shitty!

On the plus side, it will get my lardy butt out of this stupid chair for a few days, which is something that I could really use, and that I wish I could just get myself to DO more often. Maybe part of why I'm so good at school is that someone's always telling you to do something. This is probably also why I will never be able to be any good at business-related anything. Which at this point might be a virtue, I dunno. Maybe I should join the military.

Anyway WOODS. I'll be hiking in them. West Virginia to Pennsylvania, with my mini-life on my back. If i can do this without blisters, I'll kiss the bottoms of my dirty shoes.

There's a story behind that (NOT THE KISSING): I've had my hiking boots since late high school, and I have never, not once, gotten a blister that I can remember in them. *does some serious wood-knocking* This includes tromping up and down the Adirondacks in January, plodding up and down the AT last semester, and going on countless day hikes all over the damn place. But coming up might be the longest single day I've ever had to do with the danger of sweating (upstate NY in January = not a whole lot of sweat), and so this might be the ultimate test for my old, incredibly faithful and amazing outdoor footwear.

Here's hoping! And here's some moleskin, JUST IN CASE.

And Then

Then, I will come back and my love life will probably implode even more and I probably won't get this job and then I'll cry and whine a lot and then I'll be homeless. YAAAAAAAYYYYYYY

Ugh, when you go out to the bar before 7, you come home and you feel like it's 2AM, but it's not, it's 10PM and you could theoretically still get stuff done, but you've been at the BAR, and so you stare at your desk for a while and eat chocolate.

Isn't this what everyone does? It probably is.

I Forgot

...about the Michael Collier reading! It went very well. He kept telling me how nice my intro was, which he was doing probably because he's just one of the nicest guys I've had the privilege of meeting in a long time. There weren't as many people at his reading as I thought there were going to be; while I don't think that I had any illusions that this was going to be another Li-Young Lee reading, I thought that maybe we'd fill the library's mini-auditorium, but it wasn't the case. Alas, but also probably okay, as if it had been packed I might have done something untoward, like passed out.

(This is the problem with me flying along here without any medication. Sometimes the reason I was on meds in the first place wells up and threatens to black me out, which is NO GOOD.)

The better part of the night, really, was sitting out on the back deck of the Nittany Lion Inn and having martinis and beers with Collier and the MFA gang; it wasn't at all awkward and we had a very good time. See, uh, THIS IS WHY I DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE. Because if I can finagle it right, someone might actually keep paying me to have these kinds of experiences.

I was outside enjoying the INCREDIBLE weather earlier this afternoon, and some prospective master's student was complaining loudly on his cell that while he *could* do this whole doctorate thing, he'd be in school until he was 35 and he wouldn't even get to have a real job until he was, like, middle aged, dude.

I muttered there are so many worse things under my breath and kept reading.

Because seriously. Having a real job is probably the worst thing in the whole world. Even thinking about it makes me a little bit suicidal. If you're smart enough to not have a real job, WHY WOULD YOU?

On My Way to Becoming a Morning Person (?1?!?!-Edition)

So here's an incredible fact: I've been up and at them by 9 or BEFORE for the past two weeks.

You guys, I used to be practically nocturnal. Getting up at noon when I didn't have somewhere to be was a good day.

This is delightful! And I have no idea where it came from, but today I got my ass out of bed and got a whole grocery shopping trip done before I had to be on campus, a little before noon. This is a splendid thing because it does a good job of convincing me that I'm NOT in fact depressed about this whole horrific-transitional-stage that I'm in, and that I might managed to scrape through it with at least a few of my neurons firing adequately.

The sad thing about all this is that even though I'm jubilant about this whole waking-up business, I realize fully that most of my colleagues hold normal hours in which they are up by 8 or 9 every day. I am still not a "morning person." I don't ever think I will be. But this is improvement! Maybe I'll go for being up around 8 next week, and then I'll get to feel even better about myself. Because I really like daylight. It is good shit.

Produce Wrangling

I got stymied in the middle of guinea-pig-lettuce-prep by the basketball game. I guess, since it's NOT EVEN ELEVEN, that I can probably finish that up before going to bed. And since I am actually capable of rising more than 10 minutes before I have to be somewhere, APPARENTLY, I can let other stuff (like, uh, bathing) wait until morning.

Right now, two heads of green leaf lettuce have an appointment with my GIANT KNIFE

So here is another book recommendation. Actually, probably several book recommendations, but I am going to start with this one here because it is patently awesome.

Christian Hawkey's The Book of Funnels

BUY IT HERE, NO SERIOUSLY DO IT

This book is utterly remarkable. It's difficult without being obtuse, dreamy without being sentimental, strange without being gimmicky, and colloquial without being trite. I am insanely jealous of it, because it is everything I have ever wanted to be able to do in poetry. It's not quite Ashbery, but it nudges in that direction - talky and philosophical. I'm not entirely sure yet what the middle section, after which the book is named, is doing with its form, but I'll figure it out eventually. I raced through it the first time, leaping from one "holy crap that's a good line" to the next, and now I'm working my way through it slowly, though I have to force myself not to leap through it again in good-poetry-induced glee. It's that good.

And that's all I have to say about that!

Other Good Books

I just read K.A. Hays' Dear Apocalypse as well, and it's also quite good. Religious, but it doesn't beat you over the head with it, which is difficult to do. I get to be in class with her next week! Exciting.

What else. Oh, Paula Closson Buck's The Acquiescent Villa. Also strange and wonderful.

I also read Erin Batykefer's Allegheny, Monongahela, actually at pretty much the same time as Dear Apocalypse. If you're into verrrry clear poetry, she's the author for you. Her poems are so tightly controlled that not even a stray syllable leaks out anywhere, but I think they're a little too pat for me. They're EXCELLENTLY crafted, but I didn't do a dance like I think I might have literally done about Hawkey. But you know. To each their own.

So That's That

So go read some poetry! It's good shit!

In other news, I've got about a 50% chance of staying here next year, and a 50% chance of being out on my ear. Awesome. And then this summer, REGARDLESS of what I end up doing (with the exception of one or two possible amazing-dream-job opportunities, hardy har), I have to start thinking super hard about the fall, in which I will be applying for doctoral programs because y'all, as much as I rag on English departments, even the thought of leaving one makes me nauseated with homesickness. I just have to figure out what the hell I want to write books and articles on for four solid years. Eughghghghhhh.

Enough of that. I am getting the hell out of this office, because I am hungry and my eyeballs are about to fall out.