Yessir, I can actually right this very second post a link to my poetry, because I've been published at an online journal that I'm pretty sure has actualfax promise (at least I'd better damn well HOPE it does):


GO HERE UNTIL NEXT TUESDAY

THEN AFTER THAT GO HERE INSTEAD



That's all. Hooray verse!

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.

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.

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!

Boy, that was a stupid post last night. Huuurrrrrr, SORRY.

Anyway. Boy It's Nice Out!

I am stuck in the office, but that's actually okay because my window is thrown open and I'm surrounded by my friends. Literally. Their cubes are all on this side of the office. Glee!

Tonight's the variety show reading, at which I am not reading anything because I am not funny. This is okay though, because other people ARE funny and will be reading such things as Poems Made Entirely From the Book Titles of Penn State Faculty Members. Good times. Beers. Et cetera.

Meantime, I'm trying desperately to finish up a revision of an ode I wrote, which makes me type out the fact that I've written an ode, and the ode is to a letter of the alphabet, and APPARENTLY MY MANUSCRIPT IS ACTUALLY JUST TRANSCRIBED FROM SESAME STREET. Oh well. After ode revision: FROLF! This kind of makes me think of gp, which is kind of sad, but not really.

Guess What?

I'm going to lose two toenails!

Say it with me now: "WHY DID YOU JUST SAY THAT"

Because I wanted you all to share in my violet-hued pain. If I hadn't inherited my damn father's feet (second toes longer than first ftl), I think they'd still be intact. Oh well. I have yet another story for the No Really Kim Is SO HARDCORE Files.

(That will make three toenails total that go into that file. The toenail I lost after opening a door onto my foot went into the Kim Is A Total Moron file.)

The End

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!

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.

Book Review Time! (Caveat: I am bad at book reviews)

Wow, so, in an uncharacteristic move, I might have found a book of poetry that is a little too weird even for me.

(This is not to say that I write weird poetry. Unfortunately, as awesome as being an MFA is, it also beats the weird out of you a little bit. BUT ONLY A LITTLE FOR ME. I SWEAR TO GOD.)

Anyway, book is called the true keeps calm biding its story (yessss), and it's by Rusty Morrison, who is female. (I say that because I swore up and down it was a male author until I'd muddled through enough of the book to discern femininity.) It won a book award from the AAP, which is why I have it (yaaaay for winning prizes that culminate not only in money, but also in free award-winning books). And it's tough as shit. Maybe too tough.

But you should buy it ANYWAY!

And here is why:

I am slogging through the thing painfully slowly. It's a series of poems whose titles are all "please advise stop," (though the titles in the TOC are all the first couple of words of the first lines; I can't figure out whether this was a good idea or whether it would have been better to just go whole hog and have a whole TOC full of nothing but "please advise stop" and page numbers) and they are all right-justified, and they all have lines that end in either "stop," "please," or "advise." Read: this is a series of telegrams. Gimmicky? Or brilliant? I tend to give gimmicks the benefit of the doubt at first, especially when they seem like they're SO ridiculous that the author HAS to justify them at some point, or the thing would never have ended up in print (I'll probably eat those words later in life, somehow).

Anyway, the poems are extremely difficult not only because the line endings literally make you stop at the end, but because the lines themselves really don't want to cohere. She makes these utterly enormous leaps from image to image, and you find yourself reading lines four or five times just to get them to come together syntactically.

This, my friends, would go over poorly in workshop.

About That

The workshop-bombing thing is probably why I am not only giving the true keeps calm the benefit of the doubt, but going on and saying that everyone who does poetry should own a copy of a book that's this obtuse. Because even if you have NO INCLINATION to write a series of obscure telegraphs (and you probably shouldn't, because now it's been done), owning and reading and absorbing books like this one is tantamount, in my opinion, to keeping your imagination alive and fed.

As I think more and more about what will ever become of my writing, I think more and more about how we all distinguish ourselves as writers with a voice, a temperament, and an aesthetic inclination - and while I realize that there aren't exactly infinite aesthetics, I'd go so far as to say that there are probably infinite combinations of the three. (Spell check keeps telling me that "combinations" is not a word. Really? You can't have more than one combination? Or is it like deer? Why am I admitting this?) And as I think about the ways in which conventional schooling and the workshop model produce writing, the more I think that reading weird books is essential. Because the MFA does nothing to keep us weird. In fact, just the opposite (don't get me started). Books like the truth keeps calm, on the other hand, even if they may not MAKE us weirder (though maybe they should), are a persistent reminder that weirdness exists, and is good, and is possible. And wins things.

Because truly, we're in desperate need of more bravery.

The caveat: NOT WEIRDNESS FOR WEIRDNESS'S SAKE. This is the fine line; it's the same fine line on the other end of the spectrum between a pat aphorism at the end of a pretty pastoral and an ending that actually means something. I'm still trying to figure out where I stand on weird for weird vis a vis Morrison's book. I'm thinking it's purposeful and good. But I haven't fully digested it yet. Thus, I am still burping up thoughts. END METAPHOR

So anyway. Thus ends my bad book review. Go get the book. And TOMORROW, I'll tell you to buy another book, this one being hands-down the best first book of contemporary poetry that I have ever read, ever. Impressive! Hold on to your seats!

*pant pant pant pant*

So, I've been in the office for abouuuuut 4 hours now, and I'm about to go batshit insane, and I *would* leave if it weren't for the prospect of Daniel coming to get me in a minute and then going to drink many beers. (It's a sports bar. I guess I'll drink beer. Fughwghagds.)

Why The Desire for Descending Into Drunkenness? Also, Alliteration?

BECAUUUUSE this might have been the slowest week of my life. I think that my perception of time must slow down in proportion to how fast my mind is racing around in stupid little circles in my head; since my brain appears to be going for the world record in every possible sprint this week, I thought it was Friday on, like TUESDAY. Suck!

So now it really IS almost Friday, and by almost I mean it's Thursday, and by Friday I mean it is going to take me about 371231 hours to get through Friday because I am going to have the jitters all day about introducing Collier. Good times.

Oh, also, other things, which will probably get exacerbated by tonight's outing to the watering hole, but WHATEVER.

OH BUT WAIT

I managed to be a professional writer today! This means that someone paid me dollars for poetry!

I won the department's (and the Academy of American Poets) Steinberg Award for the second time today, which was pretty awesome as it both pays me and gives me a line on my CV. And I won it for a first draft of a poem! (I probably shouldn't be telling people that.)

So that's a cool twofer I just got in there. V. exciting.

So what I should be doing right now instead of updating this stupid thing is writing a profoundly thankful note to the donor who thinks that it's a good idea to pay rent for poets. BLESS HER.

So, as the title suggests, I have to go actually write a poem in 20 minutes (I'm giving myself until 10, because I'm obsessive about starting tasks on a round clock-time. Don't ask). I would use a revision from my thesis, but this week we got a fun assignment, which I will have to use if I ever get to teach poetry ever again.

Basically, Julia asked us to jot down terms from our own work onto note cards. These could either be themes, or literally words that we use a lot. I picked generic stuff like "birds" and "water" because I tend to write a lot about generic things like birds and water. Also fruit. Anyways, so we did that, and then she's all "okay, now hand that card to the person on your left," and so we did that, and then she goes "that's your assignment for next week."

I happened to be sitting next to John, a great friend of mine but also a kid that tends to write about Southern religious fury.

Har har!

So I got stuff like Jesus and wrath, which is fine, actually, because it occurs to me that I have no written one SINGLE poem that directly addresses the Catholicism of the Philippines. I feel the Jesus-in-a-prom-gown story coming on. IN VERSE. Oh help.

Not Ready Not Ready Not Ready Not Ready

Funny thing about my life: the older I get, the less I want to have anything to do with getting older.

This is not a revelation. This is a Hallmark Card. Boooo. But it *is* rather true, and it's more true for me now every day.

I am freaking out about the prospect of not being able to hang out EVER AGAIN with all the awesome people that I've met here. (This is not to say that I hung out with people all that often. It's grad school, and I think about 2 people every class manage to keep up the whole out-all-the-time thing past their first year or so. But still.) I am freaking out about not having a social network that comes together seamlessly because you have something very fundamental in common that actually involves MORE than working in the same office (though that helps).

In other words, the prospect of me going into the "real world" (??) is like trying to take a cat for a walk. You can try to drag me out the door, but goddammit, I AM TAKING HALF THE CARPET AND ALL OF YOUR COATS WITH ME.

*gnash gnash*

This is a stereotypical feeling, I am sure, but what makes it extra-special on my end is that it's patently the opposite of what happened at the end of my undergraduate career. Like, exactly one hundred and eighty degrees of opposite. I was so fed up at Hopkins, I was in a bad place emotionally, and I fucked it all up.

This, I could do forever. And ever and ever! And be perfectly okay.


NoooOOOOoooooOoOoOoooooo don't take me out for a walk *claw claw claw claw*

You guys, if you are ALSO emotional napalm, I would not recommend reading this ridiculous comic from front to back, like I just did. Hoof. Eyeball-hurty.

That's all for Today

I've written a ton today. I feel like an empty well in other regards too, so I'm just going to call it a linking-well-done, and GOODNIGHT.

YOU ARE EXCITED ABOUT THIS AND WANT TO READ IT, YOU JUST DON'T KNOW IT YET

Ready Go

230pm: I should not have eaten that much Indian food. I could do this, or I could take a nap.

243pm: WHY DIDN'T SOMEONE TELL ME THAT ALL MY POEMS ARE THE SAME THING

255pm: Okay. I was very nervous for a minute there, because I was all "I know! I'll mark with a little sticky tab the poems that really need a whole lot of work and therefore I should try to redo entirely within the next few weeks" and then I promptly ran through a whole pile of poems that BLEW. But I think they were just on top because they hadn't been revised in a while, so panic has abated. Slightly.

302pm: Divvied up thesis into PA pile and Philippines pile. They're roughly equal! Good for me and my sense of poetic balance.

315pm: Pennsylvania pile: SORTED. I feel kinda good about it. No idea how to transition into the Philippines part. If this ever gets to print, and you guys buy it, SORRY GUYS for that really awkward "wait now we are in Southeast Asia we did not even get on a PLANE" part in the middle

335pm: One hour in. Taking a break. My eyeballs kind of hurt, and also, I do not want to get discouraged. I have all afternoon, anyways.

339pm: You know what's annoying? Trying to focus on the task at hand when you're also trying to tell your emotions-about-something-entirely-unrelated to SHUT THE FUCK UP FOR A SECOND ALREADY

351pm: Okay. Back at it. Philippines part. I probably shouldn't be doing this while also listening to Danish pop music.

410pm: My arm hurts from flipping pages. Apparently, I need go to the gym more, because this is pathetic.

422pm: I feel like this should be taking me longer.

427pm: DONE. Two hours to organize a whole manuscript? Either I'm doing it wrong or I had a better idea of what I wanted to say than I thought. Knowing me, it's probably both - I have a clear idea of what I want to say, but what I want to say is wrong. DOUBLE TROUBLE

427pm: Also, titles - the one clever title is too long, I think, and everything else just seems mediocre. No one is going to buy a book entitled The Result of an Overabundance of Scenery, will they? Grararararar

439pm: Comparing to my thesis director's ordering - vaguely similar, but only one or two poems in the actual same place. Hrummmm.

454pm: Okay. I'm calling it a day on this one. Now I have finished early, I just got a good phone call (SECRETS I HAS THEM) and so now I can spend the afternoon in mental peace, reading Dillard and not freaking the pigs out with my music. Good enough.

Wasn't That Fun?

I thought it was.

So, Here's A Thing That Sucks.

Got a letter from my mom the other day, notifying me that my great aunt, who took me in nearly every weekend while I was in the Philippines and fed me...stuff...and FISH!...and PORK!...has developed what looks like extensive cancer of the liver.

She's got 6 months to live? (Question mark because we're not really sure)

*Siiigghhhhhhhhhh.*

I was talking to Gram (paternal, not Lola, ughhhh) about it today before I left and I was going on about how she's one of the nicest people on that side of the whole big stupid Filipino family and Gram goes "yeah, but you don't get to pick who these things happen to" and I KNEW she was referring to Grandpa, and I felt a little bad.

But I rationalize: Grandpa had, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly normal family. No one was, say, CFO of a wildly corrupt mining corporation. Or a nearly demented, certainly paranoid and DEFINITELY malicious old witch calling my mother, who is taking wholesale care of her father, negligent. In other words, the evil had nowhere to go, really, on Gramp's side of the family. On Tita Nene's, it REALLY COULD HAVE GONE SOMEWHERE MORE USEFUL, KTHX.

Like Tito Rogelio, said CFO. (See this entry.) For a guy who got a graduate degree from STANFORD before going on to oppress some indigenous peoples for a living, he's remarkably stupid - his first question was not "how can we help her be more comfortable?" or "should we bring her to a different doctor?", but was "can I take this vitamin supplement that is hawked all over the Philippines much in the manner of ShamWOW in the United States to prevent MYSELF from getting liver cancer? Would that help?"

I am paraphrasing, but that was the drift. I would like to recommend to you, Shitty Uncle, a supplement consisting of two packs of unfiltered cigarettes and about a pint of bourbon a day. That should clear your liver right the fuck up.

Liveraide. What the fuck.

Okay, Okay, Okay

Breathe. So that was crappy. Hopefully the diagnosis is more severe than the actual problem and maybe then I'll have time to go back and pay her a last visit. I wasn't sure about going back to the Philippines anytime soon (...after all, what would I DO there? I was so busy the first time around that I feel like if I went back, I'd just sit around being hot. Uh, more often than I did last summer. Which was a lot, come to think of it), but this might have made up my mind.

I don't know when I'm going to fit in all these grand plans I have in my head. Making it in LA! Living in Europe! Going back to the Philippines! WAIT I'M FORTY AND I STILL HAVE NO JOB HOW DID THAT HAPPEN

So maybe I'll be headed back after all, and even sooner. We'll see.

Presently, on THIS Side of the Globe

I'm back at my parents' house for a day. Leaving on Saturday for Breck (HEY anaisninja AND ALSO zovietsquid WHEN ARE YOU TWO FREE SRS BSZNZNZNZZ), then back at the grind.

The grind, as it turns out, will be even...grindier...when I get back, because I'm starting my Shmoop job while also finishing my thesis while also taking a more active role in the course that I've been sort of half-assedly coteaching while also doing that Composition Blog thing (waaaat).

On the bright side, this is probably a good thing in the short run, because I will be so busy that I won't have time to think about the fact that a) I have no future plans, and b) I'm frigging single. So there IS that.

Meantime, radio silence will probably be had on Saturday due to air travels. I'm sure you're all devastated.

...an entry that makes at least a little logical sense. I make, however, no promises.

Post-Apocalyptic Comedown

(Worst band name ever?)

No, what I am referring to is the fact that I just turned in two copies of the rough draft of my thesis in to my two readers, and am now suffering from the "...boooonowwhat?" thing that typically happens after you've ratcheted yourself over some large-ish milestone.

It still needs a TON of work. LET NO ONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE. But the pages are there, and they seem to want to cohere, and I'm pretty pleased with some of it (while being unremittingly angry at other parts for failing to make ANY DAMN SENSE AT ALL). My biggest surprise is that I've actually managed to work on my poetry at a relatively consistent rate and not want to gouge my eyeballs out with a rusty bread knife - of course the more I think about it, the less surprised I become because I can do some pretty ridiculous things when faced with an imminent deadline.

This is why I have always been such a good student, often without trying too hard. If you tell me "x is due on THIS DAY," I will get it done. Period. I can count the times that I have missed major academic deadlines on one hand.

IF, however, it's a project that has no foreseeable end (read: about 4 article projects sitting at home, my website, learning photography), then I'm a nearly interminable procrastinator.

I wonder what this says about the kinds of work options I should be looking for after this.

Another Blog?1?!

Oh noes. After break (which is THIS COMING WEEK OMGPONIES), I'm going to be 50% of the blog authorship at PSU's Composition Blog, which right now has no content whatsoever. This is kind of ridiculous, but also a good thing, as it contains two things I need desperately: a) a topic on which to focus that is NOT ME, and b) an imminent deadline (i.e. they want to have x number of posts every week).

This could devolve into lame pedagogy ramblings, but I will try to keep it as interesting as possible. After all, both people that will be reading that thing deserve only the best. (However, if you're interested in teaching writing at all, it might not be a bad idea to a) read it, and b) give me tips on how not to SUCK AT IT.)

So that will start in two weeks. Get excited.

Break!

It's this week! I'm going back to Breck! This is all very exciting, except for the fact that I have to do a lot of meta-school work before I get back. (Meta-school. Mostly, I think that that is what English departments are composed of. We're just going to talk, endlessly, about how we talk about what we talk about. Hoooorraaaay)

By meta I mean teaching philosophy statements, teaching with technology assessments, critical introductions to my own work, blah blah. It's not nearly as fun as being narcissistic in poetry. It also hits the proverbial home run in "everything that I do in life right now is about MEEEE," which is both satisfying (I have no committments!) and kind of awful (I should probably, you know, think about someone else for a a change! How about that! What!).

And then I will come home to an empty house. Just me and the pigs again. This will be good for me - some kind of starting place where I can implement some other changes I've been meaning to do for a while (mostly about using the Internet somewhat efficiently, so that I'm not both on it 26 hours a day and somehow also not getting a frigging thing done).

I've run out of steam. But we're back on track! Tomorrow I get to see momma and dad. I'm really five, so this is super-exciting.

So, today I thought "hey, I have like SIX HOURS of uninterrupted time between events-at-which-I-have-to-be today! This can only mean good things for my writing!"

...FOUR HOURS LATER, and I've gotten like 1.5 things done. This is pathetic.

Q&A Fail

It's been a week for "fail" subheaders. This is indicative of...most things going on lately, actually.

Anyway, so, over the past few weeks I've had about 134908172 people ask me, "hey, Kim, what are you going to do next year?" and I'm all "hahaha, I have no idea, isn't that funny? I think it's funny!" and they're all like "that's a good attitude to have, I'm sure you'll find something awesome" and generally, it's not awkward at all. The problem is that in my HEAD, I'm doing something like this:

OMG OMG OMG EFF EFF EFF SHIT SHIT


And while, you know, ha ha ha blinky text, I'm practicing avoidance like a mofo because every time I put some actual, dedicated thought towards trying to figure out what happens to my useless-degreed, newly-single self after this whole MFA rigmarole is over, my heart does this fun little jumping-bean impression that makes me think that I will fall over. It is no good.

I mean, it's not like gp and I had these concrete plans or anything, but it's so much easier to say "I dunno what I'm doing! Let's do something fun!" when there's actually a let's in the conversation, not just me. Not to mention that it's about 14x more expensive to live on your own. I am tempted to just up and move to California, but what the everloving HELL would I do once I got there?

(Oh, and PS - no one's allowed to call me out on failing utterly at my "no moar navel-gazing, you guyz" because I know, I know, and I will beat you with a bat)

So that's like eight weeks away. EIGHT WEEKS. SHITTY.

So Anyways

Man, there is no anyways - I can't think straight. I'm going to catch up on about 800 strips worth of Questionable Content, which is keeping me from killing things ATM. Til tomorrow.

Fastest Cat Update Ever ThenISwearIllStopSrsly

Mr. ToeBeans is back home. He spent the night at the vet, getting poked and pill-fed and blood-paneled and fecal floated. He's got ROUNDWORM! (Everybody now: "ewwwwwwwwwwgh.")

This explains the bacteria and the fever. He's now on a lovely pill schedule, and is refusing to go to the bathroom in the pile of dirt we put in the living room. (I wish I were kidding. We filled a pan with dirt, in order to make it seem more like his "natural environs." If we really wanted to go whole hog, we could have thrown in a few busted cans of PBR, and maybe a used condom.)

The joys.

And Now, Something that Does Not Have Anything to do With Fecal Impaction

Seriously! I'm going to talk about poetry instead. It's been a bit.

Most of my bloggy frustration (and, uh, RL frustration, but who cares) has stemmed, I think, from the fact that I'm way too close to my thesis mss and I kind of had one of those breakdown weekends where the cat was sick, gp was a dick as a result, and I was all "but MEEEEEEEEEE," which wasn't helping anything. So consequently, everything that I have ever written suddenly sucked beyond any other sucking that has ever sucked the suck, and, you know:



So that was kind of awesome.

ANYWAY, How It Turned Right Round Baby Right Round

You may imagine my overall *grommmmp* factor, then, when I woke up at the buttcrack of dawn this morning to trudge my way over to the Poetry Out Loud regional competition, at which I was supposed to be the "Featured Guest Artist." I had prepared some retarded speech that was all "yo, poetry is important, high school is kinda neat, don't do drugs y'all, hurrrrr" and collected some suckity-suck-suck-suck poems to blurt at them after they'd performed a few classics.

I AM JUST LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE POETRYFACE.

Of course, you all know where this is going: I got there, and it was patently awesome. I got all nostalgic for high school (?!?!?) (don't ever let me do that again) (no seriously), everyone was omg-so-incredibly-adorable, and then when they got up to perform Browning or Keats or Olds or whoever, they just sold it. I was sitting next to the parents of the eventual winner the whole time, and they were telling me about how they would recite poems to their daughter when she was little, and how they really hoped she'd grow up to be a poet or a humanities scholar. Here comes the WAT face: o____O

It was deeeeeelightful, and it was exactly perfectly patently what I needed, because there's no morale booster quite like having a room full of people generally think that what you are doing is The Shit. (Especially when you are taking repeated morale beatings at home mmmmmmkay*TMI*)

And best of all, the crappity-crap-crap-CRAAAAP poems that I'd brought to read? Reading them out loud to an audience that had never heard the things before made me go over them totally differently, to see what they felt like coming off the page, and it was OKAY. (People raved, but I think they were just being nice.) I'd been so close to them for so long, going over them with a microscope, that I'd forgotten about the big picture of just *speaking the whole thing.* Which is the damn POINT of the art at the end of the day, no?

Anyways it was super refreshing. Went to the cafe and banged out 4 revisions that I'm actually all right with. Then I did about 230957103498 loads of laundry, and now I'm so tired I can't see straight because I've gotten about 7 hours of sleep out of the past 72.

Stay Tuned

...flist, for something dramatic later!

AUGH. I missed yesterday. I'm sure that that's devastating.

Anyhoo, Cat

Photographic evidence!

( Read more... )

In Which I am Determined Not to Be an Antisocial Tard

Tonight, I swear, I am going to go out and socialize. Last night I got a sudden case of Highly Misanthropic, and spent the afternoon sleeping and moping. Not good form. On the plus side, I think I managed to wade my way through two poems that were just OUTRAGEOUSLY bad, and fix them into something that's only EYEBROW-RAISINGLY bad. Progress!

Okay, I'm a greaseball, time to shower so that I don't leave a trail of slime all the way to the party.