And I know. And I know that if I add it all up, it was a B. It probably was a B above the 85%. And I haven't felt this dissapointed in myself in a while. I knew that I slacked with the English Lit. I (haven't even reiceved the grade yet, so I shouldn't jinx anything...) know that I was sluggish and slow in the Englsh Lit class. I was not present and couldn't get there. But I was there for the Americn Lit...I just didn't make it on time for the final paper...and I missed one reading journal...I suppose Jodi got the scholarship for a reason. Yes, I'm whining, yes, I'm sad. But it was me. It was me letting other things get the best of me.
I hate getting Bs in English classes. But, I've learned my lesson. I can't get away with B effort and work if I want As.
Today I got back from my Uncle's memorial service in WA. He leaves behind four daughters, one married. The youngest is nine, or ten, and he was 59 or 60 when he passed away. He died the Friday before all of my finals, of rectal cancer, of all the cancers! I was so sad for all of my nieces and aunt. But the trip to WA was good, fun with all of my family, we get crazy and have so much fun. My uncle Rick would have been proud.
But we're glad to be back in the LBC, where the Pabst Blue Ribbon flows like wine, and I can cry my eyes out over my B, like the cheap sobber that I am.
Fin.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
And blogging, too.
Just a short list of all the things I've been doing instead of writing my last English paper, reading the novel for the English final, and finishing the Semester Project:
*Crocheting with my best friend almost all day (last Saturday).
*Drinking Belgian beer at 12 noon (today).
*Napping (Monday).
*Talking on the phone (n/a).
*Sleeping in, then eating a feast a the Yardhouse, including a half-yard + pint of Franciskaner, penne pasta, and onion rings (you'd have thought we were high, which we weren't), then taking a nap, then eating veggie vindaloo for dinner (Sunday). (What the heck! are we training for Sumo?)
What is wrong with me? I have inherited the most lethal procrastination from my parents. It's a sickness, really. I'm to the point where I'm like, that's it. I have no self-control. And one obsession with control leads to another, too much eating, too much drinking, avoiding, avoiding, avoiding.
As soon as this semester is over, it's time. It's time to get things in hand. I'm going to use this blog this summer as my literature anaylsis update, and my weight watchers progress. I know it's white middle class and pitiable of me, but this has to be checked on. So if reading about my lb or inch loss bores you, dear reader, skip it and move on to where I talk about books and school and learning and stuff.
Man, this semester was fab until everything caught up with me.
*Crocheting with my best friend almost all day (last Saturday).
*Drinking Belgian beer at 12 noon (today).
*Napping (Monday).
*Talking on the phone (n/a).
*Sleeping in, then eating a feast a the Yardhouse, including a half-yard + pint of Franciskaner, penne pasta, and onion rings (you'd have thought we were high, which we weren't), then taking a nap, then eating veggie vindaloo for dinner (Sunday). (What the heck! are we training for Sumo?)
What is wrong with me? I have inherited the most lethal procrastination from my parents. It's a sickness, really. I'm to the point where I'm like, that's it. I have no self-control. And one obsession with control leads to another, too much eating, too much drinking, avoiding, avoiding, avoiding.
As soon as this semester is over, it's time. It's time to get things in hand. I'm going to use this blog this summer as my literature anaylsis update, and my weight watchers progress. I know it's white middle class and pitiable of me, but this has to be checked on. So if reading about my lb or inch loss bores you, dear reader, skip it and move on to where I talk about books and school and learning and stuff.
Man, this semester was fab until everything caught up with me.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Nightmares and Poetry
Last night before I drifted off to sleep, I had the kind of dream that doesn't let you go back to sleep. In the dream I was laying in bed, much like those waking dreams go, and the phone was ringing next to my ear. I answered it, and a man's voice asked, "Is this Marlon Brando?" And I giggled, thinking what sort of nut is calling asking for Marlon Brando? I was trying to get Todd to listen to this, and in the dream I was nudging him in bed, like, babe, listen to this... and then when I turned my attention back to the phone, the voice, after a long pause, said, I have had a tape sent to me...
I woke with a jolt. The tape the man was talking of was typewriter tape. I have a couple of old typewriters, and the voice was talking about the ribbon being sent to him, like a roll of film, with all of my words imprinted. The dream was very frightening. I have tried since to figure it out. I know writing is a very interesting and deeply personal process for me. I sometimes feel anxiety about having a blog, or letting other people read my writing. A thought racing through my head was that I should erase all of this blog, and go into a shell (you think I'm kidding). I know something about the dream threatened me with accountability.
Of course, everything was rosier in the morning...
I'm sick. It's a virus and there's not much to do about it. I'm fatigued and feverish and the cleaning ladies are coming in the morning.
I have been researching my (late) paper for American Lit, when I just couldn't take it anymore. I have a new topic, and I have to write about it. It goes something like this -- writers often write about people who write, but poets write about life. Poets, can, through the ambiguity concerning persona and poet, own the exploration of life. Plath, and Ginsberg, and Brooks, [Isn't it amazing what our brains do? I went to class Tuesday night, and outside the 500 building there was Angie, and Blythe, and Tom, and that other guy, and Drew, and I went in to the cafe to get a diet energy drink, and I came out, and Angie was saying, "Oh, I like Brooke's." And I was like, "You like my what?" And she said, "I just like you dear, do I have to get specific?" And a few more lines exchanged, and I was so confused. Yesterday it hit me, because my brain, disconcerted with the chaos presented it, had figured out that the group had been talking about Gwendolyn Brooks, whose poems we were to have read, and Angie was saying she liked "Brooks" not "Brooke's." So self absorbed! So egomaniacal!] they write about the sorrows and the pain, so much less than fictional characters experience them, but more directly, yet, less obviously. Oh, dear. I had it. I promise.
I want to write about how even though we feel that we are in the Post Modernist age of literature in America, we really aren't. We are still trying to deal with the aftermath of WWI. America is still trying to find its soul. America went on an adventure to find a home, and lost its soul. It tried to find its soul by saying, look, now we have the room to breathe and buy, we will surely find our souls in all this space and cash! But look, we have no soul. Plath -- she is so souless that she can't even die. She tries to kill herself twice, and it just won't happen. Doctors who are trying to patch her up think they are saving her soul when she tells them, look, you big moron, it's just a show, this body, this life, what you think is so important. Brooks takes one of the most inflammatory and controvertial subjects of the twentieth century and rummages through the darkest sides of it -- she writes about a woman who has abortions who has feelings for her fetuses, who imagines them growing up, and owns her actions, neither judging herself or chalking her decisions up to rights and sciences. And Ginsberg. Ginsberg. The hairy elephant in the room. I can almost smell him. He writes of the poet, of the failure to find the soul, of the process of creating a poem in America, like ripping the deepest organ from your body like the bravest Aztec, the bravest Mayan, the most courageous soul-surgeon, driving home the point that if the world had introduced a horror to Kurtz, a horror to Jake, a horror to Addie, a horror to the invisible man, it hadn't stopped, it hadn't slowed, the horror was now unstoppable, unslowable, indefatigable, and the fiction writers could try to write about people who were trying to write while experiencing the horror, but the poets were bleeding on the altar of language, of English, of the imperialist toungue that would don so many costumes, so many names for the cause of the capitalist, freedom being the dirtiest word ever coined, they were spreading their arms and saying, here, I am the murderer of my children, here, I am a Jew who loves a fascist, here, I am a madman who lives in beauty. They were wallowing and frollicking, and sometimes laughing and mostly screaming in terror at America.
America. The road to America. The path is cleared -- the scary monsters dead. And we sit alone with the horror, sometimes the crickets chirp, and the poets forever shout into our ears -- don'tforgetdon'tforgetdon'tforget. Even Sylvia, don't pity her! she knew all about America. She knew that even when it seemed like America couldn't recover, America would rise. She knew what America meant. She knew that ideas can't die. Brooks knew, she knew that someday America would have to face what it had been trying to conceal with scientific data, something about language and euphamisms, and dealing with what hurt you caused others from their perspective. And Ginsberg, telling us what we thought impossible, that madness is genius trying to exist in the 1950s. If their genius wasn't aiding the government in oppressing the rest of the world, then it was madness, and there was no cure.
So what's my thesis, you ask? I don't know. i just know that I have to write about Modernism, how these poets are exploring modernist themes, how American culture is really anticulture, and how they take responsibilty for expressing the horror of the times and magnify it by puting themselves in the mix. It's the poets who tell us who we are.
I woke with a jolt. The tape the man was talking of was typewriter tape. I have a couple of old typewriters, and the voice was talking about the ribbon being sent to him, like a roll of film, with all of my words imprinted. The dream was very frightening. I have tried since to figure it out. I know writing is a very interesting and deeply personal process for me. I sometimes feel anxiety about having a blog, or letting other people read my writing. A thought racing through my head was that I should erase all of this blog, and go into a shell (you think I'm kidding). I know something about the dream threatened me with accountability.
Of course, everything was rosier in the morning...
I'm sick. It's a virus and there's not much to do about it. I'm fatigued and feverish and the cleaning ladies are coming in the morning.
I have been researching my (late) paper for American Lit, when I just couldn't take it anymore. I have a new topic, and I have to write about it. It goes something like this -- writers often write about people who write, but poets write about life. Poets, can, through the ambiguity concerning persona and poet, own the exploration of life. Plath, and Ginsberg, and Brooks, [Isn't it amazing what our brains do? I went to class Tuesday night, and outside the 500 building there was Angie, and Blythe, and Tom, and that other guy, and Drew, and I went in to the cafe to get a diet energy drink, and I came out, and Angie was saying, "Oh, I like Brooke's." And I was like, "You like my what?" And she said, "I just like you dear, do I have to get specific?" And a few more lines exchanged, and I was so confused. Yesterday it hit me, because my brain, disconcerted with the chaos presented it, had figured out that the group had been talking about Gwendolyn Brooks, whose poems we were to have read, and Angie was saying she liked "Brooks" not "Brooke's." So self absorbed! So egomaniacal!] they write about the sorrows and the pain, so much less than fictional characters experience them, but more directly, yet, less obviously. Oh, dear. I had it. I promise.
I want to write about how even though we feel that we are in the Post Modernist age of literature in America, we really aren't. We are still trying to deal with the aftermath of WWI. America is still trying to find its soul. America went on an adventure to find a home, and lost its soul. It tried to find its soul by saying, look, now we have the room to breathe and buy, we will surely find our souls in all this space and cash! But look, we have no soul. Plath -- she is so souless that she can't even die. She tries to kill herself twice, and it just won't happen. Doctors who are trying to patch her up think they are saving her soul when she tells them, look, you big moron, it's just a show, this body, this life, what you think is so important. Brooks takes one of the most inflammatory and controvertial subjects of the twentieth century and rummages through the darkest sides of it -- she writes about a woman who has abortions who has feelings for her fetuses, who imagines them growing up, and owns her actions, neither judging herself or chalking her decisions up to rights and sciences. And Ginsberg. Ginsberg. The hairy elephant in the room. I can almost smell him. He writes of the poet, of the failure to find the soul, of the process of creating a poem in America, like ripping the deepest organ from your body like the bravest Aztec, the bravest Mayan, the most courageous soul-surgeon, driving home the point that if the world had introduced a horror to Kurtz, a horror to Jake, a horror to Addie, a horror to the invisible man, it hadn't stopped, it hadn't slowed, the horror was now unstoppable, unslowable, indefatigable, and the fiction writers could try to write about people who were trying to write while experiencing the horror, but the poets were bleeding on the altar of language, of English, of the imperialist toungue that would don so many costumes, so many names for the cause of the capitalist, freedom being the dirtiest word ever coined, they were spreading their arms and saying, here, I am the murderer of my children, here, I am a Jew who loves a fascist, here, I am a madman who lives in beauty. They were wallowing and frollicking, and sometimes laughing and mostly screaming in terror at America.
America. The road to America. The path is cleared -- the scary monsters dead. And we sit alone with the horror, sometimes the crickets chirp, and the poets forever shout into our ears -- don'tforgetdon'tforgetdon'tforget. Even Sylvia, don't pity her! she knew all about America. She knew that even when it seemed like America couldn't recover, America would rise. She knew what America meant. She knew that ideas can't die. Brooks knew, she knew that someday America would have to face what it had been trying to conceal with scientific data, something about language and euphamisms, and dealing with what hurt you caused others from their perspective. And Ginsberg, telling us what we thought impossible, that madness is genius trying to exist in the 1950s. If their genius wasn't aiding the government in oppressing the rest of the world, then it was madness, and there was no cure.
So what's my thesis, you ask? I don't know. i just know that I have to write about Modernism, how these poets are exploring modernist themes, how American culture is really anticulture, and how they take responsibilty for expressing the horror of the times and magnify it by puting themselves in the mix. It's the poets who tell us who we are.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Spongebrooke Squarepants
So, today, I, me, I, was awarded with Honorable Mention for all my hard work and talent in writing. It's mostly like, what? But then a lot, thankyouthankyouiloveyouiloveyouallhurrahhurrah!!! All my English department crushes were there, and I thanked them all in a speech with sweaty palms and nervous giggles and strange lapses in memory that ended up in dramatic pauses that weren't intentional but came out okay. I can't believe I stuttered over Tamara Trujillio -- bizzare. My husband shocked me and cancelled a very important business meeting to be there, such a lover. Although I love getting to speak before a captive audience, my favorite part of the tea (did they even serve tea? I kept getting handed ice cream soda) was Joe's presentation to the Vietnamese student, that choked me up! But I loved my presents, they were awesome! Joe got me Ebert's essays on movies vol. I and II, and I'm thrilled. Jeanne bought me a book that seems lovely, and she said that she has given it to all the people that she loves...I felt like Spongebob Squarepants when he gets his lovey face on, all eyelashes and doe eyes.
I don't know what that feeling is, it's not quite joy, but it's a lot aw shucks and thanks and shoot. Yeah, I just posted a picture of Spongebob. Spongebob and Faulkner; I'm American, after all.
Update! Here are some photos.
Here's Joe giving me my presents. I love presents! I love Joe!
The Dream Team (minus Tamara and Jon Ison). I love these people.
The Gold Seal says it all, baby. I'm legit.
I don't know what that feeling is, it's not quite joy, but it's a lot aw shucks and thanks and shoot. Yeah, I just posted a picture of Spongebob. Spongebob and Faulkner; I'm American, after all.Update! Here are some photos.
Here's Joe giving me my presents. I love presents! I love Joe!
The Dream Team (minus Tamara and Jon Ison). I love these people.
The Gold Seal says it all, baby. I'm legit.
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
The Sound and the Fury
I started my summer reading a little early, and I'm delighted so far with Sound. I know a little about the plot, but some things are throwing me off in this first chapter. I think at least once Quentin is referred to as a she. I'm not sure if I have that right, or maybe I misread. I only have two research papers due shortly and a midterm biotest before my fina bio test as well as the two finals in literature to ponder, as well as the English Lit semester project to start/finish. I'm sorry to say that the English 212 class I took this semester turned out to be a dud. It makes me sad. Well, you golden babies, they can't all be super stars, can they?
Monday, April 30, 2007
Puke of Conciousness
We're well into stream of conciousness writing in both Lit classes, and my 212 instructor, Nadine Arndt, let us know that she has noticed bloggers utilizing this form, "just puking whatever is in their heads onto the screen." I instantly thought, this woman has been reading my blog! Sneeaky! So my brain has sufficient punctuation? So what? It's still mind vomit -- I see it sort of sliding its way down the screen, smelling a little like moldy cheese, a little like an overripe mango -- not too chunky, but slimy. I know it's not steel, I know it's just blather and musings and...well. I was called on my blog technique. It's so humiliating when sweet ladies know the truth about naked things -- and then get to stay sweet!
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Monks, Beer, and Those Big Silver Earrings
A beer that I've been enjoying lately is Franziskaner Weissbier, a lovely Hefe-Weissbier that hails from Munich. On the label is a white monk with a golden apron, holding three keys. He must be smug, bringing hef to the Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles. This Gentile is certainly grateful.
I'm not sure if Holiday Reinhorn is German, or Jewish, or a German Jew, but I am sure she is from Portland at some point, and that city, that drizzly city with the beautiful Powell bookstore and plethora of bridges and home of the best breakfast on the West Coast, and maybe it's the best because I've only eaten there with my best friend and when I went to use the bathroom found that someone, anyone, had put a plastic shark toy in the toilet, and it touched me so that I could neither bring myself to fish it out, nor pee on it and hope that all ends well. I used the men's room. I left that brave shark for someone else to find, hoping secretly that they would have some kind of moral dillema, as it did, but hoping secret from my secret self that someone would have the guts and reach a bare hand in -- or dare to muck up Portland's game, their pristine air and green tree game, their preserved historical buildings and Edenic Rose Garden with the rows and rows of bees, gorging in their eternal mud wrestle with sticky bud dust, eager to continue the dance of infinity, their enveloping public library with its comfy chairs and meaningful staircase. Oh, Portland's artists -- how you are loved and envied. Where do you get your awareness, your general love, your appreciation for the authentic? And more importantly, Holiday, your large silver earrings?
Oh, I know, I know, she got them because one of her friends is a designer, up and comming, you can read about her in the new issue of InStyle magazine (read -- they're one of a kind and you shall never have them as cool as I have them). Or, I got them when I was in Iraq on business in 2000 -- I think the boutique is blown up or something (read -- I was doing something you will probably never even want to do in a place you will never be able to do it in and which doesn't even exist anymore).
I hope, dear reader, you have noticed that I have been dancing, rather metaphorically, around the issue the ithhhhsuuu. Being. That. Writing. Should be easy. Except. Somehow, I got involved in a great mental debate with myself -- secret and otherwise -- about the validity of writing. The validity of stories. A vortex that, much like that cat of great physiscs fame, only exists if I look at it. The even more annoying and only faintly interesting part is that the vortex exists in my brain, and looking at it in the physical universe is impossible -- so the looking at it is with my mind's eye, which when looking at it sees the more demanding issues at hand. I don't know what this has to do with anything. I don't know if I'm questioning my "path" or my plans, but I love reading. This I believe. I love good stories. I look for truths in stories.
I have this friend, who only (usually) reads non-fiction (so-called) and I think this says a great deal about him and his grasp on the universe, and what I think is a dividing line between people, at least people I get along with. I mean, I read non-fiction, but honestly, usually only about the artists that I love. I want to know something of the official substance of their lives, the ones that create. Todd doesn't read hardly at all, which to me is preferable to a man who only reads non-fiction. I think I find it so reprehensible, because I think there is this arrogance in supposing that there is no truth in fiction -- aside from the obvious, of course. Yet, I'm not sure if there is really any difference. I just know that I tend to puff out like a blow fish when someone suggests that fiction is a waste of time -- not to harm, mind you, but to ward off any potential connections.
In the light of that brilliant thought, I gues what I am trying so very hard to say is that my first reaction is to feel/believe that there is truth, essential truth, in fiction, and that being said, shouldn't feel that when I undertake the task as a writer I am doing anything foolish -- or wasting my time.
Even if it's all rubbish, and let us hope so!! it couldn't be a waste of time. Maybe only the truly gifted write so as to connect with the world, and even if I write only for myself, I will connect with something grand within myself, and therefore shine brilliantly within.
I do admit, if something that I write get's picked up and I am standing in front of a rapt audience, I will not, with scant exceptions, give over the stage to my husband. Even if he has an Emmy, dang it.
I'm not sure if Holiday Reinhorn is German, or Jewish, or a German Jew, but I am sure she is from Portland at some point, and that city, that drizzly city with the beautiful Powell bookstore and plethora of bridges and home of the best breakfast on the West Coast, and maybe it's the best because I've only eaten there with my best friend and when I went to use the bathroom found that someone, anyone, had put a plastic shark toy in the toilet, and it touched me so that I could neither bring myself to fish it out, nor pee on it and hope that all ends well. I used the men's room. I left that brave shark for someone else to find, hoping secretly that they would have some kind of moral dillema, as it did, but hoping secret from my secret self that someone would have the guts and reach a bare hand in -- or dare to muck up Portland's game, their pristine air and green tree game, their preserved historical buildings and Edenic Rose Garden with the rows and rows of bees, gorging in their eternal mud wrestle with sticky bud dust, eager to continue the dance of infinity, their enveloping public library with its comfy chairs and meaningful staircase. Oh, Portland's artists -- how you are loved and envied. Where do you get your awareness, your general love, your appreciation for the authentic? And more importantly, Holiday, your large silver earrings?
Oh, I know, I know, she got them because one of her friends is a designer, up and comming, you can read about her in the new issue of InStyle magazine (read -- they're one of a kind and you shall never have them as cool as I have them). Or, I got them when I was in Iraq on business in 2000 -- I think the boutique is blown up or something (read -- I was doing something you will probably never even want to do in a place you will never be able to do it in and which doesn't even exist anymore).
I hope, dear reader, you have noticed that I have been dancing, rather metaphorically, around the issue the ithhhhsuuu. Being. That. Writing. Should be easy. Except. Somehow, I got involved in a great mental debate with myself -- secret and otherwise -- about the validity of writing. The validity of stories. A vortex that, much like that cat of great physiscs fame, only exists if I look at it. The even more annoying and only faintly interesting part is that the vortex exists in my brain, and looking at it in the physical universe is impossible -- so the looking at it is with my mind's eye, which when looking at it sees the more demanding issues at hand. I don't know what this has to do with anything. I don't know if I'm questioning my "path" or my plans, but I love reading. This I believe. I love good stories. I look for truths in stories.
I have this friend, who only (usually) reads non-fiction (so-called) and I think this says a great deal about him and his grasp on the universe, and what I think is a dividing line between people, at least people I get along with. I mean, I read non-fiction, but honestly, usually only about the artists that I love. I want to know something of the official substance of their lives, the ones that create. Todd doesn't read hardly at all, which to me is preferable to a man who only reads non-fiction. I think I find it so reprehensible, because I think there is this arrogance in supposing that there is no truth in fiction -- aside from the obvious, of course. Yet, I'm not sure if there is really any difference. I just know that I tend to puff out like a blow fish when someone suggests that fiction is a waste of time -- not to harm, mind you, but to ward off any potential connections.
In the light of that brilliant thought, I gues what I am trying so very hard to say is that my first reaction is to feel/believe that there is truth, essential truth, in fiction, and that being said, shouldn't feel that when I undertake the task as a writer I am doing anything foolish -- or wasting my time.
Even if it's all rubbish, and let us hope so!! it couldn't be a waste of time. Maybe only the truly gifted write so as to connect with the world, and even if I write only for myself, I will connect with something grand within myself, and therefore shine brilliantly within.
I do admit, if something that I write get's picked up and I am standing in front of a rapt audience, I will not, with scant exceptions, give over the stage to my husband. Even if he has an Emmy, dang it.
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