Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Indiana, Michigan, Indiana, Atlanta

2007-08-03T23:41:00.000-05:00

Well, Jeff is moved. Mostly, anyway.

Last week-ish, Aaron drove down to Atlanta and help Jeff load up the U-haul. I was not, admittedly, helpful at this stage, mostly because I was sad. Also, I may have gotten very drunk playing poker with Jeff and Aaron, and I may also have stuck my finger in my steel-bladed fan.

D'oh!

The drive to Indiana was uneventful, although I was very impressed with the speeds Jeff managed to attain in the U-haul on the downgrades in Tennessee. We unloaded when we got to his apartment in Indiana, and it only took a couple of hours. Then we unpacked, went to Flint, and went back to Indiana. Now we are both in Atlanta while Jeff ties up some loose ends--he's planning to drive back up to Indiana on Tuesday.

His apartment is fabulous! The pics don't really do it justice (because unpacking and whatnot is still in progress), but here's what it looks like:

And here's what the building looks like:

That's Jeff in the balcony doorway.

I have realized that if I were to continue writing in narrative form, this post would take forever. Therefore, I will list some points of interest:

The Midwest is very, very flat.
There is lots and lots of corn. And possibly alfalfa.
On the drive from Indiana to Atlanta (10 1/2 hours) we counted 93 U-hauls, one limo, and one "re-modeled" ambulance hauling a piece of Bobcat construction equipment.
There is a brewery near Jeff's apt. where you can buy a Growler to go--a 64 oz. jug of (quite good) beer that costs $12 on the initial purchase. It is refillable. And on Tuesdays it is refillable for $6.
Ikea furniture construction generally goes more quickly if you look at the instructions.
It is possible to spend 40 minutes in Home Depot when buying nothing more than a dowel rod.
Flint, MI has deer. In Jeff's folks' backyard.
There are no Waffle Houses in the Midwest.
Or 7-11s, it seems.
And the single population of Flint make interesting fashion decisions.
Playing a game of HORSE with Jeff and his dad is a fantastic pre-dinner activity. And his mom makes a yummy chicken/rice casserole.
Michigan has an unbelievable amount of road construction. None of which seem to actually improve the roads.
Watching undergrads move in across the street, especially when they only pack the trunk of their car, is highly entertaining.
Purdue has a beautiful campus.
Jeff now has high-speed Internet. And a cell phone!
He has cable TV now, too!
Cigarettes are more expensive in the Midwest.
Jeff's Grateful Dead t-shirt received much comment and approval from the cable guy, who seemed startled to see someone wearing one.

And that's all I've got for now. I'm sure I'll think of more things tomorrow.

The Face of the Earth

2007-07-19T09:45:00.000-05:00

So, I haven't actually fallen off the face of the earth. But I suck to intense degrees when it comes to updating this blog. What that really means, though, is when I update it, I have lots to write!

As of this moment, I have completed my first two years of my Ph.D. program. This has made me over-confident, it seems, because this Fall I am presenting at four conferences, publishing one book review, and taking my comps in my primary area (Literary Theory and Criticism). I am also teaching, and helping to organize a conference. Clearly, I have gone INSANE.

But I couldn't turn anything down!! I was sure I wasn't going to get into some of these conferences--apparently, I was wrong. So I am presenting at the New Voices Graduate Conference here in Atlanta (I'm also helping organize, but I was told that I would be shot if i didn't present this paper, so under penalty of death, I am presenting). I'm also presenting in Atlanta at SAMLA (the South Atlantic Modern Language Association). And the two I have to travel to are the Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the MAPACA (the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association) Conference in Philly. My papers concern the following topics: Ancient Roman Rhetoric, Pedagogy for Revising, Charmed (the TV series), and Punk Rock.

I do so very much love being an academic. =)

Also, I have a new pet. I think I'm going to name him Copernicus.

He's turning green more and more these days. Here's a slightly better photo.

He's already larger than when I first got him. And I've changed his terrarium a bit because he seemed to not like the skull too much. Here's what he looked like when he was mailed to me and I first put him in his terrarium.

As you can see, he has a new stick in his terrarium, which he likes to sit on (while turning green!), and he's getting to be a pretty big guy. His mouth was looking a little brown last night (brown spots are on it), so I held him in my hand and examined him to see if he was sick. And he stayed green while sitting in my hand! It was so cool.

And he's not sick, I don't think, although I'm going to clean his terrarium today to make sure his mouth doesn't get infected. What appears to be the problem is that he's so zealous about chasing his crickets that he tends to hit the glass with his snouth.

Here are the crickets he loves to eat:

The crickets live in their "cricket keeper" on one of my bookshelves for my comps (hence all the Hegel and Plato and whatnot). The crickets get little dishes of food and gel (the gel is their water--they're a little dumb, and will drown in actual water), and they hide in the black tubes. When I need to feed Copernicus (it sounds like a good name for him, doesn't it?) I pull out a black tube, and shake some crickets into the Cricket Shaker, where I cover them with vitamin and calcium dust.

And then dinner is served. Cool, eh? He's a complete glutton, too.

In other news, Jeff is moving to Indiana next week to start his Ph.D. program at PURDUE. Yes, PURDUE. How cool is that?? He's going to be continuing in Rhetoric and Composition, and that is certainly the place to do it. Although I sincerely believe that Purdue should look into relocating to say, ATLANTA. And while I am really happy that he's going to be going to Purdue, I am also very sad that he's going to be moving 10 hours away. We're working on a plan to take turns visiting each other every two weeks--that way, neither of us will go broke or fail out of our programs.

It's all still very surreal. It's hard to wrap my brain around the fact that next Thursday, we will be driving to Indiana to move him into his new apartment. I keep trying not to think about that part too much. =)

And I think that brings us up to speed. Hopefully, more with be forthcoming. I'm going to make myself a note to update this blog more. We'll see how that turns out.

Hello hello

2007-01-08T18:06:00.000-05:00

So, today was the first day back at school. It looks like it's going to be a pretty good semester. Break rocked--lots of Buffy and Angel, I learned to play Magic (I really did), there was beer involved, and we won an iPod shuffle and a Samsonite camera case on New Year's (we being me and Jeff).Â

But I promised pictures a long time ago, and here they are:Â

The first two are the puppy (Stella) and Jeff, and the last one is a bunch of Georgia State people at Damien's (the fellow on the left) graduating/going away party.Â

So, this semester I'm taking Ancient Roman Rhetoric, and Research Methods. Both look pretty cool (even though I don't really need a class in research methods at this point, I don't think, but still. I think it'll have some good stuff in it.). And I'm teaching 1102 and a Regents' class, which should be interesting. Regents' is a literacy test that is required in Georgia in order to graduate from college. I've never taught it before, but it looks like it's going to be a light class, so that's good by me.

I've been knitting up a storm, so there will hopefully be some knitting photos up soon, either here or on knitorious. It may take me a few months, but I promise knit pics one day in the future.

Photo No Go

2006-10-31T10:43:00.000-05:00

For whatever reason, now that I have my computer back, I am unable to make my photo loading thingy work. I will need to investigate this further, because I have a fabulous fabulous photo to post. Mwah ha ha. Beware of letting me and Jeff petsit for your puppies is all I have to say.

Things I have done since my last post.

2006-10-16T14:27:00.000-05:00

Gotten all kinds of enamoured.
Helped my enamouree move to the building next to me.
Placed an empty bottle of Guinness on the roof of a strip mall.
Heard the following comment from a student: "I was going to study for my speech test tomorrow, but then I was like, I talk."
Began a thematic project on Chaucer's Knight's Tale, which will read the Tale from a psychoanalytic/queer perspective in order to reformulate the ego formation triangle.
Graded some papers.
Climbed on discarded furniture.
Kicked two kegs of Guinness in a week at the Sidebar (with the aid of the enamouree, whose name, by the way, is Jeff).
Met Lee Edelman, and got him to autograph his book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive.
Went to a Sherlock Holmes themed party that was fabulous.
Attended Melanie and Paula (and Govind's!) birthday party, where there was furniture in the yard (and pink flamingoes).
Watched Jeff stand on his dry erase board, proclaiming "I have never done this before!"
Been acosted (with Jeff) by a man throwing trash cans and a man who declared that we hated Jesus.
Bought some really good CDs.
Drank lots of coffee.
Dreamed about arguing about binaries.
Ran (running still in progress) for GEA Treasurer.
Mourned the death of my computer's ethernet port due to a storm (and am still waiting to get my computer back).
Coveted the new iPod shuffle (the really really tiny one).
Gave a presentation on Henry Abelove's Deep Gossip.
Chaired a session of the New Voices Conference (and was also a committee member).
Went to Maggie's (my former downstairs neighbor) wedding.
Read a lot of Greek Rhetoric, Queer Theory, and Chaucer.
Went dancing with Jeff, who is a really good dancer.
Smoked a few cigarettes.
Obsessively used the word "interpellate."
Bought some books.
Been visited by Thaddeus.
Bought a new watch.
Participated in various other sondry things which I cannot remember right now.
Knit nothing.
Became sleep deprived.

Happy Belated Birthday, Hegel

2006-08-28T20:53:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday was Georg Hegel's birthday (born 1770), and in tribute, I will blog theory (or rather, the meanderings of my brain which I'm going to pass off as theory).

So blogging. We were talking tonight in Queer Theory about Foucault, and the confessional imperative came up, as did the act of blogging. But is blogging truly confessional? Most blogs I see seem to be narrations--we seem more engaged in storytelling than in confessing. But isn't telling the stories of our lives a form of confessing? Are we all giving accounts of ourselves via the blogsphere? Or are we creating daily autobiographies, with all the implications of narrative reconstruction inherent in the autobiographical form? Why are we even compelled to blog in the first place?

I remember that in the late 80s and early 90s, before there were "blogs," people would post on discussion boards. Now, the interesting thing is that in some of the discussion board communities, not only were there threads about actual topics, but also fairly random, and fairly regular, posts that people would put up about their days--much like a blog entry. And rather then make comments, we would all just add to that particular thread.

And even though most of these bulletin board communities were fairly small, they were still public. All the boards would be listed, and anyone with a 2400 bps modem (like, oh my god! That's sooooooo 1989!) could access them.

So why do we blog? And what's at stake in our blogging? Although I'm sure there are blogs out there that are confessional, where the writers spill out all the spicy details of their lives (spicy? to whom?!), I see more blogs that seem to be "genuine" (back to this in a moment) people telling the stories of their days.

And in these stories there aren't really any secrets that are told, or any "trangressions" that are confessed to. No one seems to have been interpellated into a role that calls them to confess. No one seems to be giving accounts. Everyone seems to be "real" people--"genuine" people. On the Internet, of course, a person can be anyone. I could write a blog with any assumed identity of my choice, and no one would know any better.

But again, why is that different from "real" life? Because we can sustain the charade longer? When I meet someone for the first time, they have no idea who I "am." I can "pretend" to be really stupid, or outgoing, or funny. I can "pretend" that I am an office cube worker, or a truck driver, or a secret shopper.

But in "real" life, it's much harder to pretend to be a man, or to pretend to be Asian. And when we say that someone's identity online could be anyone, what we mean is that someone's gender and color online could be anything. Someone's age could be anything. It's interesting to see how heavily we establish identity with the body.

(Of course, in "real" life, people pass as___________ all the time. Successfully. Billy Tipton passed as a man for 60 years and had four wives--after Tipton's death in '89, an autopsy revealed that Tipton was female.)

What I'm saying, or trying to, is that "identity" doesn't seem to be an issue in most blogs. People don't "hide," it seems, unless they hide their name, or use a pseudonym, really. And in the audience of readers, there ARE people who know who that person "is." I don't think questions concering identity bring us back to why so many people feel the need to blog. And because I don't think identity is what's at stake, I don't think that blogs are necessarily confessions. After all, when we confess, aren't we compelled to confess something about ourselves, a trait, a behavior, that is a "PART" of us?

So if we don't blog under the confessional imperative, then why are we still writing? I would rather make the argument that we blog under an imperative that is primary to the confessional imperative, and that is the narrational imperative--that we are compelled to narrate, told to narrate, forced to narrate. And I would make the argument that this imperative to narrate stems from our immersion and birth in discourse, our entry into the Symbolic, the writing of language on our bodies. And I further would say that the imperative comes from language itself, the logos of language, where logos means both word and reason. The glue that holds together the signifier and signified creates the narrational imperative. We cannot make reason without words, we cannot make words without reason, and we cannot MAKE MEANING without logos, without signs. And we cannot make the signs mean without stringing them together. And we cannot make the world around us mean without stringing signs together.

And we cannot make meaning, or create anything, without also, and firstly, destroying the meaning or thing that was previously there.

And I had more I was going to say, but my brain just totally turned off. I will attempt to actually make the arguments I'm proposing to make in another post. But I am pretty certain that I'm about to stop making sense, assuming, of course, that I was making sense in the first place.

What do y'all think? Why do we blog?

Kitsch-en.

2006-08-11T09:22:00.000-05:00

I am, it seems, decorating my kitchen. And although it's not TRULY kitsch, I have no doubt that I will, at some point, incorporate something pretty kitschy into my kitchen. After all, it's too good of a pun to go to waste.Â

But my kitchen is very small. I have a sink, with counterspace on either side. One side is taken up by my microwave, the other side used to be take up by my dish drainer. However, since I must now cook, the dish drainer is now actually IN my sink, so that I now have a small rectangle on which to do cooking things. I have a stove, and some cabinets (plus a whole row I have issues reaching, even with a step-stool--shut up you laughing people!! =P ). And I have a refridgerator and a window sill.

For those of you who saw the kitchen in my apt. on Franklin Street, this one is admittedly bigger, by say, a foot. There is no cool back door onto the roof, however. And even though this kitchen is bigger, and the cabinets do not tilt scarily towards me, I kinda miss the old one. Something about the light.Â

Anyway, since I have never been much of a cook, I have had to go buy several cooking implements, and am rapidly running out of space in my little kitchen with the cabinets I can't quite make full use of. So the other day, when I was waiting for Blizzard to pick up the phone (yes, you will get that story), I picked up a hammer and nailed a number of kitchen utensils to the wall. That has turned out to be one of my better ideas.Â

What particularly pleases me is the hanging of the cookie cutters, which makes the entire collection of utensils magical (I think it does, anyway), and that makes cooking more fun!

But hanging up all that stuff has cleaned out a drawer, which now holds my pasta press (okay, yes, I can't cook, but I can make pasta. I have no idea what that is). The former home of the pasta press now holds a bunch of pans. And this is getting more detailed than you really need, suffice to say that my kitchen is rearranged and fabulous.

Look at all the food creation stuffs I have!

More utensils! And knives! That are pastel colours!

Sweet potatoes!! Clementines!! Notice my lunch bag on the top? Pretty! Also, that bottle on the top is my really expensive vanilla, and it was worth every penny. My lavender cookies rule!

Shelve above my sink. I could probably use this space for something else, but I like my teapots and dried flowers, dammit!

So, I mentioned that I was on the phone with Blizzard, and that would be because I decided, in a moment where I was clearly crazed, to temporarily renew my World of Warcraft subscription. There are many reasons for this. I actually have free time (and it's so weird!) And gaming is fun (unless the people around you game for 36 hours straight and refuse to work so that you end up paying all the bills and they promise to pay you back but never do. Oh, wait, I'm not bitter.). And I've never seen it on my Mac. AND I craved it really bad after receiving an email that recieved the word "w00t" (you know who you are, with your l337 h4x0r skillz. ha ha Do you even read my blog? I'm curious.), which occured around the same time my students had a huge discussion about WoW, and when Jenny and I started IMing each other ridiculous things about being l337.Â

I won't be able to play for much longer, what with the semester starting, and my attempt to take three work intensive classes while teaching two sections of 1102. But playing again a little bit IS really fun.

And damn does WoW look pretty on my Mac.Â

Drink More Water

2006-08-07T20:31:00.000-05:00

According to this book, drinking water is all you really need to be healthy:Â

However, when I met up with Will and Christy in Tennessee, we did not follow the advice of this book, which was on Will's folks' table; rather, we drank this:

Which proclaimed itself to be a "carnival of citrus." As Will put it, "It's more like a block party."Â

We also drank wine. And we played poker. Oh, did we play poker.

Look at that loot!

I have no idea what I was trying to do with this photograph. And it's entirely possible that taking pictures of your poker hands may, in fact, be the opposite of mantaining a poker face.Â

Christy says "Mwah ha ha!! My riches! I have so many riches!"

Clearly, I have no riches.Â

Yay Christy and Will!! =)

Seriously, y'all, those peeps rule, and we had a superfun time! I miss 'em already!

Incidentally, Will's folks' also provide reading material in their guest bedroom:

Indeed.

After chillin' in Knoxville, I drove down to Spring City, TN to hang with my dad and step-family. That was ALSO superfun, and I got to meet lots o' folks, and watch Mennonites play volleyball. Here is where they were staying:

Not in the lake, more like in a cabin thingy near it. Spring City is very very little. There's one street, pretty much, with a stop light at either end. And it's strange that is a little town on a really big lake, most of the stores do not have suntan lotion.Â

And when I got home, I knit, and continued learning to cook. And although I have been tempted to take pictures of my spectacular dinners, I haven't. So here are pictures of knitting. But be on the lookout for pictures of my new and improved kitchen!!

Do Not Try This At Home (unless home is, say, not GA)

2006-07-16T01:16:00.000-05:00

So, I went back to Arabia Mountain. And I already blogged all this, but lost the post before it got published. Needless to say, I was very vexed.Â

Anyway, in my original post, I made note of several things that it is important for any hiker to remember.Â

1--what sorts of temperatures are associated with Georgia in July

2--what sorts of air quality is associated with Georgia in July

3--what the word "mountain" implies

4--what "unmarked trail" means

Clearly, I remember none of these things. And I ventured forth, with a book, an apple, a camera, a notebook, and some extra H20.Â

Incidentally, finding the trail up to this part took me about twenty minutes, because I wasn't expecting it to be on the other side of highway.

Why, is that 400 million year old transformed granite through those trees?!

I think it's really cool the way the stone has sheared off and left these giant cubes and rectangles--like some giant's bench or footrest.

Ah, the famous swirls of lithonia "gneiss."

Look at the rust! Look at the rust! Cool!

This is, by the way, a completely different lake.

Wow, it's a hundred degrees outside. I think I'll climb that. Unmarked trail be damned!

And since I'm now becoming very aware of exactly how very much it is a hundred degrees outside, I am getting no closer to this ledge. But look how high!

And this is back at the beginning, as I sit shivering because I have been an idiot to hike up a mountain that has no marked trail in 100 degree weather in July in Georgia. And really, at this point, I just totally deserve to get kicked out of Mensa.Â

So, I have taken a small hiking break to work on my cooking skills. Which was moderately successful--I made some potatoes and carrots and broccoli, which all came out well, and I mashed the leftover potatoes to fry up in potato cakes tomorrow. I DID, however, slightly overcook a very beautiful piece of tuna, but since I have never in my life cooked fish before, I forgive myself. I will simply have to buy more tuna and practice again. A tragedy indeed, eh?

Oh deer oh deer

2006-07-11T21:35:00.000-05:00

So, I have yet to actually start doing any yoga. Instead, I am completely pre-occupied with my new hobby. Hiking.Â

I was at the bookstore last week (again) looking for cookbooks and a map of this thing called PATHways--which is a system of paved bicycle/jogger/walking paths that run through DeKalb county and on towards Alabama. I couldn't just look up a map of the paths on-line, I had to order a book. And silly me, I figured the LOCAL bookstore would have a map of the LOCAL project. I was totallly wrong.Â

But they DID have this great book called 60 Hikes within 60 Minutes of Atlanta. And that sounded much better than the PATHways thing. So I bought it.

And so far I have only hiked ONE of the 60. And not even the whole thing. But I'm completely obsessed now with exploring every area this book recommends. And let me show you why.

The place I've gone to, twice now, is called Arabia Mountain. It's about 30 minutes east of Decatur (where I live). Now I will quote the Arabia Mountain website: "Arabia Mountain is known as a rock outcrop and a monadnock. A monadnock is an isolated hill standing above the surrounding area, in this case wooded Piedmont land."Â

Arabia is made of a kind of rock that used to be granite, and was transformed into something called "Lithonia gneiss" (apparently pronounced "nice.") It's about four hundred million years old, and has been an area of human settlement for the last seven thousand years.Â

How cool is that?

Now, Arabia Mountain is in this big park that is, of course, a Nature Preserve. And I have to say, out of the two thousand acres this park encompasses, I have only hiked about three miles.

It's about a mile through these woods to get to the lake and the granite. And while I was trekking along, there was a tremendous rustling in the underbrush, and DEER came leaping out and bounded past me and off into the woods. DEER.Â

Clearly, this is the lake.

And after trekking alongside the lake for a bit, there's this path of granite here, which leads to, oddly enough, granite.

Â Â

And then there's these mysterious building remnants, and more Piedmont forest.Â

And all of that was just one section of the Arabia Mountain Trail. Pretty neat, eh?Â

Picture this . . .

2006-06-21T22:41:00.000-05:00

So, I had a birthday last month

and my friend Melanie had a cookout for me and we ate this cake. (It was excellent--the cookout and the cake.) She also made ribs, which my friend Stu partook of his way to New Orleans from Richmond at 1 am.Â

He enjoyed them very much. And I made him some chocolate coffee so he could keep going, and I gave him the gossip about my next door neighbor.

Who was insane, and who has been evicted. We had this whole Law and Order scenario, and it was actually very intense and nerve-wrecking, and I can't really describe it with this lackadaisical voice. So that will be in another post, maybe. Needless to say that we (me and my neighbors Maggie and Jim) were all disturbed and upset. Maggie seriously needed to unwind after all the drama.

I, of course, just knit a rug out of my old clothes in order to calm myself.

And that's all my pictures, so that's pretty much all my story, too.

I-ing and mopping

2006-06-17T12:48:00.000-05:00

There are things in this world that can only be accomplished through sadness. Cleaning the entire apartment, for example. Vaccuuming beneath every chair, table, desk, throw rug. Scrubbing the entire bathroom. Dusting every surface, beneath each knick knack, polishing each piece of furniture. Cleaning out and reorganizing the closet that was never so much as "used" as it was ignored--full of the things that could be gotten around to later. Rearranging all the various little trinkets and accessories--moving flower vases, candles, coffee table books, regular books, decorative boxes, photos and yarn and knitting needles, finding a home for all the lip glosses and lipsticks, the 1/2 full bottles of perfumes and scents, the thousands and thousands of Bic pens.

And the list of things to clean gets shorter and shorter until the only thing left is mopping the kitchen floor. And although there are lesson plans to be written, knitting projects to start, to complete, to re-do, books to be read, although there are a hundred other things to do, it is impossible to mop the kitchen floor. Because even though lesson plans need to be written, and books for school need to be read, everything that comes after mopping the kitchen floor is just busywork to avoid the inevitable.

Which is the realization that I cleaned the apartment for a visitor who will never visit, for a knock that will never sound upon my door and startle me, for a phone that will never ring with a familiar voice on the line, saying "You'll never believe where I am--what's the gate code?"

And we defer so many things. We defer our dreams, we defer the deaths of dreams, and half the time we live in the betweens, neither here nor there, neither dead nor death. neither being nor becoming. There is no grammar to describe this action that is non-action, that is moving without movement, that is motion in stillness.

I want so many things. I want the phone call, the voice on the other end of the line, the knock on my door. I want the dreams, and spaces in the betweens, and the moving that is motion, and the stillness that is still. I want the breathing that is saturated with sunlight and the breathing that is soaked with moonlight. I want the either and I want the or and I want the and and I want the never and I want the always. I want the everything and I want the nothing and I want the something in the middle.

And I know I want too much. But desire is like that. Desire desires the absent, Desire desires Desire. Language is desire, and breathing is desire, and living is desire, and dying is desire. Creating is desire and destructing is desire, and creating is destructing, and destructing is creating. I want to be the -ing. The endING, the beginING, but always the -ing. I want to be I-ing.

There are things in this world that can only be accomplished through sadness. I have the mop (or, rather, the Swiffer). I have the cleaner (or, rather, the cleaning pad). And I'm sure that some of the stains, some of the dirt, some of the footprints on this floor are yours.

And I am mopping.

Why I am so Clever

2006-06-06T09:24:00.000-05:00

Last night was the last class of my May-mester on Nietzsche. It was three weeks, five nights a week, 2 1/2 hours a night, of Nietzsche--The Birth of Tragedy, The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil, A Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols, On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Human All Too Human, Ecce Homo. . . Pretty much a sampling of everything. And so my blog title is both in homage to Nietzsche and wishful thinking as I work frantically on my Final Exam (due on Friday). And for those of you who have not read Ecce Homo, the titles of the chapters are: Why I am so Wise, Why I am so Clever, Why I Write such Good Books, and Why I am a Destiny.

What a fabulous man.

I quit smoking on the 8th--I'm on Zyban/Wellbutrin. It's pretty wild--it really does reduce the urge to smoke drastically. I've tried everything else, and this seems to be working. I still have a whole plan, like the quit date, and ways to control cravings, and whatnot. My goal is to replace smoking with yoga. I'm pretty excited about that, actually.

And that's most of my blog-worthy news. Trust me, if I think of anything else, I'll take a break from the exam to post it.

In this air, in this air, in this air

2006-05-03T16:51:00.000-05:00

It's a strange day today. I have nothing and I have everything, and I have everything because I have nothing. I walk down the street, and people gravitate towards me, talk to me, hit on me. People call to me from windows and doorways. It rains for a minute, then the sun reappears. I am tired, and empty, and full at the same time. I take off my sunglasses and squint into the sky.

I have everything. I have nothing. I mill in the hallways of the GCB, I talk to my professors about my papers, my teaching, and am complimented for both. People tell me I'm brilliant, that I need to publish my paper. People tell me that I'm an excellent teacher, that I'm getting more money for next semester. I talk to my colleagues, my fellow students, my dear friends, and we discuss our sleep deprivation, we torment over the length of our papers. We complain about grading, make plans for beer.

I have nothing. I have everything. My past is present is past is future is present is now is moving is conflating is becoming is doing is undoing is redoing. There is no beginning, there is no end, there is no now. There is moving. The path I walk down becomes a plane, it spreads out, there is no straight line, there is no windy way, there is only flat space. And so I jump, and there is only air and nothing but air and I float up and up and up and on.

I had a string once, a tether, and I can't find it. I followed that string here, it unravelled behind me and I held one end as I walked. But now I'm flying, and I have no string, and I don't know if it was cut, if I cut it, if it was let go, if I let it go, if it's still there at all. And I'm soaring, and I see the world laid out before me, I see everything but the string I used to have. And I ache and I have nothing and I have everything, and all l have is having, is soaring, is moving, is hoping that as I drift through this air, as I rise and rise and rise towards everything, that I find you here, somewhere, in this air, in this air, in this air, and holding the other end of the string.

Everything

2006-04-30T10:47:00.000-05:00

I have a 20 page paper to write. I have a thousand poems to write. I dream in technicolor. I dream in black and white. I sing and I am silent. And really, it's moments like these that I just need a little Four Quartets.

T.S. Eliot said that:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

From Burnt Norton--how brilliant is that?

John Galt goes to college

2006-04-28T04:54:00.000-05:00

I have almost finished my first paper, and I've already have my presentation for it, and it apparently conference ready--HOORAY!! Plus, my prof tells me that I could probably turn it into a book or use it to start my dissertation!! I'm very very excited about this. =)

In other news, my OTHER paper is just getting started, because I randomly switched topics a few days ago. I like my new topic better. And in my academic paranoia, it is entirely likely that I will not tell you what that paper is about either.

Ha ha.

So, the semester is almost over--today is my last full day of class, and on Monday I take up my students portfolios, and on Wednesday all my papers are due. After which I will celebrate by going to see They Might be Giants, and then flying to Richmond on Saturday for my dad's birthday.

Incidentally, has anyone else heard about the Atlas Shrugged movie being back in the works (again)? And possibly starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt? (As someone else put it: who better to star in the Atlas Shrugged movie than a couple whose names have been melded together?)

I've Got Rhythm, I've Got Music

2006-04-18T23:16:00.000-05:00

So, I have been typing frantically for the last few days, and it seems as if my 10-12 page paper is going to be more like 17-19 pages. I think I can get away with it though, because I think I'm onto something with this one. So I'm not going to tell you about my paper. I'll just say I had a hell of a time finding CDs.

I have one more paper to write, my twenty page paper. I'm a little more worried about this one, because I'm not sure if I can get twenty pages out of "why doesn't Judith Butler ever talk about Cixous?" I have some ideas, but I'm not going to be happy until I start writing.

And I have one presentation left, and about 300 pages of grading. Then I take up my students final portfolios, and grade those, and turn in final grades. I hope to be done with everything by May 3rd, when I will celebrate by going to see They Might Be Giants!!

So while I realize that this isn't the most exciting blog entry in the world, I can't sleep and I can't think and I can't stop typing.

Oh, here's news--my teaching philosophy is going to be used as a model next year! I'm excited about that--I've never had a paper used as a model before.

And that's about all I've got. Rhythm, music, and grad school--life doesn't really get better than that. Well, unless it's rhythm, music, and tenure, I suppose.

Discoursing in discourse

2006-04-05T19:25:00.000-05:00

After two presentations on Judith Butler, I am now back on the blogging. I am again reconstructing a narrative self, an "I" outside of my I, which I ("I") present as a re-interative and re-constitutive process, and which you ("you") read with pleasure. See how I construct you? You are a friendly reader (and oh how you've been interpellated).

Okay, enough of that. I saw Mates of State last weekend and they were extremely fabulous! They were so good that I bought a t-shirt, and I have not danced so much at a show since I saw TMBG at Mayo Island in 1996. That might be an exaggeration, but it's pretty damn close to the truth.

And, They Might Be Giants are playing here!! Yes, friendly readers, the Twin Quasars of Rock will be performing at the Variety on May 3rd, and my little heart is pounding wildly with antici

pation at the idea of seeing them live again. It has been far too long, and my soul needs to be replenished at the musical fountain for which Ponce de Leon was born far too early to find.

Ah, linguistic games. I dub "I" Helene Cixous!

Clearly, reading large amounts of theory very quickly has a tendency to underscore/undermine one's ability to participate in language as a "normal" individual, and creates/enhances subversive tendencies.

And if you think this is a little ridiculous, just wait until the blogs I post while writing this semester's papers--in the meantime, I will be attempted to coerce several of you into joining a CD exchange program. Check your in-boxes for details in the near future.

A La Hitchcock

2006-03-07T11:35:00.000-05:00

A couple days ago I was attempting to take a nap, and was interrupted by an incredible ruckus outstide my window.Â

This is only a partial view of my backyard (taken through my dirty window), where every single bird in America had gathered to caw wildly, wheel about in terrifyingly complex swoops, and occasionally land en masse to strut about proclaiming their power in numbers. Having read Daphne du Maurier's story in middle school, and being a proud owner of The Birds on DVD, I must admit that there was a brief moment when I was seized with the urge to board up my window with plywood. But because I am a rational human being, I resisted the urge. Instead, I crawled back into my bed and hid beneath the covers.Â

Balderdash and utter nonsense

2006-02-26T22:39:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm revoking everything I said in that last post about not blogging this.

I'm getting out of my shyness mode (thank god that's on the way out), incidentally, here at GSU, and being out/getting out of the pathological shyness phenomenon makes me feel much more like myself. Sure, I still get quiet and spacey when I'm thinking about something, but I feel much more ME--and it feels damn good.

Also, I think I'm about ready to start dating again. I'm a little hesitant, and a little unsure, but still.

So, now that I've told you that, let me tell you that this man I'm attracted to intrigues the hell out of me. He's very smart, and he seems to like a number of things which I also like. I am rather unclear on what he thinks of me--I haven't "dated" in quite some time, and I never really "dated" all that well to begin with (I'm a little blunt, sometimes. Oh, that's right, and there's all my ridiculous stories, too.). There may be a possibility that I make him nervous--which is fair enough, really, since he has made me rather nervous myself on occassion.

So I'm not really sure what he thinks of me (if he thinks of me). And since I am at least a slighly more savvy dater than I once was, I try to get a read on someone I'm interested in. (As opposed to when I was younger, and had a tendency to just make my interest apparent, sometimes too bluntly, which had a tendency to startle and disconcert people.)

But I can't really get a read on this, partly because I'm just out of practice. And partly because my recent pathological shyness has prevented me (mostly) from saying or doing anything that could get a readable response.

Men tell me that I'm very intimidating. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but if I think about it really hard, I can kinda see it--because I CAN be rather stand-off-ish at times--which I'm not meaning to do, I'm probably just thinking about something, or chasing some sort of collection of thoughts down before they butterfly off.

What I'm getting at, in my convoluted way, is that now that I'm not so much busy with the shy, and not so much on the hesitation and not being ready for this, I think I'm gonna say something. I'm very curious, and interested in learning more about this man, and really, whether or not he's interested in me or curious about me is only partially the issue. Don't get me wrong, I would certainly LIKE him to be interested in me, but I think we'd also have a great deal of fun just hanging out and drinking beers.

So yeah. That's pretty much the scoop. Stay tuned for the "and he's not interested at all" post, which will be full of sardonic wit and self-deprecating humour.

I am not Carrie Bradshaw (or, My Notes from Jameson)

2006-02-25T00:02:00.000-05:00

I can't do it. I just can't. I want to write about this man and my attraction to him and whatnot, but I watch way too much Sex and the City. And blogging about dating makes me feel too much like Carrie Bradshaw, and then I picture myself in the last season of my own personal dating sitcom, thirty eight years old and and asking the same questions, and I just get depressed.

But I will tell you that Fredric Jameson and Sarah Vowell were both excruciatingly good.

I took four pages of notes on Jameson in my little notebook. I'm going to sketch them out here, and add that we missed the first few minutes because we got a little lost. Also, I would like to point out that A)several of the undergrad Marxists-in-the-making certainly LOOKED the part, however, they neglected to turn off their cell phones. An appropriate ringtone might have amused me, but Chumbawumba did not. B)several people in my vicinity felt that ruffling through their backpacks, and shuffling their notebooks, and crinkling their paper, and creating a low leaf-like rustling were activities which fell into the category of Taking Notes. They were, perhaps, rustling about because words were not magically appearing on their notebooks, and they found this disconcerting. I saw two people actually using pens to write: one was a professor, the second a student next to me, who seemed to be taking good notes, interspersed with drawings of atoms, which I thought was charming. C)several people fell asleep. Although appalled, I thought throwing things at them would create more rustling, and in any case, their cell phones would probably wake them up anyway.

Now, as for Jameson--GREAT speaker. He trails off at the end of his sentences, so I had to, well, not lean forward, as I was sitting on the floor in the aisle, but tilt my head inquistively in an attempt to hear (kinda like how I duck and hunch over in the rain--like if I bend lower, it won't fall on me as much).

What rivets me immediately is that he's talking about temporality. Time, he says, is a construction itself and a construction achieved by narrative. He established a binary of Augustinian temporality and Aristotelian narrative, discussing Aristotle's "natural," chronological time, and Augustine's relation to Heidegger's Dasein.

"There can be no pure phenomenology of time," says Jameson, only representations of history. Time appears alongside movement, and is only seen in the representation of movement. In the intersection of the modalities of time is where Time can be made to appear. (I dug the hell out of that.)

Now, he's got three things on his plate: the three fold narrative structure of Aristotle, the insertion of subjectivity with the transition from happiness to misery and vice versa, and how completeness opens a text to notions of discordance.

He talked about Ricour's essential humanism underlying his text. There was a lot of rustling. Then how Aristotle's and Augustine's notion of time constituted a split between subject and object.

Then, he addressed the matter of taking sides in historical narratives. Narratives are structured in such a manner that they force us to take sides, and reduce history to a struggle of dichotomies.

My notes now say, "capitalism-->issues imperative to think good and evil simultaneously
most productive and destructive"

He discussed asymmetry in the Aristotelian narrative, and the lack of comedic narrative. The general assumption, he says, is that tragedy is worth more than comedy, tradegy is more moral, and more important.

Then the unity of opposites, where the winner loses, and the loser wins. The success story is really the anti-plot. And to go into this further, he goes into politics and narrative, and discusses Quint and the Western oriented myth of literary history. The Epic is "par excellence", whereas Romance uses narrative mechanisms to express non-narrative time--it's episodic, discontinous accounts of experience. Romance must borrow from the Epic to stay afloat, else it would verge on becoming a non-narrative. These two forms are representative of two distinct historical periods: the Epic is the time of victors, the expression of empire and imperialism, while Romance is defeat, the end of history and narrative that "leads to the stubborn silence of the vanquished and the enslaved."

Success is boring, really, he continues, it marks the end of a project, and there's nowhere else to go.

Then he gives a fabulous re-reading of The Aeneid, reading the Trojans as the victors AND the losers, using these binaries he's established and I wrote down nothing because I am enthralled. Just thinking about it makes me change tenses in the middle of my sentences.

Then I wrote "a music made of contradictions" because I really dug that too.

And then he goes into recognition and pathos, and the struggle of disentangling "us" from "them," and the emergence of the collective reality of human history--that the ones holding up the narratives are the slaves, the losers, who are the winners. And how narratives end in pathos because they are bound by class and by exploitation.

Enthusiastic applause.

If that doesn't make sense (since I'm just sketching down my notes), I'll try to correct that in the next blog or so. But now I'm really tired, and I'm driving to Charlotte tomorrow morning. But let me say this: should you have the chance to hear him speak, go. Not only does he say really fascinating things, but I just really love the way he uses language. I think so many theorists get so bogged down in what words "mean" that they forget how words sound. And Jameson doesn't.

Sarah Vowell listens to the sounds of words too, incidentally, but I'll have to get to that next time.

Blogilicious

2006-02-20T23:25:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling very much bloggy today. No idea why, really.

And yes, I have heard your demands for my next post (both through my telepathic powers, but also because you likely came up to me at some point today and told me what you wanted to read about), but I am posting on neither of the things I promised. At least not quite yet.

And the reason for that is because I saw Leonard Susskind lecture Friday, and I'm going to see Frederic Jameson on Wednesday, and then Sarah Vowell on Thursday. And really, how cool is that?! I'm so excited!

And at some point this weekend I'm driving up to Charlotte to my brother's pad to meet up with him and my mom for my mom's birthday--which reminds me, I should bake a cake. Maybe a red velvet cake. Hmmmm.

Hopefully I will not be lame and will give details on these lectures--but then again, I never ended up telling you how the clam chowder turned out, did I?

I like . . . theory?

2006-02-20T14:26:00.000-05:00

I have class in a few minutes (well, a few minutes+time for a smoke break), and I was contemplating, in my rather non-linear way, my next post. And I decided that I would take a vote, to see what my reading public would like to read about (because it is very important to keep the audience in mind, as we all know). So, without further ado, would you like to read about my meanderings on consciousness, cognition, language, subjectivity, and neurophilosophy? Or would you like to read about my seemingly developing attraction to a particular person?

And now I'm going to go downstairs and smoke.

Wanted: a new theme song

2006-02-15T06:56:00.000-05:00

Nothing quite like listening to Zwan when you first wake up. Bless you, Billy Corgan, bless you.

I have made a resolution. This "shyness" thing which I have apparently developed since moving to Atlanta is really annoying. And it's got to go.

Not that I haven't always been a little shy to begin with--a little quiet, a little lost in my own strange and convoluted thoughts--but since I've been here, I find myself frequently stuck in that They Might Be Giants tune (which would be "If I Wasn't Shy," originally a Dial-a-Song moment of brilliance, and later released on Apollo 18). And really, that just ain't my song.

So I am leaving my apt. this morning in search of a new song. And possibly more coffee as well.

One more thing...

2006-02-10T21:43:00.000-05:00

Check out Ed's new website--there's a link on the right. It's all new and redesigned, with music!

Frenzy

2006-02-10T21:07:00.000-05:00

Apparently I am having a huge blog frenzy at the moment. Not this blog, necessarily, so I thought I would post something here and say hi. The new blog is a knitting blog (yes, I am a knit blogger now) which Miss Jenny and I have just started. But check it out--lots o' yarn and fun!

And really, it's quite hard to type and listen to Ozma. Just so you know.

So, over break, my hard drive crashed. Yes, most of it was backed up. However, in my hurry to get to Richmond, I did not (ha ha) back up last semester. Because I was (notice the tense) a sporadic backer-upper. And my hard drive crashed five days before school started.

Did I panic? Yes. Did I entreat Gateway for help? Yes. Is the hard drive issue resolved, now that it is February? NO. My computer was under warranty, too, incidentally. And I have called Gateway 400,000 times. And they are the devil.

These are things I have been told by Gateway technicians:
"You are really lucky. Usually our hard drives crash every six months."
"Yes, we can send you a hard drive with Windows installed."
"Sure, we can install Windows on your new hard drive."
"No, we cannot install Windows on your new hard drive. It's against our policy."
"No, you cannot keep your hard drive to extract the data. That's against our policy."
"We will charge you $75 for a new hard drive."
"Your invoice for your new hard drive is $168."
"Our hard drives, you know, have manufacturing defects."
"No, you cannot extend your warranty."
"Why do you want to speak to a manager?"
"You have to understand our position."
"..."
"I keep getting sent back and forth between departments. Please hold on. *sigh*"
"I will call you back."

The moral of the story? If you want a computer, get a Mac.

Friday the 13th

2006-01-13T19:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I missed the last few months of last year, but school was super hell busy. But I had to at least blog on Friday the 13th. Partly because I had a rather odd morning.

I woke up at 5:30am, and taught my 8am and 9am classes (this was the first week back after winter break, btw). After class, I met Eva, a film student, completely at random, and proceeded to randomly have a quite interesting 20 minute conversation with her. After meeting Eva, I started walking back to English Dept. office, only to be stopped by a gentleman whom I thought was going to ask me for change. As I prepared my "No, I'm sorry," face, he instead asked, "Do you have any children who need to learn the alphabet?" Taken aback, I replied, "No." So he asked, "Do you have any brothers or sisters who have children who need to learn the alphabet?" Again, I looked at him, bemused, and replied, "No." He smiled and said, "Okay, I was just wondering," and then went on his merry way.

After I finished running errands around campus, I made my way towards my MARTA stop to catch the train back to my apartment. At the intersection before the station, I was waiting for the light to change to cross the street. On the other side of the street stood an impatient man, who rapidly walked/run in front of the oncoming cars to my side of the street, where I, not so bold with my enormous wheeled backpack, stood waiting for the WALK signal. Upon reaching me, the man stopped and looked at me and said, "I like to live dangerously. That's just how I am." And before I could say anything, he continued walking down the sidewalk.

So because of the oddness of my day, I am engaging in an odd activity--at least for me. I am cooking. Yes, cooking. Clam chowder, of all things. And hopefully I'll stop being the lamest blogger in the world, and will remember to post again, and let you know how it turned out.

October?

2005-10-29T20:23:00.000-05:00

Well, I don't know what the hell happened to October, but it seems to gone. And it needed at least one blog entry.

It's been an eventful month. My boyfriend and I broke up, I passed some tests, I began delving into string theory, I studied, I graded a lot of papers, I reunited with an old friend, my mom came to visit, and my brother was in a motorcycle accident and now sports a steel plate in his arm.

That's the brief version, anyhow.

One particular morning of my ususal routine, however, stands out. I was getting off the MARTA on my way to class one morning, still somewhat exhausted from that wonderful sleep deprivation that only seems to occur when being a student, when I was jostled by a passing undergrad. He was "sketchy" looking at best, listening to headphones, and sauntering by in his leather jacket. I had only noticed him because he bumped into me, but he fully caught my attention when he reached into his pocket for a cigarrette, and dropped a joint onto the MARTA platform. Cooler than cool, and deliberately not looking around him, he reached down and picked it up and deposited it back into his jacket pocket.

I laughed all the way to class.

Speak up!!!

2005-09-29T14:09:00.000-05:00

I just received an email detailing the proposed bugdet cuts to pay for Hurricane Katrina. These cuts outlined in the email include the following:

$225 billion cut from Medicaid, the last-resort health insurance program for the very poor.
$200 billion cut from Medicare, the health care safety net for the elderly and the disabled.
$25 billion cut from the Centers for Disease Control
$6.7 billion cut from school lunches for poor children
$7.5 billion cut from programs to fight global AIDS
$5.5 billion to eliminate all funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
$3.6 billion cut to eliminate the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities
$8.5 billion cut to eliminate all subsidized loans to graduate students.
$2.5 billion cut from Amtrak
$2.5 billion to eliminate the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative
$417 million cut to eliminate the Minority Business Development Agency
$4.8 billion cut to eliminate all funding for the Safe and Drug-Free schools program

You can sign a petition, make phone calls, etc. through this link:http://www.political.moveon.org/rebuild/?id=6042-3278797-ZjrKRrOnw1.OFBBbeufwMg&t=5

It's time to speak up.

In Conclusion, Jump Little Children actually play the Variety

2005-09-22T09:34:00.000-05:00

Despite the fact that the Variety is actually called the Variety Playhouse, I was still unprepared for the rows and rows of seats when I walked in. On either stand of the playhouse were little standing room alcoves, and the entire front floor was also standing room. The place was BIG, but really, probably around the size of the Canal Club in Richmond. The difference was that the Variety was PACKED. It has been quite a while since I've gone to a show that had such a huge crowd. The capacity at the Variety seems to be about 700 people, and I suspect that on this evening, they had possibly oversold capacity.

Sarah and I walked to the front to stand as the opening band rocked the audience. I can't remember what they were called, but they were actually pretty good. It was certainly enjoyable, but after our adventures, I was definitely ready for Jump Little Children.

I was reaching that point of the opening band's set that I wanted to pull out my phone and check the time when Jonathan walked past us. He had apparently been standing in the crowd in front of us, and as he passed, I smiled, because a) he's brilliant and b) it meant that the opening band was just about done, and JLC was getting ready to go on.

Sure enough, the lights came up, and I realized during that passage of time between the opening band and the headliner that the Variety was non-smoking. As a hundred or so extra people squeezed into the front with us, I decided to forgo the nicotine, and keep my place.

Which was the best decision, because the intermission was short. The lights went out, the crowd roared, and Jump Little Children immediately went into "Hold You Down."

With the first chord I went all giddy. Their CDs are excellent, and I love listening to their music at home or on my iPod. But these guys are a LIVE band, and nothing in the world really compares to standing in a screaming crowd who knows all the words while the bass recalibrates my hearbeat to beat in time with the song. And it's in those first few seconds when I can tell what sort of show I'm in for--as my ears are submerged in thick waves of sound, and lights roll over the stage, and watching the first few bars of a song get played--the energy onstage, the energy in the crowd--and damn, this was going to be a great show.

I've never been the kind of person that was good at remembering set lists. I get too entranced by the music and I just live in it while it happens. But I can tell you this--I felt like I had written down my dream set list and handed it to them. They played "Violent Dreams", "Vertigo," "Afterlife," "Rains in Asia," "Education," "Requiem," "Body Parts," "My Guitar," "Not Today," . . . . . just to name a few. Every single song I wanted them to play, they played. And if it didn't make it in the set, it made it in one of the FOUR encores.

Yes, that's right, FOUR encores. Apparently Atlanta is their town--this is where they first started getting recognition, and as the night went on, the last show in Atlanta became quite emotional. The first two encores were planned--and I remember the first one had "Cathedrals" and the second had "Dancing Virginia." Each one had two or three songs. The unexpected third encore was one of the most deeply moving moments I've ever had a show.

When they came out for the third encore, the stage was starting to get shut down, so they decided, on the spur of the moment, to play acoustic. And what they decided to play was "Where She Lies."

The audience, familar with the two encore scenario and not expecting a third, had almost halved. There was a good amount of space up at the front now. We stood still as Jay talked from the stage, and since there was no amps or mics, we became very very silent.

It was quickly clear that they were not used to this--the first verse they were adjusting their volume, Jay was trying to compensate for no mic, and they seemed a little hesitant. Then, going into the chorus, it clicked. They suddenly somehow got the acoustics and the projection and everything PERFECT, and this beautifully haunting song reverberated throughout the Variety and into the vaccuum of silence created by everyone's held breath.

I have been in very few moments when I have felt that music became something tangible and I could feel it on my skin, or that I could taste it in the back of my throat. That was one of them.

They lingered on the stage as they left, reluctant and slow, each finding a piece of the moment to take with him. And then Jay did one more. He had his guitar and mic plugged back in, and then said farewell with "Close Your Eyes." And it was a farewell--when he finished, he thanked everyone, put down his guitar, and walked across the stage. He stopped in the middle, and just looked at everyone, memorizing that moment, and I thought he was going to cry. He was reluctant to take another step and leave behind something that meant so much to him. I could see him putting that moment in his pocket with all the other fabulous memories he'd created over the years. Then he waved, and forced himself to walk the rest of the way.

Jump (Little Children) play Turner Field--Continued . . .

2005-09-20T06:44:00.000-05:00

So, Sarah and I were driving on Ponce de Leon, looking for Moreland. Our confidence was shaken, our determination was fierce, and we were haunted by the vision of TURNER FIELD looming before us.

We are Lewis and Clark, although female, and in the South, and making far less progress because other mischevious explorers have been here before us, laying a false trail. We have no Sacajewa to aid us. We have only MapQuest directions, a CD that no subsitute for the real show which has surely begun, and a pack of cigarettes. I roll down the window, light a cigarette, and exhale a cloud of smoke into the night. We reach a red light.

"What the hell?!" I exclaim, "Sherman razed this city to the ground! Couldn't they have rebuilt it on a grid? What the hell is this? Why do I not have OnStar? Or like, a GPS tracker thing? Is this some strange Southern ploy--once bitten, now you'll never make sense of this city? Good God! Is the Georgia Dept. of Transportation insane? Well we ARE going to find this place, I don't know how, but. . ." I am interupted by voice to my left.

"Hey, hey!" calls the voice, "are you ladies lost?"
I look out my window, and sitting next to us at the red light is a man who is leaning towards us in his SUV.
"Hey!" I call back, "Where is Moreland?"
"Moreland?" he asks, "Well, it's right up there, just go . . ." The light turns green. "Follow me!" he cries, "I will honk when you should turn!"

I follow our Sacajewa, and we eagerly listen for a honk. Instead, however, he eventually turns into an Exxon, and we follow. I pull up next to him, and lean out my window.

"Hey," he says, "It's that street right there. Just look for the bustle of people. Where are you ladies going? Do you need some company, he he?"
"Umm . . . thanks!" I call back, "No, we're late for a show. But thanks! Bye!"
"Wait, wait, " he says, "I am Rasheed. I will give you my phone number."
"Oh, um, okay, " I say, "What is it?"
"I must write it down, " he replies, "You will forget."
"No, no, " I protest, "We can remember it."
"Let me find a pen," he replies.

I look at Sarah. This is taking far too long. We search through the car for a pen and some paper. I find a pen in my purse, and Sarah hands me the MapQuest directions.

"We've got it!" I call over.
He gives me his phone number, and makes us promise to call him. Then he insists on shaking our hands.
"Thanks Rasheed!" I call out the window as we drive away. I look at Sarah. "We're not calling him, " I say.
"Ah, good," says Sarah.
"But he was a nice guy," I say, and Sarah agrees. "So I'll blog him."

So thanks to Rasheed, we find Moreland. We get pointed towards the Variety after parking the car, and we rush over to the club, while philosophizing that if we've missed too much of the show, we can always call Rasheed and invite him to the Braves game.

But we have missed nothing. The opening band was still playing as we finally, finally, finally walked into the Variety.

And because I have an Old English test today, and I because I just translated a sentence as "As Cyneheard and his men all at the King were fighting until that they he killed took," I am, tearfully, forced to leave this . . .

. . . To Be Concluded . . .

Jump (Little Children) play Turner Field?

2005-09-18T13:31:00.000-05:00

I love Jump (Little Children). They are an extraodinarily good group of musicians, and I have been in love with their music ever since Ryan put "Cathedrals" on a CD for me, and Christy and Will took me to see them in Richmond. So when I discovered that their current tour was going to be their last tour, I decided that I was going to be a postman--neither hail, nor sleet, nor snow, nor rain or any other adversity would prevent me from seeing them on this farewell tour.

Luckily, I had none of these things to contend with, since they had a show scheduled in Atlanta, at the Variety Playhouse which I have heard so much about. All I had to worry about was getting to the Variety, and hell, I've been to Little Five Points before--Priya and Govind took me there. I could find it again. No problem.

So Sarah (an awesome Medievalist student from PA) and I made extensive plans (Me: "Hey, it's 7:20 pm. Wanna check out this show?" Sarah: "Sure! You know how to get there?" Me: "Oh yeah. I can totally find it. TRUST ME.") and I went to pick her up.

Perhaps I became excessively confident after finding Sarah's apartment. I only made one directional mistake, and I quickly realized it ("Ah," I said to myself, "That street must not have been marked!") and corrected it. I drove on 285 for the first time, successfully, and the world was rotating in sync with the Jump Little Children CD I was playing on my car stereo. The show was going to be incredible, and we were ready for a night out.

Without hesitation (I'm excluding the moment when we left Sarah's apartment and she said, "Turn left," and I immediately turned right), we navigated back to Ponce de Leon, and drove down the street, looking for Moreland. I had memorized the exceedingly simple directions to the Variety--left on Moreland, then left on Euclid. As we drove, we scrutinized the street signs; after all, it's Atlanta, the land of unmarked streets. And as we peered into the darkness and the headlights of cars going in the opposite direction, we studied the signs that were presented to us on the right side of the road, the signs we could actually see--our first mistake, after living in towns that made sense. We assumed that an intersection would have the same street on both sides--that the intersection for Moreland would indeed be the INTERSECTION of Moreland, with both sides marked and ready to indicate where we should turn left.

This is where it gets good, so I'm switching to present tense.

So we drive. And drive. And drive. And there is nary a Moreland sign to be seen. But there IS a MARTA station up ahead. And it's . . . it's . . . it's the Midtown station. Midtown? We're in Midtown? This CAN'T be right.

"Sarah," I say, "I think we're in Midtown."
"Midtown?" she asks, "Are we supposed to be in Midtown? I haven't seen Moreland."
"Me neither," I reply, "I think we're ummm . . . I think we're north of Little Five Points." Really, I have no idea if we're north or not. But saying a direction on the compass sounds informative. "Let's look a little more, and then turn around. If we see Peachtree, we've gone to far."
Sarah laughs, "Which Peachtree? That one?"

Indeed, we are about to cross one of the Peachtrees. Ponce de Leon has become one way, so I hang a right to turn around, and we see some very bright lights up ahead.

"What are those lights?" I ask, as an uncanny feeling of recognition begins to creep over me. It looks like a stadium. "Is that . . ." I hesitate, disbelieving, "Is that where . . . where the Braves play?"
Sarah and I contemplate the crowded bleachers before she responds, "Yeah. That's TURNER FIELD!"

Yes. On our way to Little Five Points, we have somehow ended up at TURNER FIELD. At THE BRAVES GAME. There were only two things to do. Laugh, and find Ponce de Leon.

I immediately turn right, and we attempt to find the portion of Ponce de Leon that runs both ways. In doing so, we find the intersection that sums up all of Atlanta. We stop at a red light, and discover that we are (I am not making this up) sitting at the intersection of Peachtree and Peachtree. I should have whipped out my phone and taken a picture of the two little green signs which declared that Atlanta is the most ridiculously designed city on earth. But I was laughing too hard.

Because the world was rotating in sync in my Jump Little Children CD, we managed to find Ponce de Leon again, with minimal trouble. We were determined women--Moreland would not evade us this time. We would now be taking a right onto Moreland, and we would be able to see the sign.

And because the world was rotating in sync with my CD, Fate did not leave us to our own devices to find Moreland. Fate had seen our excursion to TURNER FIELD, and kindly decided to prevent us from ending up at Six Flags, or the Margaret Mitchell House. Fate sent us a guide to our street sign. Fate sent us Rasheed.

And I want you to know that my Henry James seminar has reminded me of all the great works that have been serialized. So, as I attempt to do schoolwork and emulate several literary heroes, I will leave this story . . .

To Be Continued . . . .

My first paper

2005-09-11T21:42:00.000-05:00

This is the first paper I've written at GSU. It's for French class, so if you read French, tell me if it sucks or not. It's not for a grade, since I'm auditing, but still. When you have a sentence that says "When I arrived in London, I slept immediately, because I did not sleep on the plane, and the plane flew at night" you get a little nervous about turning something in.

En 1998, je suis allée en Écosse pour l’été. J’ai voyagé seule, et je suis partie après ma anniversaire. J’ai eu 21 ans, et j’ai voyagé en avion pour le première temps. L’avion est arrivé à London après six ou sept heures. Quand je suis arrivé à London, j’ai dormi immèdiatement, parce que je n’ai pas dormi sur l’avion, et l’avion a fait voler en nuit.

Je suis passée quatre jours à London. Je suis allée à les musées, à le Palais de Buckingham, à l’Abbaye de Westminster, à le Carré de Trafalgar, à la théâtre—j’ai fait les choses que les touristes ont fait. Puis, j’ai voyagé en train en Écosse.

L’Écosse est comme une autre monde. Je n’ai jamais regardé une place qu’est aussi belle que l’Écosse. Les montagnes ne sont pas grands, mais ils sont majestueux. Les lacs sont mystérieux et comme les miroirs. Le campagne est un vert magnifique.

J’ai loué un appartement à Edinburgh, où j’ai habité pour trois mois. Mais, j’ai voyagé en Écosse et Royaume-Uni aussi. Je suis allée à Inverness, où j’ai fait le bateau sur le Lac de Ness. (Mais je n’ai pas regardé Nessie.) Je suis allée à Stirling, où je suis montée le monument de William Wallace. En Pays de Galles, je suis allée à Aberystwyth et Cardiff, et en Angleterre, je suis allée à Liverpool, Cambridge, et London.

Mais vraiment, j’ai adoré Edinburgh. Le cuisine a été terrible (qui veut manger le haggis?) et le café n’a pas été bon, mais la ville a été comme un rève très beau. Le châteaux, le Palais de Holyrood, les rues que j’ai fait à pied tout les jours—je ces manque.

Speak for Change: a convoluted rebuttal to finger pointing

2005-09-04T10:40:00.000-05:00

Few things drive me crazier than a bad argument.

Almost a week ago, Katrina caused one of the worst devastations our country has ever seen. Entire cities have been razed to the ground. Almost half a million people have been left with nothing. Thousands of people have been killed. At least four states have suffered from immense catastrophe.

And whose fault is this? Why, President Bush's, of course. The Government's. There is not enough being done to help the survivors, the victims, the decimated South. President Bush is, after all, the PRESIDENT. Why doesn't he use his immense power to make everything right again, to help, to provide, to stop the looting? Why do we have troops in Iraq and not Mississippi and Louisiana? Why can we not provide relief and homes and medicine and food to these thousands of grief stricken and displaced people? Why doesn't the Government DO SOMETHING?

Oh, and what are we going to do about the rising gas prices? My God!!

Because if the Government cared, of course, all of these things could be so easily fixed. After all, the Government has such power, such control, that with a snap of the fingers, and a little expenditure at home, we could take care of this problem. But that damn President Bush--he does everything wrong, he's posing for photos in the South, trying to look good by hugging African-American women who have lost everything, but he doesn't really care. His eyes flicker over the devastation, and his heart is unmoved. That bastard. He's the PRESIDENT, he has the power of the whole country, he could do something.

Because this kind of devastation is so easily reversed. Look at Sri Lanka. After an earthquake that rocked the whole earth, literally, and a tsunami out of our worst nightmares, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and South India are all FINE NOW, aren't they?

How could this happen in the UNITED STATES?, the argument goes. We are AMERICANS, how could this happen to US? Who would have ever thought we would be witness and subject to such a terrible, shattering catastrophe, that we would have citizens left homeless and destitute, that order would disintegrate and a hurricane bring us to our knees?

I am 28 years old. I live in Atlanta, GA, where refugees are seeking shelter and food and clothing. I have never been a supporter of Bush, or of most of our current Administration. I am a liberal. A bleeding heart. I donate to everything, and neglect to deduct it from my taxes. I am an English teacher, and a Literature student, and I deal in stories and language and words.

For the disaster of Katrina in the South, I have no words. My bleeding heart is out of blood, so I cry with every new photograph I see. I have no money, so I search my apartment everday for something I can give. This will haunt me for the rest of my life, like the Challenger explosion, the death of Ryan White, and September 11th.

I care.

And because I care, because I feel my insides torn apart like these people's homes, I know that President Bush cares, and that any person who breathes, cares. To imagine that any person, no matter who they are, could look at the utter vastness of this tragedy, could look at the thousands of people being evacuated to Houston, to Atlanta, who have nothing, could look at the floodwaters and the bodies, the scraps of lumber that used to be homes, that used to be businesses that provided livelihoods--to believe that any person could look at Katrina's devastation and think "what a great photo op" is a statement of the most profound lack of faith in humanity that I have ever heard in my life.

To criticize and argue that "not enough is being done" is an insult to every rescue worker, every volunteer, and every donation that has been made. Katrina caused one of the largest natural disasters we have ever seen in this country, less than a week ago. To say that we should have re-created order, and repaired this devastation in a week is beyond absurd and ignorant.

To ask "why hasn't the President fixed this?" is an insult to the magnitude of this tragedy, and to the amount of suffering and loss Katrina has caused it's victims.

President Bush has had one of the most difficult presidencies I believe this country has ever seen. From September 11th and the war in Iraq, the nuclear situation in North Korea, the tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the London bombings, to the current tragedy in the South. For both terms, I have disagreed with almost every statement to come out of his mouth, when I've been able to understand it. But I cannot belittle the amount of hell he has had to contend with, and I refuse to withdraw my sympathy because I disagree with him. I cannot begin to imagine being President, and what that entails, in the last 5 years. I certainly will not fault him for not having the power to order a hurricane to stop, or for not having powers which have clearly been denied him by our Constitution and our laws.

No, there is not enough medicine in the South for the victims who are sick and wounded. But is this the fault of the Government? Medicine, healthcare, hospitals--we don't have socialized medicine here. Whether or not we should have it is not the question at the moment. We don't have it, and that's our current reality. Is the President being faulted for NOT seizing private goods and providing them to the survivors? Because that's what medicine is--privately owned goods. Where is the President, or the government, supposed to get medicine from? Seize it from drug companies? From other hospitals, who probably need it too?

And what about shelter? Should the President seize hotels, order them to allow refugees to stay for free? Or perhaps homes? Should the President seize your property and declare it the temporary (or maybe even permanent) place of residence of the refugees?

But what really bothers me isn't the blaming of the Government, but the blaming itself. Why do people feel compelled to establish blame for a natural disaster? Why are people so busy pointing fingers? Because they think it could have been AVERTED? Of course there are things that could have been done differently, but God only knows how much it could have helped. Or even, if some things were done differently and went wrong, how much it could have hurt.

I'm so tired of hearing people busily place blame, establishing themselves as innocent. It's one thing to watch the horror of this tragedy and wish that somehow we, or the Government, could have done something. It's one thing say "Bush should have supported Federal funds to reinforce the levees" and quite another to say "It's all Bush's fault."

Because we are not innocent. How many of us wrote letters to our Senators protesting the cut of the levee funds? How many of us have actively made our voices heard in protest over the troops in Iraq, and said "This is not an acceptable use of our resources?" Sure, we may have voted for Kerry, but WHAT ELSE have we done? What else are we doing?

Michael Chertoff, of Homeland Security, has stated that Katrina was a surprise. He knew the levees in New Orleans would be unable to withstand a Cat 4 Hurricane, several scenarios had been run to prepare for such a catastrophe, and all he has are excuses to explain the devastation of Katrina.

Is it HIS fault, then?

One of our biggest prides as a country rests in being a democracy. We are proud of our freedoms and our voices. And we should be. But if we use our freedom and our voices to simply establish blame, then we should be ashamed.

Perhaps Chertoff is at fault--for ignoring evidence, for making excuses, for not protecting our country like he should. But who is at fault for Chertoff?

The power of our Government doesn't rest in President Bush. It rests in us. We are the people the government is supposed to represent, and if the government isn't representing us, we need to start talking. TO them, not ABOUT them.

And if they don't hear us, we need to SHOUT.

And if they still don't hear us, we need to ROAR.

Because President Bush is right, this is not acceptable. But it's not just the devastation, the relief response, or the Government involvement. It's our involvement, too, that is not acceptable. If we want change, then we need to make change. And we can do it. The relief effort for Katrina is one of the largest in history. People are offering their money, their clothing, their homes--anything they can give--to the refugees. We have the power to act, we have the power to help, and we have the power to speak.

And we need to use it. To speak for New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama. To speak for poverty, and AIDS, and equal rights. To speak for change.

And if you think of voices as futile, think of those who have changed the world with words.

Then join them.

MARTA: Give me your socks for a song?

2005-08-26T19:19:00.000-05:00

I take the subway.

The MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) does, indeed, serve Metro Atlanta. The "Rapid" part is debatable, since I frequently seem to end up on trains that get stopped for some reason. I'm a little unclear as to why a train (or rather, a train conductor) feels the need to stop in the middle of tracks (usually on an elevated part), since the MARTA runs only in four directions. It's a very simple system. The MARTA line forms a large cross through the middle of downtown Atlanta--the hub being Five Points. The line I take to school is the East line, and I only live six stops from GSU.

But a lot can happen in six stops.

A couple of days ago I hopped on the MARTA after school and began the "rapid" transit home. I was sitting in my seat near the door, staring at the ridiculous billboards, when a man impatiently stepped on at the next stop. He spent a few moments re-arranging his duffle bag, his plastic shopping bag (which was rather tattered), and a large black garbage bag. He sang a little under his breath as he organized his belongings, and when he seemed situated, he realized that he had chosen the wrong location for his ride, and promptly moved everything directly in front of one set of the train's doors. He piled his various bags together in a mound, staddled them (facing the train doors), took a very worn piece of paper out of his back pocket, and began to sing.

Now, when I say "sing," I don't mean to imply that he sang quietly, or non-chalantly. He full out SANG. He didn't leg tap--he full body knee bounced. He gestured his his arms, indicating the train door window or himself, he pointed and winked at the train door window, and he performed some semi-dance steps (remember, he's straddling three bags, so this was mostly accomplished with his hips and some pelvic thrusts directed at the train door). His choreographer had incorporated a number of Motown-esque dance moves, and he passionately arm-swooped and back-stepped at the MARTA train door.

He was actually pretty good.

But this isn't the strange part. The man was obviously practicing--he re-sang lines, tried hitting different notes, forgot a word and had to check his piece of paper--he must have had a rehearsal or audition of some kind. He kept checking his watch, and I could only assume he, too, was unimpressed at MARTA's inclusion of "rapid" in their name, and was simply warming up on the train.

Here's the strange part. As he danced and leg bounced and gestured at the door, one of the bags between his legs--the black trash bag--came partly open. The black wispy plastic fell limp, and the contents of the entire bag were revealed--some even scatted out across the floor. And what was the bag full of?

Socks. An entire kitchen sized trash bag full of men's white athletic socks--still with the wrappers around them all. And all I could think was "My God. What does this man need with a hundred pairs of white socks?" Because there was AT LEAST a hundred pairs of socks in that bag.

As I reached my stop, he introduced himself, announced that he would be singing at GSU at some indefinite time in the future, invited me (and the car in general) to his performance, made me repeat his name, and then berated me for not repeating it enthusiastically enough.

And I have to admit, I wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying at that point, because it had suddenly dawned on me how many sock puppets I could make with those socks.

A LOT.

Orientation (or, how do I get keys?)

2005-08-18T22:53:00.000-05:00

Today was the last day of my GSU teaching and new student orientation.

Wow.

Whirlwind does even begin to explain it. I feel vaguely oriented--I am at least on so many lists and listservs that I'm not even sure what's coming into my inbox anymore. I can walk from the MARTA (GSU station) to the General Classroom Building (where the English Dept. is) without looking at a map now. And I'm becoming pretty good at finding the University Police Station and waiting for 45 minutes for keys that I'm not going to get. At least, not for my classrooms, I don't think.

The key situation is pretty impressive. In order to control incidents of theft, GSU now requires that classrooms be locked before and after classes. This means that us teachers and professors need keys to the classrooms. And since we teach in multiple rooms, we need multiple keys. Some buildings seem not to require keys, or haven't had locks installed yet--these are the buildings I seem to be teaching in. I have no idea where they are, but at least I won't get locked out accidentally. Hopefully.

I have also not managed to get my department key or office key yet, although I have been told that the Police Station will call me when they're ready. I have acquired an office, but I don't know where it is. Somewhere on the ninth floor of the GCB. I'll worry about finding it when I can open it.

I'm really impressed with the English Department, however. Orientation was quite helpful, if not a little overwhelming. They have the coolest packet of Teacher Resources that includes all kinds of information on their comp courses and pedagogy. GSU is definitely hip to Peter Elbow, and I really like the amount of control they let us have over our classes. I've got this crazy idea of implementing a class blog as an experiment with form, public writing, and technology. We'll see how that goes.

My new friend Priya and I are meeting tomorrow to copy our syllabi, and to explore a little more of Atlanta. Since I haven't yet finished my syllabus, I'm not sure how much copying will be completed on my part. I really dig my new text (Motives for Writing), so now it's just a matter of deciding when I'm going to what in class.

Getting there is half the fun

2005-08-06T23:50:00.000-05:00

I realized after unpacking how much storage space I had lost by moving into an apartment without built in shelves. Someone (Miss Jenny) said, "Check out Ikea. Do you have one?"

Ikea? I had heard of this place called Ikea, but I had never been there. When I think bookshelves or CD shelves, I think Target. Coincidentally, an Ikea catalogue came in the mail, and I began flipping through it. Wow! It was entire catalogue of furniture that I could mostly afford!! I decided to investigate this Ikea place in person. It would be worth driving into downtown Atlanta.

I chose an excessive number of CDs, and hopped into my car. Since I've hardly driven it in two weeks, and my car is black, it was like hopping into the pit of hell. Especially since I was out of cigarrettes.

I began navigating my MapQuest route, stopping for smokes before it became complicated, as I was not about to attempt to get lost without cigarettes. And it was a lucky thing, because I quickly got lost.

The thing with Atlanta is that no road has just one name. Each road changes names at least three times, from what I can tell. It's the same road, going the same direction, FOR THE MOST PART, but the name changes--for example, in Richmond, Cary St. becomes Huguenot Rd. becomes Courthouse Rd. But these name changes occur within blocks of each other in Atlanta, as opposed to 15 or 20 miles.

Now, as I said, it's the same road, FOR THE MOST PART. In order to clarify matters, the GA Dept. of Transportation has also apparently decided that some roads are the same that go in a different direction, and that labelling these changes would be cheating. For example, I'm driving down Buford Highway, and I see two signs: Exit left for 85 S, Exit right for Sidney Marcus Blvd. Since I want to do neither of these things, I stay in my lane, the right lane, since I'm trying to turn right eventually. Suddenly, I'm on Sidney Marcus Blvd. THAT WAS THE EXIT. Staying on the road was the exit. After some backtracking, I discovered that what I needed to do was follow the sign that said "Exit left for 85 S," which obviously indicates that I will remain on Buford Hwy should I choose that path.

I should also mention that every other street has Peachtree in the name somewhere. So feasibly Peachtree Ln will become Arcadia Ave, which will become Peachtree Center St, which you can only stay on by talking at left at a sign that says "Exit for 75 N.

This is all very confusing, and I am glad to see that the GA Dept. of Transportation took the same action I would have in the city. They gave up. They just stopped labelling intersections and roads all together. I drove through several intersections that had NO signs posted anywhere--just these sad hanging traffic lights that seemed to say "Well, you can go if you want to, but good luck getting anywhere."

I can only draw one conclusion--that in all probability, the GA Dept. of Transportation doesn't know what road it is either, or where they're going, and that they are just as lost as I am. And really, in a way, that makes me feel better.

Atlanta!

2005-07-24T01:53:00.000-05:00

Holy bloody hell! I'm in Atlanta!

Happy Anniversary

2005-07-21T10:50:00.000-05:00

Thirty six years ago today (I'm on Euro time, apparently), the Apollo 11 mission made history and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon.

And the computer I'm using now is more powerful than any computer NASA used in 1969.

Last year, SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X Prize, paving the way for private space flight.

In the next thirty six years, I want to not only travel to the moon, but to teach there.

Hot Pants

2005-07-20T13:31:00.000-05:00

I am currently soaking my favorite pair of jeans in lamp oil.

Why? Because the Internet told me to. I must admit, I am a bit dubious about the whole thing, especially since I doubt that my source was scholarly. However, I am determined to remove the oil-based paint from the seat of my pants.

Besides, I had to empty out my oil lamp to pack it up. =) And it gives me the opportunity to say that I have the most flammable pants in Richmond. Which is quite the accomplishment, really.

Moving

2005-07-17T23:27:00.000-05:00

I'm leaving Richmond.

In less than a week.

And I grew up here. On Jahnke Road. I used to climb the trees in the front yard and sit there, all summer, reading. I hid in the shrubbery that circled our driveway, and read among the leaves. I ate jelly beans while lying on the top of my swing set, late at night, after my parents were asleep, and I re-named all the stars and constellations after books that I had read.

On afternoons, I walked to Lake Paige and pretended I was an explorer. Since Lake Paige was a man-made lake, there wasn't a great deal to actually explore, so I created my own obstacles to overcome. Of course, the time I encountered the copperhead was an actual obstacle, which I overcame by screaming, freezing, screaming, and running like hell.

A duck once bit my brother at Lake Paige. That was pretty funny.

And I discovered the Gulch because of Lake Paige. And because I discovered the Gulch I discovered myself. Sitting there, afternoon after afternoon, growing older, smoking cigarettes, falling in love. I walked there from my house, after school--a mile down the street, thru the woods, across the creek, down the train tracks, take a right into the forest before the overpass--it was the journey that mattered, almost as much as the sitting.

There are so many hidden places in this city. The old pumphouse, behind the Nickel Bridge--I haunted that place for a summer. Or two. Or three. Who pays any attention to the old pumphouse, in the shadow of Dogwood Dell and the Carillon? I never saw more than a handful of people there during my haunting. I saw some ghosts, though--they were mostly mine. And I wonder if they're still there, dancing with the fireflies and listening to the cicadas, somewhere on the second floor of the pumphouse.

I hope so.

Randomness about Magical Realism

2005-07-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

I am absolutely fascinated by it. I don't know of a more perfect mode of writing. Magical realism seems to catch all the things in my peripheral vision, giving me a more complete idea of the world around me. I'm not sure that it's possible to get at the truth by looking directly at it. It's like the sun--if you stare at it, you'll be too blinded to see anything else. And I feel that since there are thousands of truths, it's important to be able to see the peripheries.

And to marvel at them. I feel that one of the most beautiful aspects of magical realism is its invitation to marvel--at the fantastic, the grotesque, the ordinary. And this marvelling seems also to contribute to the overpowering sense of "yes" that I feel when I read.

Who am I?

2005-06-28T14:15:00.000-05:00

GSU requires an insane amount of paperwork. I am currently working on filling out my G.T.A. packet, which seems to be getting bigger each time I complete a form. The really fun part is that every single piece of paper asks me for all of my demographic information--the address I don't live at yet, the office phone number that I don't have yet, my entire educational history, and more transcripts. I am becoming more convinced that my Ph.D. may be in Paperwork, instead of Literature.

My favorite form so far is the "I am not a subversive person" form, which needed to be notarized.

Despite the redundancy of all the forms, or perhaps because of it, I have been pondering on the summation of my life and identity. It's amazing/disturbing to be continuously reducing my graduate work to one line that reads "VCU 2001-2003 MA English--Literature." What I really want to do is to construct bizarre and astonishing origami creations out of each page, or fill the envelope with glitter and silver stars, or answer each question in haiku. Since I'm not sure what GSU would make of that, I have limited myself to completing each form in azure ink.

What I'll Miss about Richmond

2005-06-15T13:16:00.000-05:00

Richmond is a city of excessive randomness. A couple nights ago I was over at the boys' apartment, engaging in a grading/video game combo marathon, when my mother called. I stepped outside onto the balcony to talk to her, and noticed that the downstairs neighbors were having a party in the parking lot. I paid little attention, passively noticing the tiki torches, solo cups, dance music, and clusters of people chatting and laughing. I was unclear as to the purpose of the fire extinguisher and white plastic buckets in the parking lot, but I failed to creatively ponder the presence of these items. As I related various bits of moving drama to my mother, one of the girls in the party picked up two long metals with black balls on the end, and proceeded to submerge the black balls in the white plastic bucket. Although I considered this unusual, she did not fully capture my attention until she carried the two chains over to the tiki torches and lit them on fire.

Equipped with two flaming chains, she walked towards the middle of the parking lot and began swinging them into circles. As the chains gained momentum, her circles became more elaborate, and she began dancing, swinging these fireballs like they were gymnastic ribbons, making twirling S's in the air, creating a glowing field around her body as she danced.

It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

I explained to my mother why I had to go, and proceeded to be captivated by the fire-dance. She had to be a professional fire twirler dancing person--she was just too awesome. And apparently she was, because when she was finished, she asked some dude if he was ready to give it a try. He said he was, and bravely lit some chains on fire, and began making clumsy circles with them. He hit himself in the leg, recovered, hit himself in the chest (which was a little more serious) recovered again, and then made some pretty elaborate twirls. He retired to some scattered applause.

Then the Queen of Fire did an encore with a fellow who was apparently ALSO a professional fire twirling person! They did synchronized choreography with their gouts of flame on chains, making cocentric circles and swirls . . . it was astonishing.

And all of this happened in a bloody Fan parking lot, secluded in an alley. In a corner, near one of the buildings, some girl stood on a trash can and starting singing in what sounded like French (with gestures and everything). In the center, people learned how to twirl fire. And I could have walked downstairs, and said, "I want to learn fire dancing. Please teach me." And they would have taught me, if I had asked.