Notes on a Quest....

So, did I mention that I put Plan B into full effect?

Awesome...one hour spent writing a FUCKING LONG POST, and one accidental flick of the finger while I sneeze closes the whole window.  

I'm PISSED.

So I'm in Seattle now.  And I live with a stripper who just detoxed from methadone and has two kids with two baby daddies.  I met her in grad school and she took me in here after I overstayed my welcome in Boston.

Did I miss anything?

Nah, probably not.  I'm squeaking by (and squeaking doesn't begin to describe it) on freelance web gigs from craigslist.  I'm so tired of the whole struggling artist thing.

My stripper friend earns about $500 a night.  Too bad I'm not better looking.

And here we go...

Back to Actual Posting. 

It was a bit of reader mail that inspired this one.  A certain person I used to cavort with in San Francisco wrote me today letting me know that after 3 or 4 years (how long has it been Chelsea???) she has been reading my blog.  I was flattered as I had no idea.  Actually, now that I think about it, my blog has been serving a really good purpose in the way of friendships.  My other really great friend Chris reads from Portland on a regular basis as does Dave from Davis, CA, a buddy I used to fly with and well, I once buzzed his farm (and no folks, that ain't a euphemism).   So I have decided now that the semester craziness is over, and I no longer have to read 3 novels a week and work 20 hours at my part time job, that what I can do with my spare time is something productive.  Like continuing to bore you all with my weird and haphazard academic, free spirited poetic life in western Massachusetts.

Yay!!!! 

So for starters, I'll give you the run down of my weekend.  Fridays are my days off from my part time campus job (writing and researching grants and "developing" web pages (like simple html and whatnot)).  So my high school friend in Boston pinged me on Google:

Her: "Hey Oedipa, what's up?"

Me:  "Nothing, organizing my tax papers for next year.  Picking the dust balls off my floor.  And wondering where I can score some good heroin.  Do you know?"

Her: "Wow.  You should come visit sometime, the kids always ask about you.  Now that you actually have a Massachusetts driver's license, you can drive to our place too, instead of us picking you up from the Greyhound station like usual."

Me: "Oh! So what are you doing tonight and tomorrow?"

Her:  "Ummm....."

Me:  "Great, I'll be there in 3 hrs!"

To sum it up, I went to their suburban home.  We drank many Mojitos and watched 3 hrs of Battlestar Gallactica (which, even though it is set in space (Katra will agree), it still sexy and vibrant enough for those of us who despise Star Trek).   

Then we went to bed and the next day I rescued my friend from her two small children and we let her man take care of things.  And we went to Boston.  I wanted to see the Museum of Fine Art.  And so we did.  It's a nice museum, and it's big, but between you and me, once you've been to the Metroplitan in NYC there's no turning back.  But the collection of Revolutionary American art was spectacular. 

Then we went outside to the Japanese raked gravel gardens (pics to follow soon).  I was polite and finished my cigarette before we went in.  Once inside we sat in the 85 degree heat and admired the raked gravel.  I snapped a few shots.  A woman came in and sat near us for a bit.  Then suddenly my cell rang.

Now I often will simply turn my cell off when it's interfering with a conversation or when it's inappropriate.  But shit, we were outside.  And there was only one other person there.  And frankly, she seemed fairly checked out.   Long story short...I answered the damn thing, talked for a few minutes only to be confronted by a museum guard screaming at me to leave the rock garden as it was a place of meditation.

My walk out of there was indeed the walk of shame.  My cell phone held at my hip with my friend still yelling over the line "HELLO?  ARE YOU THERE?" and the museum guard giving me the evil eye.

Other than that, the only other entertaining thing was I got to see Ben Franklin's grave and a homeless guy asked me in all sincerity for $50 so he could find the car he parked "somewhere, I can't remember quite where" last night.  I actually had to brief him on how to find an easier mark.

And he and I actually parted with a hug.  I have a way with people I guess.

Still, it was a much needed therapeutic weekend away.

But now that I'm home, I'm finding that, yes folks, Western Mass is GROWING on me.  Unbelievable.  Perhaps it's because the temps aren't -20 below in June.  It's really beautiful here too.

Anyway, a totally random post with no direction.  Who cares.  It's fucking summer and I'm enjoying it.

Orbiting the Earth X amount of times

So I'm now three hours into the age of _____.  Three hours because I suffer from a bad case of insomnia.  Anyway, I have nothing profound to say just yet.  Give me time!  I'll come up with something.

And, since my blog page sends posts that are exactly a year old into the archives, I found this post from a year ago.  Anyway, once I post this, it will archive.  So I'll include the link.   What the hell.  I am slightly drunk at this point.  Damn these friends of mine!

Well, here's my horrorscope this year:

Aries March 21 - April 19

  Scientists will be amazed when new quantum-radar technology reveals that most of the dense, fast-moving, fist-sized objects in the universe are headed straight for your testicles.

Good thing I don't have testicles.  Anyway, I'm off to bed.  A year older and none the wiser.

R and R

Well yesterday, at the merry hour of 6 a.m. (which admittedly I haven't seen in two years) I launched this.   Then worked until 6pm checking everything, double checking everything and fixing whatever bugs came up.

Can I just say how tired I am of looking at photos of Alicia Keys, Kristen Dunst and Paris Hilton? 

However, in a rare gesture of appreciation and gratitude the Fashion Mag did send a magnum of expensive French champagne down to my desk.  THAT was indeed appreciated. 

Today, I overslept.  The alarm had been going off for over two hours by the time I woke up.  Launching this thing was like letting all of the mental helium out of me.  I told them I'd be working from home today, but by  mid-afternoon I finally admitted to myself and to them that I couldn't do any work today.  None.  All I was capable of was walking around my neighborhood in a  confused daze, resting on my couch, and watching TV.  And so that's what I did.  Then tonight I finally  felt well enough to read and just relax with a couple of chapters from "Poetic Imagination and Reverie" by Gaston Bachelard.

Now it's just past 10pm.  I'm still tired, but I need to get up mid morning tomorrow to mail off a manuscript of my poetry to the university for a contest.  Then off to actually pursue my independent study.  So now my other project begins. 

But the good news is I currently have a nice glass of good Oregon Pinot next to me, an Alias DVD qued up (from Season 3, btw, which I am really enjoying) and an over the counter sleep aid which will force me to turn in at midnight.  Hell, I'm so tired I may not even need it.

But the elections have made me happy.  This launch has me relieved.  And I'm looking forward to rediscovering what it's like to be human again. 

SoHo Art Gallery Event Where I Drank Free Wine and Hung Out with Anna Wintour

Just a few pics....  If you aren't my friend on flickr, then you can't see the rest.  Only because I wouldn't want the dude who threw the event to see my friend's face on there coupled with my snarky comments about Anna Wintour, free wine, etc.  You get the picture (ha!).

So come and sign up for flickr if you haven't and BE MY FRIEND!

A few samples:

Ok, a few things about this skull.  First, I wanted it.  I liked it.  Second, Anna Wintour was lurking right underneath it. What could it mean?  Third, the file name randomly came out of my digital camera as 08060066.  If you strip out the four zeros and the eight, what number does that leave you with people???  Hmmm????

Ok, I am bad, bad, bad about recognizing Famous People.  I can only recognize Famous Poets instead.  Help me out here.  I looked at this group and thought "Hmmm...there's gotta be someone Famous in here."  And then I snapped a picture.  Lemme know.  No Anna's not in here.  My fucking camera batteries died before I could snap a pic of her.  Perhaps it's becasue she's the Devil and made my batteries die.  It WAS HOT in there.  No AC.  She probably doesn't need that as Hell is apparently her home.

This alone is the reason to go to these things.  Free wine.  Yes, free.

Art!  Admire it!  Because you probably can't afford it!

An Art Ball.  These puzzling little creatures were everywhere.  On the wall, on pedestals, near the free wine....

What's Up with People?

Some years ago, when I lived for a few years in New Mexico, my friend and I heard about this class you could take to learn how to shoot and edit video for TV.  The class was being offered by the city of Albuquerque as a community service to educate its denizens on the finer art of making your own shows for that free channel on cable every city seems to have.  You know what I mean.  Like the channel in Portland, Or where you could watch Jim Spagg slowly gyrating across your screen naked, over and over.  Too bad that dude is dead.  He really did his part for free speech and all that, you know?

So my friend and I wanted to make our own cable TV show called What's Up With People?.  The premise was going to be that we would sit on a stage beneath a large video screen with an audience of about a hundred good folks in front of us.  When the curtains opened on the show, circus acrobats would come flying across the stage doing headstands and cartwheels and monkeys would race around shrieking and climbing on things. The point being is that we wanted to really underscore the chaos of the world that surrounds us.  Somehow, our show was single-handedly going to reign this chaos in.  How?  By pointing up the foibles and annoyances of the people Who Pissed Us Off.

We also wanted someone to say What's Up With People in thirty different languages while the monkeys and circus acrobats were doing their thing. All this while the camera slowly panned over the audience who was presumably shrieking with joy.  Because we wanted the international community found in Albuquerque, NM to really hear us. 

Then once the show was to commence we would then profile three people who had made our list that week.  Was it the guy with the car alarm on his monster truck outside the apartment?  Or was it the drunk rancher who made you follow him all the way up a one lane highway at 30 mph for two hours?  There were so many choices.  Then after showing the audience our selections, we would let them vote on who they hated the most. 

Anyway, I think you can guess the rest.  We never really did get around to doing our show.  However, Alfina the Vague has picked up that torch.  All it really takes is a damn blog!  She has an audience.  So we all made our submissions and she has kindly BLACKLISTED! them all for us (or at least she's kindly begun with the New York edition in addition to a few of her own).  It's amazingly cathartic. 

Vague, thanks for the community service you are undertaking for the Good of Us All.

Grad school is the tops!

I have a spare fifteen minutes before I jump into the next thing, so I just figured I'd drop a note to my wonderful blog.

So it was Zak who went crazy upon being dumped by a friend of mine in the dept.  This after my friend discovered he was sleeping with several women at once.  And lying about it.  So for awhile he was calling and writing me as I was the neutral party in everything.  Then it came out that he had sailed into our program here on a Native American fellowship...even though he's Jewish.  All this I found out from Famous Poet on the day of my last workshop when he announced getting a "strange email" from Zak announcing that he found nothing worthwhile in the dept. here and would therefore be going off to Iowa to promote his book.  Then he mentioned my name in the email to Famous Poet as being the only person here who understood him and who he would bother to keep in touch with. 

So I had to take a few days to do some damage control over that one.  Famous Poet did end up emailing me and reassuring me he knows I don't agree with his remarks and that he still values my work, etc.. 

So then I went to New York.  I arrived an hour before the poetry reading at the 92nd St Y was to begin and somehow caught a cab in front of Penn Station and was able to get there on time to meet P..  We had a great evening.  And we have lots in common in terms of poetry, age, sense of humor, etc.  I hope there's more in store there. 

Afterward, I meet up with my friend Sean in Brooklyn and we went out for drinks in Williamsburgh and fooled ourselves into believing we were hip for an evening.  The rest of the time there was spent apartment hunting and cavorting around Manhattan.  I can't wait to spend my summer there.

Actually, it may even be for 6 mos.  The Big Media Company secured funding for me through the end of the year.  The director of my program has already granted her blessing as far as independent study.  So I'll be off earning 6 units doing research into the poetic history of New York and the city's influence on American poetry.  It's a broad topic, but will leave me with lots of room to move, excuses to interview other Famous Poets, hang out all the time at readings, investigate small presses, and do interesting historical research via the many libraries of New York. 

Part of me wants to make it a book, but that would be for "someday" as I'm still working on my poetry manuscript.  That's my priority. 

Well, in case you were wondering what I was up to last week, I was busy drinking wine with a friend of mine here and binding books until five in the morning.  Because I'm in grad school and I can do that sort of thing now.

Bookbinding tools: Bone folder, thread, needle, paper, cigarettes, cube of wine and modge podge:

Much later....

After we had extricated the wine bag from the colorful box to squeeze the very last of the wine into our empty cups:

Yes....I am in my thirties.  Grad school is the tops!

Oedipa's postsecret moment #1

I've decided I like PostSecret a lot.  Anyway....  here's my postsecret moment of the week.

I was kicked out of a bar in Northampton tonight for smoking a cigarette in the men's room.  Isn't that pathetic?

Kindof a postsecret moment, but more like an Oedipa admission moment I guess.

It's true.  My friend Van encouraged me to do it, assuring me I would not be caught.  The Bastard.  See here in Massachussetts they have very weird laws.  One of them says that after 1am, no one is allowed outside of a bar to smoke.  Everyone is locked in until 2am.  If you leave to smoke you cannot return.  I think this is very screwed up, but what can one do?  Tonight, Van and I went to see a band.  Then we got caught up playing pool.  When I finally noticed it was 1am it was too late to go get one last smoke. Van assured me no one would catch us smoking in the men's room.

Can I just say how stupid and juvenille I feel right now???  Oh my god.  Next time I see that man Van, I will seriously wring his neck.  There's nothing like being escorted out of a busy bar by a burly staff member when you know you deserve it.  But it's not like I was crazy drunk or anything.  I just tried to sneak a smoke at the wrong time in the wrong place. At least I didn't try to deny it.  I just smiled and shrugged.  Yup, you caught me.  Sorry.   Whoops!  Van didn't get into any trouble as he had just extinguished his cigarette. 

Anyway, I must give this habit up.  And I don't even smoke that much!!!  Probably better to quit now before I start to though.

Oh the shame....  Anyway, off to bed with me!

Anchor....

The heat wave broke.  The hail and rain didn't exactly hit us either though.  I think it just burned up in the New York City atmosphere before it hit the ground.

A. is visiting NY for a few weeks from SF.  Which is great! She's staying at my place for a few days before moving just up the street from me for a bit.

On Monday, I really have to tell the Media Company what's going on in my life.  That I am going to grad school to write a book.  At this point, I just want to get myself out to UMass so I start the next phase of my life.  I've just got to tell them and stop worrying about it.

Everything is rife with uncertainty.

And I've been writing at work again.  This time a poem about the surface of things.  The Delta area in California.  My dad used to take me out there in the summers and leave me with the ski boat crowds while he gave rides in his seaplane.  It's a lonely landscape out there.  Brown colored water and an endless tangle of channels. 

I realized yesterday, while taking a walk by the pond on the south end of Central Park, that the Delta is his landscape.   Desolate and lonely.  Complicated waterways tangled with boats and skiers and strange barbeque pits set up in the muck on the banks.  Strange falling down docks and rusted cars and dock- side bars.  Fish and farms and coppertone and bug zappers.  And the heat.  It was always hot there.  And I often returned with painful sunburns.  He made me sleep just with a sleeping bag and no tent on the banks of an island we occasionaly visited called Snagg Island.  Perfect name for the poem.  The seaplane anchored just offshore rocked in the boat wakes from the drunks throttling past all night.   In the morning he made me swim out to the plane, dive, retrieve the anchor from the murky bottom and then away we'd go.

I always hated that part.  I feared reaching down and grabbing a sturgeon or a giant catfish.  Imagine my relief when my hands, groping around in that dark water, landed on that cold, heavy piece of metal.  Something I could take back up to the surface and show my dad and then he would be happy. 

Dumb financial luck.....

FreeWillAstrology makes the following prediction about the Aries sign:

For all I know, you may someday author a book called How To Attract Your Very Own Millionaire Spirit Guide. If you do, you will begin writing it during an astrological phase much like the one you're in now. In fact, it could even be this week. You're more aligned with the cosmic cash flow than you have been in a long time; you're more likely than usual to stumble upon dumb financial luck and generate money mojo. See if you can hear the whispers of that millionaire spirit guide as you fall asleep tonight.

I was relieved to see this because I know A) astrology is a highly accurate and scientific method of prediction and B) I'm terrified of not having enough money together for school

School starts in the fall.  I know that at least 2/3rds of my tuition for the three years there is covered, but the first year was starting to worry me.  Without a Teaching Assistanceship I would have to take out loans.  And I don't want to do that.  Especially since I'm madly trying to pay off debt right now.  So I was even considering the possibility of withdrawing (after all that too) and sticking with the Giant Media Company who pays me well and gives me perks.  What a choice.  One final temptation.  Money?  Or time to write? 

But then two days ago I was hired to do a remote contract for my old company back in San Jose (via telecommuting) and so now I just code away in the evenings earning extra income. 

Then there was today's news.  The news from U Mass I got the Teaching Assistanceship and my tuition will indeed be completely waived. 

And so the Universe continues to throw me a bone.  For that I am grateful.

Tomorrow is a picnic in Central Park with my coworkers.  I will bring my camera for capturing more of NY and environs.