Sittin' On It

Perhaps it was Sir Francois Bacon who said it best: work sucks, dude. Also, life's a beach.

Then he stole my wallet. I should have never let him in my house to begin with. I'm not even sure he was a really knighted. I mean, he was like 19, and selling magazine subscriptions.

So I work with three 20 year-olds. We'll call them Huey, Dewey, and Frank. Well, all three were in my office when one brought up Richie Cunningham. Y'know, from Happy Days. His professor had mentioned Richie Cunningham during a lecture, and he said Huey said "I thought it was weird that he made a Donnie Darko reference." At which point I looked at him like this:


He was thinking of Jim Cunningham, played by Patrick Swayze. Not that I knew this at the time, though I'd seen this Donnie Darko of which he spoke. So I said "that's weird. I don't remember that name, but it's also the name of the kid from Happy Days."

To which he replied, "what's the Happy Days."


To which I replied "what?"


Two out of three hadn't heard of this "Happy Days". This got me all twisted up. "You know, Happy Days, with The Fonz?"




"C'mon, The Fonz?"


How do you explain all that is Arthur Fonzerelli to someone? "Okay, so the show is like, all about how good the 50's were, right? Like That 70's show came out in the 90's, this was like that but in the 70's about the 50's. And Fonzi? He's a total badass, right? But he's not a badass like, I mean, he's a total badass in that he's cool but he's totally got a heart of gold, right? And, I mean, he lives over Richie Cunningham's garage."

"So who's Richie Cunningham?"

"He's, y'know, uh, Opie? Directed Apollo 13. Narrates Arrested Development?"

"Opie, from that Mayberry show?"

"Yeah! That's the one. The Andy Griffith Show. Anyway, the Fonz was like, the coolest guy in town. He had greased up hair and a leather jacket and he could bang anything with his fist and it'd just work like magic and he'd go 'Eyyyyyy' and put his thumbs up like this and then snap his fingers and put his arms out and a couple of girls would just show up and I'm pretty sure they'd go have relations but y'know he'd be tender and respectful and all because he's a good guy."



"Eyyyyyyy!"

In Which I (Maybe) Get to the Point

In reading back over my posts, this month I have twice now compared favorably myself against Cylons, indicating that I have a plan. This makes me sad in two ways. One in that I have not yet finished what I started, which is explaining that plan, and two in that, c'mon, am I really that big of a nerd?

It's safe to say that, for the most part, the past two weeks were miserable. I'd been volunteered to work on someone's project at work and, being a perfectionist, I think I worked too hard on it. I took it to Atlanta with me, working on it every night in the hotel room. I've been stressing about it since mid March, but crunch time was these past two weeks. Between this project, an event I was working on, and my regular duties, I regularly came in early and left very, very late. Staying three and a half hours late after work is one thing. It's another when you usually get out at 11pm.

This weekend, even though I had to go in twice Sunday to take care of some events, felt like a vacation. No homework, no workwork to bring home. Saturday the Mistress and I went out to dinner in high fashion, treating ourselves to pricey Italian. Then we met up with some friends at another restaurant where we had dessert. For the first time in a long time I was able to indulge myself for a day, driving up to visit Stankfoot on Monday. We played video games, we hit Taco Bell, I held the ladder while he took down his Christmas lights. It was fantastic.

The following will only be funny to those following Galactica:
On our drive to Taco Bell, he turned to me and said in a mock school teacher tone: "So, what did you learn from this week's episode?"
"Um," I searched, "don't piss off Tory."
And then, with his hands cupped closed, he said "Very good. I want you to remember that as you take command..." He moved his hands toward me, opening them to reveal this:



For those not familiar with the show, he was mimicking a very touching scene from the series where father promoted son. He couldn't have done it better. Now that I think about it, that'd be a good way for two B*G nerds to propose to each other. It would have to be a private and serious moment:

"So, what do you think makes us work so well together?" A conversation of any length, as long as it's serious, introspective, and dramatically lit, should follow. Finally, the one who started should stand up, pull a jewelry box from a nearby dresser, desk, or table, and move to kneel, saying with as much throaty gravel as they can add to their voice, "good. I want you to remember that as you take command... of my heart."

Back on topic, though I'm sure reality will set in once I'm back behind my desk, it's fitting that I feel a reprieve from work at about this time when I'm thinking of how I would like to move on from it.

Class, though it's been frustrating, has done wonders for my poetry writing. In 2004, Mr. Templeton opened my eyes to the potential of verse. By 2005 I was writing like crazy, but by the end of spring I'd burnt out. I lost confidence in my ability, and distractions like "I'm unemployed and living at home all the sudden" didn't help me gain any perspective. Three years later, I'm feeling confident again. My writing has improved, though I was not notably active. I think it's because of a gain in perspective. My problem in 2005 was, looking back, I felt I'd run out of things to say. As prolific as I was in that short period of time, I'm not surprised. Though it doesn't feel like it some times, I've learned quite a bit these three years. Somehow, I've found a thing or two to right about.

It is clear to me that, though I don't know of any dream job, any path through life free of struggle, I would like to at least struggle for something that I enjoy, something that resonates with me. I've also learned that regardless of the method or the medium, I need to be creating to be happy. It's like a pressure valve. No, it's more than that. When I struggle for hours only to, in a flash, find the right word, the perfect turn of phrase, I'm filled with immense satisfaction. I am rarely more proud of myself, more accepting and forgiving of myself, then after I have made, and made well.

So, instead of crossing my fingers and hoping that through some convoluted series of miraculous and absurd events that I end up the as the new bassist for R.E.M., (sorry Mike, I'd have to), I decided I'm going to apply for creative writing programs with a focus on Poetry. This, of course, means a lot of work. I have to:

• Study for and take the GREs
• Read more poetry, become familiar with poets I'd like to study under
• Find programs that I like with poets I like who teach
• Weigh the benefits of an MA vs. an MFA,
  
• Consider where and if I'd pursue a PHD
• If applying for an MA, creating a sample of Critical Writing, something which I do not have strong experience in
• Revise my best poems for a portfolio
• Find journals I'd like to seek publication in
  
• Submit my best poems for publication in various journals
  

This is scary. This is considering moving away from places and people I love. This is moving to leave a job with steady pay and benefits to study a field with narrow options of employment upon graduation during unsteady economic times. I frequently have second thoughts, but what I have to remember is it's those second thoughts that will keep me here. If I were happy here, I wouldn't want to leave so desperately. No, it really was worse than you remember it last year, and no, it won't be better next year. I know this, but I have to remind myself regularly.

There you have it. My plan. I have about a year to make it happen.

Like Spinning Plates

I started taking a class. Last Tuesday. Advanced Poetry writing. I was fucking nervous. I haven't been in a class since the spring of 2005. I know the professor. I was in the first class he ever taught here, which happens to be the class that precedes this one in subject matter. Which was back in 2004. The class is six other students, all undergraduates, and myself. They startle me with their youth. Their smooth skin. Their bright, eager eyes. Their carefully planned first day of class clothing choices. I'm wearing my work clothes: a sweater so I don't look like ten pounds of crap stuffed in a five pound sack. Last time I saw my mother, she noticed that I had some gray hairs on my temple and in my beard.

Our first assignment: go to our library and find twenty journals that publish contemporary poetry, and read this fifteen page article “a few times” so we can “really talk it through.” After work, I'm on the couch reading my article, and I have a moment. This whole thing feels odd. I haven't had homework in years, since I was a full time student, and with its duty and obligation come a litany of flashbacks that crash against my current surroundings. I am suddenly hyper-aware of all around me. My feet tucked into an old blanket. The napkin in my lap holding a half peeled, half eaten Clementine. The cat, ever peering from just beyond the edge of my paper. I finish my orange and decide to make some tea. Leaning against the kitchen counter, kettle warming to my left, my homework in my hand, I wonder to myself: is this what being an adult is? Dishes in the sink, tea and oranges on the couch? Bills clipped above the doorway and kitty litter to be scooped? Car payments, loans, utilities, and eight to five?

It's Thursday and I'm in class again. I ran to the library after dinner Wednesday night and lurked around the stacks in the basement, opening journal after journal and keeping a list on paper of what I found. I look around the table and every other student has typed their list up, their names and the date at the top of the paper. I feel a flash of foolishness, though I know this isn't the type of class where we'd be asked to hand this list in. I know he asked us to do this just so we'd get a sense of what our library had, what our resources were, and where to find them. We each read through our lists. Apparently, most of my classmates searched for their journals on-line. Our assignment for next Tuesday: find twenty journals in the library and to hold them in our hands.

We come to discussion of the article. It was a speech by former poet laureate Mark Strand in which he attempts to defend poetry. He starts by creating a fictional account of his attempt to write the very speech his giving, where he has a series of encounters with a student and his girlfriend. They ask him questions pertaining to the speech and poetry in general. To each he replies with an eloquent response that speaks to a certain aspect of poetry, but to each response he backs off, reflects, and determines that, to a degree, he is full of shit. The speech continues with this pattern until he decides, at the end, it is best not to give it at all.

Of course, this is meant to be cheeky and clever. People like cheeky and clever speeches. It wasn't until I read the article a second time, wrote out each argument and his reason for discounting it, that I realized that the structure of his speech was also the point: poetry attempts all these things, but is not any of them wholly. Poetry is about coming as close as you can to encapsulating an experience, whatever it may be, but it never fully recreates it. There is always a gap, a layer of mystery. And just like any abstraction will fail to capture an experience, any attempt at defining poetry will suffer the same fate.

I looked around the table again. Everyone had their articles out, and everyone's article was pristine. I was the only person at the table with my notebook out, which was full of summaries, arrows, connecting lines, and ideas, jotted in four colors. “What did you all think of this article?” Prolonged silence. At the end of the table a young lady speaks up: “I didn't like the end.”

“What about it didn't you like?”

“I don't know. How it ended like that. I didn't like that.”


There is a small panic in the other student's eyes. A furrowed brow an a pout when the professor disagrees with them. A beaming that occurs when he does. I realize that it's all on the line for them. This is what they are: students. Is this how we're different? This is their identity, and they need to succeed. If they don't, they fail more than their class. Here I am, strolling in, doing my homework before and after work, between cooking and cleaning, from the quiet comfort of my house. I could drop this class tomorrow, and if I do, so what? I still eat. I still work. I am no longer expected to succeed, and no one will come down on me. I won't come down on me. I have nothing to lose, I have nothing to fear. They have no idea what life outside of college will be like, but they know that it depends on everything they do now.

I remember what that was like. It's terrifying. It's overpowering. But it's not mine anymore. And I don't belong here. I can see how every question, every statement the professor makes, is designed to elicit a train of thought. Formed to gently massage out a response. Baby steps. I get it, and though it's entertaining to watch, it's uncomfortable. I am between two worlds here. From nine to eleven, Tuesday and Thursday, I will be an undergraduate student. From two to eleven I will be a young student affairs professional, and I don't belong there either. I see through the bullshit. I am put off by the constant dishonesty, the self serving political jockeying. I refuse to pray on the altar of my resume, and for that I will only watch others step over, pass by, as I struggle in the same position.

Maybe that's naive. Maybe I'm not so different than my class mates, only further along the curve. I've been there, and though the material may be new, the methods boring now. Maybe in ten years I'll be able to look back on this entry, on my take of home and work, and I'll see how immature I was, how much I had to learn. Still, the feeling remains. I don't belong here. I am no longer a college student. I am not a professional. I just live in limbo, playing the role of both.

I saw one of my work study students at the library the other day. He was quite unsettled. He didn't recognize me in “normal clothes.”

Freedom, Horrible Freedom

Freedom
Today was my last day of work for about a month. My job is only ten months, so between December and January, I come suddenly into a glut of free time. I have some goals in mind about how I should spend this precious resource. For one thing, I want to do something creative, like write, for at least an hour once each day. If I miss a day here or there I should be okay, so long as I do it most days. The other goal is to finally make this house mine: finish the kitchen, clean out the bathroom closet, decorate, and enjoy. Doesn't sound like too much to ask, does it? We'll see.

Master of all I see
The situation on my Grape iMac is as follows: with OS 9 installed, I'm able to play DVDs without a problem. However, under Linux, they are unwatchable. Under Linux, I can watch DivX, AVI, and other compressed video formats. I can't easily find players to do so for Mac OS 9. The solution: dual boot.

Without going into the gruesome details, it was a chore and a half to get this thing to dual boot. Last night I experienced the fabulous, magical moment when the whole damn thing finally worked. I felt cocky as hell. It runs Xubuntu fairly well, and browsing the internet suprisingly does not suck. (We're talking eight year old tech here people, and mid range tech at that.)

Also, I made a desktop for it:

I wanted to incorporate the the purple coloring while giving a nod to Xubuntu (the mouse in the circle thing). None of the desktops I found online matched the intense grapeness the iMac exudes. They just don't color 'em like the used to. Remember when the look caught on, and everything plastic was being made with fruity iMac like colors? That didn't last long. It was a late 90's thing, what with the good times and optimism and all.

While waiting for packages to download and install I framed some more posters. I had one really nice frame that was the size of the last two posters I had left. One was a Mallrats poster, the other a Star Trek IV poster. I decided to go with the Star Trek poster, even though I already knew where I wanted to hang the Mallrats poster, because it is a vintage, beat up poster. I felt seniority won it. It wasn't until after I got it all mounted that I noticed the following:

How freaking cool is that? I had no idea!

Frames
Sunday the Mistress and I went on a trip to find barry sax reeds (for her) and poster board (for me). For poster board we ended up at Michael's. I left spending way more than I intended to, for they had poster frames on sale, and you see, I must frame posters for reasons not yet determined. Actually, I think it's because I framed one, and felt that I had to frame the rest or they wouldn't look right. It was stressful, weighing out whether or not I buy these sweet frames on sale, or whether I wait like I was planning to so I'd have more money to buy other people things for Christmas, but in the end, my selfish-ass won.

Saturday
Oh geez, let's see.

Last weekend was a "take it easy" kind of weekend. Saturday The Mistress and I took a trip out to visit my college friend Johnny Blue Jeans. He had dinner and desert waiting for us: a delicious teryaki style pasta and chicken dish, followed by tea, canollis, and napoleons. His friends Brackus and Q.B. were there as well, and we all took delight in light discussion and ping pong.

Johnny Blue Jeans spent two years in Ukraine for the Peace Corps after college. I can't imagine how much he learned or how valuable that kind of perspective is. The last time I was at his house, I think, was his welcome back gathering about a year ago. I remember him looking both overwhelmed and distant. I'm sure part of it was time zone shock, but it made me think about how jarring it would be to culture switch instantaneously the way he had.

He was certainly more present and accounted for this weekend, though as we talked some tough themes certainly came up. That night I think I attributed them to a search for identity and meaning after having his home culture checked against another. After reflecting, I came back to the same conclusion I have again and again: no one I know in my age group knows what the fuck. That is to say: none of us have a clear drive or passion, (or if they do, not one they can sustain or pursue), none of us have a clear idea of what we feel we ought to be doing with our lives, and none of us have a sense of who we are or who we want to be.

Maybe I just hang out with too many atheists.

Friday
I (finally) had lunch with the Templetons! We discussed writing, school, work, family, and the what-nots. See, I'm trying to figure out who I am, or, more importantly(?), who I want to be. I'd like to go back to school, but seriously, for what? The answer is obvious: for something I'm passionate about, or for something that will allow me to do something I'm passionate about. What, then? Do I go to school for an MA or an MFA for writing? Do I look into something maybe dealing with gender studies, and take it all the way to a PhD? Do I try my hand at the LSATs and see if I can dig my way through law school just because the challenge excites me? No one can answer except me, of course. This would be fine except I don't know what the fuck.

The Templetons, being professors, students, practitioners, and admirers of the written word, spoke mostly of English MA programs and Creative Writing MFAs. Both lead you to teaching positions by default, and their advice was this: only go all the way it if you're sure that's what you'll want to do. I've never taught, and frankly, the notion of trying scares me. I love explaining things to people who are interested, but that hardly encapsulates the experience of teaching today. The more I read about how tough it is, the more I feel I'm not cut out for it.

On another note, Mr. Templeton's teaching an advanced poetry class this spring. I saw it in the class listings, but would never have asked about it, since I failed the last class I took with him. (It was an independent study course we designed, and never finished my portfolio to wrap the course up. A bout of writer's block combined with having graduated did me in.) He, however, asked if I would be interested in sitting in his class. Of course I said I was interested, and plan on emailing him soon to say yes. It's 9:20 in the morning or so, but where the class is held is less than 5 minutes walking distance from my house, which is just too cool. I know it's not coming across here, but I am so incredibly excited about this.

Car Parts
To celebrate the birth of Dark Mistress Hawthorne, I presented her the following: Windshield Wiper Blades and a (very nice) Mag Lite. (Also, a hand made card and a promise to dinner out somewhere nice.) She loved it. She was especially excited about the wiper blades, as hers currently suck, but she would never get around to actually replacing them. (We all know how that is.) She loved the gifts and is still my girlfriend, for which I am glad.