Hasty Pronouncements

I may be cursing myself by calling it too early, but I think that my eye twitch might be completely gone.

Which is good, because it's hard to convince people (least of all myself) that I am a competent and sane human being when the giant bag under my eye is disco-dancing all around.

In case you didn't get to see it, I assure you that this twitch was no ordinary "hey everyone I can feel my eye twitch but you can't see it" situation. This was a full-blown "ohmygod is she going to pull out a gun" kind of twitch. People--people who claimed to love me--would get distracted in the middle of our conversations to stare at the thing. Which was helpful in relaxation, I assure you.

Causes for the demise of The Twitch
Christmas Over
Presents Finished and Distributed
Sleep Averaging Seven Hours
Normal Food
Thesis Done
Deadlines Met
Family Met and Made Merry
Birthday Survived
Solstice Party Success

Thesis Head

Thesis due Thursday... can't two words string sentences to together make...

Book List of Graduate School Reading Experience, for aforementioned thesis:

Agard, Nadema. “Art as a Vehicle for Empowerment” in Voices of Color: Art and Society in the Americas. Phoebe Farris-Dufrene, ed. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997.

Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.

Allison, Dorothy. Bastard Out of Carolina. New York: Dutton, 1992.

Allison, Dorothy. Trash: Stories. New York: Plume. 2002.

Allison, Dorothy. Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, and Literature. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1994.

Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Viking Press. 1960.

Arizona Department of Education. “Causes of Homelessness: Substance Abuse.” Educating Homeless Children. March 31, 2007. <>

Auster, Paul. The Brooklyn Follies. New York: Henry Holt. 2006.

Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. New York: Dell, 1956.

Baldwin, James. Going to Meet the Man. New York: Dial Press, 1965.

Balfour, Michael, ed. Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice. Portland OR: Intellect Books, 2004.

Baum, L. Frank. The Wizard of Oz. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

Brockmeier, Kevin. The Truth About Celia. New York : Vintage Books, 2004.

Brown, Rosellen. Before and After. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1993.

Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979.

Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Sower. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1993.

Butler, Octavia. Parable of the Talents: A Novel. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998.

Butler, Robert Olen. A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain: Stories. New York : Penguin Books, 1993.

Carson, Anne. Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

Casares, Oscar. Brownsville: Stories. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2003.

Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: A Novel. New York: Picador. 2000.

Chabon, Michael. The Best American Short Stories, 2005. Boston : Houghton Mifflin. 2005.

Chabon, Michael. Chen, M. Keith & Jesse M. Shapiro. "Does Prison Harden Inmates? A Discontinuity-based Approach," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1450, Cowles Foundation, Yale University. 2003.

Chevigny, Bell Gale. “Introduction: Doing Time at Century’s End.” in Doing Time: 25 years of Prison Writing. Bell Gale Chevigny, ed. NY: Arcade Publishing, 1999.

Chute, Carolyn. The Beans of Egypt, Maine. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1985.

Chute, Carolyn. Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1988.

Chute, Carolyn. Merry Men. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.

Cisneros, Sandra. Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. New York: Random House, 1991.

Coetzee, J.M. Disgrace. New York: Viking, 1999.

Crais, Robert. Demolition Angel. New York: Doubleday, 2000.

Crane, Elizabeth. All This Heavenly Glory. New York: Little, Brown, 2005.

Crane, Elizabeth. When the Messenger is Hot. Boston: Little, Brown, 2003.

Day, Cathy. The Circus in Winter. Orlando: Harcourt, 2004.

Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine: A Novel. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1984.

“The Facts Behind the Faces.” A Fact Sheet from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Winter 2004-05. Chicago Coalition for the Homeless <>

Faulkner, William. Go Down, Moses. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues: A Novel. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1993.

Flynn, Nick. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2004.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2005.

Gaiman, Neil. Coraline. New York: Harper Collins, 2002.

Gaiman, Neil. Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions. New York, NY: Perennial, 2001.

Gibbons, Kaye. Ellen Foster. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Goodman, Allegra. The Family Markowitz. New York: Washington Square Press, 1997.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. New York: Vintage Contemporaries. 2004.

Harris, Thomas. Silence of the Lambs. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989.

How Many People Experience Homelessness: NCH Fact Sheet #2. June 2006. National Coalition for the Homeless. April 2, 2007. http://www.nationalhomeless.org/ publications/facts/How_Many.pdf

Johnson, Denis. Jesus’ Son: Stories. New York: HarperPerrennial, 1993.

Johnson, James Weldon. Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1995.

Joseph, Cliff. “Reflections on the Inescapable Political Dimensions of Art and Life” in Voices of Color: Art and Society in the Americas. Phoebe Farris-Dufrene, ed. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997.

Kelly, James Patrick. Burn. San Francisco, CA: Tachyon. 2005.

Kelly, James Patrick and John Kessel, eds. Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology. San Francisco: Tachyon Pub, 2006.

Key Data Concerning Homeless Persons in America. June 2006. National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. March 30, 2007. http://www.nlchp.org/FA_HAPIA / HomelessPersonsinAmerica.pdf

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York: Scribner, 2000.

Kornfeld, Phyllis. Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. The Namesake. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.

LeGuin, Ursula. The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. Boston: Shambhala, 2004.

Lemos, Gerard. “More Than a Place to Stay.” Community Care 6/29/2006 Issue 1629. p 34-35.

Lethem, Jonathan. The Fortress of Solitude. New York: Doubleday. 2003.

Lewisjohn, James, ed. At the Ninth Hour: A Book of Prison Poems. Thomaston, ME: Maine State Prison, 1977.

Lewisjohn, James, ed. Out of the Depths… A Book of Prison Poems. Thomaston, ME: Maine State Prison, 1977.

Lewisjohn, James and William Hollifield, eds. On the Seventh Day: A Book of Prison Poems and Graphics. Ellsworth, ME: Downeast Graphics, 1978.

Link, Kelly. Magic For Beginners. Northampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2005.

Lodge, David. The Art of Fiction. New York: Viking/Penguin Books, 1993.

Matalene, Carolyn. “Experience as Evidence: Teaching Students to Write Honestly and Knowledgeably about Public Issues” in The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook. (Fourth Edition). Corbett, Edward P. J. et al, eds. NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. p.180-190.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York : Alfred A. Knopf. 2006.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics. Northampton, MA : Tundra Pub. 1993.

Miéville, China. Looking for Jake: Stories. New York: Del Ray, 2005.

Miéville, China. Perdido Street Station. New York: Del Ray, 2001.

Miéville, China. The Scar. New York: Ballantine Books, 2002.

Miller, D. Quentin, ed. Prose and Cons: Essays on Prison Literature in the United States. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. Inc., 2005.

Minot, Susan. Monkeys. New York: Dutton, 1986.

Moore, Lorrie. Birds of America. New York: Random House. 1998.

Moore, Lorrie. Self-Help: Stories. New York : Random House, 1985.

Mosher, Howard Frank. A Stranger in the Kingdom. New York: Doubleday, 1989.

Mulvey-Roberts, Marie. Writing for Their Lives: Death Row USA. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007.

Munro, Alice. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Munro, Alice. The Love of a Good Woman. New York: Knopf. 1998.

Munro, Alice. Runaway: Stories. New York: Knopf, 2004.

Munro, Alice. Selected Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Murakami, Haruki. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: Twenty-four Stories. New York: Knopf, 2006.

Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place. New York: Penguin Books, 1982.

Neal, Brandi. “The Long Road Home: Billy Woolverton Finds His Way Back—to a Long Lost Family.” in The Blue Room v2 i8 Feb/Mar 2007. p. 10-15.

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.

O’Connor, Flannery. Everything That Rises Must Converge. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1965.

Olsen, Tillie. Tell Me a Riddle. New York: Dell, 1989.

Ozeki, Ruth. My Year of Meats. New York: Viking. 1998.

Ozick, Cynthia. The Shawl. New York: Knopf, 1989.

Pelletier, Cathie. The Funeral Makers. New York: Collier Books. 1986.

Pelletier, Cathie. Once Upon a Time on the Banks. New York: Pocket Books, 1991.

Pelletier, Cathie. The Weight of Winter. New York: Viking, 1991.

Pettit, Becky and Bruce Western. “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in US Incarceration.” American Sociological Review, 2004. accessed at http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Mass_Imprisonment_and_the_Life_Course__Race_and_Class_Ineq.pdf on March 8, 2007.

Proulx, Annie. Close Range: Wyoming Stories. New York: Scribner, 1999.

Reagan, Michael and Donald M. Stoughton. School Behind Bars: A Descriptive Overview of Correctional Education in the American Prison System. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1976

Robson, Ruthann. Cecile: Stories. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1991.

Roskelly, Hephzibah. “The Risky Business of Group Work.” in The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook. (Fourth Edition). Corbett, Edward P. J. et al, eds. NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. p.123-128.

Rowling, J. K. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 2007.

Russo, Richard. Empire Falls. New York: Vintage Books. 2002.

Russo, Richard. Nobody’s Fool. New York: Random House. 1993.

Russo, Richard. The Whore’s Child and Other Stories. New York: Knopf. 2002.

Salzman, Mark. True Notebooks. New York: Knopf, 2003.

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. New York : New American Library. 1963.

Steinbeck, John. Of Mice and Men. New York: Penguin Books, 1993.

Tartt, Donna. The Secret History. New York: Knopf, 1992.

Wagner, David. Checkerboard Square: Culture and Resistance in a Homeless Community. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993.

Wallace, David Foster. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments. Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1998.

Welty, Eudora. The Golden Apples. New York: Harcourt, Brace. 1949.

Welty, Eudora. Stories, essays & memoir. New York: Library of America, 1998.

White, Michael C. The Blind Side of the Heart. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Words from the Curbs: Writing from Preble Street Resource Center. v3 i1. Portland, ME. Fall 2005.

Words from the Curbs: Writing from Preble Street Resource Center. v3 i2. Portland, ME. Spring 2006.

Travel

In just a few hours I am off for a very exciting road trip to Northampton, dyke mecca of the east coast. Or so I understand. Having never been there myself I am curious to find out if, in fact, the rumors are all true. I am bringing along a friend for cuddling and a Holyoke graduate, plus some emergency beef jerky in case I should go into red meat withdrawal, so we should be prepared for all eventualities.

The purpose of the trip is to meet with my mentor, who will be giving me feedback on my novel/thesis. But I think there will also be brunchiness and sleeping late and a rainbow bumpers sticker and perhaps a seedy bar. We'll see.

Bragging Rights

So, a year or so ago, at my Stonecoast residency, we all went out to eat lobstah on a real Maine wharf complete with cranky tourists and overpriced shellfish. Though a long-time vegetarian, my friend Ann got a lobster, intending to eat it--as part of the experience. She's from a non-oceanic state, and how can you visit Maine and not eat the cursed red crustacean, etc. etc.

Anyway, she didn't end up eating the lobster (I think she gave it to S), but told me that the experience of watching me deftly dismember the critter for her prompted a piece of writing. I mean, I don't want to take all the credit or anything. There were a dozen people sucking on lobster legs and cracking claws. But, you know... I'll take some. If I can get it.

I think this is the piece: Cock Lobster. You can listen to it or read it. But, um, allow yourself a moment of private time, after.

3 Things, Not Necessarily Related

I'm back from MFA residency, very tired but super-jazzed to work. I'll be finishing up my linked short story collection this semester (if you get an idea for a title let me know); I have seven out of probably ten stories written. Some need the rough grain sandpaper, a couple need the fine. A few might require a table saw.

The residency was an incredible experience for the following reasons:

1. I'm working with the incredible Kelly Link this semester. That's right.

2. I had my credit card stolen, and got a phone call from my bank that someone was trying to use it from Switzerland. I appreciate the irony that my credit card number is now more widely traveled than I am. I'll let you know how that all turns out. PS--don't use your credit card on the internet.

3. I've decided never to wear underwear again. I went without for logistical reasons during the residency (white dress, only brought blue flowered underpants) and I don't think I'll ever go back. Well, 3/4 of the time.

Residency Burnout

We're on Day... um... I can't remember what day it is... of my graduate school residency. Not quite mid-residency, anyway. I'm trying to prevent Residency Burnout* by forgoing most of the evening, post-faculty-reading drinking adventures and getting enough sleep. It's not really working out. Since it happens so infrequently (just twice a year), there's always a push here to do more, hang out more, cram in more.

I had a little bit of a brain crash late this afternoon. My story went up for revision at today's workshop, and that went well, although there is always a certain amount of humility created by having my piece sliced up by well-meaning peers. Then there was a seminar ("Opening Gambits," with Elizabeth Searle, about creating solid, interesting openings to novels**), and then three readings by graduating students. I ate too much candy during the readings and then felt like crying while trying to figure out what I was going to do during the next three and a half hours. I was entirely unable to make a decision for twenty minutes. The crisis passed, though (of course) and I had an espresso and ate some steak and now I feel much better.

Onward! Residency Burnout be damned!

* The first symptom of which is forgetting what day it is.

** And I think I figured out in this seminar how I'm going to open my novel, which is quite exciting. I'm writing a novel! It's 3/4 done! And I know how it's going to begin! Who the fuck do I think I am?!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Much later today (Friday) I'm going to my fourth residency at the Stonecoast MFA program. It's ten days completely removed from the rest of my life--an intense period of workshops, classes, seminars, readings, and endless talk about writing, stories, the business of writing, plots, tricks, tips, gossip... I can't wait. Although, to be perfectly honest, one of the things I'm really looking forward to is ten days of wearing whatever clothes I want, because work dress codes suck.

My school chum Patrick is staying the night to save on hotel checkout time awkwardness (checkout is 11am, school doesn't start until 2), and we've been talking nonstop for about four hours about all kinds of things having to do with writing and editors and experience and our novels. A little warmup for the week.

So I'm not sure how much I'll be around during the next week or so, but I'll try to drop by and say hello. And I'll be back after next weekend. With photos. And probably a hangover.

Past & Future

Happy Sort of Birth Day to the 19th amendment, which was first proposed 88 years ago today (it wasn't ratified until a year and three months later, on August 18, 1920). Yay women voters!

I'm still mostly an anarchist at heart, I think, but I vote to hedge my bets. Which makes me either a practical anarchist or a sellout, depending on how you look at it.

****************

Also, the NY Times has a great list of what some famous writers (Foer, Eugenides, LeGuin, Eggers) are reading right now. I've never heard of any of these books that they're reading. Oh, for an unlimited book budget and some free time demanding to be filled!

With that in mind, my next post shall address the May Book Roundup. Notice I did not give a time for such a post, as all of my predictions as to when I will next return are invariably wrong.

****************

In between work insanities, the complicatedness of my home life, and some intense therapy I've been writing the seventh story in my linked collection, and it seems to be going to a very dark place (opiates and liver disease, if you must know) that makes me feel strange in the head as I write it. Likely I will someday look at this story and go, "Thank goddess I'm not there any more."

OK, The Marriage Issue

Today my Stonecoast professor and former mentor Leslea Newman, has an op-ed article about gay marriage in The Republican, a Massachusetts newspaper. She beautifully describes the scene on the day that gay marriage became legal in MA:

...I wouldn't have missed this historic day for anything, and it was clear from the crowd that many others felt the same. A woman walked down the line of about-to-be married couples looping plastic rainbow-colored Hawaiian leis around their necks. A man stood in the parking lot waving a banner that read, "And they lived equally ever after." The woman next to him held a sign that simply said, "It's about time." A child wearing a T-shirt imprinted with the words, "I love my two mommies" handed out bubble blowers shaped like miniature wedding cakes. Slices of an actual wedding cake donated by an anonymous baker were passed about. A musical group called the Raging Grannies sang "Here Come the Brides." Even the reporters and newscasters, those staunch upholders of professional detachment, had tears in their eyes.

To be clear, I am not really a fan of "the marriage issue." I don't like that it's taken the forefront of gay activism, because I think that there are some more pressing issues (hello, civil rights? violence and hate crimes? most of the middle states? texas?).

Marriage needs an overhaul. It's too easy to get into--for straight folks, of course--and too hard to get out of. Maybe it made sense to make a lifelong commitment when it was mostly a financial arrangement, but now that we (mostly) claim love as our reason for marrying, we should recognize that hearts can change and grow over the course of a lifetime. Plus, let's not even get into how it supports the patriarchy and capitalism.

Mostly, though, I don't like the "we're just like you" message, because the folks who say that in the publicity materials are middle-class white gay men and lesbians who want to get married "because they're in love." This message excludes some of the vibrant and diverse populations that make up our queer communities. Where are the "leather daddies for marriage" commercials? Or the "militant bi's for full equality?" I think that it is more useful for people to talk about different types of relationships and see marriage as one option among many.

Plus, we're not "just like you." We are discriminated against, ridiculed, and beaten. We have a resilient community that has put into practice some viable alternatives in reaction to the indifference of mainstream culture, like our "families of choice" when our biological families aren't accepting, or the AIDS activism of the 1980's and '90's that set the standard for everything that came after.

As a parent, I keenly understand the need to create legal responsibilities and commitments. If I had married my daughter's father, we would not be in this weird custody neverland where I can't take her out of the country, and I might have more leverage to get child support. Of course, we might also still be legally married, since I can't seem to find the guy to serve papers on him, and chances are pretty good that I couldn't afford a divorce anyway.

Instead of focusing on marriage, let's take a look at what our community really needs, and move forward from there. Let's talk about how lesbians make less money than practically everyone else, and how we can better work for transgender rights, and why so many people in our community have substance abuse issues, and why queer youth are committing suicide and running away from home, and about second-parent adoption.

Marriage is one of those things that our community needs. But it's one of many, and we shouldn't get caught up on the one just because it easily appeals the the middle-class white people who make the laws. Rather than trying to assimilate, we should be stretching the boundaries of the mainstream, and making our own space.

For Moments Like This

As a third semester student at Stonecoast, I am required to spend this semester working on a critical project. Most people write papers--research papers or English Lit-type papers that focus on one or two aspects of a writer's work, or a branch of critical theory, etc--some people do projects and then write papers.

I opted for a research paper about writing groups in prisons and shelters, because I'm interested, and because I would like to do some of that--for money--after I graduate, and the research may come in handy for things like grant-writing and convincing administrators that the work needs to happen. I think having an MFA is suddenly justification for me to demand to get paid for doing the things I love to do.

Anyway, it's been a trying semester because it's not my favorite kind of writing. I did manage to slide in some creative bits by interspersing the research/expository sections with personal narrative about my own experiences facilitating a writing group in a shelter.

But the best news is, I just sent in my final draft to my mentor (the very talented and patient-with-my-delays Alan Davis), which means that I get to spend this last semester working on fiction. As long as he agrees that it's actually a final draft.

I just sent K down to the store for a bottle of ginger ale** to celebrate, and I may smoke a cigarette. It's hot times in the old town tonight, folks.

If you want to read it, drop me a note and I'll send it out like the fucking flowers are sending out millions of tiny pieces of pollen to irritate my entire face (that is, with fervor and profligacy). I'll put my email address in the comments section***.

More on Mother's Day tomorrow.


**for reasons of poverty, not any kind of abstinent behavior. Don't worry, Stonecoasters, I'll be singing in the streets of Brunswick post-Joshua's soon enough.

***I think that has something to do with avoiding spam, but really I'm just copying other people who do it because it seems like a good idea.

April Book Roundup

Since I spend as much time reading as doing practically anything else, I'm going to make it a goal to share what I've been reading. I did a lot of it in April, because I was rewarding myself for finishing the first draft of my critical thesis. Don't ask me what my excuse is these days.

And I'm not going to rate them with stars or anything because I am a notorious book slut and I like just about any book that I can finish. Ahem.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Hark Haddon (Fiction): This book is often suggested to me when I'm having conversations about protagonist voice. I can see why; it has a unique and well-done pov.

My Year of Meats by Ruth L. Ozeki (Fiction): Japanese-American beef politics, mass marketing, slaughterhouses, and domestic violence.

Sand Dollar Summer by Kimberly K. Jones (Young Adult): Only slightly overdramatic coming-of-age story on a Maine beach by someone from Away. Points off, though, for stereotyped all-wise, all-accepting, self-sacrificing, precognitive Native American character.

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson (Young Adult): Feminist homesteading in the 1940s. A little bit of a YA treatment of this (sexuality seems almost censored).

Burn by James Patrick Kelly (SciFi): Sweet. Reading this felt like a magic spell in which I'm reading a delicious short story and wish it was longer and then, shazam, it is. I read it in one sitting. Yum.

The Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster (Fiction): Complicated and slightly slow but ultimately rewarding story of aging, utopia, and second chances. Bonus points for treatment of homosexuality as a non-issue.

Gnus

A few things:

There is new content at www.wtchronicles.org (thx bec), so read to your WT heart's content.

I had a bit of surgery on Friday, but am feeling pretty good, considering. The doctor gave me a little valentine, which I thought was pretty creative of her. Although I wish it was a bunny or a cross. You know, in honor of the holiday:

We watched a whole bunch of movies during the recovery time, which was fun. Sort of. In a turn-off-the-thinker kind of way.

I liked Junebug (nothing speaks to me like movies about familial repression) and Clockwatchers (temps just wanna have fun and be seen as human beings). I did not so much like Max (I fell asleep after just forty-five minutes of virulent anti-Semitism). We also started Born Into Brothels but decided after a few minutes that it would have to wait until later because we were in more of a Snakes on a Plane mood.

I also spent five hours working on my creative thesis, which works out because the first draft is due on Tuesday. It's up to 23 pages. Seven more to go.

Of note:
S is visiting her grandparents this weekend, so it's my first easter ever that didn't start with a sugar rush.

Two Birds

Happy International Women's Day.

I'm supposed to be blogging about sexism, but honestly I'm too busy trying to make a school deadline to be very creative. Instead, here's a quote that I came across while researching for my critical thesis that I wish I had written, and we'll call my poor, queer, female self's participation in graduate school as my contribution to the cause instead.

I am the only member of my family to live an adulthood clear and free from violence in my own home. Significantly, I am also the only member of my family to have obtained a college education. I believe being a reader saved my life, for it was often even the simplest of stories that I discovered, and was henceforth able to imagine, spaces free from violence. Stories, more specifically counter-narratives, gave language to what was yet unspoken and provided an illustration of how I might begin to narrate my own experiences. To evolve from the kind of family history that makes for statistics of the culturally abject at best (and the socially dead at worst) required that I acquire new languages for navigating the world. Through the paths of recognition and revelation embedded within, stories introduced the tools necessary for me to begin emotionally and physically navigating my way through those worlds, like my childhood home, horribly saturated by violence. [Lopez, Tiffany Ana. “Critical witnessing in Latina/o and African American Prison Narratives.” p.62-77 in Prose and Cons, D. Quentin Miller, ed.]

Also, Prose and Cons is the frickin' cleverest name ever for a book about prison literature.

...Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

I like to be prepared. We've been over this before. If I was, say, accidentally lost in the wilderness during my day-to-day travels, I'd be set. I carry with me a large-ish messenger-style bag, and my pockets are always full.

Here's what I have with me today:

JACKET
Left pocket:
misc. change ($0.46)
1 USM Card
1 missed appointment card from the oil change place
1 thin plastic produce bag
1 unused brown paper napkin, folded

Right Pocket:
1 container eye drops, mostly empty
asst. change ($0.68)
1 pack of gum, 3/4 empty
1 cell phone with rainbow heart sticker
3 gum wrappers
1 minty wad of chewed gum wrapped in a gum wrapper
1 chapstick

BAG
Distributed throughout various pockets & zippered compartments:
1 bottle ibuprofen with two tablets inside
1 inhaler
1 tampon
1 multi-tool in cool canvas holder
1 tin ginger mints
1 checkbook
1 chapstick
1 hand lotion
2 cinema gift certificates
1 old paper mainecare card
1 business card for nomia
2 pens
3 lactaid chewables
2 packets of ginger tea
4 pieces of nicotine gum
1 empty nicotine gum wrapper
3 more lactaid chewables
1 nametag from my January MFA residency with my last name spelled wrong and indicating that I'm from Lake Charles, LA
6 more pieces of nicotine gum
1 more empty nicotine gum wrapper

And in the large middle section:
1 box of organic, unbleached tampons
8 old paystubs rubber-banded together
1 plastic container in which I brought my lunch, now dirty since my lunch is eaten
1 day planner
1 notebook/diary, orange
1 bundle paperwork from my health insurance company, folded
1 legal size notepad
1 recipe for braised cabbage with brown onions
1 past-due credit card bill
1 photocopied piece of erotic Nancy Drew flash fiction
1 red pen
1 wallet
assorted pieces of paper from the department of health and human services, folded
1 tiny composition book
1 stick of deodorant
1 letter from my mentor from last semester
1 reading list from last semester, folded into quarters

From this list, one could gather that I have some digestive difficulties, am trying not to smoke, possibly that I write, and definitely that I have some insecurities about my body.

What's in your pocket right now? What do you carry with you every day? De-lurk yourself and tell me.

If You Don't Vote, You Can't Complain

My schoolchum Patrick is running a heavy metal noir flash fiction contest over at his site.

The stories are sweet (is there anything sweeter than heavy metal and crime in two thousand words or less? besides rock blocking, I mean) and Patrick kicks ass, so head on over there and vote. You probably won't be sorry, and if you are, you can just eat some chocolate and you'll feel better. Or else you can get internet in your house like I just did and never worry about ever talking to real people in person again.

Either way. Pretty good.

We Are A Circle... Within A Circle...

This semester at school I am studying linked short story collections since I am [gulp] in the process of writing one. My motivations are mostly cowardly and greedy: short stories, unlike novels, can be published individually in journals, and if my short story collection never gets finished, well, I still have a bunch of short stories and not a big unshaped mass of novel.

Also, linked collections have always seemed wicked clever to me, and I like being clever. It feels to me a little bit like working within a poetic form--faking a rhyme or rhythm never really works, but when it does work the appearance of effortlessness knocks you on your ass.

I found an article today that had the following quote from the ever-sage Michael Chabon (pronounced, I learned the other day, as shay-bonn):

A group of linked narratives can create an effect you can't get from a novel or from one story alone. It's like a series of snapshots taken over time. Part of the pleasure is turning to them again and again. The interest lies in what has happened in the interstices.

Exactly. And how can you not love a quote that uses "interstices" correctly?

I have just put together the following list of short story collections to investigate:

Last Call K. L. Cook
All This Heavenly Glory Elizabeth Crane
Miranda Stories Katherine Anne Porter
Go Down, Moses William Faulkner
Beck stories, John Updike
The Elizabeth Stories Isabel Huggans
A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain Robert Olen Butler
Stones for Ibarra Harriet Doerr
Craft book: The Short Story Cycle: A Genre Comparison & Reference Guide Susan Garland Mann

My mentor and I already agreed on

Bastard Out of Carolina Dorothy Allison
Brownsville Oscar Casares
The Golden Apple Eudora Welty
Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson

I read Allison and Casares for my annotations last month, and am starting on Welty and Anderson for this month. There are a few extras in that list, since I am dependent on the local library for my reading material, and not all of it will be available when I need it.

Yes, I'm a nerd. You got a problem with that?