badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

welcoming doorways

Trick or treating was purely fun this year as Moomin was old enough to be really into it. The mad throng of kids running like crazy up the walkways and doorsteps!

I'm half appalled and half pleased by the people who decorate their yards with yards of fake spiderweb and elaborate talking skeletons. Some of the carved pumpkins were amazing...

But mostly I love it that there's little kids, and they go barreling up the walkway and the door opens and there's benevolence and generosity. There's greed and consumption too, i know.... but the people opening the doors want to be opening them and handing out something indulgent... it's so sweet...

Moomin was SO CUTE. All the kids were. Rook and he were dressed as cowboys and Rook got him a gigantic stuffed horse.

People are so rich here. the good kind of candy is pretty much the norm. You know what I'm talking about. The chocolate bars!

passing, and not wanting to pass

Passing as legitimacy. I am thinking a lot about this and don't know how to write about it. Vegas was uncomfortable. I thought it would be more like Texas, where even the phobes are mostly polite with that southern politeness.

But in Vegas it's not like I saw any girls holding hands in the street.

It's nice to be back here and feel like the world is just that much more sane by a tiny smidgen of sanity.

The easiness of being in an environment or in a body or in a relationship where you don't always feel like people are looking at you and freaking out and processing whatever their private issues are. Uncomfortable moments when other people are acting "off" and I can't tell why. Is it because I did something to offend them, something directly rude, or is it my silly hair, or are they just thinking about something else, or are they suddenly throwing some huge queer-phobia my way?

I know that is all totally elementary but honestly I have not had to deal with it all that much and have mostly been queer in really supportive environments, even if there has been hatred around it's been fairly obvious and I've faced it with a fair amount of support.

It was very much like the strange awareness of people's attitudes when I was in a wheelchair. Their curiosity and fear were always on display for me. Mostly I just wanted to talk about other things and not That.

Once again. Yay for the bay area. I felt instantly more comfortable being back here. I don't want to feel any pressure to pass for anything I'm not.

As I got off the train in RWC 3 blocks from my house I ran into 3 people who had gotten off another train car and who were dressed very hilariously with signs that said "Gender DeConstruction Workers". Their outfits were great, with half-mustaches, skirts and jumpsuits, hard hats... so cute... It's the suburbs here, but it's still home.

the soothing removal of my brain

It's so nice to brain-dump a little bit. I'm not trying to entertain anyone today. I've filled my "talking to other people" quota for the entire year.

Tomorrow I'll email everybody I talked with at the conference and said I would email. I'll print my agustin1 and Ibarb0rou translations and send them to those modernism anthology guys. Wow but their panel was wildly exciting.

I lost my head at some point during my own panel and said something wild-eyed about lat. amer. modernism and how it was part of or parallel to the development of science fiction and fantasy. I wonder if someone else has said this? I bet they have. And on the plane I was reading Dar1o and he mentioned H. Rider Haggard. This confirms all my vague theories about modernism and sf and the pushing of extremes, the exaltation of the trans-human, space, aliens, mystery, geography, the creation of a sort of transcendental landscape. You can look at that poem to Helen and at the novel "She"... those thousand year old ideal all powerful goddess-women... what's that about? Agust1ni's fevered crushes on stars and statues and vampires. (Critics talk about her as "startlingly erotic" or whatever and sure, yes, but in a gothic romance and SF tradition she looks like part of a continuum.)

Also tomorrow I'll try to write up more of my paper on Mars and P4tagonia. It will tie in splendidly with the thoughts on modernismo.

at the ethiopian restaurant

The things that sporty people do. At the Ethiopian restaurant (after a long drawn out waffly process of deciding-where-to-go and not being sure if I'd just invited us along and then waiting for people and looking for other people and wondering who else is coming and is the group getting too big? oops the reservation is only for so many... so me and Chula and "Seema" wandered off to this place around the corner. No one wants to suddenly feel that they've gone to dinner with the losers as there is limited time for schmoozing, but how unpleasant to suddenly feel like the unimportant ones. However how much more comfortable to not spend too much, and to be able to have a real conversation where one can hear what people are saying. And I had no particular wish to schmooze with any of the reservation restaurant people, so I was not pained at all!) Okay I lost my thread. At the Ethiopian restaurant we were the only customers - the other people eating were 2 little kids who were probably the kids of the restaurant owners. Halie Selassie's portrait was on the wall, surrounded in a blue neon halo. The food was okay. Is the bread stuff supposed to be ice cold? even if so, it would have been nicer warm.

But my point was that ever since I read that long shocking description of what it was like to run in a marathon I have thought with respect and freaked-outedness of sporty people. Seema confirmed my queestions about marathon running with many stories of horrible, painful chafing, peeing in the pants, etc. I wish I could remember that marathon blog. It was by a totally sedentary person who went into training to run a marathon, and it TOLD ALL. The vomiting, the peeing, what happens when you have to take a crap by the side of the road, the obsessions with the body and what goes into it and what you're feeling that an athlete feels. Before reading that blog I had no idea. I'd just hear someone say that they'd run a marathon and I'd nod politely and think, "Hmm, they must really be in good shape. That sounds hard."

It's not just "hard" it's way incredibly insane. I can't believe that anyone in this society has thought for even one second that I'm a freak for any part of my sexuality, when people voluntarily do stuff that is supposedly "healthy" but that... wow it just doesn't sound all that healthy no matter how good it is for your cardiovascular fitness. It's totally perverted! Talk about "body modification"! I don't mean this as a criticism -- I'm just weirded out by it.

random bits of my trip, unordered

Lots of walking around in strange fancy yet somehow horrible malls. Lots of huge buildings and huge rather ugly art, like the MGM bronze thing.

I liked the flaming fake volcano ridiculously much.

Also the fake pirate show with dancers and horrible songs. "You take a little bit of sugar and a whole lot of honey and mix 'em together!" or something like that. Apparently that's what the sirens sing to lure pirate cabin boys to their evil, um, vessel. "My name's Cinnamon," said the head siren. "But you can call me... SIN." And then there was some more dancing around; spangled hot pants, bare-chested guys, idiotic dialogue, and the best part -- lots of explosions. We were far away but I could feel the heat of the huge fires. Not fireworks - explosions with giant blasts of flame.

We looked at the outside of "New York" and the inside of "Venice".

We went with a whole bunch of translators to the V00doo lounge on the 51st floor of "R1o". In the casino part of it there were sexed-up "dancers" in cages that were on moving tracks on the ceiling. Like those little model trains in pediatricians' offices that go around the ceiling... but way way overhead... and with near-naked women in them striking cheesy poses. I'm sure that's what it's like in Rio... yup...
The lounge itself was okay - much like the top of the john hanc0ck building in Chicago, but more loud and raucous - with an 80s cover band and a big patio outside. One bartender made drinks while juggling all the stuff - the metal cups, the bottles of liquor and the ice and everything. I was amazed at how well he flipped it all overhead and caught it behind his back. His performance was well worth the 8 bucks for a margarita!

Everything was smoky, but I did okay with very minimal inhalers. For like a week beforehand I'd been doing steroid inhalers and I'm sure that helped!

I whined a little to Chula that I wanted the cultural appropriation to be even more heinous.

I liked the seedier parts of The Strip better than the flashy fake cities. "O'Shea's" was dirty and skanky, with a cheap food court, but as we sat there and had baskin-robbins ice cream I noticed that there was no architectural attempt at controlling people. There was no slaughterhouse-maze pattern or attempt to make people uncomfortable in the food court seats. People were gathered around the bar watching some sports game in a convivial way.

There in the Baskin-Robbins we saw the saddest part of Vegas: a pink laser-printed sign that said, "Make it a double! What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!" This slogan was everywhere: give yourself permission to be naughty! Throw money away! Get so drunk you don't remember what happened! Call some hookers! Go wild! And for someone, somewhere, going wild might come down to going to Vegas and getting 2 sinful, naughty, scoops of cheap ice cream.

The other skanky parts were the ones with a million cheap signs, south of Harmon. One truckstop-like little business that is simultaneously a chinese restaurant, a knick-knack store, a car wash, an internet cafe, a tiny casino (loose slots!) and god knows what else. I took some pictures of their hodgepodge of signs.

authentic dirty.

There's the fake sleaze of parts of Vegas and then there's authentic sleaze.

I have heard so many translators say "There's no THERE, there" in the past few days.... Well. There are theres in Vegas and we found some of them.... Chula and I went to the Las Vegas Lounge, which was a pretty cool dive bar. Super-sexy curvalicious pole dancers with ass-implants and huge boobs and glittery outfits. Sex-worker desperation and not very many, definitely not enough, dollar bills being tossed onstage are never sexy, but... their dancing was hot. I felt like I was getting a femininity lesson. There were friendly girls esp. Kat, who was like the warm, welcoming, very drunk, flirty cruise director of the bar, but I realized at some point that the girls' smiles at me were kind of brittle. There was a little bit of hostility or competition-feeling at me because I was a genetic girl... That is okay but I'm not sure what if anything to do about it or how to behave or if it can be forestalled somehow!

I will blog the fun parts now and more parts later but essentially: the nice cab driver took us around the giant giant huge mall-sized parking lot of Commercial Center. Around the parking lot, facing inwards, are a bazilliion queerish businesses. Lots of bars and clubs and a bathhouse and 2 sex clubs; a cafe called I think Rainbow Factory; wig shops, leather shops, uniforms, and I don't know what-all else. It was pretty cool, but scary enough at night that driving from one side of the parking lot was better than walking.

Like I said.. the bar was full of hot hot girls. Chula did some great lap dances for me and she will kill me for blogging this but I very perversely enjoyed watching all the straight men watch her dance for me. They would all do the same thing... catch my eye and give me a friendly little nod, like "I'm watching your hot girl. You lucky dog. Don't mind me." Occasionally combined with an actual thumbs-up or a hat tip, or a drunken stumble-over-and-mutter in my ear comment of appreciation and congratulation. another strange dimension of it was the coolness of having so many times been on the lap-dancing end of it whether for paying customers or boyfriends/girlfriends and now getting to really get sexy lapdances in an actual club with a discoball and mirrors and public sleaziness. I also had funny over-analytical thoughts about the differences between whores and sluts. The bar was full of whores, but I definitely was getting lap dances from a slut, and it's better that way. Muahahah she will kill me.

Kat the cruise director took us to the tg-friendly, or at least not tg-unfriendly, sex club. Its decor was hilarious and seemed very functional, if it hadn't been a little greasy looking. And if there'd been any people there actually playing, it would have been nice! In the medical exam cubbyhole setup of it, I developed a sudden case of hysteria, but the silly doctor i was with kept trying to cure my wisteria instead. Hahahaha... Maybe it has specific nights that it's a hopping club... But I doubt it. They let us in for free and didn't charge me for a locker, so I'm not sure how they ever make any money? Maybe they host cool private parties sometimes.

Oh yeah - in the dive bar, I had a funny dual "trans" experience as some guy named Juan, from Peru, had an insane conversation with me that was like some sort of vaudeville routine. "Eres latina!?" "No, no, pues.... hablo poquito..." "pero hablas muy bien! y que bonita! muy bonita!" "jajjaja, muchas gracias" "Y... que maravilloso... su amiga.. que suerte estás... y es hombre?!" "No! Es una mujer!" "Pero.... no.... no, no, no. No entiendo. Tú eres hombre, sí?" "Aaaa.. no... soy mujer! mujer! Ella es mujer tambien!" "Qué? Cómo!?!? Noooooo... " "Um, somos, um, lesbianas... marimachas... tortilleras... levis... um... jajajja" "COMO?! Nooooo... Ella es HOMBRE, no?" Heh. it went nowhere. I hope he found someone to hang out with. He was from some tiny town near Salt Lake City and came for some hot action I guess...

It was strangely comforting to find this "there" in Vegas. Probably nearly any friendly subculture would be nice after the impersonal creepy corporate giantitude of the Strip. But I love authentic sleaze, and public space for sleaze. As long as I can get a safe ride home from it and have a hot bath with rose petals, it's great.

thinking of home

I miss Rook and Moomin... Moomin sang "Rawh1de" for me over the phone! So sweetly.

catchup is impossible

I can't catch up to now. Of course I've barely lived it if I haven't written it down. Ack!

I'm sad that my conference is just about over. It's so intense, exhausting, and great. Possibly I did too much flitting this time and not enough deep hanging-out.

I loved hanging out with Sima Arandel, who told me all about her grad student woes and how she and a bunch of people started a rogue academic zine, Masturbatory. (The main student paper or journal is The Tory.) All her projects sounded nifty! She was amazingly nice! We will do a b1lingual poetry panel together next time, maybe.

Finally I tracked down F.F. and got to talk with him and enjoy his peculiarly hilarious dry wit. He doesn't even have to say anything some of the time. and he is just so impressive. we went into this room to hear various readings, came in in the middle, and 2 sentences into a poem, F.F. muttered quietly to me, "Oh. that's C3rnuda!" and later, "Oh! that's a haiku, a takeoff of someone..."

"It's Basho isn't it?"

"Yes!" *exchange of conspiratorial glances* (But I just now looked it up, and it wasn't! It is Ryokun.)

Somehow it makes me enjoy it all more to sit next to him and hear his occasional quiet appreciative Hmm-ing right at the same moments that I'm Hmm-ing. He is so nice and such a fantastic translator! He talked about his sculptor-poet-essayist guy, and more about L@ureano Alb@n.

I enjoyed the short poems translated by V. Cast@gnini though it was like torture as she read so quietly no one could hear. What I heard was great! I bought a little book of her own poems.

The best thing I heard today was the mindblowing poetry of Cesar Moro and the awesome translations
by B. H@usner. Oh, wow. oh wow oh wow. oh the surrealist holothurians, armpits, and love letters, so over the top that it hurt. B.H. blew my socks off. I think they came out my ears! I was so jealous and inspired I could have happily killed and eaten her. "...motionless amber, source of the Milky Way..."

There were more great, great readings today that I'll describe later. And I gave a somewhat incoherent rambly talk about my anthology project. Response seemed positive. With many many many warnings: publishers will be scared of it unless they're all public-domain dead.

platitudes and profundities.

N. wa Thingio's speech was... there were parts that were okay but mostly it was boring and I thought old-fashioned and full of platitudes. Old-fashioned as in 1988 margins-and-center talk. I will go back and read that one Spivak article about can the Sub4ltern speak, I've been meaning to, but... that was a while ago, neh? And he was (gently) down on D.U., who introduced him, for saying "marginal" language rather than "marginalized" as it's not marginal to the people who talk it.

*** more in a bit ****

conference hijinks. the resurgence of "dots".

The first day of the conference was incredibly fun. I went into hyperactive interstellar social overdrive and was excitedly talking with all sorts of people. Everyone seemed glowingly happy to see everyone else. I am happy that people remember me from last year and sometimes even remember my work or specific things from it. Everyone's projects and thoughts are exciting and cool and so nerdy. there is somethign about talking with other poets who are obsessed with (mostly dead) other poets and who nitpick over their work enough to be super-translators.

As I predicted I heard many people talking about Wallter Benjjamin and that one essay that I still haven't read. Christ. At least no one asked me if I'd read it. I wonder why it's so hot right now? WTF? Was there some great article on it, in the last Tr4nslation Review, and i missed it?

I nipped out for lunch to meet Chula at the one cool cafe, where she'd parked herself for the day to write and work on the magazine correcting proofs. The proofs looked great. o wow what a great cover - a double cover of utopia and dystopia. I am unnerved yet so pleased to be in it and to help out with it. Then back to the conference: Jack the nice guy from the other night gave me a ride so i saved taxi money. If I weren't so wimpy it would be walkable, but I am rationing my knee-power. Jack and Bob whose name is really Chad were fun to drive around with. Jack's story of how he and his quadreplegic ex girlfriend almost slept with Punky Br3wster. (which -- wouldn't that make a great name for a pub? ) We all discussed the love of nerdy punky girls.

Back at the conference I suddenly noticed that the nametags have the exact same sticky paper dots as I was just talking about the night before, that I used to wear in the nightclub. I babble stupidly about "dots" to a translator of Roum@nian poetry and the editor of "Abs1nnthe" magazine. Doh! why do I do it?

T. Ay@la came up during the keynote speech and asked me how my publishing's going and rather than reply while N. wa Thingio (yes I know that's not how you spell it) was talking, I handed him my book. Just as he was leafing thru it j.o.s. came in and started laughing at me. I hid my face wildly embarrassed! I swear, he asked me to see it! I'm not going around pushing my book on everyone and their dog! "Don't be ashamed!" j.o.s. whispered, and he patted me on the head. aaaaaagh! Hahahah.

in transit. culture shock. dots.

The conf. hotel is oddly nasty and under construction. We took off right away for the other side of the ULNV campus to the stripmall bohemian netcafe. Did I say this already? All university life in LV seems to be in strip malls on the east side of campus. the cafe was hopping. The music was great. Everyone was cute and punky with many earrings and leather jackets and stuff. It felt quite homey.

It turned out the music was so good because this extremely nice friendly dude with a computer and a complex looking bunch of machinery and some amps was DJ-ing the evening at the cafe. Wed. night at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, J. is on the job! Nouvelle Vague! Shatner ! More that I can't remember! He was very chatty and nice. His friend Jack also nice and more people whose names I can't remember. For some reason, I mean, it followed naturally in the conversation, I started babbling nuttily about "dots" to Jack. When I was stripping in TX it was the law you had to have the very tips of the tips of your nipples covered at all times with tiny colored stickers (the "dots") that were basically like the middle hole parts that would be the middle part of a reinforcement sticker for a sheet of looseleaf paper. Coincidentally, Jack was thinking of applying to 3 school in creative wr1ting that I have actually been to or worked at so we both babbled up a storm. chula meanwhile was downloading all the music that J. was playing. Yay for filesharing. Everyone insanely friendly compared to SF.

***
We wandered around looking for a place to eat but couldn't decide. We maybe passed that point of not-eating-dinner-yet limbo where you are afraid to pick a sucky greasy expensive horrible place but also just really want to eat. Nothing looked quite right. We were in strip mall hell. We couldn't find the place recommended to us by the nice cafe people. Ended up taking a cab impulsively to the Strip where we also just wandered in vague appreciation and dissatisfaction and hungriness, ending up in a fairly nasty place.. alas... it was a gamble... "Venice" was quite strange and made me think about the Irv1ne Sp3ctrum and its odd architecture and the ways that universities after the chaos of late 60s and early 70s re-landscaped their public space not to make it impossible to gather in public but to make it less friendly or natural to do so, and for sure to make it difficult to disperse or escape: exits from a "public gathering space" being changed from open ended things to sort of walled funnels. The better to arrest you with, my dear, or tear gas you or shoot you with rubber bullets, presumably.

in transit. airports. plane flights.

A few notes.

In the airport I thought of airports and their layout. The SF one seems like maybe early to mid 70s, renovated. I am curious about its history suddenly and about the history of airport design. The star configuration is rather nice with the parking in the middle. Hell being, maybe, Houuston or DFW airport. The Ch1cago one, a pain in the ass but good for its public art. Art in airports. The SF airport had something promising and intriguing called "The Reflection Room" but it turned out to be very boring and not at all a special vantage point. I was hoping for some radical public art, or a lot of mirrors and giant airplane parts, or specially good windows looking out over the runways. But no.

On the plane. The guy at the window politely not minding that I was gawking. A near perfect view of the city, the ocean, the mountains, the whole bay and distant mountains. Fluffy scattered clouds and no smog or fog: so rare for the Bay Area! It was beautiful. The sparkly waves... nothing I can say that isn't extremely trite unless I go into some sort of hyperactive poet-trance, but sometimes the most beautiful things just make you roll around in platitudes and that can be extremely pleasant. Waves... time... life.... etc. Getting the overview of the huge ripples stretching as far as I could see and imagining very viscerally the lovely feeling of being in the water with a surfboard squinting out into the distance waiting for the Perfect Wave and hesitating over whether to take this next one, a possibly slightly Imperfect Wave, but the one that's here now... or maybe the next one... Yes definitely the next one but then at the last second changing my mind and hopping on the Imperfect wave and having a great time. Or missing it. Whatever. Here now in the plane getting to see the sameness of the ripples underneath and how they just keep coming...

Tensely doing a crossword puzzle in a very cramped middle seat feeling a little claustrophobic. chula next to me writing and then reading. I sneak a peek every once in a while.

At the end of the flight I finally talked to the guy next to me and noticed his weird signet ring. Really a signet ring and it is his family's crest. He is from Col0mbia. He loves cumb1a. Suddenly I regret not having talked with him earlier as I could have nicely burned him a cd of classic cumb1as as a random bit of niceness.

As always when I'm in an airplane, this pops into my head: "What would Laura Ing@lls think?" and I wrap my mind around that for a while. Not for the last time.

overload warning; taxicab cremation

Holy crap. My brain is on overload. The conference is so good that I'm overstimulated and have run off from it to hide in the netcafe for a while. A.G. was lured off with me to share a taxi and get the free junk in the veins that is email. Perhaps he's "working".

The cab drivers here have been a strange trip. Did I write about the crematorium one? She was tweaked out, clearly on some kind of speed in that jittery disturbed near-crazy way. Her clipboard with the record of all the rides of the day was sadly empty. In a normal year she makes 38K, driving 12 hours a day. This year the cab companies have doubled or maybe just drastically increased the number of cabs out there, so she is going to make more like 30K. She's been driving a taxi for 9 years, loves it and hates it. "So I was thinking, it's gonna sound crazy, but I was talking to this guy who was here for a funeral conference, I could find out what it takes to work in a crematorium. You know, just surrounded by dead people. Stick 'em in the oven, shovel 'em outta the oven. Don't have to talk to anyone and I won't have all these bosses breathing down my neck giving me shit. You think it's crazy?"

"Do you have to go to school? To, like, crematorium school, or mortician school?"

"Well, I wouldn't be doing the EMBALMING. Just put them in the oven, you know? How much money you think you make doing that? Shit. Probably more than driving this fucking cab and I get half. I get half and then there's rental for the car and then gas and fuck, then I've got 20 bucks left. 20 bucks."

"Wow that sucks. But probably you have to try to sell fancy expensive urns to the relatives and that's how you make the money."

"No way man. They have other people to do that. But do you think it would be freaky to be surrounded by dead bodies? My friend when I was 9 pretended to be dead with blood all over her and I think that's why now, dead bodies just freak me out. It would be really hard!"

Me: "So, like a real challenge for yourself... um..."

Chula: "I think it's all automated nowadays. Isn't it automated? You just sort of press a button....?"

"No, they need someone to take them in and out! You turn a sort of handle thing and they go around and around and it kind of churns up or grinds up the bones..."

on the way here

Yesterday as I was waiting for the train to the airport back in Deadwood City, I fell in with some punky little teenagers at the station. They admired my hair and my punkitude for a while, and told me their plans for facial piercings and funny haircuts. Then... the police strolled over and busted us. "Must be early release day?" Sidelong glances and guilty looks all around. "Um..... yeah ...we go to Deadwood High and we got out.... um... early...." The policemen seemed suspicious yet amiable, and stayed close by to keep an eye on our hooky-playing naughtiness. The kids were spooked. There was a general discussion of high schools. "Dude there's a lot of Mexicans." and I sort of looked appalled and the girl backtracked..."um, but they're... you know, they can be okay... um.. *nervous laugh* Um, what about where you go?" and then they all looked at me... I think they figured I was a glamourous 19 year old at Foothill college or something. I had to break it to them that I am 35. hahahaha.

A weird moment. I didn't try to sit with them on the train as they were obviously uncomfortable with my grownup status. "How do you... I mean... you seem so young, but... how do you do that?" What to say? I kind of just wanted to say... um just because I'm wearing converse and have funny hair.... it doesn't make me actually hip... I'm just dressing slightly like an idiot because i find it fun and cheerful...

I'm wearing my arm warmers and fur spats with pompoms right now. they make me feel unspeakably smug. I mean, while I'm sitting in the conference panels, I can amuse myself by petting my own ankles.

the dog returneth...

We have instinctively sought out a place that is as near to being like SF as possible. Yes, there is a cafe with free wireless and cute little punky people in Vegas. And strangely both Chula and I knew through our amazing googling powers what it was and where it was and both wanted to go to it.

Heh!

On the east side of the Univ. of Las Vegas the cafes, head shops, radical bookstores, and tattoo parlors are clustered in a huge swathe of strip mall. Definitely "car friendly"....

I think this will ease us gently out of our culture shock, and help us make the transition to tomorrow night's possible weird experience of walking around the Strip somewhat randomly. But really we are here for C. to email her work. Must buy an ethernet cable for the hotel room...

The "common people" song sung by Shatner just came on very loud. I like it! Yay, Kirk! I hope he gets into space.

This cafe has a DJ. This guy (Don? i have already forgotten) says that this IS the rich cultural experience of vegas bohemian life... right here in this very strip mall...

better!!!

I made my flyers and an extra little broadsheet of a dario translation. Somehow this makes me feel way better and very confident! I might have made mistakes but that doesn't even bother me. It's nice to have something to show.

I woke up at 5 to de-snot myself, and thought about my spasticness yesterday, feeling rather silly. It's all so trivial really, and I'll have a great time. Perspective.... etc. Yet I don't mind myself freaking out in public on my blog. I'm sure everyone gets in that mindset sometimes. however... exposing vulnerabilities and self-doubt feels so... vulnerable sometimes.

aaaaaaaa! but good

I'm buzzing buzzing buzzing over my trip tomorrow. Conference. OMG I am not really ready. I suddenly feel like stern, famous translators will peer at me over the tops of their glasses and say, "So... have you read that one Waalter Benjaamin essay?" and I still haven't. There's so much I don't know.

Everyone is so friendly there... I can't wait to hang out with F.F. as he is so mellow and silly. Also, will tag along after J.O.S. I totally worship him! except when he's telling me that I should be spending my "youth" backpacking around lat. america and hitchhiking and roughing it and sleeping on people's couches. He is like my evil conscience.

I'm sort of halfway almost completely prepared for my brief talk, which I don't even know if it's really a talk and I'd rather talk coherently for 5 minutes and then try to have a discussion. I hope to god the other people on the panel are lively and debatable rather than being the sort of peopel who stick their nose in their printout and read it in a monotone for 25 minutes going over the time.

Already in the last couple of months i ran into people who said (or emailed) "oh i see you are ON A PANEL this year, i saw you in the program. " yeek! i feel like i'd better be good!

I have never been to Vegas! It should be exciting and strange.

Chula is coming with me which should make it even more fun. I am hoping she finds dreamy bohemian cafes with wireless as she wanders about, but I fear it won't really be like that next to the university... I'm hoping in the evenings we can wander off and discover strange Vegas things... unimagined tackiness... naked hooker snow globes for only $1.99 each... the comfortable platform go-go boots of my dreams... the Albuquerque dykes on bikes, visiting, dressed in their finery, and all playing pool in a seedy bar, looking up and gasping in unison at our splendid leg warmers... Those are the pleasures that I imagine await us in Vegas.

Meanwhile next to me Rook is watching "The Steppford Wives" with headphones on and every once in a while he just goes "Rrrrrreooooowr!!!!!" at the TV. I glance over my shoulders and get a little flash of fembot miniskirted ass. But I'm too hopped up to sit still and watch a movie and pay attention.
***note: Rook gives me the disclaimer that he doesn't have a fembot fetish - it's the perky ones who haven't been replaced yet who are all sexy. ***

I will now bathe and go to bed. early. because I'm STILL SICK. jesus i hope I wake up better. something horrid is happening in my right maxillary sinus cavity and it's... no. I won't go there.

I will be better tomorrow! Day 3 of antibiotics, so it WILL happen!

So exciting! I will take the train to the airport! I'll have a happy airporty feeling! I don't like planes but I love airports.

damn cool

digital library of argentine literature

strangely unthrilled

I am in this magazine that just came today and was like "oh, good." Yet it was strangely unthrilling to see my name on the table of contents with famous people. Somehow it didn't feel like it counted.

a) it isn't the work I sent them to be in it - which they rejected as too long even though it was just sonnet-length with translation.

b) they didn't tell me that only the tiny short translated piece woudl be in there and not some of my own work.

c) I'm so bogusly and tenatively on their board of directors and being on the board is the only reason I'm in there. I haven't gone to a board meeting in forever and I've bad mouthed their organization all over town and back.

d) I'm also only in there because they desperately needed new blood and someone (me and Pastiche, i guess) to represent "the younger generation" or whatever...

e) I didn't get it that this was the big fancy thing and not their usual not-very-fancy thing. So when they said the stuff I sent was too long, I sent a 4 line poem translation in a bit of a huff. ack!

And yet... I have to remind myself to be comforted and feel some kind of achievement that my stuff is out in the world somewhere and that it actually achieves many of my goals in life.

a) R. Bly and other famous people. I'm in a book with them. They might be aware of my name in some small way. This feels good...

b) Page count towards qualifying for N3A grant incremented by one

c) People will see it, and a year from now some random person will be like, "Oh yeah - I remember your thing from that anthology. I was in it too." and that will be pleasant and make me feel very legitimate.

d) It satisfies my own requirement for myself that I need to have at least 2 things published every half a year. So, at least 4 things per year spread out over time.

So that's good, right? It just doesn't feel like I thought it would feel, and I'm still very, very itchy. It's good but not anywhere near enough to hold me over even for a week of vile, necessary, narcisistic self-congratulation. What will scratch my itch, really?

messing around

Last night was chaotic but fun... Gargyrrl was over, and Dr. Bit came back to get her pet rat and the dead rat from the freezer. I was still sick and everyone mocked me and my alluringly loud noseblowing. G. and Rook were ganging up on me! Further instruction in butchness was given! Not that I am going butch, but it is nice to finally know how. Totally fun. I forsee some good hanging-out and hijinks.

Rook got all dressed up with us in one of his astonishing velvet skirts with a slit all the way up to the hip. with the spiderweb armwarmers he was an amazing mixture of classy princess and gothgirl.

Moomin asked us why were were dressed as a boy and as a girl (first time he's really commented on it) and we kind of shrugged and said because it's fun to be in different costumes.

He is so sweet - yesterday afternoon I was trying to take a short nap, and he brought a book to read to me and "help me rest". Of course I could not sleep through this. Equally of course I listened and commented very happily, as it was cute as all hell to hear him reading the poems from "D1rrty Beasts" aloud.

sucky phone

I like my new cell phone, but T-Mooble just refused my rebate. Fighting mad! Prepared to kick some ass, I called the scammy place that sold it to me. I didn't even need to kick ass. They folded right away and are giving me the rebate.

Whoooop!

HOWever the first bill also came and ... it sucks... and it has all these "one-time fees" and stuff. My old ATT service used to be just a flat 32 bucks every month with no problem... no hitches... no "year long contract" or anything.

Grrrr.

I do wonder if we should cancel the land line. It would be nice to save a few bucks on something.

on whores. convenient golems.

I liked the B. Tr@ven book and yet it had a whole chapter on whores that made me cringe. It was so trying to see them as workers, but really they were just necessary candy for the "real" workers. Jeannette gets to tell her story about saving her parents from starvation; when her dad calls her a whore she verbally bitch-slaps him but it's all about the working men, still, somehow, and how respectful they are. There's some discussion in the chapter about how easy it is for the high class whores to slip downwards and end up miserable. But there is a lot missing. And somehow they don't get a union, or their own cool Wobbly songs.

Hipppolita in "Los siete locos" is still one of my favorite whores in literature. And the women activists in the streets and bars in "rios profundos" -- yay!

***

I'm up in the middle of the night to sit up and blow my nose in the living room for a while. I think I have discovered the primordial source of snot. How can my body make so much of it? And why is it so gross? I am tempted to make a golem from it. It seems to have a life of its own already. Would it do my bidding? Because my bidding would be for it to take all the rest of the snot and GO AWAY.

a plan for nerd-hipitude

I have a cunning plan for making Moomin be cool in school. He's been very excited the last couple of days about drawing from step-by-step instruction books and has just freaked out with joy at the instructions on how to draw swords, lances, axes, and other weapons.

I'll teach him how to draw explosions, ray guns, spaceships, robots and superhero fights! Other little boys in 1st grade will think he rules, even if he does wear boots with hello kittty on them. He'll be ever so vaguely like Beto and the other kid in the Captain Unnderwear books!

In elementary school there was always someone who "knew how" to draw explosions and battling robots, and that person had special cool points forever! Even if their drawings sucked!

slacky and worky

Horrid. I am not better and debate with myself about going to get antibiotics. My sinuses are still bleeding. Ew. Later I'll obviously need a nap, though I'm almost fully functional in between collapses.

I have 2 days to do up my handout for my talk and practice the talk. I woke up late and just want to lie around drinking coffee and reading "The Cotton-Pickers". I love B. Traven!!!! Why do I have to slack like this right when there is a crucial deadline? Why have I watched movies and gone out and laid around reading in the last few weeks instead of quickly producing something cool for the conference?

So... half an hour for myself to perk up and get worky. being sick is no longer an excuse... i just have to work anyway... it's not like hard labor... I just have to think and focus....

***

no. I still feel cruddy. Here is my new plan: Kinko's now to work and make my handout. Home for a nap in a little while. Go to the dr. at 2:30 and get antibiotics. Pharmacy. Get Moomin. Home. Nap again. This way I'll get my work done and still rest a lot.

tomorrow: work at kinko's in the morning. take a brief nap. go to sfsu at 1:00 and turn in paperwork. home. rest more. work more. pack.

wed: last minute worky things are now sort of possible, but probably not as I said I'd babysit for Peanut.

** Make sure Moomin has Halloween costume components assembled. I promised him a cape and had thought I'd write "The Black F0x" on the back of the cape in puffy paint so people would know what he is. I also think he would like a long fencing sword and I had planned on making him a cloth bandit-mask that would be comfortable to wear and easy to take on and off. ***

sleep

The Big Sleep is so great! I can't believe I've never seen it! We watched a bunch of scenes twice.

I'm up way too late. Maybe I'll wake up completely better tomorrow!? no bleeding sinuses? no sudden bronchitis? just... a 3 day cold and then I'm totally better. that would be great.

clothes stayed on

Heh heh. No one saw my underwear - at least not officially. But the mere thought of it pretty much gave whump a heart attack and amused me no end.

It just wasn't that sort of party, alas! But fun and nerdy.

Whump and Cyn nearly passed out with the force of their red-hot blushes of pleasure when Joss W. said their names. I believe it might have been one of the finer moments of Whump's life as a rabid fanboy.

The big question in my mind is HOW MUCH did all the parties rake in? It must be impressive - especially from the L.A. party.

high stakes

We're going to the High Stakes party today!

My cold is way better -- yay! Though you wouldn't believe the stuff that is coming out of my sinuses when i hose them out with warm salt water. ew, ew, ew.

Moomin is drawing d1nosaurs from a book on how to draw. A peaceful morning of toast, rat cage cleaning, loafing, reading the NY Times.

****

brilliant inspiration has hit! i will lap dance for democracy at the party! i'm getting dressed now in my patriotic whore outfit - red plaid miniskirt, blue knee socks, red leg warmers and arm warmers, white see through bra and shirt! and the blue wonder-woman underwear with white stars! party full of nerds + me stripping = $$$ We'll see if they go for it...

if they don't let me strip, at least i'll have my slutty outfit on.

Or ... maybe t his is better... I could try to make people give me 5 bucks to see my patriotic underwear. Hmmm, that would be fun! If you were at a party and I were in a miniskirt and offered to hike up my skirt and show my undies, how much money? a dollar ? 5? Rook says if I had done that "before"... when he was in the first flower of his blushing nerdhood... he would have died of embarrassment. But that could work too - people could give me 5 bucks to quit embarrassing them.

butch cats

Thoughts for the night:

Has anyone ever dredlocked a persian cat? Any kind of cat?

The world will soon fear my butchconfusion outfits. Ditch the pansyass keychain. There must be a thick, studly wallet chain. The pants must be low, the boxers hang over. "Underarmor" can be obtained at sportmart. Then put thermals over it and a tshirt and another shirt of some kind. Layering creates confusion and makes your shoulders look bigger than your hips. Entranced, I examined the 15 year old skate punk in the mirror. If his upper arm muscles were a little more cut, he'd look so macho. Who was he?

And why must he blow his nose every 30 seconds?

gargyrrl looks cute in a pink baby-t and a kicky pleated micro-mini anime girl skirt. who knew?

"The Last Man" was great - All those batman comics from 1991 by peter milligan were great - cruising through "Female Masculinity" by Judith Halberstam - ooo - with photos!

I am going to fall asleep very soon while reading a dull book on Bennt's Fort. I will wake up in the morning perky and refreshed, ready for coffee and a new day!

warm cat soporifics

There is nothing like napping while cuddling a pliant cat.

I slept... I did some houseworky things rather sluggishly... I had soup and tea and hot cider and more tea. It doesn't seem to help liquify my snot but instead just makes me pee every 20 minutes. Perhaps if I drank the tea with my NOSE.

I finished "Anna of the Five Towns" and liked it. Why didn't it occur to Anna to take her money earlier and get the hell out of town? With Agnes? Why was she worrying about Agnes when clearly she was rich? If her dad was going to be mad at her all the time anyway why didn't she just tell him to go to hell and buy herself some new dresses? The horrifying claustrophobia of her life... the heavenly vacation journey to the Isle of Man - which made me think of whichever Jane Austen novel it was where they go on an excursion 10 miles away to the seaside (Lyme Regis?) and it's a huge big deal and they've never done it before and that one chick falls off the seawall. Why can't I remember all the details... I must have read it 10 times... And it was totally obvious that Anna was in love with Willie Price really all along but she had no way of knowing it. ON the other hand I half-thought that Anna would accidentally lose all her money or there would be a fire or the little sister would die and it would be all horribly bleak - so the book wasn't really obvious after all. Or even maybe that she wasn't in love with Willie Price but would be forced to marry him through some tragic turn of events and then would live in upside-down poverty and squalor while Beatrice and Mr M. got it on. But also now I can't stop thinking about the religious scenes and how scathing they are as obviously none of the religious-spouting people cared anything about ethics or the hideous factories or what happened to the Prices. (whose name I've just noticed. Price. Oh dear.) So that the whole thing is about incompatibility between christianity and capitalism? hmmmm.

Strangely I liked the part about "the dresser" in the kitchen best. Long, boring allegorical descriptions of inanimate objects, huzzah!

It occurred to me that before the Blog Age, I read at least a book a day. Now I don't, except when I'm sick and then it's like 5 books a day. I'm happier, though, and more emotionally stable and less likely to be up at midnight babbling incoherently about vague ideas. Now I babble at your convenience, dear readers. And I suspect I'm reading better books.

full of yuck

Snot now dominates my every move. Litttle heaps of kleenex are piled up everywhere. Gross.

Our game last night was fun!

The night was a haze of dozing, noseblowing, turning over onto the other side and holding my head just so for the snot to drain, getting up and reading more trashy kids' books (Don Winslow of the Navy! The Hardy Boys!) with more noseblowing and tea drinking --- repeat infinite times till morning.

We'll see if breakfast and coffee inspire me to say anything interesting today. I'm doubting it.

The plan: take naps. take Moomin to the library to borrow movies. perhaps invite gargyrrl over so I can dress her up femme for her halloween costume next week.

hoarding

What happens when I'm sick: I go to the grocery store for eggs, milk, and tapioca, and spend a hundred bucks stocking up in case I get even sicker and can't get what I want. So weird. I definitely understand the mentality of my Great Depression-surviving grandparents and their enormous basement deepfreezer full of meat. Though I always figured that after the New Catastrophe, if they couldn't afford meat, they probably couldn't afford the electric bill for the giant deepfreeze.

Plan for the afternoon:

sleep while Moomin watches a video
eat soup
drink tea
finish "The Simulacra" by philip K. dick
clean up a little so that the house doesn't smell nasty for the buffy game

He goes to the lava tree!

In high school and college we often played "Assassin" where you have an assigned person to kill who's in the game, and you slay them by force and stealth. Most of the game was running around with squirt guns, but there were more subtle traps; doing things like turning on your victim's car radio so that when they start the car it blasts them with maximum volume.

Rook sets these kid-bombs -- so today in the car Moomin sang me the first two verses of "The Lumberjack Song". A good joke! I will try to record it.

Whomp!

Wow -- I just went to lay my anthology idea at Prof. F.'s feet and get advice. And she sort of whomped me over the head with a zen master stick and said I have to read about 20 million more things before I can say and that I must decide which ones are the best and not say all the women are equally good writers (jeez! i wasn't planning on saying THAT). And that i am acting like i'm the only person to do this but that erases the last 15 years of feminist lat. am. studies scholarship and havent' done my research, etc etc. To which I bravely replied that I don't KNOW about the last 15 years of scholarship and that's why I'm ASKING -- that asking her is partof my background research to find out what to read. She also wanted to steer me towards a narrow focus on the period of women starting to write between 1910-1915, ie the ones who were beginning to be called "postmodernista" ie not dario and not the 20s vanguard, and that all the women were in there, and that because critics jump right from dario modernism to 20s vaguard, the women are erased. Now that is extremely interesting and will be a productive line of thought, but I replied back that I want to keep my focus very broad and do earlier generations of women writing too and i mentioned the 1877 Álbum from argentina and that it had a zillion zillion women in it and I want to look at them. And she said that THEY were erased between romanticism and modernism.

Ismos are EVIL.

So now I have a bunch of pointers to reading t hat she thinks will help me, and a deep seated fear of being too much of a dilettante (but i can't help it - i'm not waiting till i'm 60 to write this book)

And I realize she was advising me as a phd advisor would advise a grad student writing a dissertation. And actually -- I think suddenly that she didn't realize i'm MAKING an anthology, not producing a scholarly work about anthologizing theory. Maybe this shows me.... Hmm. I can't figure out if it shows me that I would have to fight hard as a phd student here to do what i want to do instead of being channelled into a particular kind of academic careeristness, OR if it shows me that my project would be way better if I took another 5 years to do it (this is probab ly true - but that is why there are revised editions of things!)

I am a little breathless and teary-eyed over being torn apart by F.M.'s unexpected fangs of her discipline. If I'm trying tob e cross genre and cross-ismo and cross-time and not quite a scholar and not quite a dilettante then I guess I have to grow some armor....

yeep!!!!!

the reading tonight

The reading tonight was good - Antzen was brilliant and weird. He recited from memory for half an hour and I wish he would have gone on longer. When he got to this one part in the long long Columbia River poem he looked at me and i knew suddenly that he had put all that bit in from a conversation we had had months ago very excitedly about the meteor impact and lava flows and how it makes the Basin and Range geology make perfect sense suddenly when you realize it. Later he was like, "Did you hear it? Did you hear that part about the asteroid? I put it in just for you!" so I was right. that was so cool! He plugged the book and I sold around 40 bucks worth.

I wasn't feeling super inspired or prepared as I didnt' have time today to look over my stuff and think what I wanted to read, or practice it. I have to work myself up and be able to focus. I like bringing Moomin to a reading once in a while, but that is the problem with doing it -- when I bring him, I'm just... off... I can't fasten my mind onto what's happening or what I want to do.. it's as if I'm trying to surf and catch a wave, but can't get my feet on the ground or swim fast enough to catch it, and I'm trying to carry him with me... Just having to have that extra awareness of taking care of him even if he's being no trouble. Oh dear. Maybe this can be fixed by more attention to practicing reading out loud, and (as Antzen nags me to do) to memorize things.

People liked what I read anyway! So there!

And i heard a strange little man read from a series of poems that he just finished - one for each T4rot card, which sounds so newagey and forced, and might be in part, but it stood out as interesting amid the poems that are really a prose paragraph about the P4lo Alto mounta1n lion shooting and bowls of tulips on the coffee table and "current events". At least what he read was poetry and was not utterly predictable. I kept jotting down little exclamations while he read that started as "not barfy" and turned to "competent" and then just some exclamation points.

I really had fun talikng with organizer-woman about small press things and making zines and stuff. All good! Totally worth the 10 bad poems about lighthouses and tulips that I had to listen to!

There weren't reallly any tulip poems - it is my private joke as I once heard a stunningly bad poem read with weighty, pensive meaning in all seriousness and with an attempt to be lingeringly sensuous on each syllable. Oh, it was so painful!

The YELL
...
ow
...
TULIPS
in
...
their
BOOOOWWWWWWWL
....
...
Rounnnnndddddddd (There's an "n" in round! pay attention, everyone! this is like the foreshadowing!)
.....
in the
...
SUNNNNNN
were
ONNNNN (look it rhymes again sort of, if you linger on the ONNNNNN!)
the
.....
TABLE. (groaned forcefully as if she were personally shitting out the table...)

And that was pretty much the whole poem, contemplating some tulips in a bowl and maybe it ended up with her having some coffee and brushing her teeth. I wish I had a recording of it. The drippy horrible dreariness of the person was also a factor.

i heart marcel

I love my Proust Support Group. Just that we're still all emailing each other "proust sightings". Months after we finished and are in theory maybe going to move on and read something else. And just ... I've never been in a book group that took a whole year to read something. Yay! I love them!

tired but not broken

Working was sort of okay. I'm not feeling particularly motivated, as McCoot's loneliness and depression make him a little hostile. His flunky is beyond horrible. Much talk of eug3nics and 1Q and r4ce and politics. Apparently the acceptable thing to chuckle about is that "when bush wins", the evil "leftists" will be used by "the lawyers" to engage in pointless insincere lawsuits about the "unfair" elections. The leftists... well it's not even their fault really - they are the dupes of lawyers, who are the people trying to ruin capitalism. Or something.

He was all a huge bastard about the P3nssfa party, which apparently he just up and went to. Thank god as he has been trying to get me to go to it for 6 months or so. He announced to me that he was disappointed in them as they just talked politics and tv and didn't talk about sf. I pointed out it was a social group with parties every 2 weeks, not a book discussion club, and that whenever I brought up books someone was usually happy to talk with me about them. I can picture him glowering around looking superior (by the time you are 75, being shy is no excuse, and besides, he isn't) and waiting for the wonderful intelligent discussion to begin, but doing nothing to start it or encourage it besides giving an annoyingly tedious monologue on the genius of his own Forksogian fanfic about people faking being raped. errrrgh. I'm so glad I wasn't there for it.

Moomin is being lovely and we're making snowflakes. Really... he's not even 5... he will sit and make snowflakes with only minimal help for an incredibly long time. I realize this is luxury.

Antzen is reading tonight and there's an open mic and i'm going to go. I just realized it's a good opp for me to sell books! since he is in it. A cool 30-40 bucks shall be mine, mine, mine! But the point is... I had not quite realized that for a good long while, possibly several years, any time that any of the 12 people in the anthology give a reading, they will hold up the book and read from it, and it's sort of tangential free publicity for me and the book gets around that way, especially if I show up and sell a few books...

***

Moomin is now taping cotton balls to string and to the snowflakes which are hangnig from the ceiling. I just realized he thinks snowflakes are like... special clouds? that snow comes out of... oops. I'm not going to correct him now. Maybe tomorrow...

another nice thing

L.V., whose poetry I've been translating, finally wrote me back and likes the draft I sent her. I have done rough drafts of most of her book, but made an effort to finish one page and sent it to her a couple of months ago. I was worried it was too radical, or I'd fucked up the tone of it, and maybe she was offended and wasn't answering me. But no. she's a flakey poet. Duh!

I feel on top of the world, as she noticed and complimented all the most creative and radical bits, and liked the small bits that I left in spanish -- in my new-since-last-year style of "foreignizing" vs. old-style "domesticating". There were some bits that I domesticated and some that I didn't.

For example say you must translate a reference to a particular food like a pupusa or an arepa that is culture-specific. Do you translate it prosily in some explanation of what it is, like "a fried corn-cake with a filling"? Or do you just call it a pupusa and either footnote it or leave the burden up to the reader? Or do you come up with an analogous food like a tortilla or quesadilla that your U.S. English-speaking audience is going to understand? (Careful with this, as then people might think that in el salvador they eat quesadillas like tex-mex ones, when instead there are pupusas which are different, and 'quesadilla' means a sort of sweet cornbread or cake with funky cheese in it - so, does it matter or not?) A hundred years ago a U.S. translator might just have said "sandwich" and left it at that. There isn't really a right answer.

good karma payback moment

Chefily unexpectedly brought me some homemade cinnamon bread. It's like my dream-breakfast has fallen out of the sky. Yum!

pennies are good

I'm babysitting Iz this morning. Moomin was so excited to see her that I didn't have the heart to send him off to school. So they are playing very nicely together!

There was some excitement over Iz's state quarters. I dumped out all my different change bowls (why are there 4 of them? I think guiltily of the days when I had to search the house for couch cushion change and raided my housemate's penny jar to make up my bus fare to get to work.)

I had this idyllic picture that they would sort change for an hour. But not quite. "Look! I found a really oxidized 1984 penny! Look! I found a 2000 penny! " "Look! What year is this Mommy? it says 2, 0, 0, 0, 3." I must look at each penny. Finally I got them sorting without my constant attention. The "very oxidized!" pennies are being erasered, then dipped in ketchup to soak. Later we will wash them!

now they're drawing together... Moomin's imaginary friend Bradl3y was drawing pictures this morning with me and so it's particularly nice he has a real person for a while...

evil in the morning

I got up early and was emailing and reading more of this amazingly stupid football mystery book from 1920. The husky young lads keep on wrestling and boxing and shoving snow down each others' necks and then going back to the locker room. oh dear, surely I'm going to hell for reading it as if it's sexy on purpose!

i lied

I'll just look at my new long poem - oh wait - I'll fix this -

oops I'm writing again. It feels good.

The feeling of a new long poem sort of building up. But I don't know where it is going.

Why do I always end up writing a bunch of metaphors about continental drift?

I'm reading one of the cool books Val got me - About some boys in 1920 in military school solving a mystery. They keep playing football and taking steamy showers with their manly fresh-faced chums. I have to tell y'all something. I think I'm gay. Gay, gay, gay.

A hissing sound announced that the showers had been turned on, and a film of steam vapor spread rapidly over the room. Jerseys came off double quick... The tumult in the dressing room increased with each passing moment. Half a dozen young huskies had found themselves stripped at the same time and a wild rush for the showers resulted. There was pushing and shoving and shouting...

I love bad writing so much! Those pottersues!

(oh- god - but - what - is - making - my allergies so bad... Oh my nose is going to explode right off my face. and I keep forgetting to get my shots. Thursday morning must be the time to get them from now on! no. sucky. okay. maybe tues. morning I'll do it and then go to stafffnord every week...)

wrote out

I finished writing my short talk today and then the other part of it and then also worked on my paper...
And actually I am writing it as if it were the long paper not a tiny short one. So I think that counts as working ahead.

The Bezerkeley library didn't want to let me in. I am going to figure out how to get in there reliably. My technique for Stafffnord works pretty well and I even have a new plan of being McCoot's proxy, which should mean I get unlimited access to the stacks for the next year. Maybe some friendly Bezerkely prof will let me get a proxy card!

In theory I could write some more tonight but I'm just kind of exhausted - I'm not sure if I'm getting sick or if it's allergies. In theory rain washes the pollen off of things, but my allergies seem worse in general. Also at home I'm definitely allergic to Dr. Bit's rat. whatever the source of the slightly run-down feeling, I'm burned out on writing about Mars, Patagonia, and nudity for the evening.

It's so cool that my Bezerkely classmates in my group want to meet beforehand.. they are friendly... and they care about figuring out some interesting angle not just so that the prof will like it, but so we won't bore ourselves and everyone else. They are sparky and committed and interesting!

One funny thing... no one in class seems certain whether a paper is really due, and when, and what it should be. But at the same time no one minds. We agreed we'll all turn something in. Or maybe not. On whatever. You'd think that would irritate me, but it doesn't because I trust the prof is cool and fair and smart. But when you ask her "do we turn in a paper?" she gets a little flustered and gives about 10 different answers and keeps changing her mind -- a lot like Rook's mom. The real answer being "pretty much anything, as long as it's good."

Maybe I'll mail out some poetry submissions... I have a haunting feeling today that I have not done enough. that's the worst feeling and often very hard to quell. This feeling is why I make up artificial deadlines for myself...

outfit-fu

"Rook doesn't this outfit make you think to yourself, 'now here is a woman who is calm. confident. powerful. A levi's-wearing woman who will tell me all about poets from 1910. A mustache sort of woman."

"What?" *cracks up*

"Like a fireman, or somebody's dad!"

"Yes. Yes that's exactly what it says. Uh-huh."

"Actually it kind of screams, 'slightly butch academic lesbian'."

"Like this: ACADEMIC LESBIAN! ACADEMIC LESBIAN!" (Rook screams)

I don't know what moomin makes of this sort of conversation. It is no wonder he has learned to tune us out.

the pace of getting ready

"Can you put on your socks please?"
"It is going to take a long................ long............. long............ time for me to be a grownup, right?"
"Yup. Here's a sock. "
"But now I am a kid."
"Can you put on this first sock? "
"I think I would like to be a grownup."
"Moomin. Let's put on the socks. Put them on."
"Okay. You are a grownup, and daddy is a grownup, and Jo is a grownup, and, and, and, and, and Manny is a grownup. Eliz is not a growup. She is just a kid. "
"Yup. Someday you'll grow up. Give me your foot..."
"No. I will put on my sock by myself. "
"Okay then... put on your socks..."

***
at this point, if I leave the room and come back 10 min later, the socks will not be on
***

"And grownups can drive. And they take a shower, not a bath. And they have to work."
"Yup, that's right. There are nice things about being a kid and nice things about being a grownup."
"Well, I would like to be a grownup now."
"Moomin. Sit down. Put on your socks. Stop bouncing on the bed. "
"Okay. I will be a zoo doctor. I mean a zookeeper."
"Socks. Now! "
"Okay, okay!"
"You can bounce some more after you are completely dressed."
"Okay my socks are on and I can bounce!"
"No! Put on your pants! Aaaaagh! Pants!"

The good thing is that he is tiny and I can just pick him up and cram him into his clothes in about 30 seconds if I just completely lose patience. And there are times when I tell him to get dressed and he goes and does it by himself.

authorities

Some stuff Rook showed me from his rpg theory board got me all worked up. And I started babbling about anthropologists and who has the right to define who and the meaning of what. And then I got on about my anthology and got very excited again. Should have gotten excited earlier today instead of spending the whole day watching movies, trying on different underwear, gardening, etc.... doing like 8 loads of laundry... cooking... re-reading "The Weathermonger" and "Tarzan of the Ant Men".

There was some poetry writing I guess. That counts for something... I don't even know what "counts" anymore...

I guess a day or two off from thinking hard is not so bad. I feel mentally refreshed and ready to work.

Bring it on!

I shall do a complete draft of my book proposal tomorrow morning. And then as a reward I will go get leg warmers.

my underwear

Mervyn's has fucking awesome tacky girly underwear. Oh my. I had no idea! I'm so equipped now. Fear me, world!

I feel bad for spending half the money my mom gave me to buy a new "professional looking" grown up outfit for my conference talk... on plaid miniskirts, ridiculous black and pink thong underwear that says "sexy" in tacky tattoo-script, and levis. Um. now what? Obviously the other half will be spent on leg warmers or something.

While cleaning out all the maternity boxers out of my underwear drawer I found the best boy undies ever. I just went next door to model them. "I don't know WHERE they came from!" Rook looked up... "You bought those for ME! You... you don't remember?"

aaa! I don't remember! What's wrong with me! I'm such a cad. I'm all full of plans to wear them (packing) to a gay bathhouse. Do you people have any idea how long and how hard I've wanted to go to a gay bathhouse? The ultimate spy in the wrong locker room. oooo. and now I have the perfect outfit to do it in. These underwear.

I must be the worst wife ever.... and I'm going to hell if I don't come up with some kind of suit thing to photograph myself in to make my mom happy. Um, does anyone have a reasonable looking power suit or tweedy looking thing that might fit me?

Why is it when I go to buy some sort of suit thing, I can't ever do it? Why is there no happy medium between J-Lo pants and horrible oldlady clothes?

I just looked back at my blog from last year and right before my conference I was doing the same exact thing --- suddenly freaking out about how to dress and writing pages and pages about clothing. How odd! It's a little embarrassing.

And I came up with a new horrible invention while contemplating my new underwear. But it's so unspeakable I don't even know if I can blog it.

reality, unreality, eno, and empire

This post from Momus fits many of my obsessions:

Iron heels and possible worlds

Well, I've always thought that art is a lie, an interesting lie. And I'll sort of listen to the 'lie' and try to imagine the world which makes that lie true... what that world must be like, and what would have to happen for us to get from this world to that one. (Eno)

and to go with that -- like finding roaches in your raisin bran -- the totalitarianism in my create your own reality imaginary arty utopian la-la-land:

Suskind quotes a senior Bush advisor who derides him, along with most journalists, experts and government technocrats, as part of the "reality-based community." As Suskind tells it, the advisor described this group as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality," an approach this administration evidently sneers at.

"I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and
empiricism," Suskind writes. "He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world
really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we
act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality --
judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities,
which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're
history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what
we do." -- from an article by Michelle Goldberg, from Salon

I can't help but think of "Los siete locos" and all the stuff I read about Mussolini and the growth of fascism in the 20s. Oh, so very many more than seven madmen.

the courts do something right

A ruling defending civil liberties and a judge pointing out the "culture of fear" problem.

sanitary sandboxes

Happy bustling building in the garden. We are making a cover for the sandbox.

I found the exact red salvias that hummingbirds like, on sale at the hardware store. and I put the pots where I'm going to plant them -- already a hummingbird came to one and Moomin was excited. I felt studly, as I had just explained to him how they will make hummingbirds come and then nearly instantly it happened.

Rook is sawing the strips of wood and measuring things.

Soon I will venture into blicheando, otra vez...

The orange and blonde is not that bad if I pretend I did it on purpose, but it's going away, away, away.

Chefily's tonsils are disgustingly swollen up like horrible whitish sponges. She's miserable....

***

Sometime later we ended up snapping at each other over how to best nail the pieces of wood together and it began to rain steadily. Moomin and Rook watched a movie with Chefily and her friend... I planted things in the rain and dyed my hair and gave Rook a blonde streak.

Cooking... Moomin falling deeply asleep (I forgot to say that he was awake a lot, scared of the dark, on their camping trip) and being cranky as hell.. which for him just kind of means withdrawal and saying he doesn't want to do anything to the point where I start to think he is getting sick. I offered to draw with him ... "no." play.... "no." !? He demanded ice cream for dinner. Does it mean he has a sore throat, or does he just figure that by acting pathetic and grumpy, he can bend the rules? I did not give him ice cream but he did have cinnamon toast and is now watching cartoons. So maybe it worked for him and we're total suckers. If he wakes up sick, I'll feel vile for suspecting him of underhanded manipulation. And my own allergies are weirdly out of control. I think his are too. There's a lot of sneezing and nose-blowing in the Nuthouse tonight.

patience and recklessness

If I wash the bleach out it won't be blond enough. If I don't wash it out right now, my hair will fall out and I'll be bald.

I don't mind if I'm bald... I don't mind if I'm bald <---- punk hair bleaching mantra, said quiveringly

I'm mostly bald anyway... I won't mind, really... I can leave it in just 10 more minutes...

***

I have only myself to blame for buying the cheapest hair bleach. It's so, so, so not blond. The box should have been named "Extremely Lame Orange" instead of "Extreme Blonde".

Grrrrr.