What I Did At Work Today

New scanner...bitchin'

My Career

Earlier this afternoon, I was queried by an overseas sex toy distributor. Visiting the company's web site to browse their product listings, I encountered several products that will be of obvious interest to all of you red-blooded young men and women out there.

Starting things off with a bang, we've got "Headless Erotic Virgin." Pretty self-explanatory.

In case, however, you're kind of a perv and actually like your women headed, also available is a regular "Erotic Virgin," or, as I like to call it, "Large Shapeless Blob Of Rubber With A Big Peach Vagina Painted Atop It."

For those of you who wish to cut out all those irrelevant female body parts betwixt orifices, try the aptly named "Breasts, Pussy, and Mouth," a pair of enormous breasts with a mouth sticking out from above and a vagina sticking out from below.

And don't forget about "Wrap-around Slut"! This product will certainly appeal to those among us whom have always wandered what it might feel like to bed a giant, quivering chunk of opaque placenta-textured ectoplasm.

Finally, for you purists out there, this prolific company has developed plain old "Vagina." Do note, however, that the packaging for this item lists its contents as: "Rubber, Flesh."

Since the catalog goes on for roughly a dozen more pages and I hate to be long-winded, I'll spare you descriptions of the products that I've affectionately renamed "Gun Shot Wound On Disembodied Elephant Trunk," "Sexy Rubber Trout Mouth," "Anemone Infant Fist," and "That Lady's Got a Fever. No, really."

After all, some things are better left to the imagination.

I have questions

Why isn't this week over. Why did I have to go and give myself sciatica. Why have I never before purchased Nacho Cheese--flavored Soy Crisps. Why don't I get paid until midnight. Why do birds suddenly appear.

Why can't I wear my hair in pigtails without getting 800 billion new boyfriends. Why did I ask my trainer if we could move our Saturday morning sessions to 7 am. Why golf.

Why would someone send my office a box full of razor blades. Why would I fail to mention that they are safety blades. Why can't I walk past a McDonald's without having an overwhelming desire to dip their hot, crispy french fries in a creamy chocolate milkshake devolve into a spasm of guilt that results in a trip to the fruit vendor for a delicious and crispy...pear.

Why haven't I called my grandmother in months. Why did I blush when my boss told me we could "hang out by the pool" in LA. Why did I commit to volunteering all summer and kick it off yesterday by spending 120 minutes trying to get a hyperactive 6-year-old to stop screaming "POOP!" long enough to write a newspaper article on Sponge Bob Squarepants.

Conspiracy to commit freud

Last night, I dreamt that I was a yellow plate displayed on a narrow wooden shelf high above a floor of orange ceramic tile. I suppose I was a sentient plate, because I was conscious of the floor and thought, "If I fall all the way down onto that tile, I'm going to shatter." As soon as I thought this, of course, I tilted forward, flipped over the edge of the shelf and began to fall.

Suddenly, I was human again and running down flight after flight of stairs in the cinderblock stairwell of a decaying office building that had devolved into a crackhouse. Swatting the fluorescent lights from my face, I reached the basement and proceeded into the furnace room. There, wielding a machine gun made of....wait for it....orange ceramic tile, stood the head dealer of said crackhouse. As he swung the muzzle toward me, I pulled my gun (where it came from, I couldn't tell you) and aimed it for his heart. We were in a deadlock.

"You've forgotten one thing," he said as a grin slithered over his face. "You're the ice woman and I've got a flamethrower." With that, he sprayed me with a stream of fire that, instead of melting me, covered my skin in frost.

And then I woke up.

To my subconscious, I would just like to say: Thank you, Captain Obvious.

EUREKA!

All my months of sweating and whining and self-flagellation have finally paid off: I wrote a good poem.

I felt it when I was writing in. I felt it when I was revising it. I felt it when I submitted it to workshop. And today, my professor emailed me to say that my poem was "tremendous" and "sublime" and to urge me to submit it to The Iowa Review. Which I probably won't, but who cares, I feel elated now. I've been working relentlessly on my poetry these past six months (not to mention the two decades of messing around before that) and struggling and fighting and hating every other word I've written. To finally get just one poem right, and to have that validated by a professor that I respect, one who has pushed me and demanded quality from me and never failed to point out a flaw from which I might learn, is just...

So happy.

And beyond happy, I'm relieved. I feel like I've proven to myself that busting my ass can actually have a positive impact on my writing. On some level, after my 3-year hiatus from seriously writing, I felt I'd lost "it," and it's deeply comforting to know that "it" is still there. If things don't work out next year, there's still hope for my Polish ass.

The hilarious part is that I'll most likely be back to feeling like a talentless hack by tomorrow. To preserve the moment, I've abused Illustrator and created the celebratory death bunny you see above. Death bunny knows that euphoria is fleeting, and one must cherish the moment by leaping through the rain on a sunny day over a field of gaping hearts while quoting Lewis Carroll.

In other news, I won the auction for an almost-new pair of black Frye Campus boots (pair number 5, joining pairs 1 through 4 in blazer brown, banana, purple and white, respectively---what the hell is wrong with me) and found out that I have tomorrow off (along with my usual Wednesday) so I can rest up and prepare to march in the huge San Francisco Pride Parade on Sunday.

Life is good, folks. Let's keep the spirit of death bunny alive.

CATHARSIS NOW

Guess what? I am back to hating my writing. The theme of this weekend has been: my poetry is laughable and I don't have the time to make it good enough to get into a program that'll help me write better and I'm going to be stuck in my current job forever, sulking through the rest of my life bent beneath the weight of my unspeakable disappointment, only to be crushed to death at the age of 47 by a rampaging piano.

I have decided that I am in desperate need of catharsis.

As a result, I spent yesterday morning in the Joaquin Miller Park doing about 5 billion ab exercises. Now I can barely sit, stand, eat, laugh or lift my water bottle to my mouth to wash down another round of aspirin and drive away the psychic, oh wait, I mean physical, pain. In the afternoon, I tore myself away from my laptop and joined Chris on the couch to watch Portugal vs. Iran in the World Cup. I decided that I was Iran and the world was Portugal; Portugal won. Finally, I allowed Chris to coax me into letting him take me for dinner, and we ended up at a little Italian bistro called Fellini's. As in Federico. As in the name of yet another person whose artistic capabilities hang so mockingly out of my grasp. Gorging myself on garlic, I tried to focus on how exciting it will be spending the next 2 months working with Kim Addonizio, only to visualize her rifling through my recent poems as they turn from crisp sheets of white paper into melting pool of slithering and viscous pulp.

Catharsis isn't working.

And so, after a night of sleep in which I dreamt I was a yellow plate, I woke at 7 am and decided to spend an hour exploring my anxieties visually by revisiting my failure to learn Illustrator. The fruit of my labor is pasted above. I call it, "Self-portrait, but crappy." The blue words around my face are, clockwise from the top, "Meow, porridge, Loony, TV's Webster, crazy." I'm not going to transcribe the typed text because, well, that would ruin the mystery.

Choking

I'm hardcore choking at work today. 2 hours in and the only thing I've really done is stare blankly at my email inbox, vibrating as I try to suppress the powerful urge to run away. Yesterday, I logged 62 voice mails; today, I have been greeted with over 300 emails, one of which is the confirmation for my flight to LA. Dear lord, I even wrote a poem about it...and it rhymed. MAKE IT STOP.

One coping mechanism I've discovered is to sit at my desk with Iggy Pop's "Candy" playing on repeat on my iPod and IM my equally stressed-out coworker, who sits approximately 20 feet away from me. A longer-term solution is, of course, to return to barista-hood, and make do with less money, but more time and sanity. It seems ironic that shopping for products that are supposed to relieve stress should cause my cortisol levels to reach such alarming new heights. Hmm, no, not "new"; I just remembered that, after 2 years of editing, I was sleeping 2 hours a night, losing 2 pounds a week, and smoking 2 packs of cigarettes per day. That couldn't have been a sign of health and stability.

Equally stressed-out coworker has just offered to take me out tonight and teach me how to enjoy beer. I'm tempted, although getting up at 8 am tomorrow morning with my first beer-induced hangover and stumbling to the Redwood Forest to work out with my 80-lb trainer (who rises at 5 am each and every morning) might not be the best idea. Especially since my boyfriend took me out last night for lots of wine and cheese and the sun is stabbing me a little more deeply than usual today.

Most boring post ever?

You've Got Hate Mail

Yesterday, I went to San Francisco to hang out with my dear friend, L, who had just returned from a whirlwind trip to Montreal to find 2 pieces of mail waiting for him. The first was a rejection letter from the American Journal of Public Health, who failed to see the application of his groundbreaking research in queer health because they are big stupid fathead jerkfaces, or, as Mr. Insulty puts it, "American Journal of Public Health so serviceable, when it build a house out of spooky sugarplums, bicycle clips perform dubious acts upon a flamethrower!"

Take that, you sub-epidemiologists.

The second piece of mail had no return address and was labeled in suspiciously labored script, as if it had been written by someone using her non-dominant hand. Curious, L opened this envelope and found a single sheet of paper, carrying the following message: "Dear L, You're just a stuck-up snob. Do the world a favor, and grow up." He immediately fell asleep.

Now, I'm not going to begrudge someone her opinion (for proof, see above sophisticated critique of the AJPH), even of my dear friend L, health researcher, friend and maker of meatloaf, but this emissary has left me with some questions. I'm hoping that whoever wrote it will swing by my blog and answer the following questions for me lest I ever deign to compose my very own hate letter.

First, is the "Dear ___," salutation the most effectively hateful sentiment with which to open such a letter? I'm wondering if something more like, "Undear ___," or "You big head," might pack more punch. Then again, I'm the student here. Hmmm. If this were the GRE, the problem might be phrased something like: Imagine there is a jerk named Percival. The most effective hate letter to him might begin: a) "Dear Percival, I despise you, creepburger"; b) "Undear Percival, your loins bleat like pigeons"; or c) "You big head, I really rather hate you." My gut is telling me C, but you're the expert here, so do let me know which of the three truly brims with the most vitriol.

Secondly, if you wish to advise someone to mature in some way (ie, "grow up") is the best means of delivery for that message an anonymous letter penned in your non-dominant hand so as to disguise the handwriting? I mean, maybe. But I'm thinking a good old-fashioned rock to the head might do the trick. Or, ooh, even better, let's toilet paper some lawns!

I do hope I can report back soon with some definitive answers to these important questions. Until then, I'll have to find other methods to cope with my envy regarding L's good fortune; after all, you haven't really made it until you've received your first piece of hate mail. Congratulations, L!

Teenage Sunshine

That would be the name of a product sample I received this morning. You don't want to know. Neither do I, actually.

I have been at work for approximately 1 1/2 hours (I got here a solid 45 minutes late) and have accomplished the following:

• deleted the spam from my Inbox

• emailed my roommate to ask him why the word "horse" is so funny
• RSVP'd for a pizza party at 12:30 (that should be sad!)
• stared at an email from a former professor that I've been meaning to respond to for weeks
• moved the plastic skull from the left side of my monitor stand to the right side of my monitor stand

As I was attacking these important tasks, my boss stopped by to discuss our upcoming trip to Hollywood, where we will attend a giant sex toy/porn convention. Mostly lame hermit that I am, I asked if I would have time after the end of the convention each day (~5 pm) to do some work. I of course meant writing, but she apparently thought I meant I would be burning to get back to my suite for some good note-taking or email-responding hilarity. Whatever, anyway, to this she responded, "“Oh, no way. After the convention there are fancy dinners and bars and strip clubs and industry parties. Don't worry, I'll get you so drunk you'll forget all about work."

If I were maybe anyone else, this might sound appealing. But no, I'm already exhausted at the thought of spending 72 hours in an apparent stripper-watching, porn star-schmoozing, booze-swilling nightmare. With my boss. In Hollywood, which is already a frightening enough place to be (although the rest of LA is actually kinda neat). I can just see it now---there I'll be, clutching the bar, cowering behind my (my what? I just realized I'm going to have to figure out a sophisticated drink to order) let's-just-say Jack and Ginger, wearing something horribly unglamorous like a black tank top and jeans and, for the love of god, sneakers, holding up a lighter (courtesy of Wicked pictures!!) in an attempt to read the poetry of Mary Oliver through the smoke-soaked gloom. Just like when I was 13 and my father took me to Fenway Park to see the Red Sox and I spent the entire game reading The Tempest. If only that weren't a true story.

Oh well, maybe the booze and good food will help take the edge off. The last time I went to one such shindig was several months ago right here in San Francisco. My old boss pulled up to the office on her Harley, I hopped on the back (wearing my boyfriend's handy motorcycle jacket), and off we went, zipping past the marina to the warehouse district. There, among the corrugated buildings and gaping loading docks, erupted an enormous white tent brimming with people, the obvious majority of whom were men. After an hour spent weaving among titles and toys and posters and contract stars tottering on heels higher than anything I've ever slept on, let alone stood on, my boss kindly euthanized me with several ounces of complimentary wine that I drank from a Dixie cup in the "snack area," where one could enjoy a hot dog while eyeing a sea of jelly rubber weenie. A short while later, after losing the raffle for the romantic cruise to Mexico and some autographed Roller Blades (damn!), we hopped back on the bike and headed back to Oakland. For days afterward, I could scarcely look at any combination of words (including those composing CNN headlines, email subject lines, and menus) without turning it into some demented sexual pun. I shudder to think what will happen to me after 3 days of such festivities.

Oy. It's now 12:15 pm and I really should be getting back to work. I just opened a package addressed to me from an artist in London, and it is literally stuffed with what appear to be the tails of bunny rabbits mounted on ceramic wands. Duty calls, folks, like the ghost of a bunny rabbit dragging its ceramic skeleton through the London night.

G-R-E is half way to spelling "Greedy" (and 1/5th of the way to spelling "greenhouse effect")

You know, it's funny: I got a National Merit award after taking the SAT completely unprepared and on 2 hours' sleep the morning after smoking copious amounts of various intoxicating plantlife (sorry, Mom, but really, society's assertion that doing such things would turn me into a basement-dwelling sociopath mere minutes from going bananas and running over a little girl or throwing myself through my...basement window...was effectively countered that day and many afterward). And just now, I took a "diagnostic" GRE test sent to me by the wonderful people at ETS and got a 1450. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!?!?

Am I a freak of nature? An asshole? A robot designed by the Polish government and unleashed upon the unwitting U.S. public to prove that even my people could stomp all over their standardized testing? I don't understand why I do so well on these things and, frankly, it disturbs me. I fear it means I have a hyper-orderly mind, which is in direct contrast to my view of myself as scatterbrained and rebellious.

I realize that it's silly to let this bother me, and it doesn't especially; it just weirds me out a little. What's kind of amusing about this whole thing is that, even if I do get a perfect score, it will have absolutely no impact on whether or not I'm admitted into any of the programs to which I'm applying. None. It's just one of those arbitrary requirements posed by some of the university admissions committees, not even reviewed unless the CW department selects you for admission. If only GRE scores translated into writing talent. (Stage direction: sighing, heroine looks dramatically out her bedroom window where an errant sunbeam strikes a bluebird as it launches into flight. "St. Elmo's Fire" plays in the background.)

So, that's that. And, in honor of the GRE:

Yesterday, I:

a) Wrote a poem I actually liked for the first time in weeks.
b) Got into a heated online discussion about the relative merits of Rilke.
c) Ate a banana, determined to use the phrase "to go bananas" in next blog post (see above.)
d) All of the above.
e) None of the above.

Your eyes, your lips, your incredibly small salad

Last week, I returned from an extended lunch break (during which I shared with a coworker a plate of suicidally delicious albacore sashimi, you should know) to find a rolled-up poster lying on my chair. Expecting the worst, I began to unroll it. Slowly, teasingly, the ad to your left revealed itself to me inch by inch: virginal white table cloth; virginal white plate spooning virginal white saucer caressed lightly with salad; shining head of champagne bottle, cork popped, peeking delicately from a sheath of steel ice bucket; dainty hand tilting a crystal champagne flute toward the fire burning in the background; and, finally...

This guy.

Look at him. Look into his eyes. "Hello," he purrs. "I am wearing a shirt."

You back away in horror. "No," you think, "this can't be---that salad is so refreshing, so small, its water-rich vegetables bursting with fertility beside a glistening phallic..."

"Hello," he interrupts. "C-A-T."

As I looked down at the pseudo-seductive tableau in dismay, I heard Asia laughing behind me. "Anything I can do to help turn you on," she quoted. We decided that the wealth of shirt guy should be shared with our coworkers and promptly tacked him up beside the water cooler. There he sits, all day, inviting you to join him at his table, share his beverage, look into the horrifically blank sockets begging desperately for identity above his cheekbones. "Hello," you can almost hear him whisper. "Ear. Shoe."

Pour myself a cup of Ma'ambition

I wish that, once per year, I were permitted a Dolly Parton day. Like I could wake up, roll out of bed (and stumble to the kitchen...) feeling zombie tired and angry at the world, catch a glance of my pallid face in the mirror and say, "Good lord, I need me a Dolly day." And lo and behold, my bosom would begin to heave, my spine to shrink, my hair to lighten and curl until I was a 5'1" bombshell with a squeaky twang, a spine of steel and the ability to maneuver gracefully in high heels. This scenario is what I was fixated on all day as I stood behind my desk, squinting at an Excel spreadsheet listing various floggers, harnesses, cuffs and collars while my boss enjoyed music from an internet radio station specializing in "the 80s" to drown out the shrieking of my perennially ringing phone.

(OH MY GOD, I just got attacked by what I thought was a giant cockroach but was in fact my hairpin getting caught in my hoodie. Anyway.)

See, there's a balance that must be maintained between apathy and stress: If I care about achieving something, I don't mind enduring the stress that goes along with its pursuit; if I, however, don't give a smoking dung pie about something, the maximum level of stress I'm willing to endure becomes much lower. Such is the case with work---not just my current job, mind you, which is relatively bearable, but paycheck work in general---and so every day I attempt to calibrate my stress level with my apathy for my job. Sometimes my calibrations fail, however, and I find myself suddenly suspended above a bottomless pit of expectation and pressure and tension for the sake of something I just don't care about. Period.

On the other hand, getting paid to "do what I love" is not something I want, either. I suppose I believe that commodifying my writing would drain the joy and spontaneity out of it. Most of all, though, doing it for a living would invite the application of rules to the one part of my life that is subject to the rules, whims and direction of myself alone. I have no interest in that---there are plenty of rules for everything else. My queer friends can't get married legally, my father had no recourse when the company for whom he worked for 25 years laid him off, and because I have insurance coverage, I am required to pay $40 a month for birth control. And then there's the subtler codes, like the requirement that I acknowledge with a smile, nod or response the catcalls I endure as I walk to work in the morning or risk inviting outrage and insult.

Where am I? Right, so anyway, there I was at work, squinting my way to my daily migraine, when "9 to 5" came on my boss' radio. It was a ludicrous moment; I had a flogger in my hand. Suddenly, I could see myself as Dolly having a day out of "Falling Down." En route to work, some jerkface would holler at me and I'd pop him in the nose with my mighty flogger. At work, the Marketing Manager would ask me to write another article for the site for no pay and I'd sashay into her office, slam my flogger on her desk, and say all squeaky, "Hell no, I won't do that!" After work, I'd go find Lily Tomlin, and we'd go share a cigar in the Ruby Room over two glasses of bourbon-spiked ginger ale.

Oh well. I keep telling myself to sit tight for just 12 more months and set off for school next year with nary a financial woe in the world...or, if April finds my mailbox vomiting rejection notices, resign and take off for a year-long road trip around North America.

Starting at Dollywood.

Procrastenacious

A few months ago, I made a case at work for having a 4-day work week (without a salary cut) so that I would have an extra day to write each week without having to put my savings account on a hunger strike. My argument went something like, "If I have an extra day to focus on writing, I will be better able to focus while at work and thus better manage my time, enabling me to fit 40 hours of work into 32." Unbelievably enough, they went for it (I suppose they sensed my willingness to quit on the spot and go the starving artist route); since May 1st, I've had every Wednesday off to relax, read and write. I love it and, generally speaking, have spent my Wednesdays happily on my balcony, sitting in the sun, drinking some lemonade, and writing.

Today, I:
1. Made this incredible collage of hamburgers.
2. Spent 3 hours revising 2 lines of 1 poem.
3. Ate Trader Joe cat cookies dipped in milk while a gardener attacked the flowerbed outside my window with a weed whacker.
4. Watched a blue jay, a kingfisher, a family of robins, and about ninety sparrows stop by to partake of the birdfeeder my boyfriend hung over my balcony.
5. Tried unsuccessfully to force my hair into a french twist eight or nine times in a row, then scooped it into a hive-like shape and harpooned it with a tortoise-shell stick.
6. Sketched out 12 memories from my childhood as launch pads for future poems, which of course meant that I subsequently...
7. Spent 45 minutes googling the first boy I ever had a die-hard crush on and, when I couldn't find him...
8. Found the web site for my elementary school and browsed the photographs looking for a photo of Mrs. Stringfield, who taught gifted education and, more importantly, taught me how to roller skate.
9. Befriended a cat who wandered into my room through the open balcony door and called her family. They didn't answer and so she's sitting here right now, meowing and looking confused.
10. Wrote an essay about the poems I've been working on in the past couple of months, trying to articulate a narrative by which to order them in my portfolio.

How about that hamburger collage.

Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?

How old am I going to be before I outgrow Airplane, I wonder. And on a completely unrelated note, please enjoy this photo of me and my pal, Chopper, relaxing on the head of the devil on this 6/6/06, most metal of Tuesdays.

So I'm sitting on my porch, laptop perched atop the GRE study book that is spread open across my lap, wondering why I didn't major in math. Math is so soothing---if I work carefully enough and concentrate, I will arrive at the correct answer. Once I've reached the answer, I can double check my work to make sure I've completed the necessary equations correctly. I can study, do well in my classes, ace the GRE, and send evidence of my abilities off to a program director who will measure it quantitatively and determine whether or not my skill level merits acceptance into the program. The admissions committee will not ask me to submit an equation and then judge it for its originality of voice. The admissions committee will not say, "While the quasi-nihilism of her logarithm betrays the influence of French Symbolism, her inconsistently applied cubing of a set of x real numbers is grounded in the bardic tradition of early Norse epic. And we've already filled our quota of bi-symbolist Nordicologists this semester."

I certainly don't mean to suggest that math is easier than writing; it's not. I just find it soothing to know that I am working toward a single correct answer or set of answers. Sitting here, taking the math section of my practice GRE, I feel myself unwinding from the day's events (which involved a lengthy discussion of the relative merits of a film titled, The Gods Must Be Horny---have I mentioned I work in the booming queer/feminist-adult-entertainment-and-sexual-health industry?) and, in some demented fashion, actually enjoying myself. I wish there were a poetic analog: Wouldn't it be wonderful to write and workshop and revise and write and workshop and then check your work? Better still, wouldn't it be relieving to know when to stop solving a problem?

It would certainly be a relief to me, because lately I've been obsessively revising and chopping and rewriting and chopping some more. I fear I'm going overboard like my old roommate, who would feverishly pluck her eyebrows into two thin and jaggedly uneven commas above her eyes. Stepping back from the mirror enough to notice her mistake, she would set out to remedy the situation by plucking more and more from each eyebrow until she was left with little more than three sadly waving hairs protruding from two angry red swaths of forehead. Similarly, just when I've had a breakthrough on one poem, I find glaring inadequacies in the "final draft" of another. Before long, I'm slashing away at said final draft until I'm left with about four words floating in a sea of red slashes. That's not progress, folks. That's obsessiveness.

How do I stop doing this and let things breathe? I think I have to impose a mandatory waiting period between revisions of a given poem---say one look/revision session every 3 weeks---and hope that'll do the trick. Because at the rate I'm going, come November I'll be sending off a packet of shredded paper dripping with red ink.

And just like my old roommate's eyebrows, it won't be pretty.

Neurotics Anonymous

At 11 o'clock this morning, it suddenly occurred to me that everything I've written in the past six months is indefensibly wretched. I was staring off into space, phone attached to my ear as I "participated" in a never-ending conference call (no, really---I'm certain that in some lower level of hell, it is still in progress), drawing doodle after doodle of the same face-with-giant-nose (fig. 1) I always draw, when a line from a recent poem rambled uninvited through my head. "My god," I thought, "that's awful." And just like that, I was off, chasing the, um, mechanical rabbit of perfection around the greyhound track of...self-doubt. Yeah, that. (See?)

Anyway, so there I was, my supervisor droning in my ear about a budget crisis or the rapture or something as I watched my future combust around me. Someone in New York asked for an update on a project for which I unwisely assumed responsibility some weeks ago, and I quickly rattled off something like, "Great target analysis end of the week progress," annoyed at having been pulled away from the productive work of tearing my writing ability to shreds. The comment sufficed to move the conversation along, and I was left to celebrate my despair for the rest of the meeting.

When I was finally unleashed from my obnoxiously short phone cord, I decided the best way to revive my disintegrating dreams of graduate school was to shut the hell up and start writing. I made a salad (recipe: open bag of romaine lettuce, add dressing) and hid inside the empty conference room to write. As I sat, pen poised over unhelpfully blank paper, I remembered the advice given to me by Natalie Goldberg, a former writing teacher (and author of Writing Down the Bones, which is kind of like yoga for the brain). She advised that, when faced with a moment of doubt (or, in this case, an epiphany regarding my advanced level of suck), I should write it out for 10 minutes---just launch into a diatribe of how unfortunate the world is that I ever learned to write and what have you. So, for the next 10 minutes that's precisely what I did.

Guess what? It worked (that Natalie Goldberg is one smart lady), and I found myself feverishly scrawling something like a poem across my notebook---a cheesy little poem arriving at the conclusion that art itself doesn't care much if what I write is perfect or popular or, most importantly, legible; all art ever asks of me is to spit out my anger or frustration or boredom or anything else and catch it neatly in the handkerchief of poetry. Pretty, right? But this actually made me feel better, and I even managed to create a back-up plan for how to spend 2007 should I not get accepted into the program of my dreams. In case you were wondering, it involves road trips, going back to being a barista, and, you know, writing more. And in case you were wondering less about that than about whatever happened with my salad, well...I ate it. It was lovely and green.

Since no one is likely to ever read this, I think it's probably a waste of bandwidth to go sharing advice, but just in case: if you're all jacked up with anxiety about the state of your writing, give yourself 10 minutes to write about how terrible you are. I guarantee you that after about 5 minutes, you'll get so annoyed with yourself that you'll blissfully and sanely return to your work in progress, be it writing a poem, a love letter, or a transcription of whale songs. Or, hopefully, all of the above.

Current Discovery Channel News headline, courtesy of my Google RSS feed

Study: Milky Way Is Tentacled Beast

So now you know.

Here I go again (oh shit, Whitesnake!)

This marks the inception of my fourth blog, the difference this time being that I now fully anticipate maintaining it fervently for 2 weeks before suddenly forgetting it exists. Assuming that lowered expectations are the stepping stones of the slack, admitting this upfront is my attempt to ward off the paroxysm-inducing pressure to produce that is the hallmark of the cutthroat world of blogging.

Plus, this time I have a topic.

Last year, it occurred to me that it was time for me to pursue my MFA in the lucrative world of poetry. I arbitrarily selected three fine arts institutions and was filling out the applications when, lo, the Angel of Reason appeared and observed unto me that the deadlines had passed and I had no portfolio. That being the case, I decided to put it off for another year and do it the smart way (the smart way being researching programs, saving money, figuring out where I'd like to go, taking the GRE and polishing a portfolio above and beyond the haphazard sheaf of poems I had intended to submit). So here I am today, a year's worth of research, study, savings, writing, workshopping and volunteering behind me, all shiny and ready to go.

And I'm scared shitless.

There's something hilarious about submitting an application to a program that accepts, oh, 1 out of every 500 applicants. Some sort of wild egomania or belief in good luck that makes you think, Hey, maybe I'm that one!, and drives you to actually spend several hours and somewhere in the vicinity of $60 to join the sweepstakes. Now, I know that if your writing sucks, you're not going to make it. But even if your writing has merit, how likely is it that you're going to be that one? This is what has been keeping me awake at night.

So this is my outlet for the anxiety and kneecap-shattering self-doubt that are the emblems of the MFA application process. If anyone else is going through this, I'd love to hear from/commiserate with you so that next April, while we await our multiple rejection and hopefully a few acceptance letters, you can metaphorically hold my hair back while I spew bile and I can hold a cotton ball to your aneurysm.

After all, it'll be worthwhile even if it takes 3 years to get accepted anywhere; I can't imagine many things better than having several years to focus on reading and writing poetry. In the words of Dan Quayle, "It's time humankind entered the solar system."

I take comfort in that.