Living La Vida Alpo

Illiteracy of a different kind.

I can't seem to dig myself out of my token deaf student mentality here at Goddard.  Found out one of my schoolmates didn't bother going to workshops, choosing instead to spend her day revising her work and her night attending faculty and student readings.

Readings?  Yeah, readings.  As in the THING to DO around here where people get up in front of the mic, stare down at their papers and "perform" their writing.  Everyone else sits back in the shadows and listens in rapture and lavishes everyone else with literary praise or criticism.  

It’s constructive, connecting, networking, trying out your work on other writers, a vital part of the process.   I avoid it as much as I can.

I could dust off my voice like the deaf student who came through the program before me.  Every time I consider doing that, though, it feels like a violation. It feels like capitulating to the pressures that have marginalized me since I arrived, letting the status quo dominate me.

I can attend readings.  I have attended readings -- I get print copies and just follow along with my hearing aid.  Which is okay, but redundant as I read the text.

The big events, the big draws, this week are the visiting writers.  We’ve got some cool people coming: Shelley Jackson, Christian Peet, Erik Davis.  And what do they do when they get here? Yep.  Readings. 

Graduating students do a special reading during their last week here.  Makes me very glad I haven't gotten to that stage yet.  I get into such a schizophrenic political snit anytime I forget I forbade myself to think about it the first week I came.

I have this fantasy about doing my graduate reading differently:

I convert my thesis into video, presenting in visual situ.  Their readings drone across sound waves; mine will sear into their corneas.  I'll recruit signing actors, superimpose text, emblazon images on a wall. 

I'll show them what they've been missing, stuck behind their podiums and chained to the mic, enslaved by the public address system in the theater.

They'll fall to their knees, their minds blown.  And they'll forget about their strictly larynx-and-eardrum readings.

Then I remember I am just one student out of many. A freak fighting the machine.  And the only battle plan (desperate tactics for a war I didn't choose) I can think of is to present myself not as a writer, but as an ersatz filmmaker.

Sigh.

Doing it my way.

Week one of being officially in my own apartment went by in one supersonic, sleep-deprived blur.  But I do remember a few things.  Allow me to impart my hard-earned single-woman wisdom:

1. When a spider marches nonchalantly across your chest on its way across the living room floor and you do nothing but stare at it, you know that a) you're officially home, and b) your lack of screamage says you're growing up all by yourself.
2. Hissing "THERE ARE PEOPLE DOWNSTAIRS!" at a seven-year-old does nothing to deter the screaming, the jumping, the running, and perhaps most of all, the brattitude.
3. People who live in third-floor apartments with a dog are either dumbtards or gluttons for glute workouts.  GUESS WHICH ONE I'M VOTING FOR?
4. Never ever move into your own place without at least one chair.  The toilet does not count.
5. When you're worried about paying the bills, or when your legs have fallen asleep or your back is aching from sitting on the floor, or you're hit all over again with the realization that for the first time in your life, you are truly, honest-to-goodness, on your own, take a look around, remember all the good people in your life that helped you get here, and...

shut the fuck up.  You're doing pretty damn good so far, lady.

This is your blogger. This is payroll. This is your blogger on payroll.

You know I'm either fucking busy or fucking tired when the only thing I can manage to make myself blog after two weeks is this lovely gem I found on somebody's water bottle this morning in the refrigerator at work.

And you know I'm kinda desperate for non-work, at-the-bar, got-a-light kinda company when my reaction upon seeing this, for some inexplicable reason, is to bark out loud and think, quite incoherently, "So there IS a God."

And also: when I fucking take every fucking chance to say the word "fucking," because apparently in an office environment, saying "fucking" every other sentence doesn't come off as too, um, fucking professional.

Well, hi-dee-ho.  You can take your professionalism and shove it up your *grumblemumblemurmur*

Same ol', same ol'

I hate my implant.  Still feeling like someone is grabbing a fistful of my hair and shaking me by it.  Stupid brain.

I wish my dog would quit hunting down my dirty underwear and using it for a pacifier.  Stupid crotch-sniffer.

I pray every day not to bleed through my shirt.  Stupid new boobs.

I hope for a surprise today.  Stupid optimism.

I love my new job even though I still don't know what the hell I'm doing.  Stupid learning curve.

I dream of an isolated island in the Caribbean.  Stupid self-torturing daydreams.

That is all.  Thank you and have a nice day.... stupid.

Requiem for a Monday Morning

Hi! Hi! Good morning!  How are you?  Did you have a good weekend?  I did, yeah.  Went apartment hunting.  No luck, just several great reminders how screwed I am striking out as a broke single mom and looking for a 2-bedroom apartment dirt cheap but preferably with granite counters, thankyouverymuch.  Came home reconsidering being born into this world.  But then it was a gorgeous day and I had a few hours to kill so I took my doggie out for a walk where he promptly picked up all the ticks in a three-mile radius, and I didn't realize it until a day later.  So, yeah, I've been walking around in my house cohabitating with all manner of parasites, oblivious.  And then I bought me some new bras at Target so I don't have to spend every night bleaching the bloodstains out of the two the doctor gave me.  You have no idea how cool that is, to be able to hop out to Target and buy a bra, instead of going to a specialty store and hunting down a bra that could double as a fishing net for tuna.  And now it's Monday morning and I'm sitting here with my coffee, all dressed and ready to go to *gasp* HOLYCRAPIHAVEAJOB work, before waking the kid up.  Right this minute, millions of other people are doing the exact same thing I'm doing.  So, yeah.  I may have a roof over my head, food in my belly, a nice cotton wirefree sling over my boobs, but the price of that security? Conformity.  And that's when it hits me:  Holy shit.  It's Monday morning and I'm a Monday morning lemming.

Oh.  Hi.  Good morning.  Go away.

My new hero, Bryan Marovich.

On this beautiful Ostara morn, I find myself immeasurably indebted to some stranger named Bryan Marovich.

Because of Bryan Marovich, instead of threatening to twist the throat shut of any and everybody who asks if/assumes that my low-rez MFA program is like one of those online school thingies, I can simply link to Bryan Marovich's blog explaining the phenomenon (and he's an alum of my own school to boot).

Thank you, Bryan Marovich.  I love you, Bryan Marovich.  Will you marry me, Bryan Marovich?

Sick days

shouldn't be this nice.  Or else I'd be feeding Leah germs every day.

(Taken with my blurry Treo)

Intro to Hippie Writer Door Culture

By the time you read this, I will be headed home to the DC area, my face streaked with mascara tears over leaving Vermont. 

On one of the doors down the hall from my dorm room:

...and on one of the faculty member's office doors. 

Three guesses what it reminds me of instead of whatever the hell it's supposed to be. (I walked past it every day and snickered every single time.)

Until next time, Goddard.

I have nothing to say.

If you ask me if I have any questions or comments one more time, my head will fall off from all the bobbling it's been doing for the last three days.

If you make me listen to one more reading, my eyeballs will crumble into dust a la the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

If you ask me to write down one more list of adjectives to describe my mind during writing or a character or a plot or a setting, my hand will strangle me.  And it will be completely voluntary.

If you ask me to remember one more amazing quote, my brain will explode and slime the people behind me with curdled ashen Jell-O. 

Dude.  Who knew writers talked so damn much?

(At least there's gonna be booze tonight.  I don't usually say this, but this time it's justified: Praise the Lord!)

I've always wondered what "Stupid is as stupid does" meant.

Yesterday at lunch someone I was sitting with asked me in a British accent -- via terp of course, thus the convoluted nature -- "So... Is she speech or hearing or both?" 

I threw the terp such an incredulous face she had to repeat it, Englishified sign for Englishified sign, eyebrows raised to indicate that, yes, she was saying exactly what the hearing person next to her was saying, y'know, kinda-sorta EXACTLY like she's supposed to.

So... am I speech or hearing or both? 

Um. How 'bout suffering from that chronic virus called stupidity?

Just another day at Goddard College.  (And yes, I still want a tattoo of Vermont stamped on my ass.)

First I stay up until 3 am on my first day of the residency doing absolutely nothing good for my writing or my schoolwork even though I know the whole week will zap my energy... although you could argue the dillydallying was good for me. *snorfle*

Then I can barely pay attention to a thing on the second day.  This is really good for me.   Bodes well for all the inspiration I'm gonna get out of this week for writing that amazing Pulitzer-worthy novel:

"Once upon a time there was a princess in a castle in a far, far -- ooh, look at her shoes!  Those are definitely Fuck-me shoes! -- well, anyway, this princess, she wasn't your ordinary sort of princess -- must not forget to write that letter... -- and all the people in the land saw her as a mysterious sort of being..."

Today I manage to get up on time, only when I look at my alarm clock it tells me I have 10 mins to get my ass to class: "Writer's Block and What to Do with it,"  which I desperately, desperately need (so badly I started licking and humping the schedule when I saw it).

Beeline to the showers, rush back to the dorm room, text a terp: "Late!  Coming!"

And then I realize it's really 8 am, not 9 am.  Must've accidentally changed the time when looking for a non-existent snooze button. Crapola.  Meanwhile my terps are whipped into a frenzy, thinking they're an hour late.  Erm... My bad.  Mea Cul-duh. 

It's snowing.  I can barely see the building across the quad -- it looks like I'm getting bad reception on a TV with rabbit-ears. 

Snow, meet stupid Alli.  Stupid Alli, meet snow.

Anyone willing to venture a correlation?