spoons & satellites

2012-02-28T20:05:00.004-07:00

Arrived in my mailbox today. No one could possibly know what this means to me [other than the woman whose passing is the reason I now have these tokens of my childhood with her].

2012-02-27T19:13:00.003-07:00

For anyone who wonders what the hell it is I do on any given day in English grad school...

Sometimes, we solve poems. Sometimes, poems solve us.

2012-02-26T21:03:00.002-07:00

A very rough draft of a little project I'm working on...

2012-02-26T20:19:00.005-07:00

Things that remind me of happiness:

[summer, where are you?]

2012-02-25T00:59:00.003-07:00

I really love these bowls.

2012-02-24T21:20:00.001-07:00

And to end this excellent Friday:

2012-02-24T14:23:00.007-07:00

1. Took a morning walk in the sunshine ['round my "neighborhood"]. Found some things...

2. Re: "the incident at my apartment building:" The green residue is finally gone, and now there are these flowers. I knelt down on the sidewalk to take a picture. Because I couldn't not kneel down on the sidewalk to take a picture.

3. Typed up some more 2nd graders' stories at BDArts.

4. Somehow took this photo without my knowledge. It appeared, like a ghost, in my iPhone camera roll.

2012-02-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today in SLC: shadows and color.

2012-02-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

My most recent encounter with weird grocery store fruit. I didn't buy these ones though, but only because they hurt me when I tried to pick them up. I yelled at them.

2012-02-20T15:18:00.002-07:00

More from my neighborhood, the Granary District.

2012-02-20T02:13:00.000-07:00

I will live here some day. I will live here some day. I will live here some day.

2012-02-20T01:44:00.004-07:00

When I tell most people that I love violence, they almost immediately write me off. Which is too bad really. Because we're obviously obsessed with violence in this country and in so many other countries I've visited, so shouldn't we at least try and understand it instead of assuming that everyone interested in violence has some irreparable, sickening flaw?

Here's what "I love violence" doesn't mean to me: It doesn't mean I commit violence, it doesn't mean I enjoy witnessing violence in real life, it doesn't mean I tolerate violence from those around me. Here's what "I love violence" does mean to me: It means I feel compelled by the film, literature, music, art, culture, news, and attitude around me to recognize such a force, it means I have some desire to understand this permeating force in a way that does not simply mean coping but that means understanding, it means that physical violence almost always stands in for something else, signifies something else, represents something else, and it means that I am endlessly curious about the representations of violence, the underlying forces at work, the purpose and the function of something so present in this world.

So, don't judge me for loving American Psycho or Fight Club or Quentin Tarantino. Or this movie:

2012-02-19T03:30:00.003-07:00

And so, I have made a Flickr. I've decided to use it only for photos of my travels [this means no people photos]. The internet offers so many opportunities for organization, categorization, taxonomy. How can I, who constantly needs to label, re-label, organize, re-organize, taxonomize, re-taxonomize, resist succumbing to yet another tool for accomplishing such things? I can't, is the answer. So add Flickr to my list of documentary sites [in addition to my facebook, my twitter, my blog, and picasa]. I'm disgusting. I know.

2012-02-18T15:20:00.005-07:00

If I end up staying in Utah for my PhD, I found my new apartment. There was a flier for a newly constructed apartment building in my mailbox this morning, and it was one of those wonderfully fateful moments where suddenly all my anxieties disappeared. As ridiculous as this sounds, it's like the flier was saying, don't worry, you have somewhere to go. Anyway, the building is in the middle of downtown, it has in-unit washer and dryer, a private balcony, the wood floors are incredible, and best of all, it's not an Artspace property! I mean, I would still look for something near the 9th and 9th area too since that's where my yoga studio, my vet, and my favorite coffee place are. But still, I am relieved to know that I could find a nice place to live that isn't this terrible apartment building that's haunted by so many awful memories and incidences.

Also,

Also also,

My brother is in Africa having what seems to be the most incredible adventure I've ever heard of. And I am so proud of him. And I am so jealous. He was almost killed by a baboon. I want to be almost killed by a baboon! Sigh. I stand firm that the three things that never fail to make me happy are: traveling, yoga, and academic accomplishments. Oh and planning, clearly.

2012-02-18T15:00:00.001-07:00

Trip to the vet. Can you spot the Noops in this photo?

2012-02-17T12:06:00.002-07:00

The positives:

Every day that I leave the gym at 6:30, there's a little bit more light. Last night was glowing.
Every Friday I type up stories written by 2nd graders and often encounter glorious sentences, such as the following: "Then Spike goes home and eats his own foot." - TJ, 7 yrs old.
Today Groupon had a coupon for a $45 10 class pass at Centered City Yoga. And I bought it.
We have Monday off from school.

The negative:

I still have no idea where I'm going to be living in six months, and therefore cannot plan for anything past the end of April.

2012-02-15T21:01:00.003-07:00

ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.
ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost. ghost.

2012-02-15T18:08:00.000-07:00

[Don't make fun of me but]

Owing this gym bag is one thing that makes me feel more like an adult.

Because when I was a kid, my mom would always come home from work with two things: a briefcase and a gym bag. I would see the gym bag on the stairs near the garage or in the backseat of her car or against the wall at her office and I just assumed that adults had briefcases and gym bags. So now, when I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I always carry my messenger bag [I'm still not fancy enough for a briefcase] and my gym bag. And on these occasions, I think I feel much more like I might be an adult.

Other things that adults do:

wear suits
talk on car phones
take out their contact lenses at night
make long distance phone calls
put on make up or aftershave [depending on their gender] in the morning
book airline tickets
use inhalers

As it turns out, I now also do all of these things. Except the suits part. I've never been a suits kind of person. Oh and we don't have car phones anymore. I was clearly a child of the 90's.

2012-02-13T18:19:00.005-07:00

I am more excited about this than I've been about anything in a long time. [Look at the project website for specific details, as this post is only regarding my interaction with the project thus far.]

One of the best things about being in the U of Utah's English department is that I get to spend time with and around people whose creative work is in alignment with my academic interests. For instance, a fellow grad student created these posters to hang all over the city. They utilize QR codes to present a series of epistles. This mix of poster [analog], QR code [analog that utilizes technology to present something digitally], and the webpages themselves that appear when one scans the QR code [digital], is exactly what interestes me about the possibilities for writing in an increasingly digital world. That endlessly fascinating tension between the physical and the digital. I intend to write something more formal about this project at some point. For now, I'll just show you the photos I took of the posters I found in the stairwell of the Language & Communications Building on campus.

And! if you hold your QR scanner up to the image of these posters on your computer screen, it will still scan, and you can see exactly how this project functions.

[also, I am a person who still handwrites love letters, crazy letters of confession, to someone I am certain secretly adores me. And though my letters are often more than one page, I am willing to face crippling regret. Because the situation is already out of hand.]

2012-02-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

Sudden outburst of fireworks from downtown SLC. This place is so weird.

2012-02-11T17:41:00.008-07:00

Ever since what I will from here on out refer to as "the incident at my apartment building" last week, I've been searching for stillness and peace. But all I've found is anxiety. Anxiety about my students. Anxiety about not going to every single event in my department. Anxiety about impending responses from PhD programs. Anxiety about two of the people I love traveling all the way to the other side of the world where I can't protect them. Anxiety about my anxiety.

Yesterday was the first day in awhile that I found stillness again. As usual, it happened in yoga, but this time I was able to carry it with me after class. Today I found it in these designer medicine packages. [Normal medicine like ibuprofen and diphenhydramine, but packaged for simplicity.] Also, they have the BEST website of all time.

And in buying Valentine's Day candy for my students. Just because you're in college doesn't mean you don't like Valentine's candy.

And in the ever present weirdness that is this neighborhood of mine. A neighborhood that I love for aesthetic purposes but that I hate in every other way.

And in this article about writing in the digital age that, though not all that nuanced or original, still speaks to that which I intend to pursue for the rest of my life. [I have a folder in my bookmarks called "digital/analog" where I store all the articles I come across concerning this issue.]

And now in painting my nails gray and writing about Zukofsy's "A-7."

2012-02-11T17:35:00.000-07:00

My family portraits:

2012-02-10T23:22:00.002-07:00

It's like someone stuck their hand into my brain, pulled this out of it, and put it on display at the Art Barn. Sheet music collage background and everything.

2012-02-10T21:41:00.004-07:00

Today is my grandma's 87th birthday. She would have hated living till 87. But I miss her. I like to pretend that now she is a ghost on the moon.

2012-02-06T01:48:00.003-07:00

Apparently I can't help myself when it comes to the alliteration of "p" when writing about Pound and poetry:

"His references feel palpable and his words paint a much more precise picture than the one Pound is painting."

[See last week's post for another ridiculously overppppppppopulated with p's sentence.]

2012-02-05T21:05:00.005-07:00

There are four pieces of jewelry I wear every day. That I've worn every day for years. The symbols that define me.

1. my keyhole necklace that my mom bought for my 19th birthday while we were at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Colorado

[also frequently wear the leather/crystal necklace my mom got me last Christmas]

2. Tiffany & Co. ring my parents bought me for my 20th birthday

3. toe ring from a family trip to Hawaii when I was maybe 13ish

4. ampersand earrings I bought this summer on etsy from a jeweler in Montreal

The name of my eyeliner is "carbon" and the name of the nail polish I wear most is "master plan."

The only thing missing is a tattoo of Orion on one wrist, a tattoo of the state of Colorado on the other. [Though it might take me a long time to decide whether or not I'm actually going to get tattoos...] Once, to practice, I took a sharpie to my arm, re-outlining each star every day for a week.

2012-02-01T18:16:00.009-07:00

For awhile now I've had a mix tape in my head of songs about home. Lately, whenever I think of home I immediately hear one of three things: Ben Gibbard singing you remind me home, Ben Gibbard singing home, home is a fire/burning reminder/of where we belong love, or Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros singing home is wherever I'm with you.

& I picture my backyard, & I picture my best friend's backyard, & I picture our valley—inside and outside, & I picture Denver as I see it from I-25, & I picture Golden as I see it from 6th Avenue, & I picture Littleton as I see it from C-470 or Santa Fe, & I picture 93 to and from Boulder.

I didn't just make this list by finding songs with the word "home" in the title or lyrics. And I didn't make this list by finding songs I listened to a lot when I lived in Colorado. I made this list by thinking of the word itself, the word home, and then listening to the lyrics that came into my head. It's a short mix. Too short. Begging to grow with time.

1. "You Remind Me of Home" - Ben Gibbard

2. "3AM" - Gregory Alan Isakov

3. "Your Protector" - Fleet Foxes

4. "To Go Home" - M. Ward

5. "Home" - Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

6. "Home Is a Fire" - Death Cab for Cutie

7. "To Build a Home" - The Cinematic Orchestra

[note: "Vagabond" by Beirut would be on this list if I'd obsessed over it in Colorado instead of in Salt Lake City]

this is a place where I don't feel alone

this is a place where I feel at home

2012-02-01T01:24:00.003-07:00

What happens when I try and write about Pound at 1am:

"Pound perpetuates this precision that lacks precision via his mentions of page numbers, section and article numbers."

Who do you think you are... Gertrude Stein?

[No, by the way. The answer to that is no.]

2012-01-31T21:43:00.002-07:00

Every time I see new graffiti on campus, I like to think that whoever is tagging knows that someone out there is documenting all of this [maybe in a blog that has something to do with spoons or satellites or whatever].

2012-01-30T19:04:00.003-07:00

Question/response in the interview of the current featured seller on etsy:

What would be the title of your memoir? Why?
All I Ever Wanted Was to Make Things and Think About Them. Yeah, I know it’s long, but it’s a simple truth. I’m happiest when I get to make something worth thinking about, worth looking at.

Um, hi. This is exactly how I feel.

[also, this guy made a badass passport wallet that I bought for my brother this Christmas]

2012-01-30T18:49:00.001-07:00

wintertime life blood = chai latte

2012-01-29T12:49:00.001-07:00

Oh the pop culture infiltrates my life.

2012-01-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

Tuesday sunset—

If I pretend hard enough, this is sand, not snow.

[though the only thing that helps me face the winter are days like this: sunshine + snow]

Wednesday sunrise—

our mountains glow electric

2012-01-24T00:37:00.002-07:00

Just saw Shut Up and Play the Hits, the documentary about LCD Soundsystem's last show. So. Fucking. Good. For a moment it almost felt like I was at the show. It took every ounce of self control I have not to get up and dance. James Murphy, I love you. I love you for possibly making the biggest mistake of your life. For looking that potential mistake in the face and making your decision anyway so you can do everything else you need to do to be happy and full.

Also,
Vinto:

2012-01-22T18:55:00.006-07:00

Had a perfect Salt Lake City day today. Clean air, snow, sunshine. Drove around getting tickets for different Sundance films. Took photos of my neighborhood, the Granary District. Rode my bike to the Rose Wagner Performance Center to see Beasts of the Southern Wild, the most beautiful film about loss, home, and apocalypse I've ever seen. The whole audience was in tears by the end. But not sappy, we fall for anything tears. The kind of tears that are born out of art's painful, near perfect proximity to life.

Afterward, the director, Benh Zeitlin, and most of the cast, including the little girl, came out on stage. It was incredible. Everyone was so appreciative of their work. Only one person in the cast had ever acted before, but their performances were mind-blowing. Here's a clip of Zeitlin talking about the film, which is all I can give you because there's no trailer. It was on the ballot though, so I'm expecting to see it win something for sure.

Oh, and here's the cast &c at the Rose Wagner after the screening:

Rode home to watch this week's episode of Shameless before taking off again for Wrong at the Broadway Centre. What a ridiculous movie. If you want to know what my brain feels like from the inside, see this movie. Particularly the scene with the pine tree.

After the movie, director Quentin Dupieux and the cast did a Q&A. Dupieux was hilarious. He basically recreated the feeling of the movie in his answers, though I hesitate to say it was on purpose. Someone would ask him a question about how he came up wit the ideas and he would say, I don't know, I really have no idea. Someone asked, Why the rain in the office? He responded, Why not? He actually seemed baffled by the audience's questions which created this tension in which, as an observer, you were wondering, is this my misunderstanding or his or? He would answer a question, the audience would laugh, and he would say, No that's not funny. Anyway, here's Dupieux being [evasive][?]...

More movies I'm hoping to see at Sundance:

Shut Up and Play The Hits [LCD Soundsystem documentary]

Chasing Ice

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

2 Days in New York

LUV

Red Hook Summer

For a Good Time, Call...

2012-01-22T18:38:00.007-07:00

The Granary District: A Portrait of My Neighborhood

[click on the first photo for a slideshow with much better photo resolution]

2012-01-22T01:29:00.007-07:00

I just want to post this photo from my &Now panel because it makes me inexplicably happy [and also because I'm procrastinating writing this response to Pound's second canto]. A bunch of word-obsessed people playing with this möbius strip contraption of a narrative in some black box auditorium at UC San Diego. My life at its most exciting. I'm not kidding.

[Photo courtesy of Lance and/or Andi Olsen]

2012-01-21T20:36:00.006-07:00

It finally snowed. Though this snow is pretty wet and sloshy, it's sufficient to blanket the city into silence. Or near silence.

I happened to be at the SLC Public Library earlier today to meet with my Community Writing Center mentee. A woman in a bright orange jacket approached us and told us that everyone in Park City was snowed in and couldn't make it downtown, then asked us if we wanted the extra tickets to one of the Sundance films that was about to play in the auditorium. I accepted.

The documentary, West of Memphis, was incredible. I very rarely say that about films, not because I fancy myself a film critic with high standards, but because I truly don't feel that way often. I don't see enough films to feel that way. But this one was perfect. So, dear person who couldn't make it down from Park City, know that your ticket went to good use.

I've lived here for almost 16 months now and I've never attended a Sundance event because the schedule, the locations, the sheer number of people—all of it is overwhelming. So I pretend it doesn't exist, except when I get mad that all the Sundance tourists take all the parking spots outside my yoga studio, which happens to be next to Tower Theater on 9th & 9th.

I am pretty ridiculous. All along I've lived in this city and complained about this city and ignored something magnificent about this city. So I'm going to try and make up for it by standing in wait list lines tomorrow for extra tickets to the downtown SLC screenings. And if I do stay here for my PhD, I'm going to stop being a wimp and start exploring this place more.

2012-01-20T23:56:00.001-07:00

wishing well[puddle] on the bar floor at The Republican

Beer-thday cake!

2012-01-19T22:05:00.003-07:00

Some new, great stuff up at the Art Barn.

2012-01-19T01:27:00.002-07:00

This book will be sleeping on my nightstand for quite awhile.

Judge me and I'll make you eat my shoes. My dirty ones, not my nice indoor only ones.

2012-01-18T22:48:00.000-07:00

what a strange, surprisingly awesome semester

2012-01-18T01:20:00.004-07:00

Never has the Declaration of Independence meant so much to me as just now when I read it again in conjunction with Derrida's speech "Declarations of Independence." Incidentally, this essay was the second of my night to discuss hats in more than just a passing manner.

Also, Derrida is hilarious.

2012-01-17T22:21:00.003-07:00

"I NEVER want a philosophy of hats, a metaphysical idea of Hat in the abstract, nor in any case a great deal of talk about hats."

[Basil Bunting, "Open Letter to Zukofsky"]

2012-01-16T15:45:00.004-07:00

I've never heard of this, but the Barnes and Noble website just suggested it to me and I couldn't not buy it. Argentina has pull over me even when I'm thousands of miles away. My moon. I guess that would make me the ocean. I always wanted to be the ocean. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah. The first two sentences of the book's description won me over immediately: "The Instruction Manual," the first chapter, is an absurd assortment of tasks and items dissected in an instruction-manual format. "Unusual Occupations," the second chapter, describes the obsessions and predilections of the narrator's family, including the lodging of a tiger-just one tiger- "for the sole purpose of seeing the mechanism at work in all its complexity."

"Anyone who doesn't read Cortazar is doomed. Not to read him is a serious invisible disease which in time can have terrible consequences. Something similar to a man who has never tasted peaches. He would quietly become sadder . . . and, probably, little by little, he would lose his hair."

[Pablo Neruda]

2012-01-15T23:15:00.003-07:00

My favorite moment in my yoga practice is the moment right after final savasana before I sit up when I turn onto my side and lie in the fetal position, just for a breath, my head resting on my arm, my other hand pressing against the floor. That moment when I remember that I am supported entirely, that no matter what, I will always have the ground beneath me. I get the same feeling from that moment as I imagine other people get from a faith in a higher power. Except that my god is physics and my eternal life after death is not in heaven but in earth.

2012-01-14T22:39:00.003-07:00

Attempt at relaxation before my Monday appointment at The Kura Door.

2012-01-14T15:54:00.002-07:00

The happiest moment I've had all week was today when I finally found and purchased the exact water bottle that I also use in Colorado. This is one of those things I'm not going to be able to sufficiently explain to anyone. My heart did a little flip when I saw this bottle hanging off the little metal rod on its rack at the store. I feel complete again.

2012-01-13T22:22:00.001-07:00

losing all touch, losing all touch/building a desert

2012-01-12T21:27:00.004-07:00

I, too, feel a lot like a bunch of backlight scraggly bare branches lately.

2012-01-05T22:38:00.001-07:00

home. winter&summer&

2012-01-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

‎"I've always thought that a feeling which changes never existed in the first place."

[The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand]

2012-01-04T16:58:00.003-07:00

stardust winter sunsets [colorado]

2011-12-27T15:05:00.005-07:00

2011 has been, by far, the best year of my entire life. Here's a [semi-arbitrary] list of why [in chronological[ish] order].

1. February:: AWP in Washington, DC with Copper Nickel and Utah folk.

2. April:: Spiral Jetty [Great Salt Lake] with Narrative Theory seminar crew.

3. May:: Return to Buenos Aires

[Evenings talking to Alberto and Carmen, walks around the city with Daniel, taking the subte to Boedo to have lunch in Tayla's apartment, wandering Puerto Madero, reading on the terrace, the asado on the roof of Ellie's apartment building, Bruna's mini fashion school graduation, sitting in cafes drinking cafe con leche and eating pastries from medialunas del abuelo while reading, making up words with Marina and Agus in our room, walking to Freddo with Agus to buy a kilo of ice cream]

4. May:: weekend trip to Chile to visit Daniel

5. June:: Day trip to Uruguay [by boat] with Bruna

6. June:: AAAS lit symposium in San Diego where I presented my first conference paper [and silliness with R and H]

7. July:: Colorado summer, reading in my backyard, driving to and from Boulder

8. July:: 4th of July watching fireworks from the roof of Baseline liquor

9. July:: 1am A. Tom Collins show at The Mayan during the UMS & general S. Broadway shenanigans at my favorite bars and venues.

10. August:: the day the Rubik's cube appeared in the Valley, Sunsets

11. August:: Sudden appearance of a street fair on 200 E in downtown SLC

12. September:: SLC backyard campfire with my fellow egs

13. October:: &Now San Diego where my experimentalist rockstars and I presented a panel about the "page" and where I wandered San Diego desperately searching for the ocean. Then found it.

14. November:: Annual Nathaniel Rateliff & Co. show at The Gothic in Denver where I was reminded what it sounds like to be home.

15. December:: My first snow of this winter & finally being home again.

Other bits that made the year perfect:

Yoga

Okkervil River's new album

"Everything is the risk that it constitutes" - Stanley Corngold

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

"Exile Vilify" by The National

"life laughs at predictions and introduces words where we’d imagined silences and sudden returns when we thought we would never see each other again." - Jose Saramago

Nine Types of Light by TV on the Radio

"Everybody Here Wants You" by Jeff Buckley

my lightbox

The Rip Tide by Beirut

my first day teaching

all the incredible Colorado sunsets this summer

Lungs by Florence + The Machine

finding graffiti everywhere [South America, SLC, Colorado]

& of course the most life changing, most transcendent moments, the ones that are too personal for a blog, too inexplicable for words

& love.

2011-12-23T00:23:00.001-07:00

Day of snow [not to be confused with a snow day]

some hot toddies

& night time hot tub under the stars in 3 degree weather.

home is wherever I'm with you

2011-12-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

In my tiny mountain town, we have this big castle....

2011-12-13T20:38:00.002-07:00

Sometimes I go on etsy and find a bunch of furniture I can't afford to furnish a house I don't own. Someday.

2011-12-11T14:25:00.002-07:00

Recent purchases:

2011-12-10T16:00:00.002-07:00

i think i'll play with shadows instead

2011-12-10T12:38:00.004-07:00

Finish my first semester of teaching: check.

Finish my Fall seminars: check.

Grade portfolios, finish writing seminar papers, finish PhD applications: not check. But it's only 12:30pm, I'm running on 13 hours of sleep, I've got a full water bottle, and a window full of sunshine.

I somehow magically even made it to the last Working Dog reading of the semester on Thursday, and to our end-of-seminar gathering at Desert Edge last night. As of 7pm this coming Thursday, I will be free and celebrating at the English department holiday party in a fancy sequined dress.

2011-12-05T19:13:00.003-07:00

Last night, my home came to Salt Lake City.

Julie and Nathaniel played the encore songs in the audience. I cannot express how happy this makes me, nor can I express how much I now miss home.

And the door guy couldn't possibly have known how much I would need a stamp labeling myself by the end of this show.

2011-12-03T19:21:00.001-07:00

Update on the $6 fruit. It tastes like a cucumber. Am I awake? Is this the matrix?

2011-12-03T17:37:00.002-07:00

1. Didn't want to leave bed this morning.

2. My favorite thing about SLC is their "present" of free parking from Thanksgiving to New Years.

3. I paid $6 for this just so I could take it home and cut it open.

2011-12-03T02:47:00.002-07:00

Too tempted these days to quote passages about love and ghosts and home from all the books I'm reading. Or mostly from one book in particular that I read a long time ago. Everything I can't say. Won't say.

2011-12-02T22:40:00.004-07:00

My favorite down coat—the ivory colored Moncler I bought [at a huge discount] at Searle in Manhattan the year before I moved to New York for college—is finally wearing out, losing its warmth. I don't cope well with having to abandon items that I love.

But I did find this new Moncler. Oh.

Once upon a time I wanted a degree from Parsons and a job designing clothing. Those days are long gone, but I do slip back into old obsessions sometimes.

2011-12-01T20:29:00.001-07:00

outside LNCO

Aves. [post tree chopping]

South Temple

2011-12-01T01:16:00.005-07:00

Pre Thanksgiving break in my little SLC mountain town:

Thanksgiving break, home in Colorado:

1. Tiny Brother

2. 7th Drunksgiving with my oldest friends

[I stole this from Noonii]

5. [sort of] annual Nathaniel Rateliff and Denver bands show at The Gothic

6. I think "home" has replaced "love" as my favorite word. Sitting by the fire outside with my brother and my cousin, my first real friends, sitting on the floor of my best friends' house drinking whiskey doing nothing laughing, Nathaniel's music, my nostalgia for freezing winters spent alone in Denver wandering the city on foot listening to The Wheel's Desire and Dissolving Men, love.

Post Thanksgiving break back in my Twilight Zone of a life in Utah where a friend gave me this little owl, thus rescuing me temporarily from this terrible week where PhD apps, grading, seminar papers, and SLC's suffocating inversion converge:

Exactly 2 weeks left.

2011-11-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

Do you feel it now, Chancellor?

Read the whole article.

2011-11-19T17:28:00.003-07:00

And Chancellor Katehi's incredibly obnoxious, insufficient response can be read here.

2011-11-19T15:10:00.003-07:00

Crying and shaking with anger. This is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen.

Read HuffPo's article and English professor Nathan Brown's Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi.

2011-11-18T23:33:00.000-07:00

2011-11-17T18:07:00.002-07:00

Need more bookshelves. Need more wall space against

which to put more bookshelves. Need a house. Want a

house for my books.

2011-11-16T21:49:00.003-07:00

Oquirrh

2011-11-16T01:02:00.006-07:00

And to think I thought my current semester obsession would be failure.

Instead, it is narrative infection [not to be confused with last fall's obsession: narrative violation]. With a side of narrative consciousness. Mmmmmm. Constantly creating new syllabi in my mind.

2011-11-16T00:20:00.003-07:00

And here's the first Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. I cannot believe I didn't know about this until now. My life is changed.

2011-11-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

This is the best thing that has ever happened in my entire life.

2011-11-15T01:23:00.000-07:00

‎"You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch."

"Yes."

"It's sort of what we have instead of God."

[Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises]

2011-11-13T17:46:00.011-07:00

Coping with restlessness by posting photos from my former travels...

Buenos Aires[2011]

Colonia del Sacramento

Santiago de Chile

Valparaíso

Viña del mar

Buenos Aires [2010]

Quintana Roo

Prague

London

Rome

Venice

Paris

2011-11-12T13:24:00.002-07:00

Notes from the Lit GRE:

a rose is a rose is a rose

the only reason I knew that it's Celie who writes to Nettie in The Color Purple [because of the song you wrote in undergrad, when you were working on that show]

paragraph 1: Structure, Sign, and Play

[probably incorrectly] answered John Donne for every poem related to love and religion

Mr. Casaubon [rest in peace, or something]

no, I do not know which piece was written by Coleridge, which by Wordsworth, and which by Congreve. But I do know which piece was written by Stein, which by Eliot {t.s.}, and which by Williams. [do I?]

Mikhail! [Bakhtin, not Gorbachev]

no, I don't know anything about The Canterbury Tales, yes I know this passage from The Importance of Being Earnest [but only because I had to do a scene from it in intro to drama my freshman year of high school]

2011-11-09T17:33:00.003-07:00

1. embracing winter

2. Stevenson, owls, chai, Tom Jones [this is what I do with my time. like, really.]

3. "Jones now declared that they must certainly have lost their way; but this the guide insisted upon was impossible, a word which, in common conversation, is often used to signify not only improbable, but often what is really very likely, and, sometimes, what hath certainly happened: an hyperbolical violence like that which is so frequently offered to the words infinite and eternal, by the former of which it is usual to express a distance of half a yard, and by the latter, a duration of five minutes." [Henry Fielding, Tom Jones]

4. Today, I read "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers" to my students to make up for the heavy, boring grammar lessons we've had the last two classes.

2011-11-08T14:18:00.003-07:00

Something about this scarf on etsy has been calling my name for weeks. If only my income were more disposable...

2011-11-07T23:55:00.000-07:00

Six years ago today, mid fall semester of my senior year of high school, I went to my then boyfriend's choir concert at Metro with all my high school friends.
Five years ago today, I was in my dorm room in New York, my first semester of college, sick with the flu and half dead of a broken heart.
Four years ago today, I was in my apartment in Denver, the first place I ever lived alone, and the maintenance guy came over to fix my broken blinds while I procrastinated writing an anthropology paper. [A line from my jorunal that day reads: He started to mess around with [the blinds] and then he shot me in the leg. Ok not actually, I was just seeing if you were paying attention.]
Three years ago today, I talked with my therapist about my ambivalence toward making new friends, then went home and read parts of Discipline & Punish and some criticism on Fight Club.
Two years ago today, I took the GRE subject test in Literature, felt miserable, and so went to The Shoppe to eat cereal and cupcakes with J. [A line from my journal that day reads: Between about 9:30am and 12:20pm this morning at DU, the lit gre pooed in my face and then laughed at me.]
One year ago today, I rode my bike over to Kilby Court to see Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, who were vaguely disappointing.

Meticulous notes about almost every day in the last six and a half years of my life. Sometimes a burden. Sometimes not.

2011-11-07T21:49:00.001-07:00

My favorite paragraph from American Psycho:

"While she was gone I would vomit - just to do it - into the rustic terra-cotta jars that lined the patio in front or I would drive into town with the scary masseur and collect razor blades. At night I'd place a faux-concrete and aluminum-wire sconce by Jerry Kott over Evelyn's head and since she'd be so knocked out on Halicon she wouldn't brush it off, and though I laughed at this, while the sconce rose evenly with her deep breathing, soon it made me sad and I stopped placing the sconce over Evelyn's head."

2011-11-05T20:28:00.003-06:00

This:

"for the dullest writers, no more than the dullest companions, are always inoffensive"

[Henry Fielding, Tom Jones]

& this:

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

2011-11-02T18:32:00.005-06:00

fragments of the day::[a potential]conceptual framework for this milk-brain of mine

"what. about. love?!" [SBlack, from our disagreement with Hunter's reading of the history of the novel]

"everything is the risk that it constitutes" [SCorngold, from his talk on Kafka and the Poetry of Risk Insurance]

2011-11-01T20:03:00.002-06:00

when all else fails, when my brain is filled with milk and I can hardly even think my way around my own apartment, at least I can do origami with 2nd graders.

2011-10-24T17:41:00.003-06:00

To the woman who helped raise me. The reason my favorite color is blue. The reason I'm obsessed with miniature versions of things. The woman who taught me what a lie is, who taught me the meaning of the word "why," who celebrated my quirks always. Who let me be the crazy art project doing, grasshopper catching, run around the neighborhood like the hooligan girl I was [and still am today]. Who was with me always, even when she wasn't. Who never EVER forgot my birthday. Who collected cattails and spray painted dandelions with me. Who took me on small adventures to places like 7-Eleven or the grassy fields off the side of the road. Who, over the years, became one of the few people I could confide in without fear of punishment or judgement. Who taught me to record memories through photographs, to be patient and compassionate, and to love life no matter how awful it gets. Who was my sister when I didn't have one, who was my parent when she needed to be, who was my friend always no matter the drastic difference in our ages and life experiences. Rest in Peace. ♥

2011-10-21T21:27:00.002-06:00

My pseudo ocean shoreline, my imaginary coastal sunshine.

2011-10-19T00:38:00.003-06:00

"He got better but remained possessed by the strangest madness anybody had ever seen. The poor wretch imagined that he was all made of glass, and under this delusion, when someone came up to him, he would scream out in the most frightening manner, and using the most convincing arguments would beg them not to come near him, or they would break him." [El licenciado vidriera, Cervantes]

2011-10-16T17:08:00.008-06:00

&Now San Diego: Tomorrowland Forever!

Wednesday night:

Quick late night visit to the beach. Drinks at Rock Bottom Brewery. Sheraton Hotel.

Thursday:

Sheraton pool

UCSD campus

Pre-panel prep

Bits & pieces

Lunch @ The Loft

FC2 reading

Friday:

Our panel! In which we were rockstars. Everything was flawless.

Post-panel lunch celebration @ The Loft

My adventure to the beach in which I headed West and then kept walking for miles until I finally found the ocean.

Party @ The Loft [with free cake AND free kombucha]

Dinner @ the hotel restaurant with the Utah crew

Saturday:

Pool & sunshine

Tomasula & Olsen Panel

"Oh, like from the future" Steve Tomasula and Robert being avant-garde

Fish tacos, margaritas, and shenanigans in downtown La Jolla

Amazing time in San Diego. Between the beach, the pool, the beautiful California weather, the hotel bar, the crazy awesome people, the weird, surprising panels, and my amazing, talented, wonderful Utah cohorts, it was everything I could have asked for. Getting excited for AWP Chicago in March!

2011-10-11T20:24:00.010-06:00

What I want to be for Halloween [FUTURISM]:

A combination of Luigi Russolo's "Dynamism of an Automobile,"

Wyndham Lewis' cover of BLAST [I know, technically a Vorticist, whatever],

&
Brâncuşi's “Golden Bird.”

It's really hard to put these three things together into a wearable costume. And I have a feeling more than a few people won't be too happy with my interpretation [I've tried to... feminize things a little to counteract the violent sexism of the Futurist movement]. If only I were going as Rococo again like last year...

Rococo is always safe, even if slightly out of the ordinary.

[And yes, I know there is a trash can in the background. Sometimes people own trash cans but forget that they're there.]

2011-10-09T01:01:00.003-06:00

Today the sky got dusty.

And then it exploded.

And I decided that winter can go fuck itself and that I didn't work this hard to be happy just to be defeated by a goddamn season with crappy temperatures and painful reminders and stupid dead plants. Nothing about the life that I've built for myself has changed. And winter can't hurt me anymore. [But also, I will now buy a light box just to, you know, help fight the winter for me when I'm feeling sleepy.]

2011-10-08T14:27:00.002-06:00

How can I not revel in the horror of such reckless inclinations?

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

Halloween costume: Futurism. American Apparel, here I come.

2011-10-07T23:48:00.006-06:00

Because I haven't really geeked out about music on here for a little while...

The following are songs I've seen played live that I remember distinctly and most fondly for their epicness/mindblowingness/loveliness:

16 Military Wives. The Decemberists. The Fillmore. CO.

Fate of the Underachieved. Born in the Flood. UMS '08 outdoor stage. CO.

Everlong. Foo Fighters. Red Rocks. CO.

Jezebel. Iron & Wine. The Paramount. CO.

Skinny Love. Bon Iver. Fox Theater. CO.

Pensacola. Hello Kavita. DNC '08 tiny outdoor stage at Virgin Records. CO.

Evil Urges. My Morning Jacket. Red Rocks. CO.

Chicago. Sufjan Stevens. Kingsbury Hall. UT.

Washington Square. Counting Crows. Apple Store SoHo. NY.

The Denial Twist. The White Stripes. Red Rocks. CO.

Sæglepour. Sigur Rós. Red Rocks. CO.

Anna Begins. Counting Crows. Red Rocks. CO.

Fruit Fly. Nada Surf. The Gothic. CO.

Another night, another place. Born in the Flood. The Ogden. CO.

Oh, and this. Ohhhh this. Even though the sound quality is so abysmally awful and I hesitate to post something that doesn't come close to doing this song justice, it's the only recording I can get ahold of since they never actually released that second LP. And anyway, it's not just the song, it's the performance, that night, the electricity. A Break in the Silence. Born in the Flood. Fox Theater. CO.

Ok back to grading papers.

2011-10-06T16:20:00.003-06:00

I can feel it already. That heaviness that comes this time every year that feels like a warning or a threat or something I always fail to run away from. That burden of the cold, of dead trees, of driving with the windows up, of never having a warm enough jacket. That season that makes me long for a kind of comfort that I don't usually like to admit that I need.

2011-10-06T01:31:00.001-06:00

My dreams are so different now.

2011-10-05T17:32:00.003-06:00

Ghost graffiti

2011-10-02T22:36:00.002-06:00

Mid-semester return to Colorado for the weekend.

Walk around the neighborhood with my dad and dog.

Snake Rattle Rattle Snake and The Rapture at The Marquis in Denver.

Lots of reading in the sunshine and stargazing from the porch.

the new Wilco.

I can't help it if I fall
in love with you again I'm calling

just to let you know
it dawned on me

2011-09-27T22:17:00.003-06:00

September sun & celebrations [& 24hrs till home]

2011-09-27T13:51:00.005-06:00

Aside from obsessing over the codex and frantically trying to reconcile my opinions about the digital world with my firm allegiance to the physical book object, I am also always invested in this idea of fiction and reading and "reality" [except I care far less about any actual attempts to define "reality."] Just... read this NYTimes article.

"For a prose narrative to be fictional it must be written for a reader who knows it is untrue and yet treats it for a time as if it were true. The reader knows, in other words, not to apply the traditional measure of truthfulness for judging a narrative; he or she suspends that judgment for a time, in a move that Samuel Taylor Coleridge popularized as “the willing suspension of disbelief,” or “poetic faith.” Another way of putting this is to say that a reader must be able to occupy two opposed identities simultaneously: a naïve reader who believes what he is being told, and a savvy one who knows it is untrue."

Except this didn't start with Cervantes. It started with the things we now call "ancient novels." And it will keep going and going and I can't wait to see how it evolves along side of and in spite of the digital age.

"It is not a coincidence that the English term “reality” and its cognates in the other European languages only entered into usage between the mid-16th and early-17th century, depending on the language."

It actually kind of blows my mind that there are still educated, even brilliant people who align themselves with Alex Rosenberg's assertion that "“the philosophical theory [naturalism] that treats science as our most reliable source of knowledge and scientific method [is] the most effective route to knowledge." People who question "“whether disciplines like literary theory provide real understanding.”

"In fact, the common notion of objective reality that most of us would recognize today and the one on which Professor Rosenberg’s defense of naturalism rests — as that which persists independent of our subjective perspectives — is mutually dependent on the multiple perspectives cultivated by the fictional worldview."

&

"The fictional worldview, then, is one in which we are able to divide our selves to assume simultaneously opposing consciousnesses, and to enter and leave different realities at will, all the while voluntarily suspending judgments concerning their relation to an ultimate reality. This worldview has had an extraordinarily powerful impact on the modern world; in some interpretations it is the very epistemological signature of modernity, affecting equally our thought and politics as thoroughly as it does our art and literature."