Tonight Brock and I went to the gym together for the first time in weeks. First he was sick, then it was my turn. Most times I go by myself anyway because run alone with my headphones. I don't like company in the gym. I run rogue.
Lately I've felt really shitty, coughing up green stuff, so the thought of picking up a weight tonight was daunting. It was even harder to do. Instead of using my usual 12 pound weights to do lateral raises, I selected the 7s. It must be said I'm not a tiny, wimpy person, but these were tiny, wimpy weights. I saw my reflection in the wall of mirrors and felt sheepish--it looked as if I were about to work out my fingers with these baby dumbbells. I felt like one of those really fat girls who do bicep curls with 3 pounds because, hey, she doesn't want to get bulky. Yeah. That's what it felt like.
Across the room Brock was laughing at me and shaking his head. So I marched right up to him and said I would never, ever go to the gym with him again. And don't he dare laugh at me. And who did he think he was, anyway?
After I did my 7s and presses and bent-over rows I realized what a dipshit I'd been. Those weights were too light. And I did look kinda silly holding them. Like so many other times in life, I'd gotten really upset about something I realized was ridiculous about thirty seconds later and had to live with the shame of it.
So as soon as we were finished working out I apologized immediately and profusely with stupid excuses in attempts to make Brock laugh: it was my broken headphones that put me in a mood, it was hearing Katy Perry over the loudspeakers spliced with Jay-Z in my earplugs, it was my congested chest, it was PMS! In short, "I'm sorry I snapped."
Brock just flared his nostrils and said, "I know this place is called Snap Fitness, but geez, you don't have to take it so literally."
After five years together I've turned my husband into almost as big a dork as I am. Pretty proud of that.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Let's Try an Analogy...
I start lots of classes with this line. Or maybe I just interrupt classes with this line. I'm not sure, but the point is that when it comes to teaching, I'm always reaching.
Can I help it if Hotspur from 1 Henry IV reminds me exactly of George W. Bush? I mean, really. He's got no perception of reality, he believes in himself to such a degree that it would be admirable if not so damn destructive, and he can't see any other version of the world but his own (I'll admit, sometimes that's a difficult one for me to, but that's fodder for another blog).
Or if Falstaff (same play), has a point when it comes to eschewing honor for living, that life is more important than your ideals (or at least, that's the coward's--Brooke's--point of view)? And how this belief made me think of Harvey Milk's struggle for gay rights, that idealist, that activist who died for his cause because he wouldn't stop fighting for it?
Or if in my freshman comp class, I illustrate what it's like to be a great interviewer by using the example of Stephen Colbert, who is so indeed brilliant at getting people to say outrageous statements that he got Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) to say on camera, "Cocaine is a fun thing to do"?
These analogies often fall on deaf ears. Or maybe they're listening and getting it, I can't tell anymore. But here's what their eyes say: What the fuck is she talking about? I'm talking about the work, of course, I'm trying to talk about life and patterns, about the meaningfulness of all of it, the meaning of the work within themselves. But. I think for the 18-20 age range this is a little bit of the too much, too fast, too soon.
And do you know what that reminds me of? This reaching for analogies is like when I tried to get boys to fall in love with me on the first date. It wasn't like I even loved them! But I thought, surely, this person should love me, he's just a guy...and I'm Brooke! I'll decide later whether or not I'll love them back.
Only this didn't usually work. After dates with sundry undergraduates I wasn't loved nor did I love in return. We did drink a lot of Purple People Eaters though. And backed our asses up on the dance floor. Ah, late 90s, you were a time.
What else doesn't work, I must at long last admit, is this reaching in the classroom. What am I trying to do? My analogies might be good for a couple of chuckles (haha! she said "cocaine") but I don't think much learning is going on. Isn't that my goal?
(Though secretly, or as it were, not so secretly, don't I believe that being liked by students is an important pedagogical tool, and if they're laughing even a little, I'm doing something right? Aren't they learning to appropriately react to a teacher's desires? Yeah. That sounds good to me.)
So I'm going to try an analogy to make you understand my meaning here. My analogy-reaching with my students is kinda like when I'd try to go too fast in love with sundry undergraduates more than a decade ago. I'd go, "Love me now!" Then they'd go, "Hold on, lady, let's do a few shots first."
Yeah. That's exactly what it's like.
Can I help it if Hotspur from 1 Henry IV reminds me exactly of George W. Bush? I mean, really. He's got no perception of reality, he believes in himself to such a degree that it would be admirable if not so damn destructive, and he can't see any other version of the world but his own (I'll admit, sometimes that's a difficult one for me to, but that's fodder for another blog).
Or if Falstaff (same play), has a point when it comes to eschewing honor for living, that life is more important than your ideals (or at least, that's the coward's--Brooke's--point of view)? And how this belief made me think of Harvey Milk's struggle for gay rights, that idealist, that activist who died for his cause because he wouldn't stop fighting for it?
Or if in my freshman comp class, I illustrate what it's like to be a great interviewer by using the example of Stephen Colbert, who is so indeed brilliant at getting people to say outrageous statements that he got Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) to say on camera, "Cocaine is a fun thing to do"?
These analogies often fall on deaf ears. Or maybe they're listening and getting it, I can't tell anymore. But here's what their eyes say: What the fuck is she talking about? I'm talking about the work, of course, I'm trying to talk about life and patterns, about the meaningfulness of all of it, the meaning of the work within themselves. But. I think for the 18-20 age range this is a little bit of the too much, too fast, too soon.
And do you know what that reminds me of? This reaching for analogies is like when I tried to get boys to fall in love with me on the first date. It wasn't like I even loved them! But I thought, surely, this person should love me, he's just a guy...and I'm Brooke! I'll decide later whether or not I'll love them back.
Only this didn't usually work. After dates with sundry undergraduates I wasn't loved nor did I love in return. We did drink a lot of Purple People Eaters though. And backed our asses up on the dance floor. Ah, late 90s, you were a time.
What else doesn't work, I must at long last admit, is this reaching in the classroom. What am I trying to do? My analogies might be good for a couple of chuckles (haha! she said "cocaine") but I don't think much learning is going on. Isn't that my goal?
(Though secretly, or as it were, not so secretly, don't I believe that being liked by students is an important pedagogical tool, and if they're laughing even a little, I'm doing something right? Aren't they learning to appropriately react to a teacher's desires? Yeah. That sounds good to me.)
So I'm going to try an analogy to make you understand my meaning here. My analogy-reaching with my students is kinda like when I'd try to go too fast in love with sundry undergraduates more than a decade ago. I'd go, "Love me now!" Then they'd go, "Hold on, lady, let's do a few shots first."
Yeah. That's exactly what it's like.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Daddy
Though I'm sure I must have, I don't remember ever calling the man who helped make me Brooke by the name "Daddy." In my mind and memory he's Dad and Father and Roy. Growing up we weren't yuppies either--in fact, Dad and I just spoke on the phone this evening, and he warned me not to turn into a yuppie as per my fear of mice, which I was scared to explain to him may just be his fault (see previous blog for explanation). So he's not the "just call me Roy" type of dad. In my memoir I refer to him in every way but Daddy. But tonight, when we got off the phone, I almost said I love you, Daddy, but instead said Bye, and we'll talk soon. And just like every time we get off the phone, I already miss him.
My father can recite lines from all eight of Shakespeare's history plays. Tonight he quoted Hal's line from 1 Henry IV, "I do. I will," as it's the prescient moment in which Hal promises to someday banish Falstaff. He then summarized 2 Henry IV for me, as I haven't read it, and said that the only actor out there capable of playing Falstaff is himself, but it's too bad he's so fit and good looking.
At another point in the conversation my dad started talking about the Germans and the Russians and some important historical interchange between the two, and this was leading up to a witty joke, only I couldn't hear what he said because, you see, my dad doesn't really know how to use a phone. Half the time he's covering up the receiver with his index finger. I've seen him murder many a cell, and sometimes even use it as an ashtray.
I'm no Plath, thank god, but I've romanticized my father in similar ways. Intellectually he's a genius, but when he was married to my mother she had to do things like change the light bulbs because he couldn't. If I ever had a question--historical, philosophical, religious or otherwise--I'd think, man, I should ask my dad about that...only he wouldn't have a phone number for me to call. He'd be living somewhere mistakenly auspicious-sounding like the Friendly Inn, smoking more than cigarettes and more than that other thing you might suspect one would smoke at the Friendly Inn. During high school and college, I only knew him as the man who was never a phone call away.
Where is this going? I've always begrudged girls their daddies, I guess. Daddy's girls grew up and found ways to own other men, thus own the world. Meanwhile I could barely own myself.
An ex-boyfriend once told me that girls who were abandoned by their fathers were the best kind: so willing to please, so loving, so...desperate. According to him Daddy's girls were the pits, and I was the shit. We weren't together very long, probably because he'd so savagely sized me up without even realizing how much it hurt me to be so plainly seen. I'm guessing he was a Momma's boy.
Don't fear for me though. I'm a big person now, have learned how to love and be loved with relative ease. I still hold one thing against my father, though: he didn't teach me any salable, interesting skill. Other people in the world, people I admire, can build things and cook things and climb things and sew things and grow things and film things. Not me. I interpret things.
Though I don't underestimate myself. I want you to know I believe in my importance. Therefore I will make a correction to a previous post. In "Musophobia," I said my dad wanted to teach me to read before I turned four; it was actually before I turned three. At sixteen months I could read the words "moon" and "boy," and perhaps these nouns were prescient for moments in my life that my father would never know about, only because he wasn't curious--I would have gladly admitted everything to him.
Still, don't think I have no skill. I can be a brilliant sixteen-month-old. I can long for a Daddy like the Dickens.
My father can recite lines from all eight of Shakespeare's history plays. Tonight he quoted Hal's line from 1 Henry IV, "I do. I will," as it's the prescient moment in which Hal promises to someday banish Falstaff. He then summarized 2 Henry IV for me, as I haven't read it, and said that the only actor out there capable of playing Falstaff is himself, but it's too bad he's so fit and good looking.
At another point in the conversation my dad started talking about the Germans and the Russians and some important historical interchange between the two, and this was leading up to a witty joke, only I couldn't hear what he said because, you see, my dad doesn't really know how to use a phone. Half the time he's covering up the receiver with his index finger. I've seen him murder many a cell, and sometimes even use it as an ashtray.
I'm no Plath, thank god, but I've romanticized my father in similar ways. Intellectually he's a genius, but when he was married to my mother she had to do things like change the light bulbs because he couldn't. If I ever had a question--historical, philosophical, religious or otherwise--I'd think, man, I should ask my dad about that...only he wouldn't have a phone number for me to call. He'd be living somewhere mistakenly auspicious-sounding like the Friendly Inn, smoking more than cigarettes and more than that other thing you might suspect one would smoke at the Friendly Inn. During high school and college, I only knew him as the man who was never a phone call away.
Where is this going? I've always begrudged girls their daddies, I guess. Daddy's girls grew up and found ways to own other men, thus own the world. Meanwhile I could barely own myself.
An ex-boyfriend once told me that girls who were abandoned by their fathers were the best kind: so willing to please, so loving, so...desperate. According to him Daddy's girls were the pits, and I was the shit. We weren't together very long, probably because he'd so savagely sized me up without even realizing how much it hurt me to be so plainly seen. I'm guessing he was a Momma's boy.
Don't fear for me though. I'm a big person now, have learned how to love and be loved with relative ease. I still hold one thing against my father, though: he didn't teach me any salable, interesting skill. Other people in the world, people I admire, can build things and cook things and climb things and sew things and grow things and film things. Not me. I interpret things.
Though I don't underestimate myself. I want you to know I believe in my importance. Therefore I will make a correction to a previous post. In "Musophobia," I said my dad wanted to teach me to read before I turned four; it was actually before I turned three. At sixteen months I could read the words "moon" and "boy," and perhaps these nouns were prescient for moments in my life that my father would never know about, only because he wasn't curious--I would have gladly admitted everything to him.
Still, don't think I have no skill. I can be a brilliant sixteen-month-old. I can long for a Daddy like the Dickens.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Musophobia
The first time I remember seeing a mouse was on the cover of the first book I learned how to read, Santa Mouse. That mouse looked nice, and I liked him because he wasn't really furry or angular and always wore a red suit and hat. I could dig a mouse that wore clothes. Oh, and he had a barely-visible tail and walked properly on two legs, which was very human of him. My dad bought this book for me and, I learned later, had the goal in mind that I'd read it before I was four. I reached his goal way ahead of schedule and learned early something about pride. My dad had A Baby Who Can Read.
The second time I saw a mouse my dad murdered it in his hands. His house was infested. Each night filled itself with pittering and pattering. The sheep I'd try to count would even run away from the mice. The murder was vivid and strange, like the nightmares you get when you're sick. I was in bed reading some bigger book to dad and one of the mice in his closet wouldn't stop squealing. When I wouldn't buy dad's poetic line--that perhaps that nice mouse was trying to read a book to her father--he sighed and ran to "take care of it." For a reason I can't remember, perhaps to make me understand the truth about mice, that they are small and inconsequential, that they cannot harm anyone, or maybe because he'd finished up the six pack, my dad dangled the mouse a few feet in front of my face. I screamed. The mouse screamed. My dad said "Goddammit!" and the mouse disappeared into his hands and there was silence. Strangulation? Smothering? I still don't know the exact cause of death, but my dad's hand was the penultimate coffin. Then, the toilet, his pink toothpick tail the last of him to go down.
Twenty five years later I've discovered my worst fears are true. It hasn't been cockroach poop on the kitchen counter all these weeks, something as easily dealt with as the crumpling of looseleaf. I turned on the light in the kitchen and prepared to take care of that sinkful of dishes and the mouse--no shit--stopped in his place on the counter, blinked once, and ran under the cutting board that I laid across the stovetop grates to dry (unbeknownst to me, creating the perfect tent for a mouse to settle under). Minutes later when I stopped screaming I realized I was in the dining room now, plates still in hand, and Brock was patting me on the head like the scared little girl I felt I was and saying all would be well soon. We just need some good traps. Meanwhile I was thinking we need a better fortified house.
I can anticipate an appropriate response to this: you live in the woods, you're surrounded by big and small creatures, many of which can actually hurt you, so grow up and get over it. Trust me, I'm trying. But so much of every day is tied to that moment with my father, one of a handful of memories that I don't need Proust's madeleine to recall. It's always there, that toothpick tail a swinging pendulum in my subconscious.
Which leads me to this question: can I murder a mouse? At the risk of sounding like a stereotypical liberal who brakes for every squirrel in the road, I have to balk at the idea. It's possible I'm scared of all the others I've come across in this life because of how that first one dies. I basically ratted it out (ew: bad pun). If I hadn't done that, then my dad wouldn't have searched and swung and destroyed, and I probably wouldn't have this irrational fear. In other words it's all my fault, and now I've got to kill this mouse to rid myself of the fear of the first (either that or I have to kill my father...clearly I've forgotten Freud).
Several weeks ago my friend Jessica found a baby mouse dying in the woods behind her house and has been feeding it some mouse-formula from a tiny mouse-bottle ever since. I am not Jessica. I can let a mouse starve. But can I set up a device to crush, torture, dash it out of its life? Not sure, but I do know it's got to be gone from my house or I won't be able to eat. As it is I'm not looking forward to my coffee and English muffin breakfast tomorrow morning. I may have to skip it. Brooke's breakfast-less birthday. Some creative thinking must be done to solve this problem, and I'm not disregarding hypnosis as a possibility. Though I'm dubious about the effect of a swinging pendulum watch just feet in front of my face.
10,000 Hours
On the eve of my 29th birthday all I can think is I don't want to work. I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, a book which I'm teaching my freshmen this semester, and one of its principle theories is that in order to be a real master at whatever it is you want to do--guitar playing, football, law, writing--you've got to put in 10,000 hours. Do the calculations, or don't: either way you've gotta know this is a fuckload of time.
The first day of class I asked my students to calculate how long they've been students. We figured if they went to school for 8 hours a day, about 200 days per year, that after 7 years they'd just hit the 11,000-hour mark. But then I asked them how much of that time they'd spent truly being a student, being intellectually as well as physically present. Most said it was less than half that amount of time, a few said they spent little time at all being real students. After giving these students high-fives for their honesty I insisted they get their asses in gear, that they wouldn't live forever. Then they got scared and looked at me funny, in the same way I often look at my own reflection in the mirror.
All this made me think of myself, how much time I've spent being a real writer. I decided in earnest I liked to write when I was in high school, but because it came so easily I spent little time on it. My writing and journaling and private ideas English teachers force us to share for a grade were the only moments in school in which I received positive recognition. So maybe I spent a little more time on my journals than on math. I didn't treat writing like a genuine skill to be built and crafted until much later. Sadly, my seriousness about writing came even after graduate school, which I look back now as three years where I probably put in a full 10,000 hours toward my mastery of drinking and self-loathing.
In college I took workshops: nonfiction, poetry, fiction, playwriting. When I received an assignment I thought about it nonstop for days. Then, the night before it was due I wouldn't sleep. I'd crank. Write for hours, stop to look outside the window or clean the toilets or long for someone to love me, and then write again. Editing was something real writers did and I was only 19, after all. I figured I'd still produce something better than the rest of the class and to my detriment, that was usually true.
In graduate school I took workshops, all of the above. The only difference was such a misguided one I want to slay the seven-years-ago me: I truly believed all the hard work was over. I'd gotten here, after all, to the hallowed halls of Allen at LSU. Not everyone gets into an MFA program, and many many would-be writers are placed on hold. But I got in and got funded immediately. True, I probably had some strings pulled by my undergrad professors who loved me, but however I got in, I was in. This is the problem, I suppose, with allowing 21 year olds to pursue the MFA. Or at least me at 21. Then and now I've no discernable skill besides my desire to write. And as you know from reading the first sentence of this blog, though I'm approaching an advanced age, I sometimes still don't want to put in the work I know is necessary.
So I'm writing this now with the recognition I've got to put in the work, but I'm still trying to figure my own writerly calculations. How close am I to 10,000 hours? This depends on how one views a skill such as writing. If you want to be Jimi Hendrix, yeah, you've got to practice on the guitar for hours on end. In that situation I don't think just listening to good music counts.
But I wonder if it's different with writing. Are the recordable moments only the ones in which hand grips pen, or finger bounces on keyboard? Moments in which words, sentences, paragraphs are created? Though I'm clearly trying to compensate for my skinny hours, I do think other times should be incorporated if one wants to write: time thinking about your work, time reading the dictionary, learning new words, time studying what others' work is like and what should be avoided and embraced, time editing your work and reading it and loving and hating it. Maybe even time recognizing how much time you've put in so far in your life?
Some of this time has to count. If not, I'm alright, I'm okay, but here's what my calculations look like: I've written about one hour per day, seven days a week, for the last eleven years. That brings my total hours to just over 4,000. With this blog and some other journaling I did this morning I suppose I'm at 4,001. If I put my ass in gear the same way I've asked my students to and double that amount of time to 14 hours per week, 52 weeks a year, I'll reach my 10,000 hours right around my 36th birthday. And I can live with that. Prodigious writers who reach brilliance early often burn out early as well. Or they die: Keats, Shelley, Plath, Sexton, David Foster Wallace, etc. And I certainly don't want to die. Thus, the hours come slowly. (See how that works?)
But still I'm back where I began, not wanting to work. I so don't want to that my desk plant, the one with the ironing-board-shaped leaves, is reaching toward the window because in lieu of the water it needs, it will take the sun. Knowing this I'm still too lazy to give it water. Doing so might make me forget that I've sat here to write. Outside my window the pine needles want less cold, more sun, and turn brown despite themselves. Listlessly they hang. Listlessly so do I. But if I note at least a little of what I think and see as I sit here, so not wanting to work, then I've done something. I've spent five minutes more.
The first day of class I asked my students to calculate how long they've been students. We figured if they went to school for 8 hours a day, about 200 days per year, that after 7 years they'd just hit the 11,000-hour mark. But then I asked them how much of that time they'd spent truly being a student, being intellectually as well as physically present. Most said it was less than half that amount of time, a few said they spent little time at all being real students. After giving these students high-fives for their honesty I insisted they get their asses in gear, that they wouldn't live forever. Then they got scared and looked at me funny, in the same way I often look at my own reflection in the mirror.
All this made me think of myself, how much time I've spent being a real writer. I decided in earnest I liked to write when I was in high school, but because it came so easily I spent little time on it. My writing and journaling and private ideas English teachers force us to share for a grade were the only moments in school in which I received positive recognition. So maybe I spent a little more time on my journals than on math. I didn't treat writing like a genuine skill to be built and crafted until much later. Sadly, my seriousness about writing came even after graduate school, which I look back now as three years where I probably put in a full 10,000 hours toward my mastery of drinking and self-loathing.
In college I took workshops: nonfiction, poetry, fiction, playwriting. When I received an assignment I thought about it nonstop for days. Then, the night before it was due I wouldn't sleep. I'd crank. Write for hours, stop to look outside the window or clean the toilets or long for someone to love me, and then write again. Editing was something real writers did and I was only 19, after all. I figured I'd still produce something better than the rest of the class and to my detriment, that was usually true.
In graduate school I took workshops, all of the above. The only difference was such a misguided one I want to slay the seven-years-ago me: I truly believed all the hard work was over. I'd gotten here, after all, to the hallowed halls of Allen at LSU. Not everyone gets into an MFA program, and many many would-be writers are placed on hold. But I got in and got funded immediately. True, I probably had some strings pulled by my undergrad professors who loved me, but however I got in, I was in. This is the problem, I suppose, with allowing 21 year olds to pursue the MFA. Or at least me at 21. Then and now I've no discernable skill besides my desire to write. And as you know from reading the first sentence of this blog, though I'm approaching an advanced age, I sometimes still don't want to put in the work I know is necessary.
So I'm writing this now with the recognition I've got to put in the work, but I'm still trying to figure my own writerly calculations. How close am I to 10,000 hours? This depends on how one views a skill such as writing. If you want to be Jimi Hendrix, yeah, you've got to practice on the guitar for hours on end. In that situation I don't think just listening to good music counts.
But I wonder if it's different with writing. Are the recordable moments only the ones in which hand grips pen, or finger bounces on keyboard? Moments in which words, sentences, paragraphs are created? Though I'm clearly trying to compensate for my skinny hours, I do think other times should be incorporated if one wants to write: time thinking about your work, time reading the dictionary, learning new words, time studying what others' work is like and what should be avoided and embraced, time editing your work and reading it and loving and hating it. Maybe even time recognizing how much time you've put in so far in your life?
Some of this time has to count. If not, I'm alright, I'm okay, but here's what my calculations look like: I've written about one hour per day, seven days a week, for the last eleven years. That brings my total hours to just over 4,000. With this blog and some other journaling I did this morning I suppose I'm at 4,001. If I put my ass in gear the same way I've asked my students to and double that amount of time to 14 hours per week, 52 weeks a year, I'll reach my 10,000 hours right around my 36th birthday. And I can live with that. Prodigious writers who reach brilliance early often burn out early as well. Or they die: Keats, Shelley, Plath, Sexton, David Foster Wallace, etc. And I certainly don't want to die. Thus, the hours come slowly. (See how that works?)
But still I'm back where I began, not wanting to work. I so don't want to that my desk plant, the one with the ironing-board-shaped leaves, is reaching toward the window because in lieu of the water it needs, it will take the sun. Knowing this I'm still too lazy to give it water. Doing so might make me forget that I've sat here to write. Outside my window the pine needles want less cold, more sun, and turn brown despite themselves. Listlessly they hang. Listlessly so do I. But if I note at least a little of what I think and see as I sit here, so not wanting to work, then I've done something. I've spent five minutes more.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Some Reading
If I said I was shy you might not believe me, but if you're reading me you must know me well enough to guess I'm insecure. This is why readings of any kind are hell for me. For this reason I think the best thing to read at a reading is something super meta-, that pokes fun at what you're doing or yourself or someone in the room--preferably all three. The audience usually likes this, because it makes them feel as if they are reading themselves.
That's another weird thing about readings: if it's a round-robin with a lot of readers, it feels as if all of them are just waiting to read their work. They aren't listening. We might as well be a roomful of cokeheads pretending to listen but really just waiting for our turns to speak. Whatev. I read on Wednesday and even though I was full of the whooping cough I got a few laughs and that's all a writer who wants to inspire bugginess can ask for.
Things you should know if you read this and don't know Vince: he's absurd, speaks in absurd poems, drinks a lot, has a beard, has bad taste in rap, has written an exceptionalist manifesto which I do not understand, and is my friend.
This is for Vince, and it's called Some Reading.
It’s ten-thirty and I’m on the phone with Vince trying to convince him I shouldn’t read poetry at Teddy’s. “Look, Vince, I’m not a poet anymore.” “Fuck nonfiction,” says Vince. “Exceptionalism. Whiskey. Hamburger with pickles. Talk radio. Kidney disease. America.” I say, “I’ll say! But look, Vince—I still don’t write poetry anymore. I don’t get line breaks. I write about my life, prosaically. In prose, I mean. You know.” “Fuck it,” says Vince. “Borrow my bicycle.” So two weeks later as Brock and I are driving to Baton Rouge and I’ve got my memoir in my backpack I’m thinking, that fucking Vince is really gonna make me read poems. I mean, as soon as I get up on that stage and start reading something about my grandma and how she breastfed me, he’ll really lose his shit. I know the guy—he will not be amused. I’m scared, and that’s saying something, if you can imagine how it was for me growing up with someone like my grandmother! I ask Brock, “What should I write for the reading? Quick! We’ve got eight hours!” And he says, “Thinking about Poetry is so unsatisfying,” and he switches out the Jerky Boys CD for The Blueprint III, which incidentally, Vince thinks he’s too cool for. No shit. Jay-Z does not compare to Lil’ Geezy or whoever the hell. I mean, we’re friends with this guy. We like him, and we have to listen to this kind of stuff. But we go visit him anyway because he’s given us a place to stay, plus he’s lovable (for an exceptionalist) and we’re laughing now and there is whiskey and that does improve my situation and also Brock just winked my way and that’s poetry enough for me, but still I would’ve rather read to you about my grandmother, her dry breasts, or maybe about the time I punched my pregnant sister because she was asking for it, just ask Brock, and instead I just read a poem I’m hardly even capable of writing because of that goddamned bearded exceptionalist Vince.
That's another weird thing about readings: if it's a round-robin with a lot of readers, it feels as if all of them are just waiting to read their work. They aren't listening. We might as well be a roomful of cokeheads pretending to listen but really just waiting for our turns to speak. Whatev. I read on Wednesday and even though I was full of the whooping cough I got a few laughs and that's all a writer who wants to inspire bugginess can ask for.
Things you should know if you read this and don't know Vince: he's absurd, speaks in absurd poems, drinks a lot, has a beard, has bad taste in rap, has written an exceptionalist manifesto which I do not understand, and is my friend.
This is for Vince, and it's called Some Reading.
It’s ten-thirty and I’m on the phone with Vince trying to convince him I shouldn’t read poetry at Teddy’s. “Look, Vince, I’m not a poet anymore.” “Fuck nonfiction,” says Vince. “Exceptionalism. Whiskey. Hamburger with pickles. Talk radio. Kidney disease. America.” I say, “I’ll say! But look, Vince—I still don’t write poetry anymore. I don’t get line breaks. I write about my life, prosaically. In prose, I mean. You know.” “Fuck it,” says Vince. “Borrow my bicycle.” So two weeks later as Brock and I are driving to Baton Rouge and I’ve got my memoir in my backpack I’m thinking, that fucking Vince is really gonna make me read poems. I mean, as soon as I get up on that stage and start reading something about my grandma and how she breastfed me, he’ll really lose his shit. I know the guy—he will not be amused. I’m scared, and that’s saying something, if you can imagine how it was for me growing up with someone like my grandmother! I ask Brock, “What should I write for the reading? Quick! We’ve got eight hours!” And he says, “Thinking about Poetry is so unsatisfying,” and he switches out the Jerky Boys CD for The Blueprint III, which incidentally, Vince thinks he’s too cool for. No shit. Jay-Z does not compare to Lil’ Geezy or whoever the hell. I mean, we’re friends with this guy. We like him, and we have to listen to this kind of stuff. But we go visit him anyway because he’s given us a place to stay, plus he’s lovable (for an exceptionalist) and we’re laughing now and there is whiskey and that does improve my situation and also Brock just winked my way and that’s poetry enough for me, but still I would’ve rather read to you about my grandmother, her dry breasts, or maybe about the time I punched my pregnant sister because she was asking for it, just ask Brock, and instead I just read a poem I’m hardly even capable of writing because of that goddamned bearded exceptionalist Vince.
Soybeans
This poem is Brock-approved, which is the only reason I'm posting it. Because I don't consider myself a poet anymore, I don't feel like an asshole as posting poems as blogs. I didn't read this at Teddy's because I felt like I was dying and just read a funny poem about Vince (perhaps only funny if you know him), which I will post once I get it onto my computer.
This is for Brock, and it's called Soybeans.
Inside the pages of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row
I find one of Brock’s discarded lines:
“In the grocery aisle, the soybeans are notoriously absent.”
So loving this line that’s never found another home,
I place it in a new white box:
Facebook status.
Suddenly, friends believe I’m a poet again.
They say, only you could make grocery shopping
poetic, Brooke. Only you
could make soybeans sexy. Maybe I just needed
to see the word again next to my name: poet.
Blue name tag: Hello, My Name Is Poet.
Now, as long as I can avoid my own face in the mirror, I’m on a roll.
Now, I compose my own line: “tomato soup and grilled cheese for my sick buggy and for me.”
One more: “avocados sit glibly in their rows.”
Only…my poetic lines aren’t as poetic as his.
See how that works?
I hate the thief in my heart and the poet in my husband’s.
I take a pen to bed, hide it under the pillow: a way to weaponize love.
That last phrase I just wrote: a way to weaponize love—I stole that
from some guy on Keith Olbermann.
I don’t even know what it means.
Now Brock’s snoring—the soft kind that never wakes me up
but while awake, I can be appreciative about.
Holding fast to pen I remain vigilant:
of the air wending in and out of his mouth
when suddenly the air stops, his eyes are open,
and he ends this poem.
This is for Brock, and it's called Soybeans.
Inside the pages of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row
I find one of Brock’s discarded lines:
“In the grocery aisle, the soybeans are notoriously absent.”
So loving this line that’s never found another home,
I place it in a new white box:
Facebook status.
Suddenly, friends believe I’m a poet again.
They say, only you could make grocery shopping
poetic, Brooke. Only you
could make soybeans sexy. Maybe I just needed
to see the word again next to my name: poet.
Blue name tag: Hello, My Name Is Poet.
Now, as long as I can avoid my own face in the mirror, I’m on a roll.
Now, I compose my own line: “tomato soup and grilled cheese for my sick buggy and for me.”
One more: “avocados sit glibly in their rows.”
Only…my poetic lines aren’t as poetic as his.
See how that works?
I hate the thief in my heart and the poet in my husband’s.
I take a pen to bed, hide it under the pillow: a way to weaponize love.
That last phrase I just wrote: a way to weaponize love—I stole that
from some guy on Keith Olbermann.
I don’t even know what it means.
Now Brock’s snoring—the soft kind that never wakes me up
but while awake, I can be appreciative about.
Holding fast to pen I remain vigilant:
of the air wending in and out of his mouth
when suddenly the air stops, his eyes are open,
and he ends this poem.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)