Homework
I have to memorize a poem by next Wednesday. I fear memorizing. I have a bad memory to begin with.
But I didn't enter into this class to float by. I picked a longer poem than I needed to, because it was the right one for me.
Love Song: I and Thou
Nothing is plumb, level or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage's nails
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it, I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand cross-piece but
I can't do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.
Alan Dugan, 1961
I'm unsure how to explain my class. Does it make sense that I am interested in the work but disappointed with everything else?
I get to read these great stories and poems, but I don't get to discuss them in any meaningful way because my classmates are idiots and assholes. The idiots can't begin to discuss work with any depth besides, "The poem had the word 'weary' in it. It's depressing" or "It's not really a poem because there's no story."
No, really.
And the assholes might have something interesting to say if they could get off their fucking high horses for five minutes and contribute. They sit in the back of the class, hoodies pulled low over their foreheads, rolling their eyes and sighing, asking smartass questions and bragging about having lived in Europe when the pope died. "I mean, he's just a fucking dead guy in a box. What's the big deal?"
That particular one kept popping pills from an Advil bottle and washing them down with Diet Sprite. Later she announced that she couldn't wait for her Vicodin to kick in.
I'll pose a question to you, any of you who have done this. Why do people take classes they don't want to take? I could perhaps understand if it was a credit they needed that they didn't give a shit about, but once you get into creative writing, you have chosen to be there. You're not there because you want to be a programmer but creative writing was required for graduation. Why the fuck are these people
there? I was bristling with hatred half the night at the sighing witticisms. Education is so wasted on the young.
*
Anyway...*
I don't like reading aloud.
Maybe I wouldn't mind it if the other people had something interesting to say in response, some criticism I could use.
I'm going to have to do what I set out to do. Learn everything I can, do my best.
*Whenever I say "anyway," one should hear the lyric from
this song.
The moment of truth: my first writing class is tonight. I have the terrible suspicion that it won't go well. Adding to my sense of doom: my first set of 450 thread count sheets arrived today from Overstock.com with no pillowcases. They credited me $10. In-store credit, that is. I think I got gypped.
Anyway, it isn't what sheets you sleep on, but who you sleep with, that matters. And I'm sure I'll learn something in the damn class. Like how not to start sentences with "and."
P.S. It probably isn't a good sign when "Writing Down The Bones" is one of the class textbooks. I foresee hours spent contemplating grease stains on pavement and long-winded diatribes about childhoods that begin with, "I remember..."
whythe fuc is y bloggerwindow ucking around with my curor? wha the hof?otsfkcatisg mk
I have nothing to say. I'm bored with myself.
You know how anorexics have "thinspiration?" I have "asspiration."
So this girl leaves a voice mail on my cell. She says, "I don't know if you remember me, but we grew up together." This sentence starts sweet and polite, but has a bitter aftertaste, as if she'd really said, "...but of course you remember."
And I do. She was one of the pretty girls. There were two. The other was her cousin. I knew them from church.
There were other pretty girls, I'm certain, at school and there were probably more at church, too, but these are the two that matter. In my memory, they are the impossibles. They sometimes pulled me in, sometimes pushed me away, so I was like the lab rat who gets the pellet only every once in awhile, a shock the rest of the time, but keeps pressing the lever in hopes of a pellet. They were the Daisies to my Gatsby. They were the careless rich. My mind snapped to them when I heard the song, when I was eighteen:
Where the pretty girls are; those demigods.I'm sure Tori speaks for legions of depressed eighteen-year olds still.
This one was the nicer of the two - or, at least, the more polite - and I have no idea what to think of her call. I haven't seen or talked with her for thirteen years, and we had no relationship before that. I don't know who she is, and she lives far enough away that I shouldn't have to force a friendship now. But I'm devilishly curious. Is she still militantly a part of the machine that was my childhood church? Is she as beautiful as I remember, or have I been so inundated by the OC version of gorgeous that she will seem boring by comparison? Is there any depth to her character? Was my teenage hostility toward her unfounded?
Sometimes, it's fun to just sit back and watch the universe throw things my way. Hmmm, I think. What am I going to learn from this curveball?
I feel better today. Weird stuff, yesterday.
Today, I register for a class at OCC. I have no idea where I'm going with it, except that I want to keep my brain occupied. I never took a writing class before, so I'm starting with that. Next semester, maybe belly dancing. After that, sociology or something. Maybe one of those literature classes, so I can read books and talk about them. Sounds good.
*
My dad believes in the power of hot water, dish soap, holey underwear demoted to rags, and daily scrubbing. I believe in the power of the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, the bleach pen and the Clorox wipes. Anyway, my dad was annoyed with my place. I cleaned hard for a week before he came, but it wasn't enough. I forgot how particular he is.
He gets frustrated so easily. I came downstairs one evening to find him poking around a plastic farm setup The Bug got for his birthday. The pieces weren't all there; The Bug likes to deconstruct his toys and scatter their bits, but my dad was trying to put it together and getting really pissed off about it. Same thing with that little triangular brain teaser game with the holes and pegs - when he saw it on the table at a breakfast joint, he didn't even want to look at it.
He told me, when he was young, he wanted to be a scientist when he grew up.
God, I feel weird today. Like the world is splitting apart into two big dimensions and I don't know which one I'm going to end up in. Though that makes no sense; if you're going to believe in dimensions, you have to believe there are an infinite number of them, that the world splits every moment, that you exist in more than one of them. But today is weird. Some reality is not happening. Maybe I'm feeling something happening in the next door one. Or maybe my hormones are just balancing out from weaning The Bug, compounded by the alcohol I had with dinner. Nevertheless, you know how it feels to have your forehead all bunched up? My whole being feels like that.
I'm fucking tired right now, just mentally drained. This is going to be one of those posts that could get me into trouble.
My dad is so honorable, so deserving of respect, and he does so well with the little he was given in so many ways, but he makes me crazy. We disagree on so many subjects, and he's so fucking pushy about it because I don't argue. I don't argue because there is no point; nobody is changing his mind anytime soon. But also, I bite my tongue because I don't want to have to deal with it, and because I'm afraid of him. He obsesses and obsesses and I would never hear the end of it, plus he's wound so tight, I could see him hauling off and smacking me if I actually said what's on my mind.
Respect is a big issue with my dad. The slightest hint of disrespect from me sent him into a rage. And when I was a teenager, that was often. I dreaded going home, sometimes drove past if I saw his truck in the driveway. I avoided him as much as possible.
I thought he chilled out, but he's only gotten crazier, more isolated, since his divorce. He's going the way of the unibomber. God, what a six! (That one's for you, Jordan.)
Sometimes we're doing really well, and I'm able to be patient and to respect and love him, but then he drops some mean or sarcastic or ignorant or racist comment, or starts up with the antichrist talk - oh god, I could just rant here for pages but I won't. I won't feed this energy, I refuse. It's just, my quills come out and I shove them back in, often stopping midsentence, so my insides are constantly being stabbed. I'm just trying to avoid him, again.
I need to breathe for a few, then I'll try again.
My brother sent me
this guy's blog, and I read it every day now. I read it like I'm starving and he's got burgers on the grill.
***
I'm sitting here. Forcing myself just to sit and check my email, and eat cinnamon Eclipse mints. There are a million things to do, but I am sitting, on purpose. When it stops being on purpose, and it goes from restful to lazy, I'll know it. Then I'll get up.
When The Bug wakes up, he and I will walk to the store and buy dinner, and toothpaste, and milk, and then I'll rush around cleaning and cooking. But this is a good, quiet time.
***
This morning, I went to a tiny farmer's market near my place. I bought green bell peppers, an eggplant, light-green flecked zucchini, carrots, white nectarines, and avocado honey. Lists like that make the Redwall series good. There's so much good produce in my kitchen right now.
The bee lady was crazy, like bee ladies are, but I love her and I can't wait to talk to her again next week. I love geeks. Even bee geeks. Maybe especially bee geeks, because they remind me of a good part of my dad, an easy part. My dad's hobbies are always fun: bonsai trees, beekeeping, beer making, antique clock restoration. He follows through, too, does each one well and for years, and when he is done with one, he is done. He starts something else.
He's visiting tomorrow. He's sometimes difficult. I am never sure if I'm on steady ground while around him.
I want to romanticize his sleeping. I want to write here that he sleeps with the electric fan buzzing, moving his vertical blinds, shirtless and sweet. But he screams instead. He screams and screams and I don't know what to do. I nurse him and he sleeps in my arms, then wakes to scream again when I put him down. I give him milk in a bottle and he screams around the plastic nipple, sometimes drinking but sometimes choking, the milk making spots on his sheets when he throws or shakes it.
This is our worst problem, the sleeping. God, why can't he sleep? This is my first big parental failure.
