Quickies! Chicago contest

This July/August I'll be doing a little traveling, first to Kansas to see college friends, then to Nebraska to see my Dad and cat, and then on to Chicago to hang out with my awesome sister Tenae and go to Lollapalooza, which is becoming something of our annual tradition. I hope it continues forever--until one of us gets too old to be running around to music in the blistering heat for three days. But I think we've got a few decades left in us.

Knowing I would be in Chicago in August, I entered a story contest for Quickies! Chicago: a short fiction reading series. I think I spotted it in a post on Molly Gaudry's blog a month or so ago. I forgot about it. And then I won! That's the best kind of news--the kind that comes out of nowhere. So, if you happen to live in Chicago or plan on being in the area August 11th, I'll be reading.

The link is <<HERE>>.

yes chris ware

If you ever want a great job, work at a university writing center in the summer. It's kind of slow, but the students are less stressed, everyone's chatty and dewy, the sun is out, iced coffees are sweating on tables, and there's time to talk during down time with fellow consultants about secret thai restaurant menus, Andrei Tarkovsky films, weather patterns, how Gordon Lish is a bad ass, etc. And look! The summerim has only just started and Daniel brought me a Chris Ware graphic novel! How nice! I keep peeking at it. Like this kind of peek:

peek

Animalia

I really want to take trapeze lessons.

I went to this musical/aerial art performance last weekend and my friend Tonia did a great little write-up on it for BushwickBK. Read her article HERE.

Goods

Went to a reading at McNally Jackson bookstore (on Prince St. in SoH0) this evening with Akashic Books authors Maggie Estep and Joe Meno, hosted by LIT magazine. Both authors read from their latest novels, Alice Fantastic and The Great Perhaps, respectively; and Estep and Meno were rather charming in the Q&A, with curt candor and insightful, friendly chattiness, respectively.

It was just so much goodness all over the place. LIT magazine is great; I have a few of their issues and I think they have a launch party for the latest one coming up this month. McNally Jackson is a decent independent bookstore--they should probably just get a cat.

Both authors read well, which I guess I expected, but sometimes I'll go to to a reading and the author will look really uncomfortable and fidgety and sweaty or dry-looking and I get that same feeling I get when I'm trapped in the same room as an awkward talk show. Even though I'm not involved in the exchange, I know I probably would be that painful to watch, and it causes me to cringe uncontrollably and I have to put the show on mute or leave the room. But this wasn't like that at all.

In the audience Q&A there was a lot of talk about giant squids. Estep's next work will involve"1860s Gangster Chicks." She had a "dog list" to keep track of all the dogs in Alice Fantastic. Meno has a baby. Meno 1) will "call bullshit" on any writer who says they can write about the last eight years without including absurdity 2) suggested that writers often focus on illness because we/they are weak and sickly, but we're allowed to procreate, so cowardliness keeps getting passed down to new puny writers who can write about illness 3) thinks imagination and fun is lacking from current fiction.

He also encouraged everyone to buy a book, not just his or Estep's, but any book, a good one, from an independent publisher or bookstore, because "they don't just magically stay open." It's true. Alice Fantastic or one of Meno's books. He has many. Buy your dad or someone you know who is a dad or could be a dad a book, and send them a letter too. Those are nice. Then recycle something. And figure out why it won't stop raining on New York.

Busy Day! More Woolf

The Rumpus also posted my interview with Cecil Woolf, 82 year old publisher and nephew of Leonard Woolf. I like the illustrations by André da Loba. Read it HERE <<<>>>

19th annual Virginia Woolf conference

For various reasons--including a connection to parts of Woolf's biography and personality, an attraction to her honesty in her diaries and her frighteningly perceptive view of the world, and her philosophies--I'm really into Woolf. Reading her was like not having to be lonely because I had thought these things but no one really told me it was okay to think those things--that not everything has to be how it is structured to be. I found this mostly in The Waves and To the Lighthouse and Moments of Being. I had this phase where I thought maybe I was somehow Virginia reincarnated, but like, a way less brilliant and less ill version, or that maybe I was her sister reincarnated. But I'm not a painter so that wasn't it either. Maybe I'm just one of her fans reincarnated as another one of her fans.

I had the opportunity to attend the conference this year and I wrote a little review of it for The Rumpus--it's up today HERE.

Preview: "Loving Woolf as a common reader today requires a certain defensiveness. In addition to intimidation, I experienced nostalgia passing through the rooms of my college literature professors and near embodiments of Woolf herself, jarred occasionally by a student or a man."

Listening to scholars discuss the intricacies of Woolf was just so damn fun and interesting, and difficult at times. They devote their lives to this, going over and over what's been gone over and digging up new bits to string in a new order of lights, for a slightly different effect. I mean, I'm sure within academia this stuff is valuable, but for a common reader of Woolf, sometimes I felt they were dissecting her too much, trying to explain her. No one needs to be explained. No real person, anyway. I mean, for one speaker I looked back over my notes and saw only babble, like:

"subordinated principles of orientation and various tropes of performance with an interval of prolepsis to eroticize mastery of foreign tongues and androgynous aspects of eastern cultures attracted modernists and parody of stylization of the body, fraught with coded domesticity..."

and somehow this was all related to Lily Briscoe putting her head on Mrs. Ramsey's knee in To the Lighthouse, or something.

I think I was meaning to say what a great experience it was for me...because it was. But I think the parts I enjoyed most weren't scholars necessarily rearranging and "illuminating" Woolf, but those speakers you could tell were really inspired by her. Like Rebecca Solnit.

How long did I look at this today?

By this I mean THIS. I don't know. Maybe 20 minutes. That seems long. Longer than most other things I did today without moving much, except maybe reading. It loops. Work is slow in the summer. Not much matters much in the summer. Less cold less serious less heavy less holidays.

As I was watching this, my co-worker Daniel said, What are you thinking about? Maybe he said something else and I misheard; I was wearing headphones. I said, Weather. I really wasn't thinking about Weather or anything I was just watching these boxes and trying to work out a pattern. I was failing. But then I was like, Shit, I'm not thinking. That's a weird thing to realize. So I started thinking and worked out a little story in my head, part of which was stolen from my friend Mandy and this memory she was telling me about this weekend, involving her being a little girl and folding clothes with the babysitter and her and the babysitter realizing the babysitter had left a baby boy she was also babysitting on top of the dryer and he vibrated and kept vibrating and while he was baby bouncing and they were folding clothes he fell right off the dryer. He couldn't help it. He lived. Anyway I wrote this story in my head about what the babysitter was thinking as this was happening because I was not thinking and needed to be thinking something as I watched this video so I became the babysitter, I guess. I felt a lot of guilt, for the baby I left on the dryer. I didn't write it down and felt okay about that. I ate a bagel.

Really what I think I wanted to get at was my obsession with Animal Collective lately but I guess that's not incredibly unusual. I've really enjoyed playing my iPod loud and stomping around all over the place, walking fast and walking in front of cars even I'm though only going to the Strand to look for a Philip K. Dick book for my Dad for father's day, because he's a good guy really, and he lives in Nebraska, and then to Trader Joe's to get a big bag of edamame and some milk--not really anywhere important. Maybe it's music, in general, I'm advocating. Music in a life is important, even thought it's another form of living that involves not thinking.

I was mugged a few months ago and I didn't have an iPod and I have a roommate who doesn't like music so I didn't have music. It was sad. It was dark. It was quiet. I could hear neighbors in the backyard telling each other secrets. But then a friend who happens to be a professional poker player who happens to get points for playing poker with a certain site and who happens to play a lot of poker and who happens to be very nice, used his poker points to secure me a new iPod for free for me. So then I had music again and I can stomp around damaging my hearing and feeling just fucking great, or just fucking fantastic if I've got a coffee, because that's how I feel.

I used an audio recorder for that interview I did with Cecil Woolf (up tomorrow morning on The Rumpus) and I decided I'm going to carry it around and record people so if you know me and see me occasionally, this is a warning. A disclaimer for our friendship.

I bought this recorder when I was 20ish and really mad about something involving someone removing things I wanted to not be removed from a particular place which was my old home then, but once they were removed there was nothing I could do about it, not even go to all the GoodWill's in Lincoln, Nebraska because the stuff that you donate there doesn't necessarily end up there. I tried. So, I wanted to record these things that were removed but I was upset and had this fear about dying and not remembering a lot of stuff and didn't think I could write very fast; plus, I had to drive three hours alone back to school in Kansas so I bought the recorder at a Target and sort of yelled and cried at it for half an hour or so in the car, cataloging the things that were removed that I wanted to remember and being angry at the person who removed them.

I listened to this the other day and it was sad. Sad because I was sad on the recording and I'm me, and I remembered it and experienced the rehappening of the sadness. But also because you're not the same person for very long, noneofus. The voice was definitely not the person I find myself in today. I was mad about not having the "things" I thought I needed in order to remember another person who was gone, but then the person on the recording was me but not me, and the person who is gone knew that person, and not this person, so the "things" did matter, even though I got over the whole angry ordeal and thought the things didn't matter. Because the things don't change, just us. And that link between this person and the person who is gone is gone now that we're all different and will keep twitching into something new.

I'm still writing. Something is going to be in DOGZPLOT sometime soon, I think.

Important Things

Friends. Sun. Carbs. Glasses and/or contacts. Childhood. Stamps. But friends are just great.

Floral?

What does one wear to interview Cecil Woolf? Ruffles? Should I iron a skirt?

Sometimes I'm walking around feeling like a bug, probably drinking coffee and lost, literally, looking for north or a clock or my keys, wondering if I'll find cheap pizza and if my current condition is the result of a series of mistakes and misguided--if not well-meaning--encouragements,and if I should have been a veterinarian and married a nice boy, because I'd probably have 'security' and 'plans' and 'pets,' when suddenly someone asks me to interview a relative of Virginia Woolf. And again, here is where here should be and was all along. It's nice.

Summer of Infinite Jest

This morning, The Rumpus linked to a literary challenge and collective enterprise: to read and comment on David Foster Wallace's tome Infinite Jest--a sort of online book club, initiative, and support group. Info here. The 'rules' aren't up yet but the basic idea is to start June 21st, reading 75 pages per week (+ endnotes) until September 22nd, discussing on various global forums. Neat! I'm a sucker for a bookish gimmick.

A co-worker at the KU Writing Center spent a significant portion of our slow hours together last summer urging me to get into DFW, but I never got around to it. I'm not sure if this monster is the best way to dip my toes. There's an Infinite Jest wikipedia to assist readers. Knowing me, I will have to read all the endnotes and the whole damn wiki or I'll feel like I exercised one side of my body and not the other. It will consume me.

Plus, I was planning my own challenge: to read 20 books by the end of August, knocking out the unread purchases on my bookshelf (including The Slynx by Tatyana Tolstaya, Joe Meno's shorts Demons in the Spring, the copy of The Things They Carried my dad sent me for my birthday, some stray Murakami novel, etc.) I usually think of things in my own definition of personal 'productivity'...but I may never read this if I don't do it now. It's like in college, when I wanted to read Joyce's Ulysses, but only if I could really read it, with a group and an expert and outside sources, not confused on my bed, falling asleep. And of course, as soon as I graduated there was some semester long Joyce class. Maybe I should see if there's an online one of those, actually...

Look at it! Could squash a cat! I'm awaiting reply from Writing Center Ben to advise me if it's worth it, or if I should just spend a week or so on a different DFW.

Do other people cringe

every time they remember they have a blog and look at what they just posted, as a larger string of words by oneself in one place, with a title and background color and spatial organization and little forethought and some photos and timestamps and whatever? I do a little.

I'd like to be at the point where I have all sorts of places on the sidebar to direct people to read my writing, so they won't have to listen to sasha-the-writer-person talk--they can just go read the writer. Because we're not the same, really. Unless you know us very well and then only vaguely.

I will stop apologizing for this thing.

I killed a cockroach and don't know what to do with it, where it's corpse should end up now that the thing can't make decisions for itself. My responsibility. I don't have a strong enough personal constitution to touch it with my hand and there aren't enough paper towels to put between it and my fingers.

I did not kill it with my own person.

It's dead over there where I can practically be close with it, as in it's under a table, as in I can see it if I look, as in it's within walking distance. If I leave it, it's family may come looking for it and then I'll have the angry relatives to deal with.

New York City is getting warmer which makes every day better but faster too. I don't have enough time even when I'm doing nothing. I've learned things, maybe. The cockroach didn't get into an MFA program and now he's dead. Not the end of the world. He probably never did half the things he wanted to. And now he doesn't even know it.

wordsss

We have habits. Nail biting, smoking, "um" "like" and "actually," television, candy, nose picking, infidelity. I pull at my eyebrows when I read. I wash my hands when I get home or I feel I might die, not from germs but unfulfillment, like not crayoning a balloon in a coloring book all the way to the black lines.

I've found I overuse these words when I write:

wonky. lucid. geriatrics. extrapolate. garbled. curdle. lumped. undulations. insipid. thing. something. sort of. ragged. Pattern? Not sure. But it's a strong bond.

i'm going

Rumpus/McSweeny's/Smith Mag joint event tonight.
Involvement of special guests.

I appreciate the opportunity to passively participate in something I might be able to categorize as productive, in that learning and listening and enjoyment will happen, without having to try too hard. I'm feeling a little dry in the brain today, from too much coffee or listening to Gang Gang Dance or a hex put upon me after my post about the evils of hyper-'clever' interaction. It does feel good when my brain is snapping. I agree, you were right, lift the Jell-o from my synapses, please.

I did this already

elimae reading at the KGB bar,

but I didn't have a blog then.

I guess it's time

Every writer I know has a blog, like a business card. I don't think you can exist without one. You can but you seem weird and hard to find. I'd like to exist.

Concern: Since when are all writers interesting? As if writing on top of living isn't hard enough. Most writers I know are fascinating, funny, psychologically troubled or stable humans. But I also know a few who are about as personally intriguing as a clay pot.

Concern: Blogs seem to perpetuate a fashion of constant "cleverness." Everyone is so witty and it seems to occupy a lot of energy. Sometimes I don't want to say anything. I might want to say something dumb and syntactically incorrect and look at people walking, and not be pleased with myself and the quality of my conversation. Either blogging is an exercise in this talent, causing 'cleverness' to metastasize, or it's an outlet for such zingers, and everyone can just relax.