page-hugging.

Lutz, woo me with your tortured syntactical artistry.
This man has read 250 dictionaries of grammar usage.
He reads books backwards. (I don't always care what happens much either.)
He read The New Yorker in order to analyze punctuation, which is not a bad reason to start reading The New Yorker.

As a follow-up to my previous mention of Gary Lutz, here is a lovely little Q&A with the man,
reposted from Eugene Lim.

Watch it and experience brief self-conscious language paralysis, or seduction.

Reunion

Sorry bloggy, it's been so long! Last we spoke (late, t.v. bound) I was stuck in a word mire that amounted to nothing but practice. But! I started a new story and wrote it in a week and now I'm waiting until I'm slightly less excited about it so I can make some wise revisioning happen. Am I good at structure? Hell no. My hook and push at plot needs work, as in, I don't even consider it. My structure is confusion and lists and terror towards the end and then confused calm, or some strange image that I woke and wrote in the middle of the night. Erratic. The other stuff so far in this story, I think I like.

I heard Mary Gaitskill read from "Don't Cry," her latest story collection, at the NYU Writer's House this evening and she used her eyes in this flashy way while she spoke that I liked, and she has really nice hands. People asked some moderately uninteresting questions and her answers were as unexpected and perceptive and usefully instructive as I had hoped they would be.

Does this reading log I have on the side here mean anything? Is it stupid? Does it seem pretentious? I can't tell. I'm actually a little embarrassed about it because I'm sure plenty of people read more interesting things than I do, and more of them more quickly, but I kind of like seeing it, to remember what I've been through, especially when I'm reading borrowed books. What if I started noting everything I ever read, like every lit journal or story or poem or article or blog post or manual or shampoo bottle or subway advisory? At least I'm not doing that.

I'm reading Chris Ware's graphic novel "Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth" but I only read it for a certain amount of time at home every day because 1) it's heavy and I don't want to lug it around in public and 2) it's so sad. So good, but I've already almost started crying twice and not because of what happened really (well, maybe that scene where the dad has to drop a cinder block and the mouse audience is watching...if that means something to you) but because of a small motion or subtle change between frames that was so striking in its simplicity and weight. Let's just say I'm a happily miserable Ware fan. I'm also reading some Lawrence Weschler essays, htmlgiant obsessively, daily, feedback from classmates on my story, and George Saunders's "Pastoralia." I'm working on a letter to Cameron in Korea and considering making him cookies, but I don't know if they'll make it. I wish I could go to Korea.

One of the Korean students I work with often at the writing center at FIT, this woman Damee who is an amazing artist and toy designer and makes the cutest friggin boards for her toys I have ever seen, told me that when she first came to New York from Korea for a visit, her purse was stolen and she had twenty dollars for one week. She couldn't ask anyone for help and she really wanted to see Van Gogh's "Starry Night" at MoMA so she spent that money to go see it and didn't eat for three days. It was so romantic, this story. I was gaping. I wanted to hold her hand. And then she said something like, "Being hungry is not fun. And the painting was so small." And then we talked about how Chuck Close is a cheater. Chew on that, next time you eat or don't eat, ignoring art. I guess I'd rather eat? People get weird when they're extremely hungry; I'd probably get too weird.

throes of syntax

I just spent the last 5 hours writing two paragraphs. This is serious. The first paragraph is three sentences (one is rather long). The second paragraph contains one sentence. A short one. I don't even think they're that good. In fact, I think I liked whatever I wrote the first time around, at about 5 o'clock earlier this evening when I first sat down at my computer, but now I have no idea what it was. I just emerged from this vortex of word-fiddling and was like, I am so hungry, What did I just do to myself?

I was all set to start with this one thing, involving various abstractions like I usually do, but then I decided I should learn from the past and do something different, and now I've screwed myself into a dark, indecisive corner.

In self-consolation, at times like these I like to remember some Gary Lutz wisdom from a few years back. I attended one of his readings and during the Q & A section, someone asked if his current writing was going well. He said something to the extent of: No, my writing is not going well. My writing is never going well. And the people who say their writing is going well are the people I am not interested in reading. So maybe I can wrestle some goodness from this disaster. But not right now; I need a sandwich and television.

know what I'm not fond of or interested in? vampires.

brooklyn book festival

today. everyone was so excited about books! even the weather was happy as a little kid with a backpack. i did some book selling / hanging out at the Akashic Books booth and was able to wander through most of the festival, although i didn't catch as many readings as I meant to.

books/journals acquired:
Bicycle by Paul Fattaruso
A Best of FENCE: The First Nine Years, which includes stories by at least half of the writers I love
A Public Space Issue Three
Letting Go: Morrie's Reflections on Living While Dying by Morrie Schwartz which looks like the most depressing self-help book in the world (but I found this on the street in a "please take" box after the fact so it's not really included in the festival goods)

authors observed and/or met: Arthur Nersesian, Tim McLoughlin, Melvin Van Peebles, Rivka Galchen, Jonathan Lethem (kind of, he was more talking to Arthur and I was standing there), David Cross, Jonathan Aames

things i am at this moment fond of or would like to learn more about:
beyonce's "single ladies" video
the possibility of making injera at home
zapatistas
typesetting
money

chicago recap

I'm really glad I did that Quickies! Chicago reading in August--it was nice to have my sister Tenae and some close friends I don't get to see that often there. Plus, the writers were all audible and read great stories; the crowd would laugh at things and clap a lot; the place was that type of divey bar that puts kooky crap all over the walls and strings lights around, kind of like a deranged Christmas work party, or someone's garage sale for a good time; the bathroom had toliet paper; and the reading's hosts, Lindsay and Mary, were awesome. They brought cupcakes.

I liked Greg Gerke's story so much I bought his book, out of his backpack, on the spot. It's called There's Something Wrong With Sven, and he was nice and talked to me about living in Brooklyn or something, I think because we were the non-Chicagoans. Chicagans? Oh, the internet just told me The Rumpus reviewed this book recently. Way to go, Greg.

Anway, if you're in Chicago you should go check out a Quickies sometime, and here are some pics from the reading. They liked my sandals. Thanks I like them too.

waves schist slap rime bank shore water-logged shallows lapping greenish

DIAGRAM issue 9.4

I would say more about it but I'm reading it now and liking this experience too much to stop and take stock of it, and blogily articulate my subjective appraisal--plus someone's coming to look at my crappy apartment and consider making it their new living space, and I guess I have to let them in. It's a lot to do. There's also a man in cargo shorts with a ladder on my fire escape and I'm trying not to be slightly terrified.

I had the impulse to share, as htmlgiant shared with me. What do you want, enticement?
Here's some stuff:

"I, underneath, I, underwater, I came floating up, scuttling, sloshing, pulled by the underwater tug, still I came floating up into silver foam." This is from August Tarrier's "Field Notes"--she uses so many lovely words associated with river and water and the material it spits up. I would never think of that many. I also really like her additional notes on the story, at the bottom, in red: "Precisely because the brain checks out during intense, traumatic experience, we discover trauma as we relive it. Like my narrator, we have only wisps and shards of the most horrific experiences of our lives, and as we try to make sense of them, gradually, cumulatively, we end up the authors of our most terrifying moments."

I really like the journal design; reminds me of Kiosk at KU.

"The weather outside was frightful."

Shya Scanlon's online novel serialization project is so cool. He explains it on the FORECAST 42 PROJECT site, but the basic idea is that twice a week he publishes a chapter from his novel Forecast on a different literary journal or blog, and we follow the links and read the chapters and thus his novel, for free, all over the place. What's the word I'm thinking of, that this is? Brave? Hip? Maybe. Yes. That and other things. Newfangled.

Is Forecast good? I think so. But honestly I haven't read it yet. I want to read the whole thing at once, so I might wait for most of the chapters to go live before I start--which is probably disrupting the point of the whole thing. Someone is disappointed in me. Sorry. I still think it's a great idea!

I don't know if other people feel this way or if I'm just an odd duck, but I don't really like skipping around and switching between writers' voices when I'm reading. I would feel weird reading Shya Scanlon's book every now and then and not continuously. Coming back to it every few weeks, I would always be like, Who is this again? What do they want? What's going on?

In fact, I don't particularly enjoy reading literary journals for this same reason. Wait wait wait I will explain. I do read them. I love them. I was editor of one in college. I've been in them. I borrow them and carry them around in my bag and trade them and shelve them nicely. They are awesome, but I also like being with one good writer for awhile, even if it's a 100 stories that are only 10 words each and it takes 20 minutes, I want to pause and eat a snack before I move on. Skipping around between writers quickly kind of feels like going to a buffet, and a buffet--let's face it--is no one's friend once it's said and done. It's like, I want to eat this gazpacho and please let me be until it's gone, get those chicken wings out of here. I want to understand it's gazpacho-ness and learn from it and love it and then hate it a little then make some judgment and come to terms with the gazpacho, then go onto something else--poached cod perhaps. I think I learn more from a writer when I'm with them for awhile at once. Oh man, I feel like I just confessed to something incriminating. Is anyone else like this?

temporary; lucky

1. is dedicated to rachel
2. is when you numbered things in that one post
3. is how i liked scrolling up and down to see the story then the title then the story again. My brain responds well to categorization, kind of the same feeling as opening a box of crayons, or eating corn on the cob. Did you do that on purpose for me?

things i wandered my mind to a lot at work today:

--which was day three of three nine-hour days packaging and mailing over 1,000 signed pre-ordered copies of ryan adam's second book called "_____" (that's one word and i noted this because when i was shuffling the early stages of this book around on a computer for the editors a few months ago it was two words, but when the books came to the office in boxes, it had become one word and I thought, I wonder what changes like that do to a person). I was going to say the title of the book but I think ryan fans are freaking out on blogs with joy and anticipation and such and I don't want to draw attention here or be included in that, you know? That might not make sense. I might be half-asleep and paranoid--

sober-living house
bad skin
kiwi vs. kiwis (do you like kiwi? do you like kiwis?)
the state of my bed
the state of my spine, current and long term
pum-pum, hood, and big batty: words I learned in a book
korea

Rachel, it is so late and I miss my trip and all the people on it. The ceiling is falling out in chunks like the beginning of the prologue to the end of the city and I am so tired in all this dust and my fingers are sore--I will barely brush off my feet.

I'm too tired to delete this post.

two, no wait, three

1. Reading this evening at Innertown Pub in delightful Wicker Park, Chicago, 7:30, part of Quickies! Chicago flash fiction series. I am being taken by friends to pick apart deep fried whole fish after, my favorite culinary pass time.

2. I was using a free internet cafe, sponsored awkwardly by ING Direct, this week in Chicago since my sister is morally against having internet access in her apartment, and I was denied access to my own blog, restricted by ING Direct. Is my blog dirty? I thought I was just talking about books and stuff. I don't even really say 'fuck' that much any more. However, Barnes and Noble's free wireless nook doesn't think I'm too naughty for public viewing. Good to know.

3. I was accepted into NYU's MFA in creative writing program. And I'm going! In three weeks! Graduate school! Maybe I should do laundry so I have clean clothes or something.

I'm in Omaha, Nebraska

There should be a question mark or something after that but I guess a period is more 'correct.' Omaha, Nebraska reminds me of absolutely nothing, more because it's kind of nondescript, not because it's distinctive. I saw a "Maggie Moo's" ice cream parlour for the first time since I left Nebraska, and it was kind of heartwarming, until I realized I've never been inside one. If my parents let me eat ice cream it was at the university dairy store because they sold cinnamon honey sticks and I could roller-skate around outside on these smooth loops and there were lilies. The dairy workers made cheese in that dairy store. It spilled from steel bath tub-like vats onto the floor and men in white and boots waded around, pushing at it. Sometimes they would wave. I saw the Mutual of Omaha building when we got into Omaha and it has the most gigantic tiger on the side.

But before that we went into this bar because the street was lined with scooters and motorcycles, and inside they were playing the film Quadrophenia: The Who's rock opera involving scooter gang war between mods and rockers. There were helmets in the bar dotting a slightly unsettling combo of hipsters and bearded biker dudes, all eating free Cheez-Its. Did you know Sting is in Quadrophenia? I had no idea.


Now, I just want to go to the zoo, The Henry Doorly one:

rain forest, aquarium, penguin hill, the nursery, the cat house, the monkey house, the DESERT DOME--largest in the world. I remember being pooped on at this zoo maybe three times in my youth, the birds and monkeys scurry that close. They have a new Butterfly and Insect Pavillion I really want to see.

Let's go to the Henry Doorly Zoo already! Too bad it's snug up the rear of Omaha. I was in Kansas for a week and that was great--especially the parts where I was on a bicycle or eating or stumbling upon good shows like El Ten Eleven and Ad Astra Per Aspera and Fag Cop, which happens a lot in Lawrence. I sold my desk my ex-boyfriend had been using for a year. I also let go of the philodendron plant I had been making people babysit: Sasha you can't get it to New York. I left it on my friend Whitney's stoop with a bottle of Miracle-Gro and I also returned her bicycle and fed her cat Bill and drank most of the Pom juice in the fridge.

I also read Arkansas by John Brandon and it was the most straight joy and titillation I've found in a hardback since like, winter.

dogzplot short

One of my short-shorts,"Hearing," is up on dogzplot--the flash fiction site today. The piece came from the beginning and end of a much longer story that I am continuing to fiddle with in it's entirety, but it's interesting sometimes to pick parts away and make them new in isolation. It makes me look at the whole story a little differently, seeing these bits mashed in a new form.

Read the short HERE.

andernovel

I work as a reader/editor for the online literary journal Anderbo.com and it seems we are looking to publish a novel in its entirety.

Guidelines here

You know, just in case you happen to have a novel stuck in a closet somewhere getting dusty, or if you feel to urge to whip one up by September 1st.

hey cool

There are photos from the elimae reading 5/26/09 at the KGB bar.

I found me. There's an "s" missing (it's okay--the "bosch" part is the least interesting anyway) and I kind of look like I'm just standing, saying maybe the word "deer," but the moment was an exciting one, lots of heat and wiggling on the inside. It was fun. Affirmation of something for me in the scope of the recent past, I think.

be serious sasha, idea

Someone suggested recently that I read my weight in books. I was like, I'm sure I've done that, a few times. I like books and I'm a little person. But he was like, No, do it starting now and as an event on your blog--Sasha will read her weight by a certain date! Catchy. He envisioned a photograph involving 1) me on a scale, smiling or something, waving, and 2) another scale with books stacked, and 3) weight equality between 1 and 2. Close up of digits. Maybe a calendar in the background with a date ominously circled in red. I was like, Hm.

I think we also discussed asking for pledges on my blog to raise money in this endeavor...to fund my book purchases? I'm fairly sure the only person who would pledge money to encourage my reading would be my father, but he would want to select the books. I'd end up reading only Thomas Hardy and George Eliot and Tolstoy for years.

Writing about this is actually making me interested in the reading part though. How much do books weigh? No more than a pound each, right? Probably most I read are 1/2 pound. So if I read 100 1/2 pound books and 60 1 lb. books, I'd be there: 110. How long would that take me, to read 160 books? Maybe five years?

cheap mcsweeny's books

click this link and i will show you the way

i love deb olin unferth's Vacation! it's only 5 bucks good god we should all buy it like twice.

i'm getting Mcsweeny's 24 (the donald barthelme one) and i think Arkansas by john brandon. deb told me she liked it and she knows things.

fat

I'm reading Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno and the feelings I have are kind of sweet, like I want to eat ice cream and paint my toe nails. I even took a pink flyer from the elderly Asian man who always stands outside FIT with pink flyers, ignored. It was for Jess's Nails. I wondered if he has to get rid of the whole stack before he can go home. I wondered if he gets paid per flyer. I wonder what he's thinking and if he has children and what they are doing and if one of them goes to FIT, supported by pink flyers, and probably not but why not and what that would feel like, to be the man, or the people who run across the street to avoid flyers. Surely it is out of the way to do that. They are so repulsed. Are the papers diseased? They hate baggage. They hate inconvenience. I'm going to take flyers from everyone, always, and not throw them away until I am a little dot, blinked out.

It is raining but the sky doesn't seem to be agreeing. If I went outside--which I should because the clock says I am no longer being paid to sit here--then the ground would be bright and wet and I would feel like a mermaid reflecting on rocks. Pleasant and runny.

I am the only one not working because the other two consultants are tutoring students and my student left, because we had finished our session and were just talking about Woody Allen, and no one else is here.
Yecca just said, "Why would you want to start a sentence with 'But'?"
Student mumbles something. Sort of scribbles.
Yecca says, "But do what you want, if you're thinking about it. I mean, rules are just rules."

Patrick is saying, "Journal entries aren't always a story. A story someone else would read."
Student says, "I want to make it a story."
It sounds like they are making stories.

I don't remember why I felt motivated to write this. Did it have something to do with Joe Meno? Was it the coffee? I underlined these things in Meno's story "An Apple Could Make You Laugh": "the desperate waistbands of our unhappy clothes," "your shoulders would be as white and stunning as antelopes made of snow," "a phone from a dream I once had about you where we were both made of soap," "you borrow a pen because your pen is haunted," "I ride my bicycle into a tree."

Today Patrick brought me Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I'm getting fat on reading and need to do more writing. I've been working out this thing in my head that will probably be longer, like a novella or something, but considering my longest stories are like 8 pages, then I'm guessing this would be about 50.

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.