There's a slight chance I might be going to hell.

My former landlord (oh, it feels so good to say “former”) is a jackass. He broke many laws—such as not replacing appliances in a timely manner, refusing to put deadbolts on my apartment doors, giving me my rent tax forms late… He told me he didn’t want to put on deadbolts because living in fear of burglary attracts the negativity of intruders (like rapists) as though by asking for basic safety measures, I was “asking for it.” Our “included” washer and dryer costs were snuck onto apartment #1’s bills. He spent a whole hour explaining to my neighbor how to use the miniblinds like she’s some kind of idiot, but he failed to tell her that she controlled the heat for my apartment, so when she turned the heat down and left for Boston for Christmas, I had no heat in my apartment until she returned a week later—in the middle of winter in Minnesota—and my landlord had left town with no back-up facilities help, so I was screwed.

When I moved in originally, he hadn’t cleaned the apartment, so I had to scour the place before I could move anything in. It was disgusting. Now, I have moved out. I didn’t want to clean it because it wasn’t clean when I moved in and because I hate him. But he still has my deposit—and while he probably couldn’t legally withhold it for not cleaning, the last two people who moved out had to take him to court to get their deposits back. I didn’t want to go there.

My landlord is the next tenant for my apartment—he’s moving in as we speak. So what’s a girl to do? Do you clean the place, knowing he doesn’t deserve it, hoping to save your deposit? Or do you leave it crusted with gunk?

I’ll tell you what you do. You clean the whole apartment using week-old toilet water. You snap on some rubber gloves, dip a couple sponges in stagnant water from the shitter, and you scrub the inside of his refrigerator with it. Then you do the microwave, the bookshelves, the mirrors. Dip them again—give the side of the bowl a little wipe—then clean all the light switches and door handles.

I ran into the bastard on my way to get my last pieces of mail. He told me how clean it was—immaculately clean—and he seemed so pleased.

Things I would do if I had a magic wand or a bewitched nose or at least a crew of helpful mice like in Cindarella:

• 
• Magically arrange and put away all the tons of stuff in boxes and lying in piles around the new apartment.


• Remove the ugly mini-blinds in my new apartment and replace them with lovely curtains.
  




• Stop time long enough to lie on my big fluffy couch and read books until I fall asleep.
  
• Magically and neatly fold fitted sheets and put them in the linen closet.
  


• Collect all the stuff that needs to go to Goodwill and float it down the street and into the donations box.
  
• Fix whatever is wrong with my printer.
  
• Return light bulbs that don’t work and magically select the ones that do from the aisle at Target dedicated to 6,503 sizes of light bulbs.
  
• Make a big fat ice cream sundae for my boyfriend for doing tons of handiwork.


• I may as well make one for myself while I'm at it.


• Clean the old place.
  
• Type up a brilliant prospectus and residency application and slide them into the mailbox with correct postage.
  
• Install a 3-pronged electrical outlet next to my bathroom sink. (There are no working outlets in my bathroom—none.)
  
• Re-pot all my plants.
  
• Find something to put in the weird-shaped, unusable fireplace spot in my living room that covers up the electrical outlet (there IS an outlet right in the middle of the fireplace-hole! WTF?) that fits and doesn’t look funky. Candelabra? Pillows? Lamp?

Exclusive interview you've all been waiting for!

Hee hee.

My new blog-o-sphere pal over at Bleeding Espresso interviewed me, and now I shall interview you. Drop me a line in the comments if you want 5 questions.

(1) Do you have a large group of close friends or just a few? Do you like it this way?

I have some friends from various stages of life all over the globe—childhood, college, living abroad. I'm good at keeping in touch with old friends. I’d say I have a small group of really close friends and a large group of medium-close friends in my day-to-day life. I prefer a smaller group of close friends rather than a zillion semi-friends.

(2) Your teenage years: best time of your life or sheer torture?

I didn’t like high school. I lived in a small conservative town with limited educational resources and I always felt stifled, like I didn't fit in and that freedom awaited me elsewhere. I did have wonderful friends, a safe home and much love from my community, which I appreciate. I've converted most of my distain for my hometown into respect for it (even though it isn't the right place for me, at all). One of the things that united my group of friends was our desire for more, and that made for some loving friendships.

I'd say the best time of my life is now.

(3) In how many different places have you lived? Which was your favorite and why?

About 4. Probably Australia because I love the ocean, but I also love Minneapolis now and love Portland (though that period ran its course for me). I also studied abroad twice and sort of feel like I've lived in Europe. I want to live abroad again sometime soon-ish.

My favorite is usually wherever I am.

(4) Who's your most favorite person in the whole world and why? (OK, you can list a few if you like.)

Let’s assume you mean someone I actually know who is alive right now (so we can rule out the Dhali Lama and Mother Theresa, etc.).

My favorite people right now are all the ones who helped me move this weekend.

• Liza and Voix helped me paint the bedroom sky blue and the kitchen a bodacious orange.
• Scott Andrew tirelessly schlepped boxes, went on a painfully long shopping trip, arranged for a van and kept me sane--we're talkin' dawn to midnight for 3 days straight, all without whining once.
• Kate and Tim helped with several loads.
• Aunt Claire and Uncle John brought over their van and helped me pack and move furniture, all after hauling a million pounds of mulch for their own garden.
• The Two Barts helped with a kitchen table and transportation.
• Kara and John not only helped me assemble cabinets and lash boxsprings to a car, but they brought me a big old bottle of champagne to boot.

A pretty loving tribe I've got over here.

(5) You've just been granted your dream holiday. Where do you go, for how long, and who's coming with you?

Oh. Yes. I love this question.
I’d travel around the world—literally, including Antarctica—and I’d bring Scott for most of it (traveling alone is also fun) and have other join at various points on the trip. I’d begin with a tour of the pacific islands (Fiji, Cook, to which Becky, Kate, Voix, Jessi, Michelle and Lola are invited), head to Australia to see friends in Perth and Sydney. Get my dive certificate at the Great Barrier Reef. Do Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Russia. I’d need to do more research on Africa for specific spots, but definitely the Gold coast, Morocco, Egypt. I’d like to go to Mesopotamia if it’s safe enough. I’d see Europe—back to the Swiss Alps, Italy (heaven) and Germany and spend lots of time in wine country. Go to the Nordic countries. Back to England. Ireland. Iceland. Then central America (maybe hang out in Guatemala long enough to learn Spanish properly), and work my way down to the tip of SA and take a cruise to Antarctica.
There, how’s that for an answer?

Your turn:

1. Leave me a comment saying "Interview me."

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.

3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Modern Astronomy 101

Doctor Murphy told us he doesn’t believe

in UFOs. He sketched equations over-head
showing the likelihood of aliens
coming to Earth from billions of light years away

to make crop circles, no less, and go home.

Maybe we came to class hung over,

sweat pants baseball caps. Late.

But equations. Equations can see
The Wind Cries Mary leave Hendrix’s guitar
in colors and waves, hit your inner ear and
fire the synapse that gives the urge

to close your eyes and rock.

One equation showed the likelihood
aliens could travel faster than light
without micro-waving to death.

Another showed the likelihood
they’d be able to stop a space craft moving that fast

without crashing into us.

He turned the crank and laid a transparency

of the Universe, black with blurs like bits of rice.

Murphy said with so many suns

They must exist. But

our planet’s just a boat rocking away

in a black sea. We’re a climber stumbling sideways

through snow and aliens may be a helicopter

with a search light. Even if we could feel their blades

rattle our sternum—if they bothered

to send out a search team at all—

they’d surely never find us.

Progress Report:

A couch has been purchased. Picture it in a coffee-with-cream color, minus the tacky accent pillows.

Paint has been purchased.

Old apartment is looking very post-tornado.

I'm am going to swipe more bubble wrap from the shipping room at work now.

Yeah. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

I had the pleasure of babysitting my friends’ baby, who is the smiliest, most angelic little almost-1-year-old you could ask for.

I have no children of my own, and while I want maybe one or two of them, genetics did not bestow me with the gene that draws me to children with the same force that I am, say, drawn into a shoe store. I like kids and all, but I don’t feel a primal or automatic urge to go play games with children at company picnics or know what to say to make them giggle or get them to stop crying. I’m generally inclined to treat them like little adults, though I know better than to make them a toddler-sized martini.

Anyway: I adore this little kiddo. He’s the first I’ve gotten to see grow from teeny infancy, and he recognizes me and reaches out for me when I’m around. So last night we got to hang out solo while his parents went out.

Before the walk, I changed his jacket 3 times before going out because I was afraid he’d be cold, or warm, or maybe he should have a hood, or maybe I should put him in a fleece and bring 2 more options just in case. I loaded my pockets with 10 binkies and toys, then realized that after all this, I forgot to put shoes on him.

I had also forgotten to strap him into the stroller entirely (lest he fall out at a screaming .0001 miles an hour). Naturally there are 60,000 straps and clips all wound around and I don’t know what goes where. When I got him all finally situated realized that I’ve done all this IN the house and now have to either undo all the straps and take him out of the stroller—a contraption as large and complicated as a space ship, I tell you—and put him back in again, OR I’ll have to carry him down 25 steps still strapped in.

Then my mind goes like this: But if I take him out of the stroller so I can carry the stroller down the steps first, what if something happens in the 3 seconds while he’s out of my sight? What if he chokes on a Lego or tries to pull himself up on the bookshelf and it falls over or drinks Drain-o or follows me out and falls down the stairs or chokes on those little strings that hang from the blinds?

And the whole time he’s sitting there blinking his giant blue eyes at me like, “Lady, what the HELL are you doing?”

Note to self: Call your mother and apologize to her for all the years you teased her never, ever getting out of the house on time.

(Oh, and I carried him down the steps IN the stroller. And I didn't drop him once.)

Moving. Ack.

I woke up the day after class ended and thought “Ah, morning. I’m done with school. Why, what’s that small light off in the distance? It’s getting bigger. Hey, it looks kind of like a co—” BAM. It hit me: I have to move, um, NOW.

I have to be out of there by the weekend, need to paint, acquire boxes, buy, I don’t know, FURNITURE, schlep a ton of crap across town and naturally, I really, really want to have everything I need right NOW so I can just get it done. Not just “done” as in, “I can find a fork somewhere in one of these boxes” but I want it “done” as in Better Homes will be over with the photographer by next Wednesday. Not so realistic, I know.

When I moved here, everything I owned could practically fit into someone’s glove compartment. I had no job and had just taken out student loan money which is enough to buy one whole burrito to sustain me for the entire semester. My parents were kind enough to give me some of their furniture, and while I appreciate their generosity (love you guys!), its old an needs to be put to pasture.

So, Voix and I went on a big fat furniture shopping spree on Saturday. You know how when you have no money you can walk into a store and think “If I could afford any of this I could decorate a whole house!”? Yeah, it wasn’t like that. Now that I have the money to actually buy some moderately priced stuff, there really wasn’t much of that looked very fabulous. However: If I’m ever hired to decorate Zsa Zsa Gabor’s Nascar game room basement, I totally know where to buy gold-trimmed paisley ornate coffee tables and puffy built-in-beer-can-cup-holder couches.

Okay, so some of it was fine, but nothing that I gotta have. I need to find something soon because I didn’t think to consider that a couch that isn’t stocked in a nearby warehouse will take 8 weeks to get here.

Luckily, I found some stuff at a department store last night. I have a couch/chair combo that I really like, but there are a couple more places to check out before I commit. It’s a couch, I know. It can be sold or even returned to the store if I don’t like it, but the whole thing feels like a big decision.

A letter from me, to, well, me.

Congratulations, Self. You have completed all the coursework necessary to graduate with your MFA. You’re deemed, by the Powers that run the Graduate Liberal Studies program, qualified to write a book. Soon, you'll finish thesis. Graduate. Be qualified to teach at a University if you want to.

Remember graduating from college and getting sitting at the desk of your first job thinking “Oh my God. This is so dreadfully unfulfilling. I can’t do this. I need art. I need substance. I’m going to die.”? But then you didn’t die, you sold all your shit and moved to the other country where you mustered up the courage and determination to find some way to do your art and support yourself without wanting to die. And you decided to really start helping other people.

Remember waiting for your acceptance letters for graduate school? You were sitting in the office of an engineering company answering phones, and you suddenly knew that somehow, Melanie was with you. You didn’t know why you felt her there until you got a phone call from Regina telling you you were accepted into the program. You excused yourself from your desk and went into the storage room—the only place for privacy in the office—and jumped up and down. That is why you felt Mel’s presence—she was, from wherever she is now, jumping up and down with you.

Remember when you moved to Minneapolis for school and your loving Dad drove up a bunch of old furniture to help you with your new apartment because you had no job or car and everything you owned fit in a suitcase? Remember how alone you felt when you moved here and didn't have a single friend nearby?

Remember this last semester, and the one before that and the one before that? When you got up, went to work, listened to audio books on poetry and cosmology and physics while you worked, then studied things you had to study because they were required until 11 p.m.? Remember sitting in class for 3 hours after a full workday? Spending all weekend doing homework? Doing it all over again?

Yeah, that is over. Starting today.

Starting today you get to work on your fabulous thesis project directed by two amazing, established guru writers. You get to ask them for what you need to grow and they are going to do their best to give it to you.

You get to make your own book lists, study whatever poets you want and make your own schedule. You’ll have more time to apply for writing stuff, go to readings and send your stuff out.

You have a job that is moderately creative and many times enjoyable. It not only pays your bills, but totally understands if you need a morning off to write. And if you need a month off to fly to the tropics to revise your thesis in peace, they will work with you to make it happen. Oh, and they’re paying for your credits, as of last March.

Now you get to buy new furniture. You get to move into a bigger place. You get to not freak-out about money.

Now you have friends, a writing community, a loving partner.

Lots of times in the last three years have been hard. Finding the right job fit, getting homework done, sometimes living on a credit card. Struggling to be a better writer. Handling the emotionally taxing work of being creative on demand. Struggling to figure out what the right path is for you, how to get on it and how to get by while honoring your calling. Being afraid of being a bad writer, or being afraid of being a good one. Dealing with some other unexpected, difficult life-things. There were also many good things, but a lot of times, it has been hard.

Well, here you are. The next year also include a lot of hard work, but you can handle it, and will be better for it. You have earned all the enjoyment the results of your efforts brings you. You have done well. Keep it up.

Residencies

I’ve been working on my final class portfolio, which is due tomorrow. I’m so completely mentally and emotionally checked out of this class it won’t really matter.

I’m so very excited to start thesis. I want to put together reading lists and apply for residencies and write and re-write and send stuff out and go to whatever readings I want to go to and not have to sit in class any more.

So: I’ve decided I’m going away for a month, probably in January, to work on my thesis. I’m trying to figure out where, and I’ve found some residencies around the globe that look fantastic. There’s one in India I’m drawn to, (there’s a residency in ANTARCTICA—yeah!). Right now, I’m feeling a pull back to Australia.

I lived in Perth most of 2003, and while I was there I volunteered for the State Literature Center and took a couple classes. My writing teacher, Melanie, and I became good friends. During my time there I was generally feeling lost about what my next life step should be, and she helped me to see that it was time to seriously pursue writing. She taught me so much—basic lessons I’ve never seen another writing teacher teach—and she was such as supportive friend to my personal struggles (heard of Saturn Returns? Yeah, that was me), helping me to identify what I wanted and needed from life during a turbulent time. My life changed course completely, and she was there during the time when I was in limbo and making huge decisions.

Melanie died three months after I moved home. I miss her. Because I wasn’t there and I’ve never known Perth without her, it’s still really strange to think of her as being gone.

I was with her when I decided to go to grad school, I used material I wrote in her classes for my applications and returning there during thesis would feel like the last half-decade would come full-circle. So, there’s a residency in Perth that I’d like to apply for (I need information on it, and fast—all I know is that the deadline is June 2).

Ideally, I’d love to go in January because that works out best for my work/study schedule, and because they have a HUGE and awesome arts/literature festival that month. It’s a really exceptional writing opportunity—to go to that festival. And it makes sense to my heart—to return during my thesis to the place where I first committed to this life. I don’t know if it’s meant to happen or not. I believe that if I put in the effort, if it’s meant to it will somehow. So: I’ll keep you posted, I guess. Meanwhile, the thought of walking on my old favorite beaches and writing at the Walk Café in Subi and having the rest of my old friends and going to readings downtown at the festival—this makes me very, very happy.

So, what are you all reading?

All of you are invited to post a comment, even if you’re only reading are baseball scores. While you’re at it, tell me a story about it—that you came across the book in the dime-bin at the used book store the day you were looking for a book on re-caulking your bathtub, that you’re reading it because your spouse is dragging you to a lecture on the history of presidential rhetoric, that you’re reading it because it had a cool cover or because you’re on a beach in Florida and wanted a smutty romance. Whatever. All of you, now: That includes you, stranger-in-Germany-who-reads-my-blog.

In the works right now for me are:

Come Now to the Window by Ann Iverson
Poems put out by the Laurel Poetry Collective, a group to which my thesis advisor belongs. I got the book at Garrison Keillor’s new bookstore below Nina’s Coffee Shop on Cathedral Hill the day I skipped work. I love that they support so many local authors there, and I bought another book by a friend of mine. I wanted to show how important it is for bookstores, especially locally owned ones, to support us writer-folk. And Ann Iverson, I believe, got her MFA from my University.

Invisible Acts of Power by Caroline Myss
I finished the archetype book, and I’m on to this one, which is shorter. It’s about how giving and doing acts of service create an impact—both literally and energetically for the universe. She corresponds good acts with various chakra energies. It’s fascinating.

Fringe (et. al.): If you get the audio books, there’s no solicitation to go to a lecture. AND, all her lectures are available on audio book for free at the library. It’s all so much easier to understand when she’s talking about it vernacular-style.

The Peace Book by Todd Parr
This is a children’s book I bought for my baby friend Ellis for his first birthday. I got it at Café of the Americas, a multi-language, multi-cultural book store, when I was shopping for a kids book of rain-forest poems for SA’s niece. It’s about how peace is more than the absence of violence, it’s about making new friends, helping others, the freedom to move, and compassion. I love it, and I want my little Ellis friend to have it as one of his very first reads.

More later, but for now

Just to clairify:

Archetype:
1.
the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype.
2.
(in Jungian psychology) a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.

Stereotype:
1.
a process, now often replaced by more advanced methods, for making metal printing plates by taking a mold of composed type or the like in papier-mâché or other material and then taking from this mold a cast in type metal.
2.
a plate made by this process.
3.
a set form; convention.
4.
Sociology. a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group: The cowboy and Indian are American stereotypes. –verb (used with object)
5.
to make a stereotype of.
6.
to characterize or regard as a stereotype: The actor has been stereotyped as a villain.
7.
to give a fixed form to.

Regarding the Animal-Lover Archetype: I'm new to this subject, but I think its a combination of the Child-Nature archetype (think Tarzan--close to nature, protective, fully connected to the community of it), the Mother Nature archetype (nurturing, healing, etc.) There's a ton more about them here, and this is a really good book if you're interested.

Archetypes in Writing, and Animal People

I’m finishing Carolyn Myss’s book on archetypes—it’s a big one—and it’s got me thinking about types of people, and the various parts of a personality and how some people seem born one way or another or they grow into one way or another. In writing, we have to be careful not to generalize archetypes or stereotypes. Elizabeth’s posted about how she’s an animal person—which is totally a personality archetype, I think, which I also have and so does Elizabeth and definitely Zetta.

I think the qualities of animal people, besides just loving them and not being afraid, is fiercely wanting to protect them. (Steve Erwin’s the epitome of this.) When I was little, we had the best dog. She was mostly schnauzer and totally hyper and loving and fun and crazy and I totally miss her. Once, I absolutely refused to go on a family vacation because my parents were going to bard her, and I was sure she’d be emotionally traumatized and I wouldn’t go, period.

Then there was the time I decided to save all the goldfish from imprisonment by the town carnies at the town carnival. You know the game at fairs where you throw the ping-pong ball into colored water in a little fish bowl and win a gold fish? I was appalled, and took it upon myself to liberate them all. I gathered all the money I could and ran away from my mother at the fair and tried to win every single gold fish. My mother thought I’d been kidnapped and was presently meeting a horrendous demise, got on the phone with the police and was generally having a total meltdown when I walked into our back gate carrying about 6,593 plastic bags of goldfish. I named them all Jaws. Jaws 1, Jaws 2, etc. And I loved them all.

A few years ago, I went to a psychic—for a writing class assignment. The lesson was on stereotypes in creative writing. You can’t just make every single sailor a womanizing drinker, and you can’t make every psychic in your stories a turban-wearing crystal ball gazer. Our teacher made us pick a stereotype out of a hat, go interview and write a story with the character—using the interview from a real live person who did whatever (one woman picked “prostitute”—and she wrote an awesome story after interviewing a hooker).

I chose the psychic. The woman I interviewed had shelves of stuffed teddy bears and bright flowery wallpaper in her office. We did the reading in her back yard while she caught a frog in her pool. So, she's proof that not everyone who has an archetype (the psychic) fits a stereotype.

She told me that my boyfriend’s dog, who’d passed away a few weeks before, wanted to talk to me. Really—of all the important messages waiting for me from beyond death, she was like “You’re dead great-aunt Margaret is asking me to tell you you’ve inherited a genetic disposition for lung cancer from your mother’s side. Oh, and Dan’s dog Jessie wants the family to know she’s fine, she’s on the other side and has made a new collie friend. They have lots of room to run and her arthritis is gone now.”

Anyway—it was a great writing assignment. I wrote a poem about the goldfish incident once (now a legendary family story), but I’m not so thrilled with it, so I need to re-do it. I’ll make myself a note to mine that whole psychic/frog/Aunt Margaret/dog thing for some material, too.