In the Jungle of Nool

Zetta’s post today has me reflecting on my weekend. Saturday morning I slept in with the S.O. and had the rest of the day, really, to myself. I got a massage in a neighborhood I rarely spend time in. Afterward I wandered around stopping into cute shops and dig through stacks at used bookstores (Best of Jane Kenyon, $6. Score). Then I went to an alfresco café, wrote while I ate and drank ice tea in the sun and struck up a conversation with two of my table-neighbors, both dining alone, and chatted there for a while. Then I went home and read and took a nap. Then I lugged a blanket and some stuff to the beach behind my house and I went swimming, read on the blanket, went swimming again, read on the blanket, etc. till I was tired of that. Then I went to a Great Gatsby-themed party and made some new friends and ogled everyone’s debonair threads and had something called a lemon-fizzy-ginger-something-or-other, then I went home.

Sunday, S’s sister and two nieces arrived for a visit. The girls are 5 and 7. I don’t normally get all kid-happy, but I adore these two. Regardless: they’re a shitload of work. Kids just are--this is no newsflash, to be sure. And eventually I want one, maaaaaybe two. But the nonstop of kid-rearing: holy shit. His sister, who has a good-dad of a husband at home, is still frazzled all the time, even though her kids are well behaved. I realize that if/when I have one, my wandering-around-book-stores and leisurely adult conversations over iced tea will go bye-bye.

More difficult to swallow is that that time will be taken over by constant running, managing, repeating requests, breaking up sibling squabbles, wiping up spilled things, feeding, schlepping, picking-up-after, etc. This is in exchange, of course, for the countless rewards of one of the most rewarding kinds of love. Granted, some frazzled parents would benefit from asking and accepting more help, though often the resources for help are complicated or nonexistent. I intend to hold off until the situation is right--until have the resources I need to have a kid and not go completly insane. As for S’s sister—after dinner I sent Sis and S straight out for drinks with strict orders to get her to relax. And I took the two little lady-bugs to my house for some slumber-party Dr. Seuss-filled girlfriend time. It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed the literary genius of Horton Hears a Who, or given little girls hugs before sleep. It was good. For a weekend.

'Cause if it ain't Scottish, well, you know what it is.

My inner critic used to be a lady in a slick pink jacket (think Grease!) who sat on the edge of my couch smoking Misty Lights. If she couldn’t stop me from writing at all, she mostly carped on about technical skills—how I didn’t know enough about point of view, scene, summary, dialogue, whatever—to ever really be any good. Then she bitched about my fears of breaking the rules, of imagination in my work just sounding weird instead of unique. Apparently inner critics have no problem contradicting themselves, in case the Misty Lights weren’t annoying enough on their own.

She wore the pink jacket because a pink jacket is what symbolizes, for me, being able to make creative choices for what you want, not what you should do. I remember shopping with my mother, who always taught us to evaluate choices based on utilitarian criteria (mind you, I was in the second grade, here), like price, usefulness, return on investment. The very first time I remember making a choice just because it pleased me was the time I bought a slick Pepto-Bismol pink jacket at Penny’s. Now, my inner critic wears it to mock me. The jacket, I loved it. But it was tacky. See where following a whim gets you? On the worst-dressed list. In writing, she said, following whims gets you some shitty writing.

I’ve learned to shut up the critic through practice, mostly, and mental tricks like reminding myself that when I write, it’s just an SFD (Shitty First Draft), so it’s allow to suck. Sometimes I actually sit down and tell myself before I begin “Write something sucky. Then put it away and mine it for good bits later.” That way when Pink comes in the room and shouts, “Who pooped?” I can say, “Oh, that’s just my first draft. Right now, it’s allowed to stink.” And keep writing.

Now that I’ve had the experience to get over that amateurish inner critic, I’ve come across a new strain of critic to which I’m not entirely immune: The Professor. The professor isn’t a real professor; my real live professors are awesome. He’s an old Scottish snooty, brainy imaginary bastard who tells me that okay, so I can write some stuff that’s kind of good. I’ve had success in a couple small literary journals. But that doesn’t mean I’ll get anywhere. Slush piles are huge and getting a first book that sells well is unlikely, and it’s harder to write your second book than it is your first. When you get to the point where you’re not the emerging star some publisher can “discover” but you’re not established yet, that’s when most writer’s stall.

The Professor is Scottish and a professor on account of a critical, self-indulgent essay I read on science poetry written by such a character. He quoted his own work as supporting material for his arguments throughout the piece—as in, “I believe that a successful poem about science must be written by one with a PhD in astrophysics. To quote, well, me, here’s an excerpt of my poem on the escape velocity of carbon molecules in the Kupier belt…” Hellooooo.

Anyway, the Scottish snot says that it’s better to be a scientist who writes poetry (like him) rather than a poet who includes science because scientists are always successful. Even if a theory is tested and proven wrong, its successful in that in eliminates a possibility. However, a poet can fail all the time—if all they ever do is get published in literary journals that have more submitters than subscribers, what Big Fat Losers of Doom. Furthermore, poets are too fluffy to get science.

Where’s Pink when you need her—Who pooped?, indeed.

To me, there is no “us” and “them” about it. Sciences and arts are both high creativity in different forms. An equation is a language that creates something we may not be able to perceive with our senses just like poems use a language to generate something we can feel but isn’t tangible. That’s what I say to The Professor. That, and that starting out in little LitJo’s isn’t failure, it’s awesome. And for God’s sake, lose the kilt and put on some damn pants.

I have a confession:

I like working on my thesis. It doesn't feel like a looming burden. It feels like a fulfilling break from all the zooming around.

Mind you, I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing, writing a book. I’m focusing on my current job, which, here in pre-thesis, is to read lots, write lots of poems, send them to my advisor, get them back, revise them. The whole making-them-perfect part and putting-them-in-some-kind-of-order part is a speck off in the distance, no doubt approaching much more quickly than I can perceive now. I return again to my comet analogy: Before I can even say, “Why, what’s that dim light? Is that a co—” the deadline-comet will smack me in the head at full speed, I’m sure.

Its summer, right? This weekend I saw a play, went to a party, watched the Twins win, rowed for 2 hours, had dinner with Voix, went shopping with Jess and still managed to work on thesis for about 4 hours and fall asleep on the couch watching a movie. The whole thing was fun, but thesis was a nice calming breath of relaxation in all that.

Not writing is scarier than writing at this point. I mean, it’s kind of like doing laundry. There comes a point when there’s so much damn laundry to do that you keep avoiding it, when really, that makes more laundry pile up so you REALLY start to avoid it and before you know it, you’re buying new underwear because you don’t want to face The Pile.

Likewise: The more hours I go without getting ideas out the more will pile up for when I do sit down to write and I feel like it’ll get all jumbled around into a big stinky mess instead of being neatly folded in stacks or rolled into little sock-beans and lined up in a drawer. There’s a backlog of stuff that I’ll lose if I don’t go get it down. But lo—there is a full time job to keep. There is a man to drink wine with on porches. There is the Mississippi to row.

Unlike laundering jeans and spending an afternoon handwashing unmentionables and rolling socks into little beans, which I do not like, I love writing when I get to do it. Time flies by, I get good ideas, the poems look better than they did before. Progress happens.

People bitch about Minnesota winters (myself included), but there comes a time after summer where you long for a nice spell of fall thunderstorms. You get to sink into a chair and just stay inside and stop going. The end of summer is one big sigh, but right now we are in the middle of it. There are no thunderstorms--just the loud call of sunshine/refreshing beverages/backyard parties. And, of course, the comet, just a little smear off in the distance.

Peppermint latte. Mmmmmmmmm.

So, as of this summer, I’m managing my first employee. It’s a little weird to have someone come to me like, “Do you want me to research the clinical data first or make photo shoot appointments?” What? Who, me? Yeah, I don’t really know what I’m doing, but I’m pretending that I do. It’s been good—Megan’s awesome and motivated and smart. I hear my colleagues bitch about their employees falling asleep at their desks (oh, and such a short while ago that employee was me) and mine rocks.

And she puts up with so much crap from a certain someone else in our department. Megan just got back from her family vacation to find approximately 80-gajillion boxes in her cubicle. My boss put them there thinking Megan wasn’t returning until Monday, so Meg spent her morning burrowing a tunnel to her computer. The good news is that if the office were suddenly attacked by Vikings, Megan would be protected by a fort made of cardboard boxes full of surgeon training binders.

Meanwhile, I’m a tired and dried out. I went out for beer(s) last night, then S. and I sat up talking and goofing around till 1 a.m. and my alarm didn’t go off, so yet again, I show up to work where my one employee has been dutifully digging her way through crap to start organizing our literature catalog, and I roll in 45 minutes late in jeans and a t-shirt and wet hair with bags under my eyes like, ohhhh, you’re back today? Would you be a doll and run to Dunn Brothers and get me a peppermint latte?

People who take the last pull of coffee in the office on a Friday morning and don’t start a fresh pot should be forced to drink day-old decaf for the rest of their lives. It’s called grab a filter, dump in a bag of grinds and hit “start,” people. For the love.

Okay, I didn’t send her out for coffee even though I wanted to because I’m not that kind of boss. On that note, I suppose I should go do some work now.

Journey Home

So, I’m getting ready for a trip home to the Hoosierland, and I’m taking my beau. This is the first time I’ve invited a beau home, which didn’t stop my aunts from adding my last boyfriend, whom they’ve never met, to the Family Tree. No shit. They still have a photo of us up (we broke up in 2003) on what I call the Wedding Table. The Wedding Table is a table at my grandmother’s with photographs of all 18 million grandchildren at their weddings. Oh, and then there’s Dan and me. I haven’t laid eyes on Dan since 2004.

Anyway: There’s my family for you. Most of them live in the same area code, married before 25 and had babies. Great for them. But I didn’t do that, and while they love me and they try to get it, they just kind of don’t. (Honestly, I don’t get them either, but I try.) As a disclaimer, my immediate family—mom, dad, big sis, little sis, didn’t go down the rural-Midwestern-life-path either, and they get that there are other ways to do things.

So, S. and I are staying at the local B&B. I called the proprietor of said B&B, who is the mother of one of my old high school classmates. So I make my reservation and she says “So, have you heard? Little Eddie S. died. Surely you remember him—you did the play Grease together when you were juniors. The paper said the memorials are to go to a mental health facility. What do you think that means? Well I’ll save the obituary for you.”

And there you go: You call to make a reservation from a stranger and before you know it you have the town news and an invitation to gossip about the mental health of a kid you sat three pews behind in church for 15 years. Just in case being in Indianapolis during a huge (HUGE) NASCAR event isn’t enough to scare the pants off my tolerant and loving boyfriend on his first trip to Indiana, the obituary on the pillow of our bed and breakfast will.

Ed, the classmate who just died, suffered deeply from depression, and was the town’s only other poet. Even though we weren’t close, I’ve read his work, done theatre with him, and feel a sort of poet-kindred ship. His obituary says he’d just finished preparing his second manuscript. I’ve been saying little prayers for his family. I hope he found at least some comfort in his art.