Nervy

This is totally a guilt post (oh, don't you wish it were a gilt post, with pretty golden doodly bits all over?). Its late, I've been working on my lesson for class tomorrow, and suddenly, urgently, I decided that I Must Update My Blog Now. So, hi. Here I am.

Again, this is probably old news to my 5 readers, but just in case any of y'all aren't among the folks I email recently, here's the update on Herr Lump: benign. A benign tumor of the nerve sheath, to be specific. Schwannoma,. It's even fun to say.

The only bad news in all this (and it's not that bad, really, unless you're me) is that I have to go back in for surgery in two weeks so that a real live neurosurgeon can actually take the tumor out. But after that, all should be fine. Which is good, because, surgery? Not a fan.

I'm actually kind of excited to have elegant little scars along my collarbone, once all this mess heals. I can be a woman with a past, a possible ex-sword fighter or wildebeast wrangler. A wombat chaser. These are all starting to sound like euphamisms.

Anywho.

Lazy

I don't want to go to work today. Also, I don't want to get out of bed. I had a dream last night that I was Harry Potter.

So.

The cat is sleeping on my lap. Which is to say the bulk of him is on my lap -- I'd say that approximately 60% of the cat is currently above my pelvic region. His head is nestled in a pile of papers stacked next to me on the couch, his front legs twitching languidly to one side. His back paws are propped up on the couch arm, stacked awkwardly as if he just fell from a great height (he hasn't). He is snoring.

I taught my first week of class last week. It was fun, but I'm kind of panicking about the fact that I have to teach again this week. Me. Teach. Again. Eek.

I'm also going in for surgery this week. This is most likely no surprise to any of you. All (guessing here) five? of you already know about the lump, the inconclusive biopsy, the surgery this week to take the whole thing out. If you didn't know (or even if you did) don't worry. It's more than likely nothing; I'm fine. Well, I'm depressed and anxious. But yeah, that's pretty much 'Tuesday' for me, anyway.

The cat just sort of rolled over, and he's now snuggling with my laptop's power supply. It's cold tonight in San Francisco; I don't blame him.

And I Play Ma Jongg with him.

SF Pride 2006
Originally uploaded by Oldvidhead.

I was just poking around on Flickr, and found this photo of my friend David (aka Mrs. Vera) from this year's Pride. Mrs. Vera is actually a collaborative work between David and his partner Michael Johnstone, and you should totally check out their work here.

This is one of the things I love about living in San Francisco. Despite the high rents, despite the gentrification, there are still artists here, living and working and playing Ma Jongg on Mondays.

hobnobbing

So I ran into Armistead Maupin the other day. Literally.

At least that's what I told my sister when I called her a few minutes later. I told her that we'd collided, and I'd said excuse me, and that a carful of men had ridden past in a converable, singing the 'lonely goatherd' song from The Sound of Music. This, I told her, was the reason I lived in the Castro. Stuff like this happens all the time.

In reality, there was a good three-foot saftey zone between the Armistead and I. We made passing eye contact, if even that. He was looking over something that looked like a bill, and I was regretting my shirt-choice and realizing I was late to work. No words were spoken, no limbs intertwined or even bumped. I didn't see the 'lonely goatherd' men until I went around the corner. Mary? Forgive me. I lied. I embellished.

But that's what writers do. We make the truth better. How do I know (well, besides the fact that I've been exaggerating since I learned how to talk)? Armistead told me (and a roomful of other writers) tonight, at the Novel Writing and Publshing Seminar at 826 Valencia. So there.

Uncanny Valley

A moth is sitting on my ring finger as I type this. It feels so strange -- not just tickly-strange, but unheimlich, like I'm breaking some deep-set and rooted taboo. Just my luck: sit down at my desk to finally write, next thing you know, I'm the Moth Bride.

Anyway. So I'm done with school. That might be fairly temporary though; I'm looking at a few grad programs (one a Ph.D, one yet another MFA), both of which have deadlines looming, both of which I might apply to. I say 'might' because I'm having trouble deciding which to go with, and because, well, I'm busy enough already.

Busy with what, you may ask, O imaginary reader. 'This and that,' I'd reply, and then we'd both sit and ponder how much of our lives are spent this-or-thating, and before you know it whole weeks dissapear out of the 'future' drawer, only to show up crammed inside in the overstuffed 'past' drawer and oh God the moth is going for my beer.

Anyway (did you know Brian has started counting how many 'anyways' it takes me to finally get to my point? Not all the time, that would be horrible, just sometimes, when I'm being especially pedantic and digressive). Anyway.

I have been busy. With the Day Job, which takes up an awful lot of air, despite only being 6 hours, thrice a week, and 3 hours, twice a week. And with getting ready for teaching next semester, which entails lots of reading & listening to lectures-on-tape, and basically giving myself my education thus far all over again, so that I don't feel underqualified. And with not writing, which takes up more time than you'd imagine.

Meanwhile summer's here, and even though seasons in San Francisco bear almost no resemblance to the ones I had growing up in Massachusetts, there's always that funny tug of memory when the weather changes (like the distinctive beach-ball smell of sunblock, which pulls me, for a moment, back into every summer day I've ever lived all at once).

And now I'm thinking about summer, and I've lost my train of thought entirely.

dun dun DONE!

There it is, kids! I turn it in tomorrow.

Time travel

I just got this email. I've got to say, my timing's impeccable.


(The following is an e-mail from the past, composed on Sunday, April 17, 2005, and sent via FutureMe.org)

Dear FutureMe,

Well, I hope you have (almost finished) your mfa by now, and nothing in our life has changed drasticly for the worse. Brain's great, eh? Six years by now! You go, me!

Give my love to everyone,

Nora

Lucky

So, last night when I finally crawled off to bed at around 4:00 or so (I don't know why I can't get to bed at a normal hour anymore, but that's topic for another day), I was thinking about how lucky Brian and I have been since we moved here. I've finished not one but three degrees, he's started making art again and found a studio space to do it in, we've made a whole new set of wonderful friends and reconnected with old ones whe had lost touch with, and -- the most astounding luck of all, we have lived for nearly a year now practically rent free, exchanging odd jobs and cat-sitting for our apartment.

This housing situation has made it possible for me to devote all my attention to school, for Brian to accept fewer web design jobs and work more on his sculptures, and has introduced us to yet another round of really great people, including our landlady Jana and our upstairs neighbor, Ira.

So, the class I'll be teaching at New College is just the latest in what seems like an endless stream of good news. And going to bed last night, I couldn't help but wonder, in that it's-4AM-and-God-I'm-tired way, if maybe we didn't deserve it. After all, I've made so many mistakes in my life, messed up so many good oppurtunities. Could the universe really still have such a store of good luck set aside for me? Shouldn't a meteor be hurtling towards us or something?

So when Brian woke me up this morning to tell me the cat was missing, I couldn't help but see it as fate's fickle finger pressing down. Nine-One-One -- the cat that is -- tends to be a homebody. He'll usually hang out in whatever room we're in when we're home, and when he does go outside (there's a cat door built in to the back door, and he can come and go at will) he usually just sticks to the porch or wanders into one of the adjoining yards. It's very, very rare that he won't come when he's called, particularly when we're holding treats.

But this morning he didn't come, and he didn't come. Brian and I scoured the house and yard, checking every place we thought a cat might get trapped, or (god forbid) hide if he were sick or wounded. We pressed our ear to the floor, listening for faint meows from the crawlspace below the house and poked through the construction site next door. I even checked the refirgerator, on the off chance that he'd jumped in when I got myself a glass of water before bed.

Finally, we just decided we'd have to wait, and that if he wasn't home by 3 or 4 this afternoon, we'd start printing up lost cat signs and knocking on neighbor's doors. We were hoping he'd just wandered in to someone else's kitchen, or maybe fallen asleep in a patch of sunlight too far from our yard to hear us calling. I tried to work on my thesis, but couldn't concentrate. Finally, I just decided to take a book and lie down for a while, hoping my nerves would settle.

I hadn't even made it through one chapter when the cat walked in, looking sheepish but otherwise fine. We picked him up and hugged him (and for once he didn't complain about being held) and fed him an obscene amount of treats. And he's here now, purring and snoring and generally being his awful cute self.


I guess we're just lucky.

Poetry Thursday, plus good news

First the good news: I just found out I will be teaching in the fall, a course called Revenge, Justice, & Civilization: The Trojan War & the Classical Tradition, which was honestly my favorite of the three proposals that I put together. I am very excited, and very nervous, and very very wound up right now.

So, with the Trojan War as our theme, here's an excerpt from Christopher Logue's All Day Permanent Red, his reinterpretation of the battle scenes from Homer's Iliad.


-------

Silence and light



   The earth
And its attendant moon
(Neither of great importance
But beautiful and dignified)
Making their way around the sun.

  Bread trucks have begun to stream
across the vast plateau,
fair skies, high cumulous cloud --
the birds are in full throat
as the sun lights up the east.
   Who is it sees
Set in the north Agean sea, their coasts
Nosegays of seaweed tossing Ida's snow,
The Isles of Imbros and Samothrace?
   And over there -- grapes ghosts and vocal grottoes --
Greece. Above it Macedon,
Its wooded folds declining til they meet
Those of Carpathia and Kagan Gorge,
Through which, fed by a hundred tributaries since
It crossed the northern instep of the Alps,
The Danuge reappears.
   Eyes to Italy
(Where squirrels go from coast to coast and never touch the ground)
Then up, over her cyclorama peaks
Whose snow became before the fire before the wheele, the Rhine,
Below whose estuaries beneath an endless sky,
Sand baars and sabre grass, salt flats and travelling dunes
Lead west, until, green in their shallow sea
That falls away into the Atlantic deeps
He sees the Islands of the West.
   He who? Why, God, of course.
Who sighs before He looks
Back to the ridge that is, save for a million footprints,
Empty now.

Oh really I'm fine

I shouldn't blog while it's raining. It's never anything a break in the clouds and a walk through the puddles won't fix.

I've been having trouble with sleeping lately. Not with falling asleep, I can do that fine. I just can't seem to stop sleeping for hours on end.

At first I was staying up late working, going to bed at 4:00 AM and sleeping in til noon. But for the last week or so, it's been shifting. I'll go to bed earlier, but sleep til one. And waking, I won't feel particularly rested, as I seem to have the strangest dreams right before I wake up. The predominant theme of these dreams seems to be guilt (my own), and sometimes retribution (other people's). Also fish. I've always been afraid of fish.


Tune in next week for more Nora goes stark raving bonkers!

Heck, why not have poetry Sunday, then, too.

It is national poetry month, after all.

The Good-Morrow
John Donne

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov'd? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on countrey pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den ?
T'was so ; but this, all plesures fanices bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, t'was but a dream of thee

And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare ;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one litte room, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face is thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we find two better hemispheares
Without sharp North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally ;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

Day late Poetry Thursday

Time flies when you don't know what day it is...

Tom Clark
Artificial Light

Without it, what savage unsocial nights
Our ancestors must have spent! All those deadly
Winter nocturnes in caves and unillumined icy
Fastnesses: they must have laid around and
Grumbled at one another in the dark like the blind,
Fumbling each other's features for the wrinkle of a smile.
What tedious repartee must have passed! Perhaps
This accounts for the dullness of much archaic
Poetry, whose somber cast is notorious and must
Have derived from the traditions of those
Long unlanterned nights. Jokes came in with candles.
How did they see to pick up a pin, if they
Had any? How did they get dinner down? Think of
The mélange of chance carving that must have
Ensanguined dining after dusk! Lights out,
Not even love's what it's cracked up to be.
The senses absolutely give and take
Reciprocally. One wants to know whether that's
An elbow, a knee, or the night table
Before one returns the favor of a friendly nudge.
Wasn't it by the midnight taper all writers once digested
Their meditations? By that same light we ought
To approach them, if we ever expect to catch
The tiger-moth of inspiration that dances
In the word incandescent.

from Like Real People
Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, Calif., 1995

Hmmm

So here I am sitting in front of the computer at 4 AM, surfing the internet while my work sits untouched in a minimized window. And so I thought, why not take an online test for Adult ADD, because hey! There might be something to all that.

Incidentally, anyone know if those herbal remedies (hypnitol, Focus ADDult, etc) work?


Oh look, a peanut.

Kitty Perfectionist

Workin' on my thesis? Oh, yes. Workin' hard.

Poetry Thursday: Brian Teare

So I just found out about Poetry Thursday over at be present, be here, and decided that, it being Thursday, and poetry being on my mind, hey! I might as well join in.

This is a poem I just recently found online over at Blackbird. It's by Brian Teare, who just happens to be one of my favorite teachers over at New College, and whose work is just absurdly, intimidatingly good.


---

Lent Prayer

The way prayer is root to precarious : two crows creep
the steeple. Not winter,

not spring. Given a chance,
a season out of season will write

bastard pastoral, elegy
full of errant splendor and spent sheets of sleet, rain all spondaic

and unrelenting. Pallid nouns look familiar
but they're dead :

after thaw, after crocuses, even tulips : new snow, and robins
caught on a border without name, lost

to a scrim of frost, dozens
dead, each a lace of lice. The way soul has

no certain etymology, how weirdly what's rootless goes
wrong-like, fog

erasing syntax that holds
nouns in the sentence called landscape, looks like : streetlight tree

snowdrop stray-cat tow-truck leaves sidewalk snowmelt : except
what's visible

shifts, wind
arranging things,

the neighbor's lit window gone down the block like a dog
off its lead.

But all the small-town lights have left
for the Susquehanna

where they lean over water and rinse long-
billed birds into shallows, cattails

that shiver
the river like quills

sunk in dark ink. If I bring
to the banks what nouns I've found,

what of it?
Clean of scene they shine

in the mind like fish flick water open, switchblade-
quick : weathervane

horse-cart milk-pail police-tape
farmhouse snowplow : if

I put them back, I'll hate the tableaus
they make : cows

crapping in crabgrass; on Market St.,
little flags flapping; or two Amish girls

pressing curd through cloth;
dirty water. It's written :

the opera house burned
in 1906. What is it goes on living

in a town like this, between penitentiary and nicotine, the way form lives on
in both feign and fiction : arson

or accident, the plaque says this
is the original cornerstone : because

the root of error is wander,
who wouldn't want

out of a town so wrong? The current's fed under the bridge
like fabric to a sewing needle, each light

a small satin boat
stitched slow in folds.

Who wouldn't want to go
to them,

the lights? As prayer is
route to precarious, the river trembles on its treadle.

Keep your fingers crossed

I just submitted some undergraduate course proposals for next semester. And I have so much bad undergraduate karma to work off, I don't even want to think about it. So wish me luck! Time spent teaching undergrads = less time in Purgatory.

Crazy, definitely crazy

So I've had this habit, for pretty much my entire academic life, of going completely stark raving bonkers as soon as any project nears completion. I sit around for hours, obsessing over my manifold failings: all the things I should have said but didn't, all the things I said and did that I shouldn't, the way my butt looks in these jeans, which are awful comfy, but sheesh, what am I thinking?

And so it is that now, as I'm scrambling to finish my thesis, which is due in less than a month, and get my reading done for this weekend, and I need to type up a paper for the class I'm taking with ZZ Packer(name drop! Woo hoo!), and write the course proposals that my poetry professor suggested I do (which I just found out must be in by this time next week), I find myself trolling through myspace and friendster, and friends blogs, and friends of friends blogs, and just wanting to send out a mass email screaming I'm just so sorry for not being the friend you wanted or needed. And I'm so sorry to have bothered you with this here apology. And this one, too.

Yup. Weirdo!

And this is how I feel right now

self portrait as scary small head person
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

Unfocused at best. All eyes and no brain. An empty something something something.

HAHAHAHA

HAHAHAHA
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

This mural is on the side of one of the grocery stores in our neighborhood. It always makes me want to cackle in solidarity. Because I love bannanas and grapes too, and if I could enjoy them while busting through a wall, you know I would.

How cool is this?

chemical-free photo processing with materials found in the average kitchen! Wow!

dreams are strange

Slept like a bump-on-a-frog-on-a-log-in-a-hole-in-the-bottom-of-the-sea after The World's Longest flight from Portland to San Francisco. Apparently,when it's really windy in SF, they close all but one runway at SFO, which means flights are delayed all over the world, and planes waiting for landing have to circle and circle and rise and fall and rise and fall in a dark foggy world lit by nothing save the blinking lights on their wings, and the passengers inside start to wonder if maybe they have died, and this is limbo, and if so, it's a good thing they thought to grab the new issue of the NewYorker before they boarded.

But anyway, we finally landed, and I was met by Brian, who had been getting worried because on the telescreens my flight had shown up as delayed delayed delayed before disappearing altogether, and he had thought I might have left this this dimension, too. And then I went home and slept the sleep of the not-dead-yet, I dreamed that I was watching a soap opera wherin a baby was brought back to life when someone was electricuted during a fight and knocked up against the cabinet in which its body was being kept, and the camera zoomed in on a headline which read Miracle Baby Found! Is Cleavland Next?

We're paying that cat too much

I just saw a mouse. We share this house a cat who weighs more than twenty pounds, yet mice (because as Carl Sagan once said, where there's life, there's community) are frolicking beneath my desk.

I grew up in a cat house. Not in the 'House of the Rising Sun' sense, but rather a more concrete and furry phenomenon: a house with nine cats. Cats were everywhere, on every sofa and every chair, swarming the house and surrounding evirons with thier purry furriness, their living being.

And for the longest time, I identified as a cat person. Cats are soft and slinky, they insinuate themselves into laps and armcrooks and the extended waning afternoon of a good book. Cats give the sort of affection I'm comfortable with: slightly standoffish, but unabashed and complete, in its own peculiar way.

When I was ten or so, we added a dog to the mix -- Francois Couperin (Le Grand), a large and clumsy aging labrador who added a new dimension to my experience of pet ownership: companionship. Here was an animal who did things with me, rather than around me, whose experience of the world took place alongside my own, rather than in some nearby and sympathetic but ultimately unrelated plane. And another dog followed, this time a puppy that I got to pick, who alone of all his squirmy siblings crawled into my lap and fell asleep. His name was Merlin.

We got Merlin when I was 14, and as awkward and miserable as any teenage girl in suburbia. And he was a perfect companion, equally happy walking aimlessly for hours or sitting patiently while I sobbed into his fur. And when I fled periodically home from college, after hours of intermittent sleeping and crying on the train between Annapolis and Boston, Merlin was my comfort, patient and silent and perfectly, exactly what I needed.

But of course I did grow up eventually, and there was a wider world of needs than home and dog could provide. And Dog love is such a visceral, present thing, it doesn't lend itself well to long distance. It doesn't seem like its enough to stand outside on Chistmas morning with the dog you only see twice a year, to sink your fingers into the fur that gathers around his collar and hell him how much he means to you. But that's all I could do, and that's what I did.

When Merlin died this morning, he was already incredibly old for a dog his size. My mother tells me she was starting to wonder if maybe he was the only thing on earth that never would die, that would just keep going. But of course he couldn't. Nothing does.

Lists

"Facts" I dreamed were true this week:

1. George Harrison and John Lennon are still alive, but share a body and don't go out much.

2. William Hershel was one of a set of triplets, but ate the other two soon after birth (in my dream, I read it in a book, and thought, "I don't need to know that.").

3. If I were to write a novel about high school, it would take me the better part of an afternoon.


Things that have reminded me of C.W. Bayly recently

1. A pair of orange tennis shoes and a tasteful plaid scarf.

2. At Freddies by Penelope Fitzgerald.

3. Seeing St. Etienne at the Fillmore, and ordering a greyhound at the bar.


Things I like about making lists

1. No need for follow through (you list things, you stop)

2. Numbers

3. Using the "bold" tag (it makes me feel like I know html)

4. Items in a list feel kind of like a paneled comic strip, which gives the last item a certain weight, regardless of merit.

List

Things I got in the Mail Today

1. Marlboro College Alumni Revitalization Task Force flier

2. Pacifica Graduate Institute admissions packet

3. Cell Phone Bill

4. New T-Shirt! lookie!

Gloating Just a Little

More Cherry Blossoms
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

Hard to believe it's been snowing in Boston since midnight last night. While I miss *real* seasons (and my family) a lot, I'd have to be blind not to aprecciate sites like this just outside my door. And in February, no less.

For the curious

Ten Top Trivia Tips about Nora!

1. The air around Nora is superheated to about five times the temperature of the sun!
2. The number one cause of blindness in the United States is Nora.
3. Nora was invented in China in the eleventh century, but was only used for fireworks, never for weapons.
4. Originally, Nora could not fly!
5. A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but Nora can not!
6. Without its lining of Nora, your stomach would digest itself!
7. Nora is the largest of Saturn's moons.
8. Nora can pollinate up to six times more efficiently than the honeybee.
9. If you blow out all the candles on Nora with one breath, your wish will come true.
10. The only planet that rotates on its side is Nora.

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

Blarg!

My computer seems to have taken leave of its senses. I've wiped the hard drive, installed and re-installed Tiger, run disk warrior many times, and still it acts as if I've been stuffing peanut butter in its little insides. Which would be fine and all, but I've a novel to finish by April, and other schoolwork besides. Bring me my working harddrive! Bring me my arrows of firewire!

And other things

It's my first day of classes today. I almost have none at all this weekend; if I hadn't opted for Editing and Publishing II, there'd be no reason to get out of my jammies.

I'm suffering from late-onset second thoughts about the program. What am I going to do with a degree in Creative Writing? Surely I don't expect to write a novel? I don't have the wealth ideas neccesary for such a venture. I'm starting to feel like I'm hardly literate.

In other news, I'm considering getting an MFA in Poetics after this. but only because the Poetics program at New College is highly reading-of-poetry based. I think I really need to read more before I can be expected to have anything at all to say.

Did I dream?

Woke up from a dream of being in a lecture hall, taking part in some weird psychodelic game show, all bright blues and purples. Midway through, I realized that something sinister was afoot, that 'phase two' involved something horrible. Luckily whoever wasa controlling the game show could only see the participants' brightly colored clothing, and my teammates and I were able to sneak out by striping off our coloured layers and lying perfectly still in the aisles. At the last minute (we were somehow slithering out, like snakes), I was caught, and sent to a back room, which had a bed & some strange wand-like thing. I was woken up by the alarm & the by the cat (who comes in begging when the alarm goes off), and never found out what the wand was for.

It's sunny today, but cold. I'm sitting on the orange fainting couch by the window, and the sun's pouring in through the garden. There's a pink rosebud on one of the bushes already, in January. For this, I moved to California.

Because Outside of School, it's too dark to read

didn't Groucho Marx say something like that? Anyway.

Since I haven't much time for writing outside of school right now, I thought I'd share with y'all a recent virtual Blue Book essay I wrote. Misspellings and lack of sense-making have been left intact.

Blue Book Exercise: Write for 40 minutes straight and answer the question: How does a linguistic representation (or reproduction) of “what you are” begin to unlock the repressive nature of analytic thought?

For some reason I'm finding the whole idea of personal identity tremendously troubling right now. Am I someone? Sure. Was Shakespere someone else? Indubitably. And then there's George Bush, and a man who knows what Colorado looks like from the ground, and a woman who lives in an apartment down the street who I wouldn't even recognize on sight, and Dominica and Jigmey and Jim and Cassandra. And we're all different, or at least individal. And that's due to som sort of individual 'me'-ness in each of us. So I suppose there must be something that is "what I am." But I am still finding the whole idea tremendously strange.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I got a copy of an academic journal put out by one of the colleges I was thinking about attending. The whole thing was pretty much over my head, or at least the articles were bouncing off of the Wernike's or Broca's areas of my brain (wherever it is that words become ideas) as I halfheartedly flipped through. I don't remember anything about the journal, except that it had a blue cover and that one of the articles started out with a quotation from Pindar: "become who you are."

The quotation bothered me in a way that's nothing up to that point had ever bothered me. I was used to knowing answers to things, to my Latin teacher's weary "does anyone... except Nora.. have any ideas on this?" I was used to knowing, if not the answer to a question, at least the means to an answer. For Greek, try Liddel and Scott, for fashion, Sassy. But this? How does one go about becoming oneself? And how does one know one's true self, from the many false faces that might show up in its place?

So I guess what I'm saying is, I understand what you mean by "the repressive nature of analytic thought."

So. Unlocking that. With a 'linguistic representation or reproduction' of what I am. Could such a thing exist? Do I know Shakespeare as a represented or reproduced in his work? Do I know David Bowie? Does it matter if their work 'reproduces' them, or must it just "tease with the promise of a story the [reader] of it itches to be told?" Could representation be so subjective as the awakening of an itch?

I guess what’s tripping me up is the whole question of whether or not anyone can ever be understoon, even to themselves. Identity seems so amorphous -- it’s not like any one of us can at any time point to a solid or external thing and say “this is me.” Trying to poke out an identity is like trying to get out of an echoey mirrored room with all the lights turned out: frustrating and a little creepy. And sort of an odd way to pass the time.

Ok. But I'm getting turned in on myself here. Obviously, I don't write highly anylitical pieces for fun (at least not exculsively). And obviously, a lot of what I write is sollipsistic and navel gazey. So I suppose I should assume that I assign value to these activities. And the 'itch' to understand ourselves an each other is undeniable -- probably 90% of society came into being around that itch (the other ten percent is spilt evenly between sex, the domestication of dogs, and the cultivation of grains). Somehow, this sort of understanding comes about in odd phrasings and not-neccesarily analylitical musings. Emily Dickinson speaks more to the human condition than Euclid does (though a line of 'breadthless length' has the appealing truth of pure creation, it doesn't quite 'select its own Society - /Then [shut] the door).

Some psychiatrists treat patients suffeing post-traumatic stress disorder by having them perform a series of guided eye movements. These movements circumvent talk therpapy and analysis, retraining the neural pathways to be able to cope with trauma, rather than letting it endlessly replay. If there are, as Bearden says, "roads out of the secret place within us on which we must all move as we go to touch others,” perhaps they function as a similar sort of short cut. I could tell you my life story, list my secret worries and idle thoughts for hours without end. But if I could surprise you, surprise myself. If I could undercut, unlock. Then maybe there'd be a connection. We'd have an itch, a story.

42, minutes. I'm afraid I'm done. You want messy? You got it.

False memory syndrome

(via Arwen/Elizabeth)

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don't speak often, please post a comment with a COMPLETELY MADE UP AND FICTIONAL MEMORY OF YOU AND ME.

It can be anything you want--good or bad--BUT IT HAS TO BE FAKE.

When you're finished, post this paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people DON'T ACTUALLY remember about you.

pumpkin, mit stuffing

pumpkin, mit stuffing
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

Happy Thanksgiving! I stuffed a pumpkin!

Modular Collage 1 (modulated again)

Modular Collage 1 (modulated again)
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

Modular Collage 1 (modulated)

Modular Collage 1 (modulated)
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

Modular Collage 1

Modular Collage 1
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

Something I'm working on. Still in the development stages (and I have yet to get a good photo...).

Tuesday, Tuesday

So, school's heating up, and the assignments are piling, piling piling. I've never been one to be organized and/or 'on top of things' and I'm beginning to notice a disconcerting tendancy to feel organized and on top, when in reality I'm anything but. This leads to a misplaced sense of complacency. Also, that is decidedly not how novels get writ.

My friend Storm is on a 'raw food' diet (and has been for years). No wonder s/he's so healthy (and smells so nice, too). S/he's also prolific. I wonder if there's a connection?

I can't stop sneezing, but the cat's asleep on my lap and looks so happy, what can I do?

I had a dream last night the cat was an alien spy. But not in a bad way, really.

Kitty's got a brand new blog

I've started a blog for our cat/ward/landlord, 9-11. You can read it here

Sleepy

Just got back from (not) selling CD's at the EndUp. I really am not a party person, and apparently my dour little face doesn't make folks want to buy CD's either. In other news, I got to watch the clock on my friend Chuck's phone turn over at (not!) 2:AM. It was 1:59... and then 1:00 again.

Whoah.

And now, this

My father’s father was made of stone, of anceint rocks from the belly of the earth. He could sand wood against his cheeks. I think he thought he was made of wood, which would explain a lot. You’re more careful with your person when it’s wooden. Marble is hard, but softer than most rocks. The marble that lines the bed of Lake Champlain seeps minerals into the water that make it good for your hair. When I was little, my grandfather told me rocks could float. Maybe he was made from wood after all.

My father’s father was a raven, like the trickster who first brought food to the world. You coulldn’t get a straight answer out of him, and when he told you things there was a bit of sandpaper hidden inside or maybe a bit of stone, so if you tried to eat it then you had rocks inside you, too.

My grandmother was once made of smallness. My grandfather used to say she weighed nothing, no matter how much she ate or how many layers of clothing she put on. Now that he’s gone, though, she wheels a wheelbarrow on her own, and stands in the kitchen with freeweights, flexing. At night she looks out the window, and she is made of looking.

My grandfather framed fibers under glass, if you break the glass then they’d be dust, like Popcorn Snow.

My father was made from protein chains, a crinoid or ammonite. Or maybe he was the world’s first boy. He never lost his baby teeth. He was created whole.

My father is made of ferns.

And I'm not on Ritalin 'cause I never got around to asking for it

I'm doing that thing again. That thing where I sit down to write a paper (in this case, a freakin' FIVE PAGE critical essay for my "Reading the Shape of Change" class) and I Just. Cannot. Sit. Still. I'm all over the internets, reading boring things I don't care have a whit about. I'm off to the grocery store, in the hopes they have something blueberry flavoured and fizzy. I'm scratching my nose. Anything not to write an essay about a book I freaking loved (Jim Grimsley's Dream Boy) and a topic that fascinates me (the nature of desire). Five pages, people! This is nothing! Except I've apparently stumbled into the section of my brian still trapped in Mr. Bridges 7th grade English, sulking its little heart out.

Grr.

Fizzy and blueberrry.

Just so you know

Serenity is a good movie. You should see it.


Unless you're my dad. If you're my dad, don't go -- there's shooting and sad bits. Actually, if you have no stomach for shooting and sad bits, you probably won't like it, whether or not you're my dad.

But I have a fairly low tolerence for such things, and i made it through. So.

We've created a monster

911, the cat we're sitting, has a reputation for viciousness. The contracters next door avoid him, the book-keeper talks to but does not pet him, and we, for this first month or so we've lived here, treated him like a large, furry grenade.

Over time, however, his attitude towards us has warmed and mellowed. When he hears us at the door, he comes and meows us welcome. When I'm writing, he sits as close as possible, preferably on my computer to some degree, and swats at my typing fingers. He purs like crazy when we pet him, and when he tires of petting, he swats at our hands claws in (an unheard of concession when first we met). And though he never deigns to come with us when we go to bed, he's always there curled up at our feet when we wake.

The secret? Beef jerkey.

The consequence? A Hindenberg of a cat.

We've put him on a bit of a diet. Jerkey only as a special treat, only small bits of dry food in the morning and evening. But Oh! does he whine. Oh! does he meow. He sees beef jerkey as his due, and he is (very nearly) willing to scale the heighest heights to get it from us. Luckily, is just too fat and lazy to climb the shelf it's on.

He's watching me as I type this. All kibble and no jerky makes nine a grouchy kitty. All kibble and no jerky makes nine a grouchy kitty. All kibble and no jerky....

Arrr! Who be windsurfin' now, matey?

The only thing better than reading Sen Kerry's skillfull takedown of the Bush administration's response to Katrina is reading it through the pirate translator over at mediocre minds.

If I could do it all over again

I'd have gotten Trixie and A. this for a wedding gift. 'Cause you never know when you might get thirsty.

Come to find out, I'm right on track.

From On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner:

Like any other kind of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or incivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections); obstinancy and a tendency towards churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true); childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischieviousness, and unseemly propensity for crying over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes); remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrasing earnestness, the latter often heightened by irrationaly intense feelings for or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good. Not all writers have exactly these same virtues, of course. Occasionally one finds one who is not abnormally improvident.

And the painted ponies go up and down

Finally, some seasonally appropriate weather. Granted, San Francisco is often brisk and cloudy, but today it feels all right and September-y, and I'm feeling the urge to make curried lentil and cabbage soup (they were eating it in this novel I've been reading, and I've been craving it ever since).

The brisk air is good for the roaming sense of guilt I've been feeling. Good in the way that it's making it go away for a while.

For some reason, fall is the most strongly nostalgic season for me (the smells maybe?). The new apartment is right in the middle of what seems to be the elementary school nexus of the universe, too. We've got a Catholic School, a Friend's School, and the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, all within one block of us. It takes a girl back it does, seeing all these tots and hearing their dulcet screams at recess. The other day I was walking past the Quaker school's field during what looked like a PE class. There was this one girl with long wavy blondish hair who was tagging along at the end of the lap-runners, sort of half jogging half walking, stopping intermittently to examine random clumps of dirt and grass. I got all ruminative about how that was totally me, and now here I am all growed up and moderately a jogging type, and wow how I've grown. And then I totally tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.

Bardo, Dante, Guilt, and ow.

So for my MFA thesis my advisor suggested a novel. Which I think is a good idea, for the most part, excepting the whole ack-a-novel-thats-huge.

My ideas for a novel are still pretty fuzzy, but I'm sort of toying with a story that'll examine the idea of justice & punishment. Wait, no, punishment's not really the right idea. I'm sort of thinking of punishment like the levels of the afterlife Dante's Comedy -- you know, how people get what they deserve, but it's also kind of crappy and unfair.

My friend Hope invited me to a lecture next month about the Tibetan Buddhist concept of Bardo, which is sort of like this space between lives where you have visions, and your reaction to the visions determines your next life. And that reminded me of something I read a while ago, which argued that one of the lasting aftereffects of slavery was that white people had cut themselves off from empathy towards such a large group of other people that it caused long-term damage to society and family. That idea of something dogging you forever, until you get it, intrigues me. It's like punishment, but more like a karmic thoroughness.

Oof. Shouldn't a girl with a masters in writing be able to get this out better?

No surprises here

Pure Nerd 86 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 43% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations! Thanks Again! -- THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 95% on nerdiness You scored higher than 25% on geekosity You scored higher than 76% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid

Long time, no blog

I know, I know. I'm totally lame. You're not even here, reading this, I'm such an infrequent updater.

Today was one of those ridiculously perfect San Francisco days. Blue sky, not a fog bank in sight, warm air (it was even warm in the shade! The shade, I tell you!). I tried to write, but the outdoors just kept on pokin' at me, saying, "hey, c'mere. I smell nice." But not in an icky way.

Innyhoo. So we're settled into the new place, the six-months-possibly-more catsit. There's more mailing and office work than I anticipated, and more heavy lifting, but I really can't complain. And I like writing here, which is something I never felt easy doing at the old apt. I spend the day on an old couch by the window, cat at my elbow. The window looks out semi-subterraneanaly at the garden, which gives a nice fishtanky feel to the whole affair.

I've been going for long walks, too, getting a feel for the new neighborhood. There's more hills and less trees, making for expansive views of what feels like all of California. and there's more bars, only here they're full of exhuberantly drunk men in wigs and tight tee shirts who pay me so little mind that I worry they might walk through me by accident. Which is oddly liberating, kind of like the childhood fantasy of becoming invisible. If I find a way to shoot lasers from my eyes, I'll let you know.

Itchy Itch

So, long-overdue update. MA done. Me grouchy. Ever have one of those days where everything you say seems sightly off and too loud? Story of my life right now.

we've been adopted

My days are really, truly blessed here. I realize how silly that sounds, but it's true.

I had a late night editing last night, and slept in a bit today. When I finally lurched awake at ten AM, Brian had already gone out (he had an appointment to help a neighbor move a cat at 8:30). I shnurfled around, retrieved the $3 Brian had left out for me to get an iced coffee with (we're out of milk, and I've never really mastered the espresso maker), and made my way down to the park.



The park is a funny little part of our daily routine. I say funny because it's simultaneously the most useless part of our day and the most important. For an hour or so, almost every morning, we sit on park benches and chat with the other park regulars. We talk about physics, gossip about the neighborhood, give each other amateur phsychological and legal advice, and watch all the dogs that frolic off-leash there get their 'dog' on. Almost all the new friends we've made since we moved here have been folks we've met at the park. Heck, our two most promising housing prospects are places we've found through park folk.

This morning, the weather was incredible. I walked the requisite three blocks to Bean There, got my iced-double-latte, and headed across the street and up the path toward the park benches where we all gather. As I got close, the bench erupted with shouts of "Nora! You're up!"

As of this week, our housing situation's been resolved. Mike, a guy we know from the park (natch) found us a -- wait for it -- six month cat-sitting gig. Nice.

Living

So the possible-living-situation with T has fallen through, and we're still looking. We've got a possible house share out in upper market (pro: $800 a month for the two of us, nice-seeming housemate; con: a bit of a hike from our preffered 'hood, wall-to-wall carpets, shared), a possible studio a few blocks from our current apt (pro: across the hall from friend Jason, private, cute old-timey details, hardwood floors and crazy-cool tiles in the kitchen; con: only slightly larger than a shoebox).

The whole looking-for-housing thing really doesn't agree with me. I hate that we have no money. I hate that we don't have great credit (thanks a lot, twenty-year-old self. I hope you had fun with those credit cards). I hate that we have to move now and that every time I sit down at my computer I spend two hours searching the classifieds for every minute I spend writing.

I hate change. I really am a creature of comfort.

Becalmed

So, I'm having trouble doing just about anything today. Yesterday, too -- that trip to the grocery for lemonade and lesbian catcalling was just about it. This isn't turning out to be a good month. Or maybe it is. I'm honestly not sure.

Last Thursday, June 30, our housemate told us he's moving to Rhode Island at the end of July. For the past two months we'd all been talking about his boyfriend moving in (which would have reduced our already-managable rent to quite-pleasantly low). Now, Brian and I have thirty days to find a new living situation.

Unfortunately, Brian & I aren't planners. It would be great if at least one of us was (preferably him), but we're more 'oh-I'm-sure-it'll-all-work-out' types. We thought our rent would be going down. We just went to Boston for a wedding. I've been living of student loans and parental generosity since December. In short, neither of us can afford to pay first months rent & deposit on a new place. Not a (market rate) $1250-a-month studio in the neighborhood we live in & love.

Fortunately, we have great friends. Two immedeately offered to put us up for a while. One of them might even take us on as roomates in perpetuity.

So it looks like we'll be moving in with our friend T, just about four blocks down Haight from where we currently live. She's smart (I mean really smart - the woman listens to calculus lectures on her ipod when she's going to bed. Me? I'm not even sure how to spell calculus), funny, and suffers from varying degrees of agaoraphobia, OCD, and ADD. So I'm a little worried that we'll have to move again before August is over. But she thinks she'll be ok with having roomates (as she put it, "I didn't even panic about it when my meds wore off"). So probably it'll work out. And (woo-hoo!) her apartment is rent controlled. So it might be a solid plus in the long run.

But it's still depressing. We're adults. We should know enough to have set some money aside. But we're scraping through this only inches away from homelessness. I'd already started on a 'whats-it-all-about' kick after my cousin's wedding (nothing like the marriage of two type 'A' personalities to make a chronic underachiever feel a bit fraudish). To top it off, I've had writers block for days. Not that I believe in writers block.

Or spellchecking. Sorry kids.

Nothing so Rare as a Day in near June

It's absurdly gorgeous today: the sky is clear and blue, the sun is shining the world is green and green smelling. A few minutes ago, climbed out from under the pug we're dog sitting and walked down to the grocery store for some lemonade. On the way back, an old black lady in a wheel chair smiled at me and said, "Lots of pretty girls out today. I gotta go home and put my teeth in."

I love San Francisco.

Verlassen auf einem jetplane

or something like that.

So, I know it'll be hard for you all, as accustomed as you've become to fresh! daily! content, but I'm leaving tomorrow to go home for two weeks in sunny Massachusetts.

And it's my dog Merlin's 14th birthday tomorrow! Happy birthday, Merls-a-pup.



I was fourteen myself when we first brought him home (and if I recall I was much more limber).

Nerd, continued

Brian and I, on a whim, went to see Revenge of the Sith (or is it Return of the Sith?) at midnight tonight. It completely took me back to that childhood space of I totally want that spaceship.

Oh, and cousin Jake? I'm totally sorry I played with the Star Wars guys I found under your bed all those years ago. I hope I didn't mess 'em up at all. *Whew* that guilt's been on my chest for like, twenty years.

Lest any one doubt that I come by 'nerd' honestly

I just got off the phone with my parents. We had a long conversation about the reasoning behind the Pythagorean prohibition against eating beans.

A long, animated conversation.

Five Questions from Tricia

1. What are the values/morals your parents (or
whomever) taught you as a child, which somehow
affected you in the future?

This is an interesting (and somehow difficult) one. One of the strongest lingering values (or at least one I've been noticing recently) is my strong 'intellectual' streak, something (oddly) that sets me apart from a lot of the people in my writing program. This isn't to say they aren't smart -- far from it, really. It's just that I have a sort of academic way of looking at the world: a love of reading and writing about strange and esoteric concepts, and an unabashed enthusiasm for things like literary theory and the history of ideas.

Of course it's not a black or white 'people see it either my way or another' type thing. But its always been one of my defining characteristics, from my brown-nosey elementary school days on up. And I take it really personally when people act like 'intellectualism' and 'elitism' are synonomous. Because thinking crtically is gonna save the world, man.

2. What is a common first thought you have in the
morning and the last thought before bed?

I don't know if there is a common thought that runs through my head when I'm lying in bed. I do love bed thoughts though - those funny little surrealist streams of consciousness that seem to show up in the liminal states between consciousness and whatever lies beyond it.

As we're falling asleep, we usually listen to Coast to Coast, a conspiracies and aliens call-in show that Brian's been listening to for forever. He usually falls asleep right away, no matter what topic is being discussed, but I'll often lie awake staring into the darkness as people call in to discuss alien abductions and haunted factories. Our bed is by the window, and I like to stare up at the sliver of sky between our apartment building and the next as I fall asleep, but some nights, when the eerieness on the radio gets to me, I just close my eyes and try to think of rational, daytime things.

When I wake up, I usually just wonder what's made Brian so damn chipper. And try to will myself out of bed in the direction of coffee. And I try to hold onto my just-before waking dreams for as long as I ca, but I never have the forsight to leave a notebook by the bed. This morning I woke to a dream of someone spraypainting the windows to a car I was in, and then me cooking appetizers and snacks for a large crowd.


3. If you were stranded on a deserted island and could
have 5 things and one person with you, what would you
have and with whom? (The ol' standby.)

Well, 'who' is easy -- I don't know if I'd even know how to get lost on a desert island without Brian. And besides, he's totally the sort who can figure out how to build a shelter and make fire, while I would, I dunno, weave together palm fronds into a cute bikini or reinvent deconstruction or something.

And lets see - five objects:

1. A phone (you don't expect me to live on a desert island without calling my parents at least once a week to talk about it, do you)?

2. A portable lavatory, well eqipped with toilet paper (I have anxieties about poopin' in the woods).

3. (ahem) a lifetime supply of feminine hygene products (can i include toothpaste and floss and make it a sort of toiletry bag? Ok, ok, I'll try to think outside the bathroom for a while).

4. I bookshelf stocked with (waterproof?) copies of Madeline L'Engle's books, the complete Anne of Green Gables series, random paperback mysteries and sci fi, and a few "infinitely re-readable" books, like the Illiad, the Divine Comedy and the like.

5. pants.


4. What is something you regret?

Sometimes I feel like regret is my default setting. Seriously -- today I had this great convestation with a girl from school, one of those totally wide-ranging and in depth funny conversations you get to have with folks every once and a while. And within an hour, I was feeling twinges of... I dunno ... free-range guilt? Even though it was a great conversation, I can't help but feel I said something stupid or potentially offensive or something.

That said, there are plenty of things I do and should regret. I fogot to call Shana on her birthday. I'm terrible with money. I often speak without thought or reflection. But if I had to choose one, everyday, practical regret : I wish I'd learned time management skills somewhere along the line.

5. What were you like when you were 10?

Ten was really my favorite age. I was at the height of my preadolescent powers. The fifth grade was the oldest class at Greenwood Elementary (the school around the block from my house that I’d been attending since kindergarten). We fifth graders were sort of uber-children, and school was a familiar world of teachers, janitors and administrators I'd known for years.

Though not popular, I was well known among my classmates, and universally accepted, even liked. Every day I wore the same uniform: a mismatched pair of Converse ‘All Stars,’ one pink, one blue; an old bomber jacket from world war two (the pockets stuffed with pens and paper), and a man’s fedora that my older sister had adopted and then abandoned some years before.

My teacher, Ms Riordan, and I had a special bond. We'd talk -- it seemed at the time -- like equals, with special jokes and secret smiles. Like every teacher I’d ever had, she scolded me for not reaching my ‘potential’ - a word I heard over and over again every year, as I turned math homework in late or missed assignments entirely - but she knew me, understood me. It was marvelous.

Except that I never did learn that 'potential reaching' schtick.

MeMeMeMeme

alternate title: boy am I wordy
Frog over at Between The Lakes was nice enough to pass on this meme to me. Anyone out there reading who'd like to play, let me know, and I'll send five questions of my own devising out your way (and thenyou get to ask me five questions and oh! this could go on forever...).

1) Tell me about your spiritual journey. I have a feeling there’s a story there.

Good question. I'd never really thought of my spiritual journey in any concrete way (and me! Dante obsessed over here. I know).

I grew up in a religious household. Which is to say that both my parents were religious, and actively occupied their respective faiths. My dad's a Quaker and my mom is Episcopalian, so I grew up attending both services as I liked -- Quaker meeting with dad when I was in the mood for quiet contemplation followed by organic peanutbutter sandwiches, Episcopal services with mom when I was in the mood for South African freedom songs followed by kool aid and raucous games of tag in the parish hall. And like I said, my parents were both very much involved in the life of their churches -- my earliest outside-of-family communities were formed in and around church.

This continued up through high school - I was in youth choir for a long time, and even after I dropped out of that, I regularly attended youth group and religious retreats (that was with the Episcopalians). Then, when I was a senior or junior in high school, I got very much into Quakerism -- in part because I was fairly shy, and in part ecause our old Episcopal church had hired a relatively conservative minister, and we (my mom and I and a fair amount of our friends there) were feeling a bit alienated.

When I went away to college, I stopped attending church regularly, and I have to say I haven't ever really gotten back in the habit. I do, however still consider faith and religious thought to be a big part of my life -- as I mentioned above, I'm fairly obsessed with Dante, and I read other stuff, like Aquinas and the Journals of John Woolman, which keep me on my spriritual toes. And I have a subscription to Soujourners magazine, which my mother says is just as good as church, really.

And when I was picking up my veggie box today, I noticed that there's an Episcopal church just a few blocks form me. So who knows, maybe there's more kool aid and tag in my future (though in SF, I've learned, one does not menation kool aid and religion in the same sentence).

I feel like I'm getting away without doing any sort of real meaty rumination here. But this was a great question to start mulling over - I'm sure more stuff will come out of it. I'm ruminating right now - I swear.

2) What brought you to SF?

This ones a little embarrassing, because so little brought me here, and so much makes living here so wonderful.

A little over two and a half years ago, I was living in Medford, MA with Brian in a perfectly nice apartment and working at a difficult but interesting job. I'd dropped out of Marlboro College about two years previous to that, and while I had a nice apartment and a happy relationship and a job that could be considered carreerish (that is, I wasn't slinging lattes), I still felt like there was something pretty tremendous lacking in my life. And I couldn't see myself going back to school -- there was just some sort of block there.

A week or so before thanksgiving, my old childhood friend Chris came out from California with his new boyfriend. Brian and I put them up for the duration of their stay, and Chris mentioned that should we ever want to move to San Francisco, it would be fun for all of us to live together.

That really planted the seeds. Brian had been fantasizing about California since he was a young and freezing teenager in rural Vermont, and started really talking about San Francisco as a long term plan. My job was getting more and more unpleasant, and I started fantasizing about San Francisco, too. Poor Chris had probably forgotten the whole conversation as soon as he got on the plane back to San Jose. But we started talking with him about it, anyway.

Then, at thanksgiving, my cousin Claire mentioned that she was taking a year off before medical school and moving to New York City. Everything in me that wanted freedom and something new and no more job and no more snow and arrrg! rushed to the surface, and I blurted out, "Yeah? Well, Brian and I are moving to San Francisco."

After that, things pretty much fell together. I gave notice at my job, Brian and I started saving money, and Chris started looking at two bedroom apartments in San Francisco. By March, we were here, in this small-but-cute-and-location! little apartment on Haight St. And in the two years since, I've finished my BA, started on my Masters, and made more 'neighborhoody' friends than I've had since college. Go figure.


3) What was the best thing about your trip to Hong Kong?

Thats a toughie. I went with my old college friend Liza, which was awesome in and of itself, because she and I hadn't laid eyes on one another for more than two years. So, seeing Liza, getting over (mostly) my fear of flying (because when you're in the air that long, you just cope), and getting outside my well-worn grooves. Those were the three best things.

That and looking for a lost turtle on Lamma.

Lost Turtle
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

Or at least wondering how one might find a single, specific turtle on a tropical island. Which leads us to...

4) How long have you and Brian been together and how did you meet?

Brian and I have been together five years as of April first (april fools day makes for a memorable anniversary).

I actually wrote down our 'how we met' story a few years ago, when I wanted to get all my family's love stories together in honor of my sister's wedding (a project that never really took off -- the collection that is, not the wedding). Anyway, you can read it here.

5) Tell me about the photo in your profile. I’m intrigued by it.

Ack! I just wrote a whole long bit on this, then accidently deleted it. Boo. Apologies if it comes out rushed.

That's probably my favorite photo from my trip to Hong Kong. Its of an alleyway in a town called Tai O, which is on Lantau Island in the Hong Kong archipelego. Liza and I went on a daytrip to Lantau one of our first days in Hong Kong. My guide book, "The Top Ten Guide to Hong Kong," reccomended that one take the Star Ferry over in the morning, then take a bus to "the quaint fishing village at the end of the island" -- Tai O, then hike up to the Buddhist monastary (and its 72-foot statue of Buddha) and enjoy a vegetarian lunch provided by the monks.

We got up early and took the ferry over, munching on red bean buns and sipping tea as we tried to get pictures of Hong Kong retreating in the distance. Once on Lantau, we poked arount Mai Wo, the village where the ferry dropped us, then hopped a bus bound for Tai O, on the other side of the island. The bus, filled to the brim with elderly people and their groceries, chugged up and down steep mountain roads for about a half hour before finally dropping us off in Tai O. We poked around for a bit -- Liza bought shrimp paste and I tooke that picture -- and congratulated ourselves on discovering something so far off the beatenpath (at least to those not in possesion of a "Top Ten Guide"). After a while, we started to get peckish and headed up the only road out of town (past the 'Fat Ho' middle school, for all those adolescent sniggerers out there), and towards the monastary.

After about fifteen minutes, the sidewalk ended. Another ten minutes, and we started to consult our maps, trying to figure out how many miles were contained in the half-thumb-width between monastary and town. Finally, after about forty five minutes of conversation about what an adventure this was and attempts not to look annoyed in front of one another, we managed to flag down a monastary-bound bus. Ten minutes and several(!) steep hills later, we were at the monastary. And man, was that monk-food good.

We must imagine Sisyphus healthy

Oof. In my continuing campaign to be a guaranteed size eight for my cousin Claire's wedding, I've taken to jogging, and the propensity of hills and three-storey stairways in the neighborhood make for quite a work-out. Holy hindu cow-in-a-bucket, is it a work out.

In other news, San Francisco is freakin' gorgeous. I'm wishing i had a more eensy camera for in-the-pocket transport. The sunsets I'd show you!

Obligatory Guilt Post

This blog is starting to feel like the journals I kept intermittently from about third grade on. The entries all read something like this:

Dear Diary (ugh - I hate cliches, don't you?), sunny today. Went for a walk with Merlin (did I tell you we got another dog!!!?). I can't beleive I'll be FOURTEEN tomorrow. Oh well, gotta go.

[next entry]
Dear Diary, Well - I just found you under my bed. I'll be sixteen next week, and lots has happened! I grew my hair out! Have you ever thought about sunsets? The're so pretty, yet so specific. Anyway, I'll write more later. Bye!

[next entry]
Omigod! I just found this diary under my bed again! I really should be better about -- oops! Time for dinner! Write soon!

You get the idea. Though I suppose, with the actual expectation of audience (hi guys!) inherent in blog writing, neglect is a slightly greater sin. And it's not like I need to go fishing under my bed for blogger software (digression: remember disks? That came in boxes? Playing Kings Quest III back in the day when it took four disks to play, plus at least one to save your games on? Sigh, and time marches on).

In other news, omigod! I'll be twenty-eight this Saturday. Brian and I are going to see Camille Paglia read from her new book (Break Blow Burn: Camille Paglia reads forty-three of the worlds best poems) Friday night, followed by a late dinner at the Metro Cafe. On my actual birthday, Brian will be testing for his blue belt in jujitsu, so I'll probably just stay home & worry. And write, of course, since I have 25 pages due for workshop on Monday (between-semester break? ha!).

I'm also working on some graphic stuff I hope to post up in here in the near future. Watch this space.

Been a while

72-foot Buddha
Originally uploaded by Nora Sawyer.

I finally uploaded some of my Hong Kong Photos to flickr. Click the Buddha to see more.

In other news, I [heart] flickr. So easy to use, so fun, so free. God bless the internets. They live, I tell you.

Nel Mezzo

Alternate title: Sestinas: what can't they do?
Alternate alternate title: Sestinas: say less using more words than other people say with less.

In France they have drugs that improve memory
(I read an article about it at a time in my life
when I thought I’d carved a space in the wilderness
though I was as unsure of the path
as I was of anything). Anyway. The article described
miracles: sparse thickets of thought thickened into woods

But that was the problem really. I already had a wood:
a place bereft of reflection or of memory
(for those who walk unpleasant places do not describe
a path; these are not reflective joints of life)
a place absent even the memory of a path;
where all that is belongs to wilderness.

Wilderness
far from being just a wood
becomes an essential piece of any path
(path: a place within cohesive memory
that defines the whole of life;
that which edges describe)

And so: a line describes
an angle, and so a triangle is made. And out of wilderness
we make our life,
in amongst a wood
of shivers, thought and memory
and suddenly there becomes a clear way, a path.

(or I suppose it should be a path
though mine does not for sure describe
the way through brambles of memory
through the dark of the sleeping wilderness
in the thickness of the wood
or whatever. Life).

Midway along the journey of our life
I strayed, abandoning the rightful path
And found myself within a gloomy wood.
So hard it is in its aspect to describe
This savage harsh and fearsome wilderness,
That fear rekindles with the memory.

in the thickness of our life (strange as it is to describe),
there is (or perhaps could be) a path, a way inside and out of wilderness
into the wood, out of memory

Excuse me? We could use some resurrection over here.

It's rainy and chilly here in San Francisco, and I'm feeling rather homesick, like Easter and spring just aren't real without family around. We'd planned to go see the Sisters' easter celebration in the park today, but it was all chilly and we had trouble getting motivated, and then the rain pretty much settled things.

Oh well. There's always next Sunday.

Doppelganger Sestina

written in class, March 19, 2005

When I was eleven, I saw my double
(Double didgets granting second
sight) rising from the yellow grass, waiting
Under swaying pine trees. It was still.
A strange hiccup, one two three.... three
Calling me, my echo, a child

The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child
In his garden chanced upon his double
And Shelley (the poet) saw his, too and died three
Days later. So: an inauspicious second
That hearts and minds and thoughts lays still
(Grass blew against its stiff legs, waiting)

Outside the house it’s waiting
Inside I’m just a child
Under blankets lying still
Counting breaths, double double
Eyes clenched against the seconds
Listening as the clock strikes three

The clock strikes three
And outside the dark is waiting
Somewhere out there stands my second
Night’s never so long as when you’re a child
At every hour the darkness doubles
At every hour, unbearably still

Chimes and echoes breaking still
Counting breaths, one, two, three, three
When I was eleven I saw my double
Standing outside, just there - waiting
I was just a child

Not prone to seeing seconds
The eye is cones and rods and retinas, still
I was a literally minded child
Who knew prime numbers (1, 5, 7, 3)
Numbers for with no factors waiting
No other’s double

As a child I saw my 2nd, counting one, two, three, three

The night still, waiting

And I was just a child. Two ones, double.

Hang spring-cleaning!

Ahh. spring in San Francisco. The weather's been between 60 and 80 (steadily! With almost no bizarre and sudden turns) for almost a week now, the clouds in the sky are there purely for their aesthetic value, and woodland creatures all over the city are feeling the first stirrings of that thing called love.

But alas.

The apartment is filthy. My papers are a complete mess; I can't find half my school things half the time, and the other half of the time someone's asking me to move them so that we can eat dinner or find the sofa or some such nonsense. And to top it off, an overnight guest is expected at the end of the week. But the Mole in me just keeps looking outside and thinking, well, how jolly it would be to be idle.

Poetry at 2 AM

Usually a bad idea

Inferno V:85

Dido
In her flocked and tattered robes superlative
Hovers idly
Without encomium or fond remembrance
For whatever oily stain was left
On Carthage’s sea salt cliffs

Love cries ring out empty
The high wind
Mocking fire’s memory
With August procession
In the flickering dim.

Just a miiinute! I'm in my niiiiighty!

Eeep! Here Tricia's gone an linked to me, and I've nothing to say. I'm working on a collection of short stories (an early version of my thesis for the conclusion of the MA portion of my MA/MFA program), and spring has completely sprung, complete with sun & flowering trees and a return to sandals as daily footwear. It's hard for a girl to stay focused.

But blogging! Must! Continue!

So, what can i tell you about my little life? Brian and I went for several walks today, one of which ended with a sausage and a beer at Toronado's. They had something on tap called 'nogginbonker,' but I was afraid to try it.

And that, my friends, is all you're getting.

The Hits Just Keep On Coming

So, I get these moods. Sometimes, even though the sun is shining, birds are chirping, and small puppies frolic in the park, I'll start to feel a case of the ol' ennui. And even though everything is going swimmingly, even though spring is here, and Herr Brian is all a girl could want, and I'm in a program that satisfies my every creative desire, I crash.

I'll sit on the couch, sinking lower and lower into despair until there's nothing left of me save a tuft of hair poking out from underneath the beige cushions. And poor Brian, who's trying to work, gets interrupted every five minutes: "I'm sorry I'm like this. You shouldn't see this." and a minute later, ""Do you love me?"

I tell you, the man's a saint. An atheist, but a saint.

Anyway, I've been like this all week. And then there was class this weekend:

Saturday:

Morning class: I'm more subdued than normal, and when I do speak I stutter, and then giggle. I hate myself for seeming weak. The instructor announces a new structure for discussions, wherein we raise our hands and wait to be called on instead of just speaking up. I can't help but feel that this is an inderect rebuke to my normally effusive classs presence.

Afternoon class: Four times, I start to speak, only to be cut off mid sentence. Twice, I am cut off mid-sentence by a prospective student. No one else seems to notice or care, particularly the instructor, who I thought liked me.

After school: I stand talking to my fellow students. J, an older man with a sort of rough and tumble sense of humor, asks "where's Brian?" in a way that makes the woman next to him hit his arm and giggle. I'm self-conscious about being the only one who's boyfreidn meets her at school. Do other people think that's weird? J gives me a ride home, along with two other girls. Getting out of the car, I trip and almost fall. I'm the only one who laughs.

Sunday:

Morning, before school: I'm running late. The toilet clogs and must be delt with. I have no clean laundry, and end up wearing a shirt that is low cut and has a tendancy to ride up at the belly. I spend the whole day intermittently pulling the collar up and the bottom down.

Morning class: I arrive ten minutes late, at the tail end of an in-class writing exercise. It looks interesting, but I don't get a chance to find out exactly what it was. During class, I work hard to make constructive comments about other's writing that I didn't particuarly enjoy, but that doesn't seem to be garnering much response. When we discuss a piece I really loved, my comments seem redundant and I have trouble articulating my thoughts.

During class break, I go outside and stand in the sun. No one esle from my class is around, except for A, a tough-seeming, pretty girl from the midwest who is sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette. I think about sharing with her my discomfort with my overly-revealing shirt, but go inside instead.

When it comes time to discuss my piece, comments are generally favorable. David, an older man who's work I enjoy, ways "Nora really has what I think makes a good writer: whe can write a good sentence." I am genuinely touched.

After class, I get back people's written responses to my piece, a work of fiction that combines first-person narrative and fragments of the protagonist's academic work. The crit from A reads as follows:

- Don't give a fuck
- If you're an academic "at university" then fucking stay there
- you're no writer if this is your kick
- this shit is hard to understand BECAUSE it has such a specific audience! We are not your audience! Academic Journals about Greek/Latin philosophy and mythology are.

then, on an interior page of the story:

It's been done - interpret something new - something folks give a fuck-in-the-hole-of a running donut ABOUT.

I go to lunch, and manage to giggle over beer and sushi with some of my classmates. We discuss (humerously) the feasability of ordering ritalin over the internet using scholarship funds.

Afternoon class: Memoir and Testimony. during the in-class writing exercises, I can hardly get myself to write. My voice seems false. Sentences don't come. Tears are pricking at my eyes. I want to go home and go to bed, but doubt my energy could even take me that far.

Did the commenter get that the piece was a work of fiction? Is my voice too obscure? Surreptitiously, I flip through the other comments, but all I see are negatives: beautiful writing, but..., the narrative sections aren't as vivid as the other bits..., Very few love notes this time. As usual, however, I'm impressed...

I feel something akin to suicidal. I want to remove myself from the picture. Deperately, I want to be gone.

Class ends. I see Brian, Chris and Ruben across the street. Chris is anxious to make dinner, which means he's anxious to plan a dinner that I'll end up cooking. They ask about class. I change the subject.

Home: I'm grouchy and unreasonable. I keep going to the bedroom to cry. Chris makes steak, I make salad. Everyone seems a bit nervous. I'm acting like the crazy head of a disfunctional family.

Oof. Anyway. Today, Tuesday, I'm meeting with my instructor to discuss my piece and the crits. I feel a bit silly, like I've been up all night staring in horror at a hooded figure lurking by the closet door, only to realize with the creeping dawn that I've been on guard against my own bathrobe.

I mean, all told, its not that bad, is it?

For the Record

I hate the sound of people chewing.

I had a strange dream last night.

I was in a small store - one of those strange boutiques you wander into, only to realize that the place is far too small and you can’t possibly browse without engaging in some manner with the proprietor. Always a source of frustration; I rarely come to buy. Anyway. This store was a magic shop (ein Zauber Kasten). It was also, I believe, a hair salon.

Anyway, as I spent time in this shop (which, by the way, had beige carpeting) I became aware of a mirror that the shopkeeper kept tucked inside an alcove. If one looked in the mirror, they would see the manner of their own death. Several people came into look in the mirror. I realized that this was one of those unpleasant rights of passage: sooner or later, I was going to have to look in the mirror, too.

Suddenly, I was in the alcove. The proprietress was cradling the back of my head, as one does in a baptism. I looked in the corner, where someone had placed an abstract sculpture made of driftwood. My head was pulled back, towards the mirror. I screamed, and then was quiet. An old woman looked back at me. I was relieved; my death would be from old age.

I looked closer. My reflections hair was gray, but her face was still young; she couldn’t be older than fifty. Her roots, strangely, were still brown. I searched the reflection desperately for clues - what could possibly cause my death at such a young age? All I could see was a strange misquito-like bite on my back leg.

I would have to dye my hair, I concluded.

Golden Ears

I am feeling the hard edge of my own selfishness lately: my need to be seen, my need to have my own specialness acknowledged. I think this may be contrapuntal to my awakening listening ear. At least I hope that it's a sign of growth.

When I signed up for this writing program, I expected to get all sorts of things out of it: heightened writing skills, to be sure, but also adulation, praise and attention. I am accustomed to receiving such things when I set my mind to a task and do it well (I offer the distinction of 'setting mind to' because I have not been accustomed, at all times, to doing so; often, especially in school, my mind has been elsewhere). I did not expect to be humbled. Particularly not with such consistency.

The other day, I spent some time with my friend D, who is also a member of the writing program. As she was driving me home, D observed that she and I had both been born with distinct advantages: I my supportive and loving family, she her high IQ.

And I was strangely upset by this. Not because I feel that my family was not an advantage, nor do I think that D is anything but brilliant. But because it was the third time in as many days that someone had pointed out their own intelligence, without mentioning anything about my own.

As my ex-boyfriend Gahlord used to say when I was upset: “feel that sting? That’s pride, fucking with you.”

Yeah, he was kind of a jerk sometimes.

Anyway: yes, it is pride. And it stings particularly, because I’ve always told myself and others that I don’t imagine myself to be smarter than anyone.

And that’s true.

But hidden deep within that was the assumption that OF COURSE others might think that I was (smarter, that is). And that my perception that, really, I am just about as smart as everyone around me, well that’s just due to my innate perspicuity. That’s right: I’m especially clever, because I can see how smart you all are. Now tell me that isn’t astute.

I am kind of a jerk, aren't I? I always imagined the onset of humility would be more enjoyable.

SO I took a nap this afternoon (as people do, when they work at home and live in california and it's spring and all is decadent) and I had the strangest dream:

We were looking at an apartment next door. We decided we didn't want it, but I started having strange dreams about the landloards late brother-in-law. We were dogsitting for my parents, and I was trying to write the dead man's brother-in-law a letter, but kept making horrible and frustrating typos. Also, I wanted pretzels.

Here's the letter (I wrote down what I'd managed to get down in my dream as soon as I woke up. It seemed very important):

Dear Mr ___

Over thepast few weeks, I have been having a series of strange dreams. The content of these dreams has led me to beleivethat I am being visited by you late brother in law, Mr Harry Davidson. Through these dreams I beleive that Mr. Davidson may be trying to communicate something of great importance. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,

Belle Anne

Hello, You.

I know, I know. If any of you are actually still out there you're wondering what on earth I'm doing in a writing program when I never write, I never call. Communication: not my forte, even now.

So - it is spring (at least today) in San Francisco. Poisonously green foliage. Great blue sky punctuated with columnular, fluffy clouds. A sense of bigness in the world. I wish I could show you the pictures in my head.

There's a park near our house: Buena Vista. The first week we lived here, Brian and I used to go for walks there every morning, and it was incredible, everything I expected California to be. When I'm walking there, I feel like a child: every tree, every snail crawling on primeveal leaves seems new, representative of a vast knowable unkown.

Reminds me of a hymn we used to sing in youth choir:
Name unnamed, given and shown, knowing unknown: gloria.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness. a combination of school and spring has untapped something for me, grammar be damned. Or maybe dammed. I probably need to drink some tea.

I've been oddly out of it lately. I haven't felt like writing. Not that I don't have any ideas (though that's definitely part of it). It's more of a self-censorship, a problem I've had on an off since my late/teens early twenties. I can't seem to take pen to paper (or in my case finger to keyboard) without asking myself: with so much noise in the world, why add to it?

I dunno. I'm probably just making excuses. Lots of schoolwork to be done. Lots of writng. And me, sitting here, feeling like I should read the Phaedrus again, but too lazy to go over to the bookcase and fetch it. And even if I did fetch it, I'm not sure I'm in the mood to read it.

Perhaps a nap is in order. Or a tub interlude.

Mmnmp.

Sleepy as heck. Brian has bad cough, and wakes the both of us up several times during the night. Need to be writing, but lack story ideas. Also, sleepy.

whaddup?

So. Oddly unverbal days of late. I've been having tremendously vivid dreams, though.

Location-wise, my dreams are fairly repetitive. I tend to have dreams that take place (at least in part) in the following areas:

1. The basement of the church I grew up attending with my mother and sister (the best of these was one wherein I was dating Axl Rose. Guns N' Roses had a 'clubhouse' in the closet where the youth choir kept robes and whatnot. Lest anyone think this was a teenybopper fantasy, let it be known that I had this dream last year).

2. The neighborhood on the border between Wakefield and Melrose, MA (a few blocks from where I grew up). In my dreams, however, this neighborhood has several added blocks, and is somewhat modular.

3. Outside my parents' house (when I was younger I'd havve reoccuring dreams that I'd be outside and unable to open the door. Or rather, I'd keep opening the door, only to find the wrong house inside. I'd have to sort through a pile of doors, trying each one on until I could get the right interior.

4. The stretch of Main Street between my old Jr High & my parents' house. The woods by my old elementary school (and the shortcut contained therin) usually play a role as well.

Hm. Is my corner of the Jungian subconscious stopped somewhere circa 1987?