Fun with (U)/(dys)topia

Reading this thing by Ira Shor, a Comp guy, (not the comp tests, the Comp studies), who gives an overview of his "frontloaded" student response class whose subject was, surprisingly, Utopia. And I saw myself teaching the class, editing his ideas, referencing works he's missing...instead of looking at what he's saying about pedagogy itself. Oops. It's interesting that he only referenced works in English...
          Of course, part of the issue is that his students are all 10 years older than me. His students didn't grow up during the grunge rock phenomenon, they weren't affected toward Marxism by the neo-Punk revolution started by Green Day in 1994, and they certainly hadn't gone through the Clinton scandal or 9/11. Teaching Utopia is different now; the questions have changed as the socio-economic atmosphere shifts further toward right wing capitalism.
          Damn, I'd love to teach a class on Utopia.
          And, every time I imagine myself teaching it, it is at Bluffton College. I mean, University.
          Shh. Don't tell. Especially Jeff, because he predicted it. He said that all my cynicism would one day turn back on itself and make me into a sentimental sap.
          That was during Modern Poetry, the class that probably meant more to me than any other class at BC. Again, shh. Don't tell. That class taught me how to handle graduate level work, before I even knew I was going to do this whole mess. That class gave me an in for Rotella's Modernism class, and wouldn't you know it. Guy Rotella stopped me in the hall Thursday to tell me that he wants to sit down and discuss my paper from last semester--in a good way! That it was a very nice paper.
          Confidence. How do you instill confidence in students? How did I get my confidence back, after I lost it my first year in grad school? Was it the summer alone with Kenneth Burke, M Keith Booker and a million other social and linguistic theories? Was it the anime? Is it that I now talk to Kari every day of the week, for at least 5 minutes? When did it shift?
          I once told Jeff that improvement for me doesn't happen like it does to other people. Most people gradually work toward a goal. For me, however, it's like electrons. You know. Electrons can only have certain energies, and there is no y=mx + b line to show how they increase in energy. Instead, it's sections of long plateaus followed by giant, sudden leaps, with white space in between. The shells around a nucleus are levels, not sloping lines; there is no connection. And when an electron shifts levels, it happens in a burst of light. Not that I also create bursts of light, but that the movement is sudden, and I rarely notice the change until much later in the plateau (I am sure electrons also do not notice their changes in location).
          What does this have to do with Utopia? My thinking on it has shifted again; I realize, reading Shor's article, that I must rethink the rhetorical situation of U/dys-topian lit. That in many ways, I am correct that it is written to be received by all audiences, and that the general public is aware enough of the conditions of Utopia and the problems it could pose. In many other ways, however, I have forgotten that although anyone can understand the literature, few actually pick up the books to engage in that relationship I outlined. I need to add one more factor, one more causality, into my neat little equation, one which will complicate the hell out of things, but will clean up the ultimate problem I have with rhetorical criticisms in general: How is it actually received? What are the conditions that are behind any one reading of the text? Other than shoving the book in their hands and holding a gun to their heads, how do publicists convince readers to read? Who else, other than publicists, do this job? What other conditions surround the reading of dystopian texts? Utopian texts? Don't they necessarily assume an engaged reader? What happens when the reader is forced to read ( F451 in high schools, for example)? What about the physical presence of the book?
          Silly Amy. How could I have overlooked such simple things? The theory, Oh, the theory....

Essay of DOOM, Part the Third

I've changed my mind about where this essay is going next. Some notes:
In discussing the "Text, Context, and Subtext" of the genre, I left a lot implied. What I was trying to say was that the con/text of fanfics includes fan knowledge of the originary text, and that the various texts and rhetorics surrounding the fanfics come from fan knowledge. I used Dragonball as an example of the types of knowledges fans bring to texts.
I also wanted to highlight the fact that many of these fanfics are--and I think I got distracted from my purpose in my paragraph about fanfiction.net--recast by the authors into a different genre. Genre distinctions on fanfiction.net and mediaminer.org are part of the search criteria that allows readers to narrow the results--a necessity for a site that features fanfics in the thousands for some series. While the specific genres are different for each site, some remain a constant: Action, Adventure, Humor, Drama, Angst (itself an interesting "new" genre), Romance, Mystery, Scifi, Fantasy, and Tragedy. Of the 1500 or so pages of fanfics for InuYasha, for example, more than 900 identify themselves as being "Romance," which isn't a surprise, considering that the anime and manga are both considered Romantic Comedy. Of the 1200 pages of Dragonball Z fanfics, however, 500 are identified as Romance--a rather large portion for a series known for its martial arts and long battle scenes against evil, nearly immortal monsters. It is perhaps a moot point to make to say that one of the jobs of the genre is to "fill in the gaps," as it were, the gaps left by the original creator. In action-based series, particularly those with well developed characters like DBZ, it is not surprising that authors turn to the characters' love lives for a point of extension.

now, back to the flow of things. Next I'm going to look at restrictions... Think of this next section as a giant insert that goes before the sentence I started in my last entry on "audience."

Restrictions and Constraints
Bitzer finds that rhetorical texts, while initiated by exigency, are constructed according to the various restrictions and constraints--both practical and contextual--placed on the text. I have already mentioned some of these restraints: in order to be published on a fanfic database website, a text must follow the terms of service of that site. Mediaminer.org's recent ban of CYOA or "Role-playing fanfics" is one such restriction; now all texts must be written in standard prose forms, and in the first or third person. Both Mediaminer and fanfiction.net reserve the right to remove texts that are "disrespectful of the English language" in that they use "chat language" or are vastly erroneous in spelling and grammar. Fanfiction.net reserves the right to remove material they deem to be above an "R" rating; because the authors select the rating themselves, this can be problematic. What constitutes "R" is arguable; in general, there are to be no "full blown 'lemons,'" although "lime" and "citrus" are allowed. Most fanfic users understand "lemons" to include graphic description of sexual intercourse, where as "lime" or "citrus" are respectively less graphic, constituting a continuum that allows users to restrict their own reading, or the reading of their children. "Lemonade," "limeade," "orange" and other derrivatives have been created to be even more specific, but the lemon/lime distinction holds the most sway for what constitutes a restricted text.
The creation of jargon and euphemisms to talk about such restrictions points to the existence of a discourse community and the concerns of that community. That such a wide selection of descriptive jargon has been created to aid users points to the users' knowledge of restriction, and their respect for it as a constituting element of their texts and community. While here I could expound on some of the other salient issues in the lemon/lime disctinction, including the constituting of a normalized sexuality, I will leave that for others to discuss. For a discussion of "slash" fiction (called so for the slash mark between gender pairings such as f/f, m/m, m/f and various other combinations) and its work, see Berg Nellis and Kelly Anne Colleen's forthcoming dissertation on the fan community of X files, "Making Sense of Television: Interpretive Community and 'The X-Files' Fan Forum. An Ethnographic Study."
Legal restrictions are also a necessary and defining element of fanfiction.

I'm going to stop here for a moment. It seems like a good place to stop. Plus, since the "apocalypse" hit Boston, I've been feeling lethargic, and the warm computer lab, the white noise of the heater above my head, the quiet chatter from the Writing Center, are all working together to make me want a nap. A lap around the building should clear my head.

Impromptu

Excuse the fluffy crap about to follow. Perhaps the snow froze my brain.
      I was talking to a student last night, as we all frantically prayed for a snow day (woohoo!), and I clicked on his profile and followed the links to his photography page. Wow. How beautiful. Go there now:
Ted's Photos


      Something about this reminded me that texts can be beautiful. And for just a second, I remembered why it's called a Master of Arts.

      That's not to say that theory isn't good, or that criticism shouldn't be done. Hell, no! Sometimes I just forget to appreciate it for what it is...unfortunately, we even have a theory for that....
      As I am not yet in that elusive writing space, I will not return to the Essay of Doom until I am passionate again. This could happen at any moment, but will most likely occur as I try to sleep after writing my paper for Thursday. Adrenaline must be fettered out. In the meantime, as I read Rhetorical Bodies, I come across an essay written sometime in 1998, which states, "Lately the World Wide Web [note his language here], the most powerful publishing technology ever created to distribute both words and images, has provoked an eruption of jeremiads about how the Web is destroying literacy as we conceive of it in the academy. We hear that critical thinking and reflection, a sense of order, dialectical interaction, logical relations in texts, depth of analysis, trails of sources, and the reform mission of public discourse [we have a mission?] are all going to be lost. Even those who take a more balanced view fear that the multimedia capability of the Web will undermine or overwhelm the power of prose" (Faigley, 175). Please note that five years later, I am quoting this on a web site entirely devoted to prose, and that images are limited on this website. Note that fanfics in all languages make up millions upon millions of webpages. And that even if these are not "ordered" or "logical" or necessarily "literate" (in the sense that it obeys social conventions of the use of English), the power of prose over the power of image is going strong in these websites. So there.

      So here's some beauty and truth (note the lack of capitalization) I did earlier, after anime. A little self-absorbed, the first of these refers to...well, actually, I'm not going to say. I'd hate for people at GBC to find this and blame me for their diminishing numbers. And I'm not promising anything on punctuation or grammar.

Leatherlips

it's at all the "we's" that I'm flinching
it's the feel of the pain under my nails that makes me whole
the cold snow breath smelling like winter leaves degrading
the fire stove baking hot chocolate down to skin
it's the cards damp and woody
it's the humid room and drying clothes
tossed on the floor in tears
it's the dimmed lights, the candle lit nights
the way our faces shaddow when we are most afraid of hell
it's the song master singing his weaknesses
it's the strings of his guitar that make me try to cry
I want to be a part of the weeping
I want to save my soul, but something keeps me back
steeped in the tradition, I note it now, cold
the full metal of the beds, cult-like arrangmenet--
arraignment of the criminal soul.
The lines we await for God in
that we find our turns in
the moist heat of the kitchen not drying our eyes
but normalizing the brightness of the overhead lights
To be transformed is to be in the snow
to join in love as with the football
escape to the cabins that expect grief
Here is the promise of truths told
here is the promise I broke
the black notebook
that they told me to destroy
The singular tension,
not enough breathing
nothing left to free me from the folding chairs.

      I think that was what Wordsworth meant when he did the whole "spontaneous overflow of emotion" thing. Not that I agree with anything of WW's arena. I'm just saying. "Even a broken chonometer gives the correct data twice per solar cycle." (Star Trek--Data)

      Here's another of my post-apocalyptic things. As Sharron said tonight, "Why is it people like you and me are so fascinated with shows about demons?" I know why I am...But I doubt everyone else sat through readings of Revelation as many times as I did. Oh well. Here's another one. Call it a vision. It's in the past tense.

Floor model

when all the feilds flashed cobalt for the last time
the sky opened to reveal
the circular nature of things
a gold ring
a sliver halo
to undo in a holy split
our grounded nickel earth

a certain time has passed again
enough to find what it means to end
and what it is between the beginnings
that ferrets new grasses
that eclipses new suns
that wakes us again
to find only one scar

      It made me feel good. Back to Rhetorical Bodies . This one is about how illiteracy (and illiterate people) have become constructed. There's even mention of the people of Appalachia....

The other end of text

Theory hurts brain. Must do something else. Must stop talking like HAL.
I submitted to some online poetry journals from WebDelSol (of which MidAmerican Review and other print journals are also a part) this weekend. There really seems to be a market now for prose poetry/flash fiction, and the more I do it, the more I like it. Here's one of the "new" ones I'm working on. Actually, it's a revision....And it's somewhere right between prose poetry and flash fiction, which is nice. It's, as the Mid American Review says, "A fineline" between pp and ff.
Truce

Each of them stands and her “because” falters, not with a long reach extended by the wrong side, but with daylight’s measure of their errors. Something like peace comes of this, and their wings grow out, erections carping freshly at half-joking door slams. They are home, still not looking directly at each other (their eyes are too dilated). Each of them stands: It has passed. The scent of Brazil refills this mean space and lets out a few survivors too directly, coated by capes of postwar elation.
Diesel engines announcing into the garage tell the band of merry men their ass is his . He pines over something, grins, begins a rate for them to follow, a pace to lead them to their background. In an ass-cold moment, his demeanor slips, he sits, indeed has a sailor’s sigh, shows her the mark of the tube at his wrist. The Because and the But fall to a robot’s ears, crisply ebonite in the parking lot. You (or I) rake a needle through the layer, where a tine scrapes all the crust off his heart. Shake hands and twist.

And another
Compromise

I drowned him soundly up there, while occupied with the muddled lovers and/or their photographs; she was riddling out the girls who believe on it, having an hour to doctor her quirks.
One of us, (opening our eyes, finally concerned,) sure of a movement from empty plots cooling, tips and paints boldly on the closed bowl what was a parish of enthusiastic smiles once, and makes neat little masters of them, all for me.
My numbness was shaken as you smiled. I would have had you care, as you worked out our next inference in notes. Once spotted, he was banged up, used, murmured about, his status stopped at the shoulders and ransomed.

Who the hell knows where this is going?
Even to the edge of doom where metaphors are. Even to call and demand "Bloom!" to the flowers at the altar splayed velvet there. Even to step lightly, to spew nightly the effects of the sun. Even to jump in the mud where melted snow was.
Inevetiably involves how the debate makes feeble mother's fears zenith. Even to bow low with the years, obsession, choice, and service is to hold yourself away from June--abdominals straining--and not mention wars, or, moreover, anything natural or permanent. Have we a thousand mesas to skirt? Have we money trees on the island?

Essay of the Damned, Part II

Gerald once said something about entering the "writing space" and being unable to leave, giving that as his excuse for keeping me and Andrea long after the Wit meetings were over, feeding us theory like candy, which was good, since we hadn't eaten.

I was talking with Emma tonight about this essay, and realized just how big the topic is. And suddenly, in a spontaneous overflow of dry academia, I saw my dissertation. The chapters aligned themselves, the bibliography became manifest. And I immediately became frightened.

On with the show.
      MediaMiner.org, on the other hand, is devoted almost entirely to anime fandom, although Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings also appear on the series list. In addition to hosting fanfics, Mediminer allows users to upload fan rendered drawings based on anime/manga ("fanart"), to review and rate a series, and to participate in Role Playing Games (PRGs), in which participants of the game take turns writing paragraphs or scenes from "their" character's point of view. The RPG section has grown recently, due to new restrictions placed on the genres and types of fanfics allowed in the searchable database. Second person stories and "Create your own Adventure" (CYOA) stories were moved to the RPG section in the Fall of 2004. Notices on the home page in red alert users to this new restriction, and points them to the RPG forums for further information.
The rhetorical situation: Audience, Restrictions, Exigency
      In noting the volume of texts being produced from the originary text, and the available means of publication, I am already beginning to frame the rhetorical situation of fanfics. Bitzer used the term "rhetorical situation" to identify the elements that shape a piece of rhetoric. While he was thinking primarily of the texts studied by speech communication departments, his framework is also helpful here. If we take seriously the injunction of Kenneth Burke and Jacques Derrida (Eek! I couldn't avoid mentioning him!) that spoken and written texts differ little and should not be placed in heirarchies of "rhetoric" and "literature" or "speech" and "writing," Bitzer's three areas composing the "rhetorical situation" becomes applicable.
      Bitzer identifies what he calls "Exigency," "Audience," and "Constraints or Restrictions" to compose his understanding of Aristotle's "kairos," which Bitzer translates as "situation." To understand how fanfics are composed--and thus to understand their arguments and overall purpose--I will attempt to describe the rhetorical situation of the genre. I have already begun this task in my framing of the object of study for this essay: in defining "fanfic" I necessarily had to limit my scope to those pertaining to anime, and to those that are available to read via a searchable database. In order to narrow even further, I have already mentioned which types of fanfic I am concerned with: those legitimated by fanfiction.net and Mediaminer.org. This framing is fairly arbitrary, except to say that these are the texts that I am most familiar with, and are the most easily accessible.
      In invoking Bitzer's framework, I will also begin to touch on the second part of my essay, an analysis of the rhetorical moves of three specific fanfics. This is probably avoidable, but because the domain of fanfics is itself transitory and contingent on multiple overlapping factors, it is difficult to isolate what is "Rhetorical move" from what is "constrained by situation." Because some of the boundaries can only be unblurred by taking into account authorial intention, I will avoid making distinctions between my modes of analysis in those areas where proof of intent would be needed to clarify the motive behind the resulting text.
Exigence
      Perhaps one of Bitzer's most difficult categories to extrapolate into the literary arena is Exigence. While the exigence of a Presidential Inaugural Speech or newspaper article is fairly obvious, the need-fulfilling purpose of not just fanfics but of poems, short stories and novels, is not quite as clear. In the materially published literary arena, one could cite "financial gain" as exigence, or "fame" or "need to inform audience of their own world," the first of these being perhaps the easiest to understand in Bitzer's terms. Burke uses the term "attitude" to describe the purpose of literature--that is, to move the audience toward a certain attitude. "The Waste Land," then, would have the exigency of showing readers that their time is a time like no other, that the world is in trouble. It is difficult to talk about exigency, however, when literature, in general, is produced and written over longer periods of time than speeches and news copy.
      What need does fanfiction fill? What recurring social situation (to use the language of modern genre theorists) does it respond to? It would be easier to study the exigency of the production of specific texts who have specific authors than to make a statement about the exigency of the genre as a whole. What immediately comes to mind are recent studies on "fandom" and the psychology of those who participate in fan-related activities. Instead of giving an overview of those theories here, I believe the important aspects can be summed up using Barry Brummett's understanding of Burke's "representative anecdote," that some texts are written as ways of mediating social tensions. That entire genres exist to both alleviate some of the tension from the author's life--that is, to play out the situation and imagine solutions--and to give readers a road map to follow in their own lives. Fanfics remove the responsibility of creating an entire world-the originary text has already established parameters--and instead allow the writer and reader to project onto pre-set characters problems which then play themselves out in the resulting story. Because the originary text is one the fan is highly familiar with, and, being "fiction" is always/already more stabilized and predictable than the real world, fanfics provide a sense of comfort as well as creation: While there are already some constraints on the author before she even begins to write, the author can (and often does) create a fairly complex story line, introducing new characters (often based on friends or family of the author) and new relationships between them. The resulting texts are heavily descriptive and highly imaginative, since the author often must invent a way to let him or herself into the text without ignoring or revising the original.
      This is just one instance of exigency in fanfics. The exigencies of fandom itself are far too complex for this essay. I would suggest (without any other proof than my own experience) that there is, at this point in American culture, a desire to be in more contact with the originary text, to enter more fully into the discourse so as to completely be in communication (see Plato's "Phaedrus"). I will, however, leave that observation for others to study.
Audience
      My opening anecdote about my own experience becoming an audience member provides some basis for analyzing the audience members.


And...I can't do any more. I need sleep! Now that I've set up the structure, this should be fun!

Essay: Stuff I'm thinking about...

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Happy Birthday, Robert E Lee!

And you too, Mom.

Some drunken idiots last night were shouting. That, unfortunately, was not what kept me awake until 3:45.

No, let's go with Procrastination Consequences for that one.

And it'll be like this the rest of the semester. Oh, God. Rage, rage, against the coming of the light. Rage, rage, against the reading of the night.

The spots in my vision have become 3-D. If not for the threat of failing the comps, I'd go home and go rest. Instead, I am waiting for the meeting, waiting to undo the hegemony of meetings. We all want to. There will be leaders nonetheless, who will tell us what is important and what it means to be a student.

And what it means to drink yourself blind, like Milton, only he didn't drink. He just became blind.

A dozen varieties of the same paper, a dozen ways of teaching, of letting them drink from my brain, from my chi. The dantien is empty right now. Come back later.

I have gone to find myself, etc etc etc

They gave me my extra shot for free again today. Too bad it was just espresso.

Brain Freeze, Brain Fry

      Kate and I used to do this thing, when we thought the same thing at the same time. We'd touch index fingers and say "Brain freeze" then wiggle all of our fingers while making hissing noises, saying "Brain Fry."

That was before I called her Kate.

The night is only dim here
it's raw and constant
how the hours sllither in between the thoughts
that send much needed chills down my spine

      I drove Shuijuan past the bowling alley where we used to spend so much time, and no one asked questions. I could have sworn that it was less dingy then, but then of course, the awe of aging was robbed from me by my stupid brain, which immediately informed me that nostalgia and all forms of it are just different versions of some ideology meant to keep me from acting radically.

And thus the average epiphany was thwarted. I tried not to look at apartment 14, and instead remembered to be a good driver.

They ask me when the day is
it's when the silence isn't filled
when the harp stops pinging solidly
when the melancholy of the background music
fails to tingle in my gut

      I suppose there are worse things than missing out on epiphany. We talked about epiphany and Elizabeth Bishop in class, and I'm pretty sure we came to a conclusion that Bishop didn't believe in epiphanies, not as positive, life-directing moments. They can always cause you harm later, they can be merely constructs, they can make you move back to Boston.

      I got an email from Purdue on Friday, from a woman identifying herself as Jill. She told me my application was complete. She called me Amy, and signed it Jill. It was very warm, for a short, generic (of a genre) letter. I mean, email. I mean e-letter.

     Epiphanies are so rare these days, that I should appreciate the little ones. There is a woman in Indiana named Jill who wants to call me Amy.

The man said he saw Paul standing behind me
the heat waves off my thighs
in the middle of a phrase, the words shift
to something like mangoes, to cornucopias
to the science of fiction, the art of waiting
(It's not hard to master) to read the right line

      Sometimes I forget that those places still exist. Have I become the true New Englander, who can't see west beyond Foxboro? Can I live without public transportation? Even sucky public transportation like the T? Do I remember how to buy gas every week? What if everything outside of these eight blocks or so is actually just a bedtime story?

      Then again, stories matter, they always have. Or I wouldn't be doing this. It's not about Material Science. It's about Material Rhetoric, the stuff we live in.

Staring at black lines and platonic wisdom
Paul can stand behind me or beside me
when I turn out the lights and hate myself
for letting the sun come up so quietly
for not seeing the transition into dawn
When I crawl into my cave and shut my eyes
against the maddened crowd, against the material
of my wet washcloth that won't be dry by dusk.

Red Sox? Now?

      Earlier tonight I was chatting with Laura Callahan, mentioning my raging writers block ("rage, rage against the shoe leather?") when she asked me to post this. Well, always happy to have fans, I am complying. But I am including the entire email sent that night, since "we" get to frame the "text" however we want, and for me, this text includes the informality of the email message sent with it. SO THERE, you cultural studies theorists. I framed the freaking text FOR YOU.





I have written a poem, since some of you could not be here in Boston for this "historical" occasion of the Sox beating the "Damn Yankees" in the ACLS. If
> you don't know why it's historical, I'm not going to tell you. It's enough to say that I am shocked and awed (allusion intended) at what I've seen this week, not just sports-wise, but community/tradition wise. For those who don't know, Northeastern students rioted when the Pats won the Superbowl, and NEU has a reputation for having "rougher" students (meaning not Ivy league) and the city councils are always blaming us for everything negative about the Fenway neighborhood. The culmination of which was a new police action plan, and the future release of all student identity information to the city for students living off campus. I'm frustrated, my students are frustrated, the profs are frustrated, and I just saw something I've only read about in 1984 , unfolding the last two days before my very caffeinated eyes. So, here it is. The title sucks. So do the Yankees.
P.S. Kari--can you forward to R Eric's address? I seem to have lost it...Chadd's too. And anyone else I've forgotten that you think would find this suckiness interesting? Thanks and peace. I hope.
Love Amylea, from the center of Red Sox Nation, unable to sleep for the chaos...

To all: A Mass Email in three parts
I.
It's 2:13 a.m.
The game has been ended for two hours and
the honking has continued in one mass GM motors blast across the city
across the Fens
into the Atlantic
So that Iceland has just received the first echoes
of our joyous moments
Those initial confused sounds of disbelief
Damon's grand slam that made me choke on
Potato chips and Swedish chocolate
and Now the cops are chasing
the sounds of honking
the bongo drums
the Hip hops
around the block in a figure eight
Storrow Drive
to Mass ave
To Westland ave
to Storrow again
and around the Fenway Drive (Marked with green on all maps, but mostly concrete paths for runners and rapists)
In rhythm to "Shave and a Hair cut"
Two Bits.

II
"Who's your daddy? Who's your Papi?
Here we go Red Sox, Here we Go!"
and the happy chants move from praise
to suggestions of what New York can do
in its new found spare time post season
And I am not sure that a city is capable
of doing said items; if so, watch for it on the news
for it will do more damage than the terrorists ever could.
The helicopters overhead blinking their lights
Remind me of X-files and Conspiracy Theory
(They've come around the block again: Honk Honk honk-honk Honk)
There will be a run on cough drops at CVS tomorrow morning
I've watched 16 hours of baseball in four days
and it was only by exhausting the spirit of the city
that the Sox maintained their chi with ease
We've been yawning (see www.boston.com for article
titled "Who needs sleep?")
in the office hours, abandoning mending walls for
trancending them (Grand slam from the White Jesus)
And we thought God would be mad at us
for closing half the Churches in town and selling
them for apartment buildings...

III
If I never hear another honk again, another
"%&$ the Yankees' big money!" or
"Red Sox kick ASS"
I will be happy
I could write something about
the rhetoric of fandom and the opiate of the masses
but I'm trying to restrain myself from throwing open the window
--this time in anger, head between the changing ivy--
and telling the post adolescent males
what they can do with their car horns
Something like
      consubstantiation (sharing of substance, Burkean Identification)the city, across the ages, back to
Bambino's curse--
     screw it all! Kamino kaze (the guardian's wind)
     blows colder and angrier into the night
     as Bambino's spirit retreats to gather strength
for Saturday
One might say the sound of (non)sense outside is
like the ocean
continual yet ever changing
but one would be a moron (the honking has now set off
car alarms in the parking garage above the Organic Foods store)
The third news helicopter, probably Fox 25 from way out near Framingham
is hovering over our neighborhood--look for the line of white
that runs tangent to the Prudential center
Those are the apartements next door that
go for $2300 a month for a one bedroom.
Rage, rage against the dying of the night
old men should waive their right outright
to claim it's Northeastern Students who fight in
streets by moonlight...
My dystopian playthings draw closer than ever
The police in black riot gear
helmets with gas masks on most
billy clubs out
Kevlar vests with headlight reflectors
marching in a familiar beat
(Could they be humming the Ashland High School drum cadence
as they tromp down the center of Westland?)
One car in front
four colums
eight rows
one car in back
facing straight ahead
--somewhere west of here,
they are going north as well, if they're
being all strategic like it's war--
and I pull Emma out of bed to say
"That, that I've never seen before.
That's. That is."
I lean against the cold radiator
my face against our window
(note to self, clean window tomorrow)
"Unbelievable."

So confused with...Canonization?

Unwiredmascot's Comprehensive Guide to Being Comprehensive

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10 hours of reading in preparation for a presentation

10 weeks of two hour meetings with other, haggard students

5 Norton Anthologies of Literature to reread

2 nervous breakdowns

9 folders full of class notes

2 reams of notes from other students

38 student papers to grade, during those "down times"

The kit comes with the following poem as a "practice" test. Think about the following questions:
What literary school does this poet probably identify herself with?
What era is this: Modern or Post Modern? How? Why?
To what canonized author is she referring to in the last four lines? For what rhetorical purpose? How does knowing the referent of the allusion help you interpret this poem? How might that author react to her use of his/her lines in this way?
What rhetorical devices does she use?
What major literary critics have said something about the referred to author? Why is this important?
Does anyone read poetry for fun anymore? Explain.





Contrary

you should know by now
that the contradictions in her spirit
are the source and pride of the nation
you, after all, loved her first
and last, and always

they now can say
that it is all in the child she was
How could she act,
so confused with powers
How could she become,
so entrenched in flowers?

Wired for Comps

It begins!
Ohmygod, it begins.
Yesterday the 2nd years (that's me) held a meeting to break up responsibilities for comps studying. I didn't go for 2 reasons:

1. I am not in the Literature emphasis, unlike 75% of the group
2. I felt like hell after falling out of bed Monday

Both of these were valid reasons for not going. According to the reports, I didn't miss much. They will be reviewing Lit Crit for the next three weeks, before moving on to the periodization stuff. That's where I need to study--I can apply theory in my sleep (ask roommates!) but to put a text in context requires background knowledge I'm still fuzzy on.

For example: Romanticism. I don't like it. It tries to relate nature and humanity. Rugged individualism, poet as prophet, the Eolean Harp/Wind, exploration, Imagination, etc. But who was responsible for these? I know WW and Coleridge both wrote various lit crits, but what were they? How did they differ? Literera Biographia or something like that was Col's work. It contradicted WW's, and they had a fight. But what was it? What about Pater and Ruskin, in the Victorian era? Something about Pre-Raphaelites? Hair? Decadence? Bloomsbury Groups? EEEEEEEKKKK!!

It all blends into other things. And as for historical-political-social stuff, forget it, unless we're talking American. I couldn't tell you a damn thing about the state of the British empire--I mean, yeah, there was all that sucky colonialism, but who was the monarch/prime minister? What Acts of Parliament are important? What about Women?!

It's time to reread the Nortons Again. I think it's going to be a long semester. Again.

Let There Be Weekend!

Oh, to let the sun in through the brick
to let it munch on fog
to see the Pru in its entirety,
This is too much for a January day,
for Thursday in Boston!

The air dies wet on the skin of our faces
The light drops heavy at 3:30
While cold and unwound.
It's too too solid in my plush chair
I'm too unsteady for an Early Thursday.

The dark spot on the top
the darker streak on the bottom
like the aqua guidelines for pagination
Nudge me to snap-to destinations.
They point me home when it's dark at 6:00.

Unverbed gerunds that go here
are meant to break the monotonous The
They displace the lines to weigh the balance,
to make a statement about statements
to focus the eye on the the Un.

What you eat is what you are;
I do not eat, but drink.
The clocks' disparate readings fogged the morning
Is it seven, or eight or some-thirty?
Is it already over, this second Thursday?

Comm theories and my future

Holy Theoretical Frameworks, Batman!

      I'm reading this thing in one of the Comm Studies journals from like 1985, before it got completely all cultural studies-y and way out there with Butler's performatives, and I run across (read: Was Assigned) this article that is so happily up my sadistic little theoretical alley. This dude, Ehrenhaus (Didn't Gerald mention him?) is talking about Silence as Object of Study and Silence as Experience . This is lots of fun! Silence is only silence when the person/thing communicating fails to elicit a response, that is, when the symbolic fails to symbolize something for the reader! In this way, Silence-as-absence-of-speech is golden, because it speaks in different ways, so that "the story ceases to be told by the speaker and becomes a story to be created by each who would listen."
      One sucky thing about this critic dude is that he is totally dissing Brummett! You know, Brummett, the Burkean scholar who "translates" Burke into critical approaches. Brummett! The dude who took Kenny's very abstract, very theoretically based idea of discourses creating representations of events (the representative anecdote) which we then use as Master Narratives to Live Life By, and turned it into a method of reading texts such as movies and novels! This dude Ehrenhaus has a beef with Brummett's idea of silence having "predictable" interpretations. Lay OFF MY BARRY!
      What does this have to do with anything? Well, I got the email today from Minnesota saying that they now have all my stuff and will start processing promptly. And I'm reading this cultural rhetoric and reading this Rhet/comp stuff, and I wonder if I really can be in an English Department much longer, or be in a lit-based program. I could handle Texas, looking at their philosophy of English Studies as multi-departmental, multi-faceted. And most of the other programs I applied to are either concentrated in "theory" or "cultural studies" (to cause Mom even more problems when she is asked what I "do"--no one really knows what it means to "do" theory or cultural studies). But Minnesota is fairly lit centered. And I don't think I can do it, when I love this other stuff so much. Art and Jazz have especially impacted me of late as "texts" which can be read in similar ways that I'm reading movies and lit--this isn't really new to me, but they have been more interesting and present to the upper level of my consciousness lately. Maybe because it's just something different. This is the sixth straight year I've been thinking about literature and narrative and post modernism and the ability to actually say something. In comp class Monday I found myself writing that phrase that made Pam Nath laugh so hard when we were in Chicago: It's all just words.
      That's not to say that words are insignificant, that they are so disconnected from the signified that there is no meaningful communication. No--sorry, Derrida. It's more that the word-ness has become so cliched (?) in my head. The linguistics of it breaks from the reason I like to read in the first place: That moment when the outside world is completely gone, and the words stop being things you are reading, and there's that internal hum as you become one step removed from the physical plane. Letting loose the subconscious to play--that's why I like the series by Jasper Fforde. He removes the idea of the pleasure of the text being in the interpretation. Like Prof Rotella said, literature is in danger because we are too busy privileging how it is read to actually read.
      Maybe I am thinking about switching programs because I want to change objects of study. Or methods of studying the same object. Or ways objects of study can be changed by changing departments. Or something like that. I just know that there is little joy in lit crit for me, unless it's the heavy, dense, Derridian stuff. The joy is now in cultural criticism and rhetoric. And, maybe it always has been.

Collage

      Patricia Somebody, who came to speak as part of the interview process for NEU's hiring of a new director of the writing programs, spoke about teaching and evaluating "experimental" student writing. She kept refering to the "collage," of which Susan Griffin's "Our Secret" essay is an example. Collages are meant to break down genre lines, to make us question what genres do, even as information is presented and art is made within the text. Somehow, however, this "anti-generic form" has become a genre.

Where's your messiah wound?
"Never seen a blue sky
Yeah I can feel it reaching out
And moving closer."

      This should not surprise "us." It doesn't. Instead it just annoys us. Now I'm reading for my Rhetoric As Cultural Studies class, and the issue of genre comes up again, and by "issue" I am refering to the Problem of Generic Definitions.

When they are running through the forest, she clings to his back and sighs.
"Things are turning deeper shades of blue."

      In this essay, Carol Blair--a visual/material rhetorician--describes what she does as a critic, and why it's important. She makes it feel so simple: She wants to "understand my own response" (Blair, "Public Memorializing in Postmodernity"). She even lays out clearly what makes a good rhetorical criticism: "a clear theoretical base and/or generalized implications for rhetorical theory or criticism" . (Blair, "Memorializing" 345). This was something I knew implicitly, but had never been able to articulate before: Why study it? Because it makes us feel something we don't understand. Why write about it? Because the object's full impact is not explicit, and we want others to know what the hell is going on. What is the larger purpose of studying a single ("particular") event? To fine tune theories that help us figure out what is happening in the real world, so that we can avoid misunderstandings that lead to griefs. Because we're all inscribed in/by language, and language is not utopian in nature.

Slipped, clung, iron reaver soul stealer on the heel of my hand, red faced when imagining the binding coming loose.

      Blair talks about all the memorials that have been created recently. She talks about the Kent State Memorial. I don't remember it, although I know I walked around it every day while at "Journalism Camp." I know I ate lunch on it one day, thinking of how war was bad, but not knowing, then, how bad. It was made of stone, but few memorials aren't. I remember framing it as an issue of the First Amendment, which I knew better than I knew the Ten Commandments. I remember it as being the first time I really understood punk music and the whys of the anarchists--that things go very wrong as a result of ideologies some times. Back then, I didn't know the word ideology. Now that I do...what? I am a better person? I have certainly signed more petitions, spoken with more (other?) knowledgeable people about social resistance. But I think I was more in touch (no pun intended) with the memorial when I sat on it or walked around it, bleary eyed. It was solid. It was in my way. It needed explaination. It was a presence meant to represent an absence in memory, but I had no memory to invoke. Memorials "answer needs" says this other critic, Morris. There are "energies" that need to be "marshaled."

Rust in the bathtub
Milk in my coffee cup overflowing
Needs are turning leaves in autumn
on the flickering, pall side
that fall upside down
brown or red once in the mud.

Rhetoric and Rhet/Comp

     It's like going home, reading the cultural rhetoric pieces.
     Last semester I felt like I was crazy, not only because of all the work and lack of sleep, lack of exercise, lack of interaction outside of a classroom, but also because the literary realm has become unfamiliar territory. I kept asking myself, "So What?" I mean, it is lovely and ( oh how I hate this word ) interesting to do readings of what the text means or says about the world but then what?

     What is the purpose of all this? To become better human beings? I'm not sure that reading Robert Frost or Elizabeth Bishop--or even reading them in tandem--will help me do that. This is where rhetoric comes in, I suppose. We assume that the artists want us to learn something so that we'll do something. To what end?
     Perhaps I am having a crisis of faith in the goals of liberal education, those goals I have held firm since the first time I criticized my mother for watching soap operas when she could be learning (age 4, I think). I am 24 years old. It may also be that here, in Boston, in a (more) diverse setting, in a larger population, I have become uncertain that the motive to "save" the world one student at a time through recognizing ideologies is worth the effort. I still believe that texts change people. Now it has become a question of Mass (pun intended). The strange, cliched ideas that we are all here to help each other (!?!) and that making a difference in even one person's life is worth it (?!?) don't seem to be enough.
     I keep watching the death tolls rise in Iraq, and want to scream that it's all because of rhetoric. I feel responsible, somehow, for the duping of the conservatives. Liberal guilt with a twist: I feel that if I had taught enough, or if someone like me had, then this wouldn't have happened. I know that isn't true. But since when did knowing that it's not my fault help?
     Why go on to a PhD? In my personal statements, I went with the "save the world" thing--to teach and to learn. To analyze and to compare notes. To not feel so alone in this endeavor of teaching by becoming a fully legitimated member of the academy. I had such a hard time writing it because I was second guessing my motives the entire time: Why study rhetoric? Why teach it? Why can't I decide which version of rhetoric I want to be a part of--the Rhetoric of Speech Communication Studies, or the Rhetoric of Rhet/Comp? Why do they have to be different? They are both concerned with how discourse is used to gain power and to connect a reader and a writer. Isn't that part of understanding a piece of literature, of understanding what it means? Of becoming a better human being through reading? In order to understand what it means, we must also know how it means. So why is the Rhetoric of Comm departments different from the rhetoric of Comp departments? Or rather, How? Where does this desire to separate come from? Aren't we done with distinctions like that?

And once I am legitimated, can I change departmental politics? Will I even want to by then?

Theoretical Blog

I wrote a blog for today. It was almost done, and I hit a key. Everything I had written disappeared. It's probably a sign that I was repeating myself into nothingness.
So it goes.
I was writing about theory and the problems of ideology. About how ideology has come to be a negative term. About the belief we all have in free will and selfhood. About Sessame Street and Mr. Rogers telling me that I Am Special and You Are Too, and how even our critiques of ideologies seem to want to preserve this. I wrote about how the death of uniqueness is the death of selfhood in Western cultures. About the hero, and dystopia and how I came to be concerned with escape from hells on earth. And now, about how I'm questioning my original intent to write a theory of reading dystopian rhetoric that gives agency back to the individual reader and individual writer, one that rescues the dead hero at the end of the novels.
About how writing is an attempt at redemption. The teaching of writing has underneath it an intent to save the world. Compostition teachers are mavericks, or want to be. Underneath it all is the belief that things right now are quite bad. This probably comes from the Platonic division of the Body and Soul, which Paul picked up on--as long as things are physical, like bodies and communication, we're all screwed.
About how I don't think it matters anymore. Now that we recognize that language is ideological and everything is language, we must either be hopeless or purposefully ignorant. Now that we know that we can't know about how writing happens, we are stuck in the theoretical. The human mind remains unpenetrable, thank God. Writing remains in the misty regions of gray matter. Thank God. The dystopias show that once we figure out the human mind, it's all over.

Weekend Theories

I'm slowly reading various texts for class next week. Too bad they're all mixing together in one giant confusing mess about ideology, rhetoric, and social construction. I'd love to say that I've got brilliant ideas for class, but I don't. Cultural studies makes sense right now, as does rhetoric...but when you ask me to think of it in terms of a composition classroom, I get theory overload. It's like, to use a cliched and dead metaphor, a big jigsaw puzzle, only there are four of them, and all the pieces are mixed together. Not only am I supposed to separate them all, but I'm supposed to put the different puzzles together, then arrange the four completed puzzles in a meaningful narrative. And I don't even have the picture on the box--I'm supposed to imagine it.
Of course, this is just another visual metaphor meant to arrange the chaos into something parallel to an imaginable object. In reality, my situation is nothing like putting together a puzzle. There's too much at stake, and the pieces are never guaranteed to all be there yet.
Theory, as Susan Wall said, is like a religion. It gives us a framework for making sense of everything. M theory, mother theory, the theory of Everything. The theory of me. I am self aware enough to know that I cling to the language of theory because it makes me feel in control of chaos. I know very well what I'm doing when I apply to a PhD program in Rhetoric and Theory. Theory and its application calms me. A theory of pain? A theory of disability, and its linguistic manifestations? Films about disformity, 20/20 and Dateline specials, Reader's Digest and women's magazines...where do these narratives come from? Should they be recognized for what they are (hegemonic tools) and changed? Can it be changed? Whose job is it? How do we start?

Fun with Ice

Just last week I ordered an iced latte, which I drank in bed, watching anime. Now I'm eating Dunkin' Donuts (R) for two meals a day and sleeping four hours a night again. To use a phrase my students like, WTF?!
Called Mom today. Apparently Ohio has an Ice Problem, as well, which should be joining us here on the East Coast (Right Coast, Left Leaning) at approximately 6 pm, or, in Real Terms, About The Second I Step Outside to Walk Home. I had planned on running errands tomorrow (like the PhD apps still in my backpack), but if I know me, I'll wake up around noon--Emma will have been up for four hours already--take one look outside and pull the covers over my head, claiming I'll get up early tomorrow.
Which reminds me. Things to do:

1. GGet new Transcript to send to UTA so they'll stop emailing me and bugging me
2. Get shoes so I can go to the gym
3. Get dried beef to make dried beef gravy
4. Find quarters to do laundry
5. At Stop N Shop: Meat! Hamburger for some couscous-like item. And some of those Betty Crocker Ready to Bake casserole thingys.
6. Send the freakin envelopes!

Unwiring for Bed

Public Service Announcement:
*******************
From the Unwired World News Center in Boston:
At 11:37, the National Weather Service noticed a large object moving upward at a rate of .0003 miles per hour in the vicinity of Westland Ave. This object then moved downward, and headed for the fridge. Morning travelers to 9 Snell Library and 427 Ryder Hall are advised to move cautiously around the anomaly, and avoid making eye contact with the cardboard cup in her hand. Be AVISED: The storm is volatile.
Rpt 330AM EST
****************************
Despite my desires to have normal hours while in the sound and fur(r)y of teaching in Beantown and finishing this little thing called a Masters (scary name, scary implications), I am still awake. Why? Because I was hungry, and desiring dark chocolate, and, having eaten most of my supply, went for the chocolate covered espresso beans. Do not ask. Do not send me angry letters. I am fully aware that this is all my fault. Thank you.

Wired for the First Day

The pigeons have entered Snow Mode; winter has officially begun in Boston.
It's the kind of day that makes me want to learn the campus tunnel system. The Weather Channel predicted rain all week--they were wrong. What could have been rain, what I had been planning for as rain has turned into one of those Boston snows that is sticky and wet and easily accumulating on one's clothing as one walks. The pigeons hunker down in their own appointed spots, like the way people do in their unofficially designated pews at church, and they just sit there, letting it all pile up on them until all you can see are pigeon shaped lumps. They have already congregated around the cold steel sculpture in front of Whole Foods, and others sit atop the Avis parking garage in a semi-circle. They are tough, survivors, and will sit there until the snow stops or they get hungry. The smaller birds, like the sparrow-y items that hang out in front of the restaurants have a different philosophy; they are in constant motion, fluttering, flying, pecking at each other, beating their wings to hoover mid-air. They seem to know that they're so small that if they stop, they won't start again. Kind of like me.
I didn't realize how long my hair had gotten until I saw the snow gathering on it. It felt alien, like a wig, and I stopped long enough to stare at it, brush it off, and remove the snow that was numbing my foot (I wore clogs to teach in, expecting only rain). I am now sitting in bed, Gregg the Laptop warming my icy thighs, ready for a nap.
As first days go, I've had worse. My first class is really quite fun, a good group of kiddos. They're mostly PT majors (hmmm. Free advice?) and they are 12 in number. My second class was a little less enthusiastic. Civil engineering and Criminal Justice majors, like my group from Spring 2004, mostly large guys who seem like former high school football players. Either they have a strict sense of decorum in the classroom, or are bored and unengaged as of yet. I was doing the Amy the Instructor thing, jumping around, making sneaky, underhanded comments that usually wake up students one by one, slowly, but this time I got nothing. Most weren't even interested in eye contact. Neither class had bought the book yet, even. Sigh
PhD update: Screw mailing today. It's going to take an army to get me out of this apartment and into that mess again, even if the post office is a mere half block away. If I wake up from my soon-to-be nap before 4 and get a jones for half-off Au Bon Pain pastries, I may trip my way down there. More than likely, I'll do it tomorrow. I promise.
Quote of the day, from bumper sticker seen in parking lot at the New England Conservatory: Eat Betty's Mussels.
Right. Sure. Why not?

Unwired to Teach

This is one of those times when the little angry voice in the center of my brain radiates outward, telling me that I should be sleeping, or at the very least, be doing something constructive. Instead, I'm sitting in a very nonergonomically correct position on my bed, trying to dispell last minute anxieties about teaching.
Why I have these anxieties is itself a puzzle. I am a competent teacher; my students think I'm weird, but things usually turn out okay. I just feel like I'm forgetting something.
Saw a squirrel today. Two of them, actually. Considered chasing them, but then gave up that thought. Too early in the semester.
Which brings me to my Sex and the City quote for the day: A squirrel is just a rat in a cuter outfit.
I want to be a squirrel, not a rat.

PhD update: Finished my purpose statements for remaining colleges. Finally removed strange phrase on my mirror which said: Find 200-500 word purpose. Apparently I have found said purpose in life, and it is around 350 words.
Most obituaries are about the same length, so I guess it all evens out eventually.

Unwired for now

Hello, Bonjour, Chiao, Hola, Konichiwa....
Whatever.
It's still technically Monday for the next 39 minutes. Class has begun at NEU here in formerly sunny Boston, and for some reason, I'm still chilling out as though it were summer vacation. Latte Count: 1, iced almond from ERC on Gainsboro(ugh). Found out that Comps are on April 1, and Jenny suggested starting the study groups next week. I guess that means fewer hours of anime and more hours of theory. Unless, that is, I can somehow apply the theory to the anime.
New episodes of InuYasha start Saturday at 1 a.m. (okay, that's technically Sunday, but you know). FullMetal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell are all new too, so that's my exciting Saturday night.
Emma and I are going to the gym tomorrow, after which we will bake the brownies from Lou's Christmas gift. Two steps forward, one step back....wasn't that in a Paula Abdul song?
Mom informed me that Jonny Daimon got married this week. So much for my career as a BoSox wife. I guess that means that I will actually have to do real work. Damn.

Tilting Radiator

Because I feel guilty for going to bed early, I am posting some of the poems I'm still editing. Because the radiator is tilting and the floor is sloping in new ways for the first time in 18 months. Because 18 months have actually passed without much incident. These are. Um. Well. Yeah...

Reconnaissance
(For Riley Court)

Oh to be held
In the confines of your loveseat
In that small room undone
By its previous uses—
Forgive me for being flushed here;
I’ll begin again.

Oh, you are afraid!
--You retract from my seat—
that we are attracted by
your attractiveness alone.
But there are three on the loveseat,
A cold confined by heats.

Oh, don’t stuff your arm
In that flannel sleeve,
Shivering in your couched state,
Darkened room reflecting your blood.
You are not that cold,
Though bluely poisoned ink and all

--oh!—your words would make
a whore of me, charmed by
your tongue’s cynical displays.
I’d drink the root beer offered;
I’d sit astride the love seat’s
Arm rest to portend a casual thirst
If conscience thus allowed me.

O, I am weird sisters three
The beaver on your shirt
Lets me in—when I knock
You crack the hinge and I read

Pacifier

She brought her sigh to fruition
Holding her own hands in complement
Above the thick pane.
“Is this what I’ve come to—
the history of windows?”
And still he had the gall,
No, let her amend, the balls
To stare through the clear division
From the other side and demand

“Do you trust your tomatoes?”
No, no! Tensed by the present or future
Simple only…
“Gloria, sugoi, liquid flowers, vivant”
(Love your words. Caress the thin tomato skin)
I will not hurt you. I have no desire
To hurt you, not with fists
Not with words.
Tamped down, the flower dirt clumps
Are how we should define ourselves.

This is what is called a "short short" or "prosetry" or "prose poetry" or any number of things. It's an emerging genre, and it's good to work with. I think Marianne Moore's poetry fits into this better than the line breaks she makes, but I'd never say that to anyone in the academy.

Superhero

When every nothing had been leaned on by ways of so uncommon sleep, she, unlike the relationships and realisms, answered the oracle, which another left her with. It doctored their facts; she became what his sort compiled when their dreams grew too large.

But here is where the doubt turns: If the answer arrives during the cursing of her wide accounts, will she choose to work at night, for the bounty of his narcissism above all else? Will she tag her enthusiasm on the underside, 25¢, in an oily garage thrust into the Saturday sun, in answer to a card left in a drawer?

This is a weird little thing I wrote on (literally) my desk in my office. It's one of those that could work, if I took more than three minutes to think about it.

Unspeakable

Making statements
“Can you save your soul?”
“What do you do when you can’t
Trust the narrator?”
A priori, abducting, advocating
To wink across the shrine
Jewel-like frost on birch branches
To tangent the sphere
That tickle and offer up the dead
Does somehow succeed in
Skiving off the previous moment.
He said “elves” and you know
Who I thought of, all those moments…
J’aime bien ce moment
(le moment quand
il me regardait avec
ses yeux fumant)
quand je souvienne
si bien que le moment
il me mordre,
me mange,
me fait complite.


This one seems to be part of another poem, one I haven't written yet, and probably never will. Written during Robert Frost class. I was freezing, and thinking of InuYasha.


Cold

Please unloose my flesh
To let fly free that which
Aches against my borders
Like frost on a window
Binds sticky, prickles,
The melt of heat and cold creating
Shards, only sharp when it comes inside,
Not to stretch, not to open,
Not with embracing arms.



...and who knows what the hell this came from. Probably some unknown subconscious thing having to do with my father's desire to make me a mathematician.

Odd Numbered Questions are in the Back

You cannot solve this equation x + y = 23, unless I tell you X is, say, positive integer A
or Y is negative integer Z—not that it matters. The teachers never give you an unsolvable problem because they know the human mind hates seeing more than one unknown at a time.

I cannot help but hear Jeff’s silvery tones
Stringing Rumplstiltsken twines that will not be
In that gap between my typing fingers
And the words appearing on the screen
What mistakes might have been made when I couldn’t see?
When he couldn’t draw breath for the change of speed?

Sad Christmas ballads which ask me to come home
Make their biggest plea in the brush strokes
On the tight chained snare that breaks once a month
The hitch in the fortepiano (pianissimo)
The hitch in my brain preventing me from hitting
The hitch in those sentimental voices saying “Come home”

You cannot solve this equation but it can be graphed--It’s raised high y=x+23, evenly moving away up one over one, up one over one, like adjusting the temperature of a tepid shower after an afternoon in the gym, lifting, hitting high notes red-faced in the hitch