WHAT IT'S NOT FRIEND-LOCKED?
i feel like i go back and forth about decisions more than anything ever. i hate letting other people know about what i plan to do, especially when it is something that i think i will really enjoy, because i get more worried about their responses will be and what their responses are and why they are responding that way that all the fun of what i wanted to do is taken out of it. i like knowing what i want - the rare, few times i actually know it - and doing it without having the 20-minute long discussions about how i will get there or where will it take me and why do you want that. i am also learning that the only reason i hate writing is because i hate revising on my own. i like coming up with ideas with other people, i like talking things out. i like unlimited and detailed and mean feedback. i do not like "YOU WRITE GOOD OMG YOUR STORY IS GREAT but you need to change something, i just don't know what." i do not like "YOU DID GOOD but 'nightcap' seems dated." i do not like focusing on small details when the big picture is still a mess. i do not like "put more details like 'green-and-brown thatched mat' because that's awesome. but i can't tell you where to put them." (by the way, that's mine, and in a story i'm hoping to get published so in case anyone actually reads this, i'll punch you in the head if you steal it). i want someone to walk through every. single. tiny. detail. with me. i want someone to go sentence by sentence with me. because i don't know what needs to be put on the page and i am not emotionally attached enough to anything to think it sacred or to think it too good. i think the people in my workshops these last 4 years are too close to their pieces - while i'm too far. they think everything they write is GREAT and OMG NEXT MASTERPIECE WHY AM I NOT IN PUSHCART OMG, so when we say something is wrong, they get mad at us, personally. whereas i want you to tell me every single tiny thing that is wrong and every single big thing that is wrong and to think through it with me, because i, obviously, know why my narrator is narrating this way and why s/he reacts they way s/he does, but i don't know what to write to get it on the page in order for it to find that border of THIS IS WHY THIS IS HAPPENING and "i want to keep you in the dark amap."
and also. why is it that almost every poet we read in classes blow my ass? there are 2739058904 good, young+old, poets out there, and we read stupid things about i don't even know what. the long island rail road. which, although described as beautiful in the poem, i can't believe because i have been on it and it is about as pretty as the staten island ferry. (Never been on that? it's about as pretty as the snow in mid-march, when the dirt shows through and dog pee stains it every 11 inches and you end up with more mud on the hem of your pants than actual percipitation.) and then there is Aimee Nezhukumatathil who writes about everyday things, like teaching, and makes me want to, not only write and teach, but to write and teach poetry.
i feel like the only time i write in here is when i am avoiding work that very much needs to get done. i am in the middle (and by middle, i mean very beginning) of revising one of my 4 short pieces that need to be turned in on monday morning, and studying for my shakespeare exam that is at 1pm tomorrow, which i guess i could do tomorrow morning or early afternoon if i knew i would be able to wake up, but i don't know that i will be able to because my body is not only being seasonally affected, it is rejecting the entire idea that there is daylight at all and forcing me to be most alive from 10pm-5am. which, if you count it out, is only 7 hours of being awake. i woke up at 3pm today. i think i went to sleep at 3am yesterday. i don't understand.
also, i'm worried that jess and i are totally not what we were, at all, which makes me nervous and i don't even know. and i feel weird saying anything to her because she seemed like everything was completely normal when she came over during thanksgiving, and she seemed so grown-up and bourgeois and (omg hey cliche) european and i felt all schlumpy and dirty and like a child. it made me not like myself, which i didn't understand because i had just started to like myself, and that makes me not like myself because i can't ever like myself for a long period of time, which is stupid, and it makes me miss when she used to call me, upset, or when she was super happy, and i'm afraid that isn't going to happen anymore. and i'm obviously doing a whole lot to remedy the situation, by writing about it on livejournal instead of saying something to her, but i don't want her to like me less (because she seems to - i feel like i'm getting compared to peri, which i probably am, but i'm not okay with because we're so different and if that's who jess needs, then that's who she needs - i sound like i'm talking about an ex-girlfriend or something). but i don't know what to say: "HI WHY IS OUR RELATIONSHIP DIFFERENT?" but that's stupid because she was in another country for an entire year and i must have seemed like the shittiest friend ever because i never called, even though i couldn't because we don't have international on any of our phones, house or cell. so i totally wouldn't want to talk to me ever, either, but i wish she did.
so now i'm crying and feeling sorry for myself and i still have to revise at least one story tonight and finish studying for the test that i have no notes for. and then tomorrow, after the test, i have to revise another story, before going out for trav's birthday at like, 7, because, as my boyfriend just reminded me, "especially if you go out tomorrow and get drunk... sunday you won't feel good at all."
oh and i'm fat as shit and can't fit into any of my clothes. wooooo this semester is awesome.
and also. why is it that almost every poet we read in classes blow my ass? there are 2739058904 good, young+old, poets out there, and we read stupid things about i don't even know what. the long island rail road. which, although described as beautiful in the poem, i can't believe because i have been on it and it is about as pretty as the staten island ferry. (Never been on that? it's about as pretty as the snow in mid-march, when the dirt shows through and dog pee stains it every 11 inches and you end up with more mud on the hem of your pants than actual percipitation.) and then there is Aimee Nezhukumatathil who writes about everyday things, like teaching, and makes me want to, not only write and teach, but to write and teach poetry.
i feel like the only time i write in here is when i am avoiding work that very much needs to get done. i am in the middle (and by middle, i mean very beginning) of revising one of my 4 short pieces that need to be turned in on monday morning, and studying for my shakespeare exam that is at 1pm tomorrow, which i guess i could do tomorrow morning or early afternoon if i knew i would be able to wake up, but i don't know that i will be able to because my body is not only being seasonally affected, it is rejecting the entire idea that there is daylight at all and forcing me to be most alive from 10pm-5am. which, if you count it out, is only 7 hours of being awake. i woke up at 3pm today. i think i went to sleep at 3am yesterday. i don't understand.
also, i'm worried that jess and i are totally not what we were, at all, which makes me nervous and i don't even know. and i feel weird saying anything to her because she seemed like everything was completely normal when she came over during thanksgiving, and she seemed so grown-up and bourgeois and (omg hey cliche) european and i felt all schlumpy and dirty and like a child. it made me not like myself, which i didn't understand because i had just started to like myself, and that makes me not like myself because i can't ever like myself for a long period of time, which is stupid, and it makes me miss when she used to call me, upset, or when she was super happy, and i'm afraid that isn't going to happen anymore. and i'm obviously doing a whole lot to remedy the situation, by writing about it on livejournal instead of saying something to her, but i don't want her to like me less (because she seems to - i feel like i'm getting compared to peri, which i probably am, but i'm not okay with because we're so different and if that's who jess needs, then that's who she needs - i sound like i'm talking about an ex-girlfriend or something). but i don't know what to say: "HI WHY IS OUR RELATIONSHIP DIFFERENT?" but that's stupid because she was in another country for an entire year and i must have seemed like the shittiest friend ever because i never called, even though i couldn't because we don't have international on any of our phones, house or cell. so i totally wouldn't want to talk to me ever, either, but i wish she did.
so now i'm crying and feeling sorry for myself and i still have to revise at least one story tonight and finish studying for the test that i have no notes for. and then tomorrow, after the test, i have to revise another story, before going out for trav's birthday at like, 7, because, as my boyfriend just reminded me, "especially if you go out tomorrow and get drunk... sunday you won't feel good at all."
oh and i'm fat as shit and can't fit into any of my clothes. wooooo this semester is awesome.