(no subject)
Dear friends & strangers,
Hello from Brooklyn. It's been awhile. I've been coming home too exhausted to do much writing, which is something that I know I need to change somehow, just for myself. The manuscript's not much longer than it was two months ago. Poetry's been more pressing -- not the kind that I sit down to write intentionally, but the kind that comes in fits and fevers, the kind that wakes me up in the middle of a dream, urging me to rummage for a pen and paper.
This morning I woke up with Alanis Morissette inexplicably in my head.
I'm trying to figure out what parts of myself I need in order to stay myself, I guess you could say.
I'm no longer living in the magical apartment with its bookshelves and records. I've moved into a friend's former place a few neighborhoods over, which is a room on the lower level of a brownstone. I have a roommate, Mandy, who went to school with me. We're both dancers -- her much more seriously than me -- so we talk about contact improvisation and creating art with bodies, and coexist peacefully, sharing our Dr. Bronner's hippie soap and bonding over our common interest in eating food off the floor to build our immune systems. We also have a third roommate, a tiny corn snake named Weco. He is pretty cute and, like me, enjoys sleeping by the heater. I'm planning on living here until sometime in March or perhaps the beginning of April, while I look for a new place where I can really move in, and do grown-up things like get my own bed and start to amass kitchen utensils besides my the wooden cutting board that my uncle made for me, which is a recreation of one that my grandparents used.
I couldn't resist buying a $2 pot of crocuses as an impulse purchase at the grocery store. They are on my windowsill and I love watching the way the blooms open up to the sun every morning, the way they greedily lap up the rays that seep in through the blinds.
Life continues in the cafe. I still love bookstores and coffee shops and I am trying my hardest not to have them ruined for me. I still find people-watching fascinating at times. It seems particularly notable that so many people who come to a bookstore clearly don't know how to read (signs, labels, price tags, et cetera). Or maybe they simply feel that they are above reading? Hmm...certainly a convenient excuse, though surely problematic at times...
The latest episode of my farcical life involves me potentially getting paid to learn how to arrange flowers, at the rate of $10/hour. My interviewer at the flower shop asked me, "Would it be too intimidating for me to ask you to do a flower arrangement right now?" I joked that I felt like I was on Iron Chef for flowers, and then went around picking flowers that I thought would look pretty together. She complimented the shapes and colors in the bouquet, then took a picture of me holding it and called me the next day to see if I would come in for a trial week (for which I get paid). Tomorrow is my first day, provided that the impending Snowpocalypse doesn't prevent me from getting there (though I have to say, as a Wisconsinite, I'm not afraid of a bit of snow, and it's a bit funny to me to see the supermarkets in a mass panic as though Y2K is approaching). It's basically trial-by-fire, throw-me-to-the-wolves, since Valentine's Day is coming up and there will be a ton of flower orders to do.
Re: Valentine's Day -- I don't really understand why everyone gets so up-in-arms about this day. The way I see it, I like candy, and Valentine's Day has an increased chance of me getting free candy, compared to the average day.
I wish I weren't too old to trick-or-treat.
I also wish that I had some I Choo-Choo-Choose You valentines to give out, preferably filled out with my non-dominant hand.
Hello from Brooklyn. It's been awhile. I've been coming home too exhausted to do much writing, which is something that I know I need to change somehow, just for myself. The manuscript's not much longer than it was two months ago. Poetry's been more pressing -- not the kind that I sit down to write intentionally, but the kind that comes in fits and fevers, the kind that wakes me up in the middle of a dream, urging me to rummage for a pen and paper.
This morning I woke up with Alanis Morissette inexplicably in my head.
I'm trying to figure out what parts of myself I need in order to stay myself, I guess you could say.
I'm no longer living in the magical apartment with its bookshelves and records. I've moved into a friend's former place a few neighborhoods over, which is a room on the lower level of a brownstone. I have a roommate, Mandy, who went to school with me. We're both dancers -- her much more seriously than me -- so we talk about contact improvisation and creating art with bodies, and coexist peacefully, sharing our Dr. Bronner's hippie soap and bonding over our common interest in eating food off the floor to build our immune systems. We also have a third roommate, a tiny corn snake named Weco. He is pretty cute and, like me, enjoys sleeping by the heater. I'm planning on living here until sometime in March or perhaps the beginning of April, while I look for a new place where I can really move in, and do grown-up things like get my own bed and start to amass kitchen utensils besides my the wooden cutting board that my uncle made for me, which is a recreation of one that my grandparents used.
I couldn't resist buying a $2 pot of crocuses as an impulse purchase at the grocery store. They are on my windowsill and I love watching the way the blooms open up to the sun every morning, the way they greedily lap up the rays that seep in through the blinds.
Life continues in the cafe. I still love bookstores and coffee shops and I am trying my hardest not to have them ruined for me. I still find people-watching fascinating at times. It seems particularly notable that so many people who come to a bookstore clearly don't know how to read (signs, labels, price tags, et cetera). Or maybe they simply feel that they are above reading? Hmm...certainly a convenient excuse, though surely problematic at times...
The latest episode of my farcical life involves me potentially getting paid to learn how to arrange flowers, at the rate of $10/hour. My interviewer at the flower shop asked me, "Would it be too intimidating for me to ask you to do a flower arrangement right now?" I joked that I felt like I was on Iron Chef for flowers, and then went around picking flowers that I thought would look pretty together. She complimented the shapes and colors in the bouquet, then took a picture of me holding it and called me the next day to see if I would come in for a trial week (for which I get paid). Tomorrow is my first day, provided that the impending Snowpocalypse doesn't prevent me from getting there (though I have to say, as a Wisconsinite, I'm not afraid of a bit of snow, and it's a bit funny to me to see the supermarkets in a mass panic as though Y2K is approaching). It's basically trial-by-fire, throw-me-to-the-wolves, since Valentine's Day is coming up and there will be a ton of flower orders to do.
Re: Valentine's Day -- I don't really understand why everyone gets so up-in-arms about this day. The way I see it, I like candy, and Valentine's Day has an increased chance of me getting free candy, compared to the average day.
I wish I weren't too old to trick-or-treat.
I also wish that I had some I Choo-Choo-Choose You valentines to give out, preferably filled out with my non-dominant hand.