Let's pretend we were on spring break

[bironic]

Am experiencing that unfortunate blogging state where you don't post for a while and then there are too many things to talk about, so you don't talk about any of them, repeat until something gives. Let us try to overcome the blockage through the magic of a "five things" format:

1.

Comments

[kassrachel]

Poetry Months-and Septembers, when I remember the beginnings of school years-always make me wonder whether and how you can restore yourself.

I love this sentence, this idea, this question. <3

[bironic]

You are the quickest!

I used to call these thoughts, this question, Operation Resensitization. (Here is the first time I tried to articulate it - http://bironic.livejournal.com/1432.html - back when about three friends read this LJ, heh.) Have you pondered similar questions, including in relation to poetry?

(Who even has or allows themselves the time to parse stuff like this on LJ/DW these days?)

(/projection)

♥

[kassrachel]

Ooh, that is a neat post; thank you for the link

[bironic]

Set an intention to read more poems, slowly, instead of lots of news feeds with continuous partial attention.
>> Yes. Oh, how the brain rebels. I remember getting antsy when shows had commercial breaks because it disrupted my attention. Now I can hardly watch a thing for 10 minutes without feeling an itch to do something concurrently. (Unless the media is really good. :) )

Spend a week reading in the evenings instead of dicking around on the internet or watching tv.
>> At least I have that going for me lately!

When I used to be able to take a week to go on retreat...
>> That is really the ultimate in brain-resetting, at least for this full-time worker who doesn't get to enjoy an academic calendar. Taking time off. Especially if it's a real break and not a jam-packed trip somewhere.

More soon! Preschool time.
>> Case in point, eh?

[browngirl]

One of my friends loves "Starships" SOOOO much.

And I really appreciate your review of "Girls" as I'd heard it took place in that mythical all-Caucasian NYC of so many shows and movies, so I'm really glad to find that's not the case.

Mmmm, huuuuuge challah...

[bironic]

Actually, that's the biggest criticism of the show that I found to be true, unfortunately. Donald Glover was... possibly the only black character on the show? ETA: Oh, unless you count a coworker Hannah had for one other episode. /ETA And he was only in two episodes. Reviewers seem to read his appearance as Dunham's/the show's response to criticisms of white-centricity, which didn't alleviate the problem so much as establish that Hannah's race issues do not necessarily reflect those of the show creators. And there was... one Indian character, briefly, an ER doc. So. :/ One can argue that it's not unusual for the sort of privileged white women the show focuses on to only associate with other privileged white women and men, but that doesn't, as you say, recognize the diversity of their RL neighborhood or address the question of the showrunners' desire to - or responsibility to - diversify their cast and characters.

[cold_clarity]

hi! so...you certainly don't know me (and I hope this isn't creepy) but I friended your journal about a month ago now because I read the meta piece you wrote on noncon/dubcon. basically, I liked the piece a lot and I hoped that I'd end up getting to read similarly awesome and intelligent stuff if I followed your journal.

...so here I am?

in any case, I'm commenting now because I was really overwhelmed by this:

Poetry Months-and Septembers, when I remember the beginnings of school years-always make me wonder whether and how you can restore yourself.actually, I was really overwhelmed by the whole paragraph discussing the idea of resensitizing and slowing down, mostly because the sentiment you expressed really resonates with me. I think about this all the time; I can recall a younger me that had more patience, more focus, more sensitivity (in the "awareness of the world" way--and also probably in the "my feelings are easily hurt" way), and much longer spans of attention, and I very much attribute the degradation of all those things to

[bironic]

Hello! I'm glad you only friended about a month ago because I haven't been much of a substantive poster lately and you might have given up on me if it'd been longer

[alpheratz]

I hope National Poetry Month helps you find something new (or something old?).

[bironic]

Thanks. ♥ I'll tell you what it's done so far, which is gotten me to finally pull out the sheaf of papers my professor put together for a college poetry-writing seminar in like 2005 (that I, uh, got into and then dropped after the first class on account of being intimidated by ~poet~ classmates) and start reading the poems in them. So that is something.

[alpheratz]

Both old and new! I am impressed!

[bironic]

:) And by 2005 I meant 2002. I can count years, I swear.

"Fog" by Mark Doty is one of my favorites so far: http://world.std.com/~wij/hiv-neg/Chapter23.html

[flywoman]

Have you had a chance to watch more Dollhouse? The first couple of episodes impressed me so little that I never watched again while it was on the air, but a couple of years ago I watched the whole series on DVD and really enjoyed it.

[bironic]

Haven't yet, but I expect to at some point. Maybe the next time I visit synn and we're fishing around for something to watch. :) Good to know that it gets even better.