Did I Miss Anything?

This poem sums up my feelings on the subject of student absences better than I could ever hope to do. So instead of listening to me ramble on about it, especially this late in the semester, read this poem instead. Oh, and while reading, be sure to do one more thing: exult in the stunning power of those last two lines.

“Did I Miss Anything,” by Tom Wayman
Originally from: The Astonishing Weight of the Dead. Vancouver: Polestar, 1994.

Did I Miss Anything

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

The End

I attended a reading by Salvatore Scibona recently, who just recieved a nod from the Nat'l Book Award committee and was named a finalist this year (the winner has yet to be announced). I also managed to catch about half of a fascinating Q & A session he did for the MFA program before I had to run off to teach. Among other things, he talked about why he uses a typewriter instead of a computer (though longhand is, of course, preferable), about surfaces and their absolute necessity in fiction, and gave this pithy observation on the writing of novels:

"You can't write a novel in a panopticon."

Seriously, he said that. I might just make a massive poster and hang it on my wall as a way of encouraging myself to keep those projects I am unsure of to myself for just a while longer, to allow them to become what they will without undue outside influence. I wish I had caught the end of the session, since he was billed as answering questions about the Provincetown FAWC fellowships, of which he is in charge of coordinating this year. But hey, I'll throw logistics out the window for a phrase like the above any day.

His reading was similarly fascinating--he admitted that the first page was really just one long sentence--and I do love a long sentence, especially when the content is good, and in this case, since the novel in question, "The End," was about a tireless baker who worked seven days a week to pay off the rent on his bakery, and since I have a weakness for good bread, it was just the thing to cap off a long day at work (What, descriptions of work as an andtidote for work? Absurd, but yes, true.), and I really had to hand it to Scibona for being as smart in his fiction as he is in person. Okay, I'll get off my rhetorical hobbyhorse now.

He Said It...

The artist is the precondition of his work, the womb, sometimes the dung and manure on which it grows. Whoever is completely and wholly an artist is to all eternity separated from the real.

 -- Nietsche, On The Genealogy of Morals

Book Stacks

Shark Journal from the Sorted Books project
C-prints, each 12.5 x 19 inches, 2001
Nina Katchadourian

I would organize my books into small stacks like this if I had time. Who does, these days? See more here.

On Student Essays

Truth 1. No matter the grade you assign, the student will complain about it.

Truth 2. No matter how simple the assignment, the student will manage to complicate it.

Truth 3. No matter the number of essays left to grade, I will find a way to take longer than I need to grade them. This makes me miserable.

Truth 4. If number three is true, then for my own sake, I should end this post.

The Book

A friend dreamed that she went to a bookstore and saw my book on the shelf. Unfortunately, in the dream the book was, well, a textbook. Let's hope only certain parts of that dream are prophetic....

First Day

The first day of classes has come and gone. It went well, I think. At least, I have no complaints. It's nice to be able to start a scheduled life again, now that summer is over.

So I shuffled through the first-person stories I've written in order to submit to a contest and come to the conclusion that first-person is a tough perspective to pull off. Though if I'd been sorting through my third person stories, I'd likely have thought the same thing about that point of view.

The trouble with first person is that the voice so often becomes a predominant concern in the story, preventing the story itself from achieving depth. It seems as though the character, in telling his or her own story, is unwilling to examine closely the reasons for telling the story, and would rather babble incessantly about whatever comes to mind. In short, my first-person narrators are solipsistic. They don't care a fig for what anyone else in their world thinks about their problems. In fact, they don't care what they think about things, either. As long as they can keep juggling enough witticisms to keep the projected reader interested, why would they want to examine the real conflict that brings their voice into existence in the first place? Although framing the problem like this is simply another way of saying that I can't seem to get the narrative under control and figure out how to maintain both a consistent and lively voice and at the same time lay the complexities of character open to the bone.

On a minor and completely unrelated note, I happen to be terrible a titling my stories. Either a name affixes itself to the piece for unknown reasons or I suffer with a work-in-progress title, but either way, the process of naming is a difficult one for me. Things ought to come with their names attached. For me, that is how the best of my writing has gone. As for the worst, well, I'll just say I've settled for a workable title on this submission and ignored all consideration of whether the writing is itself my best or worst. I'd be happy with passable, right now.

*Note: Add this contest to my list of rejections.

Handwritten Note

It could be worse, I suppose. It must have taken at least a few seconds to write this sentence. So, for that marginal period of time, my story was more than just a blip in their consciousness. It was a mid-sized blip.

Ira Glass on Storytelling

I have to say, Glass is spot-on here. He talks about the gap between what you want to create and what you actually do create as being normal in the early stages of artistic development. He also gives a way to push through and overcome that gap (don't expect shortcuts, though, the solution is pretty much what you'd expect). So here's to work, volumes of it.



This is actually part 3 of a 4 part series of short videos. Check out the others here.

Forgetfulness

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

- Billy Collins

Isolation

Often, I think that isolation is the simplest choice.

Then I reconsider, and think perhaps I would like to be

surrounded by fields encrusted with snow

on a high peak of the Andes,

shielding my eyes against the glare to find

a rope bridge twining itself across the span

of the untried, holding out a familiar path of escape.

Where In This World

I'm hooked.

Rain

We went camping this weekend and got wet.

First, we tried to set up the tent before it rained, but weren't done before it poured. So we set up the tent in the rain and got both the tent and ourselves sopping wet.

The campfire and foil dinners went well though. Easily the best foil dinner I've ever had.

Then it rained late at night after we'd gone to sleep, and the tent leaked on our heads. We put our feet where our heads were and kept on sleeping. N slept through the whole thing. Not even the thunder and lightning woke him up.

In the morning, we went swimming at the lake nearby.

All in all, it was worth the wet clothes and rain.

B-Day

It's Nash's 1st birthday today. Be excited. Be very excited.

This Fall

I'll be teaching freshman comp at UM. The dept. likes to hedge its bets though, so they've only given me a one semester spot, with no guarantees afterward. That means that finding this particular job is really only a brief reprieve from looking for a new one.

In other news, I didn't get the Press job. They opted for a former work-study student, since they'd have to train him/her less.

So I'm officially a lecturer now, having signed papers and filled out forms. I never wanted to teach, but now I am, out of necessity. Strange how that works.

On Submissions

There are days, like today, when I absolutely despair of ever publishing a story. And on those days, if they are really bad days, I submit something, anything, in an attempt to allay that feeling of crushing obscurity. For some reason, sending paper, or electronic files, off into the abyss calms me. The ordering and arranging of cover letters and listing of titles and dates makes my tiny world of letters feel as though it had purpose. Eventually, I'll receive a note on a slip of paper that rejects said submission, and I'll despair again. Lovely cycle, isn't it?

Laptopia

Macbook refuses to start two days ago.

Panic level = rising. Data = not backed up in a long time.

Internet searches to solve problem make me dumber. Solution = no closer.

Warranty = Still in effect. Panic level = holding steady.

Tech support = Yep, already did that. Did that too.

Trip into Apple Store = Quick diagnosis. Why find the problem when you can swap out the old parts for new? Macbook will be returned, with new keyboard, logic board, etc. in two days. Two days!

End result = Panic level dissapears. Love of all things Mac = rising.


Update: They called me on Tuesday, a day ahead of schedule, to tell me my macbook was ready for pickup. Amazing.

May

The month in review:

Sit at desk.

Revise.

Think about revising.

Sit at desk.

Think about blogging, then read other blogs.

Sit at desk.

Realize a month has gone by.

the sis

which is one way to break down the almost familial relationship i have with the stories that will comprise my imperfect body of work: the sister i never had.

another way to think of it--how to call something a culmination when you need another year before the material in question is polished enough to feel like one?

or: just a pile of paper. one hundred odd pages.

or: a thesis.

coming apr. 16 to a desk nowhere near you.

Ha!

This is good for a laugh or two.

in case you were wondering

what happened to me, and why you haven't heard from me in so long, the answer is neither as complex as school (though that is certainly a factor) nor as simple as parenting (see last parenthesis), and can instead be summed up in one word: Lost. Yes, ever since we found out that you can watch all the previous seasons for free on ABCs website, we've been hurrying to catch up. So now, after who knows how many multiple-episode nights, we are primed for season four, episode 8. So don't call thursdays. I won't answer. But if you want to talk shop, try another night. I'm always open to floating theories.

glasses

Yes, it's true. Because I can no longer read street signs while driving, I am now wearing glasses.

It feels strange, as though I am a different person, myself and yet not myself. This is akin to those first few days after a radically different haircut, when you feel that some part of yourself has been accentuated by that cut, and makes you feel as though that quality is the main facet of your personality.

Right now, as stereotypical as it may be, I have to say that while I'm still a tad self-conscious while wearing these, overall the specs make me feel smarter. So while I don't need them for reading or close work, if I do wear them, I feel brilliant. So until the feeling wears off, here's to brilliance.

Pictures of me actually wearing my glasses are forthcoming.

NY

AWP. enough said.