open letter to oleoptene
Monday 18 February 2008 | someone left a cookie
Dearest M.,
Well, today so far has been, like the weeks which have preceeded it, something of a bust for me. Shocking I know! I couldn’t mail your parcel, or indeed any parcels, because it’s some kind of holiday in celebration of dead white males, and the post office is closed. In the wee hours I was unable to make more than a 20-point Scrabulous word, and then went completely bleakly nonverbal in our little chat box. And, I have conspicuously not been working on my workshop revision, which is due in about, oh, two hours.
[NB: please prepare for several paragraphs of enough about me, let's talk about you, what do you think of me and how do you like my dress.]
So far today, in fact, what I have primarily managed to accomplish is to collect other people’s pictures of pretty turquoise and blue and purple things, and arrange them artfully in a pre-coded virtual space. (If anyone bothers clicking on that link, please do be sure to check out all five pages, which are filled with gorgeous objects none of us can never, never possess [sic].) (Not that we need to own them, to appreciate their loveliness: and beauty is there free / and beauty is not exclusive / and beauty is ours to touch and to know…) (The Innocence Mission, on the phenomenon of art museums—though of course you are not actually allowed to touch things in art museums either, no more than you can on etsy.)
Also in the last 24 hours, I have written several pungent blog posts in my head (on the invisible paper), taken many hilarious Tartarus photographs (using the invisible camera), cancelled two student conferences, slept fitfully from 4 am until about 8:30, taken the dog out twice, drunk a large bowl of milky matcha and dutifully eaten two toaster waffles with butter and mable syrub [sic], and tried and hideously failed to apply for the NEA, due March 3 (they have some new evil software you have to download, which of course don’t function [sic] on a Mac). Further, I’ve ordered more superfluous lip balms from Clear Hills Honey Company (on sale for $1.30 each—lavender vanilla, sweet jasmine, sugared plum), picked a hair follicle on my chin until it’s red and angry, and stared adoringly at my new log-cabin quilt fabric, which I can’t take a picture of because someone stole my camera at the State School. And I had to drop out of quilting class thanks to my seasonal mental diabetes, though the nice quilting ladies assure me I can finish the class later, in the summer, which will be perfect.
Aforementioned new fabric exists here in my office (glowing slightly, somehow serene and modestly confident in its own wholesomeness), because yesterday, for a few hours, wonderfully, I felt better. The sun shone radiantly, the bell jar lifted temporarily and spring entered the world; I peeled off my black sweater for the first time in days and could breathe, in spite of or perhaps because of the Brujo losing his temper at Fiona (who trod with usual doggy ineptitude through a blessedly unplanted cactus seedling tray) shouting and cursing till I fled outside, car keys jingling in shaky hand, and spontaneously drove to the barber for my annual springtime haircut, the chin-length bob (in February, remarkable—about a full month early for me).
And then I went to a bike shop and found the bike I love yet probably shouldn’t get because I already have one, which I now want to sell on craigslist, then found my car wouldn’t start and sat in the parking lot for half-an-hour talking to Mandarin while the Brujo called and left unnecessarily repentant and humbled messages on my cellphone. And then the car started and the Brujo actually went with me to the fabric store. And mostly sat outside smoking and staring into the horizon of desert being made into condos and big-box retail at the rate of an acre an hour, but toward the end came inside when asked and offered his opinion on different colorways of calico print, his taste being as exquisite as a gay man’s. Oh, and for the better part of an hour or two I trolled around the ether looking at pictures taken by and videos of Herself, flagrant self-promotion suddenly everywhere as the Dying Book is about to be released this summer. No Publisher’s Weekly/Kirkus/Library Journal starred reviews yet, though there’s a big fat excerpt in Tricycle this month. Mandarin says I should buy a copy. (I watched with fascination as Herself gives a dharma talk; I know that voice so well, its every nuance, its every inflection; her face, her gestures. My beloved old crazy teacher. My non-recovering Buddhism.) And I worked fitfully and intensely on two handouts for my students (logical fallacies and missing premises!) and a revised syllabus. And I applied to teach English 105 next year, an accelerated honors version. And I ate hummus and pita and Greek olives with the Brujo. And I got a haircut, but I already told you that. And I tried to open my new savings account but the Java applet wouldn’t let me, nor would it let me order paperless statements, though I did manage to sign up for automatic bill pay.
Not necessarily in that order.
Oh, and also I worked on my CV, for an dear friend and former coworker who mysteriously has demanded 15-30 pages of poetry and what he calls my “bibliography.” Perhaps to turn me in to the CIA? On ne sais jamais. I agonize over the poetry. None of it seems coherent to me. Same thing for the NEA, only it’s 10 pages and my third bootless application in six years.
Speaking of bootless, abstractions like literature seem so evanescent and pointless when there are turquoise and purple ceramics and silks and yarns in the world. I get all nonverbal this time of year (she wrote); and stare at pictures of thread for hours. How do I explain this to Walt Whitman and the Duende, who just think I’m blowing off their classes, and are hurt in the way that all egomaniacal male poets with low self-esteem invariably feel when younger female students disappear and don’t write revisions?
I’m lucky enough to be in a workshop from Thursday until Saturday with, of all people, Carolyn Forché—yet feel pretty much about it the way I did about the workshop in the fall with CD Wright: why did I ever think I could do this on top of everything else. I’ve successfully sloughed off obligations by the handsful—book review given to someone else, individual conferences with students instead of marking papers, appointments once thought mission-critical canceled right and left. And I have taken meds religiously all week, including Lunesta sleeper and optional accessorizing Abilify.
“It’s February,” said Mandarin pragmatically last Sunday, as I shivered and sniffled on the floor, curled up in the duvet, having finally crawled into the other room for the phone after several hours of planning for the journey. “And in February, nothing is optional.” Following the simple instructions. Keeping to as regular a schedule as I can manage. Eating, sleeping, bathing, going to school by the clock. Conversely, though, many things have turned out to be optional which I did not originally view as such—all social obligations, from the hundred emails to the unreturned phone calls.
This Thursday, curiously, is also the third anniversary of my little parasuicidial escapade up Atalaya. Though this sounds weird even for me, I’m thinking about getting a commemorative t-shirt. (Not one of our esprit d’escalier variety!) These clever Deadhead batik artists have an image which somehow encapsulates the best of that night, to me. I wonder what you think? Is it wrong to mark that anniversary—is it just best forgotten and not dwelt upon?
What Would the DBT Do?
Speaking of whom, Mandarin has talked me into scheduling some phone sessions with her to tide me over, since Aunt Freud is so psychodynamic and actually psychoanalytic as to freak me out. We pass seemingly interminable spans of time during which she simply sits there neutrally, exuding warmth and interest but saying nothing. If I ever knew how to conduct myself during such sessions, I’ve forgotten. Retrained by behaviorism, I’m impatiently waiting for someone to hand me photocopies of some worksheet or another and say briskly, Now what are you going to do for the rest of the week?
I wonder, deeply and often, how February is treating you; though I am seldom released from besetting self-absorption long enough to wonder it aloud. But please send news, when you can.
And thank you a million times for your wildly compassionate letter. Have you been told lately how brave and fierce you are?
Bons baisers from here to Portlandia, yours unreliably, etc.
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Thank you for the update, it is reassuring, and the Mandarin’s words seem wise from here, since sorting the optional from the not is a tricky business, and February tends to zap my perspective. I face February with a black eye from trying to disentangle a tricycle from my bicycle and pulling upwards towards my face when the handle bars came free. It fits with the rawness of all this hopeful greenness when surely the rain will be back tomorrow, but the light is too much for my eyes behind new glasses straining to focus… I neglect my blog while my parents are visiting, while we pretend to a social life, while all the silly little tasks around the house that will still need doing tomorrow need doing today. I neglect the blog to make valentines with S. who believes, at five, that it is one big holiday about love and therefore kindness (that love and kindness are so intertwined!), I neglect the blog to make batch after batch of vegan cupcakes (though the cookbook *claims* they are bloggable, never having met my blog).
Is there a middle-ground between dwelling and repressing? Commemorative seems fine, and somewhere in the Pacific Northwest there is someone deeply grateful for your own courageous continuing on in these three years, grateful for having had the chance in these three years to come to know you.