Issues and Complaints

- My cat has taken to falling over sideways. She'll be fine, running around like the spaz she is, back and forth, length-wise across the apartment, and then just stop and keel over onto the floor. This can't be good. Is there such a thing as kitty vertigo?
- I JUST decided what I am writing my 20-25 page paper about, due Wed. evening. This is the fourth topic I have 'decided' on. Hopefully, fingers crossed, knock on wood, it will be the last.
- I am still only five pages into my other, 15-20 page paper. At least I have a definite topic. Knock on wood, fingers crossed, hopefully.
- I still have not finished my Christmas shopping. How am I supposed to do this, when I must constantly write papers?
- My Christmas package from La Gap started in Ohio, traveled to NJ, traveled to NY, and is now, according to tracking, BACK IN OHIO. Why? WHY? How am I supposed to get this by Christmas? Why would it go back to Ohio?
- I am out of food. And diet coke. I will have to leave the apartment. I don't really remember the world outside, but I feel it's unsafe.
- I will also have to leave the apartment to visit the library and use 'microform'. I have never used microform before. I am NOT looking forward to it.
- I have not had a haircut since I moved to New York. Ew.
- My gym membership is totally going to waste...on account of my never leaving the apartment.
- It is becoming difficult to walk through my small bedroom, as it is covered in books and printouts from literary journals.
- I can't remember the last time I did laundry. I might be running out of clean underwear.
- My vocab is slipping. I say "eff this and eff that" all the time. And the word 'Whatever' (sometimes as 'Whatevs,' which is worse). This morning my roommate and I slumped on our bright red couch and orally wrote the new hit children's book, "Eff you, Moon."

And on that cheerful note, I return to my paper writing.

I have no title for this blog.

I have stumbled into a morning where commonplace thinking becomes very difficult (after all, it just took me three tries to type 'stumbled'- forgive all typos in this entry).

For example: this morning's shower. I had to think very hard about whether or not I was wearing any clothes. While standing under the water, I still was not fully convinced that I wasn't. Then, I had the following mental dialogue: "Is this shampoo or conditioner? Shampoo or conditioner? The bottle says conditioner... hmmm...Conditioner." Then my glance fell on the face wash, and I thought: "F--- you, face wash!" The face wash, I assure you, had done nothing to warrant such a sound mental thrashing. It was merely sitting on the side of the tub, being face wash (originally typed: 'fash').

I know I had a point with this blog. It is eluding me.

Hmmm...

Anyway, last night at eleven o'clock, I decided that the paper I had been writing about Wallace Stevens for two weeks was unusually bad. I decided to write a paper about Robert Frost instead.

Usually this kind of mania deserts me after half a page and I return to finish the original paper.

By 2 AM, I had four pages and by 5 AM, I was rounding out eleven. All that remains now is a few finishing touches on a paper leaps and bounds above the original Stevens concept.

Paper must be turned in at six-thirty. I must go to work now. Head is a foggy, foggy mess.

The IM Self-actualization of Artists

R: YOU WILL NEVER FIND HAPPINESS IF YOU DON'T GO LOOK FOR IT

Me: I understand the concepts behind self actualization and fulfillment.

R: Prince Charming does not fall into the lap of girls like us.

R: we're made to get broken

Me: Yeah, yeah. Wait...what?

R: we're artists.

Me: Ah. I see.

R: we need a little sadness.

R: otherwise what would we write about?

R: but you have to keep looking!

R: aye-carumba!

When I realized I had totally lost track of the Wallace Stevens paper...

"This music is the music of the poem Peter Quince and not music produced by the individual players of the poem. It is an important distinction."

I paused. I read that sentence. And I said, outloud, to my empty apartment: "I have no idea what I'm talking about."

Those Crackpots and These Men

I love the guys in my grad school classes. Well, the ones I actually know and spend time with socially.

They are a new and unusual phenomenon.

I have never before been friends with men in my field. There were about two of them in the English department back in undergrad. My male friends were in other fields or in theater. I discussed literature with women outside of class (I remember one incident that involved yelling over the resolution of Jane Eyre in the Quad) but not so much with the other gender.

It's just so refreshing to talk to men who are interested in literature (and most of them more interested in literature than I am) and then have a beer and talk about television (postmodern aesthetics of LOST or just general plot points) or stupid drunk things we did at parties and then talk about our take on Derrida.

Anyway, I'm spending the weekend in bed with Wallace Stevens. Or on the couch. And I'll probably mix some 10 Things I Hate About You in there, since it is my paper writing Muse.

But for some reason, I can't sleep right now, even though I'm exhausted. So guess which West Wing episode I'm watching?

Deep? I am the poetry club.

Feminism be damned, I want a man to cook for.

Or, to not end with a preposition: A man for whom I can cook. Which sounds dumb.

Also, according to my roommates, I am the only person in NYC who makes casseroles.

Lately, I think mostly as a procrastination tool, I have been doing a lot of cooking. I like casseroles because they fulfill my need to cook while only utilizing the bare minimum of dishes. As much as I love to cook, I hate to wash dishes (in fact, we almost started World War III and a health hazard in our apartment senior year of college because none of use liked to do dishes). My two most recent culinary experiments have been a Moussaka casserole and Sundried Tomato Potato Gratin. Any recipe with rhyming words is fine and delicious by me.

I watched 'John Tucker Must Die' tonight, while compiling notes on the reception history and criticism of Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet 'I shall forget you presently'. I found this teen movie much less satisfying than '10 Things I Hate About You'.

It had a few good lines, however. Including: 'Dude. I'm deep. I'm dating the poetry club.'

Dude.

It IS the most wonderful time of the year!

Welcome to Christmas decorating day in my apartment. It involves cursing, carols, and many mugs of glorious spiced hot cider.

Instead of cementing my tush to the red couch and my thighs to the laptop, as per usual, today, I joined my roommate on a quest for some holiday spirit.

We found it in the form of a Christmas tree lot outside of our local grocery store, where a nice hippie with a lime green van sold us a Christmas tree from Nova Scotia. A real live Christmas tree! I can't remember the last time I had one of those. So, we paid the nice hippie (who still believes in capitalism), lugged the tree home, struggled to get it into its tree stand, and decorated the suckah.

It is the most beautiful tree ever, and the smell of evergreen mixed with the smell of spiced apple cider is absolutely intoxicating.

While my roommate tackled the lights (she likes putting them on tree, I promise), I cast my eye on the rest of the apartment...

"Have you ever been to my parents' place around Christmas? It's like my Mom walks into the center of the house and vomits gold glitter onto everything. I take after her."

Last year I made those gold poinsettias into a treetop decoration.


"We are not decorating with a baby Jesus."
"But he's so cute."
"He can be baby Fred."
"How can you resist this? Look. Mary is wearing birkenstocks."

Darcy did not get into the holiday spirit, mostly because Darcy hates happiness and joy. So far she hasn't eaten any Christmas decorations yet, so that's a blessing at least.


I would like to end this blog with one of my favorite Christmas decorations, a special message from Mr. Bond:

And then I laughed

marriedtothesea.com

If you've been spending a lot of time lately reading late eighteenth/early nineteenth century seduction fiction (guilty) and proscrastinating on important papers by writing blogs (also guilty- see last three entries and this one), this comic just hits home.

And when I'm really tired of Wallace Stevens...

I take useless online personality quizzes.

Which West Wing character am I?



The idealistic speechwriter is well-liked by just about everyone. He's known for his excellent writing, sense of humor, and tendency to be clutzy. Although being younger than the rest of the staff, he's often treated as so, much to his dismay.

:: Which West Wing character are you? ::

I scored Toby on a different one. I think it's the writing thing. But Sam works much better for me than Toby.

Also, I would focused more on idealistic in Sam's description (except for when he comes back at the very end of the show and is mean and jaded...but we don't count that as real Sam) and the part about being younger than the rest of the staff isn't true, cuz he's the same age as Josh, and I don't remember him ever getting upset about being treated as younger.

Mallory: Don't play dumb with me.
Sam: No, I am dumb. Most of the time I'm playing smart.

This is me paraphrasing off the top of my head, but it certainly describes how I'm feeling about these papers right now...

Sigh. Anyway, back to Wallace Stevens. The paper used to be about 'Music, Gender and Sexuality in the Poetry of Wallace Stevens'. Now it is about a bunch of notes I typed out that I'm having trouble fitting together. I liked the old topic better.