Christmas On The Good Earth

I stumbled across the Apollo 8 Christmas broadcast on, you guessed correctly, Christmas Eve. I just got back from a trip that included the Air & Space Museum in D.C. I haven't been excited like that in a long time. Which is funny, because the first time I ever went there (8th grade, school trip) I was bored out of my mind.

Here's something I put on Facebook. I'm resisting the temptation to rewrite in more "bloggy" language: 

An astronomer friend once asked me why I love space crap so much. Some of it is how small the scale of the galaxies makes me feel, in the good way where I know it's up to me to make meaning in my life, because the universe is expanding / everything is pulling slowly apart and nothing will last long enough for the time I wasted picking my nose to matter. 

& a lot of it is how much the history of space exploration represents some of the highest levels of hope and optimism in humanity. The Voyager I & 2 missions were some of the craziest things we've ever done. Hey, hypothetical intelligent life, here is a GOLDEN record containing some classical music, a baby crying, and scientific diagrams that can be decoded based on the time it takes for hydrogen to transition between its two lowest-energy states. We'll toss it out of the solar system and maybe some day someone will see it. Come find us if we're still around / maybe don't kill us! 

That's beautiful to me. And so friends, happy holidays, happy solstice, merry Christmas, & may your life be full of far more joy than sadness.

Voyager record replica at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum

2010 overview

This year: I started freelancing in earnest; moved back to the city I was born in; got a new job I like less but, for now, want more; lost a cat; nearly lost one of my closest friends; gained but then at least temporarily lost another friend; got poems in 3 publications and another 2 upcoming; wrote a lot of unpublished poetry; became a co-producer of a local literary/theatrical group and wrote several press releases; had great ideas that actually bore fruit; cemented a sort of plan for the eventual future involving grad school not in Wisconsin; cut my hair repeatedly and gleefully even after deciding my face looks better when it's long; got a tattoo; went to Japan and Korea; fell out of touch with pretty much everyone who isn't in the same city as me and many who are, and decided that in 2011 I would get better about that.

Still, it seems like a period of few permanent gains. I realized I sometimes measure my life like it's a level-based RPG. Problematic. But let's say that I gained lots of experience points, but my armor is still pretty shitty and my spell proficiency is still only 62%.

Hello train, goodbye train.

Things I can change at any time but won't get around to until 2011

I think one reason so many people do New Year's resolutions is because they're too busy to effect change in their lives in November & December. So all of that resolve piles up until the holiday season is finished and you fall with relief into the new pattern you've been plotting for months and wish to really, actually enact in the hope of making it permanent.

Like, I want to get back into going to yoga regularly for mental and physical health, but all of my good after-work times are filled with Christmas shopping and dealing with my job and my not-jobs and seeing friends who are dipping into town from far-off places for the holidays. I am left cycling through lazy sun salutations for 20 minutes before bed. Paying someone to tell me which poses to do for how long is a good investment, even only once a week. I leave ready to take on the whole world.

Mostly I can't blame the holidays for lapses, though.

Like, I also want to start eating breakfast again, instead of junk food over my keyboard at work, and wake up earlier after fewer alarm clock reminders and really, seriously, I mean it, regularly take the bus to and from work, even if it means walking many blocks or driving to the transfer point.

And I want to respond to those little e-mails people send me for nice reasons that I let languish because I'm too busy at the moment and never get back to. And be better a friend in general.

And as always, I want to write more, better, usefully.

Dear blog,

Did you know I have a pseudonym? An e-mail address specifically for it? It's true. I have projects that I'm not ready to tie concretely to my real name.

In ninth grade I found a book by my then-favorite author that included a beautifully-written group sex scene. Pure poetry. I was enthralled! I tried to show it to a friend I'd known since elementary school, who also liked that author. She was weirded out. The writing didn't matter as much as the content. It was the first of many tiny gaps between us.

This was my first lesson in not telling people everything that's worth talking about in your life.

"So write...Not like a girl. Not like a boy. Write like a motherfucker."

Ketchup ketchup ketchingup.

This press pass is already falling apart.

on being a weirdo

It is so casual at the new workplace that some people do not wear shoes.

Finally biting the bullet and getting me some internet. My free time should return to being composed of unhealthy levels of internet browsing in T-1 week.

Unless, of course, my apartment has mold somewhere, which would explain why I have gone to sleep sneezing and rubbing my eyes nearly every night since moving in.

And anyway, I shelved all my books finally, sorting by category (nonfiction, science&Spanish, scifi/fantasy, literature, poetry, picture books, embarassing or nostalgic works from my YA-hood, moldering science fiction paperbacks rescued from my dad's house when he remarried that I have not read but will one day, and everything else I have not read) and there's a lot I still have to read. At the rate I rescue stray books from friends and $1 shelves and UW Library book sales, I will never not have a lot to read, of course. But the compulsion is strong after touching every single book in a single evening.

If the new job is comparable to high school, then I really haven't changed much, except I'm more secure about who I am and how I want to spend my free time. It's a nice feeling.

self promotion

What did I do on my vacation beside go to Florida, look at apartments, hang out at art fairs and vaudeville shows, wash my dishes and put my books in boxes and NOT make progress on the Triangle Shirtwaist poems? Write about going to Florida for Dane101. I get paid per page view, so if you're curious about what south Florida is like post-BP, following the link would be totally awesome and maybe in a few weeks I can buy a milkshake to celebrate.

Excerpt to tantalize: "It’s Independence Day and I’m seven miles off the coast of Key West, Florida, right on the cusp of the southernmost point in the contiguous United States. I’m having my first ever look at a shallow water coral reef through the clear glass of a snorkel mask. Two hours earlier my friends and I had stumbled, bleary-eyed, from a 95-degree tent at the KOA campground where we’d spent the night, in order to spend our holiday here, first snorkeling and then, after hours of sweaty wandering, watching fireworks from a beach filled with hundreds of people while rows of boats drifted just offshore, their lights bobbing like stars." Here's the link again.

Harder than it looks.

Been turning myself inside out, upside-down, wringing my bones out like a wet rag. At a class I've been attending on and off for a few years now, the teacher is joyful and beatific in all those ways You Would Imagine of a yoga teacher. I used to roll my eyes a little but now her enthusiasm is infectious, even if I still don't much care about Lakshmi.

* My internet is out at home. My dislike of calling Charter Communications and also staying home from work to wait for technicians is, so far, vastly greater than my dislike of internetlessness. And occasionally there's a roving wireless source that flickers on long enough for me to check my Gmail or post a pre-written blog post.

* I went running last night and had one of those fabulous upheavals on a slick-fine layer of new snow, where your feet literally fly out from under you on little wings and your arms flap flap and an oncoming car that appeared at Just The Moment Of Glory may or may not have doubled back to see if you're okay. I thought I had acquired a concussion but no, not even a bruise, except for my elbow.

* No one had better say anything about Lost until I have Internet again.

This weekend I sold my body to science.

Fyi, at plasma donation centers you have to itemize all piercings, tattoos and self-inflicted scars like it's stuff you're declaring at customs. What is it? Where? What year? This is so they can tell when you've got new infection risks, in case you weren't planning on telling them about that tattoo, and defer you for X number of months while you either do or do not develop the symptoms of HIV infection.

So, at one point, a nurse approaches a guy waiting to donate and says, "Wait, I need to document those wounds on your neck!" He's got some fairly impressive hickeys, I can see them big and dark from across the room - "These are wounds?" - and she says smirkingly, "Yeah, those are WOUNDS. Go ahead and tell whoever wounded you…I don't even know how to spell hickey. What do I write, acquired in the act of lovemaking?" And he's smirking too and starts sending a text message.

Helping poet friend assemble writing sample for MFA program applications. We talk about how doing an MFA in New York would really just be an excuse to live in New York. I would like to spend two years being poor in New York, writing and riding on the subway, breathing in smog and turning it into something else.

Video killed the radio star.

Sometimes I work a shift at Wisconsin Public Radio, reading the weather and playing promos between shows. It's my favorite glorified button-pushing gig ever.

Have been either driving, working, or writing thoughtful critiques since Sunday night. Some sleep. Today, my only day off until sometime mid next week, I ran two very crowded workshops full of high school poets without hurting anyone's feelings OR rambling endlessly/unhelpfully about the shell games you can play with your readers, and then drove my ass from Whitewater to Baraboo just in time to tutor my English student, who is making awesome progress even when we meet only once per week. Blissed-out beyond belief. No longer capable of safe writing or driving. Goodnight.