2011 so far:

A circus, many naps, a night locked out of my apartment, 4 coffee spoons. Nearly everyone I went to the circus with left with a clever disguise. I saw a young man spin on the floor in a hula hoop like a coin embossed with da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. Never faltered. It was beautiful. When he finished, he couldn't stop grinning. It felt like a moment where someone should be hugging him. I wonder how it feels to create dynamic art. You never get to keep it, the way I do my poems. I speculate that this might be both a relief (the mistakes disappear behind you like engine smoke) and a sorrow (the good things are only there when you're doing them?). I want to have this conversation with a dancer or a singer or C's cellist.

And also a thousand dead birds thudded across Akansas.

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but then at least temporarily lost another friend; got poems in 3 publications and another 2 upcoming; wrote a lot of unpublished poetry; became a co-producer of a local literary/theatrical group and wrote several press releases; had great ideas that actually bore fruit; cemented a sort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.

I only said one terribly awkward thing in front of family this year, so I am calling this Christmas a success. I also called my sister "fast and easy," but I was talking about her birth as described by my mother, so I don't feel awkward about that. I was "fast but not easy." I like this phrase.

We cleaned my mom's house today and played the Beatles really loud, a holiday tradition as of 2009, and after re-discovering a high-quality record player, the 9 symphonies of Beethoven and the War of the Worlds on vinyl, and a lot of sentimental old books that date back to at least my mom's childhood (I wish I'd brought my camera), my dust allergy is apparently worse than I thought. I am about to take a Benadryl and go to sleep, no doubt snoring wetly all night.

Christmas so far: no eclipse, but fantastic socks and cookies (not pictured because they've been my dinner and breakfast since I received them), and I've finished my shopping. This means I get one night to wrap them and mop the winter shoe-slush tracks off my floors and Be Alone before I leap into family time. That itself is a gift.

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.

Acceptance

New Wave Vomit published some of my poems. Hooray!

& Crispin Best's For Every Year project will feature me for the year 1601.

Now all I need is a lunar eclipse and to finish my shopping and this holiday season is complete.

If the world is really ending in 2012

More people should read books with science fiction and fantasy and any other word for "alternative version of life as we know it" involved. The world is a strange place, and the likely future seems in many ways sadder and more wilted, but it is stranger and harder to cope with if you've never mentally visited the "what ifs."

I think, if we are parachuting into a new universe, and it is in one way or another dystopian, at least those who have read The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx&Crake, Pastwatch, The Player Piano, etc etc etc, will not be shocked that such things can exist. We have visited that country in our minds. It's grim country, but we will not be flattened by shock. Maybe we'll get our sleeves rolled up and get started on whatever meager repairs we can that much sooner. I like to think, anyway.

I also have this theory about zombies. Because we've incorporated them so smoothly into our pop culture mythos, we're more likely to survive them because we already know what they are and have a set of possible survival strategies to start out with. They may be completely wrong, but at least we won't be paralyzed. I like to think, anyway.

My friend Matt visited from Chicago this weekend. At breakfast today he told the story of his night curled on the floor by his friend CJ's bed, driven there (from the couch) by ghosts. Strange footsteps in the hallway (there are no neighbors on that floor) and, "It sounded like it put my shoes on and was walking around in them." CJ swears the place is haunted, and the cat was mewing at shadows.

"I was going to call you guys," he tells me and Carrie over our respective scramblers.

I kind of wish I could have gotten that phone call. If only because no one has ever called me while in the process of being haunted. I am not sure I would have said anything useful, but I like giving useless advice.

A sort of nuclear glue

Days like Carl Sagan's birthday make me miss my brother. He can do a pitch-perfect impression. I am sure I have said this before. One Thanksgiving he just erupted with the most beautiful "billions and billions," and we all gawked and laughed.

I called him tonight to demand a performance and he obliged and I laughed and clapped my hands. He is not, however, thrilled about my "Let's bake billions and billions of apple pies and watch Cosmos and call it a party" idea. Oh well.

I'm having one of those weeks (I guess starting last Wednesday) where all I want to talk about is poetry and my sick cat. I'll refrain here.

I killed a brown recluse spider in my bedroom last night. I'm sure it's a brown recluse spider. I felt very brave. Now I'm checking every skin imperfection for signs of necrosis.

There was a haunted house. It was very manufactured - warehouses at the Waukesha fairgrounds, smoke machines, actors, rancid water, bookshelves and skeletons in the bathtub and other things theoretically beautiful that I wanted to photograph but was not allowed to. But they did a good job and I got scared and a fake ghost called me a midget and Robin "four-eyes" and another friend "beard guy" and we formed a human chain so we could get out of the final smokey maze without separating, passing other human chains going the other direction, resembling slightly Sean of the Dead.

yes

Crockpots are magical creatures. Take heap of browning apple slices, handful of water, plenty of cinnamon, and one long, amnesiac day later you come home to a nice surprise. Better than the housewife with the martini. Hi honey, would you like a quiet bowl of September before bed? Yes.

---

I have been reading the end of Ulysses repeatedly this week, Molly Bloom's cascade of "yes" et cetera. Aloud. This is difficult because there is no punctuation, and sometimes the stream-of-consciousness diverts midsentence. But a rhythm emerges slowly from the mess and the "yes" pulls you through it to the end. Yes, I should own this book, yes I will Yes.

---

Last night I dreamed about a plane crash. I think there were many loops, because at the end I knew it was going to happen, and I looked out my window in time to see the whole nose tilting down. Somehow I survived and there was no falling or dream dying to wake me up. I woke up thinking more about Lost than today's anniversary, though. And I think it was fed by a friend telling me about an airplane dream. That plane landed safely on State Street. I don't like planes much lately because they require a specific destination. I hate choosing and I hate sitting on my ass in a cold tin can.

Florida, day 4

Back from Key West. Both vile and amazing. Today started with snorkeling on the reef ($30 and worth every penny, I would have gone back for another round if we'd had the time) and ended with fireworks on the beach. Other stuff between. Bird sanctuary yesterday, the house where Hemingway wrote half his works and petted six-toed cats, the bar he spent every night in and which is now kind of vile. Sadly. Lots of tasty fish. & more to say, but I am saving some of it for a more formal piece, and anyway we drove straight back after the fireworks and must take M to the airport in four hours and are very tired and filthy and ready to sleep in an apartment instead of a 90+ degree tent with a rainfly on it and three people's worth of body heat. And chiggers.

Happy Bloomsday

Yes I said yes I will yes.

Reverend Taylor

We were joking around in the office today about weddings and one thing led to another and I got myself ordained at the Universal Life Church. I might be able to officiate your wedding, if you’ll give me like $30 so I can buy myself the official ULC wallet card and ordination credit and letter of good standing to confirm my holiness to state authorities.

Please keep in mind I am not actually Christian and also don’t really care much for marriage before you ask me to officiate your wedding.

Hey, look, I added a list of links to places that have been nice enough to publish my poetry. Now I won't forget anyone when I'm writing cover letters asking more people to publish me.

Mother's Day in our household has turned kind of into Christmas. The siblings made a surprise trip down from Minneapolis, and I'm sleeping on Mom's couch, sneezing and sniffling but thrilled to have everyone in one place. My sister's going to Mississippi in June, she'll be teaching math in the Delta. She cut her hair and we joked that it was so she wouldn't get oil in it. But really, I wonder.

Happy Public Domain Day!

W.B. Yeats' copyright expired! I am all over quoting long chunks of that without regard to fair use. The center cannot hold, y'all.

Merry BearMasKwanUkah!

How about a summary of 2009 using this set of arbitrary statistics, some of which may be estimates rather than actual counts?

countries: 3
music festivals: 1
places slept (including couches, tents, rondavels, hostels, floors): 24.
pony rides: 3
plane rides: 2
train rides: 9
bus rides: 1
awkward car rides: 3
apartments: 5
jobs: 4
so-called professional jobs: 1
fake marriages: 2.5
cavities: 3
skinny dipping: 6
film festivals won: 0
taxes done: x3
global economic downturns (GlobEcDown): 1
episodes of Gilmore Girls: 19
poems submitted For Your Consideration, Thanks: 24
poems published: 2
insurances: 3
new monthly bills since beginning of year: 5
snowballs: 13
hats: 7
drug tests: 1
moments of abject terror: 3
instances of utter despair: 5
hope, change: 30%
newspaper articles written: 130-145
self-ridicule, hilarity: 89 degrees.
notebooks: 2
squash soup: yes
stage names: reference to a Howard Hawks movie.
coffee spoons: 66666666666666.

one small step

The holidays are not stressful enough, so it looks like this move is happening in the next 2 days, because my landlord is hoping to lease vacant unit (my current unit) before Jan 1., and after Wednesday afternoon I am All Over The Place, between family and work, Madison and Baraboo.

So in the three hours since I got home from work tonight, I've already moved like, half my stuff. And made a batch of cookie dough for the upcoming office "remember the days when our company threw us a party at Kalahari and rented us a karaoke machine and gave us raises? Oh, you're too young to remember raises, Christie" potluck.

At least for the next couple days, this also means I have TWO apartments. I am sending the cats to colonize, and establishing tiny moon bases in the kitchen, bathroom. Little outposts in the closets.

THE EARTH IS POISONED, PIRATE CAT, WE MUST EVACUATE HASTILY. AND THEN SCRUB THE REFRIGERATOR.

Hey, happy solstice. I’m celebrating the gradual return of sunlight by moving across the hall into an apartment that, for just $10 more per month and the stupid $20 for moving my wireless internet, has south-facing windows (instead of north) and a little second-story porch. I guess this is me, burrowing in, fighting the urge to sell all my possessions on eBay.

If you’re in Madison, you should come visit and help me move a desk. It will be super fast and then we can go to Devil’s Lake and gape at the stark majesty of the black trees against the lonely, loveless snow. Or, you know, get a beer.

Thanksgiving post #41231908

This has been a week for appreciating what I have, sort of regardless of the season but also conveniently tied into it.

E.g. Wednesday night, I was in the ER waiting room waiting for a friend of a friend, L, to find out why her stomach was so swollen and hurt so damn much. She ended up having to stay all of Thanksgiving in the hospital, waiting for the specialist to return from his holiday. L and her husband are jobless and crashing somewhere rent-free right now after moving from Idaho with $500 to their name. With only a few words of explanation from me, my mom and sister eagerly helped pack up a big bagful of our Thanksgiving food – before we’d even sat down to dinner ourselves – so L’s husband could stay at the hospital with her without starving/squandering precious money on food. Turkey included, and my sister made a special trip to the grocery store to buy a couple thermoses for cider and coffee. I am ridiculously proud of my mom and sister, and also very aware that my only problem yesterday was fitting into my schedule (and stomach, ouch) all the dinners to which I was invited before I had to head home so I could work today.

E.g. Not to get mushy about my family, but we have it pretty good considering where all we’ve been since my parents filed for divorce more than a decade ago. For example, we usually get along, and agree that life’s going to be totally sweet when the Death Panels finally arrive. My sister and I go for hour-long walks in suburbia to catch up and drink soccer-mom-power-walk coffee. My brother, 18, shocks us all with a pitch-perfect Carl Sagan impression during a game of ApplesToApples, straight outta the high school Cosmos videos. And while I’m not sure there will ever be a way to celebrate Thanksgiving such that both parents will feel like they got their fair share, these things seem to balance out in the long run.

E.g. The basics. 10 fingers, 10 toes, my 3 new cavities will mostly be covered by insurance (though still cost too much), amazing friends, strong legs, employment in industry related to my college major and lifelong ambitions, exciting and/or meaningful extracurriculars.