I have been digging underground.

[raybear]

Hi.



So the last time I was posting, I was hauling around trying to get a bunch of work in at the temp office gig and doing a bunch of copies and then I DJed a wedding and then I picked up a rental car and threw a bunch of various clothes and CDs and snacks into it (but no notebook -- brain?!?!? I was so mad I had to buy one when I have a gajillion blank books at home) and drove to Bloomington, Indiana for the Indiana University Writer's Conference. It's the second oldest writing conference in the country, I learned on the first night.

I was pretty stressed on the drive down, because I got a late start and I had to be there by 4 o'clock and google maps said it was a 5 1/2 hour drive and I forgot they were on Eastern time so I lost an hour, but the drive took just under 4 hours, so I had plenty of times. I even stopped once I was on the edge and pulled over to eat a snack by a creek and stick my foot in the water and breathe a little after spending so many days clenching the steering wheel, even before I was actually doing it on the drive. Ok, writing that sentence made me self-conscious but this is my journal, free-writing it all, but it's hard not to want to re-work every sentence, because a switch got flipped while I was there, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I want to pause and thank here the people who helped make this happen, including DYA who paid for a good chunk but also collected other money from friends who chipped in, as a birthday gift for me, and also because they knew that it was important to me. I'm grateful for other people who just supported me prioritizing going, even if it wasn't exactly the most fiscally responsible option in the moment, but because it was necessary to the bigger picture of me, and finances would get ironed out in the wash after the fact. I'm also indebted to sebastian6 and L (who has an LJ, I think, but I don't know her codename!) who opened their house to me for 5 nights and provided so much more than just a comfy bed in my own guest room. It was nice to have chill folks to sit on a porch and process my day or watch Colbert Report or to just listen to Fleetwood Mac while I fell asleep on the couch. Next time, more board games will have to involved, of course.

Ok, back to the voyage. I guess it doesn't really matter if I'm linear. So I attended the conference at the urging of Dana. I suppose I can name names, it wouldn't be that hard to figure it out and she's been published so whatever. I'll name drop more later. So Dana taught a lecture every morning and she allowed me to tug on her arm and lurk around her during receptions and she teased me about being too cool for everyone when really I was just having moments of severe social anxiety. I eventually broke through and connect with a few folks, including two guys in my workshop who live in Chicago who I invited to join my writing group with Miss Rook. I went out Tuesday night for drinks with Dana which was hilarious, particularly afterwards because she was drinking 3 rounds for each of mine, and insisted on Taco Bell's drive-thru on the way home. Wednesday night we ended up at the same bar, this time with her friends, but they couldn't keep up and ended up leaving us there to walk home. I was fine with that, was planning on walking home already, but I think Dana was a little putoff. I enjoyed the extra bit of quality time though. Even if it made me extremely lonesome for L.A. That's a funny word, lonesome. I suppose I mean longing. But it seems to work. Ok, free-writing, no editing. Keep going.

So you can attend the conference and just go to lectures (the conference in general favored poetry 2-1 on most things, but I was open to it), but I went to workshop because I love workshops and I learn a lot in them (unless they are run by Lisa Teasley -- don't EVER go to anything where she is attempting to teach anything, that is a story for another time and one I probably already told a year or more ago). So workshop. I workshopped with Amy Bloom. I was feeling a bit cautious, curious, a hint of starstruck maybe mixed in with my suspicion because Dana said she got an uncool vibe from her. You can google Amy Bloom and go to her website and see the photo and she looks nothing like that, or rather she does if you imagine that person growing out their hair for a year and adding black plastic cat-eye-esque glasses. And maybe it's just that the photo seems so demure and in no way captures the intense big BIG energy of her personality. She is smart and quick and sharp and opinionated and convincing and argumentative and steadfast and knowing and brutal and honest and unflinching and all those words that don't really even fully add up. She's also self-deprecating and self-involved and secretly shy and occasionally cold and catty and possibly a tiny bit delusional. You know, human. All this to say, I learned a hell of a lot and while the workshop was often like an intense personal lecture about our work, rather than a roundtable discussion, frankly I learned way more from what she had to say than most of the folks at the table. I mean, she is a National Book Award Loser. She has something to say. Ok, seriously, her intensity is really what I'm trying to capture here, her focus on words, on sentences, her passion that every single letter matters, that you can afford to throw away any of them, and it was conveyed to me, and for a few seconds, I got it. No, more than a few seconds really, I'm still marinating on it, I'm still brainstorming, planning, enjoying the flipped switch. It's like momentary enlightenment, waking up, and being able to sustain it for longer than than minute in the classroom. Even if I got a little eviserated in the process. I ended up at Target after me meeting with her, buying new underwear and jeans, then later a bottle of fancy wine and fancy cheese.

Then it ended. And I had to leave. And I was ready and I wasn't. Sometimes it's harder when left alone to my own devices. This was not one of those times. I had good clarity about what I wanted, what I needed, even the parts that needed lots of work. It is hard to think about integrating it, but it seems impossible not to now. I haven't been very integrated of late. I'm not yet. Having lots of alone time helped. I have not been prioritizing that properly. It's always different when you can do that driving in the car alone, not having to sit in the house and look at piles of laundry and unfiled papers.

I got in the car on Friday and I drove all the way up to Wisconsin for keetbabe's birthday camping. I sat and stared at the campfire, I ate a lot, I swam in the lake, I wandered off on an impromptu hike. I think it was maybe the first time I hung out shirtless in front of people that I wasn't having sex with. It was a small group which was great, to have some good interactions, but there were a few moments when I wished for the anonymity of a larger group, to go off alone for longer. But the trip was so short, I rode it out. It even got shortened more, when Sunday morning opened with solid downpour that lasted for hours and hours before we got up and broke down camp and put all our waterlogged and muddy belongings into the cars and left. It stressed me out a lot. Mostly because I was at the end of my rope when it came to emotional energy, and I hadn't gotten enough sleep, and then I recalled it was Father's Day and I hate holidays and their association with family and right now I'm trying to sort out family. It's this big topic that's always there, and lately I've been breaking off small bits and looking at them. Those small stones of hurt, experiencing and examining, before discarding. Trying to find out what I want to fill myself with instead.

Yesterday afternoon we got home just after lunchtime, enough time to nap, but I was so spent I couldn't relax enough to sleep. I don't know what I did. Then we got dressed and went to see the play M. Proust which I had been excited to see until I heard not so great unofficial reviews, plus, I was physically spent, but we went and I really liked it. It had a few things I wasn't keen on, but still, I liked it. And it was about writing. Full circle, I suppose.

I came home from Bloomington with a huge stack of literary journals (free as a courtesy of the conference) a few used books, a new favorite western shirt and a beautiful black leather jacket and bright orange swim trunks and new black work shoes (all courtesy of thrift stores), and Martha Wainwright's CD and I can't stop listening to it. Her voice is carving up my heart in the most painfully delightful way. I was saying over the weekend, that I've always liked Rufus Wainwright more in theory than practice. I mean, I like him, but I feel liked I should LOVE him based on what he is on paper, but I just don't. But I'm currently loving Martha. So I don't know what it means for others, but I'm just putting it out there as a possible theory of connection, that if you like-but-don't-love Rufus, you might love Martha.

The first track. Just, the first track.

So that's the meandering report. I'm temping downtown all this week and all next week and than the week of July 4th I'm not working because Noriko is coming to town and I'm thrilled. I need to book a trip to L.A., but I also need to get my work situation and lifeplan and money and all that together first. I'm waiting to here back from ASM about teaching in the fall. I think temping will keep me busy for the summer, enough to pay the bills, but I'm not keen on doing it for too long. It's exhausting. I come home and change and rest and I don't feel like cooking so I don't eat well and I want to do more exciting things with my day. Like writing. And reading. But then again, it feels good to want it, to crave it. All this is very Proustian too, this theme of witholding, of absence, of fully understanding and seeing and experiencing it when it's not there. But only for so long. Only for so long.

Oh, and I still have a beard. I am both attached to it and feeling close to perhaps parting with it.

Comments

[pidge.livejournal.com]

i really like this post, the almost stream-of-consciousness of it.

[foxycoxy.livejournal.com]

this is the most slowly and steadily i've spent reading your journal in a long time. thanks for the candid honesty within it... there's something peculiar to learning about what you think and feel, what's really going on via livejournal than in person. I guess people operate differently depending on the environment or maybe its easier, or maybe its safer, well.. regardless i'm happy to learn in whatever way. i became super self-conscious that i was talking too much about family, it seemed alot of conversations this weekend revolved around family and i hope that wasn't too off putting.. I WANT ANOTHER GO AT SCRABBLE! I sucked big time and feel the need to redeem that i have some smarts somewhere stacked up there.. Though i am fine with admitting my limited vocabulary, really. I'll be the first to say it... Anyway, Will bring Scrabble with in a few weeks..