Homework and horror

It's been troubling me a little that Pam thought that my profile picture was actually my thumb, dressed in a costume and posed. Ummm... no, it's a little gnome pushing a wheelbarrow containing a candle. I only get out the thumb outfits for very, very sacred purposes. Anyway, it has made me think about changing my profile photo. Lately I've been preoccupied with both my hair and with horror*, leading to these two photos.

I am perplexed about how I suddenly got all this hair. While I have been distracted by stuff and other whatnot, my hair has been following an independent and aggressive growth agenda. Now I think of it more like a pelt. A 1970's pelt.



Because of the Shirley Jackson books, I also took a scary picture. I apologize for any preoccupation with horror it may cause in the night.



I'm supposed to be doing homework right now. Homework! I'm doing a two-week workshop. Here is one of the best sentences I've ever read:

"Quintessentially and overly simplistically depicted through the juxtaposition of synthetic phonics-based instruction versus holistic whole language approaches, this vacillation has resulted in the artificial and detrimental segmentation of concurrently complex and codependent literacy skills, processes, and practices."

So many pretty syllables!


* horror lite, of course

Need a new goal

Waaah! I can't get over the sheer productivity of Dave Eggers. I was just on the McSweeney's website - and that dude has started a whole slew of non-profit kids' tutoring centers focused on writing! Maybe they've been around awhile, but this is the first I've heard of them. There's one in Ann Arbor! The website is amazing and the workshops look great. I wish the fourteen-year-old me could take one. Could I still pass for fourteen, do you think?

Yes, productivity. The one magic wish I want for myself is productivity. Although I did grade almost 250 pieces of student work Saturday, which is saying something. Maybe it's drive that I'm lacking. Dave Eggers must have a lot of drive, running a publishing house, writing long books, and now these tutoring centers. I finished What is the What today. I loved it (thanks, Jen!). My students are even referencing it, just because I told them about it. "That reminds me of What is the What," they have said a few times lately.

I have a writing date with Mollie for Thursday night. Perhaps that is the day I'm destined to discover my inner drive at last.

Last night was Mollie's b-day party. I loved everyone there. It was great fun. Kuntry Luv (our band of yore) had a 3-song reunion. We sang our biggest hit, the hymen song. I also co-created a new secret handshake of sorts, and talked lots to M's Arkansassy brother, Charlie.

All night long I had the urge to do a backbend, the splits, or to put my foot behind my head. All signs that I'm feeling pretty good about things. Oh, and I'm a sofa owner. It will be in my possession within a couple of weeks. My long-term goal has been realized sooner than I expected. Now I need to identify a new long-term goal. Any ideas?

Ouch, and then some

1. I hate Emily Dickinson. And I hate that I suddenly can't remember if it's spelled Dickenson or Dickinson. I hate all those dashes she uses, and her prim outfits, and how she was all morbid and housebound. And I really hate that we have the same birthday.

2. Today I have numb and tingly legs. Scary things come up when you google "Numb and tingly legs," by the way. But I think it has to do with my lower back, and some pinched nerves, perhaps? I wonder if it's all the fault of those blasted standing sprints in spinning class?

3. Had a feast from LaShish at Deborah's for her birthday yesterday. Me, Deborah, and Tim ate and cracked up about stuff while Isidora dozed in a hugely oversized sweater, which was super cute. I wondered why she seemed to be struggling to keep her eyes open at times. I do that when I want to finish a chapter or a movie or something, or when I'm teaching a boring lesson or sometimes while driving, but what reason does a newborn baby have? Succumb to the sleep while you can, Izzy!

4. Sheesh, LaShish is so damn good. I wouldn't say no to a bed of hummous with pine nuts, with some of that awesome soft bread for pillows. What do you think of this for their new motto: "SHEESH, LaShish is good!" Would it make you want to go there? I want to go there right now. But I'll bet that uptight Emily Dickinson would have never wanted to eat there. Loser!

5. Like I am even capable of ever teaching a boring lesson!

moomins, y'all

I have a bad memory for books in general, but I think of all the Moomin books I had as a kid this was my favorite. I mean, shouldn't it have been? LOOK! Look at them on their stilts! Stilts and comets! That's a winning combination if ever there was one. I was trying to remember how I started reading these books, thinking it was my Finnish grandma, but no - I think I happened upon them in the bookstore in Dublin as a kid. I still remember the bookstore we'd go to during the two years we lived there. I remember how it smelled, and I remember that the book selection was totally different and that was exciting. So I read Moomins, and I read two boarding school series by Enid Blyton, Malory Towers and St. Clare's.



In these books there were lots of sensible English girls and one or two headstrong ones, and usually a spoiled, glam American nuisance with a lazy drawl and maybe a hot-blooded Spanish girl. At least one of the group would be horsey, one would be strong and athletic, one would be dumb as a stick, and one, whipsmart. They'd get into scrapes and arguments. At least once a term they'd have midnight feasts by flashlight, tucking into tins of pineapple, lovely cakes, and orange fizz sent in parcels from mummy and daddy. Sometimes they'd be careless with the crumbs and would get caught the next day and the headmistress would have to give them a frightful scolding. Sometimes they'd sneak out at night and fall off cliffs, or get dragged by a wild stallion, or stubbornly try to prove themselves by swimming in a dreadful current. They never seemed to meet any lads, though. Pity.

Yeah, I thought it all sounded pretty exciting, that English boarding school life. Looking back, though, Moominland would definitely have been the better place for me. I found some Moomin song clips at http://www.moominvoices.com/listen.html . Some are pretty wild, consisting of multiple layers of moomin voices.

I'm glad that when I can't sleep I can get online and look up things like "moomins." There's over a million sites. A whole lot of obsessed souls out there, which works out great for me. But these two? These two give me the creeps! I knew a few people in Japan who had gotten married at Disneyworld, though, so I guess between the two, a Moomin style wedding is way cooler. I would have included stilts, of course, in case of a comet.

I want to stay up all night

You know how there are holidays and days off, devoted to different things, like the founding of our nation and the remembrance of veterans?

I wish tomorrow was one of them.

I have so much to read and I can't keep up. I have piles - today's New York Times, barely touched; magazines, some from last month; library books... It's unlike me to be so neglectful in this way.

But I did crack open this Ikkyu book today. Ikkyu was a 15th century Zen master and writer of then-scandalous poems. Example: "don't hesitate get laid that's wisdom / sit around and meditate, what crap"

This one's less scandalous but I like it: "I love bamboo how it looks / and because men carve it into flutes"

I once wrote a bamboo poem. I was going to add it here but can't remember it exactly. So I got up to try to find it and realize I need another holiday/day off to devote to organizing my dozens of notebooks. Which one contains the bamboo thing? Aargh.

*

There was a man who used to come into the record store where I worked in Ann Arbor and one day he said to me, "I'll know winter is over by the change in your clothing."

Home from work

I'm home sick today. I hardly ever do that, mostly because it's so much work to get things ready for a sub teacher that it's easier to just go in. But not today. Today is all about fire in my stomach. You know it's bad when you keep reminding yourself of the main character, Port, in The Sheltering Sky (a book that I love; I hear the movie stinks). He is slowly dying of malaria. There's lots of descriptions of the desert woozily shimmering around him all psychedelic-like, and of his stomach feeling like liquid fire, etc. It's all very excruciatingly described, and not a good thing to be able to relate to.

Since I don't have the book to draw a quote from, I was just online looking for one. They all seemed to be about the book's larger existential theme, if you can call it that. Not everyone thinks of intestinal agony when they think of the book, apparently. Then I found a book club guide that included questions like this: "What keeps Kit and Port Moresby together as husband and wife? What role does their friend, Tunner, play in their attachment to one another, and how do their mutual episodes of infidelity affect the course of their marriage?" Ugh. God. Is that what book clubs do? That sounds so terrible to me. My book club would have to be renegade. I could never sit around and answer college literature class essay questions! We'd have to make up interpretive dances or something instead.

This is why I never pursued a Lit. Master's despite loving books so much. Analyzing them too much kills it for me.

So, the other thing I found online was a list of books to read while you're traveling in various countries. This list recommended The Sheltering Sky for people traveling in Morocco and Algeria! Great idea. I definitely would want to read about slow, lonely death in Morocco and Algeria by parasitic intestinal destruction while traveling through those countries. That would be my very first choice.