Thursday, January 26, 2006

I am wearing a really ugly sweater. Not ugly in a good way. It's also scratchy. This was one of those mornings where I woke up way too late, couldn't decide what to wear and then ran around all panicked putting one thing on and then taking it off and throwing all my clothes on the floor. So this sweater was maybe my fourth try. I would have changed again if I knew it would be so itchy.

Things are happening and my brain is busy. I started a new writing class at The New School - non-fiction this time - and even though the instructor mumbles when he reads in this way that drives me nuts, I think its going to be really interesting and motivating. When I came home I wrote four pages, just like that. Of course, I'm not getting to the million things on my immediate to-do list, like the book review that was supposed to be done last Friday, so I guess tomorrow night will be a chain-myself-to-my-desk kind of situation. Except that the latest Todd Solondz movie just showed up in my mailbox from Netflix. Shit.

Tuesday night I went to hear Mary Oliver read at the 92nd street Y. I was trying yesterday to write about what it was like to be at that reading, but I can't really do it justice. I could mention that it brought me to tears - which is true - but that just sounds so dramatic and empty. All I can do is tell everyone to go read her poems. She read in an auditorium that I've been to before, and hate because it has a border of names of famous dead white guys (Lincoln, Jefferson, Moses, Shakespeare... you know the list) just below the ceiling, and therefore positioned over the stage. So there was Oliver, so humble and brilliant and amazing, standing at a podium underneath that list of names, a woman telling more truth than those guys ever did. And if that's an overstatement, too fucking bad. It's rare that you see a juxtaposition like that, one that SO cleary spells out a dynamic that we usually have to convince people even exists.

My new tote bag just arrived from Queen Bee so I can finally start carrying around the large amount of crap that I need to, instead of packing my dumb girl purse so full that it's like a brick.

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