Disconnect

I was just sitting on my porch smoking a cigarette when a couple walked by the house hand in hand. They both had headphones on. No, they were not sharing a pair of headphones, listening to one song as they went. They BOTH were listening to their SEPARATE iPods as they walked to wherever they were going. Sorry, what? Why even be together if you're just going to completely ignore each other and disappear into your own music? I don't understand people sometimes.

The Internet Will Break Your Heart

I wrote this last night when I was bored and pissed off about being robbed and felt like being profane.

Lauren says: hey
what are you doing?
Julia says: the guy i fucked this weekend has an atrocious profile pic
Lauren says: what’s his info like?
Julia says: i don’t know i didn’t friend him
Lauren says: DO IT
Julia says: it wasn’t that kind of thing
i’ve been trying to masturbate all day but i can’t do it unless i’m high
Lauren says: you don’t have any weed?
Julia says: no he smoked it all
bad decisions
Lauren says: right
what number is this one?
Julia says: 14
13 was way unlucky
Lauren says: naturally
Julia says: why did you call me yesterday?
Lauren says: i was lonely
and bored
Julia says: waaah waah
Lauren says: i know. Brian left his red label in my room and i was drinking it alone
Julia says: oh in that case i’m sorry i didn’t pick up
Lauren says: fuck you
why can’t you masturbate?
Julia says: i don’t fucking know and it’s driving me crazy
like i can start and i’m wet and everything but i just can’t keep going
it’s like i can’t face it alone
you probably don’t even remember what that’s like
Lauren says: i still masturbate
Julia says: yeah fuck you and your perfect boyfriend
Lauren says: whatever brian’s okay
Julia says: of course he is
i don’t want to talk about this anymore
where are you?
Lauren says: atomix
Julia says: nice their coffee’s so cheap
Lauren says: yeah and the barista gave me the wifi password for free cause i asked for soymilk
Julia says: maybe i should go vegan
Lauren says: of course you should
Julia says: but cruelty tastes so good
i’d only do it for the free shit from other vegans
Lauren says: we do watch out for our own
Julia says: fuck off
Lauren says: what is up with you today?
Julia says: i’m just sexually frustrated
don’t mind me
Lauren says: my teeth are fucked up
like i can taste blood in my mouth
Julia says: don’t worry about it just brush more
Lauren says: i think i have gingivitis
Julia says: do you have any weed?
Lauren says: yeah
Julia says: come over?
Lauren says: can’t, waiting for Brian
Julia says: oh that old fucking chestnut
Lauren says: lay off
it’s not my fault you can’t come
Julia says: so what’s up with your teeth?
Lauren says: my gums are pulling away from them
and i taste blood a lot
Julia says: shitty
you should get that checked out
Lauren says: yeah i haven’t been to the dentist in a while
are they as expensive as doctors?
i don’t have insurance
Julia says: yeah i think so
that sucks
Lauren says: yeah
what are you doing?
Julia says: wishing i had drugs
and avoiding working on my shitty story
Lauren says: what’s it about?
Julia says: this white trash married couple
they both work at a roadside burger stand in oklahoma
it’s super clichéd
she’s fucking the boss and gets pregnant
wants to run away
maybe she should kill him
Lauren says: which one?
Julia says: i don’t know i can’t decide which one she ends up choosing
Lauren says: maybe she goes off by herself
Julia says: gross
that’s such a fucking hollywood move
no one actually does that shit
Lauren says: okay, jesus
Julia says: fuck positive messages of female empowerment
Lauren says: just trying to help
look i gotta go
Brian’s here
Julia says: okay come over later?
Lauren is offline.

Julia looks around her bedroom. She should clean. She paces into the kitchen. She could do the dishes. She runs the water so hot it hurts, and she moves the sponge quickly. She thinks about her story. The first line is “the locals called it Jimmy’s.” Good, intriguing. It’s about the tourist trap, and the nobility of the buffalo, and...something else. Maybe Lauren was right, and it could be about freedom and independence. The thought of producing something so idealistic makes her think about barfing. Whatever, the story fucking sucks anyway. Maybe she should kill herself. She’s not serious, but thinking about it passes the time. She’d do it with pills. Of course. Everything’s clean too quickly. She thinks about just doing it again, but that’s too fucking depressing. She goes back to her computer.
She puts her hands on the keyboard to start typing some corny bullshit about this white-trash lady’s journey to herself or whatever but decides she really should clean this room. She put on the album she had just illegally downloaded, then decided to read the review of it on Pitchfork. Apparently the lead singer had been brought up in some kind of cult. She looked it up on Wikipedia. Heavy shit. A lot of the women were forced to work as prostitutes and they published kiddie porn. Whatever. It’s a good album. She goes back to Facebook. Her friend Joe put up a funny picture of him and his roommate playing with bubbles. She likes it. The smile on his face is so simple, so real. He’s laughing. It makes her want to laugh, but she doesn’t.
Oh right, she was going to clean. She collapses onto her bed and gets up three hours later when the doorbell rings.
It’s Lauren.
“You look like shit.”
“I haven’t left the house today.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Writing. Can I bum a cigarette?”
“Sure, where’s your bowl?”
“Right here. So, how’s Brian?”
“He’s getting a dog.”
“Aww, sweet.”
“I think he wants me to move in.”
“Hmm.”
“Yep.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know, I mean it’s big.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“But I mean, he hasn’t brought it up yet. He was just really excited about the dog.”
“Cute.”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of dog is it?”
“Black lab.”
“Perfect for him.”
“Yeah.”
Eventually the bowl was done.
“I’m hungry.”
“I have macaroni and cheese.”
“Can’t eat it.”
“Sorry. I don’t have any milk anyway.”
“When was the last time you left this apartment?”
“I don’t need to. Fuck the rest of the world.”
“Where’s Nicole?”
“She’s in Denver for the week.”
“Oh cool.”
“Yeah, she’s....”
Blah blah blah, no one cares. Soon, Lauren will leave. Julia will finally clean her room and write a paragraph of exposition. She will find that she is no longer stoned and go to McDonald’s for two McDoubles and a vanilla milkshake. When she gets home, she’ll drink the forty she’s been saving in the fridge while watching reality television. Then she’ll take a bath and go to sleep, and dream of standing on a spinning platform while a potato peeler slowly removes her skin, in a perfect spiral, one long strip, and only when it reaches her feet will her guts finally fall out, spattering the walls and floor with bright red blood.


I remember really liking it at the time.

In other news, I've been really enjoying this album lately. Yes, it is the one from the story. It's pretty rare that I hear a new album that really grabs me and makes me want to listen to it over and over again. I'm not a music writer -- I don't know why this one does. It just does.

Publication

I remember being in high school, when I thought that if my work were ever published, that would mean I'd made it. Period. That would mean that I was good. Well now, after one year (and almost a half) of college, I've had poems selected for three different online publications and my academic papers have been granted cash awards from my college. And I still am not sure that any of it is actually any good.
What does it mean that a poem is good? That it has significance to the poet? That it moves a reader/listener? Maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Did E.E. Cummings think "o sweet spontaneous" was good? Did he realize that it was possibly the perfectest combination of words and syntax to ever be so artfully arranged on a page? That's overstating the point, of course. Really, what I'm wondering is if I will ever be satisfied with my own work. Come to think of it, this might not even be desirable.

We had a conversation about art today in my Neuroscience of Consciousness class. We started with the famous quote by Louis Nizer, "A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist." Prodded by our professor, one girl was talking about her horseback riding. She said she was not an artist with the kind of obvious disdain with which one tells a group that they certainly did not sleep with that lech at that party, and they don't intend to. After yet more prodding, she admitted that someone may be amazed and dazzled by what she does, but that "I've been doing it for so long, it's just something I do. It's not like I'm astonished by it."
I wanted to ask her if she felt anything, at all, but I knew the answer would likely be too depressing. How can anyone have something they do without being astonished by it? Why keep doing it without the heart? She mentioned that her mom tended to think everything she did was amazing. Maybe she was a stage child. I wanted to tell her she could make her own decisions now, if she wanted to. I mean, I don't sing onstage anymore. Anyway.
I think my fear of my own poetry is related to this. Yes, I am astonished by anything that comes out of my pen, hell, I'm astonished that anything comes out of my pen. The fear is this: what the hell do I know? Of course I'm going to like my own work, these little ditties I've whipped up. I think they're pretty cool. But what is that beyond sheer narcissism if someone else doesn't get something from them? I don't know. Maybe it's art.

If nothing else, I learned from this conversation that the task of living artfully is to always be astonished. Go ahead and put that in your magazine.

Speaking of which, look for my piece "Ascapuon" to show up here November 15.

Back

Wow. I forgot about this.
Re-reading that last post made me think about some things I haven't thought about in a really long time. I'm back at Beloit, and it's comfortable. I like the Women's Center. I like the parties and the bubble and the familiarity and even some of the people. And even if I didn't, here I am.

I don't actually have that much to say. I have absolutely no idea what happens next, but at least now I know that that's a good thing.

I've started getting up early, like 7:30 am even though my earliest class doesn't start until 10. Today I made tea and toast and did yoga and went for a (very) short run. I like running. I want to do it more. This could be a routine. I want to get in shape before I go to Hawaii.

Oh yeah, I'm going to be WWOOFing in Hawaii over Christmas break. If you don't know what WWOOF is, go here. I'm going to be living and working on an organic farm and meditation center where every day starts at 8 am with swimming, surfing, and chanting. I'm ready to live some real life and be with the earth for a while. And I'm proud of myself for not giving in to the pressure to go back to New Jersey. I don't need that shit.

But first, first I have to make it through the semester. Tomorrow is my first day teaching poetry and performing arts classes at the Hendricks Education Center here in Beloit, an alternative high school for kids who couldn't handle the public school for whatever reason. I'm excited to see what kind of words get written and said. Then in two weeks I'm going back to Chicago for a few days. I'd go for the whole week but I need to stay here to keep up with the class at Hendricks.

For all the pain and frustration, the difficulty of giving up the Beloit mindset (the sound of a turd dropping into a river) while still living here and work and work and work on trusting that change is not only possible but inevitable, and fear that it won't come and ....well, I'd say I'm doing just fine.

Hey, you, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Who knows where I'll be next year?

Hmmm...Blog

It's about time I did something with this, isn't it?
Today has been a day of speculation. I'm thinking about just not leaving Chicago. Really. I paid my first bill today. I'm feeling more adult by the second. The option was pay the bill or have my phone service suspended.
But seriously, I could leave my entire life behind right now and start a new one here. I could start looking for places, or live on-campus at Columbia for a semester, meeting people. I could go to Amsterdam tomorrow and spend all my money on hookers and blow. I am so young.
I could go to LA.
I could go to New York.
I don't really want to go to any of those other places, not just yet. I'm settling in here quite nicely.
It does get lonely, though, sometimes. It could. I need more friends.
Oh god, I'm looking at apartments on craigslist. I don't even have a job. Yet. If I get this housecleaning gig that could change.
That's right, Chicago, get ready. Cynthia Spencer will clean your house for you. All you have to do is pay her adequately and treat her nice.

I really really want this. It's hard, wanting something like this which is so scary, which was so not a part of the game plan. What if Columbia won't give me any money?
If I go back to Beloit, even for a semester, will I lose momentum? Will I lose track of the few contacts I've made here? Will I get lulled back into that safety net, that illusion of security?
None of that is real.
And there's a cheap 2br in Ukrainian Village right by Carly's place, like on the same street. Who will take the second bedroom?

At moments like these, the entire universe seems to collapse in on itself and I can't even really believe what I'm contemplating.
I can just move to Chicago? Just, like, do it?
I'm already here. I already did. It's just a matter of staying.
Jesus Christ, I'm going in circles.

Hint Fiction

I discovered something very cool today that someone apparently only just named, though it's been around for quite a while: Hint Fiction. Anyone heard of Hemingway's famous six-word story? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." That's hint fiction, cause all you get is a hint, get it? I love this, and I think it's becoming especially relevant with the rise of our mobile culture and shortening of the collective attention span.
In the same vein, Folded Word Press, an online lit mag that once published a poem of mine (not to brag or anything, but I've got almost a thousand views), is now publishing poems and stories under 140 characters via Twitter. I think this is a novel idea. I know, I know, typically I'm lamenting the collapse of the English language due to venues such as this which force us to write (and therefore think) in short, simple phrases, but I really think this puts a delightful spin on the idea. Yes. Do something creative with it!
As you'll see if you visit the Hint Fiction page, I submitted the last few lines of one of my shorter poems as well as a couple of lines I just wrote today (I thought of it at the time as a seed for a story, turns out it could be a story itself).
Does this make me lazy? Am I just unwilling to put the time and energy into fully developing this story seed, feeding it, watering it, caring for it? Is that why I'm so excited about the opportunity to present the world with just a tiny kernel of literature?
I don't think so. The form certainly does require a bit of messing around, figuring out how to fit as much information into as few words as possible. Look at that Hemingway bit above -- do you think that was easy? No. Not at all. It's an immense challenge to develop characters and relationships within twenty-five words. Seriously. Try it now. It's fun. Put what you come up with in the comments

Cynthia

P.S. Also, I found this in the Related Videos for my poem, and I find it really hilarious.
That is all.