Impatient and Impetuloance

It's raining. It's pouring. My old man is snoring (because he's f*ed up on Nyquil). He has a terrible cold and all he wants to do is sleep and sleep. Meanwhile, I'm bored: the house is dirty, I haven't written in weeks, there's still christmas present wrapping paper all over the floor, and and I've nearly exhausted my DVR reserves. I'm bored. I know, I know, only boring people get bored. So I took to my iphone today (did I mention I got an iPhone?!? So excited!) and hooked up with my friend Lisa and we braved the rain and had a dog park adventure. It was muddy and wet, but we rocked it and Lola and Bailey had a great time traversing the wood chips and grassy knolls. But then, just when we were all having a great time, Bailey decided to take a swan dive from the top of the hill. Here he is right before his jump:

Pretty vertical, right? He landed on his legs/side/back and jumped back up pretty quickly - recovering nicely with a sneeze, a shake, and a running in a circle. I'm pretty sure he'll be just fine (No, I wasn't standing there, taking photos of him and waiting for him to plunge to his death - he's a mountain goat and loves to climb; I have no idea why he decided to try that route towards me at that exact moment).

After Bailey's peril, Lisa and I went to One Stop Tattoo in the inner sunset. Lisa got inked, Kevin and I watched, and we all went out for Indian afterwards. A pretty great day all together. The power was out when I got home, though and power outages always really creep me out. I was able to hang in there like a normal person for about a half an hour, but that feeling of antsiness and restlessness overtakes me so quickly. Luckily, though, the power came back on before I started murdering anyone just for something to do. I've decided that my New Year's resolutions are to: 1. keep writing. 2. finish at least two pieces. 3. bake bread regularly. 4. exercise more. 5. MAYBE quit smoking (the jury's still out on the one).

My favorite youtube video

I really like this.

*UPDATE* I created this post solely for the purpose of showing a student how to create a link within their own Blogspot blog. My students this semester were awesome and their own student art blog projects turned out great. Here's to the conclusion of another semester (read: I need a drink)!

Rainy Days

Rain is one of the things I will always love - the tap, tap, tap against a window; the cool smell and freshness of wet earth; the reminder that we aren't really in control of anything. It is a time for poetry, a time for living without thinking. Close your eyes and imagine me.

...


When the weather is cold and you can feel it in your lungs.
When it hurts to breathe
in too deeply, and the sharp pain in your chest sends warning to your entire nervous
system.
When you can feel me, behind you, watching.
That is when you are ready.

For Your Consideration

If I knew how to use Photoshop (or any of the other thousand softwares taught at the Academy of Art), I would make a For Your Consideration poster advertising my own greatness.

"The best at everything," - Carleigh's boyfriend. 

"Amazingly beautiful, incomparably talented," according to her dog. 

"Just okay," - her best friend.

But I can't, so I won't.

Why am I so full of myself? I'm not really - it's just a facade I wear so that no one can see my little broken heart.

Writers on writers

I had to ask the question: what do you do when your friends, other writers--in order to promote themselves and their work--become ubiquitous to the point of obnoxious? I follow my favorite writers on Twitter, and they're so whiny that I don't want to read their books anymore.

His answer was good - just defriend people. You can't have a personal connection to being unfriended either, and you have to be generous with your work. Give it away, share it, comment on other peoples' posts, and be interactive. I liked his answer.

Seth Harwood came to my writing class tonight to speak about getting published in the ever-changing, confused and confusing world of the writing social-industrial-complex, a.k.a. publishing. I like his approach - I too think that the accessibility of the digital reading medium is great for reading and writing. I'm excited about it. He is a dude writer, though, so I don't think I'll read him (and by dude writer I mean he writes about crime and mystery and dudes and stuff - I prefer weepy, emotionally wrought female issues).

So, writers on writing. As a reader on reading: keep it up.

The Hunger Games and my own hunger pains

I re-read the last three pages of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay) again and again. For some reason, that delicious ending gave me everything I needed and so I took more. I won't give it away, but let's say that while war harms us irrevocably, love is stronger than that. War kills and death surrounds us - deaths in vain, deaths of violence, deaths caused by our own negligence and disregard. Yet love is the reason for living. Love bring us to a better place. Love is maybe as close to God as I will ever get.

I'm not really a proper reviewer of books, as I tend to just give my emotional reaction to a story, but that's ok. I am a person led very much by my emotions and so if I love something, it is as high a recommendation as a carefully written rationale. The Hunger Games sometimes took a long time to engage me--the exposition of the second and third book's first halves was necessary but languid--but the best scenes were the action scenes. I tried to think of the hero, Katniss, and whether she was a strong young woman with hero merit or simply a heroine with a pretty face who carries a war forward because she is the sexual objective of men (like so many other contemporary heroines (coughBellaSwancough). But Katniss is strong, and not pretty nor particularly smart. She is plain, and full of fire and anger and does not forgive easily. I was pleased with this new addition to modern feminist characters.

In my own life I strive to let love show me the way. I am having some sort of a love/existential crisis, relationship-wise, but I am choosing to move forward through it and see what the other side holds. Maybe happiness. Maybe hunger. I want to know; I have to know.

Courage is just fear, plus walking.

The Monsters We Meet

There once was a young boy who would not eat his vegetables.

“Eat your vegetables,” his father boomed from the head of the table.

The boy cowered in his seat near the end, and again touched the tip of the farthest-away fork tine to the tiny, green bundle of miniature cabbage on his plate.

Brusselsprout.

It wiggled from the contact and settled back into place, upright again just like a bop bag.

The young boy stared at his nemesis, whose flower opening seemed to be sneering at him. He raised an eyebrow—and his fork—and stabbed that Brusselsprout through it’s dead, lukewarm heart. Piercing it with fervor, and plugging his nose with his free hand, the young boy ingested that vegetable. Mastication. A gulp. A sense of victory.

“EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!” his father yelled louder this time, slamming his fist down onto the lacquered oak table.

The young boy grimaced and looked down at his plate. The fallen brusselsprout’s brothers were there, waiting. An army to overtake. A precipice to conquer.

It would be a long night.

Sometimes I feel like a nut....

Sometimes I don't.

Let's Talk About Socialism

Just 1% of Americans own 23.5% of our nation's wealth.

If you haven't read it, Slate has an amazing series of articles about the disappearance of the American middle class. It's called the Great Divergence. If you look at how far the gap between the super-wealthy and the just-getting-by is widening, it is truly scary. I read a couple of months ago that the middle class is so far behind in where it should be re: buying power, that no longer would Black Friday be indicative of the coming year's economy. What is the middle class anyway? To me, it is the ability to be comfortable, maybe have a kid or two. Own my car, go on vacations, and retire without the uncertainty of relying on Social Security/Medicare for my fixed income/healthcare needs. Whatever the middle class means today and 40 years from today (when I'll be retirement age), I don't want to be shut out of it - do you?

San Francisco days, Benadryl nights

Since entering adulthood, I've been prone to itchy eyes and skin, the sniffles, and the inability to sleep during an allergy attack. I can't remember who introduced me to Benadryl, but I am so glad they did. I just had the most blissful sleep of my life - delicious dreams, warm body next to me (Bailey's the best snuggler), and drool all over my pillow. Thank goodness its Sunday. Good sleep is hard to come by but harder to deal with on a school night.

Yesterday I participated in one of my most favorite activities in the world: rearranging the furniture. Whenever I feel slightly off, or down, or frustrated by the insurmountable task that is house-cleaning, I rearrange the furniture. This time I moved the bookshelves (the centerpiece of my house, naturally) clear across the room. My bookshelves are huge and heavy and I had to unload all of the books before I could move them. So I did and with that much dust flew but now I have beautiful shelves and my books are rearranged in my favorite order - from important to really good to pretty good to okay. My top shelf includes my Salinger collection, the dictionary, Tosltoy, Dostoevsky, greek mythology, the Decameron, Wally Lamb and John Irving. Read into that what you will.

So the house is rearranged, mostly clean, coffee's on, and it's a beautiful day. In one week, Scott and I will be on our way to Mexico for vacation. We're going to the Riu Palace in Cabo San Lucas. We will miss Bailey, of course (who will be enjoying his time at Pet Camp), but we will be well-entertained with booze, chilequiles, and swimming. So there is that to very much look forward to. I love November - the cool, crisp air, the impending end of the usually-difficult Fall Semester, the cute and fashionable layering of clothes. Here's to another wonderful one in San Francisco.

Virginia Woolf

I asked my writing teacher how I might expedite the process of writing. I find myself languishing over every minutia in a scene - the subtle raising of an eyebrow, the grasping of opposite elbows in a reveal of self-consciousness. In short, it takes me forever to get to the dialogue and get the scene underway and finished.

I really liked his advice in that he gave none: "Well, someone once asked Virginia Woolf how she had done after hours and hours of writing and she answered, 'I did okay - I managed to get her from the bedroom into the drawing room.'"

And so I toil, but I do so love Virginia Woolf and therefore greatly appreciated his advice. Here is one of my favorite Woolf quotes, from A Room of One's Own:

The beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. 

I should be writing

I should be writing fiction right now, but instead I'd rather blog. It's much easier to write about myself than it is to project myself onto a character and then write from that voice. It's all so meta. Given my inextricable narcissism, you would think this would be an easy task for me. Alas, it's not: I'm horrifically self-conscious yet entirely self-involved. Epic levels or arrogance matched with self-deprecation. A leo lioness with a moon in Pisces, a little guppy fish with the heart of a shark.

This weekend I learned that I love art because of what it means to people, to movements, and to society as a forward-moving organism. The Van Gogh, Guaguin, Cezanne and Beyond exhibit was beautiful. It was intensely inspiring to be in a room with paintings that were life-changing for the artist, world-changing for art, and art-changing for society. To look at Van Gogh's broad and fierce brush strokes--the madness of pieces fitting together but with the seams showing, the manifestation of the hard and lonely life that is the choice to be an artist--is breathtaking.

Take the time to be yourselves, dear Readers. Listen to your heart and let it take you where it may. Make that difficult choice - you are the only one who can.

The intensity of criticism

Sometimes you just have to put yourself out there. Neck on the line, balls to the wall, pedal to the metal, and not a backwards glance.

Offering myself up for criticism--true reflection in the harshest and brightest of lights--is often the hardest thing I ever have to do. Harder than eating no carbs for two weeks. Harder than breaking up with someone who is poisonous, but so addictive. Harder than saying goodbye to an addiction. Harder than really saying no to myself, putting down the keys when I'm too drunk to drive. Some of the aforementioned come with age (maybe) and some of it was learned through hard lessons. But what each has in common is that at the time I thought it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. And each one's passing has resulted in my being a better person, a stronger person, a more truthful person.

If every scar is a battle wound, I am an evident warrior.

When I was a little girl, my teacher asked me if I knew what the strongest material on Earth was. I had just leaned this--diamonds are stronger than any other organic material--but instead of answering correctly I said, "Human flesh. Because it heals."

It hurts, but it heals.

New Beginnings, Old Vices

I wrote to my mother today. This is momentous for me for a few reasons, not excluding the fact that I have not written or spoken to her in more than a year. It is funny - I see her in my mannerisms and movements more every day. I cringe when I think about how utterly similar we are. We run from that which is good for us or ties us down. We smile and woo entire rooms. Why are parent-child relationships so complicated? If it were easy, this would be a sitcom. But it's not, so it's more like the movie "Happiness" (I kid, I kid).

So I am going to Israel in March. I am also going on a diet so I am more comfortable for the damn 15-hour flight. We shall see. I may track my progress here, but I probably won't since I am loathe to blog about body issues. Instead I will blog about my life.

Tomorrow is election day. Though I share a name with her (phonetically, anyway) I am NOT voting for Carly Fiorina. I am, however, voting liberal across the board. I feel like even though midterm elections are a "referendum on the President," as I learned on NPR this weekend, the time is nigh to be liberal and stay liberal. Do not back down from the yes-we-can-fight-call. Tow the line that this country can be better and will be better if we take our heads out of our asses and put education, health, social prosperity before corporate bottom lines.

I love Roger Ebert. I follow his Twitter feed religiously. Here is a link to something everyone MUST read: the 8 major myths that GOP shoves down this uneducated populations' throat, CORRECTED: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010104222/false-things-public-knows-they-go-vote.

Happy Halloween!

I'm a smut writer

I know I'm in trouble when Scott likens my short story to V.C. Andrews. It's true, it's trash. Smut - dirty, dirty sex and sexy, sexy dirt in 13 pages of a class assignment. What is wrong with me? I am going to try my hand a more appropriate story tonight. Stay tuned.

Paging Dr. Carleigh

I often find myself day dreaming about what it is I really want to do with my life. I'm reading a new book right now, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, and early in the first part is a brief description of the protagonist's educational life, as relative to her mother's: "I realized a long time ago that she would never respect me for choosing to be a repairer of books rather than bodies. For her, my double-honors degrees in chemistry and ancient Near Eastern languages might as well have been used Kleenex. A masters in chemistry and a PhD in fine art conservation didn't cut it, either. 'Kindergarten work,' she calls it, my papers and pigments and pastes. 'You'd be through your internship by now,' she said when I got back from Japan. 'At your age I was chief resident' was all I got when I came home from Harvard."

I'd like to think I'm stupidly ambitious. Anyway, this passage got me thinking about my own nature and ability and I thought, "well shit, I ought to be a doctor in something." Sometimes I can't tell if I'm honestly smart or stupidly arrogant. I'm at least confident it will all come out a wash in the end.

Here's to my upcoming doctorate.

To Elucidate

I guess I've got to start writing again. I've got a writing crush on someone at work and so I took a class just to impress. I love to justify my actions based on extrinsic motivations when really, I know, everything I do is intrinsically motivated, pushed along to please myself. Please, please, please myself.

Being a woman is difficult for many reasons. Today I ran into a well-familiar friend: the immeasurable guilt I feel for being my true self, a bitch. I'm a HBIC-type but I apologize and try to sweep up after my natural Shiva-the-destroyer tendencies with a broom of niceties and smiles. All the while I am thinking, "geez, you really are that stupid."

Leggo my Eggo (or, How I am Proud of Myself Today)

It is funny how I receive the most validation for my job well-done during Parent and Family event days. Myriad families pass through the Academy-sponsored parent breakfasts and orientation events and somehow compliments of my knowledge, ability, and overall helpfulness and easing of a child's transition to college filter down to me, from the executives to the assistants and helpers. It makes me feel great to hear my name's mention get back to me in the matter of a few hours. I love gossip.

The Satiability of Friends

I am not close with my family. That is an understatement, to say the least. I have always had great resentment, deep sadness, and a horrifically mortifying view on and relationship with that which is familial to me. This is not new nor developed with age, and since the time I was very young I made every effort to reach outside of what I was born into and grow roots among friends instead. When I was a young adolescent, I practically lived at my friend Sarah's house. I will always been grateful to her and her family for letting me live with them without questioning the whereabouts (or wherewithal) of the woman who was supposed to be rearing me.

When I went to college, things changes because the roots that I had put down among strangers were pulled up and essentially wrapped around myself. I became my own greatest resource of strength and resolve. I studied, loved, worked, worked some more, and paid my own way through burgeoning adulthood. There were of course, hardships through which I had a hard time and never thought I'd see the end of (mostly financially), but I did and for the most part they passed. I remained pretty good friends with Sarah but because my own trajectory of independence was so ferocious and we were, in effect, moving through life at such radically different paces, our friendship changed to a more superficial, but enduringly loving one.

When I concluded my collegiate studies and moved to San Francisco, I became good friends with Conor, and we laughed and talked and made trouble and I truly had an intellectual match in him. We danced the night away for years and spent many nights with our faces close together, whispering compliments back and forth. He is still one of my best friends, and any divergence we have had is because in my old age of 26 I am settling down and Conor is always getting started on his next big adventure. I owe my much of my adult tastes to him and from him learned to never settle for a substandard life (You should see him turn down not-quite-right clothes or shoes that his mother buys for him - it is hilarious and totally copacetic).

Now that I am no longer dancing the night away in the clubs and I prefer to spend quiet time with my boyfriend and our adorable pooch, I have been in quite the friends rut. It feels like there isn't another 26-year old on the planet who can be intellectual, mature, and fun at the same time. This does not preclude drinking and clubbing of course (I am still a party girl at heart, after all) but it does mean a little more balance of game nights and conversation and wine instead of pre-party shots and trying to avoid roofies once out. It seems like a strange time and I have missed having as much friend action as I'd like.

Last night my friends Kevin and Lisa (and Lola) joined Scott and me (and Bailey) for an afternoon-play-date-turned-night-of-drinking-and-scrabble. Lisa and I polished off a bottle of whiskey. I was quite proud of us. Besides just having an awesome time, I truly, truly adore Kevin and Lisa. They are both smart, funny, interesting and interested people. I am so glad that they moved here and we have gotten to know one another as adults (as opposed to teenagers in science and general PE, respectively). We all have some pretty cool (and important) things in common that I don't have with other friends: books, music, movies. I look forward to much soul-feeding with them in the future.

Friends are so integral to who I am as a person. It's hard to properly thank people who have so ultimately touched me simply by being my friend. I don't want to get sappy, but I do hope that I am, at least, returning the favor.

One Moment

It was a sweet night
of sweet things and sweet tastes
trickling, teasing, tip-toeing across the tips of tongues
and I held you
at arm's length
but close enough for a good look
and I looked with my eyes half-slit into small open intervals
of a number line
and I saw
You
and we watched as the waves crashed and the tides turned and all the other big cliches
in that little book
held their meaning
and you held me
for just one moment.

Aspirations, Aspirations

Aspirations, aspirations (and perspiration, too - under my arms, mostly).

It is a hot and muggy day in San Francisco. This morning, the citizens of the city by the bay awoke to news of a rampage run against bicyclists during the wee hours in the city's Mission and Potrero districts. The SUV crossed lanes, drove the wrong way, and all in all ran down a total of 4 (innocent?) victims. The suspect remains at large and dangerous--if you consider a penchant for injuring bicyclists danger.

I kid, I kid. Bicyclists are wonderful and an important faction of our city. True, they block pedestrian crosswalks during red lights, pedal on the sidewalk, run stop signs, and slow down an already too-slow Muni with their damn use of racking. I kid, I kid. I am a car driver and a pedestrian in this city - truth be told, I don't have the balls to ride a bicycle down any one of the major streets here. I know for a fact how totally inattentive and incompetent the drivers here are (whether native children of bridge-and-tunnelers). The fact of the matter is that we are all crammed into this 49-square-mile city together. Pedestrians, unsupervised children, bicyclists, vehicle-drivers, Frank Chu, dog walkers with too many dogs, and even Parklets. There are curb cuts and endless DPT ticketing. There are potholes and pissed off crackheads. There are Smart cars and even Hummers (a very strange sight indeed). There are smiling hipsters on their way to Dolores Park and stern ladies with arms full of pink grocery bags. And there is almost always a fight on a Muni bus. I love this city.

Today I decided that my as-of-yet-unrealized life dream is to be a journalist. I want to be a one-woman Matier & Ross, and I want to be the one making the life of the homeless-but-hard-working Shoe Shiner a lucrative one. (Disclosure: I realize that C.W. Nevius broke the story of Larry the Shoe Shiner, but Matier and Ross are just so much more likable.)

So in order to self-actualize (isn't this what I constantly preach to my students?) I've got to write. This is a paltry blog entry, I realize, but it's a start. I shall opine daily henceforth on that which I find annoying in my beloved city of San Francisco. This should be fun.

Glee for Glee!

Last night's Glee was so excellent, so titillating, I just had to take my blog.

First, I have to say that Kurt's rendition of "Rose's Turn" took my breath away. I love Gypsy anyway, and love Kurt's character maybe even more. After the last couple weeks of gloomy episodes, I thought the show had maybe lost its spunk. Yet last night brought it all back for me and I want to go the theater! Or at least download some stuff to my ipod. Oh, iTunes, how you make everything about you.

Also, I must admit that Lea Michele does such a good job of playing the obnoxious Rachel Berry that I despise her. Her reaction to being in the same room as a quadriplegic man was so rude--so horrifying embarrrassing for everyone--that I practically yelled at the screen. But then she came back and atoned, oferring him ongoing singing lessons. On a side note, I think she should go ahead and get her tonsils out - I got mine out and it was the most fun week an 8-year old could ever have (so much ice cream!).

Evil Capitalism and Other Thoughts on Film

When I was in high school, I was so in love with the idea of socialism and communism that I routinely touted the evils of capitalism in anyone's face - every chance I could get. I have found though, that living hand-to-mouth for 10 years since leaving high school has changed my ways and my mind. I no longer force my strong opinions down anyone else's throat, and I no longer hold fast to the idea of nonconformism being the only way for me. In fact, perhaps the pinnacle of my own changing views can be best illustrated by my purchasing a brand new Jetta in 2006 and choosing the color black because it matched my shiny, new, and fancy (at the time) phone. Thus was my first undeniably consumption-for-the-sake-of-consumption purchase. The event also coincides with my emergence into a higher tax bracket after accepting my first "career" job and entrance therefore into--I suppose--the middle class.

I have since drooled over designer fashions and bigger, better, fancier gadgets. I have toned my consumer lust down quite a bit since then, but it still lingers. I'm okay with that (though I know for sure that I will owe a sum of $1 million to my old friend Aaron Coleman as life has proven me MUCH more conservative a thinker than he will ever be).

But I still cringe at the utter nonsequitor that is this country's Republican party and the dogma of us versus them that feeds this terrible pattern of babies making babies who all vote GOP (don't believe me? Show me one girl from MTV's 16 and Pregnant who is not from a red state). This weekend I watched "Capitalism: A Love Story" by the ubiquitous Michael Moore. Now, Mr. Moore's film-making certainly leaves a film buff like myself wanting as far as cinematic talent goes, but the underlying messages are clear and true. I wished he had gone farther. I wished he had eschewed the old black and white film and monsters montage crap to give us real facts, real data. He didn't bring up anything I didn't know - though everything I know about Collateral Debt Obligations and default swaps I owe to This American Life. When he surrounded the Chase Bank headquarters with caution tape, it felt trite. "Sicko" had an amazing climactic confrontation scene, where Michael, along with some victims of the US Healthcare Industrial Complex, attempted to get into Guantanamo Bay to be seen by the first-rate medical professionals stationed at the dicey facility. That was an amazing film, and I really wished "Capitalism" had pushed the same limits. It's almost as if the train-robbery that this country's economy has been perpetuating for so long is too scary even for Michael Moore to truly tackle.

If I have any recommendations coming out of this, it is to call to you, Dear Readers, to be educated. Do not take what you see from either Michael Moore or Bill O'Reilly at face value. There is more. This life is a layer cake of onion skins and one pleasantry gives birth to the next evildoing. Read the newspaper, watch movies, listen to Ira Glass (thank God for Ira Glass). And above all, do not simply make your own choices - own them.

Little Bee and Me

I recently finished reading "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave. Usually, I find it tiresome to read women-centric books written by male authors, but I didn't even notice a man was writing until the very end when I read the acknowledgments. Perhaps it helped that there was no sexuality in this book. This book was about the horrors of humanity, the horrors of gaping wounds left on one's neck after a bullet has grazed you there. You may walk around for hours afterward -- bleeding, puss oozing from an unhealable wound trying in vain to clot itself up, but eventually you will succumb and die.

The horror, the horror. Joseph Conrad's famous line is relevant here because what we learn from Little Bee's story is that the horror is not only all around us, outside of us, but it is also inside of us. Inherent to ourselves, inevitable in our relations with those around us. We deceive our lovers and partners, we murder other tribes for their resources. We, in effect, hang ourselves by our own rope every time.

This book is powerful. It also made me stop and think about my own prejudices and remember just how horrors commited by one people against another are a major part of everyone's history. Genocide was not invented by Hitler's Third Reich, and it is important to remember that. No one people or nation is worse than another, but it is shocking to see that this is happening today, transpiring right this very second. How can we live with this cognitive dissonance? Because we have to. Life is about happy mediums. Can there be happy endings? No, but there can be bittersweet ones.

A Reliable Wife - A Review

Visceral stimulation is an understatement for the lingering feelings I have after finishing Robert Goolrick's A Reliable Wife.

I tore through this book like an in-n-out cheeseburger customized to my exact ravenous desire. It happens that my cheeseburger simile is an appropriate choice, as the subject matter of this book was in fact ravenous desire. Ravenous desire that consumes us, creates us, destroys us, and leads us from one day's dark into the next's light. There were moments while reading this too-short novel where I felt all was lost and there was no redemption to be found in the Tundra Heart of Northern Wisconsin's frozen terrain. But the snow did melt, and the jewels lost in the blinding snow storm were eventually found - survived the winter under ice though their value was ultimately depleted to nothing but the regret we all carry around with us.

This book is about three relationships between three people and the intricately woven ties that bind them. With every deception, wrong--and sometimes right--that is perpetuated by one against another, these ties grows stronger, all the more unbreakable. However, this tightening of the strings that hold these people together only serve to more tightly choke out any hope of freedom from the pain.

I don't know anything about Robert Goolrick, but I read his afterward, which he entitled "Beholden". It was a brief expression of gratitude to the author of a book he had written about the frozen Northern country during the "diseased end of the 19th century" and how the country--the rural and remote place that we think of without much thought--is actually a hothouse of people's interactions, destructions, love and loss. Madness and fury, lust and love, incest and iniquity, goodness and evil are part of all people - it is the human condition. The life of the country is not pristine and innocent: it is as horrific, complicated and beautiful as anywhere else. Where there are humans, there is the human condition.

A Reliable Wife is holding a spot in my top ten reads of 2010. This is going to be a contentious year.

An Exercise in Engagement

It is so very difficult to sustain interest in those things that are funny/interesting/cool long enough to say or think anything meaningful about them. I've decided to blog along with my class--if the purpose of this project is to capture in words one's ties to motivation and inspiration then wouldn't it be hollow if I weren't doing the same thing? I have high hopes for my students - and I know first hand how procrastination and a disaffected attitude are poisonous to the longevity of success.

What the heck am I talking about? In the handout "Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity" one stuck with me: "Beware of Turning Hobbies Into Jobs". This didn't sit quite right with me - I would love to do my hobby for a living, but I can't for the life of me imagine who would pay me to watch Judge Judy for 40 hours a week. Also, I watch enough Judge Judy now to know that sooner or later, I would get sick of her (I already argue back to her on the screen, which is quite embarrassing). However, there is one thing about which I am passionate that I would actually really love to turn into a career: writing. I have always kept journals, written little poems on postcards for my friends, and invented embarrassingly dramatic short stories and novellas throughout my youth. When I was a freshman in high school--fourteen and gawky as all hell--I wrote a screen play and forced all of my friends to be in. We put on a lunchtime production in the drama room and it mortifies me to remember the plot and characters - I was essentially playing Barbie with my friends, and the drama closely resembled an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 (which I was watching intensely at the time - oh, the 90s!).

Regardless of the embarrassment of "Strangers" (and yes, I had to Facebook an old friend in order to remember the name of that god-awful play), it is pretty amazing that I had the gumption to write an entire screen play at 14, and luckily I had some pretty amazing teachers along the way who encouraged me. I wrote and wrote - reams of poetry, short stories, editorials, and even an entire newsletter that culminated in my leading a protest against my high school administration for excess homework. And then I went to college and wrote more. I was published in a scholarly journal (yes, really) and was a consistent op-ed contributor in the Jack (Humboldt State University's campus newspaper).

Then, I finished college and all that momentum was lost. I managed a coffee shop, ran a non-profit program, and starting working at the Academy. But where was my writing? One day I woke up and realized I had not written anything in years. One of the "Keys to Creativity" is to start a blog. Can it be true that writing about the work that other artists are doing will exercise the creativity muscles of our own artistry? I hope do. So, as we embark on this journey of exploring the relationship between motivation and success, I challenge you, dear student. I also challenge myself. Let's blog and create and create and blog. Let's see if it gets us anywhere.