"I wore my heart like a wet red stain on the breast of a velvet gown"
Truly petulant whining behind tag. School, spring, algonquin round table...
I'm thinking about Dorothy Parker today. Of sad lady poets dying old. She died in her 70s, a tiny lady in an anonymous NY apartment, carrying her tiny dog under her arm to the shop. Mrs. parker, widow of a gay man and in love with a cheater, several times pregnant and never a mother. No Cobain-style memorial keening; folks thought she'd been long dead already. That line is from one of my favorite poems of hers, a love-left-me, I was earnest and now I am wise poem. the last bit is something like:
Now what shall i do in this place
But sit and count the chimes
And splash cold water on my face
And spoil a page with rhymes
And I get it -- even your grief is stale and unsatisfying, and the world is unsentimental for your losses. ah, the pathos.
I'm hating my night right now. I'm writing a paper that was due today, will now be late and 5 points off. I've become such a grade whore; me, the archetypal underachiever. Never knew when anything was due, never cared that I was failing. now I'm so proud of those shiny, austere As, all lined up -- So far I have not had a single B in grad school, and I've fucking earned my little ego pleasure. So aside from the fact that this paper is a disappointment and that (goes without saying) I don't care about my topic, I also still have to write it. Shredded myself, up all night trying, no use. Went to class, skipped the second one, had a tamale and a wank and slept a few hours, and I'm back staring at the engineering students in the computer lab, all for nothing.
And I had time to do it, but couldn't make myself. This was so avoidable. I think i'm having a contest with myself to see how much i can get away with, how clever and wily i can be. a few weeks back i wrote 2 ten-page papers in one night and got an A on each. So i push a little further each time, see what my limits are. Thing is, i'm not an astronaut nor a fakir, I'm a fucking grad student. And who is keeping track of my amazing feats anyway? what do i feel like I'm getting away with? My friend B, a poet from my writer's group, is having me read her thesis. She's so damn good. her poems are breathing, they make me feel both voluptuous tenderness and a sour, brittle jealousy. Today i don't feel like i'm doing much with my life and I'm ashamed.
Truth is truth; I had a truly wrenching, emotionally wringing spring break last week over which to do it, the kind you're supposed to get an automatic A for the semester over. i couldn't get it up to look up department of justice funding streams, I was managing to breathe and that was pretty fucking good. I could have begged my case, but I know i could have done the work, it disrespects my heart to use my hard times for a petty and manufactured excuse.
We're about to swing into spring, my rough season historically. Today I took the last of my meds, i forgot to get the prescription filled, and I'm out of alternative substances (actually, that's for the best). The spring has been tricky for me since forever, i hate that it is and i've never gotten why. the bright burst of life trying again makes me so sad. there's much to look forward to -- buds and mud and the smell of sex in the ground, daffodils and heartbreaking pale skies, easter when my rebirth happened, falling improbably in love in her cathedral, the return of persephone from the underworld and coeds in short skirts with knee socks...it breaks, breaks, breaks my heart.
Two jobs tomorrow, bless my heart. Tonight, write until my eyes bleed. Walk home past the cemetery and the donut shop. 7:40 a.m., start the day talking to sad or relieved women who will make their nightmare/parasite/hope/innocence go away through strength of will and short surgical procedures. drink for an hour, savor my stupid unmanageable crush. Go home and talk dirty to boys for not enough money, feel sorry for them. wallow. engage in negative self-talk. Ask the moon to hold me up.
words of encouragement bashfully requested.
I'm thinking about Dorothy Parker today. Of sad lady poets dying old. She died in her 70s, a tiny lady in an anonymous NY apartment, carrying her tiny dog under her arm to the shop. Mrs. parker, widow of a gay man and in love with a cheater, several times pregnant and never a mother. No Cobain-style memorial keening; folks thought she'd been long dead already. That line is from one of my favorite poems of hers, a love-left-me, I was earnest and now I am wise poem. the last bit is something like:
Now what shall i do in this place
But sit and count the chimes
And splash cold water on my face
And spoil a page with rhymes
And I get it -- even your grief is stale and unsatisfying, and the world is unsentimental for your losses. ah, the pathos.
I'm hating my night right now. I'm writing a paper that was due today, will now be late and 5 points off. I've become such a grade whore; me, the archetypal underachiever. Never knew when anything was due, never cared that I was failing. now I'm so proud of those shiny, austere As, all lined up -- So far I have not had a single B in grad school, and I've fucking earned my little ego pleasure. So aside from the fact that this paper is a disappointment and that (goes without saying) I don't care about my topic, I also still have to write it. Shredded myself, up all night trying, no use. Went to class, skipped the second one, had a tamale and a wank and slept a few hours, and I'm back staring at the engineering students in the computer lab, all for nothing.
And I had time to do it, but couldn't make myself. This was so avoidable. I think i'm having a contest with myself to see how much i can get away with, how clever and wily i can be. a few weeks back i wrote 2 ten-page papers in one night and got an A on each. So i push a little further each time, see what my limits are. Thing is, i'm not an astronaut nor a fakir, I'm a fucking grad student. And who is keeping track of my amazing feats anyway? what do i feel like I'm getting away with? My friend B, a poet from my writer's group, is having me read her thesis. She's so damn good. her poems are breathing, they make me feel both voluptuous tenderness and a sour, brittle jealousy. Today i don't feel like i'm doing much with my life and I'm ashamed.
Truth is truth; I had a truly wrenching, emotionally wringing spring break last week over which to do it, the kind you're supposed to get an automatic A for the semester over. i couldn't get it up to look up department of justice funding streams, I was managing to breathe and that was pretty fucking good. I could have begged my case, but I know i could have done the work, it disrespects my heart to use my hard times for a petty and manufactured excuse.
We're about to swing into spring, my rough season historically. Today I took the last of my meds, i forgot to get the prescription filled, and I'm out of alternative substances (actually, that's for the best). The spring has been tricky for me since forever, i hate that it is and i've never gotten why. the bright burst of life trying again makes me so sad. there's much to look forward to -- buds and mud and the smell of sex in the ground, daffodils and heartbreaking pale skies, easter when my rebirth happened, falling improbably in love in her cathedral, the return of persephone from the underworld and coeds in short skirts with knee socks...it breaks, breaks, breaks my heart.
Two jobs tomorrow, bless my heart. Tonight, write until my eyes bleed. Walk home past the cemetery and the donut shop. 7:40 a.m., start the day talking to sad or relieved women who will make their nightmare/parasite/hope/innocence go away through strength of will and short surgical procedures. drink for an hour, savor my stupid unmanageable crush. Go home and talk dirty to boys for not enough money, feel sorry for them. wallow. engage in negative self-talk. Ask the moon to hold me up.
words of encouragement bashfully requested.