Put a Poem in Your Pocket Day

It is Elaine's 21st birthday in two hours on Pacific time, but it already has been for 1 hour in Indiana and 6 hours in London. I'm not sure what the difference is in Florence.

It is also Put a Poem in Your Pocket Day in the same amounts of times.

Here are my Top 10 Poems of the Year.
They were not all written this year.
In fact, maybe none of them were.

Who knows?

1. Noon by Louise Gluck.
-Poems for PAPIYPD should be short and this one is not. Dorothy got the book for me, and before I told anyone I was in love, I told this poem I was.

2. Things Shouldn't Be So Hard by Kay Ryan
-Cynthia and I saw her read this in the Morrison Reading Room, which is very lucky.

3. Peace by C. K. Williams
- I used this for an assignment in GWS101: Doing Feminist Research. Not very well. The idea was to build an archive for peace the way Sara Ahmed does for happiness in The Promise of Happiness. I also talked about Jersey Shore.

4. Poem about My Rights by June Jordan
-is a very important poem by a Berkeley lady we love very much.

5. The Poet's Occasional Alternative by Grace Paley
-About a pie.

Still No Time to Blog

But I want you all to know that just because I've decided I don't have time to participate in the challenge this week, does not mean that I think I'm busier than you or that my time is more important than yours.

Sometimes I wish I had some sisterwives. Usually not.

Four Hours

...is for many college students a reasonable or at least typical amount of sleep. I am not among their ranks. The good news is that there's been an unclaimed canteen with 1 shot of tequila in it on top of our refrigerator for several months. It belongs to no one in this house. If it is yours, don't fret! I have transferred its contents to a Tupperware in the freezer so I can use it to carry coffee around with me. I think this is reasonable since it belongs to no one in my house and since I don't have a canteen or thermos of my own. And since I got five hours of sleep! Four! It was four! Oh man, I am really tired.

I don't have my own canteen or thermos because, as my high school drama director used to say when I was dutifully stage managing and asked for a copy of the floor plan, "No, you'll lose it."

I mean that's probably true. But Jeez Louise. I was still a good person. At that point.

Falling Down on the Proverbial Job

Everybody (my latest gender-neutral group address of choice): I promise to blog tomorrow! I am falling down on the Image Challenge, and for this I apologize. I am tryna write a paper that is due on Tuesday. It is not going well. I am listening to a fratmusic.com playlist called "Drunk Girl Anthems" and right now it's playing Dynamite, making me miss Shef.

P.S. GUH! I think Adrien Brody is so cute! I wanna watch Darjeeling Limited, but I can't because I have to write my paper!

The Poems

While dates vary state-to-state, our community recognizes this Thursday, April 14 as the 2011 Put a Poem in Your Pocket day.

In high school I brought a bag of poems to school ever PaPiYPd and distributed them to whoever wanted one. This is probably the coolest thing I have ever done. It's hard to print pages of poetry in college, so last year I distributed them to some people via facebook. I guess I will do it again; it takes a long time but it's very enjoyable, and besides, I don't have very many traditions.

One thing I wish I did was write poetry instead of just read it. I did this very frequently as a middle schooler but now I don't usually think of it. Hmm! Something I just remembered is that Rider Strong, who played Shawn on Boy Meets World, reportedly wrote poetry. I know this because around the time I was writing poetry, I was also videotaping Nick at Nite's eleven p.m. Boy Meets World screenings to watch the next afternoon and spending a lot of time on Boy Meets World fan sites. I am not sure I have ever been a "fan" of anything as much as Boy Meets World, which I have not seen 1 minute of in about five years. It's never on! Anyway, Rider Strong (if that really is your name), a google search for your poetry reveals this gem:

(it should be noted that in the time lapse between my typing the above colon and concluding my extensive search for Rider Strong poetry, a lot of things could have been accomplished. Anyway:)

Capitol Reef
When he came to the dense selection of nothing
He was counting on lucidity
An etching that would rise up from the drama of horizons
Like a call to arms from this urn of ancient oceans
But the silence had made the music
he had heard while driving there
resound like plastic drums within his skull
And the packed and jagged thoughts
He had so carefully prepared
Were just packed and jagged
As he sweated of the cliff with a journey for a journey
Looking at his feet, he knew at once the redbrown of redbrown dust
Could be nothing more than redbrown dust
And looking up, The rocks were dangerous in their density
How much did his eyes project
Before the sunlight filled them up-
Before his desperation, once affronted with the setting (as it arched in every way, arched to slip behind the bent horizon) overflowed?
Tears to reconcile the desert
He cried
As witness
When the landscape overrode (crushed and crackled from inside) the glass of his snow globe;
Left him murdering his daughter for the winds



....Well, he was probably trying his best. I mean what have I ever done that was so great? Get Geared up for 'Pocket Day Twenty-Eleven! And if you have a good one, throw it up right here!

Being Alone

I get the sense that I enjoy it more than many people. That being said, my own company is reliably tumultuous.

Indiana Jones

Some disappointing facts about Indiana Jones:

1. He is not from Indiana
2. He does not really have anything to do with Indiana
3. His approach to arc raiding is decidedly colonial.

Watching Raiders Of with Tara tonight, I had some pretty strong memories of my last trip to Disney Land circa 1996. When GoddessMom asked if I wanted to ride the Indiana Jones ride, I thought, how special! A ride built just for Indiana!

I also remember Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, which prompted an attempt on the part of my
father to read The Wind and the Willows out loud to me, but it was too boring.

I'd go back if I had a little kid with me but not otherwise.





P.S. Part of the California readership reports being "bored" of pictures of Patrick and Adrian. Well, there you have it.

Dinner Party vs. Laurie Colwin

Today was so sad that I spent an hour of it (5 p.m. to 6 p.m.) reading Chapter 13 of Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin out loud in an empty conference room in Dwinelle. When I got home, I remembered that Carolyn was having a dinner party and felt extremely sad. All I wanted to do was read Chapter 14 of Family Happiness- a novel about a woman who is systematically oppressed by complications due to a never-ending string of dinner parties- in my bed. And then maybe watch "I Love You Man".

The good news was, the dinner party was totally charming! Carolyn made chicken pesto pasta and garlic bread. Lucky this happened, because now I am totally into dinner parties. The things I will serve at my weekly dinner party during [Bro]quefort Summer 2011 include baked macaroni and cheese, omelettes with only cheese in them, and probably grilled cheese. Also cinnamon french toast ("breakfast for dinner", something that very rarely happens in Laurie Colwin novels). I will be like Clarissa Dalloway meets Janie Crawford meets Happiness protag Polly Solo-Miller. Only, you know. Perkier.

This blog isn't gonna be that cute, I am pretty sure.

Ya'll, I forgot to blog yesterday. When I realized this earlier today I thought that I would blog twice today, but now I am not feeling much up to it after seeing a documentary screening and live presentation by Minh Dang, an activist and survivor of child abuse and trafficking.

I am now working at Caffe Med, reading about what went down during the century of American history during which abortion was illegal. Author Leslie Reagan wants us to know that abortion in the Great Depression was commonplace, professionalized, and frequent (relative to more prosperous periods) across lines of class, race and marital status. In other news of the reproductive, I am reading (my) Professor Charis Thompson's book Making Parents: The Ontological Choreography of Reproductive Technologies. One thing the book discusses that I hadn't really thought about is the frequency with which egg donors and gestational surrogates are family members of the aspiring parents. In many cases, they are the best friends or sisters of the mother-to-be or father-to-be. In some cases, they are the mother-to-be's daughter (and father-to-be's stepdaughter, if the MTB is married). I am all about the creation of different kinds of families, but I will admit that the idea of giving my egg to a doctor who would mix it with my (fictional) stepdad's sperm and implant the resulting embryo in my mother's womb made me feel a little odd. Roomies agreed.

From an anti-essentialist standpoint, I can't really argue anything "wrong" with this arrangement in the hypothetical. Thompson notes the rhetoric that infertility patients and relative-donors use to protect themselves from accusations of incest, and while I sympathize (it's hard to imagine a more stigmatizing label), I don't think it was exactly that issue making me queasy. Actually, I was excited by the possibility that these Assisted Reproductive Technologies presented for legitimizing the collective raising of children by two or more committed parents outside of a sexual, heteronormative partnership; for example, people who are best friends or a set of siblings who want to share parenting. Something about the mother-daughter relationship startled me though, and I think it was this: in my understanding of consent in our contemporary, contextualized, constructed realityI'm uncomfortable with the potential for coercion when parents ask their children to donate genetic material.

Well. I don't even know if that's legit. I think there are a lot of ways to have a family, and that every family is different. I might regret this post in the morning; I'm just feeling too down to write anything cute. And, I love my family.

SuperBro

The guy is 17, for crying out loud! Happy birthday, Q.

Cornie

Getting this one in late, April Image Challengers. A theme I'm thinking of developing is using archival images from Goddessmom's very established blog as my images. This one is of a toy dog that, if memory doesn't fail, Goddessmom inexplicably referred to as Cornie and that, memory definitely doesn't fail, simulated breathing through a mechanized raising and lowering of its weird fuzzy stomach. I hated that thing in '05, but probably just to be ornery because it looks really cute here.

Well. Mostly I am trying to finish this post so I can read Family Happiness by the late Laurie Colwin. Serendipitously, Tara has left her iTunes on in the room, presumably some kind of mellow playlist, and "Brighter than Sunshine" by the short-lived singer-songwriter Aqualung is streaming into the room. I was just trying to remember this song the other day! I associate it with "A Lot Like Love" starring Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet. When I lived in Minneapolis in the eighth grade, I saw this movie with my mother. As the credits were rolling she altered the lyrics slightly and whispered, "Let the rain fall, I don't care. I'm wearing underwear." Again, I think I pretended not to like this, but really, I thought it was funny.

Love you mom.

1 year Anniversary Post

It's the 1 year anniversary of Indiana Rock and the 2nd day of the April Image Challenge. I have to be fast because Alicia is just downstairs getting her laundry and I told her I wouldn't move. My image is of a drive I took with Adrian to Indianapolis this past summer to see Toy Story 3. We got lost because my directions were bad and so we just took the many dollars in change I'd been saving from the time I tried to pay for a $3.65 Berkeley-Embarcadero BART ticket with a twenty and threw it into a fountain and made wishes for our friends. We also got lost on the drive home. Then we went to Steak n Shake with Patrick and talked about porn star Sasha Grey. After being informed by the boys that Sasha Grey was the most popular porn star, I tried to gain some street cred by dropping her name at a fraternity, but everyone just seemed kind of freaked out when I did so. Heterosexism. It'll getcha.

Report from Sproul

Happy April Fool's Day, Blogosphere. Typing this post from the Gender Equity Resource Table on Upper Sproul Plaza, I feel a bit like Snoopy working on his novel on top of the doghouse. Or isn't there a Nickelodeon girl who works at a typewriter? With glasses? It's not Ginger. Whatever.

Some of the things happening on Sproul today are the sale of boba by Kappa Gamma Delta, the canvasing of at least 30 Academic Senatorial candidates, and as of 10 seconds ago, a live saxophone performance. I do not anticipate attracting very many Sproulers to the GenEq table (the canvaser across from me has a mattress set up upon which several Golden Bears are sunbathing in swimsuits), but just in case, I have laid out the infosheets on Gender vs. Sex, Transgender Identity, and Dating Violence.

My April Fool's prank is to fool everyone into thinking I am Eliya Lavine by wearing Janice Lavine's skirt as a dress all day. So far, I have fooled everyone. I don't really like April Fool's Day, though, because it makes me feel bummed out.

...Hmmm. Well, being that I just spent the past 15 minutes taking a blogging break and talking to the actual Eliya Lavine in front of everyone, I think my prank may be ruined. Anyway, I have to bring the table in. I need new pictures of Patrick and Adrian. Six weeks til summer.