In the Pink

When I arrived, there were Christmas lights strung from the disco balls, and when Craig stood on a chair to switch on the revolving mechanism, the balls wouldn't turn.  Maybe unhook the Christmas lights, I suggested.  That worked, and New Years Eve could begin for real.  I drank some of Cliff Hengst's amazing bourbon sangria and danced to dj-ed New Wave disco, music I'm not particularly fond of or familiar with.  But the longer I danced the more it grew on me.

Disco balls and spiky potted plant cast a shadow play upon the wall.  And even though Kevin and I had agreed to only stay an hour, I danced on and on.

The earrings I wore mirrored the disco balls—crystal pave balls hanging from silver wires.  The crystal chips are gray and therefore called "black diamond," which made me think of Elizabeth Taylor.  I'd like to say I felt like her, but I have no idea what Liz would have felt like dancing beneath the pink disco balls in black dress and heels, black diamond earrings swaying to the beat.

The crystal ball earrings are an Etsy knock off of balls made from real diamond pave called Shamballa.  Rap musician Jay Z was the first person to custom order a Shamballa bracelet.  From the Shamballa website:  "We make precious jewellery that encourages the possibility of connecting to our inner compassion and wisdom."

And later:  "The Star of Shamballa—two intercrossed thunderbolts, represents the irresistible force created when creativity springs in a pure, conscious mind.  The creative force is found in everyone, we invite you to explore the force within you."

So, I guess there's magic and then there's materialism, and I hope for the New Year I'll have the capacity to discern the difference between the two, if indeed there is a difference.

Today Kevin and I walked to a nearby cafe and ate breakfast-lunch-dinner, all at once, and he told me about the lives of Bunny Lang and Henry Fonda, alternating so quickly between the two that sometimes I didn't know who was living which life.  "How's your meatballs?" I asked.  "Too spicy."

Listen

For today's image, I went to my iphone and downloaded the last photo I took.  It's Quincey on the couch, buried in wool and velvet.  It's a good image for the end of the year, as I hope that we all can feel such comfort—and a sense of protection, no matter how fragile.

This has been a disappointing day for me in that I slept nearly 12 hours and still woke up groggy.  Have been sleeping like crazy.  I know this is part of my body healing from various issues—I'm being as vague here as Hilary Clinton has been about recent health stuff, and yes it pains me that we live in such an environment where right-wingers were calling her illness a Benghazi flu, and instead of backing off from that, they're going all conspiracy and saying it's a fake blood clot.  As much as I adore Rachel Maddow, I have this urge to stop paying attention to the news, to curl up like Quincey in luxurious muddledness.  She eats, she shits on the floor, she offers her body for petting.  And most of the time she's unconscious and she doesn't feel guilty or frustrated by that.

My psychic told me that I didn't need any more information, that I was full of information and it stays in my head and gets stuck there.  She said that I should do whatever feels good to my body, to start making choices in life by how it feels in my body.  I pulled my back out Christmas Eve—as I was getting dressed to go to KK's birthday party.  I somehow managed to get dressed and hobble down our endless stairs and up Anne McGuire's endless stairs, and at the party I was my old freakish self, relaxed—pain in a way is like being drunk.  I felt touched by someone more than once in the course of the evening for I was not capable of erecting those dear barriers.  I'm under orders to rest the back and keep wearing a brace, but last night I had the urge to stretch, like it was driving me crazy, so I started with a few cat-cows, and then a few more hands and knees poses, and then child's pose, and then sphinx, and then I was on my back doing happy baby, and I was twisting and rolling and it felt like heaven, like I could stay up all night doing yoga.  When I finally stopped and went to bed, and I was so so sore.

This evening I checked out Ariana Reines' and Bett Williams' blogs.  They both seem to be doing well, both intense as ever in their unique ways.  Earlier in the month in Los Angeles, Kevin and I had a couples dinner with Bett and her partner Emily Stern.  It was far too little time to spend together, it made me thirst for more.  I haven't answered the last couple of Ariana's very sweet emails.  That's the kind of friend I've been of late, as if thinking fondly of someone is a relationship.  I suppose it is a relationship, but I want to bring that out of my head and into my body and into the world.

I guess I'm going to a New Year's Eve party tonight.  It sounds impossible, as I sit here all muddled and in need of cleansing and a good teeth brushing, but it will be good, this stepping outward.  Sitting before me on the desk is a print out of CA Conrad's interview with Alice Notley on trance writing.  I'm reading it because I feel like I lost the ability to let go in my writing, not lost it, misplaced it, and I want to get back to it.  I wrote an essay for a show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and it turned out well, but I had barely begun to say everything I had to say, so I extended the essay, including material about the Bay Area, and read it mid-December at the Machine Project in Los Angeles—after dinner with Emily and Bett.  But this past week, all sorts of other ideas have opened up, and now I'm extending it again, like it will not stop, and with each layer of revision, it gets closer to the personal.  There's little of the personal in the ICA version, which works for it, but there's only a whiff of it in the extended version.  It's like the pulsing self that infuses my writing is hiding, and I guess I need to coax her back out.

To go to sleep at night I'm reading Waking the Moon, an early novel by Elizabeth Hand, a gothic supernatural thriller, and I'm enjoying it tremendously, but am upset by some of my reactions to it, which center around how some of her choices would come across in a grad writing setting.  I'm half dozing, propped up in bed, holding this battered used paperback, and I'm thinking, at the end of this long section of close third, she switched perspective to what these other characters were doing that the main POV wouldn't know about, and I'm thinking this is an odd choice, this would never fly in a grad writing program, everybody would tell her not to do it, I probably have told people not to do such a thing, and then I'm shaking my head about how MFAs make people into POV fascists, like, as a reader, I'm totally fine with her switch in POV here, and in regular conversation, the larger world, such shifts happen all the time, modern audiences are capable of switching all over the place, but writing workshops make people act stupider than they are, any variation from internalized rules and they're confused and not understanding, when in the real world I doubt they'd be confused at all.  And as I continue reading the Hand, pages later I see what the shift in POV was setting up, and I think, the shift wasn't necessary, we would have read this scene fine without it, and then I'm thinking I bet some stupid editor had her put that in there.  And then there was another section where she summarizes a whole relationship before showing the characters in a scene together, and I can hear a dozen voices in a classroom in unison chanting PUT THAT IN SCENE.  But, again, as a reader, do I really need those scenes?  It's all working and building, and some of the writing is gorgeous, and I'm interested and the tension is dripping off the page.  I put down the book and I thought—student-centered learning is over-rated, as it often means that students learn very little.  Anything that goes on in an institution is inherently conservative, why not own up to it.  From what I've seen, grad writing students love formulaic teachers.  The longer I teach, the more I'm in the if it ain't broke don't fix it camp.  If most writing students took my psychic's advice and just did what felt right in their bodies, they'd be better off for when I see writing get broken, it's when the person can't get out of their own head and take a look, a good long look, at the world outside, don't allow their selves to fully resonate with that world.  They shouldn't be thinking, is it okay to shift from first person to third person in the same narrative.  Anything can work, honey, anything if you really own it and connect with it.

Happy New Years to All.

Mooning

I know, it's been ever since I've written here, and as I've been feeling very private, I'm surprised to be here, but there is this urge tonight to dust off the cobwebs.  I've had some physical issues that have screwed with all aspects of my life, but now I'm in rest and recover mode (see how private, me not going on and on about whatever).  Last night I began throwing out candy, etc., trying to get my space back to its low-glycemic pre-holiday state.  We're having a cold spell in San Francisco, and I haven't adjusted to that yet, perhaps I will never adjust, and I know compared to the East coast I must sound like a pussy complaining about it being 50 degrees out with lows in the mid-40s, but when your only heat is space heaters, it's rough.  When we go to bed at night, there is no heat, and I love that, humans and cats snuggling together beneath down comforter and piles of blankets.  The cold brings out base, survival consciousness, like I know I own two pairs of sweatpants, and one is in the wash, which means the other is in the bottom of a drawer—and which will win out—my laziness and not wanting to hunt for them—or my shivers.  In the photo I'm modeling my upcycled cashmere cowl and wrist warmers I bought on Etsy last winter from some woman in the UK, but they were so perfumed, I couldn't stand to wear them.  Off gassing for a year they're fine now and I love them.  The original cashmere sweater they're made from must have been expensive for they're the softest things I've ever worn; they're weightless and fluffy like cotton candy, light gray with bold red Frankenstein stitching around the edges.  On each arm warmer is attached a small felted cashmere rose.  Originally a larger rose was pinned to the cowl.  The photo was hard to take, holding the iphone with one hand at arm's length and trying to click without blurring the picture.  I was concentrating so hard on that, each image would come out with me looking all dour.  I tried smiling, but this is the best I got.

Last night I was up late reading a book about changing one's relationship with time—something I've been thinking a lot about lately, and the book suggested that you go outside at night, lie on your back, and absorb the moon and the stars until you feel a sense of spaciousness.  I wasn't going to lie on my back, but I put on Kevin's bulky cardigan over my bathrobe, and Sylvia (my cat whose picture I endlessly post online) went on the back porch, which is 3 storeys up, and we looked at the moon, one day short of full.  It was two in the morning, and no human sounds.  Sylvia and I felt strangely alone.  Half a block away an office building was billowing smoke into the air, or at least the cold was making it look like smoke; it was more atmospheric than toxic in tone.  And I looked at the moon and the sparse rippled clouds, and the few stars that broke through the urban sky, I stood there with my head crammed up, heart open until I'd had enough vastness and cold, and I called Sylvia, who was exploring somewhere, out of sight, and we went back inside, and I felt joy.  No superlatives or qualifiers.  Just joy.  I registered that for a few minutes, then I searched out my iphone and went back outside to document, of course.  So, here's the moon last night from my back porch.

In the bottom right quadrant, the couple of specks that look like dust on your monitor, are actually stars.

Even though I don't do Christmas I got 4 presents this year.  David Brazil gave me a Tommy James & the Shondells greatest hits CD, which I'm listening to in my car.  Andrew Kenower posted a video for me on YouTube of the Tiffany cover of "I Think We're Alone Now," the 45 played on 33 rpm so Tiffany sounds like a man.  Kevin gives me a book about Sylvia Plath every Christmas.  This year was Kathleen Spivak's With Robert Lowell and His Circle, which contains a chapter on Plath.  The book looks interesting but kind of sad—to be in the position of being the not famous member of a group, writing about one's famous peers.  Been thinking about fame, how little appeal it has for me.  Online I was reading bits of Mary Pipher's Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World, how the success of her earlier book Reviving Ophelia destroyed her, her sense of inadequacy before the adoration and expectations of her admirers.  I know I'd be the same.  I've had the experience of being nervous at a party and not giving the right attention to someone I didn't know, and then having that person hate me for years and years.  I'm not immune from projecting stuff onto people, but it's such a bizarre experience when it happens to you.  Person to person will project totally contradictory stuff onto me.  At my level of marginal success, my social value varies radically from room to room, and it's always just me trying to survive the moment.  It makes me think people are remarkably superficial, the judgements we make on so little data.  So often when we think we're having a relationship with the outside, we're really just relating to ourselves, our little insecurities and paranoias.  Kevin was having a discussion with a friend recently about aging, and the friend said one of the pleasures of aging is that you can let go of past selves.  So, that's another thing I've been thinking about, which seems a suitable approaching New Years thing to be thinking:  which selves would I gladly part with?

I forgot the 4th present:  Anne McGuire's hosting Kevin's birthday party.  That was the greatest gift of all.

Balmy Photo Journal

I'm updating my iphone as I write this, so there's the terror that the thing is going to explode or something in the process.  Right now, it's just sitting there with an Apple logo and this long, thin white lozenge-shaped outline on a black background.

Now my life has been swept through with school stuff, all the big projects, beginning of the semester organizing have been taken care of, and life should proceed like clockwork, with time for writing, once I finish a major personal avoid-like-the-plague project this week.  This summer, to balance the intense writing, I petted my witchy side with two projects.  One, to create a successful non-dairy vanilla ice cream, and two, to make a luxurious body oil to slather on after showering.  Both projects took many trials, but ultimately met with success.

Tastiness was easy for the ice cream, but to get an acceptable texture proved surprisingly difficult.  I did a lot of research, and I found out various strategies to keep it from freezing so hard.  I ended up adding eggs to my homemade almond milk and cashew base, which makes it not vegan.  Part of me thinks I should keep trying, but I don't mind the eggs, and my homemade vanilla ice cream is the best nondairy vanilla ice cream by a mile that I've ever tasted.  It's insanely good.

The body oil also took many trials, but, again, it's this divine luxury product that would cost $$ in a fancy boutique.

Today I took things up a notch and made my first herbal balm.  I took photos to commemorate the occasion.

First I solar-infused olive oil with calendula flowers for 6 weeks.  I purchased all my ingredients at Rainbow Grocery.  There are special places online you can get everything for cheaper, but it's wonderful to be able to buy all the witchy supplies I could possibly want, a few blocks from home.


Today I strained the oil through cheesecloth:

Here it is in bottles.  You're supposed to put it in dark bottles, but I didn't have any, so I'll store it in a cupboard or the refrigerator.

Then I grated some beeswax.  I read that you should use a dedicated grater for the beeswax, so I used a microplane grater that sits in a drawer because I don't like it.  A box grater would be easier because with the microplane the wax wanted to fly all over the kitchen, but I developed a technique that minimized that.  Note the glove in the following picture.  I've learned from repeated finger gratings to use a cut-resistant glove.

Then I melted the beeswax in the oil.  The measuring cup is sitting on top of a canning ring, which left rust marks on my pot.  Fortunately with a bit of Bon Ami, they were easy to remove.  It was really hard to keep the water from boiling like crazy.  Next time I'll use a makeshift double boiler set up.

Then I stirred in some vitamin E oil and poured half of the concoction into a jar.  I added lavender essential oil to the remaining stuff and poured it into a jar.  The third jar contains a mixture of the scented and unscented.  There are indentations in the surface because I couldn't keep myself from poking it while it cooled.

I'd refine my technique next time, and future infusion plans involve herbal blends, things like comfrey and plantain and lavender, but I rubbed this stuff on and it was velvety and amazing in every way.  I'm having this fantasy of living in the backwoods somewhere, stirring my cauldron and making magical potions for all my friends.

Guru Movies

Hi All—the deadline for my book has been moved back, and there's still tons and tons of writing to do, but I can now proceed at it in a more relaxed state, but not too relaxed as I have much to cover and I'm such a slow writer, but I so love the slowness of writing, alternately losing myself in brainstorming and precision.  As part of my research I've been seeing guru-themed movies.  This summer I saw Crazy Wisdom:  The Life and Times of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, which, despite it surface flutters of appearing provocative, was basically one long spin-doctored advertisement for Shambhala.  I have no gripes against spin-doctored advertisements for Shambhala, but I do take issue at having to pay to see one.  This movie should be shown for free as part of a recruitment process.  My therapist, who's practiced Zen for 30 years, felt the same way about it.  But, in the teeny women's room of the Roxie Theater, one of the multitude of aging bourgeois spiritual types was wearing these great leather sneakers, and she told me what brand they were, so now I'm wearing them as I type this.  The CTR-woman told me they were very expensive, but worth it.

A couple of weeks ago, Kevin and I went to see Kumaré, the feature-length documentary about the Indian-American guy from New Jersey who decided to become a guru named Kumaré to explore issues around spirituality and belief.  I found myself quite swept up in the movie, partially because impersonator/director Bikram Gandhi is so cute and charismatic.  He has star quality oozing from his pores.  Kevin and I went to the late show at the Roxie, and the crowd leaving the first show looked exactly like the aging bourgeois spiritual audience I sat among at Crazy Wisdom.  Gandhi eventually comes up with a philosophy he can believe in—that we all carry a guru within us and therefore we don't need external gurus.  He uses this idea to convince himself that he's doing good through his deception of his loyal followers.  That afternoon I watched online interviews with him and the film's producer in which they appeared quite sympathetic, and by time the movie ended, I'd totally bought their schtick. 

Kevin wanted to take a picture of the film's producer, who did a Q&A after the movie.  The producer was this totally paranoid guy who acted like we were stalking him, which was funny considering we'd just watched a movie about luring in the unsuspecting, and this guy seemed to suspect everybody.  Kevin said, can I take your picture, and the guy said why, and Kevin said for Facebook, and the guy said, suspiciously, what Facebook?  Kevin said his personal Facebook page, and he finally agreed, but since the light was so dark, Kevin said he'd get him later in the lobby.  Even before Kevin freaked him out, I told the guy that I was writing a book about cults and I so resonated with what they were saying in the movie, and again, the vibe that I was this crazy stalker.  When the guy exited to the lobby, he skirted past us.  Kevin nabbed him outside as the guy nervously tried to ignore him.  He's an idiot, as Kevin's really good at portraits, and some of his photos are going to be shown in the near future at White Columns.  Spending nearly all of your time in the bubble of a writing/arts scene, as Kevin and I do, it's odd to be in a situation where you're not known.  Kevin and I must project a much creepier front than we realize.  So, instead of the producer, I've included a photo Kevin took of Molly, one of the duped followers, who couldn't have been sweeter.  I suppose the duped are always sweeter than the dupers.

This week, on a DVD from Netflix we watched The Guru, a 2002 romantic comedy starring Jimi Mistry and Heather Graham.  Jimi Mistry as a fake guru is just as cute as Bikram Gandhi is in Kumaré, but not nearly as charismatic, probably because Mistry's character never believes what he preaches—until the end when he tells his betrayed number one follower, Marisa Tomei, that she would be fine because really what had changed her was not him, but her guru within.  Kevin and I turned to one another, our jaws dropped, and Kevin said it first, exactly what I was thinking:  This is the same movie as Kumaré!  That Mistry's guru slept with Tomei is just considered okay, not really addressed—Guruji's cavalier attitude towards the power dynamics of his involvement with Tomei's cardboard heiress character is perhaps the only genuine moment in the film.  In a couple of interviews online, Bikram Gandhi is asked if he got involved with any of his students, and he said something like the morals of fake gurus are stricter than those of real gurus, implying no, he didn't.

I allowed myself to love Kumaré as a character.  Like his followers, I squelched his contradictions, his narcissism, his smarmy exploitations, so seduced I was by the focused sexiness of his yogic goodness.  But after seeing The Guru, my attitude towards Kumaré shifted and I feel kind of dirty having been sucked into believing.

Long time no see : Come see me on Saturday!

Let's get the come see me part over with first.  On Saturday the 28th, at 8:00 I'll be reading with London-based writer Francesca Lisette—which is so exciting, and I can't wait to meet her—and with Jason Jimenez, who I'm also excited to be reading with.  Last spring, Jason graduated from the grad writing program at California College of the Arts.  I worked with him every semester he was there and I was the chair of this thesis committee.  I worked with Jason so closely I sometimes refer to him as my spawn.  He's a very talented writer and I advised him to read all the weird kinky stuff because the crowd at Woolsey Heights where we'll be reading is super sophisticated and will get what he's doing.  As an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, Jason studied with Rob Halpern, so he has serious New Narrative cred.  The reading's at Andrew Kenower's house in a teeny—like one block long—neighborhood in Berkeley that seems much more like Oakland than Berkeley—Woolsey Heights.  Even though Andrew's smeared his address all over Facebook, I don't feel comfortable putting it down here.  If you want to come and don't know where it is, email me.

I'm planning to read stuff from the book I'm working on.  Not sure what.  There's a shitload of material, but it's not yet been officially organized.  Will pull something together by Saturday.  Which brings us to the long time no see.  I've been writing my book.  Seriously.  No more researching (that's not really true, everything I'm reading is towards the book), no more taking notes, no more organizing and organizing.  I've been sitting down and plowing through and writing the thing.  To do so I've pretty much chained myself to home, cancelled all appointments except therapy, haven't seen many friends, have been horrible on email.  I mean seriously not leaving the house, sometimes for a couple of days at a time, only sort of getting dressed, my writing uniform being floral knit pajama bottoms and a tank top.  When I'd go out, I'd switch the pajama bottoms to yoga pants.  My immersion method worked—in less than two weeks I broke through my resistance and got in synch with the book.  Now I'm pretty much doing the same immersion, but I've added in long walks and going to cafes, where I write or critique the work of my low residency grad students.

It was miserable at first, I was climbing the walls with anxiety and boredom, but now I'm having a wonderful time.  I feel like I could do this for the rest of my life, it's such a luxury.  In the fall, no one is going to be able to say I wasted my summer.

So, anyway, hi!  I think of blogging fondly, but I'm in monkish mode.  Writing a book is like having an intense affair, and to extend the metaphor into groan corniness, the book is a jealous mistress.  This one especially.

The image at the top is as still from Fulci's The Beyond, which is so great at evoking emptiness.  Though, thankfully, I have the emptiness but not the gruesomeness of that movie.  No gouged eyeballs here.  A full emptiness rather than an empty emptiness.  This is bringing up a memory for me, but I can't go there, not right now.

Summer Hotel Retreat Day 11

Kevin got in late last night, we slept until 11, I wrote for a bit, Kevin answered email, we got dressed and were out all day and evening playing with the locals.  It's late again and I'm tired, so I'll end the Summer Hotel Retreat series with a photo log.

We began our day on Venice Blvd. in Culver City, lunching with Hedi El Kholti at Cafe Brazil.  Hedi's a wonderful story teller and I was moved by his love of reality TV, how his enjoyment goes beyond simple irony to heartfelt identification with the artificially constructed realities of the participants.  A reminder that you don't have to believe art in order to be moved by it.  I adore Hedi's willingness to invest in the cheesy.

After lunch we drove over to La Cienega and stopped in at a few art galleries.  Here's Hedi walking behind Jason Sherry orbs comprised of eyeglasses at Luis De Jesus gallery.

Since our next stop was Chinatown, which is on the way to Hedi's home, he led us there in his car.  It was so much fun, following his Subaru, letting go of my agency, and cruising through backroads of LA that Mapquest would never suggest.  Once in Chinatown, we ate more food with Vanessa Place and Christine Wertheim at Via Cafe.  Vanessa instilled within me a great desire to hear Dolly Parton's cover of "Stairway to Heaven."

Vanessa Place, Christine Wertheim, Kevin Killian

Then we walked over to Poetic Research Bureau to hear Julia Bloch and Frank Montesonti.  Here's PRB principal Joseph Mosconi proudly standing beside the placard in the plaza outside the venue.

Here's Frank Montesonti at a particularly dramatic moment of his text.  Frank went to Indiana University, as did I, where he met Andrew Kenower before Andrew moved to the Bay Area.  Small world.  Frank presented two bodies of work.  The first was comprised of well-crafted poems that he jokingly derided as "journal gems."  The second manuscript, of newer work, was more experimental, looser, shaggier, much more out there.  But he seems equally comfortable in both modes.  It was a satisfying range of tone.

Julia read from her new book Letters to Kelly Clarkson, whom you'll remember was the first winner of American Idol.  Julia began the collection 10 years ago in my private workshop.  Kevin and I sat in the front row like proud hens as she gave a stunning reading.  She ended with newer work, one poem inspired by Terry Castle's talk at the Q.E.D. panel I was on that launched the Summer Hotel Retreat series, so Julia brought my Southern California experience round full circle.  I loved the Terry Castle poem.

Here's Diane Ward and Aaron Kunin standing in the courtyard after the reading.  I dreamed about Aaron last night, so Kevin said I brought him to the reading.  I've known both Diane and Aaron for many years, and it was a treat to get to spend time with them this evening.

The readers and most of the audience ended up at Hop Louie, a nearby bar.  Here's Kevin, Diane, Julia, and Allison Harris horsing around outside.

And now, as I click away at the keyboard, Kevin's lying fully clothed on top of the kingsize bed doing heavy sleep breathing.  I'm exhausted and can't wait to climb on there with him.  Tomorrow night I'll be back in San Francisco, with my three cats, each in their own special way guilt-tripping me for being gone so long.  Thank you all, whoever you are, for sharing my Summer Hotel Retreat with me.  I couldn't have done it without you.