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.