Competition

Louise Bak's hour-long interview with me about the buddhist  is now available online to listen to or download.  I posted the link on Facebook, but no one's responded.  The photo of my almond flour scones from yesterday, however, got 18 likes and 9 comments.

Well Read

This evening I did an hour long radio interview about the buddhist with Louise Bak on Toronto's Sex City, CIUT FM.  An hour is a long time to talk on the radio when you've had no media training.  I felt somewhat inadequate, but not nearly inadequate as a Skype job interview where half the committee members come in late and are milling about in the background while you're trying to answer how diversity impacts your teaching philosophy.  But I was touched by how thoroughly and thoughtfully Louise had read my book.

Then I stumbled upon two amazing posts about the book from February on the Emily Books tumbler.  The first was Rachel Monroe's "Our tribe," (February 23rd), in which she talks about reading the buddhist while staying in a hostel surrounded by Alabama surfers and irritating Russians.  Discussing the in situ reading experience is a perfect tribute to the book and to my aesthetics in general, that our perception of any cultural phenomenon is contingent upon the position of the viewer.  I'm reminded of when I taught comp at the SF Art Institute, and I took them to a Kara Walker exhibit at SFMOMA, and their assignment was to write about the exhibit, forefronting their experience of viewing it in the gallery on that specific day.  A favorite line from Rachel's post:  "But there’s a danger to the kind of brief, one-sided intimacy you can get from good art."

The second Emily tumbler post was Sady Doyle's "Because it's broken," (February 27th), in which she she does a thorough read of Dodie as narrator's clinging and not letting go.  It was both embarrassing and affirming to take in Sady's eagle-eyed read of me, or more precisely, me as character in this book.  Throughout, I felt this woman has got my number.  Take this line:  "At its core, the buddhist is a protracted fight between two people for the right to know what happened. "  Exactly, exactly.

Recently when I complained to giovanni singleton (whose first collection of poems, Ascension, is a finalist for the 2011 California Book Award!) about how marginal I was, giovanni said—but you have this intense underground following.  With responses like those mentioned above, it doesn't sound so bad to be underground.  Perhaps I need to commit to that underground—to be writing more and teaching less.  Working withing these institutions is a constant assault on my ego—and my aesthetic integrity.  When we were reading David Wojnarowicz's "In the Shadow of the American Dream" in class today, about this quest for radical freedom, at one point it came up, half overtly, half covertly, what the fuck are we doing in this institution with all its expectations and rules.  It was a student who brought it up, but I was thinking it myself.

Succulent

Last night Kevin and I happened to be in rainswept downtown San Francisco, so we stopped in to look at Macy's paradise-themed flower show.  It was boring—bromeliads and mannequins scantily clad as Native American showgirls—but we got excited by the moss handbags filled with succulents that were on sale, I guess as mementos to the cheesiness of the flower show.  We got our iphones out and started snapping pictures like crazy.

Last week was this totally exciting poetry event week, with Alan Gilbert, Eileen Myles, and CA Conrad in town, but here I am, writing about topiary purses.  Topiaries excite and frighten me, bending Nature into such artificial constructions.  Recently when Rachel Maddow visited Mexico to report on the removal of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear power plant, she lingered lovingly and perplexedly on all the topiaries surrounding the facility—ducks and turtles and snakes and more (fastforward to 1:15).  Maddow's response:  "The world is a complex and coordinated place."

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I keep thinking about Villette today, which I'm nearly done reading.  I only read it to go to sleep at night, and I've been getting to sleep quickly lately, so some nights I get through less than a page, so it's dragging on and on.  Since I'm reading it on a Kindle, I'm not clear on how much is left.  Fifteen percent, according to the Kindle.  But how much is that?  Looking the book up online, editions vary from 500 to 600 pages.  So, at the most, 90 pages left, but you can't really take that in on a Kindle; it's more about duration that at some point just ends.  Which reminds me of comments people made about reading the buddhist as a book versus reading the original blog postings, how the very act of holding a book and seeing the pages diminish and being aware that an ending was approaching, totally changed the experience of taking in the material, despite any sorts of editings and shapings I did with it.  That I could still enjoy Villette on such a foreign, time-fucking contraption as a Kindle is a tribute to Charlotte Bronte's genius.  I guess.

Actually, I have no one opinion about Villette.  It's sort of a rambling mess, but it's also genius.  Is it a deeply flawed book—or do I perceive it as flawed because I've been contaminated by teaching grad novel writing with the impetus to tighten tighten tighten?  Reading Villette sometimes reminds me of reading Kathy Acker, I'll be rolling my eyes, thinking, will she ever stop ranting about the Catholics, and then when I least suspect it, the book will open to a moment of glory, and I wonder if the glory could exist without all the rest of it.  I'm amazed by what a full world Bronte creates in the novel, how real every nook of that school is, and even though for me marrying a Catholic is something I never gave a blink of a thought to, in Villette it's impossible to not feel the import and taboo of the Catholic-Protestant romance.  I'm wondering if a serious investment in naturalism doesn't require a certain amount of messiness, to mirror our lived experience.  Villette goes on and on, and important turns seem to almost stumble into the book, and you're not always certain what or who is going to be important, which is closer to how we experience life than a narrative so tight you could bounce a penny off of it.

To honor a truly great week of readings and friendship, I'll end with a couple of pix.  Here's Alan and Eileen on St. Patrick's Day when Kevin and I went with them to see We Need to Talk About Kevin, a film that all of us had mixed feelings about, but haven't been able to quit thinking about.

And here's a gorgeous picture Kevin took of CA Conrad and Kate Pringle:

Conrad recorded something like 24 Bay Area poets for Jupiter 88, his video journal of contemporary poetry.  For each poet he made a unique Jupiter 88 sign, decorated with glitter, which we got to keep.  A treasure, indeed.

Hand Typed

Today was one of those days that felt outside of time, except that I'm of the age where I know in my bones that time is irrevocable.  Yesterday I had 3 thesis meetings, which meant I talked nonstop for 6 hours, then walked home, sat at home for half an hour then went out and talked for another 3 hours.  It was all good, a meaningful day for me, but I think the sheer volume and intensity of it pushed me over the edge of my social tolerance.  At her talk with Moyra Davey at UC Berkeley—which I'm planning to write up for the SFMOMA blog—Catherine Lord said she and Moyra were reclusive, and Moyra nodded in agreement.  Reclusive, I thought to myself, that sounds so dignified.  I'm not all weird and hiding at home, I'm reclusive.

What did I do today.  I considered calling Kaiser because I think I may have broken my toe, the middle one on my right foot.  It's been a week and the swelling hasn't gone down and it still hurts.  But I so much wanted to be alone today that I decided my toe could wait a few more days.

I made some coffee and hot buckwheat cereal with raw almond milk, currants, chopped walnuts and half an apple, and I sat sideways on the couch and wrote in my journal.  I put an essential oil blend called Believe in the diffuser as I wrote.  I cannot remember what I wrote, except that it instantly turned into rough draft material for my book, something I hadn't been intending.  My cat Ted was feeling passionate, so he and I spent a good amount of time on the couch, cuddling.  He came from a kill shelter, and I asked him if he was happy I rescued him.  He seems to be.  Yesterday, Kevin told me that no-kill shelters are dwindling dramatically due to budget cutbacks.  Governor Jerry Brown wants to repeal the Hayden Bill, California's animal shelter protection law, in which impounded pets are held for 6 days before killed.  Repeal would mean instant death for many animals.  I was asked to write a protest poster for an event that's happening at the Berkeley Art Museum in May.  I wish I'd chosen this as my topic.  When he was dating Linda Ronstadt, Jerry Brown was a good liberal. Now he's a puppy killer.  SAVE THE HAYDEN BILL!

After breakfast, I made some gluten free bread with almond meal.  It was from a recipe, and it had 5 eggs in it.  I don't eat eggs very often, but I'll eat them in baked goods.  Five eggs sounded like a lot.  I was right.  The bread turned out perfectly but it tasted like dead animal waste.  I threw it out.  I cleaned up the kitchen and read a bit and made a green smoothy for lunch.  I put most of it in the refrigerator, and forgot to drink the rest of it.

I got dressed and drove across town to an empty office because the person I had an appointment with forgot to call me and tell me she had stomach flu.  I walked around and bought a bright multicolored scarf and drove home.  Miraculously I found parking mid-day.

I sat cross-legged on the couch, wearing my new scarf, with a shawl draped around my shoulders and meditated for 40 minutes.  This was the best part of the day.  During meditation I was finding my thoughts very boring.  I realized that today my biggest desire was not to think, like all I wanted was to sit there and breathe.

When I got up I decided to use the one egg I had remaining to make some gluten free scones.  To soothe my frustration at throwing away the morning's toil.  I made the scones with currants and chopped walnuts, and orange zest.  I zested the orange on a microplane, and slipped and shaved off the top of my thumb knuckle.  I have a bandaid on it.  The gluten free scones turned out okay.  Good enough that I'd play around with some variations.  I know it sounds like I'm this Earth Mother baker, but I'm not.  I bought the almond flour over a month ago, and this is the first time I could get myself to touch it.  I cleaned up the kitchen some more.

I answered some email and played around online.  I found a photo-sharing site where Nada Gordon posted dozens of photos of the dollhouse she's furnishing. I was fascinated by this project when she posted about it on her blog—meticulous, beautiful, magical—so I was in hog heaven finding this bucket of images elsewhere, an elsewhere I would be hard put to find again, I just stumbled upon it somehow.  I also stumbled upon someone who I don't know who implicitly claims to have identified the buddhist in their comments on the book—they wrote the name of a real buddhist and claimed it was the buddhist in my book.  I never speak the buddhist's name online and rarely outloud.  I found the person's email address and wrote to them, asking how they came to link this real life person with the buddhist.  This development feels uncanny, like the buddhist's real life name is a haunting, and I want it to go away, to go all filmy like ectoplasm and dissolve.

It was getting late and I hadn't really had dinner because of sampling the scones, so I shredded some cabbage for some coleslaw.  I used the food processor to do this, but thought of when I used to work in a burger joint in college. Back then, coleslaw meant getting out the giant chef's knife and chopping the cabbage until it was in teeny bits, like rice.  Heads and heads of cabbage, all hand minced.  This wasn't some artisan thing, this was normal.  It frightens me how anything made by hand is this big deal now, how coffee made with a plastic filter cone is now called "hand poured."  It's like we're forgetting that bodies were made to interact with the world.  In some absurdist Sci-Fi future I imagine in-person sex referred to as "hand touched."

The coleslaw turned out well.  I made it super simple, with hand-diced green garlic, Meyer lemon, Himalayan salt, olive oil.  It needed mellowing, so I hand-juiced half of the orange I used to make the orange zest, and threw that in.  Everything but the salt and olive oil was from my weekly farmer's box, which I'm always rather desperately trying to use up.  I heated some vegetable bean soup with giant purple lima beans I made over the weekend.  And I topped the soup with a glob of coleslaw and some hand-chopped avocado.  And it was fucking awesome.  I also made some rooibos chai with coconut creamer.  And I cleaned up the kitchen some more.

Now I'm typing this.  So what do I think?  No wonder I eat out so often.

Flesh and Blood

I read with Sara Wintz at Small Press Traffic on Sunday, the day after my return from Chicago.  Even though I slept for like forever, I was still groggy, a grogginess that no amount of rest or stimulants could touch.  On the plane home, I was writing a response to student work, and I fell asleep with my fingers still typing.  But the reading went well.  Sara read new work that was inspired by Occupy protests, which Oakland-based poets have been particularly active in.  This new writing was amazing, and the longer Sara read, the better it got.  As in Walking Across a Field We Are Focused on This Time Now, her forthcoming book from Ugly Duckling Presse, Sara danced between straightforward and oblique, while exploring how the individual is enmeshed in larger cultural vectors, and all the pangs of pain and bliss and inadequacy that entails.  I loved reading with her.

Since Claudia Rankine cancelled and we had all this extra time and I didn't have anything new that's ready to share with the masses, I decided to read "Lapdance," the very raw ending to the buddhist.  As dedicated Belladodie readers will remember, I read it in New York, at Segue, less than two weeks after it was written, and since I was still in the heat of the emotion I generated to produce such rawness, I lost it, right up there on the stage of the Bowery Poetry Club.  I've been too nervous to touch it again.  But I was curious what it would be like, now that almost a year has passed since its writing, how it would be for me.  In a nutshell, on Sunday here in San Francisco, I pretty much was in control of the material; I'd be up there thinking, What drives you to write such embarrassing stuff, Dodie, and I could feel the emotion radiating from the words, but I was pretty much outside that emotion.

Then, when I got up Monday morning, it hit me.  Wham!  Like I was broadsided by a speeding train of loss.  And a deeper ineffable, an unspecified trauma that was all the more powerful because of my inability to define it.  It was both visceral and mental, as if those two weren't separated, are never separated, and the gist of it was that I was reminded that this person wasn't a fantasy or a dream, that it/he really happened.  I felt very much a being of flesh and blood and that this other energetic mound of flesh and blood was still existing somewhere in the world.  I keep waiting for the next sentence, but it's not arising . . . his lyings and coverups remind me of a 50s sex comedy, except I didn't find them very funny.  A negligeed broad in two different hotel rooms and Tony Randall frantically running back and forth.

Priority

Before I begin, for those of you following the debate on HTMLGiant on whether or not Cunt-Ups is experimental fiction or not, let me say right up front that this blog post is not experimental fiction.

I'm back in San Francisco after 4 nights in Chicago for my first AWP ever.  Kevin and I stayed at the Palmer House, and I only went to the convention on Friday, for the panel KK was on, featuring gay men who had done work reclaiming dead gay poets (David Trinidad/Tim Dlugos, Mark Doty/James White, Stephen Motika/Leland Hickman, and Kevin/Spicer), during which I kept wondering—where are the dead lesbian poets, who's recovering them, could there be a panel of lesbians recovering endangered lesbian authors?  This theme of recovery continued this morning, when Chicago photographer Doug Ischar took us to see the exhibit of Surrealist photographer Claude Cahun at the Chicago Art Institute.  The joy evident in Cahun's gender-bending self portraits made me feel the tragedy of her imprisonment by the Nazis (1944), not just in my heart, but in my gut.  She was sentenced to death for her political activism, but received a reprieve.  She looked markedly aged in the first photo after her release.  "That's not the same woman," said Doug.  With the latest wave of rightwing attacks on women's rights, the Republican probe up the vagina move, as well as the demonizing of birth control, it's not too hard to imagine concentration camps reemerging, and me and all my friends the first ones slammed into them.

It's amazing any of Cahun's photos survived.  The AIC owns her only surviving assemblage, a very weird, cartoony eyeball with hair on it.  Kevin knew all about Claude Cahun because he went to a slide presentation Tirza Latimer gave on her at CCA, and I was envious that he went and frustrated that I missed it, that this important work has been out there and I haven't been aware of it.

But what about the AWP.  Here's what I did:  bumped into lots of people; took part in an amazing reading at Danny's Tavern, where Kevin did a moving rendition of Ariana Reines (who cancelled), and coreaders Peter Gizzi and Lewis Warsh were awesome, as were the audience and the dj, I downloaded Prince's "Paisley Park" to commemorate the evening; Kevin and I went with Chicago artist Elijah Burgher to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s, it was a fascinating show, and I came into my own as a writer in the 80s, so it was in some ways a walk down memory lane, but a sad walk, it was a complex time, glorious—I fell in love, I found community, I got married, I began publishing—and tragic, everybody was dying, dying and my community, as communities tend to do, disappointed me; I went to Kevin's reading in honor of the Anagram City show at the Golden Gallery, where afterwards they served the most delicious and gluten-free hot and sour soup; we then rushed over to the ballroom of the AIC for Les Figues' I'll Drown My Book reading, and even though I don't think of conceptual women as warm and fuzzy, it was a sweet event, and the performers were wonderful (the Bay Area's own giovanni singleton made a big splash), I'm so happy to be in that book in such wonderful company; Friday morning I dragged myself out of bed and went to the Antioch Los Angeles MFA's 8:00 a.m. breakfast, where Antioch treated over 40 of us to eggs and fixings, I sat across from the president of the University, Tex, and he's a kind, engaged man, nothing like you'd imagine the president of a university to be like; then I went to Kevin's panel; after the panel we met up with Chris Breu and Elizabeth Hatmaker for tea and hanging out at the book fair; at the book fair I hugged and chatted with a zillion people; then Friday night it was dinner with Carla Harryman and local artists, academics, and poets (a totally non AWP event, except that Carla was in town for the Lorenzo Thomas panel) at Cumin, a Nepalese/Indian restaurant in Wicker Park, my Nepalese green beans were divine; then today the Claude Cahun show and home.  The people I interacted with this visit, even those at the AWP, felt genuine; it was lovely.

On the way home, Kevin and I fantasized a TV sitcom featuring the three TSA guards we were watching, they were checking IDs in the priority line, and Kevin said we'd name the show Priority.  That made standing in this endless line kind of fun.  Here's a photo of me (far right) watching two of my new stars.  The huge loveable blonde woman departed before we could snap her.  A great loss to photography.