The Hangover

I promised a friend of mine on Friday, then again on Saturday, that I would write a post about something entertaining I had said. Maybe because I was drunk both Friday and Saturday when I talked to him, I can’t remember what that entertaining thing was. Oops.

14 Verbs

Caffeinate.
Write.
Contemplate.
Theorize.
Read.
Search.
Obsess.
(Re)organize.
Love.
Cook.
Eat.
Craft.
Sleep.

Repeat.

Mobile Me

It seems that I can blog from my Blackberry. Not that I really want to but it could be good for those times when I’ve just seen something funny on the bus.

Creepy

There are a few blogs I follow that belong to people I don’t know. For some reason, I feel weird about it, like I’m some kind of online Peeping Tom. Sometimes I want to leave comments, but I never do because I don’t want them to know I was there.

Reflecting on Neglect

I think I’ve been neglecting my blog lately because I’m bored with it. I don’t think it’s particularly inventive and it doesn’t have a strong theme tying it together. Plus, I look back at recent posts — and by recent I mean a couple of months back, since I’ve barely been writing at all — and everything just seems, well, boring.

The thing is, my life is anything but boring these days. I guess I just have too much to do lately to bother making time for my blog. And I’m lazy.

Neglect

Oh poor neglected blog! This happened last Summer as well.

Why I’m A Snob

Sometimes I cringe at people’s bad spelling. Like, to the point where I momentarily question whether or not I can take them seriously as a result. I don’t mind when people ask me how to spell things, even repeatedly, but it’s the published misspellings that hurt. Call me an irrational snob, please, because I totally am. It’s actually quite funny considering how terrible my grammar is.

The Birds

A robin has been trying to break through my bedroom window all morning. I wonder if it’s the same robin that was trying to break through our living room window every day for over a week last month. I also wonder why it wants in so badly. My first theory was that it was attracted to a feather-covered ball we have hanging near the window in the living room. But then it moved on to another spot so I decided that probably wasn’t the case. My roommate’s theory was that it was attracted to the heat in the house. My other roommate’s theory was that it was the disembodied spirit of one of our friends trying to give us a message.

Whatever the case, it’s really loud.

Speechless

I’m having one of those days where all I want to do is write but I can’t think of a single thing to write about. Not a single thing. Even all the conversations I’ve had today have been incredibly mundane, like when I was telling my roommate all about what kinds of juices I like. In case you’re interested, I really like grapefruit juice. And cranberry juice is good too, but not the kind that is full of added sugar, that’s too sweet for me.

I actually think about these things quite frequently. Not juice. The mundane. I always find it entertaining to eavesdrop on people’s conversations in public only to discover that they aren’t talking about anything important or interesting at all. And I’m pretty sure most of what people overhear me saying isn’t very interesting either. People, in general, spend an awful lot of time talking without communicating anything of consequence. I suppose it’s nice for us to connect with each other, just for the sake of connecting.

Happy Un-Birthday To Me!

Someone reminded me that I posted my first blog entry a year ago today, so I felt compelled to share something about that. I started writing a blog a year ago mainly because I was angry and I wanted a public forum in which to vent. I know, that’s incredibly narcissistic of me, but I’m okay with that. I did have other motives though. For years I’d been feeling as though I’d been so well trained in academic writing that I was unable to write outside of that framework anymore. I wanted an opportunity to just write what I wanted without worrying about the format, or the soundness of my argument, or the completeness of my prose. And I’ve definitely found that in the blog. The best part is, I think it’s actually helped my academic writing. When I sat down to write my first comprehensive exam this past fall I was able to just start riffing as soon as the exam began, whereas before I would have stared at the blank screen for ages just waiting for the perfect sentence with which to start.

So to celebrate my “liberation” into non-academic writing, I’m going to do something I rarely do, and that is to share some of my creative writing. A few years ago, I went on a road trip around the UK with a few girlfriends. We were all studying for our Master’s at the University of Edinburgh and we were going to the Guardian Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. The Hay Festival is one of the premiere literary festivals in Europe and attending it was an incredible experience. But the act of actually getting there, and the combination of all the things we saw along the way, was possibly an even better experience. You can probably imagine — seven days in a van with five girls makes for some interesting stories, to say the least. Anyway, when we got back I wrote a poem for them, mainly composed of images from our trip. I had never shared it with anyone outside of that group, partly because I figured it was so esoteric that no one else would appreciate it. But I recently showed it to a friend and she really liked it, so now I’ll share it with all of you.

HAY-ON-WYE

‘Going on a pilgrimage and I’m going to bring…’
Just this one thing, I promise

‘follow the bridge’ they say
but the bridge is not there

do the tracks even reach this far afield?

instead there rests a stone cottage -
home to aging philosophers and musical children
warming their rain-soaked feet by the fire
warming their mist-laden hearts with tea -
frozen in time

dusty books on dusty shelves, treasures waiting to be found

The Old Sage strokes his beard as he listens to us talk
then ties it in a bow above his head
‘interesting…’

His words almost as wise as yours when you said
‘all roads don’t lead to Rome after all; all roads lead Here’

and a memory is rendered -
not a photograph or a souvenir spoon
but a moment grafted onto our secret selves