another week gone 10:01 PM

it has looked like this some days lately, when it has not been rainy & miserable & full of tornadoes.

there was a tornado in brooklyn last week! it was a big disaster. i was having a shitty day. nothing was going right & everything was wet & nothing dried & it got so bad i wanted to move to australia but then it was friday & i felt a little better. yesterday i got very sick & today i am on antibiotics & feel a little better.* i have been sleeping more than working lately, which i am trying not to feel too guilty about.

these days i am trying to re-learn how to work. it has been a long time & it has taken until maybe this morning before i was able to really sit down & get things done. i have made some progress on projects i have been behind on & i have done some really good brainstorming & planning & i have caught up mostly with emails [i am really bad with emails, this is just a thing] & i even took care of sasha when he had a miserable headache & made a batch of browned-butter rice krispie treats & didn't eat the whole thing!! [yet.] i think it is all the water i drank yesterday & also the antibiotics.

i have been thinking a little about my thesis projects. as one who inevitably overcomplicates the diorama, i had thought i was scaling it back when i decided to create a kit that told the story of what happens when you are inside a house that is swallowed by a wolf. i was prepared to build axes & mirrors & silverware & wolf-whistles. when i started on it, though, i just felt overwhelmed. there was nothing in it that got me out of feeling like i was working in a vacuum, like i was doing anything that had any meaning. but i kept trudging & i felt proud when i did things like get cylindrical design to lie flat so i could work on it & then re-wrap it around an axe handle & i wish the end of this sentence could be something like 'i did the greatest thing ever!' but that is not how this ends. this ends in abandonment for the time being. this ends in a really productive meeting with one of my thesis resource professors. this ends in a trip to the strand & almost three dollars spent on two of the oldest books i could find on the shelves & a plan to buy latex gloves & face masks & thin metal pins.

i am going to be a book entomologist

& i am very excited about this.

other than this there isn't so much to report. candy corn season has started & i am trying to get myself in better shape but i keep running myself into the ground instead. i have dreams of pear pies. plum pies. butternut squash soup. it's still high in the eighties. tomorrow i hope to find a nice fall sweater & maybe a dress to wear & a coat to replace the fake-trench that i have had since i was probably seventeen & that was never quite long enough in the sleeves. tonight though i am compositioning & working on finishing up a draft of the fear folio & probably starting mockups for my means of communicating with extraterrestrials. these are assignments!

i am trying to feel excited about things again & i think i am getting there.



* did you know that the duane reade in chelsea has a walk-in clinic open 7 days a week? it is true! they even take my weird insurance that barely gets me anywhere! plus the guy running the front desk was a great conversationalist. we had a good time, or as good a time as you can have when you are at a walk-in clinic & feeling very sick & also fasting for the holiday.

on the absence of the precarious mfa 12:45 AM

you were expecting this post, i know. it isn't that i don't want to talk about the mfa experience! but it is that i don't want to talk about it just yet.

i mentioned before that we are pioneers here. we are still getting our wagons hitched & our horses shoed, i think. but we have bought supplies & bullets & spare parts & we will be just fine once we get on the road.

this is most definitely a metaphor.

so, yes: probably there will be no precarious mfa for a little while. sorry. i'll try to keep up with other things instead, though. so don't feel disappointed please!

some facts about water 12:42 AM

when i was probably seventeen, some friends & i went to see bryan lee o'malley [now famous for the scott pilgrim series] be up for a number of harvey awards [for that same series, which i think was only just a series at that point]. he took home none of them. but during the awards ceremony, jeff smith, who took home a number of harveys for bone, spoke about his creation process, the kinds of things he thinks about. one of the things he mentioned was the role water had in his stories.

he talked about how whenever something critical or pivotal happens, water is present in the scene. this can mean rivers or bodies of water, or atmospheric water [rain, snow, hurricane], or any number of other things. water, he said [as i remember him saying, i mean], is so fundamental to the human experience that its mere presence in illustrated form in a story can affect our reading, our understanding. everyone knows we are something like 70% water. we feel things around water.

i have my own relationship with water. my own body is often dehydrated, likely hovering around 65%. i get tired more often than i should.

i tell my secrets to the sea. the last time we met, it was late & i stood out at the edge of the water, my feet sunk in the sand. the waves came in & came up over my ankles & i said one thing at a time: my fears, my hopes, my regrets, my wishes—until it was dragged out & i waited until the next one came in before i said or thought a thing. this repeated for a very long time & sometimes i think about my whispers coming back home through the tap in the sink.

my mouth can comfortably hold just over one third of a cup of water. any more & i drown. this is not a large amount of anything. i mean: the line between what is necessary & what is death is often very thin. i also mean: if my mouth is filled with water maybe i won't talk so damn much. it's exhausting.

i used to say i liked rainy days more than sunny ones. i don't know why i said this. i don't know that i believed it. i don't like being rained on. it becomes even more difficult to maintain a steady body temperature. but i do like the safe feeling that being not-rainy while it is wet outside can bring.

when i am feeling like the world is too much for me, when it is so much i cannot bear to breathe [sometimes i call this a 'panic attack' or 'nervous breakdown' but i don't know if that's really appropriate], i make myself take a shower or a bath. stepping into water is the only thing that is proven to calm & more often than not inspire ideas, bring me not just back to being ok but motivated to get back & get going.

if i were the kind of person who thinks things like 'i wonder how i can help the world' i would probably say here that this is my thesis topic, something like 'oh yes i am going to do a campaign to raise water awareness'. but i am far more selfish than that & my thesis has nothing to do with this.

well, almost nothing. it's all tangential i guess.

i've been thinking a lot about significant objects. about authenticity. about participation, in both the commonly-understood & barfieldian senses. about narratives & experiences & empathy. when you see someone being touched & feel that touch just as strongly as when someone touches you, this is considered a neurological mistake. so is seeing sounds, or reading colors. i mean: i'm not just interested in putting my experience of the world out & expecting others to understand the experience like they were having it. but i want to try to create things that will draw their users into the world they inhabit, a world between the fictional & the real.

like what happens when you get too involved in a book & believe the world works like that. filling my mouth with water is probably a better idea than filling it with linen.

pre-class catchup 4:53 PM

hello blagoblag readers! it has been some time!

some things i have been doing since we last met include relaxing, reading, going to the beach, getting something like a tan or maybe more like a pink, getting over my fear of large bodies of water, eating a lot of things like fish & also watermelon, & settling into our apartment. some of those things looked like this:









part of 'settling' is actually 'setting up'. a week ago sasha built a couch & i commandeered the cardboard boxes & the big broom we bought to keep this place neat & tidy & i set sail for the other side of the apartment. i made it all the way across the kitchen!! it looked something like this:



it was a great success, i feel.

anyhow then before i knew it courses had started & i am now all of a sudden in the middle of classwork! as this year is the first year of this program [for all of us], we have been called 'pioneers'. whenever this word comes up it is very difficult for me not to look around the room & think 'which one of us will die of dysentery' but i am trying hard. the other word that seems to be used often to describe what we are doing / our program / the future is 'exciting' or 'excited' or whatever form is grammatically appropriate. this is kind of a shame because we are all legitimately excited about everything that is happening with our program & our overuse of the word diminishes its meaning. but it does not diminish our excitement, so there is that!

i have decided to write a little about the program / my work / whatever it ends up being every week. this was originally inspired by catherine lacey's / sasha's vicarious mfa posts. except that when i was trying to remember what they were called, all i could think was 'precarious mfa, no, no that is wrong, what is the word, it isn't precarious', & eventually i did remember what it was but decided that my entries would probably be more appropriately about the precarious mfa. so expect those to follow shortly.

what i mean to say with all this is that it's been a nice STOP period, these last few weeks. i've been doing a lot of thinking & stepping back & thinking again, & those are things i need to build in to my work more often. i think i've figured ways to get my work to be 'relevant' in the ways i want it to be. i have run into problems i hadn't thought of before & i want to work on getting through them. & in some ways, i've become a little [though very very little] more confident in my abilities, in my work. [this will improve as i actually do & make, so i'm not so worried about this.]

i hope you've all had great summers & are enjoying this weekend of labor or no-labor! we are going to have a barbecue & a dinner party & i have baked chocolate chip cookies for the occasion. it is going to be great.