20things : motivation routine waking sleeping

1. At 6:35, my brain turns on. This is the absolute latest it has turned itself on in months. This is how late I sleep, and I have no reason to get up this early. This is off-time, healing time. I don't have to go to work.
2. Telepathically, Rus knows I'm awake and so comes over and yowls for breakfast.
3. I don't want to wake Mike up so I get up.
4. The moment my feet hit the floor I'm like fuck, another day. Weren't we just here yesterday?

A flower I clipped from the long-lasting Valentines bouquet to cheer myself.

5. Get up make coffee cat meds cat food human food computer facebook email blog surf internet until my conscience says I can't possibly procrastinate anymore shower start day.
6. From within my metaphorical nautilus, last night, I wrote down a list of things to do in the morning before I have to leave the house.
7. I put cardamom and ginger in the coffee this morning. Also to cheer myself.
8. It's sort of working.
9. Today I have to leave at 12:30 and I won't get back until 9:30.
10. Nine hours is a long time to be out for someone with fibro, okay, for ME with fibro and attendant visual difficulties that make me so tired. Nine hours is a long time to be up w/o a nap.
11. Okay now you know one (another?) of my embarrassing secrets.
12. On a normal day, I can't go more than nine hours w/o sleeping.
13. Today I will have woken up at 6:30 {math math math} I think that's 15 hours.
14. Most people go w/o sleeping for at least 15 hours.
15. Right now at this very moment I can hear a little voice going there's nothing wrong with you; you're just lazy.
16. But shit, there's a DBT skill for that. It's called "non-judgmental stance." It's like "be aware of when you're judging and stop that."
17. Easy, right?

Luna stole my flower.

18. I'm excited about my impending haircut.

19. Anybody wanna go with me to a reading at the Sphinx tonight? That place is designed to kill me, with its dim light, cramped space, and many overlapping floor rugs that stick to my feet, causing me to wobble.

20. Except it also has the atmosphere of an opium den, which is very relaxing, which is what I want my whole house / apartment to look like. The end.

And they made it be Monday again

Mondays are always hard for me because 1) of the inherent Mondayness of them 2) I have to see C on Monday morning.

C has a problem that is similar to but not the same as the one my mother had. She has a digestive issue that will not let her process food, or rather barely process it. I'm being intentionally vague here, because it is her business. She's had this problem for over a year, and has been to many doctors who all have a different explanation of why it's happening and therefore how to fix it. But the thing for me is that she is getting super-thin. Hugging her is like hugging bones practically. And it's a trigger because of course this reminds me of my mom. However C is a fighter, an investigator. She's been through MANY invasive diagnostic procedures and she is not giving up. Not like my mom.

This has been going on for awhile and I've often asked myself what makes them so different in temperament? I think they both felt like outsiders, in a way, because of various aspects of their personalities... only C embraced her outsider status early-on, and my mom continued to think the world was persecuting her. Anyway, this ruminating is beside the point. C is C and my mother was my mother. They are about the same age though, so it's difficult not to compare.

The point is, that it's a real trigger for me, and so I have to work extra hard at distraction, soothing, and improving the moment. At first when I was pretty bad-off, I was just avoiding Mondays. Now I'm starting to see that I have to make Mondays special. Or at least try to, before I slip into behavior that some might classify as avoidant.

Of course this means not staying close to home because my neighborhood is unfortunately the opposite of producing-warm-safe-feelings-special. So I'm going to this place to do my homework today.

The Te Cafe

I first discovered the Te Cafe when I did a reading there in their now defunct reading series. It is a bit small as a venue, and whenever they had readings it was always standing room only, although this was quite romantic. In the cold weather all the glass panes would get steamed up and you'd be standing, or sitting if you were lucky, in a tight-knit group of your comrades as you listened to good poetry and fiction and watched the traffic go by on the dark street, each headlight and tail light given a fuzzy aura.

Then I used to hang around there a lot with a friend, A, and we would do collages and cards together. The staff was awesome --they never bothered us even though we took up a big round table to spread out all our paper on and stuff. I actually wish I could go back and work on cards there some more... but I feel rather inhibited doing it by myself. I need a wingman! Or rather, wing-woman, since I know exactly zero guys who are interested in collage. Well, on the internet and at galleries you hear of them, but I know no one in person who likes gluing paper together.

But today I am simply doing my homework. Did I mention how lovely this place is? During the day it's pretty quiet and the atmosphere lends itself to calm contemplation. 

This is my reading material of late! The ones on the far left are my homework: the My Emily Dickinson (Susan Howe) packet, an edition of her poems, and Goodbye, Flicker by Carmen Gimenez Smith, which I have read before and loved. 

The temperature may be getting up to {gasp} 40 today so I am looking forward to walking mindfully as well. I wish the damn weather would get springlike already but it is still February so I'm just left feeling wistful about that.

What I did and didn't do on my summer vacation

Although I was completely bummed about dad changing shore plans last minute so Mike and I couldn't go, I do want to say that I got to do some pretty cool things this week instead of being at the ocean. I actually skipped two readings because I was rather fatigued. Which means I could have done cool things four out of five nights of the week. Actually, there were two on Friday night, but I was dead-exhausted and opted for neither.

What I did do: I went to the Beauty Is A Verb reading on Thursday. I'd been anticipating this reading since last April, when the date had to be moved because of the f*ing bomb threats at Pitt. Usually I find academic venues a bit dry and difficult, lacking in ambiance. This was still the case at the O'Hara Student Center, but the readings were fantastic. And and AND I got to meet three people who I'd been wanting to meet for quite awhile: the smart and sassy Jennifer Bartlett (she's really funny too, and kind) the fierce and feisty Kathi Wolfe (I think I have a crush on one of her new personae, and she said she likes my work and I should email her) and ... Mike Northen, who was rather laid back and professorial and I felt a little awkward because I'm shy and I wonder if he is too. I had that magnets-repelling feeling that I get when two shy people, myself being one of them, try to have a conversation. Nonetheless, he recognized my name from having a poem in Wordgathering this month, and he told me to keep sending... which is really a moment of validation I needed and I sooooo appreciated it.

ASIDE: I had this convo with Mike (husband Mike not editor Mike) about my ridiculous neuroticisms whenever I have poems accepted. For example: an editor quickly accepts four out of five or six poems I sent. My response, although I'm very happy about it, is also tinged with OMG, that editor wasn't very discriminating. They're probably just desperate. They need to fill in some space. It couldn't possibly be because they liked my work that much. If an editor accepts one out of five or six poems that I send, especially if it's an online venue, my reaction, although I'm quite pleased, is tempered with really, only one poem? Wow, I just barely got in. The editor must just barely like me. Why did they choose this poem at all? What about the others? Were they bad? REALLY bad? It was probably a pity-acceptance.  I mean, what is wrong with my self-esteem that I can't win either way? But really. Acceptances are winning. Period-end-of-discussion. Even rejections are winning, because it means I actually sent stuff out instead of procrastinating on it. Now if only someone would pick up the manuscript...

Anyway, then on Friday Pitt had a roundtable discussion about dis-studies in the humanities. I guess right now their dis-studies program sort of follows the medical model (grumble, cure, etc.). But they want to parlez. So good on them. I hope this panel got the ball rolling as far as a possible program at Pitt. But it'll be years, I bet. It was a good, stimulating discussion though. I felt like my brain had been to a mini-conference. This is a good feeling. I haven't gotten to go to conferences in quite some time, due to health stuff and work stuff. But... Multiple Perspectives in April and AWP in February. I think I have the months right. Anyone wanna split a room for AWP?

quick update

So, the reading went really well yesterday. Decent turnout. I read all the vulnerable stuff, with the little scaffold I had built for it and the whole thing was paced really well with only a few awkward moments. Andrew did well too. I hadn't heard his work, ever, really. Not like that. It made me --what's the opposite of retroactively --proactively? miss him. I just really realized oh dear, he's leaving. But I'm so proud of his decision to go back to school. And there were pictures. Many pictures.

And the first day of teaching went well today, despite some mild chaos. I took the hour that I didn't have to be in class and explored a few floors of the Cathedral so I could get my bearings better. I think that was a maybe-not-entirely-kosher thing to do; I was supposed to be somewhere else... but I feel more comfortable with the building now, or at least the parts of it I have to go to.

The kids are pretty great. Eager writers, sense of humor, open, energetic. I like having that energy reflected back at me, you know? Compared to the times where I've put it in and... well... yeah. This is going to spoil me. But it will also get harder. The pace will pick up.

I might blog some of my freewrites / writing exercise responses. We end up doing a lot of them and they get pretty surreal and fantastic. I like writing with the kids. There's a good group energy happening.

Okay, lesson plans are done for tomorrow. Time to collapse. After six months off, I'm kind of outa shape :)

20things : Long Distance

*thanks to Daniel Shapiro for giving me the idea for this one

1. Facebook comment: I like having the recordings because now I can listen to you read whenever I want. I can resist the urge to call you and plead for you to read me a poem over the phone.

2. Okay, that's it. I'm changing the outgoing message on my phone:

3. Ms. Khoury only accepts phone conversations in poem form. For all other topics, she'll be happy to arrange a meeting, or send some email.

4. I still haven't changed my cell back from the Ohio number, and it's been seven years. 

5. In 2006 I got called up for jury duty in Franklin County. I had to send them a document proving my new location.

6. Among the top ten ways to get out of jury duty: move.

7. I'm just shy on the phone. 

8. You know that moment, when the two people try to talk at once, and then it's like you go; no you go; no you go? 

9. That's what it's like talking to me. 

10. I make exceptions for family.

11. It's easy to get my mom to do all the talking. I just keep asking questions.

12. Or, first my stepmom does all the talking, then she makes me do all the talking. 

13. My dad says hang on I'll put [your stepmom] on the phone.

14. In my formative years before there was internet, I was one of those girls who would tie up the phone line.

15. Once I read a boy the better part of some novel that we had to take a test on the next day. I don't remember which. Let's say it was Hard Times or The Grapes of Wrath.

16. Reader, I liked him.

17. My mom would yell at me every fifteen minutes to hang up. She did not believe we were doing homework.

18. He got a better grade on that damn test than I did.

19. What was the significance of the stairs? Their hats? That dog on page 63?

20. Endless essay questions. I don't know. I don't remember. Can I just put my head on the desk for a minute? A scrawl that trailed off the page.

Wild gratitude

So I just want to say thank you, although those words are inadequate for how much your friendship means to me. Especially those of you who have sent me such warm fb messages of late, and keep coming out for readings no matter how cramped the venue :) 


The Hem's reading on Tuesday, I was expecting it to be sort of meh. I was definitely having an off day; stress / anger were eating me; I was totally scattered and cerebral and just not feeling it. 


[the ambient temperature of my work area here, off the living room, has got to be over 80 degrees, so forgive me if this starts to sound loopy]


But you know? Hem's turned out to feel sort of transcendent. I don't know if it was the act of reading these particular poems or the audience's reception --it was all new stuff and vulnerable material, most of it revised with no outside input) --but I'm still feeling buoyant. [Like maybe I'm okay just as I am.] Joan made a recording for me, which was fabulous... I'll share it as soon as I figure out how to chop it up into individual poems.


I love the end of this poem "Wild Gratitude" by Edward Hirsch. Here's a link to the whole thing. But these lines...

"...teach us how to praise—purring 
In their own language, 
Wreathing themselves in the living fire."

There was a person at that reading who asked me after, in tones that sort of implied he was pretty confident of the answer, "Are you a Christian?" I was like, "Nope." He said, "Are you sure?" I was like, "Pretty sure..." He seemed to want something so I shrugged and said, "I was raised Catholic but now I'm ..." "You're what?" "Severely lapsed." I was really hoping that he wasn't going to ask me to accept Jesus as my personal savior or anything, but the conversation did not go in that direction.


Bad things were done to me in the name of religion. And I'm pretty over it... sort of... but I get tense when people try to pin me down on what I believe. But praise as a kind of purr... I can feel that.

I think sometimes I get so wrapped up in my head that I forget how to praise. And by praise I mean give profound thanks. To readers of the blog who pop up out of the ether. To friends who buy me dessert for dinner. To Mike who "fixed" my text-to-speech problem by tweaking a deeply-buried setting. To a soon-to-be teaching colleague who did not make me feel hideous [or should I say confirm my already-in-place feeling of hideousness] when I asked for help. It feels good to be so grateful. Almost like purring.

To reiterate: 

I asked for help from a person I have not yet met [read: stranger], who doesn't know me, and I got acceptance instead of rejection. I'm writing it down here so that I can attempt to cement this lesson in my mind. I know it will fall out soon enough but maybe I can get a few more days of that interesting hopeful feeling.

Last Day in Vegas

So it's 7am here and I'm not supposed to wake up until 8. This didn't work though, because I'm sunburned everywhere and the weight of the comforter on me was starting to be irritating. I'm barely awake, so ... fun blogging! This whole trip I've only used my cane in the airport. In this and other hotels, it's been all "sighted guiding," which for Mike and me means careful hand holding. I don't know why I made this decision. It sort of made itself up out of my unconscious. Certainly, I'm never going to see any of these people again.

So venturing down here to the Orchid coffee lounge by myself was like what I am now considering "the old days." Walking slowly and hesitantly. Really paying attention to sounds to figure out my distance (and closeness) to the world. You know what has a lot of ambient noise in it? A casino. Friendly Me is out this morning, especially to baristas doing the morning shift. I got a soy mocha because I only have one of those little pills that mitigates lactose intolerance left, and I want to use it with Mike at breakfast. They don't have soy in the breakfast place. But that means I had to forego a pre-breakfast mini cupcake... I gotta say these are real beauties. The supermodels of mini cupcakes, with an elegant minimalism. If the light was better I would have tried for a picture.

Things are so surreal at this time of morning. There are gamblers coming in from what looks like all night sessions. They look sort of baggy and rumpled. There are many behind-the-scenes people scurrying to make sure the "guest experience" is ongoingly even and nary a leaf of asiatic lily is out of place.

I would post you my pics but I forgot the cord that connects the phone to the computer in our room. Mike sleeps. I kiss his forehead and he murmurs something. His hair trails over two pillows. It's so long! Like butt-long. When I suggest cutting a few inches off, those last ratty few, he says cryptically that it might be "time for a change" hair-wise. One can only wonder what that means. I know that when I had my hair at its longest, which was only at about chest level, it felt like I was constantly minding a small child. Don't get caught in my backpack. Don't get snagged in the door. Now it's cut close to my head on the left and either a sleek cascade or a wavy wildness on the other side. When I pull a piece down, it hits just above my clavicle. My right-side, normal clavicle, not my left-side, crispy crispy crispy clavicle. I have the weird sunburn pattern of someone who went in the pool and was then haphazard about re-applying lotion. The ends of my hair on the long side are dry from the chlorine. Not used to having dry ends. They needs a deep conditioner or something. I was thinking I'd dye it raspberry when I got home. It wouldn't be the first time, but the first time in awhile.

[Alaina, if you are reading this, do you remember the cherry kool-aid dyeing experiment you did in high school? Your long dark tresses had that raspberry gleam. Do you mind if I write a poem about it?]

I actually got to read! books! while I was here and love the experience of sitting by the water reading. Wish I could re-create that. Part of me is like, why can't you dummy? I've managed to crawl out from under the panic and guilt long enough to have some fun. Whoa. Mind-blowing. I've read The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which Carrie sent me as a gift. It's by her friend Emily Danforth. If one had to categorize it I would say: a queer coming of age novel. It was really riveting. I had to make myself put it down, attempting to pace myself. My plan was to finish it on the flight back but too late! It's done. I intend to write Carrie with all the books this one is "better than." There are MANY highly touted volumes, and also some noir, which I've tried and failed to read on the plane --just gave up and fell asleep. After about an hour I get super-claustrophobic on plane flights. Mike will sometimes stretch his legs by walking the aisles, but my limited vision plus unlimited shyness make this plan not a good fit for me.

[When I went back to add the link from Amazon, I noticed that Miseducation is one of Amazon's Best of the Month in Young Adult selections. Rock on with your bad self Emily!]

I'm also reading Jim Daniels' book of ghazals All of the Above. Adastra put it out last year or so. Good. Soooo goooood. Like, these poems surprised and impressed me with their leaps of language and image. I think of "the Jim Daniels poem" as being fairly straight-forward, narrative, and sort of tough. I'm a little in love with these ghazals though. Of course then after getting about halfway through the book, I had to write a ghazal. So yay, one vacation poem.

And then I picked up on Kindle, Nancy Mairs' Waist High in the World: A Life among the Nondisabled, which I'm also knocking out much faster than I intended. I'd wanted to read the whole thing instead of scattered essays in anthologies. I need to get something lighter for the plane though. Mike gifted me Christopher Moore's Bite Me: A Love Story at Christmastime. I adore Moore's humor, but I don't know if I can do vampires right now. Maybe I'll see what Amazon thinks I should want.

Then again, when I went back to add the link for Bite Me, I noticed that this book has "a huge shaved vampyre cat named Chet" in it. I think of Rus, my oldest at 13... soon to be 14! Tall, strong, and meaty with giant fangs. He won't let anyone stick their hand in there but me. Let's hope he doesn't go all vampire.

Uhhh, speaking of sharp things, I'm getting new ink on Friday. It will pretty much trail down my left arm the way the leaves-and-eyes trail down my right. Again, I designed this one myself and it's kind of wacky. Jason said holy fractals! when he saw it. I don't really think the fractal is super apparent.

Okay, now I'm babbling, because I haven't had enough coffee, and I don't have much more to give you right now. It was nice to get away. I'm restless to get back already. But I don't want to lose this otherworldly relaxed feeling.

Two Successful Readings

So, I did two readings in the past week, which is more than I did in the past year. I have two more scheduled right now: one in June and one in July.

Whenever I am behind the mic I am not nervous. I feel in control. I know what our roles are. I feel dope-happy. The mingling though, after, usually throws my brain into a frantic cataclysm. The crowd. The talking-to. Am I doing this right? I can't see everyone / everything. It's like the walls are closing in. I want to love all of you. Instead I can't breathe. But these recent two; these were different. I had some conversations that were truly resonant, and for that I just gotta thank the universe and hope more readings will come my way. Or rather, that I will notice the opportunities for possibilities to open up, and get on them.

This year so far is truly being transformative, on many levels.

READING AT SPHINX TUESDAY 8PM

Yes, I just had to put that in the title of the post because I haven't promoted this reading enough. I was too busy with the Modern Formations one. I'm reading tomorrow night with Shaina Bazyk. She has a really serene energy to her. We went to a reading together once last year, but I'm not familiar with her work. But it's going to rock because the Sphinx series rocks in general.

Oi, so tired today, like I just can't wake up. The sky is that shade of gray that seems to swallow all the light, all my fortitude. I know this is what April is like.

I checked my new submission tracking spreadsheet this afternoon and apparently, since I've started the spreadsheet (late November 2011), my acceptance : rejection ratio is 1 acceptance per four rejections. I had to count it several times! That's a pretty high acceptance rate. I need to send out MORE MORE MORE to keep the good qi flowing.

I came to this coffee shop to research journals. Instead I got involved in some bureaucratic emailing and totally sidetracked. {yawn} Is it time for bed yet?

The nature of me though, is that if I have a day like this today, then I will be much more full of energy tomorrow.

jim ferris

... reads at Poetry Speaks in Toledo.

"... save us from the selfless / may they each earn a self" (or at least this is the way I heard it)

Danielle Pafunda

I wish I could find more of her reading on the web.

"The Dead Girls Speak in Unison."