The good news and bad news about this jambalaya

(Yes, this jambalaya)

is that 

1) it weighs ten pounds. And I never measure or write anything down. Or follow recipes really, unless I'm baking. Thus:

2) You will have it for a week.

3) And then you will never taste it again.

Viewfinding

So yesterday J. (the other J!) led the writing warm-up in homeroom. She did an exercise to focus them on details and imagery by proving each student with a paper viewfinder and asking them to examine some object they had on their person, or nearby... many of the students did indeed pick up minute details that graced their everyday objects, which they had not noticed before. Since I was the teacher who was not leading, I also participated in this exercise. When J. had walked in (we get there earlier than the kids) I wanted to touch the viewfinders. I was intrigued by this exercise. 

I think if all of us teachers could just spend a week sitting in on each other's workshops, we would. Or at least I would. I love doing the exercises and activities that my peers have come up with. I alove writing with the kids. This may not be common to everyone though. I know some writers who hate FW and timed exercises because the pressure leads to performance anxiety and the words won't come easily. Personally I find that FW (and the like) really work for me. The inner editor is silenced! I work better under pressure. Unfortunately I also use this excuse as to why I'm a procrastinator in other aspects of my job (grading) but that's bullshit. Maybe grading just hurts less if you have to do it quickly without obsessing. My problem is that i still obsess, but then I must obsess quickly. 

Anyway TANGENT. I really want to concentrate on those viewfinders. I have used these before to pick out details in a photograph, where you lay the photo on the table and move the little frame around. When I do large watercolor / acrylic washes, I'll use the frame to find the areas that contain the most interesting patterns to cut out and repurpose. But for this exercise the students were holding the viewfinder up to their faces, like a camera or a telescope. 

So you can picture it better, it was just a little frame make of cardstock. The opening was a rectangle about two inches wide by one inch high. I tried to do the same thing and immediately discovered that the viewfinder was actually way larger than my field of vision. When I held it up to my eye, the viewfinder disappeared. I sat there for a second thinking, hey this is kinda cool, moving it back and forth and watching it disappear. Jill's cool vision tricks. Then I thought to myself, holy crap, my visual field is actually smaller than that. 

I have a document. It's probably close to 20 years old now. It confirms the shape of my visual field, as much as a visual field can be measured. It's jagged. Like an irregular polygon. I had somehow imagined it would be round. {shrug} Eyeballs are round. The visual field chart is a series of concentric circles, like a dart board. To get that kind of record, the docs, or their belabored technicians, have to perform a visual field test.

I hate visual field testing. Every time I go to the ophtho, they want to do a visual field test. It's one of the reasons why I don't go. I know. Bad me. Bad. These tests involve the tech sitting on one side of a concave plate (okay, in my memory it's concave. It might actually be just like a big drawing board) through which they can shine a tiny light, like a laser pointer. They ask you to focus on the light and, without moving your eye at all, tell them (or hit a buzzer or whatever) when the light disappears. Then they mark the spot on the other side of the plate with an instrument. From the way it sounds I imagine it's a pencil on a sort of metal arm. I can tell it's a pencil because of the sound the multiple erasures make when I say shit! I moved my eye or Sorry! My vision jumped. I hate and dread these tests. First of all, the impulse to track a moving object with your eye is nearly overwhelming that it is so difficult to hold the eye still (shit! I moved my eye) Secondly, trying to hold the eye still (as they ask you to do for most of the damn ophtho tests) causes my nystagmus to go batshit crazy (sorry, my vision jumped). Basically, the more they ask me to hold still, the more I shake. 

The last time I went back to the ophtho was to get reading glasses. I could have go to a regular eye doc and lied but I knew I was supposed to go to a specialist and I hadn't been in ten years and they would probably just refer me anyway once they had a look at my eyes. The poor bastard who had to do my field test was a total newb. Like, literally, it was the very first test he had done on anyone after getting out of medical school or something. I felt so bad that he was getting me. After about five minutes of mutual frustration, he was like I don't think this test is really beneficial for you. I was like amen brother! I don't know if he genuinely felt that way or if he was just trying to get out of performing a difficult procedure, but I didn't care. My visual field isn't degenerative. Plus they have other crazy tests now where they can track your eyeballs with computers and stuff. 

So, the viewfinder. I have to move my personal viewfinder around and around an object, a person, a street to get the big picture. I want to make an analogy here, about how I'm so detail oriented and tend to lose the larger perspective easily... but it would all wrap up too easily. There's no metaphor. It's just a paper frame. I'm finishing this blog entry while I'm supposed to be supervising students in the park. There's some awful folk duo.... I mean... the songwriting.... it's .... they tend to like cute themes. Every so often I look up. The students are chatting. They have their notebooks out. Typed pages are being passed around. The ones at my table are playing Exquisite Corpse. One girl passed me a note about a sonnet crown. Seems like learning is taking place. I feel a little antisocial about blogging while they're doing a team-based exercise. The band is so bad. And loud. I'm dragging. These kids are so good. I'm totally being the pinnacle of leadership. I'm going to miss these kids when they go. They are going to spoil me for future students. 

negotiations.

Dear My-Hip-and-Lower-Back-Muscles:

Please forgive me for not remembering all of your names. I need you to really cooperate here. I need you to not spaz on me until after 7/27. Really, August 1 would be ideal. I realize that I'm not keeping up my end of the relationship as well as I could. I have been remiss in some areas, and I'm sorry. I'm dehydrating you. Not feeding you protein. Sleeping in contorted ways and then having nightmares which stiffen my whole body. You can't blame me for that last bit though. The unconscious can be so wily. I'm going to try harder to at least give you more fluids and maybe yoga on Saturday. You like yoga, remember? I realize holding my torso up is a real task, and many times I tax you with bad posture. After that thing I have to go to tonight, where I'm sure the seats will not be to your liking, if there are seats, I'm going to try to remember to do some stretching before bed, which should help, yes? Please don't make me put on the back brace. Everyone agrees on how much we hate it.

Yours in bodily unity,

Jill

20things : Unstuck

1. In the heat I become unstuck from myself.

2. It starts with a papercut on my left thumb.

3. My skin curls back like an aging piece of tape until my whole torso unpeels.

4. Like a giant hand pressing down on the crown of my head, the heat bids me kneel.

5. My fall to the floor seems endless.

6. But, I think, it's not so bad down here, on my back, on the tile.

7. Breezy, even.

8. I see why the cats like it.

9. They stretch to their longest possible length.

10. They show a lot of belly.

11. Then my fascia, my muscles, grow brittle and snap.

12. I'm thinking I really should blog this.

13. My bones desiccate, dissolve.

14. It's like an oven in here!

15. Not the heat, but the humidity!

16. My liver slithers from where there used to be ribs. Then my spleen. Then all the fancy ductwork that held it together.

17. I notice my liver is the color of the grout between the tiles and wish we'd picked a different color.

18. There's nothing much to do but look up at the ceiling fan.

19. Whirl whirl whirl.

20. The heat makes me so dizzy.

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.

20things : Proofreading

1. I am trying to proofread the manuscript this morning.

2. I go through this at least once a month and still find things out of place.

3. I am working from home. I work from home now. Or coffee shops. But right now home.

4. Wrong verbs.

5. There's a thin line between revision and proofreading. I cross and recross it.

6. Somewhere in this four-story house a smoke alarm is low on batteries.

7. The poem is never done.

8. I have trouble letting things go. I get too attached.

9. Each time it chirps I can feel the sound actually reverberate in my head.

10. I wouldn't say I'm a word hoarder or anything. Perhaps verbose.

11. One cat whines for food. One cat is trying to quietly destroy something in the next room.

12. Chirp.

13. Why does it say "no section break" when I meant to write "no stanza break?" Section?

14. Mike says the offending alarm is in the attic but I went to the attic to collect some papers and you can't hear it from up there.

15. My work area, with the big monitor, is down here. The one I can most easily see from. Still ... how am I finding all these mistakes?

16. It's like each revision washes away the previous efforts at proofreading.

17. The cat who whines for food has now gained the top of the filing cabinet. In my blindest spot. He means to jump quietly but sends books and papers into the furthest corner behind my desk, where it hurts to bend and reach.

18. My hips are iffy this morning. How am I so--

19. Chirp. Meow.

20. Next page.

a) nightmare b) some good news

So I woke up this morning because Ruskin yowled and yowled. I was grateful because I was having a hard time breaking free of this nightmare:

the university for which I previously taught (and in the dream was still teaching at, or trying to) had a principal. A principal, like at a high school, who disciplined all the students and also made the hiring decisions. He looked like the Bob Kelso character from Scrubs.

I had made him a PowerPoint (as part of an interview portfolio?) in which I described what it was like to be blind. I used both an argumentative approach and also a poetic one. Like, logic entangled with metaphor.

Except I accidentally hit the "send" button (PowerPoint had a send button) and it whisked into his inbox without revision. I got it back with a big silly asterisk in the corner. It said F+ --"your arguments are not strong enough."

I wrote a groveling email in which I tried to explain the accidental hitting of the send button and could I have more time to complete the assignment? Instead of waiting for a response, I decided to just revise the damn thing and send it off again. I got his response. This time it said F* --"_________

and then I woke up.

The good news is that (I think I can share this? I haven't signed a contract but I did receive an acceptance email....) I'm teaching in the Young Writers' Institute this summer, high school level. w00t!!!!!

Might as well call it neurotica

[just ocd thoughtfragments, not poem]

I am freaking out about bugs
specific bugs
glossy black
three lobes
legs
feelers
mandibles
wood eaters
the shower
wherein this morning
Mike found
a silverfish
he stoically dealt with
the silverfish

SILVERFISH

my coffee is rich and frothy
my skin vibrates right off my body
I tune into
tv shows
about disasters
bridge collapse
train
folds into itself
kills a small village
subway tunnel
on fire : to a living corpse
dancing in a puddle
of flaming diesel
a silverfish
would not seem like much

"Graduation" from PT

I received: 2 resistance bands, 2 pages of exercises, and ... a t-shirt. I have to figure out how I'm gonna repurpose it. My inner 13-year old points out that, if you black out certain letters, it will read either CRABS or Center for Rabies.