New to the blogosphere

I can't believe I just used that word, but it's an exciting occasion. The pastor who spoiled me such that I didn't like another church for years, recently retired, has set up camp here: http://ricksmumbles.blogspot.com/. This is an important man, and if you have a spiritual inclination you should check out his blog. It's brand new. (Heh heh.) So be among the first to visit! Maybe if you write comments, he will post a lot.

In other news, I think I've finally hit my stride with writing and come up with a comfortable, fascinating subject capable of keeping me interested long enough to write a whole thesis on't. http://www.taize.fr/. Very close to my heart. You should go. And invite me to go with you. Added bonus: I speak French, so I would be a valuable asset to your group.

I made not one but two trips to the library book sale. The only reason I'm not worried for my mental health in relation to buying books is that I was able to leave behind many books I could well have purchased. Now I've got the crowded-shelf problem anyway, and not nearly enough time to read. My habit lately is to read a bunch of books a little at a time, at the same time. Like, sit down with a stack and read one page of eight or ten books. I got the idea from Sparrow, so it can't be all bad, but it's making it hard for me to read anything for longer than that. I console/inflate myself by reading things like The Whipping Boy, and saying I read a whole book, look, I can read a whole book, I can. Holding it up as evidence (to no one but myself) that I am capable of reading a whole book. So cheap. Oh well. Since everything's cyclical, soon enough I'll be reading like a normal person.

Oh, here's something cool (can you tell I just learned how to insert links?): http://www.humancalendar.com/. Found through Scott's blog.

I think I'm going to the Seagrove pottery festivalS. I want all the dirt behind the clay. This is all fascinating, sad, and hilarious to me. Gotta figure out where it is and whether anyone I know lives close enough for me to crash with them, because I have a feeling there'll be no room at the inns. So exciting. Look at me acting like a real writer.

This is why I should go to places with no internet.

I've done everything on my computer today but write. I have expertly arranged my bookmarks (er, favorites), bookmarked (favorited?) some sites for writing research, looked at other people's blogs, written this post, checked email, reviewed the week's PostSecrets in English and French, and thought nobly upon the enticing possibilities of all the research I'm going to do, all the topics that are just so fascinating to me, all the books that are brewing inside this brunette-covered brain. And their name is Legion. Oh, you betcha (anyone? Anyone? Palin?), there's synesthesia, wine in France and in NC, Taize and Seagrove and pottery, comics, the history of typography, everything that pops into my head is there in full-fledged hardback bound form, right down to the author photo, which doesn't exist but I know just which pose I want. There's just one small problem.

The writing.

Not my thing lately, it seems, despite my mapping out all the ideas in my world and their connections on butcher paper on the kitchen floor, despite my blocking out time to write, despite my (parents) paying good money to be here and devoting three years of my life to writing, and taching writing--for goodness' sake, if my students knew how long it'd been since I really put myself into a piece and got behind it instead of dashing something off for workshop and couching it in disclaimers about how rough it is, they'd stage a coup. Unless we had class outside, in which case they wouldn't notice or care.

Other non-writing things I have done: library book sale, cheap massage at the technical college, reading Othello, reading other stuff, several episodes of Project Runway, walking Wrightsville Beach Loop, considering a small party, a little cleaning here and there. Nothing I shouldn't have done, but geez, I have got to come up with a system that will make me do what I say I do.

Any ideas?

I don't know how to get just the funniest part. The part I want to show you is about God and Jesus, several minutes in. Cracks me up for a good 18 hours now.

Something is wacky on my taskbar. Lugging the ol' computer to IT on campus tomorry and hoping someone there knows from Vista.

I spread out some butcher paper on my kitchen floor and made a sprawling map of things I could write about. Lots of connective lines. Groups of topics are becoming clearer. It's fun stuff.

men i don't know inside my brain

You know what I realized yesterday? When I read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (which is as often as possible), I picture James Thurber, or some Thurber hero. I think it has to do with the era, and the clothing, and the age of the man. It would have to be Thurber in a bad mood, though, becuase Prufrock seems so much less able to laugh at himself. Strange, strange thing, the way a mind works.

Speaking of my mind working (ish), I forgot my ATM PIN for the third time in four months or so, and also forgot where I wrote it down, or possibly threw that away. And now that David Foster Wallace is gone, my constant mixing him up with Scott Russell Sanders is more of a problem. Then again, maybe I'll be able to distinguish them now. It has nothing to do with their writing, it's just that they both have three names, and I discovered them at the same time. And it's not really mixing them up, because I would never call SRS by DFW's name. I just call them both Scott Russell Sanders. I'm just waiting for the day when David Hyde Pierce, Michael Ian Black, or Stephen Jay Gould enters the mix. Oh, lawd.

I do not believe in the end of blessings.

Today is the day for a haircut, and maybe the purchase of a new Bible, and a sweet-potato-and-black-bean quesadilla, and a trip to Goodwill if I'm feeling especially indulgent.

Yesterday I went to the movies too early, so I walked to the library and got some books on comics. I owed four dollars in late fees, but only from one day of lateness because it was two DVDs and they are two dollars per day late per DVD, so it wasn't as grave as I thought. The movie was beautiful, but I didn't quite get the ending, so maybe one day I'll read the book. Maybe not. Erin went with me and rode her bike home, and I pulled up behind her at a stoplight. I came home and ate homemade shells and cheese with breadcrumbs on top, then graded an impressive paper.

The day before that I went to the first meeting for Disciple Bible study, and the leader is the father of a friend from college, which was a surprise and made me feel even better about joining the study.

On Saturday, I spent the day in the upstairs of a coffee shop downtown reading and researching, and the evening at a reggae festival and then a terrible redneck bar about which my curiosity is now soundly sated.

On Friday, I found the herbal drink I've been searching for, Celestial Seasonings' Roastaroma, at the co-op. I was afraid they didn't make it any more.

In two days and a few hours I'll be on the road to Cooperstown, New York, for a wedding reception.

Two weeks after that is the public library book sale,
and then I'm reading at a reading,
and then it's Halloween and I'm going to Greensboro for the Avett Brothers,
and then it's Writers' Week,
and then it's Thanksgiving and Christmas,
and then AWP Chicago with Art Spiegelman,
and then it's almost time to start dreaming about summer and maybe a move downtown.

So who cares if I'm better at having ideas than implementing them? Who cares if I don't have a boyfriend or a date, and if one of my classes is not well, and I'm probably not going to enter that one great writing contest? Everything is the picture of perfection, and the way things are is a perfect way for them to be. I don't mean I don't want to change. I don't mean there's no better way; in fact it's the kind of perfect that can only get better. I just mean this is perfect and for once I know it.

Rachel Writes a Blog Post

I'm going to this Bible study tonight, and it is going to last 34 weeks. That's thirty-four weeks. Longer than anything I've ever done continuously, with the possible exclusion of school, which is only longer by a couple of weeks. I have never met or seen any of the other people in this Bible study. I have glanced briefly at the workbook, years ago. And the people will probably be older than me and talk often about their children and family life, and I will not identify with that, but for some reason I'm very excited about this study, so it will take a pretty terrible group to make me leave. I have always heard about this study and book and how it changes everyone's lives, and now for the first time it is working with my schedule and I'll live in the same place long enough to do it all, or most of it. I feel as though I'm getting down to business. Finally. But it could always not be for me--that happens all the time, everyone but me loves something. I hold my mind ajar. We will see.

In other news, I saw Burn After Reading and laughed and realized I am that woman who talks in movies and wondered when that happened. It was very funny, very well-acted, with lots of good scenes, but they didn't add up to much of a movie. As I'd been forewarned, the Coens and I are still OK. I would recommend that you wait and rent it or, as the kids do these days, Netflix it.

I have pulled off the coup of the decade in my poetry class, with permission. I "wrote" an entire poem of eleven stanzas using only found text from the Reader's Digest Science Reader from 1963. If I can continue to write poems by stealing lines and have professors say it's a great idea, I am switching genres. Not really. I keep telling myself I'm here for a challenge, I'm going to research and write this book, I'm not going to fall back on memoir, and I'm going to like it, and so is everyone else. Of course, when one has never had a class in research, one wonders how to proceed beyond the library. Maybe I could contract someone to do the interviews and stuff. Except I would still get to travel and meet people, just not have to take notes or anything.

I started reading French Women Don't Get Fat. When I typed that, I put "far" instead of "fat," which makes the sentence funny but not true. It's surprisingly readable, and I look forward to putting its concepts into practice. I am also savoring The Moviegoer, sometimes reading sentences repeatedly because I like them so much.

Two lost things someone should write: the second half of Aristotle's Poetics, in which he probably wrote about comedy (the half we have is about tragedy); and accounts of mortals who were welcomed into the Olympian community--according to Edith Hamilton, this happened to several humans, but once they went to Olympus, they disappeared from literature. What was their life like up there? When I say someone should write these, I mean me. So no stealing.

Tie Up the Cows, Maw!

I haven't bought bread and batteries or put together an emergency kit. I have, however, filled some containers with water and my car's tank with gas. I just don't know what to make of this. Classes are canceled, but they also get canceled when there's a quarter-inch of snow. So just how bad is this going to be?

Nothing to do but wait. I have plenty of food and stuff, and my cell phone and car. But still, how weird. The last one I remember that did anything was Fran, and we were out of school for a week because power was out all over, and we did word puzzles by candlelight. Not so bad. And now I get to see if I can do it as an adult.