Biting the Bullet

So, after a month or so of looking for next year's housing and having nothing but lousy experiences, touring A2 apartments that are all a)teeny, b)dumpy, c)vastly, ridiculously, over-archingly expensive, d)did I mention teeny? and e)surely I've mentioned squalid? I have had enough.

No more flesh-gouging landlords shall toss casually over their shoulders "Oh, by the way, my wife and I have decided to raise the rent for next year--we'd been thinking Barely Affordable, but now we're completely behind Not Even With Two Good Jobs and a Sugar Daddy."

No more men in ball caps shall walk me through 300 square feet of rotting carpet and Bacardi-stained linoleum to tell me, with a self-important air, that "this is a very desirable campus unit."

I will no longer consider forking over every penny of my grandmother's hospice money for a "cozy efficiency" in a "quaint bungalow" on the "highly sought-after" Westside. I will not be placated by rumors that the filthy, mold-eaten kitchen will be "completely remodeled" before move-in or by the fact that I can lean out of the rotten, warped window casing of the cigar-box-sized bedroom and spit onto Main St.

I am leaving the Big Rock Candy Mountain. I am taking my money with me. Together, we are eloping with a forbidden love.

Think of me (and my money) as Billy Joel's Virginia, falling into the burly arms of a man who Runs With a Dangerous Crowd. A laughing man. A man who knows what it means to rent a decent motherfucking house for SLIGHTLY LESS THAN EVERY GODDAMNED DROP OF YOUR LIFESBLOOD PLUS TAX.

Yes, folks, it's true: I'm moving to Ypsilanti.

For those of you sure that such a move is tantamount to falling off the end of a squared-off globe, never fear; you can visit me anytime you like just by driving toward (and then past) the giant penis tower. If you're scared to do this but would still like to communicate, send me an e-mail--Ypsilanti is likely to develop connections to that new-fangled "Information Superhighway" any month. Even better, build me a care package and mail it to the Armed Services. I'm pretty sure there are still allied drop zones around Frog Island.

No, Ypsilanti, for all the hard knocks he's taken in a world that may be Separate but is never Equal, isn't bitter. Ypsilanti will laugh his raspy, cigarette-addled laugh and cough the phlegm of brotherhood into the bottom of his whiskey glass when you mince up. He'll give you Ann Arborites a hearty slap on your white-collared backs, and after you've picked yourselves up off the Tap Room floor he'll even buy you a good dinner (and maybe a peanut butter shake) over at the Chick Inn, just to show there's no hard feelings.

Ypsilanti is a good egg, even if he did try to send me to Detroit that time. Know why? 'Cause Ypsilanti is cheap.

Just as every good man should be.

Global Orgasm

A friend sent me a link today to the Global Orgasm, a project attempting to achieve (or at least, push toward) world peace by harnessing all the positive energy created by near-simultaneous human orgasms. Bizarre, certainly. But sort of sweet. Sex for peace? Why not try it--sounds much more pleasant than Occupation.

I couldn't resist a quick, reactionary poem about the project. Here 'tis:

Becky Adams
Sex for Peace: The Global Orgasm Project

On the day of the Winter Solstice
December 22, 2006
people around the world
are going to lay down together
and make love for peace.

Everywhere there are
Friends of the Common Good
Friends of Harmony and Trust
people will be knocking
and entering into each other.

The world, they say, has become
an urban lot snowed over—
one big, aluminum-sided bungalow
standing between our peace
and the hushed, oncoming dusk.

On December 22 we will be lamps
plugged in to the shared power
of the human orgasm
and we will send the light
bat-burning through our house.

Also, rather incidentally: if anybody knows of any poems about Paul Revere besides Longfellows' ever-famous "Listen my children, and you shall hear.." bit, let me know. I'm doing research.

Robert Lowell

Apparently operating under the delusion these days that I'm a poet.
(Tell this to my workshop leaders. It will thrill them.)

Walked home from the SF reading group tonight with a new volume of Robert Lowell (Life Studies and For the Union Dead), a book I will admit I slavishly purchased because Phil talks about the guy with some regularity and I no longer wish to feel myself an ignoramus. After a quick glance through the poems, I can tell I'm going to like the guy. Good bread-and-nails winter reading, I think. Steel. Grit. Humanity.

This is Robert Lowell (though that very well might be Lyle Lovett's hair). What a dish! Poets know that all they have to do is publish a chapbook or two to get the girls.

What it Would Take

First draft of two (very) new poems. I don't know if I like them yet. Also, for reasons I don't quite understand, Blogger refuses to recognize the subtleties of format "Lover's Philosophy" ought to display. Why???

Very blah outside today. I'm melancholy without any real excuse...somebody call me. Anybody. Seriously. Save me, at least for a few moments, from this Sunday-afternoon funk.

Becky Adams
What it Would Take

Fourteen guys with big hacksaws and chainsaws
and a snarling teenager with a butterfly knife
and seventeen German Shepherds with no training
collared in bulging chains whose stamped steel links
I could eat dinner through,
coming at me in the dusk that is worse than dark
because it distorts the light like a fogged-up
bathroom mirror rubbed with a wet towel
or those teeny eighteenth-century window panes,
could probably convince me to start seeing
someone else. Barring their maiming/cutting/jostling/
angry words/bony teeth/physical obliteration,
I own you. You’re mine, baby.

___________

Becky Adams
Lover’s Philosophy

If you believe in Boston, in England,
in all places I have never been,
then what is left for me

but to trust you
always, and implicitly, so that you may
say to me anything

—the moon is a great tightening
of the galactic larynx—

and I will have to believe,

or to trust you never, and reject
you inherently

—I love you, I want you,
I think you have a beautiful mind.

MFA Soccer

With a turnout of about twelve, I'm going to call today's MFA soccer match a success. Granted, I'm the worst player in the group, and granted, yes, that Peter's gross finger-dislocation and Cyan's possibly-broken nose did dampened the old European zeal, briefly, and granted that team white-shirt (my team, surprise-surprise) lost by about eight bazillion points, but still! Fun! Running around and kicking, and all that!

But seriously. I was terribly nervous by the time I arrived at World Wide Sports--I'm awful at soccer--but the first person I bumped into was Peter and he did his best to put me at ease. No need to worry, either, because even the people I'd never met before today (which was most of them) were very kind about my obvious physical handicaps. I plan to play again, even though I'm sure a number would rather I not. I like the spirit of everyone bringing white and red shirts and yelling out at random intervals, "does your side need a seventh? Okay, then, just let me change." A come-together, all-in-the-spirit-of-play attitude, that.

I really ought to practice, though. Anything I could do to improve would be a kindness.

Spinach

Okay, I got a haircut. Actually, I got all of them cut, and the mullet is no more. Nobody seems to have noticed the change but at least I feel better about my place in this decade.

What's up with the spinach scare? Are a number of restaurants really taking spinach off the menu? Jesus, people, spinach is probably the safest now that it will ever be---about eight million watchdog groups (or at least, eight million people working for one or two watchdog groups) are now staring spinach down in great, natural, man v spinach contests. Daring spinach to become a threat. Just daring it.

And spinach is backing down, because the heat is on. There will never be a safer time to eat spinach than right now, when the national crop has been tested a bazillion times.

In the spirit of my point, I ought to check my e-mail on a computer with a Dell battery while spinning in a Firestone tire swing and eating a big ol' rabbity spinach salad. But I'm not. Know why? 'Cause I'm a little scared.

And that's why, no matter the intellectual debate, no matter the grey cells' cooing and reassurance, the spinach farmers are totally fucked this year.

Mean(s) Morning

Halfway through my day with David Means (a workshop, a lunch, a walk, a tea, a reading, and a signing) everything is absolutely swimming along. The guy is friendly and funny. He thinks I'm funny. He's as easy to talk to as if I'd known him for years and is absolutely unpretentious. Also, the weather today is GORGEOUS which adds a vitality to being outside and circling through events.

All in all, this day-long date is turning out awesome. I'm glad now that when my alarm went off half an hour late this morning and I woke up tired and hung over I still got my shit together and went to Means' workshop. I take back most of what I said about time with authors not doing much for an MFA student--this morning has been a big breath of air and a reassuring clap on the back. Good for the writer's spirit.

Promise

Today I woke up and the morning felt as full of promise as one of those early summer days when I was a kid. Haven't felt that kind of joy about meeting the day in a long, long time.

Maybe this means things are getting better? Or maybe the weather is just SMOKIN' today. Go outside and feel that sun!

Like the Butterfly Bursts From its Cocoon...

...so do I, too, smush aside the gelatinous goo that doth clothe my voluptuous, vibrant person and emerge freshcheeked and slimy into the light of radiant day.

Updating! For the first time in months!

I had a rollicking summer of many ups and downs (got drunk in the river, read a lot of Robert Service, hiked the Tetons, was nearly eaten by a bear, got lost in the woods, turned 22, etc). Now I'm having a first-term-of-grad-school full of ups and downs, and I think everything's going to turn out well. I'm working on a new story that shows some promise and the dog is no longer bouncing around my heels like a crack-addled Chihuahua. Saw a severe librarianwalking some Mexican hairless dogs the day before yesterday. What's not to love about this life?

Here's a poem for my return to the internet. It's a first draft and not very good. But fuck you guys, okay? It's fine.

Retrophilia
Becky Adams

If this were a Bela Lugosi movie
you and I would wear white white

pancake and stare deep back
beyond the camera into the shadows

of the catwalk.
Low voices and eerie

lighting, a dab of technicolor here
and there, an old woman’s handkerchief

at your neck, and I could slit
the bag-blood of your throat

with my mouth
and flee

in a series of fading stills
while you bled, and died,

and slid slowly down the castle door.

Camp Davis, Baby!

Folks,

In a day or two, I'm off to Wyoming for the summer to hike around and clean bathrooms. Unless the spiders eat me, I will be receiving mail. Since our internet access is spotty and shared, and cell phones black out in our valley, for the greatest part of the summer I will be receiving ONLY mail. Feel free to write me e-mail, just understand that I may not get back to you for awhile. CERTAINLY send real mail--it will be the hub of my communications, and, quite frankly, existence. Here is my address:

Becky "Where'd you leave those tacos?" Adams
c/o Camp Davis
13405 S. Bryan Flat Rd.
Jackson WY 83001

I will be there between June 17 and August 12. Don't expect anything to reach me until about a week and a half after you send it.

I'm really, dreadfully, going to miss all of you--so much!!!!!! Jon, have fun in France. Ross and his idiot consort, recall me fondly when your new friend comes over to eat all your food, drink all your Coke, and swim in your pool. Cliff, don't find a new favorite student. Sara, get that job in South Africa. Margaret, try not to regret promising to live with my tiny dog. Rohin, don't you dare move to NYC before we go to the Aut Bar in August. Everyone else I love, kiss each other for me! Then write. And keep writing. Everyone who writes me will get at least one letter back.

John Spencer

I've been thinking a lot lately about John Spencer, a wonderful actor who died at the age of 58 this past December. Celebrity gossip is not something I'm very interested in, and I don't tend to follow the lives and times of very many actors or actresses. But I had a real respect for Spencer, who always impressed me as a driven and talented man. Like Anthony Hopkins or Richard Harris, Spencer was an actor's actor---a professional; someone, according to his colleagues, to be respected and counted on.

I have no desire to be an actress and I hope very much that I won't pass on as young as 58. But I hope that when I do die, people will say the same kinds of things about me that were said about Spencer. He did for people. He opened his heart and worked quietly and well. Not too bad a legacy, is it?

LAND

Live deliberately
Apply yourself (may become "Act out")
No decisions from fear
Do no harm

My CUVWEBS. "Land," a word both secure and inspiring, a rock and a-roving, creating the best and worst elements of the American Dream, but a vital component of that dream nonetheless. We want it, we sweat for it, we protect it with our lives. Land.

Bite-sized Update

Those of you who visit this sight with any frequency may have noticed that the housing pictures are down. That, my friends, is because I have FINALLY found someplace to live! 829 Brown Street, an unassuming apartment in a quiet residential area, will be my home three months from now. We're painting, I'm bringing Columbo, the bathroom is huge. There will be room to cook pies and set up at least two bookshelves in my bedroom. Life? Not so bad.

The Davinci Code? Rocked my socks. Ian stole every scene he was in. I'm so glad the movie lived up to my high anticipation, because last night was certainly a celebratory occasion.

In other news, I'm writing my own version of Clifford's CUVWEBS. Anyone who knows what I'm talking about should feel free to join me so we can get together and test our mantras on each other. I think mine will only be four letters instead of seven, but that's alright. I'm younger and am only trying self-wisdom on like a big hat.

MFA, Here I Come!

I AM IN GRAD SCHOOL!

The MFA program at UM just turned my rejection on its ear and invited me in for two years, complete scholarships, a gradership, summer stipends, and a graduate teaching assistantship.

And this on the heels of my winning the Virginia L. Voss Memorial Honors Award--dear, dear God.

I've died. I've died and gone to a thoroughly undeserved world of recognition and grad school! Woo hoo!!!!!

A Michigan MFA, baby! I'm in the cohort!!!!!

Memorizing Poems

Here are two wonderful poems I memorized tonight:

William Wordsworth
The World is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Edwin Arlington Robinson
Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him;

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favoured, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said

"Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,

And admirably schooled in every grace;

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread,

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Recitation is a fucking art. If you're really serious about it, you just realize one day that you're creating a kind of internal portfolio, and you love that. I need to add to mine. Right now I can recite:

Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
After Apple Picking, Robert Frost
Fire and Ice, Robert Frost
Ozymandias, Percy Shelley
The World is Too Much With Us, William Wordsworth
Richard Cory, Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ye White Antarctic Birds of Upper 57th Street, Lisa Jarnot
Bad Morning, Langston Hughes

I used to know Robert Frost's Into My Own as well—it probably wouldn't be too hard to retrieve that one. Really, you just need to say them to yourself (as long as there's an obvious rhythm to them) over and over and you hold on to the language much longer than you'd expect. Next on my list are:

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas
It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free, William Wordsworth
The Tyger, William Blake

Anyone have any suggestions to add? Any they know and love to rattle off to a captive audience?

I have a faux hawk.

The fauk has so far been described as:

"ballsy" (Angie)

"Eddie Izzard-like" (J-Bakes)

"fighting poodle-esque" (Clifford)

and "nice" (Mark)

I have been told both "it's...unique" and "it looks good on you!"

I love it, I gotta say. The fauk and I will be looking for housing next week. Together.

I Avoided Ruination Day

Tigers Stomped the Indians, Freddie Krueger did not get me.

Today felt like the first day of summer.

I'm thinking of a new haircut.

Time Capsules Rule

So, I finished my portfolio for my 417 class 5 days early. And in the twenty-seconds I took off to celebrate, I thought,

"why the fuck have I never put together an honest-to-God time capsule?"

So I'm taking that project on. Anyone with any advice about how to construct or populate the capsule should leave me a comment, because I'd appreciate the input. This is for all of us, you know. So we can remember this great era.

Here's what I'm thinking of including so far:

--current news clippings
--journal entries bearing on life goals, thoughts on issues, etc. Submissions welcome.
--photos. Ditto the submissions thing.
--a really good book or two, signed
--art
--a few trendy knick-knacks
--a 2006 dollar
--a tape of a day in the life, voices from today, etc. recorded on my big ol' tape recorder

This bears further thought, certainly. Where will I bury the capsule, for one thing? I need to be able to come back for it in twenty-years or so, and I should tell others where it's at in case I die...

Guy Sums it Up

There are a few lines from a Guy Clark (Austin, TX songwriter) song called "Dublin Blues" that I think sum up the bittersweet end of college very well:
...
so forgive me all my anger
forgive me all my faults
there's no need to forgive me
for thinking what I thought.


The mix is relatively morbid in my head right now. Everywhere I go I see the end of things, even with a new and exciting life just up ahead. A natural attitude, but still. I feel like I could look into a baby's face these days and right in the middle of being awed at all that raw potential see a death rictus superimpose itself over those features. This change of life feeling is one I think I'm too young to have experienced with any potency before.

What I wonder now is, do people feel this way constantly after the age of, say, seventy? I'm not sure I could stomach it. This quiet sadness just sort of spreads across the world. Maybe that's the real reason old people are slow and stooped. From carrying this knowledge that everything, everything ends. Everything.

Christ. I really need to go see a film or something, don't I?

Bad Monday

I'm so depressed today. I fulfilled none of my obligations and pecked away half-heartedly at my thesis. I accomplished nothing, got another fucking parking ticket I can't pay, and feel, in general, as if absolutely nobody gives a shit. Christ. I want out this foxhole before I get hit by a shell, you know? I really hate everyone and everything around today, including myself.