OLD TO BEGIN
It's pretty quiet in the old homestead tonight. (Well, if "quiet" means "Pavement at maximum volume" and "homestead" means "the Creative Writing studio.") Yep, I have easily the best campus job there is to be had in these parts. I've been feeling like working on another zine lately, even though I'm having a difficult time remembering exactly what this process entails, espeically since it's been more than a year since the last zine. I think part of the reason it's been such a while is that before, zine making was mostly a personal outreach mission from me to the rest of the world, and I've been feeling pretty in-touch with a lot of people. To think that I made two zines the spring semester of my freshman year is just ridiculous to me now, and makes me wonder if maybe I was feeling really out of the loop with things in general at that time.
Some of the things that I want to write about have been rattling around for a long time, but I haven't found a concise way of going about writing about them, and I'm sure I'm suffering from atrophied academic writing more than anything else. I know it's so much an issue of momentum, but all I seem to want to do is read the Writer's Chronicle and other poetry/academic rags. I also want to get a bottle of red wine tonight, but I don't know how or where that's going to happen.
Also, I think the way I think about things has changed RADICALLY in the last year. When I first started "The Patron Saint of Small Things" it was supposed to be a strictly non-political endeavor. I'm not sure I entirely remember why I made that choice, but it was very deliberate. I think that I was still under the impression that pure aesthetics were separate from politics (which I'm pretty sure is bullshit now, but yeah). Now, it may just be the influence of literary theory classes, or my subsequent level of discomfort with them, that pushes me into this weird corner in relation to my writing and my production of what, you will have to excuse me, I consider art.
At the same time, I'm not even certain that I've been politicized or radicalized; maybe I just think too theoretically about everything. My poetry has become a minefield of literary and cultural theory terminology and concerns, and all of my response papers for my classes are basically a major treatise on my SUBJECTIVITY and my understanding of it as such, which, nastily, is also part of my SUBJECTIVITY. As is my choice to capitalize it.
Ugh. Can I just be a stand-up comedian?
Actually, I've been thinking a lot about what I'll end up doing after I graduate from college. I can tell that some of my friends are in that mode of self-inquiry (and self-inflicted doubt, I may add) that comes from trying to decide how to go after this. Until the beginning of this year, I was fairly certain that I would simply get mineself into grad school as soon as possible. For a while I was even considering graduating from undergrad a year early and getting an LCS (that's literary and cultural studies) master's from CMU next year. NEXT YEAR. What in the world was I thinking? Or even just taking my sweet time and applying for an MFA in poetry. Only being 21 when entering grad school? EEEE. I don't know.
I blame James Baldwin primarily for making me want to travel, but I also blame my friends who have accompanied me on some awesome road trips lately. Still, there's something very real that freaks me the fuck out about moving to Europe, you know, just for the hell of it. And what exactly would I be doing there, anyway? No answers. And certainly no "Finding Your Bohemian Niche in Europe for Dummies" book to help me.
But the idea that I've been kicking around with my friends, the one that I'm kind of taking seriously right now, goes kind of like this: I graduate from CMU next year with a BA in Creative Writing, English, and Jazz Performance, move to a medium-sized city, and start up a small, independent bookstore there. This kind of idea may frighten my parents, especially coming from a girl who has, in the past, admitted a total lack of interest with regard to economics, personal or otherwise. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm not imagining myself unloading boxes and boxes of books, renting space, attending community business meetings, or sleeping under the cash register (all things which, in honesty, are likely if not unavoidable). I see myself instead fostering a writing community, selling zines, hosting potlucks, getting kids with few resources from their education system in touch with books that will change them, knitting behind the register, and maybe, with a little prodding, delivering a few lectures and readings myself. One of the things I've learned about college (at least in the humanities) is that it's a lot of good books and a lot of good people. People talking about books. Another thing I've learned about college is that, even though any institution claims to admit a diverse and stimulated student body, a lot of people just happen to have a damn lot of money behind them. Add to this that many of my friends aren't these (probably bewildered) old money kids, but plucky Pittsburgh area types. Anyway, wish me luck, you know?
It's pretty quiet in the old homestead tonight. (Well, if "quiet" means "Pavement at maximum volume" and "homestead" means "the Creative Writing studio.") Yep, I have easily the best campus job there is to be had in these parts. I've been feeling like working on another zine lately, even though I'm having a difficult time remembering exactly what this process entails, espeically since it's been more than a year since the last zine. I think part of the reason it's been such a while is that before, zine making was mostly a personal outreach mission from me to the rest of the world, and I've been feeling pretty in-touch with a lot of people. To think that I made two zines the spring semester of my freshman year is just ridiculous to me now, and makes me wonder if maybe I was feeling really out of the loop with things in general at that time.
Some of the things that I want to write about have been rattling around for a long time, but I haven't found a concise way of going about writing about them, and I'm sure I'm suffering from atrophied academic writing more than anything else. I know it's so much an issue of momentum, but all I seem to want to do is read the Writer's Chronicle and other poetry/academic rags. I also want to get a bottle of red wine tonight, but I don't know how or where that's going to happen.
Also, I think the way I think about things has changed RADICALLY in the last year. When I first started "The Patron Saint of Small Things" it was supposed to be a strictly non-political endeavor. I'm not sure I entirely remember why I made that choice, but it was very deliberate. I think that I was still under the impression that pure aesthetics were separate from politics (which I'm pretty sure is bullshit now, but yeah). Now, it may just be the influence of literary theory classes, or my subsequent level of discomfort with them, that pushes me into this weird corner in relation to my writing and my production of what, you will have to excuse me, I consider art.
At the same time, I'm not even certain that I've been politicized or radicalized; maybe I just think too theoretically about everything. My poetry has become a minefield of literary and cultural theory terminology and concerns, and all of my response papers for my classes are basically a major treatise on my SUBJECTIVITY and my understanding of it as such, which, nastily, is also part of my SUBJECTIVITY. As is my choice to capitalize it.
Ugh. Can I just be a stand-up comedian?
Actually, I've been thinking a lot about what I'll end up doing after I graduate from college. I can tell that some of my friends are in that mode of self-inquiry (and self-inflicted doubt, I may add) that comes from trying to decide how to go after this. Until the beginning of this year, I was fairly certain that I would simply get mineself into grad school as soon as possible. For a while I was even considering graduating from undergrad a year early and getting an LCS (that's literary and cultural studies) master's from CMU next year. NEXT YEAR. What in the world was I thinking? Or even just taking my sweet time and applying for an MFA in poetry. Only being 21 when entering grad school? EEEE. I don't know.
I blame James Baldwin primarily for making me want to travel, but I also blame my friends who have accompanied me on some awesome road trips lately. Still, there's something very real that freaks me the fuck out about moving to Europe, you know, just for the hell of it. And what exactly would I be doing there, anyway? No answers. And certainly no "Finding Your Bohemian Niche in Europe for Dummies" book to help me.
But the idea that I've been kicking around with my friends, the one that I'm kind of taking seriously right now, goes kind of like this: I graduate from CMU next year with a BA in Creative Writing, English, and Jazz Performance, move to a medium-sized city, and start up a small, independent bookstore there. This kind of idea may frighten my parents, especially coming from a girl who has, in the past, admitted a total lack of interest with regard to economics, personal or otherwise. I'm perfectly willing to admit that I'm not imagining myself unloading boxes and boxes of books, renting space, attending community business meetings, or sleeping under the cash register (all things which, in honesty, are likely if not unavoidable). I see myself instead fostering a writing community, selling zines, hosting potlucks, getting kids with few resources from their education system in touch with books that will change them, knitting behind the register, and maybe, with a little prodding, delivering a few lectures and readings myself. One of the things I've learned about college (at least in the humanities) is that it's a lot of good books and a lot of good people. People talking about books. Another thing I've learned about college is that, even though any institution claims to admit a diverse and stimulated student body, a lot of people just happen to have a damn lot of money behind them. Add to this that many of my friends aren't these (probably bewildered) old money kids, but plucky Pittsburgh area types. Anyway, wish me luck, you know?
