eek!

There’s lots to like about our neighborhood, including how it’s walking distance to great shops, restaurants and bars, very close to our respective offices, and full of pretty Victorian buildings, including ours. But the little details I really love about our neighborhood are Oreo Cat and Mini Cooper.

Oreo Cat is a black and white cat who lives in the house around the corner. Because we live on a thoroughfare that has commute lane parking rules and tends to have cruisers racing up and down all night, I like to park right around the corner on the side street. I often park in front of Oreo Cat’s house, and it always makes me smile when he’s in the window. Some cats sit in the window and never see you, but Oreo Cat makes eye contact. I say hello and it’s like he can tell I’m saying hello. It’s a much more neighborly exchange than I’ve had with most of my other neighbors. I take what I can get.

Here’s Oreo Cat, who probably has a more dignified name like Eustice or Creamed Corn:

And there is a guy around the same corner who has a vintage British racing green Mini Cooper. Recently he painted a 73 on the side, but here is Mini before his paint job:

These are things in my neighborhood that make me smile. That’s all.

It is half over and that is ridiculous. I could have sworn it was just October a second ago.

Part of this time whoosh is working three jobs that have a weekly rhythm, even more so than my former Monday-Friday workweek. The magazine I write for is weekly, so certain things happen every week like clockwork: Monday I write captions for one of our Party Crasher (photographer shows up at fun public event and takes pictures of hot girls and hipsters, basically) features and I proof pages for my stories and others for this week’s mag as I’m working toward my Wednesday copy deadline for next week’s issue.

Tuesday is another hardcore writing day and then after I leave the office I go teach my pop music class for a few hours, then stumble home and bang my head against the wall until I fall asleep.

Wednesday is the day everything for next week needs to be in, so sometimes I’m writing up a bar review from the night before, when I sandwich a bar stop between class and head-bashing. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. Imagine the bars you like to visit. Now imagine not going there but somewhere else in the name of the people need to know. It beats digging ditches by a yard, please know I am not complaining. But I don’t fool myself — it’s still work.

Thursdays are sometimes opening nights at the theatre, so I go in the evening and write up a review on Friday morning, early so it can be posted online by noonish and squeak into the Saturday edition of the daily paper (which I also write for — the job is kind of a hybrid) through some magic I am not privy to and that is OK. All the while on Thursday and Friday I’m doing interviews and researching for the next few issues’ worth of stories.

At the same time, in the evenings I’m teaching an online MFA-level poetry workshop, which is structured in a compressed 8-week semester. So every week is a new unit of focus with fresh assignments, and I have a very strict regimen of poetry reading, grading and critiquing down from Wednesday-Sunday so I don’t fall behind. Theoretically I have Monday and Tuesday somewhat off from this gig, but prep work and class time for my Tuesday class takes over. I’m having a great time teaching, but again, I don’t fool myself. It’s work, and I am responsible to my students.

Drew is in Costa Rica with his dad, playing peek-a-boo with howler monkeys and becoming besties with a three-toed sloth. I’ve kept myself busy so I don’t get too lonesome, but it’s so quiet around here. Well, if you don’t count the downstairs neighbor’s club music and the actual nightclub across the street. I’ve taken the crazy quiet time at home to work on a chapbook manuscript that I didn’t even realize I had. I had a major breakthrough on it last night after I came home from a play, and I am looking forward to sending it around. Wish me luck?

In other news, it is fucking hard to find Thanksgiving decorations a couple of weeks before the big tofurkey day. When Drew comes home, I thought it would be fun if in the Spot of Seasonal Decor (right inside our downstairs door) he was greeted with, say, a cardstock cut-out of a grinning turkey wearing a pilgrim hat or similar. It would be festive and whimsical (if slightly manic) and underscore the irony of the celebration of gluttony/salvation by depicting a heritage bird excited about his own slaughter while wearing traditional religious fundamentalist garb. Well, best laid plans, etc. Walgreens, that bastion of seasonal crap, came up empty. They’re all Christmas from Halloween until New Year’s. The best I could do at Target was a garland of metallic autumn leaves, way too tasteful if you ask me, to drape over our mantle. You don’t even want to know about the imported pine cone turkey monstrosities at World Market, but just imagine what child laborers in Indonesia imagine a festive Thanksgiving tsotschke to resemble. Too freaky even for me is the answer.

On a more serious note, my friend Jason is in the hospital with severe complications from surgery, and the situation is extremely touch-and-go. He’s very far away from me, and I feel the usual impotence at not being able to do much besides offer my meager but heartfelt warm and hopeful thoughts. So if you have a spare second, send a warm and hopeful thought toward Texas. He’s a hell of a guy, one of the best around. He is facing multiple surgeries and I don’t have anything pithy to say about that, nothing at all. Just cross your fingers for him, and if you pray, that might not hurt, either.

So neglected! The truth about my poor blog neglect (last post three months ago, ouch!) is that I was in serious job evaluation/negotiation/interview mode for most of the late summer, and though it occupied a big chunk of my brain I couldn’t very well blog about any of it. So here I am at the end of October, and lots has happened, big and small. I will try to do a quick round-up for anyone still reading, and I am going to try at least weekly posting about the daily goings-on with my posse on Broadway. Harold, Drew and I are doing well and enjoying ourselves, especially now that I have stepped off the academic job market rollercoaster for the time being. So!

Working girl
As some of you know, I jumped into the search for full-time teaching work right around the time that everything went pear-shaped and searches were canceled right and left. I have had some luck — a final stage interview a scant few months after I started looking, a phone interview here, another in-person there, some requests for full materials — but the job search was, quite frankly, making me insane. Here’s how it works: you have to fully imagine yourself in a particular school, teaching specific classes to a specific student body, working with real colleagues, after you have (happily!) relocated somewhere that may not be your fourth or even fifth living choice, in order to be convincing about these things in your application letter, to convince a committee that this very school is exactly where you want to be and nowhere else. Now repeat that process for at least 30 schools. Now detach yourself from the process so completely you don’t fall to pieces every time a search moves on without you or you get just far along enough to be really invested before you’re rejected. Repeat for years, while working full-time, writing, teaching part-time, and living your full and fun life. Holy shit. I cannot emphasize enough how much this entire process sucked for me. The invest-detach-invest-detach-devastate! process was really tough. I never knew if I would come home to a rejection letter or a canceled search, or if an email meant good news or bad news. I cried often and loudly. It was, to say the least, quite embarrassing.

What I did instead
I accepted an offer to come write full-time for Velocity and The Courier-Journal, covering theater, books, pop culture, the dining and drinking scene, and other fun topics. I’ve been blogging for Velocity for a couple of years now, I’ve done the odd freelance piece here and there and I recently started writing a regular print column, but I hadn’t really considered what it would be like to write full-time for a living. Teaching writing, sure, in which publication was part of my job demands, yes. But this has turned out to be a great decision for me. I’m covering Louisville’s theater scene, interviewing authors (my Chuck Klosterman interview was a pretty good time), covering ideas like “why do goths wear a lot of pink these days?” and “why are educated Gen X adults reading books written for teenagers?” I’m working with smart and talented people and having too much fun. It beats the hell out of crying over the mail.

What else I’m doing
InKY is still going strong, we hosted a standing room only show in October and I’m looking forward to moving into a less-prominent producing/hosting role by sharing some of those duties with my fellow InKY-teers. Our little series feels all grown up now, with a budget, grants, an annual fundraiser and a vending partner. I’m grateful to still be on the editorial boards of The Heartland Review and New Southerner (check out their new website!), helping these journals thrive any way I can.

Still teaching?
Yes! I’m teaching Pop Music in American Lit this fall at Bellarmine, and I started teaching in the online MFA program for National University. It’s wonderful to have a graduate poetry seminar all to myself, and teaching solely online is both a challenge and a convenience. If I had a lick of sense I wouldn’t have started a new job right around the time I started teaching in person and a new graduate class, but I signed on for the classes ages ago, so here I am. I plan on taking a break from Bellarmine in the spring, chiefly because my spring season at the paper will be very busy, but I will throw my hat in for Fall 2010 and see how it goes. I hope I’ll continue with the online classes, as distance MFA work is keeping me much more in touch with poetry than my undergrad class can. I’m also teaching one workshop for the KY Governor’s School for the Arts this fall, rather than try to teach as many as possible, as I have in the past. I’m tired, y’all. On the weekends, I need my rest.

Life in Louisville
Drew and I are holding off on adopting a dog for now, though we definitely want one. Our schedules are still too busy and our building doesn’t have any green space, though we’re a couple of blocks from a small dog park. I just can’t see it working, not just yet, though like dog-crazy creeps we detoured through the Doggie Halloween Block Party yesterday just to gawk at maltipoos wearing Batman capes. We’re still in our light-filled apartment on Broadway, planning on having a few folks over for homemade cupcakes on my birthday. Harold the Cat is curled up next to me as I write this, snoring lightly. We’re watching Glee, The Vampire Diaries, Bored to Death and The Big Bang Theory, which is a lot of shows for me, but we’ll go a couple of weeks and then gorge on the back-log all at once.

Life on the road
I love my new job, but gone are the days of a month’s vacation, so we had to re-evaluate our plans to go to Paris for Christmas. We did spend Labor Day weekend in Pittsburgh, which is a totally cool town and you should all totally go if you can. And last weekend, we ran away into the country to see the leaves changing and hike up to the natural bridge. We rode a chair lift through the skyway and had some great wine from Jean Farris. And while we were tucked in our cozy cabin for the evening, Drew surprised me with a proposal and a ring. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I said yes. We don’t have any immediate plans for a wedding, we’re going to take our sweet time. But we are happy to make our implicit promises to each other explicit, and now public. Paris will come in time, maybe next spring or summer, with many trips to follow. For now, we’re happy at home, especially on Sundays where nothing is planned besides a vigorous straightening of the bookshelves and the search for a great cupcake recipe is on.

Harold (the Cat) Bloom has had enough of Nosferatu’s cheek. His wrath is fierce, his vengeance swift.

The delightful hand-crocheted Nosferatu doll sourced from our buddy Brittanie Cannon’s Etsy Shop, Britt’s Friendly Monsters. Harold (the Cat) Bloom sourced from the Humane Society.

Gwenda did it, so I did, too. Here’s the word cloud (via Wordle) of my next book:

Man, this book sure does focus on the body and all its parts.

Oh, memes. What would the internet be without you? When I write …

I always:

• listen to music. Sometimes I need background noise, but mostly I need atmosphere. Different characters and moods call for different music.
• have Harold the Cat sitting close. He’s like a furry, squeaky satellite.
• draft on my laptop. I’m too slow when I try to write longhand, and it kills my momentum.
• sit on a couch or upholstered chair, legs crossed under me. Desks are for piling stuff upon.
• edit as I go. I don’t believe in the virgin first draft.

I sometimes:

• write poems based on things I read on Facebook.
• write the end of a review first.
• burn this particular kind of incense, which reminds me, I need to order some.
• blog in my head but not on the screen.
• write scenes before I sleep that I hope see the light of day.

I never:

• get up at 5 a.m. to write. That’s fine for farmers and William Stafford, but that’s just asking for a couch nap when I’m involved.
• show anyone my very first draft of anything. I can barely stand to read it myself.
• manage to write every single day. Even during the daily writing challenges, I end up having to double down sometimes to make up for the previous unwritten day.
• know how I want a poem to end when I start it. I think that’s a recipe for disaster anyway. If I know how I want it to end when I begin, I end up circumventing a crucial part of the creative process. Give me discovery or give me a blank page.

Ever wondered what publishers and editors say when they read your work, especially when they reject it? What happens when a manuscript rejection is sent with the reader’s comments accidentally attached? If you are Susan Messer, you turn it into a performance. Here’s her “Rejection Rhumba,” which includes delightful insights to one publisher’s discernment process, like “politically correct, sentimental, predictable, like a made-for-tv movie,” but “if the arts council likes it, maybe we should publish it and try to make a little money off of it!”

The weird little Xtra Normal people and their robot voices freak me out a little, but this video made me laugh. I especially love the ending. J.K. Rowling had 700 rejections, you know!

There will be a memorial service for James Baker Hall on July 11 from 4-5 p.m. in Lexington’s Gratz Park. (In case of inclement weather, the event will move inside to the Jesse Stuart room of the Carnegie Center.) Afterwards, there will be a reception in the Carnegie Center, with food and drink and poetry. Folks are invited to bring along a poem to read.

James Baker Hall, former Kentucky poet laureate, writer, teacher, photographer (1935-2009)

This poem takes my breath away:

That First Kite

That first kite was made of newspaper and strung
with fish line. I was lying next to it, alone. Sunlight
in the bright shape of a window, X-ed once
with the shadow of the sash, moved

slowly across the floor toward
me. A way had to be found

to make it work. We were trying. All this
took place in the attic where the cat brought
the birds.
My mother was downstairs
or out back in the cornfield
with a gun.
I didn’t move. Who knew
where my father was.
Nothing ever worked.
I kept my eyes closed

whenever I thought
I was asleep
or flying. I awoke

when I felt the light touch
my feet, perfect, still

I didn’t move. When it touched
my eyes I opened. The crosshairs
were on my chest, breathing. I saw
my heart. A cold wind rattled
the kite.

An exhibit of his photography at 21C Museum.

Normandi Ellis invites memories of Hall.