Hello again

I’m just recovering from a very busy month and half at work – it’s application season at our fellowship and given the state of journalism and the economy, applications came pouring in, mercilessly. I think the worst of the workload is behind me.

There isn’t too much that’s new and exciting to tell you about. Winter in California goes splendidly along – rain is fine, rain is great. I’ll take it over ice and snow any day. I was biking around campus a week or so ago, enjoying the electric green color that’s sprung up everywhere; February here means that everything flowers and blooms, thanks to the rain. Stanford these days reminds me of Washington, DC in the early springtime when the leaves and cherry blossoms burst onto the scene. It’s something everyone should experience at some point.












Sean and I did our taxes of the weekend and realized that (a.) we’re poor and (b.) given the amount of taxes we owe, the government and California do not think we’re poor. But I’m just complaining because I can (and will). Truthfully I look forward to paying taxes; while parting with money is always painful, I am all for Socialism. People who complain that government “steals” their money irk me. What? You expect your roads and old people to take care of themselves?

Please.

Speaking of poverty, I’ve been writing a great deal of poetry lately. I was walking my dog and realized that an old boyfriend of mine just turned 40 and thus came the idea for a poem. It’s going well. I haven’t written much since I left Alaska. Part of this is due to time and emotional issues: I’m only now, two and half years into my latest stint of employment, dealing well with the fact that 9 hours of my day simply must be eaten by my job. After the empty schedule graduate school afforded me, the plunge back into grown-up-ness was not pleasant. You’d be amazed at what one can accomplish in a day when there is nowhere to go. After a lot of anger and disappointment, I think I’m over it. (It also helps that I reduced my round-trip commute from 2 hours to 40 minutes.) So, I’ve been filling my evenings by writing and washing dishes (energy permitting). I hold no illusions that things will “work out” with my poetry. I don’t expect to ever get published, necessarily, much less paid or recognized and this can be discouraging. But, I can’t really not do it, either.

I’ve been reading a great deal of Rilke, lately, specifically his Letters to a Young Poet. Rilke was my kind of guy. For one thing, he takes his correspondences seriously. He wrote a letter to Kappus (the young poet) about how he would writer a better letter later and went on to explain why he could not at that time write a proper letter. And this helped me understand that Rilke’s modus operandi is to do something right or not at all. By “right,” Rilke means, I think, for the right reasons. Don’t just scribble a letter off to your friend, sit down and write it with good intentions.

He also applies this to sex.

Rilke counsels Kappus to not let dogma and social morays affect his sexuality, but instead to use sex for the (again) right reasons – as a fundamental human experience to enrich one’s life and bond us with the larger cycles of life. How could one err in teaching this kind of lesson to a kid? I would have gained greatly from such a letter in my formative years.

And now, I could use a Rilke simply because no one writes letters anymore. Most people can’t even be bothered to write a full sentence in an email, if they bother to email at all. I still write letters, mostly to old men I know, and when they die I imagine so will the practice for me. I’m not bemoaning technology and advancement, I’m all for a paperless world, but in moving forward we do lose some truly wonderful things. And I’m not just talking about pen pals. I read in the NYTimes recently that Kim’s Video, an NYC fixture, closed. Kim’s was a legendary video store in the Village where you could browse for movies by director and they carried EVERYTHING. It makes sense that their services are no longer necessary with the advent of things like Netflix and digital movie files, but it’s also sad to see them go – they just understood Rilke’s idea of doing things right.

Winter wasteland: a summation

I’ve been back at work for one week and am already feeling burnt out. Just pathetic. (Don’t worry, I won’t let this diatribe last too long.) There’s no one to blame but myself – I threw myself back into things a little too hard and overdid it in a feeble attempt to clobber the enormous mound of work I’ll be facing until March. And, predictably, I was only to maintain my energy for about three days before utterly crumbling.

*Sigh*

Backtracking a bit, our extended winter vacation was good, though it hardly went as planned. We were halfway to Palm Springs when Honky, our car, overheated and appeared to be leaking antifreeze. The nearest town was Coalinga; its most distinctive feature was a huge K Mart (city of pride, my ass). The local garage (run by drunken in-breds) was unable to identify the problem, but refilled our radiator and gave us instructions should the car overheat again. Rather than risk it, we turned around and headed home, our getaway plans thus thwarted. When our trusty, non-inbred mechanic heard about the trouble he was pleasantly taken aback, seeing as our car had just been in for a tune-up. We arrived home without incident and took the car in early the next morning. They were unable to find anything wrong with it – apparently the car had decided that Palm Springs was a bad idea. So, Sean and I stayed home and my poor in-laws were stuck eating an entire turkey by themselves – it’s amazing they didn’t overdose on tryptophan.

For Xmas we went to Sean’s sister’s house for turkey, copious inebriates and family-bonding time with the Wii – a good time was had by all (except maybe by my in-laws who fielded several drunken phone calls from our party). The only other highlight to our time off (unless you call sleeping in, watching movies and eating our weight in rich foods exciting) was a quick visit from my college-era buddy Steph. Frieda and I took her to Half Moon Bay to take in the coastal scenery and see the wintery beach – fun times. For New Year's Eve I left Sean at home and attended a raucous wig-and-moustache-themed party in San Francisco, which was great until people started vomiting everywhere. Nonetheless, there was a sweaty throng of dancing going on when we exited – very impressive, in my book.

And… here I am, in 2009. Work is busy, as I mentioned, but all else is great. I booked a trip to NYC in late May to romp with my beloved Carse and other denizens of my hometown; and Sean and I will go stare into the abyss that is the Grand Canyon in early June.

I was deeply disappointed to learn that the Ranier Maria Rilke class I was registered to take here at Stanford was canceled due to lack of interest. Ditto for the Orson Welles class Sean had planned to take, so instead we’re going to take beginning Italian together, which will be super-fun, but still doesn’t fill the Rilke-sized hole in my soul, I’m sad to say. (More on him in a later post, I’m sure.)

Now that you’re thoroughly bored with my admittedly drab little life, I’ll leave you with the link to a movie I am very excited to see: Milk. Generally I find bio-pics to be ambitious, worthy attempts with terrible results (Ray, Walk the Line [insert your own retching noise here],... Knocked Up), but the pairing up Sean Penn under Gus Van Sant’s direction, to tell the inspiring story of San Francisco’s own Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist and CA's first openly gay politician (in short, a hero), is irresistible.

Here’s to you, Harvey.