The hard part is, I haven't really proven myself to be worthwhile, at least in that particular sense. You give me the time when you have the time because that is the kind of person you are- kind. And perhaps there is something, after all, that sparks up that is pleasant and unfrightening. It may very well be. Regardless, it has not changed the fact.
I have not really proven myself to be worth the time. That takes work, and I am unfortunately very often averted to working. I do not believe in the outcomes because they are not speedy visuals. They take a lot of time, actually. They are formed one tiny movement and decision at a time.
I have not proven to myself that time is worth taking. I have always been a regrettably speedy artist. I rush through words and materials in order to create something that I can look at within a short time.
I have not proven myself. I do not like to write long stories. I do not write many stories at all, given that it is a large part of what I desire, I think. Desire is veiled. I at once time liked to take photographs. I write poems. They may or may not be good. I don't know.
I also like to make up words such as unfrightening because they are faster than circumnavigating what I mean in more words that are established; because I push through definitions, because I don't have the patience.
I have not proven myself to be worth the time. Either to you or to myself, I have not been proved.
Even this, what I just wrote, This is stupid. But I wrote it and here it is, waiting hoping probably never going to be proved.
11.21.2009
11.20.2009
the insomniac posts
Hello, blog. Amy here. No poetry tonight. I think. I forecasted sleep right about now, and I was wrong about that, so really, anything could happen.
Let's see. Today, I purchased Jay-Z's album "The Blueprint 3." Yes, I did. I am not really qualified to critically evaluate rap albums, but I can say, I have a really soft spot in my heart for Jay-Z. There is a lot of classic, full and bright feeling instrumentation intermixed with awesome hip hop beats, and a few songs that really pointedly hate on the current autotune trend. I dig it. And I know it's ridiculous of me that I do. I'm okay with my ridiculousness.
I finished an essay that I wrestled with more than any essay since my senior year of high school. Henry James' The Turn of the Screw is a really freakin' tangled web of confusing and ambiguous things that you can halfway legitimately talk about if you aren't a legitimate and verifiable scholar in _________.
I had dinner with some old friends from high school that I love and one of our English teachers from high school who is currently getting his doctorate in education from UW. I hope to see more of all of them this year than I have in years previous.
I also tried to start filling out my FAFSA for next year, but had to save it for later because of the frustratingly detailed and minute, random meticulousness of the forms- currently reacting negatively with a very confusing and difficult to track financial year for my family. I'm going to have to call and advisor to figure it out...
The UW announced that they are expecting the lowest state contributions to their funds next year than they have seen in a decade. Tuition is bound to increase more, resources are bound to decrease, and faculty is bound to be less hired. I feel very fortunate to be able to go to school right now, and very helpless to watch it become something less and less financially accessible to average students year by year.
And you know, the broadway grill has the best veggie scramble that I have ever eaten in my entire life.
Let's see. Today, I purchased Jay-Z's album "The Blueprint 3." Yes, I did. I am not really qualified to critically evaluate rap albums, but I can say, I have a really soft spot in my heart for Jay-Z. There is a lot of classic, full and bright feeling instrumentation intermixed with awesome hip hop beats, and a few songs that really pointedly hate on the current autotune trend. I dig it. And I know it's ridiculous of me that I do. I'm okay with my ridiculousness.
I finished an essay that I wrestled with more than any essay since my senior year of high school. Henry James' The Turn of the Screw is a really freakin' tangled web of confusing and ambiguous things that you can halfway legitimately talk about if you aren't a legitimate and verifiable scholar in _________.
I had dinner with some old friends from high school that I love and one of our English teachers from high school who is currently getting his doctorate in education from UW. I hope to see more of all of them this year than I have in years previous.
I also tried to start filling out my FAFSA for next year, but had to save it for later because of the frustratingly detailed and minute, random meticulousness of the forms- currently reacting negatively with a very confusing and difficult to track financial year for my family. I'm going to have to call and advisor to figure it out...
The UW announced that they are expecting the lowest state contributions to their funds next year than they have seen in a decade. Tuition is bound to increase more, resources are bound to decrease, and faculty is bound to be less hired. I feel very fortunate to be able to go to school right now, and very helpless to watch it become something less and less financially accessible to average students year by year.
And you know, the broadway grill has the best veggie scramble that I have ever eaten in my entire life.
11.17.2009
saussure looks on sympathetically
These words dissolve me,
Empty of themselves,
Constricting my thoughts,
Categorizing what is uncategorical
Forgetting the unspoken
But WORDS also do solve me,
In gathering relationally,
Organizing delicate ineffability
Broadening, broadening, and opening
Direction, taken as a token
Of what I have seen and
From the top of the embankment,
Careen across the sandy grass, soft enough
To break your fall but
Fast enough to quicken my blood
These words dissolve me,
What is unsaid is impossibly compelling
What is said is never enough and points to
What is unsaid is importantly indwelling
What is said and how it says the unsaid and the said
And what is said
These words can start to solve me
That is, if they can solve anything
…if they can, they can
if they can, it’s me
and it’s no longer me
it’s the word for me
Empty of themselves,
Constricting my thoughts,
Categorizing what is uncategorical
Forgetting the unspoken
But WORDS also do solve me,
In gathering relationally,
Organizing delicate ineffability
Broadening, broadening, and opening
Direction, taken as a token
Of what I have seen and
From the top of the embankment,
Careen across the sandy grass, soft enough
To break your fall but
Fast enough to quicken my blood
These words dissolve me,
What is unsaid is impossibly compelling
What is said is never enough and points to
What is unsaid is importantly indwelling
What is said and how it says the unsaid and the said
And what is said
These words can start to solve me
That is, if they can solve anything
…if they can, they can
if they can, it’s me
and it’s no longer me
it’s the word for me
11.16.2009
because i promised i would write SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE every day
Comfortable in this familiar shared space though
Foreign and corporate, and it took long to beomce a place
Where I recognize the details, each scratch
And each thumb tack has a subtle grace
That it remains where it was before, a gentle "Hello!"
Whispered from inanimate nothings that really have no trace
Of anything friendly about them: but I recognize them,
I have been here over and over for lunch hours and ten minute breaks,
In this very same room; feeling this very same chill,
And in these very same shoes walking a route well worn- perhaps even paced
Given the endless repetition of things I do over and over and over
With the start of each new shift, the dull tasks that create something delicate, like lace.
Foreign and corporate, and it took long to beomce a place
Where I recognize the details, each scratch
And each thumb tack has a subtle grace
That it remains where it was before, a gentle "Hello!"
Whispered from inanimate nothings that really have no trace
Of anything friendly about them: but I recognize them,
I have been here over and over for lunch hours and ten minute breaks,
In this very same room; feeling this very same chill,
And in these very same shoes walking a route well worn- perhaps even paced
Given the endless repetition of things I do over and over and over
With the start of each new shift, the dull tasks that create something delicate, like lace.
11.12.2009
11.11.2009
shady villanelle
There is someone yelling on my street
And even when I am by the water or sea,
Beside the water feeling, I still am me.
While I remain eluded by sleep,
While I cloud my vision with drugs and tea,
There is someone yelling on my street.
Safety shrinks to the limit of my wall, and we.
When I'm next to you I am no more complete.
Beside the water feeling, I still am me.
Through moments covered by other things,
The sounds I form coaxing life through me to seep,
There is someone yelling on my street.
The sea to me means lost into its sleep
Enormity of meaning in itself to drown in and eat
Beside the water feeling, I still am me.
But for now the filled up sea refuses me;
It will not take me to its stormy calm keeps.
Beside the water feeling, I still am me,
And even so, someone is yelling on my street.
And even when I am by the water or sea,
Beside the water feeling, I still am me.
While I remain eluded by sleep,
While I cloud my vision with drugs and tea,
There is someone yelling on my street.
Safety shrinks to the limit of my wall, and we.
When I'm next to you I am no more complete.
Beside the water feeling, I still am me.
Through moments covered by other things,
The sounds I form coaxing life through me to seep,
There is someone yelling on my street.
The sea to me means lost into its sleep
Enormity of meaning in itself to drown in and eat
Beside the water feeling, I still am me.
But for now the filled up sea refuses me;
It will not take me to its stormy calm keeps.
Beside the water feeling, I still am me,
And even so, someone is yelling on my street.
11.09.2009
11.08.2009
11.06.2009
play by play
Here is what I am doing: writing sestinas, abecedarians, and other poems. Exploring the socio-economic tensions driving the characters within The Turn of the Screw. Trying to understand, (REALLY trying,) post-Saussurean linguistics and the implications it has on literary theory and critical theory. Trying to get my head around deconstructivist and post-structuralist ideas. Trying to read poetry more carefully, so I don't feel like an idiot in class for missing the fact that "jar din" is a pun on SEVERAL levels. Getting rained on. Getting coffee too much. Riding the bus 2+ hours every day. Forgetting my keys. Forgetting my umbrella. Wearing button-up shirts and not-jeans. Wearing rain boots. Sneezing loudly in Suzallo, where it is quiet and the high, gothic arches and stained glass echo the sounds of my sneeze unforgivingly.
Going crazy. Talking about school too much, to people who don't care. Trying to figure out WHY B[C]C did not give me a graduation certificate or make note of the fact that I graduated. Eating hummus, lots of hummus. A whole hummus quartet, the kind you buy for casual get-togethers or potlucks, by myself.
Highlighting sentences, asking questions I'm not sure I fully understand, reviewing other people's work and enjoying it a LOT, having a weird envy of my teachers for how knowledgeable, articulate, and awesome they are, and also for their cool and depressing offices, stuck in the 1970's and in the basement of that one building that makes no sense, and wondering:
Where am I going?
That's what I'm doing.
Going crazy. Talking about school too much, to people who don't care. Trying to figure out WHY B[C]C did not give me a graduation certificate or make note of the fact that I graduated. Eating hummus, lots of hummus. A whole hummus quartet, the kind you buy for casual get-togethers or potlucks, by myself.
Highlighting sentences, asking questions I'm not sure I fully understand, reviewing other people's work and enjoying it a LOT, having a weird envy of my teachers for how knowledgeable, articulate, and awesome they are, and also for their cool and depressing offices, stuck in the 1970's and in the basement of that one building that makes no sense, and wondering:
Where am I going?
That's what I'm doing.
11.04.2009
Today's observation
At the end of the nightly news broadcast, Brian Williams signed off with, "As always, I am Brian Williams."
I was both amused and oddly comforted.
I was both amused and oddly comforted.
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