Random Thoughts...

I'm going to read Denis Johnson's Train Dreams this week because I loved Jesus Son and Shane Jones said something on his facebook about Train Dreams reminding him of reading Jesus Son and I love Shane Jones and Jesus Son, so I'm reading Train Dreams right now.

A Washed Up Battlefield

I'm going to read a Less Than Zero soon. I read this interview of Bret Easton Ellis in The Paris Review and BEE seems like a real asshole and I love assholes and it seems like his books are about assholes and I love books about assholes (see above mention of Jesus Son). I watched The Rules Of Attraction and it reminded me of a strange mix of when I was 18, this past summer, and the summer I went to Europe...

Everytime I see GF, I think, Girl Friend, not Glutton-Free.

I met a politician today. Probably the first time ever. I liked him. He's for lowering college tuition, marriage equality, and marijuana legalization.

I want to get a job as an adventurer's assistant.

Finished my ecopoetics paper proposal. Someone said it was sexy. Someone said it was really good and was surprised that I "start(ed) doing work like this" to which I should have said, damn right mother fucker.

I did an interview with Carrie Murphy and Dan Magers at HTMLGiant. I liked doing it. I'm probably going to do it again. Favorite part:


DM: That’s awesome. My MFA thesis sucked.

Very Ashbery imitation

CM: haha. i mean, no one’s to say my MFA thesis DIDN’T suck..just someone happened to want to publish it!

The Weather Is Cooler, But Not Because Of My Sweater

I'm reading prose in heavy doses and poetry in micro doses. As if a poem is time released. As if a poem has rules outside itself which allow it to transcend time. It's a lie I'm telling myself so I don't feel bad about not reading anything. Do I feel guilty about that?
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Today I found a sweater I thought had been lost. I'm wearing that sweater now. Yesterday, I wore a sweater for the first time in New Mexico since spring. The sweater I'm wearing now is my favorite sweater. It's navy blue (again with the blue) and a crew neck and is 100% cotton and looks like a little like gym wear. 

When I was at NMSU, I would wear this sweater even though it was really warm, too warm for a sweater. In Las Cruces, it was too warm for a sweater most of the time. I forced myself to wear this sweater through the heat, as if I could make it cooler by wearing cool weather clothing.
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I've never forced myself to read. Even in grad school, if the words weren't making my brain vibrate at the same tempo as the book, I would quit reading. I give prose 50-100 pages. I give poetry 5 poems. After that, if the words aren't doing anything for me, I just quit.

I've never forced myself to write either. I don't think I turned in an assignment that I didn't want to do. I don't think I've ever written a poem that I didn't want to write.
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I think I wear this sweater because it is perfect. It fits exactly the way I want sweaters to fit, it's a natural fiber, and it's a color that goes with everything. It was an investment piece for which I didn't have to invest a lot of money. It's a sweater that was originally 125 and I found it on sale before the Washington DC AWP for 45. I wear it and wear it and wear it.
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Writing is a compulsion to me. Making is too. I don't make things or write things for long stretches sometimes. Then I make things for days and nights in a row. Then I'll write till I make no sense. Today I'm writing this. I drew this.

Again With the Blue

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What I need to be writing is a paper proposal for this conference on ecopoetics. I'm reading D&G and Zizek and McSweeney and Göransson and Tim Morton and all my thoughts are all swirling but I don't have the crux, the example, the 'so what' moment. It'll come though. I'm not going to pretend like writing and writing is going to make the idea better, anymore than wearing a sweater is going to make the weather cooler.