09.05.08
Posted in writing
at 10:54 am
Considering how little time I had to send out submissions between teaching, writing and wedding planning this last year, 2008 has been good for my writing career. And by that I mean I’m finally heading towards having some semblance of a writing career. The fall issue of Bellevue Literary Review is coming out in a matter of weeks and, as I mentioned a few months ago, one of my poems will be in it. I also managed to be a finalist in two of the contests I applied to this year: the aforementioned Cultural Center of Cape Cod National Poetry Contest and the pretigiuous Iowa Review Award in Poetry. I didn’t win either, but I was happy just to make it past the first round.
At this point I’m working on actually getting this book finished so that I can start sending the manuscript out. I have enough pages, but I don’t have enough that are up to my standards. I want this monster to be as good as possible before I start, you know, actually showing it to people.
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05.17.08
Posted in writing
at 12:20 pm
My poems have appeared in a lot of small journals in the past few years, which is something I’m happy about, but also something I’ve wanted to balance out with some bigger publications. And, finally, it’s happening: one of my pieces has been picked up by Bellevue Literary Review, a magazine put out by the Department of Medecine at New York University. They publish:
works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that touch upon relationships to the human body, illness, health and healing.
They’re a really great magazine, and it feels good to know that my poem will appear there in the Fall. It feels like a step in the right direction. And it’s definitely motivation to keep sending out submissions.
And hey, did I mention I’m getting married in two weeks? Because I am. And that’s pretty nice, too.
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04.20.08
Posted in Spring
at 9:17 am
Did you know? A carpenter bee keeps trying to get in through my window. I started a new blog called Geek Girl Friday where I post ridiculous things I find on the internet. I update that a lot more than this. It’s Spring and once again starlings have made a nest in the vent above our bathroom. They’re loud and our cats keep trying to figure out how to kill the birds in our ceiling. There are pink blooms on the trees in Ithaca and big stripy fish spawning in the creeks. Yesterday justin and I hiked the North Rim Trail at Taughannock and found that there are lots of stairs. I am afraid of heights. I think we need a new air conditioner. Bees come out in the Spring. I’ve never been stung by a bee, but I think it would hurt. Carpenter bees don’t have stingers, but they can bite. I haven’t been bitten by a bee, either, though.
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04.08.08
Posted in Cornell, writing
at 3:33 pm
So I was a finalist in the Cultural Center of Cape Cod National Poetry Contest this year, which was exciting, even though I didn’t win. The most exciting award news lately, though, isn’t mine - it’s Junot Diaz’s Pullitzer Prize for The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao!
Junot’s an amazing author and a Cornell MFA graduate who I had the pleasure of meeting last year. I’m sad Denis Johnson (who was also nominated) didn’t win for Tree of Smoke, but I’m happy for Junot.
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03.28.08
Posted in bizarre
at 3:59 pm
It sounds like a West Side Story parody: groups of rockabillies and punks hunting down and beating up emo kids. Groups of emos mobilizing and taking to the streets to defend their right to wear tight jeans and eyeliner. It sounds ridiculous and comical, but it’s disturbingly real: anti-emo violence has really and truly exploded across Mexico. Wired has a good article on the situation, but the best source of news, at the moment, is Daniel Hernandez’s blog Intersections, which keeps linking articles and YouTube videos on the topic.
It really is incredible how angry people can get about the way a person dresses. Hate is a strange phenomenon. How did we move from LOLcats to this?
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02.28.08
Posted in bizarre, nudity
at 7:07 pm
So maybe I’m not clear on locker room etiquette, but I was under the impression that there are times to be naked and there are times to be clothed. When you are changing, either rapidly (you know the move - strip off sweaty shirt while showing as little skin as possible, replace with clean shirt) or languidly (remove clothes, walk to scale, weigh naked self, replace clothes), it is acceptable to be naked. When you are hanging out in the sauna, it’s probably a good idea to wear a towel but no one’s going to get too upset if you opt out. These are acceptable naked times.
What are unacceptable naked times, you ask? Well, I may be wrong here but I’m going to go with pretty much any other time you’re naked in the gym.
I walked into the locker room at Island Fitness yesterday and was met by the usual sights: elderly, obese women peeling wet bathing suits from their breasts, nude twenty-somethings digging through lockers for that misplaced bra. I’m polite. I avert my eyes and keep walking. But I was stunned into silence by the woman who positioned herself directly in front of the entrance to the locker room so that she could dry her hair in the nude.
I mean, that’s not even languid changing. At that point you’ve skipped the part of the day where you put clothes on and moved right into hair and makeup.
The worst part was that she wasn’t on a bench or in an aisle - she was out in the open, half-blocking the hallway that leads to the showers. I literally had to squeeze past her to get to the scale. Not only was she more naked than she had a right to be, she was naked in a place where innocent bystanders had to touch her.
Here’s to you, Openly Naked Woman At The Gym: your comfort with your own body is making other people uncomfortable. Nice work.
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