happy b'day to me

it's my birthday today. i officially cross today what i have (for reasons i do not quite understand) always considered the threshold of actual adulthood. i'm 25. and i thought i'd take this opportunity to update you, my loyal few readers, on my life as it is shaping out as i cross into adulthood.

i'm still waiting tables for a living, but only for one more week. i got a new job as a customer service representative for Verizon Wireless, and after training i'll be working only about 2 blocks from home, which i am excited about. I was hoping to begin at Marquette this fall, but i didn't feel good enough about my application as is, and i've put it off for now.

i haven't been posting here much because i have sort of shifted my thinking from verse to prose. this is possibly an even bigger shift than it sounds. i started out with very little idea about how to write prose, and i'm trying every day to figure it out. i've begun working on some various short stories and two or three novels all in the hope that i will break through somewhere and be able to write to the finish. as i discovered before, the secret to writing, as the secret to reading very long books or gobs and gobs of research, is simply not to stop. but sometimes i have to, and sometimes i have simply no idea how to go on, and even more often i hate the rough draft so much that i begin trying to redraft it before it's ready and the process comes up short. but as i promised before, i'm working very hard to finish and put something up here as soon as possible.

something i badly needed after living for 2 years in the perpetual summer of Abilene, Texas, was a long, cold, and very snowy winter. and i've gotten it. i love it. i feel at home in the cold. it makes me want to chop wood, build a fire, and write a winter idyll. somehow the winter seems to write itself as a story or a poem (a very concise poem, without superfluity), the feel of which is gently but clearly perceptible. and it is somehow summarized a little at a time in hot chocolate, mittens, scarves, and the feel of stiffening lungs as sub-zero air fills and contracts them. it really is a wonderful thing.

somethings very random, indeed

believe it or not, i try to post on this blog far more often than i actually get it done. for one reason or another, or any combination of reasons, it seems i rarely actually have anything worth reading to put here. but there are a few things i want to say now, and finally i find them worth at least saying, if for no other reason than that i feel i ought to say something on my blog between such long absences.

first, the best television show in the history of mankind is Arrested Development. it is so far beyond any of the competition that to make a comparison is laughably foolish. the more i watch it the more i am confirmed in my initial belief in its startling perfection. one of the first things i would do if i ever became a famous critic would be to vehemently assert this fact, and then condemn everything else as unwatchable drivel.

second, there is a certain writer whose blog i have been reading with a considerable bit of enjoyment lately. it's true that he's my brother, but he's writing something that belies a good measure of potential, and i think everyone should read and comment on it. i'm not saying it's perfect, but that i like something about it, and i think it's worth reading, even if it results in negative comments: try finding something close to it that it isn't painfully obvious the writer had no idea of natural expression going into it in the first place.

third, everything i write and post here is continually undergoing transformation, perhaps even more than i should like. some of the stuff is now unrecognizable from the form that it originally found on this blog. i just thought that you should all know that.

fourth, i have been working very hard to try to finish some things to put up here, and i should have them ready soon. i just wanted to let everyone know that, and to say it out loud so that i'll have to finish them soon.

christmas break = reading time!

Christmas time is my traditional happy reading time. not that everything i read over christmas is necessarily happy, but i'm usually extremely happy doing it. so it was pretty depressing this christmas when i didn't actually get any good reading done. i usually shoot for at least one good thousand page novel, or a few shorter ones, new or old, and head (usually, but not this year) back to school, my entire life rocked by a new or revitalized relationship with a great book or two.

but it was a combination of things that kept me from getting that done this year--christmas parties, new years parties, lots a lots of work, a broken down car, and sheer indecision of what to read (something i am almost always plaugued by when i don't have a syllabus telling me exactly what to read, and a condition i have been hoping will be cured by being temporarily out of school).

so anyway, i haven't gotten anything good done yet this christmas, which is a real shame considering the quality of the works i've been trying to decide between (though in my defense i did start A Christmas Carol and a couple hundred pages of Bleak House (nothing says blustery cold winter like Dickens)). but all of this is to say that in the past couple days i finally started something i feel good about. you see, i got extremely sick new years day, apparently poisened by something i ate. and since i had off work, and couldn't go out, i reached for the first thousand page book within reach, and began Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. it was a necessary step, because without my christmas reading i was really beginning to feal like my life was in disarray.

it's cold outside

i'm on my porch, wearing layers, smoking an absolutely wonderful cigar, and i can see my breath. those of you who know me at all know how special that is to me. it makes me want to write.

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can you believe i spend my time thinking about this stuff? i think i am finally and irrevocably an academic. i actually think to myself, ooh, that'd make a great paper topic.

up to date

welp, i was checking my counter the other day and noticed that some of you still check on this blog. it's rather embarrassing, then, that i haven't had the decency to update it in such a long time. so i thought i would let everyone in on what i'm up to, and what's consuming so much of my time.

1. first and foremost, i'm married, and looking for another job. i currently wait tables at the olive garden, and i'm hating every minute of it. i thus spend a lot of time missing my wife while i'm at work, and my friends who don't live nearby--which is all of them.

2. i was supposed to have an adjunct teaching position this fall, but it fell through when an emeritus professor stepped in and asked to teach. so i'm currently academically and professionally bored.

3. i'm working on a novel. i'm not sure how long it'll take since it's something i've never attempted before, but it's engaging, and i like thinking about it, at least.

4. i'm also toying with some pretty ambitious (if i do say so myself) ideas for an online poetry project that there's a good chance no one will ever see, but this project, along with some other writing projects, is primarily what has kept me from this blog. for those of you interested, and i assume that means the one or two people who still check up on this blog, if anything ever happens with it, i'll let you know immediately.

odd???

i sometimes find the sensations i experience somewhat oddly composed. for example: i am soon to be married. i find in this thought a variety of feelings: relief; a romantic easiness; sexual arousal; irresistible smileyness; and, perhaps, etc. of particular interest to me, though, is the nature of the relief (just stop your mind right there: i'm not going there. well, not really). relief that wedding planning is over, that non-stop work is coming to a break, and that i will perhaps have more luxury time on my hands, etc. now, here is where i find my feelings oddly composed. Holly and i have a rather extensive collection of books that i have hardly been able to spend any time with this summer. usually my summers are centered on reading, and this summer i've largely missed it. so along with the relief of marriage is the excitement of having more time to read. but, i suppose because that excitement falls into thinking of marriage, when i find myself thinking of reading (just reading) after the wedding, i also experience feelings of a romantic easiness; irresistible smileyness; and, perhaps, etc. . . . . . . .
is that odd????

wedding coming!

in just a little over two weeks i'll be having sex in the smoky mountains. obviously i'm pretty excited. excited enough to bring it up without any real point of having said it. i just wanted to boast.

i'll be glad, though, when all this wedding stuff is over. now, my life hasn't been as hectic as is often portrayed in movies like Father of the Bride and such, but there has been little time for pleasures like reading, and certainly almost no time for that incredibly time consuming (yet intensely pleasurable) task of writing. i haven't been so much running around trying to finalize wedding things, myself, though, as i have been trying to make up for about 2 1/2 months of not working this summer because i had a crumbled bit of wood-work for an arm.

an interesting phenomenon of having a wedding coming up is the number of puns that pop into your head, and into the heads of everyone around you. i'm sure that most of you have experienced this already, and that i don't need to go into details, but suffice it to say, my title is an example. for that very reason i left off adding "quick!"