On the Up and Up (with fingers crossed)

Despite being scheduled 2nd shift during a packet week, I successfully completed and sent my 33 page first draft of the ECE last Friday. And while the pressure's not completely off, I feel markedly relieved to be at least done with the drafting stage. For me, drafting is the pits. In a way, critical papers are kind of easier than creative pieces because you have to structure them very thoroughly, and such structuring leads pretty much in one direction: supporting your thesis and proving it. The lack of the creative spark in such composition, makes critical sentence slugging kind of boring after a few pages. While thinking up the things to say, and researching is very exciting, laying it all down is pretty boring.

But at least until I hear back from Louise, I'm taking a break on the ECE and working on some new creative material and getting back to reading non-research books. I'm currently about halfway through Barthelme's Forty Stories, some of which I really like, and other bits that are just a bit too quirky to really capture me. I'm also reading Rachel Harper's book out loud 1 chapter per day to Sue. It's a great book, and I'm really glad that it was picked for this fall's book in common for fiction. Our nightly poem is coming from the Poetry section of McSweeney's Quarterly vol 23--they do this big poetry chain thing where 10 poets pick 10 poems. Since I haven't read much poetry, I'm hoping all the exposure will turn me on to some more people. So far, it's been kind of lukewarm; Dave's book was much better in every way. I'm also looking forward to reading Lincoln's Melancholy, the new issue of Fence, Opium4, Democracy (Joan Didion), and Demonology (Rick Moody). If I get through that, I'll be about half way through the list of books that I considered for this semester.

Change sucks until it happens, then everything's cool till it's about to happen again

For me, the writing area is a sacred place. There's a certain sense of comfort mixed with intention loaded into such a place. I guess there's probably a fair amount of psychobabble I could dig up to further establish this point, but I'll just point out that most sleep deprivation studies say that the leading cause for insomnia is because the bed is being used for things other than sleep and sex. Isolate your area, and it becomes damn near magical.

Anyway, in addition to being very attached to my area, I'm also very attached to not changing things. Today we changed things. With the baby on the way, we moved the futon couch upstairs into my room, and in order to get it to fit we had to do a lot of shuffling. One of my book cases moved around the corner into the other attic room, Sue's drawing table shifted 90 degrees to the right, a lot of her fabric found a new home, our D&D bookshelf galavanted across the threshold, and most terrifyingly (for me at least [until now]), my desk had to move. Granted, it was just a straight slide from one side of the room to the other, but god you'd think I was taking an icepick in the forehead for it....I whined a lot. And Sue persisted. In the end, she was right to make me move (she always is), but what a shift.

I have an "L" shaped desk and a slanty roofed attic. Originally, the slanty wall was to my left (and covered in index cards, papers, and other random stuff). The short arm of the desk faced doorward, and the long arm was to my right (so basically I had to walk the long way around my desk to sit down. Cramped and narrow, it became very cave-ish up in the attic. Now the long arm is against the wall where the other bookshelf used to be. It's pretty swank-ish (now that I'm getting used to it). Here are a coupla pics. For a long time, I've been thinking about getting a picture of my writing area up, but apathy always took center stage. Does anyone else share a sense of insanity with their writing areas? What kind of crap do the rest of you put around your writing nooks?

Metaphysical Angst and other BS

I live in a brick rowhouse in lovely downtown Lawrence Park, a suburb subsidized entirely by GE (well at least it was back in the day). All the rowhouses are pretty much the same looking, with the only major difference being open porch vs. closed porch, duplex vs. quad. I have an open porch quad (middle) layout (in case you were wondering). These houses are damn nigh centenarians, and despite creaky floors, small kitchens, and "old man showers" in the basement, they're generally quite wonderful, especially in heat dissipation. Well, that is until the daily high temp breaks 90. And that's exactly what's happened the last few days. It's 22:00ish now and 86 outside and 85 inside, 80% humidity on both sides. In short, summer in Erie sucks. I'd much rather be shivering in my attic office than sweating on my porch hoping that 1. my laptop doesn't overheat 2. I don't get eaten alive by bugs and 3. that sometime before I go to sleep it'll cool down a little bit somewhere.

Of course, all of this heat comes at a pretty rotten time. I'm two arms deep in ECE, and it's starting to stink. By stink, I mean rot. By rot I mean that I'm currently writing the third draft of my first draft. WHAT?! Yes, that's right. It all came about because I have this wonderful talent, see. I can read a book with intent to write on it, then I can read supporting books, one after another, for weeks. This ability allows me to think of all kinds of wonderful connections, explanations, and beautifully tight critical prose. BUT. This ability manifests in logorrhea. Basically, it's a left handed skill that allows me to talk about things in a manner that is logical to me...not anyone else. Also this process tends to lend itself to considerable over-writing. Packet 1's response told me that 1. I have 4 ECE topics worth of ambition started, and 2. None of what I'm writing would make any sense to the average reader of an ECE.

So draft 1, revision 2 began, and fortunately died at only 4 pages (Draft 1 v1, was fifteen before it got shot down). Rev 2 died thanks to a lot of good conversation with Sue. She made me consider the "Why" of everything in a much more logical manner than I was able to conceptualize under my own left-handedness.

In short, instead of writing about how Postmodern literary theory operates to create a layered ontology within Ben Marcus' Age of Wire and String, I'm writing Why Marcus needed to make an ontology, and how it relates to the reader in a meaningful way--it's really almost the same thing, but not at all...

I do miss writing fiction.

Angst. Angst.

P.S. We went to my mom's today to escape into some AC, and got to see the original "Sweet Dreams" music video along with other 80s music videos on the magical Cable TV box. Someday, maybe I too can join the modern world and have cable channels other than Discovery. Maybe even a tv with a remote... Nah. Bitching about such lack is much more fun.

I gotta baby on the way

In case you haven't noticed from before, my wife and I are expecting to have a meeting with the ol' stork here in September. And though the drudgery of my gloamish job along with the stress of throwing together a 25-40 page masterpiece of critical writing have really been sapping my excitement for this upcoming event, I'm still really excited for the whole shebang to get on with the shebanging.

The due date is still pretty firmly the end of September, but Sue's fairly confident that the Ides of the moth sounds much better and I have to agree. Sooner than later, as long as sooner is a safe time for sooner to happen so that she won't have to hop onto a respirator or spend any unnecessary time in the hospital (Molly: when you decide to emerge, do so in a healthy state of mind. K. thx. bye.). In any event, that means Molly will be either a Virgo or a Libra. Sue's a Libra, and well that works good with me...but two balancers in the house may lead towards some headbutting (good thing I have that archery thing going on with the saggitarius bit...so I can snipe from a distance).

In all truth, I really don't know much of anything about astrology, so I'm really babbling, babbling more as a foregrounding to the lovely background images of the baby's room that we've taken pictures of. It's truly a wonderful mural, painted of course by Sue. So take a look.

In other news, as I've mentioned, I've been crunching away on the ole ECE, and after reading seven books of research and rereading The Age of Wire and String, I'm thoroughly ready to move on to something else. It's definitely one of those "I've conceptualized the paper, but I don't really want to write it" moments. I'm sure you all know what I mean.

Musically, I recently picked up Jill Tracy, Emilie Autumn, Buck Tick, and Tre Lux. Jill, Emilie and Tre Lux are all goth-vein stuff of varying levels of angst. Buck Tick was actually for Sue, and it's a Malise Mizer kinda sounding gothy J-rock band. It's pretty good, but that album lacks in consistency--about half of it is harpsichord darkness, and the other half is ska/Dick Dale kinda stuff...really off putting if you ask me. Tre Lux, a solo album from one of the girls of Switchblade Symphony is all cover songs of popular music...Weird in a gothy way. "Yellow," "Blackhole Sun," and "Karma Police" are among my favorite covers on the album. Sue hates Tre Lux. She says the girl's voice sounds like a cat being skinned alive...yet she likes Switchblade Symphony, which sounds about the same....go figure. Jill Tracy is pretty much a spooky piano. It makes me think of the flamenco dancers' music along with a little Addam's family and Elvira all jumbled together. Odd but interesting. Emilie Autumn is a very Dresden Dollsish type with lots of piano/harpsichord and violin work. I particularly love "Gothic Lolita" because it makes me think of the Harajuku goth scene as well as Nabokov's Lolita (which the song is probably based off of). The album is smart, angry, and very dark.