i’ve been blogging in one form or another since 1999. my motivations for doing it have changed over those 10 years, from catharsis to ego-tripping to therapy to writing exercise. i realized recently that all the writing i’ve done here, so much of it terrible and chronicling terrible things, is the best gift i have ever given myself. it has helped me remember very specific things about where i was, what i was feeling, who i was and how i’ve changed from that person that started this thing in August 1999. so it vexes me when i don’t write here, because there are going to be holes, a great expanse of nothingness and it will leave me wondering what the hell i was doing then. like checking in with past versions of myself. so: more writing here. i hope.

today is my last first day of school as a student, EVER. i am of course kind of sad (a surprising emotion given how full of turmoil the first two years here were) but also excited. i distinctly remember the sweet, sweet relief i felt after i finished my BFA. i graduated in December, and that relief and happiness and sense of accomplishment lasted for a good six months. i realized today that i going to get that sense of relief and happiness and accomplishment all over again, perhaps even more magnified, once i graduate in May. when i started school in August 2007, i had in mind a number of things that i wanted to do, that i needed to do, to let my pysche chew through a number of roadblocks that i knew were preventing me from being the artist i wanted to be. without exception, i have accomplished everything i set out to do, and so much more.

i spent the better part of this month writing and compiling teaching job applications. i started on January 5th, when i got back from Lebanon, and i finished on the 15th. nearly every day in between was 10-12 hours of me typing, printing, folding, taping, procrastinating on Facebook, walking to the post office, and gradually wearing a dent into the sofa in my studio. during the entire process, i hated myself, my life and everything and everyone around me. it was possibly the worst adminstrative nightmare i’ve ever experienced, so many pieces of paper to keep track of, so many places to mail them to, not to mention half of the applications had standardized online applications in addition to things that had to be snail mailed. it sapped my will to live.

but it is over, for the most part (still a few left to do). i nearly died, but i cleared this hurdle. depending on fate, luck and fortune, i could end up in one of these following places come this August:

Bozeman, MT
Fort Wayne, IN
Chicago, IL
Towson, MD
New Haven, CT
Rochester, NY
Purchase, NY
Oswego, NY
Buffalo, NY
Clemson, SC
Sarasota, FL
Columbia, MO
New Wilmington, PA
St. Joseph, MO
Richmond, VA

and a few others i have forgotten. it is mind-boggling how open the possibilities are. i have my top choices, of course. i would love to be in Purchase, which is 30 miles north of NYC. i’ve always loved the Hudson River valley and would love to live near there. Towson would be great as well, i could live in Baltimore and be only a stone’s throw from Philadelphia and my parents. of course, going to a place like Montana or Missouri would be a great adventure as well. however, i am terrified of getting stuck in another small town for the next 4 or 5 years of my life; living in New Bedford has taught just how essential being close to a large city (and its cultural activities) is for me.

at this point, this is all pure speculation. getting a tenure-track teaching job is still a needle in a haystack for someone right out of grad school, so my Plan B is moving back to Philly, adopting a greyhound, getting an apartment and studio, scrounge together some adjunct teaching jobs and just relaxing and trying to remember who the hell i was before all of this happened.

what is said in this talk is so dense and amazing that i haven’t fully processed it yet….but i will soon. what do you think of it?

and now it’s Christmas eve, and here i am, trying to come down from the semester. the last two or three weeks have been particularly hard on me physically, and as it usually is with me, the mental fallout is a little time delayed. so it’s happening now. the anxiety has been leaking out of me all day. i think i am the first day of what i predict will be one of those three or four day long low frequency migraines, with enough pain to make my life annoying but not enough for it to be incapacitating.

my review was last thursday. the week leading up to it was strangely pleasant. i switched around my schedule completely - classes were essentially done, so i allowed myself to work through the night and sleep during the day. it’s a habit i started when i was an undergrad; and the fact remains that no matter how much i attempt to train myself to get up early in the morning, my most productive hours as an artist have been (and i suspect always will be) from about 8 pm to 4 am. i attribute this partly to the fact that no one is around, and therefore no one bothers me, but i suspect it also something to do with my body’s circadian rhythm. during that time, i have the run of the entire department, i turn up my music or podcasts to obnoxious levels, and i usually take off my bra (cause no one should be wearing a bra at 3 in the morning). i watched more than one sunrise (my windows face east), including one from the roof of the building (spectacular).

after the sunrise, i stumble out of the elevator at 7 or 8 or 9 in the morning, just as everyone is coming in. i tend to lose track of what day it is when i do this - if you don’t go to sleep, it’s hard to conceptualize that is in fact Tuesday and not still Monday. and i collapse in my bed, the morning sun glowing warmly from my window, and i fall into a most delicious exhausted dreamless sleep. i love sleeping during the day far more than at night, and i suspect that, if given a choice, i would make these my hours permanently.

i passed my review. i have been admitted to the big MFA show in the spring, and now all that is left to do is make the work, polish the thesis, and of course, apply for jobs and residencies and hope and pray that there is an end in sight to my poverty. there is only one semester left, which is exciting and scary and sad all at the same time. in last few weeks, for the first time, i’ve felt an inkling of the loss that i will experiencing in May. this small part of my life is slowly closing up and coming to end. it’s so strange that i won’t be around these people and this place for much longer, and what’s worse, i’m afraid i will be so busy that i won’t have time to stop and really enjoy all of it.

and then, i get to move on and be the grown-up, the teacher, to be the start of something somewhere else, to be the person that everyone looks to for the answers. that notion is frightening and humbling, but i’m ready for it.

well. this was an impressive game, right down to the finish (which, in the last 30 seconds, included a personal foul for unnecessary roughness, a fumble by the Giants which was then recovered by the Eagles, and a fight that broke out as the clock wound down). DeSean Jackson in particular just kicked ass.

it’s clear that Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick get along well (and for this we thank god, after having lived through T.O. a few years ago). just based on the relatively small sampling of photos of today’s game culled from The Daily News, it’s pretty much a lovefest out on the field.

Some stories you carry around in your heart. Others live in the throat, in the skull, in the fangs — all worthy places, too. (Natalia Antonova)

a few days ago, i had to opportunity to finally do some bronze casting. one of my colleagues is teaching a beginning sculpture class, and let me in on the class bronze pour. so on Monday, after spending most of the day wrangling with some nearly impossible brown wax, i took my small sculpture over to main campus. i had not cast anything in metal since i was an undergrad, and not like this (i had done all centrifugal casting, which sounds exactly like what it is: pour molten metal into a crucible and let a thingie swing around your mold until it’s cast). so i had a bit of a learning curve when it came to prepping my piece. sprewing was different, air vents had to be added.

Michael showed me how to do it, in his usual kinetically impatient way. as he was explaining, i noticed his left had was wrapped in a tangle of gauze.

“oh, no. what did you do to yourself now? you’re always damaging yourself.” i said. he had a tendency to be accident prone.

“oh, i was demoing a kitchen this weekend, and i bent my thumb all the way back when i was trying to rip up a floor.” as he was telling me this he was unwrapping the gauze so he could more easily manipulate the hot knife to melt the wax.

“maybe you shouldn’t do that…”

“it’s okay, as long as i don’t bend it back, i’m fine.” as he told me this, he mimed doing exactly that, and i cringed in empathy, unconsciously gripping my own thumb.

he paused for moment as he worked. “it’ll heal. i just…i can’t not be able to do things. i fall into a depression, kind of. i have to take care of myself…physically. or it’ll be bad.”

i nodded, slowly understanding. “you take pride in your physical abilites. making things, being able to do things.”

“yeah.”

“i get it.”

a few days before Thanksgiving, i went to New York to stay with my sister. i arrived on Tuesday evening, and despite my best intentions to get out into the city and go to Chelsea and the Whitney, i stayed firmly planted on her couch, absently watching TV, futzing around on my laptop and occasionally playing with her dog. eventually i got hungry and, mindful that i did not have a key, decided to snag something to eat in her cupboards. as i searched the kitchen, i uncovered a loaf of freezer-burned bread, a bevy of condiments and espresso pods for the red chrome Illy machine on the counter. i availed myself of this immediately, and made the bread passable with a toaster and jam. i poked around her apartment some more, realizing that this was probably the longest amount of time i had everspent in her apartment in the almost four years she and her husband had lived there. i read the spines of books, observed the bits of ephemera pinned to a bulletin in their office, admired the shoes in her almightly closet. as i made this inspection, i couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with what i was seeing. something…missing. it took me a while to place it. as my eyes fell on a needle and spool of thread perched on a shelf, it finally dawned on me: there was nothing in her apartment to make things. no drawing pencils. no sewing machine. no wood, no drill, no velcro, no pins, no tape, no exacto knives, no screwdriver, no countersink bits. it was so completely….strange.

of course, my sister generally doesn’t make things. this isn’t a criticism, it’s just a statement of fact. well, she makes things, i suppose, when she’s at the office at Loreal, emailing and telephoning and going to meetings. but nothing tangible. so of course it makes sense that she does not have these things, she doesn’t need them, and her apartment is small. but their absence was notable for the fact that i was so unused to it. put it simply, her not having these things made me realize that i have always had these things. things to make. they have always been with me, and they always will.

on being an artist, a few times i’ve said to my students that if they could envision a happy life as anything other than being an artist, that’s what they should do instead. it would be far less difficult and heartbreaking and far more financially and emotionally stable. and whenever i said this out loud, i always felt like a bit of a hypocrite, because deep down inside, i was wondering if i even believed that for myself. i had often thought about just stopping making, giving up forever (or at least a very long time), and trying the nine to five, office existence that seems to satisfy most people. i had wavered on this decision for a long, long time. until now.

standing in my sister’s apartment, i realized for the first time that i am in this for life. there is no way out. i coudn’t stop or back out now if i tried. i am a maker. i always have been, it just took a while (almost exactly 29 years) for my heart to get there. like the most natural thing in the world, like my autonomic nervous system, my heart that keeps beating and my lungs that keep filling with air whether or not i am consciously aware of it. it is a condition that is always present. it is the best and only way i know how to make sense of this insane, weird existence of mine. like Michael, i have to keep my hands in things, always physically working, beating back the demons, making things beautiful in the only way i know how.

i am amazed at the memory that flows through my arms, hands and fingers, indeed, my entire body. the muscle memory that allows me to remember just exactly how to finish a rim on a cup or remember how to twist my back just so when i lower a shelf into a kiln. i can’t believe that all that knowledge resides solely in my brain. it lives anywhere and everywhere, telling its stories through movement, lift, hold and touch.

so now for something a bit lighter. i made some LOL Eagles. i realize that that, demographically, the audience for this is vanishingly small (somehow, i don’t think many Eagles fans know what LOLcats are, but perhaps i’m underestimating). there are some inside jokes that you may not get if you’re not a fan. enjoy!

i am jealous.

okay, this sounds like the oldest tale in the book of sibling relationships. i am jealous of her. it’s stupid that it took me nearly 29 years on the planet to not only figure this out that this is probably most of the root of the problems in our relationship.

what prompted this? she got married about a month ago. no, i’m not actually jealous of that. i suspect i will always remain ambivalent about the idea of marriage for myself, along with its various expectations. i’m not particularly jealous of her life, because while it’s fine for her, working 60 hours a week at a desk job in a large corporation would never make me happy. no, i am jealous of her because yesterday she sent me an email with the first few of her wedding photos. in them, she looks absolutely drop dead stunningly beautiful. oh sure, everyone looks great on their wedding day, you say. no, she transcended even that. and i looked at those pictures and instead of feeling happy, all i could think was, “i will never, ever be that beautiful.” not on my wedding day, if there is one. not ever.

see, i told you this was ugly. this is the shit that people think about but never say out loud, maybe not even to their therapists or their best friends, and certainly not to the world wide interwebs. this shit, the way i feel about her, is just fucking ugly. i hate it. i hate that i can’t seem to forge a relationship with my only sister because i’m pissed that i’m not as pretty as she is.

and who knows when it started? i have no idea, but i can’t remember a time in my life where she was not firmly fixed in my head as The Pretty One and i was The Fat One. i stubbornly locked us into those roles decades ago and they haven’t budged since. in the meantime, they did all sorts of damage to me and to our relationship. and the the end result is this: i am almost thirty years old and i have an unbelievably fucked up relationship with my own body as well as a nearly non-existent relationship with my sister. well, i guess that worked out pretty damn well.

i wish i knew why it was so important that i feel beautiful, and even more importantly, why i have chronically come up short in my own mind. why can’t my feelings of self-worth rest on something a little less passing and ephemeral, like say my intellect, my skills as an artist, my gifts for words, my compassion for people, my determination, my take-no-bullshit attitude? apparently i take bullshit from no one but myself, because good lord, this is a load of bullshit. never once have i believed anyone that has called me pretty or attractive. mostly all that’s echoing in my head is, “you should see my sister.”

even now, i dread having to measure up to her. when i drive down to New York next week to pick her up for Thanksgiving, i’ll be wearing my most favorite and interesting clothes, and i will be feeling great, until i see her, and then i will know that i’ve lost. i’ve felt it happen again and again whenever i am around her, because i know no matter what i wear and how confident i feel, i’ve lost that battle as soon as she walks in the door. she wins. she always has. and in that moment, all my various accomplishments fall away, and i just feel ugly, strange and unpolished standing next to her.

i don’t even know how to fix this. i don’t even know what NEEDS fixing. it is her? is it me? is it both of us? how do i begin when i don’t even have a road map? i’ve thought about sitting down and writing this entry for a few weeks now, and i was originally going to strike a more optimistic tone, about how i wanted to repair our relationship, but now i can’t even say for sure if i’m even capable of doing that.

maybe it’s enough that i know now, that i’ve dragged it out into the open, and maybe i can at least poke at it and work through it. throughout several difficult situations in the last year, people have told me at various times that i’m compassionate, kind and tolerant. all i can do is look at them incredulously. then again, they don’t know the shit like this that brews in my head.

she had me at “pop music will never be low brow”.

i’m trying to figure out how she flew under my radar for so damn long. i tend to be late to the party for most pop culture trends, so it shouldn’t be much of a surprise. for a long time i just thought she was another boring pop princess, writhing on something or someone to same old edits and the same old beats. well, perhaps the beats are not what brings us here - her music is catchy and mildly interesting but not relevatory or new in any way, no - Lady Gaga is clearly a woman meant to seen and not heard.

i spent an embarassingly large chunk of time watching her music videos today. all of them, several times over. and i’ve come to a number of surprising conclusions, the first of which is: pop music desperately needs Lady Gaga, because i’m not sure there’s really anyone else like her. of course, she’s not saying anything new at all, but like Madonna, that’s not her point - she’s post post post Modernist, and she’s making music videos about other people’s music videos. i picked up a million different allusions to lesser pop stars, from Christina to Britney to Lindsay Lohan to god knows who else.

the thrilling thing about watching her in these videos is her complete mastery and control of everything around her. she’s not singing and performing for some vague male presence. i get the sense that this performance is entirely for her, a power trip of the biggest kind. even when she’s dancing in a crowd of men, writhing all over them, you don’t get the sense that she actually wants to fuck them. if you don’t get what i mean, watch one of her videos and then watch one of Britney Spears’ videos. the difference to me seems pretty clear.

the other amazing thing is you know she gets it. she knows exactly what she’s doing, who and what she’s parodying. i haven’t seen this sort of self-awareness in a pop star since Madonna. of course, Madonna was self-aware about very different things, but she came of age as an artist in a vastly different time. the problem i have with most pop music and music videos is that everyone is just so damn earnest and wants to be taken so seriously. they are making ART about their FEELINGS. pop music isn’t about seriousness, for godssakes. and Lady Gaga is willing and able to explode that seriousness because she understands that what she does in front of that camera is not about her, the person. it’s about her persona, trying on costumes, playacting, fucking with politics, power, gender and identity. i freaking love it.

and of course, there’s something about the gaze here. i kept noticing that she is constantly covering her eyes, with either a mask, make-up or her own hands. i have to believe this isn’t by accident. it’s all so tongue-in-cheek for her, she’s playacting passiveness and powerlessness while at the same time remaining in control. i read once that in a dominant/submissive relationship, it’s really the submissive party that has all the power. i think Lady Gaga gets that.

and this is why if i were going to be pop star, i would be Lady Gaga. because she also gets that, while she can have fun and games and insanity and power and control, she also understands that what goes on in pop music is not to be taken lightly or dismissed. good pop music, really good pop music, says more about the culture we live and what we think is important than a million doctoral disserations, a million sociological studies and a million New York Times op ed columns.

on Friday night, i finished reading Empire Falls by Richard Russo. it was quite a delicious novel, and i am looking forward to watching the miniseries soon (which has a fabulous cast, by the way - Ed Harris, Paul Fucking Newman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joanne Woodward, and Helen Hunt). but on some level it made me long for John Irving. it might have been the dark family secrets in a quiet New England town thing. a quick inventory of my bookshelves revealed a disturbing lack of said author - it turns out i own only The Cider House Rules. how could this be possible?

so on Wednesday i ordered a pile of John Irving from the coffers of the Amazon used books thingie. part of the AP English course at my high school was reading A Prayer for Owen Meany, which is a book never failed to deeply effect the seniors who were reading it. my sister read it in class three years after i did, and we’ve had many conversations about it. Mrs. Brown, our teacher, seemed to have an uncanny knack for picking out literature that stuck particularly well to 17 year old brains. and for that i am grateful, and looking forward to a reread as soon as it arrives in the mail.

now for another literary transgression: a few weeks ago, i swallowed the entire Twilight saga whole. for this i have no excuses. i usually have an extremely low tolerance for bad writing, and these are a prime example of bad writing, or, at very best, mediocre writing. i can’t quite figure out what happened to me - someone lent me the first book, i read it in an evening, and then found myself on Amazon, in a fugue state, ordering the entire series. when it arrived i made one of my colleagues lock the box in her cabinet in order for me to finish my work for midterm. Otherwise i’m fairly sure my review would have been a major shitshow, all thanks to Stephenie Meyer.

i’ve thought a lot about the books, and why they are so popular, and why the fan base is so fervent and so narrow demographically (i.e., nearly all tween or teenaged girls). i parsed it apart in my head from a feminist perspective, as i am wont to do, and the protagonist of the books, Bella, comes up sorely lacking: she’s not exactly proactive and full of agency. she spends a couple thousand pages getting into trouble, mortal and otherwise, and being rescued by the various men in her life, one of which is a vampire who won’t have sex with her.

then there’s the sex thing! Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon. one of primary plot tensions in the book is that Edward will not have sex with Bella because he might kill her in the throes of passion. through some fairly athletic plot twists and turns, she manages it so her main characters forestall sex until after they are married. le sigh. there’s a really huge thread running through the books about the simultaneous danger and attraction of sex and desire, but i have yet to fully process it all.

anyway. i’m going to see the midnight showing of New Moon in a few weeks. please don’t laugh at me.