Category Archives: a propos of nothing

a propos of nothing, F&F, self-blogerential

her long story

When Emilia came to the end of her long story – which in spite of its length displeased no one; on the contrary, they considered it to be briefly told with respect to the quantity and variety of events that were recounted in it – the Queen, expressing her wishes with a single nod to Loretta, gave her leave to begin, and she did so as follows:

Dear friends and readers, or enemies and followers, today is my twenty-seventh birthday, and although my life at this time feels like the longest story I have ever known, I hope that you, like the Decameronists, will find it and this blog equally briefly told with respect to the quantity and variety of events recounted in it.

This is the first birthday in years that I have not spent in previews. I am spending it, instead, job-interviewing, housecleaning, filing, and preparing for another meeting of the Jacques Lacan book club this evening. Tomorrow, some friends are coming over for dinner. Last night, I celebrated the April Seconding with a single cupcake, muttering “Happy birthday, cupcake” to myself in quiet agony. But today, I’m going to clean the bathtub.

The most important present I have given myself is the making of a decision which has been suspending me in neutral for months. In its wake, I barely know what to do with myself, but at least it has been made.

Although, unlike Lauretta, I do not know what story I am going to tell you yet, I am comforted and continued by the knowledge that I will keep telling you something. Thank you for being and for reading.

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a propos of nothing, chicago, writing

Conversation with the CATHEDRAL

[You know, I tried to read CONVERSATION IN THE CATHEDRAL a couple weeks ago and couldn’t. And yet I wrote a post which was derivative of his work. I’m not Llosa, but here’s what’s left, after I took his style out of my writing:]

Chicago. Spring forward, sunny day, a conveyor sidewalk of cafes ending at a black metal bench at the northwest corner of Division and Damen. A bench without a bus stop.

Heading north, a woman in semi-transparent brown leggings with no pants and no skirt pushing herself, her husband, and her bushels of baby strollers up Damen. This is the second instance of Wicker Park-area exposure I’ve seen in a few weeks – the last one was a woman on the 70 bus with plumber’s cleavage.

Back to the present, a man on an electric bicycle is circling the block, proudly displaying his gut in his red jersey, not moving his calves one bit to move his body.

We sit, we eat, we observe other people’s bodies in motion around us, and we spend the day waiting for a bus that doesn’t come. Instead, the night does.

I say, elated, that I’m going to write a poem about the woman with no pants. I don’t. I write this instead.

[As I write this, gazing more and more inward, a little red-headed bird made out of burnt umber lands on the porch outside my window and squawks at me, as if to say “Get over yourself.” ]

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a propos of nothing, chicago

saint patrick’s saturday

Today we are going to watch the river being dyed green from E’s friend’s lake-looking apartment, and then later on I’m going to hear a bunch of “acid jazz,” “prog-rock,” and “wandering electric piano” at Reggie’s. The slight but consistent improvement in the weather has made everyone much more social, and we are all back in the business of overcompensating for the snow.

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a propos of nothing, theater

most foul and unnatural

To my extreme annoyance, in the Chicago leg of my tour of Bodily Afflictions of the Kindergarten Period, I’ve somehow managed to develop an ear infection, which prevented me from taking my long-planned trip to Indianapolis for the culminating performance of the second year of the Indy Convergence tomorrow.

The Convergence is a theater conference which I co-founded last year, with friends I met assisting at OSF, and I was going to attend the performance both to congratulate my friends and to pass the baton to their new director of development. Instead, I’m here in Chi-town, oddly sick, and with something that I’ve never heard of anyone over the age of eight contracting. Using the droppers makes me feel like the Ghost in Hamlet. Lying in bed, reeking of acetic acid and liquid steroids (my ears could be baseball players) I keep hearing “The king rises!”

At any rate, if you’re in Indianapolis, please check out their work tomorrow. Feb 28th, 7 pm, Wheeler Arts Community, 1035 Sanders St., downtown Indy. Free and open to the public.

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a propos of nothing, poetry, theater

she came in through the bathroom window

If I keep moving into other fields, I’m going to have to stop calling theater “the field.” I just got off the phone with another poet who entered poetry through the back door (side door, garden hedge, etc). In her case, she came from the world of music. We talked about the fear of leaving behind what you’ve worked so hard on. Unspoken between us, but louder than anything we spoke, was the truth that performance fields are so much more difficult to live in, and that the choice to move towards poetry was, in some part, a choice to move towards sanity.

I met someone at a party two nights ago who said “Wow. Poetry. That’s a hard life.” We’ll see if he’s right.

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