north

Don't forget! how you love the north and its brutal beauty. How its beauty is sharpened by its brutality. Don't forget the dipper tilted on its side, tacked to the sky by the lodestar. Don't forget the world swathed in snow. Don't forget how the frigid weather compels an interior life. Don't forget the poetry this entails. Don't forget the extended meaning of the interaction forced across the snowscape. Don't forget the harsh glittering world, don't forget the glittering world.

phone interviews

I just finished my TFA phone interview, and it put me in mind of my first attempt at presenting myself as a candidate for a job from a distance... Last year, when I was in Italy, I had to interview over the phone for an internship at MASS MoCA. The day of the interview, I went up to Fiesole with my mother, a really fun trip that I will probably write about later, maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I got back to my apartment in Florence less than 20 minutes before I was expecting a phone call, and ran around the building until I found a courtyard where my Italian phone seemed able to keep a few bars. I waited, sitting on the curb, hugging my knees, staring at the blank grey face of my cellphone, waiting for it to light up.

The call came in, and I fumbled with the buttons, tried to answer as professionally as possible. I managed a 'Hello?' and the voice on the other end, a girl's voice responded, 'Hello?' She sounded as far away as I felt, muffled and inquiring. We both started talking.
'Is this...'
'Hi, this is...'
'My name is...'
'oh, hi!'
'I'm calling from...'
'whoops'
'can you hear me?'
and then, of course, the phone went dead. I panicked, horrified at the still, dark face of my ridiculously chunky cell phone, the ineptitude of the arcane black characters that populated the useless screen. Another call came in, MASS MoCA trying again. I appreciated the persistance. Again, we could hardly strike a rhythm for the conversation. Our voices, both feminine, both young, seemed mirrors of each other, turning in the same direction, futilely colliding whenever we tried to come too close.

Finally we kind of got it, though the whole conversation was punctuated by 'I'm so sorry, could you repeat the question?' and 'what was that?' at the end of the call, she asked me, ' so how long is your brother visiting?' I was so confused. I don't have a brother. He certainly wasn't visiting me. After a pause, I asked, '... my brother?'
'yeah, your brother. Didn't you guys just get back from Fiesole?'
'Oh! no, that was my mother. my mom. my mom's visiting. I only have two sisters.'
'ooohhhh, I'm so sorry, I must have misheard...'
'no, I'm sorry, I...'
'this phone, it's just...'
'can barely hear...'
'...international calls, you know.'
we laughed, commiserating, and said goodbye. For a while afterwards, I sat in the courtyard, one arm around my tucked-up shins, tapping my chin with the cell phone. I realized: I had absolutely no idea how that interview went.

Don't forget: international calls are hard to make and phone interviews are awkward.
Also don't forget: smile while you're talking and hope for the best.

at Lake of the Clouds

We were talking about alarm clocks and what to do when someone forgets to deactivate their alarm. We discussed methods for coping when you are not ready to get out of bed. I decided to share my noise-blocking technique.

My family and I were hiking in the White Mountains, along the Appalachian Trail, and we stayed overnight at the AMC hut at Lake of the Clouds. These huts are great. They give you a bunk and a blanket for sleeping, they feed you dinner and breakfast. This one is just below the Washington summit, and has a beautiful view. We ate barley stew and settled in to sleep in a room with fifteen other people. Then this guy started to snore.

It wasn't normal snoring, either. It was loud. It was also irregular. My uncle was in the bunk below me, and I heard him grumbling. Eventually, I saw him stick his hiking stick out and poke the guy in the foot. Tentatively at first, but the guy's reaction was to give a rumbling, deafening snort, so my uncle jabbed him harder. To no avail. After a lot of twisting and turning, I figured out that if I jam my head into the pillow and the heel of my hand into my open ear, I could block most of the noise, so I fell asleep in this position.

The next morning, I woke up, looked around, saw the grey flannel lump of the guy still snoring. Then I saw the empty bunks where my family should have been. They were seriously nowhere. They had left me on top of a mountain. It took me a good five minutes to collect myself, to stop panicking. When I walked out into the dining room, there they were: asleep on the floor and the dining room tables.

Don't forget: if some guy in your hut is snoring, jam one side of your head into your pillow, and jam the heel of your hand into your open ear. This way, you can sleep in your cozy bunk, instead of on the dirty floor of a mountain hut. I think this will also work for situations in which someone's alarm clock is going off.

milk teeth

I had almost forgotten this story. I think it's one of the only distinct and narrative memories I am still carrying from fifteen years of playing sports. So, freshman year, we were getting ready for the spring break tournament in California, and we went to an indoor softball field to get some practice on dirt, instead of the field house flooring, instead of the ice outside.

It was dark and early morning, and we were working on base running. I was standing in foul territory off third base, arms crossed, zoning out in my batting helmet, waiting for my turn to be picked off by our catcher. The runner on base took her lead and immediately dove back to the bag as the catcher stood up to throw. The ball glanced off the runner's helmet, uncaught by the third baseman, and rolled away. Everyone jogged over to the runner, still lying on her stomach in the base path, a little dazed. It was a second before I noticed the third baseman, kneeling off to the side, staring at her hands cupped in front of her. I walked over and crouched down beside her. I noticed the blood spatters in her palms and in the dirt. I didn't know what to do, so I told her to spit, vaguely thinking it wasn't nice to swallow blood. She spit, more blood came out, and then her teeth.

The ball had ricocheted off the runner's helmet and hit her in the mouth. Her two front teeth had been knocked clear out. They lay together on the dirt, curved into each other like lovers or twin moons. They were longer than you'd imagine. Maybe two inches? and not bloody. a pair of white slivers, two pearl spears.

I was horrified, and I told her to spit again. I remember touching her hair and trying to signal the trainer to come over. She hadn't seen her teeth yet, she hadn't realized what had happened. When she did notice, she started wailing and cursing. Everyone came running, and everyone recoiled at the glistening bone quotation marks punctuating the brown infield. Someone shouted for water and someone shouted for milk. The owner of the place came out with a cup of milk, and delicately scooped her teeth inside. The trainer called the ambulance, and she went to the hospital. They managed to reinsert the teeth, though her mouth was swollen for a long time, and she didn't play that season.

don't forget: store lost teeth in milk, not water. The calcium protects the enamel from deteriorating. I'm not 100% sure, but I think it'll work for most bones.

writing exercise

Melville has the best chapter titles. I picked up Omoo last week, this beautiful edition from the 60's I found in my library. The dark blue cover is illustrated with a tropical island at night, the
light blue image continuing across the spine onto the back. The illustration is in the style of the woodcuts inside; a series of dark, striated pictures, ominous and whimsical by turns. Just flipping through, I see bonfires in jungles and a seed sprouting in its walnut shell. I also found this pamphlet tucked under the front cover. It's a short expository essay with a lot of parenthetical asides that read like inside jokes. I bet it was for a fancy1967 book club.

I picked one of the chapter titles to use as a title for a new poem. I know this is an old idea, but I think Melville's language is particularly suited for the assignment: completely literal with respect to the contents of the book, utterly cryptic when taken out of context.

here are some of my favorites:
My Reception Abroad
Death and Burial of Two of the Crew
Our Destination Changed
Rope Yarn
Tahiti
They Take Us Ashore -- What Happened There
We Take Unto Ourselves Friends
Cathedral of Papoar -- The Church of the Cocoanuts
Something About the Kannakippers
How They Dress in Tahiti
Same Subject Continued
Something Happens to Long Ghost
Farming in Polynesia
What They Thought of Us in Martair
How We Were to Get to Taloo
Life at Loohooloo
Retiring for the Night -- The Doctor Grows Devout
Which Ends the Book

I think it'll work for short fiction too.

statement of purpose

pinning the memories down to the board
before they're gone for good.