Create Your Own Visited States Map
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Winter Coats Are for Winter
I have been visiting my family in Pittsburgh since November 19th. I worked while I was here from ModCloth's Pittsburgh office, which was fun and fortunate because I could spend extra time with my family and friends without losing work days. I fly home to San Francisco tonight and hit the ground running tomorrow with teaching and writing.
During my visit I stayed in my parents house, the house I grew up in. My old bedroom is now the guest room; Sal and I slept there all week until he left on Saturday and since I've slept alone. I forgot how cold my room can get at night, especially without Sal there, who is part furnace. On Sunday night we missed the chance to talk and I dreamt of him. He emailed me saying he fell asleep after work and dreamt of picking me up at the airport and calling me all night.
The typical question that everyone asks you when you get married is, "How's married life?" Which is then quickly followed by, "When are you going to start a family?" Since Sal and I are not married, the question I got asked the most during my visit was, "How do you like California?" I'm not sure why I started answering the question this way but I told people about all the things I didn't like: how I feel neurotic around Californians, I missed autumn, people pee on the street at night, I can't get used to the slow pace or how expensive everything is. This was an honest response. I'd then quickly follow up with how I love my work and learning the city is fun and there is always delicious food and avocados everywhere! But I made it clear that it was and still is a big adjustment for me. Sal expressed concern about my responses and I told him I just wanted to be honest with people and not just say that I love California because you are supposed to love it. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. The jury's still out.
A few people asked me whether California felt like home.
No.
But after I thought it about, Pittsburgh didn't feel like home anymore either, especially after Sal left. It's definitely more "me" here. People here drink beer, put fries on the their salads, don't care whether their food is "grass-fed" and they don't wear winter coats when it's 55 degrees outside because 55 degrees is not cold. But it's not home anymore. It occurred to me that I am, for the first time ever, without a home.
I don't know how I feel about it. Many people experience this feeling much younger, but I called Pittsburgh my home for 30 years and five days and now I live in California. As corny as it sounds, Sal feels like home. Saying goodbye on Saturday was hard because I thought about all the times we said goodbye while we were long-distance. But now I say goodbye to so many people and while those goodbyes are the same kind of difficult, they are still hard. Especially when you come from a tight-knit clan like me.
Maybe people become my home? Maybe I carry it with me? Maybe I have many homes? Or perhaps I decide what home means and I consciously build it in San Francisco? I don't have any answers yet.
During my visit I stayed in my parents house, the house I grew up in. My old bedroom is now the guest room; Sal and I slept there all week until he left on Saturday and since I've slept alone. I forgot how cold my room can get at night, especially without Sal there, who is part furnace. On Sunday night we missed the chance to talk and I dreamt of him. He emailed me saying he fell asleep after work and dreamt of picking me up at the airport and calling me all night.
The typical question that everyone asks you when you get married is, "How's married life?" Which is then quickly followed by, "When are you going to start a family?" Since Sal and I are not married, the question I got asked the most during my visit was, "How do you like California?" I'm not sure why I started answering the question this way but I told people about all the things I didn't like: how I feel neurotic around Californians, I missed autumn, people pee on the street at night, I can't get used to the slow pace or how expensive everything is. This was an honest response. I'd then quickly follow up with how I love my work and learning the city is fun and there is always delicious food and avocados everywhere! But I made it clear that it was and still is a big adjustment for me. Sal expressed concern about my responses and I told him I just wanted to be honest with people and not just say that I love California because you are supposed to love it. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. The jury's still out.
A few people asked me whether California felt like home.
No.
But after I thought it about, Pittsburgh didn't feel like home anymore either, especially after Sal left. It's definitely more "me" here. People here drink beer, put fries on the their salads, don't care whether their food is "grass-fed" and they don't wear winter coats when it's 55 degrees outside because 55 degrees is not cold. But it's not home anymore. It occurred to me that I am, for the first time ever, without a home.
I don't know how I feel about it. Many people experience this feeling much younger, but I called Pittsburgh my home for 30 years and five days and now I live in California. As corny as it sounds, Sal feels like home. Saying goodbye on Saturday was hard because I thought about all the times we said goodbye while we were long-distance. But now I say goodbye to so many people and while those goodbyes are the same kind of difficult, they are still hard. Especially when you come from a tight-knit clan like me.
Maybe people become my home? Maybe I carry it with me? Maybe I have many homes? Or perhaps I decide what home means and I consciously build it in San Francisco? I don't have any answers yet.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Pride
I'm sure you've heard by now that Prop 8, the ballot proposition in California that defined marriage as an institution made only for a man and a woman, has been overturned. Gay couples can now get married, just like straight couples in this state, along with four others, plus our nation's capital. Living in California this summer, just feet away from the Castro, with all its history, and now being present here during the overturning of Prop 8, has given me some hope. Hope that human's can learn from their own history, weigh progress against tradition, factor in the ideas of the old and young, put aside personal beliefs, and just let people be themselves. I don't think I'll be able to process my entire experience in this state until I'm back in my home state. But for now, I'm just proud to be here.
Friday, July 30, 2010
BEATIFIC: Kaleidoscope Reading Series
Last night I attended the Kaleidoscope Reading Series, curated by Michelle Wallace. Of the readings I have attended so far, this one felt the most familiar to me. Perhaps it was the dim, red lighting or the small, cozy living room atmosphere of the Kaleidoscope Free Speech Zone. It could have been youthfulness of the audience and the readers, who are on similar career paths as myself: current MFA students or recent graduates, educators, publishing in familiar journals. It also seemed that everyone there knew one another. I noticed that about all of the readings actually. There is definitely a community here, but it seems that they run in smaller packs, which is similar to Pittsburgh. Lots of readings, but it's too soon to tell how much crossover there is between reading series. There were definitely fewer people at this reading that compared to the RADAR Reading, but also Diane di Prima put a lot of people in the audience, so I can't fault Kaleidoscope.
There was something else that felt more familiar about this reading. I keep sensing it was the intimate space, the cheep beer, the funky young audience. But I suspect it was the writing. It resonated more with me than any other reading I've been to so far. I'll try to be brief with my reviews of specific readers, since there were five in total. Kudos to Michelle (who welcomed me when I awkwardly walked in at the last minute) to planning a short intermission. Too man readings I've attended (in any city) run on too long without a break.
The readers themselves were all young, in their late 20's or 30's and they read a mixture of fiction, poetry and memoir. First up was Michael Zhai who read some nonfiction that were pulled from his experiences going to on a high school field trips to visit a Pilgrim village in his home state of Massachusetts. Zhai's prose was well written enough, but I was more captivated by his poetry. His verse was musical and had more surreal striking imagery, which made up for the fact that he was kind of a low-key reader. Sometimes I wish people would practice reading and be a little more compelling, like they actually like their own work.
Next up was Elissa Perry, who read an excerpt from her novel. I find it difficult to be dropped into the middle of a larger plot line, but Perry pulled it off with her understated confidence and warm cadence in her voice. Her writing detailed a gathering of young lesbians and included a rather sensual scene that managed to be sexy, but not pornographic. I think she was probably the best in terms of reading ability and presence. I was also left wanting to read more of her novel, which is probably what she's going for.
The next reader was Richard D'Elia, a quieter man who's poetry had no titles. He was all business when he read, very efficient, pausing long enough between pieces to make up for the fact that his pieces were untitled. While some of his work was compelling, I felt like I needed to have more time with it. I always feel this way, especially about lyrical poetry. If it doesn't have a narrative or a long extended metaphor, it's difficult to really get a poem the first time you hear it. His work incorporated a lot of earthy imagery, one in particular was about the body and merging with the natural environment, something I rarely hear coming from a man's work. But perhaps I'm stereotyping.
After a short intermission, Scott Duncan entertained us with some nonfiction that he claims to not have written himself. He is apparently working on a re-imagining of Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona. Instead of reading an excerpt, he chose instead to read synopses the various remakes of the story in film, documentary and even pornography. In short, it was very funny. I'm probably not the best person to comment on it simply because I had never heard of Jackson's classic novel until Duncan read this piece. It is clearly a part of the culture in California though, and part of the Mexican culture specifically in Southern California. Good reader, relaxed, entertaining. It's rare to have sustained humor at a reading and I appreciated it.
The final reader was Maiana Minahal who read both poetry and a selection from her new memoir. I did find the subject matter of the memoir compelling, mostly because it details the events leading up to the sudden death of Minahal's father six years ago. As the story progressed, it seemed to point toward her father drowning while the two were swimming in the ocean together in Hawaii. However, she stopped short of the actual death, so we're left wanting more. A good tactic on her part. Minahal admitted to never writing nonfiction before and that this was a work in progress. I felt the excerpt lacked the emotional tension that I longed for earlier in the section. She spent a lot of time setting the scene and describing minuscule events and it wasn't until the end that we got to feel what she was feeling. I wanted more of that earlier in the piece. I think her nonfiction could benefit from her poetic sensibilities, which are clearly her strong suit. Her poetry was my favorite poetry of the evening in both the ambition of the text and the reader's particular voice. Minahal read from her book Legend Sondayo, which is primarily a retelling of a Filipino folktale. She stated during the reading that she both modernize and made the stories queer to reflect her specific voice and the story's impact on her as a young person. Minahal's strong reading voice was as it's most deliberate when reading from this collection. I never wanted her to stop. I also bought a copy of her book. You can too.
I tried to find links to blogs or websites for all of these writers, but when doing Google searches, all of their names, save for Minahal's, came up with random links to strange websites. I'm surprised by this fact. In Pittsburgh, almost everyone I know has a blog or a website or a project with their name attached to it. Your name is your product as a writer, IMO, and you need to have a web presence. Perhaps I just run with that crowd though. It seems all of these writers are doing well for themselves despite their lack of web presence. If I was going to be in San Francisco for another month, I would definitely go out to this reading again. Nice job, Kaleidoscope.
Note: I did find Elissa Perry on Twitter. Yeah, I'm following her now. Cuz I'm a big writer-geek fan-girl.
There was something else that felt more familiar about this reading. I keep sensing it was the intimate space, the cheep beer, the funky young audience. But I suspect it was the writing. It resonated more with me than any other reading I've been to so far. I'll try to be brief with my reviews of specific readers, since there were five in total. Kudos to Michelle (who welcomed me when I awkwardly walked in at the last minute) to planning a short intermission. Too man readings I've attended (in any city) run on too long without a break.
The readers themselves were all young, in their late 20's or 30's and they read a mixture of fiction, poetry and memoir. First up was Michael Zhai who read some nonfiction that were pulled from his experiences going to on a high school field trips to visit a Pilgrim village in his home state of Massachusetts. Zhai's prose was well written enough, but I was more captivated by his poetry. His verse was musical and had more surreal striking imagery, which made up for the fact that he was kind of a low-key reader. Sometimes I wish people would practice reading and be a little more compelling, like they actually like their own work.
Next up was Elissa Perry, who read an excerpt from her novel. I find it difficult to be dropped into the middle of a larger plot line, but Perry pulled it off with her understated confidence and warm cadence in her voice. Her writing detailed a gathering of young lesbians and included a rather sensual scene that managed to be sexy, but not pornographic. I think she was probably the best in terms of reading ability and presence. I was also left wanting to read more of her novel, which is probably what she's going for.
The next reader was Richard D'Elia, a quieter man who's poetry had no titles. He was all business when he read, very efficient, pausing long enough between pieces to make up for the fact that his pieces were untitled. While some of his work was compelling, I felt like I needed to have more time with it. I always feel this way, especially about lyrical poetry. If it doesn't have a narrative or a long extended metaphor, it's difficult to really get a poem the first time you hear it. His work incorporated a lot of earthy imagery, one in particular was about the body and merging with the natural environment, something I rarely hear coming from a man's work. But perhaps I'm stereotyping.
After a short intermission, Scott Duncan entertained us with some nonfiction that he claims to not have written himself. He is apparently working on a re-imagining of Helen Hunt Jackson's Ramona. Instead of reading an excerpt, he chose instead to read synopses the various remakes of the story in film, documentary and even pornography. In short, it was very funny. I'm probably not the best person to comment on it simply because I had never heard of Jackson's classic novel until Duncan read this piece. It is clearly a part of the culture in California though, and part of the Mexican culture specifically in Southern California. Good reader, relaxed, entertaining. It's rare to have sustained humor at a reading and I appreciated it.
The final reader was Maiana Minahal who read both poetry and a selection from her new memoir. I did find the subject matter of the memoir compelling, mostly because it details the events leading up to the sudden death of Minahal's father six years ago. As the story progressed, it seemed to point toward her father drowning while the two were swimming in the ocean together in Hawaii. However, she stopped short of the actual death, so we're left wanting more. A good tactic on her part. Minahal admitted to never writing nonfiction before and that this was a work in progress. I felt the excerpt lacked the emotional tension that I longed for earlier in the section. She spent a lot of time setting the scene and describing minuscule events and it wasn't until the end that we got to feel what she was feeling. I wanted more of that earlier in the piece. I think her nonfiction could benefit from her poetic sensibilities, which are clearly her strong suit. Her poetry was my favorite poetry of the evening in both the ambition of the text and the reader's particular voice. Minahal read from her book Legend Sondayo, which is primarily a retelling of a Filipino folktale. She stated during the reading that she both modernize and made the stories queer to reflect her specific voice and the story's impact on her as a young person. Minahal's strong reading voice was as it's most deliberate when reading from this collection. I never wanted her to stop. I also bought a copy of her book. You can too.
I tried to find links to blogs or websites for all of these writers, but when doing Google searches, all of their names, save for Minahal's, came up with random links to strange websites. I'm surprised by this fact. In Pittsburgh, almost everyone I know has a blog or a website or a project with their name attached to it. Your name is your product as a writer, IMO, and you need to have a web presence. Perhaps I just run with that crowd though. It seems all of these writers are doing well for themselves despite their lack of web presence. If I was going to be in San Francisco for another month, I would definitely go out to this reading again. Nice job, Kaleidoscope.
Note: I did find Elissa Perry on Twitter. Yeah, I'm following her now. Cuz I'm a big writer-geek fan-girl.
Monday, July 19, 2010
IT'S BEATIFIC: Radar Reading with Diane di Prima 7.7.2010
As part of my independent study for the summer, I am documenting my travels around San Francisco. I was not sure if I wanted to document this experience online or not. After some reflection, I think that this space is the best place to document my experiences while I'm in the city. Another portion of my study is devoted to ecotourism and the Redwood trees of Muir Woods. I will not have internet access in that space, but for now, as I sit in Vesuvio in San Francisco, drinking my Stella and typing away in the upstairs loft, I figure I might as well document my experiences online for all the world to see.
I'm a little behind. I'm also not traveling in any particular order. I might return to some places more than once. But to kick off my initial study of the Beat poets, I discovered that Diane di Prima, lady beat extraordinaire and San Francsico's Poet Laureate, was reading as part of the RADAR Reading series. RADAR is produced by Michelle Tea and places an emphasis on queer art. Below is my experiences before and after attending the reading on July 7th.
_______________
I have been in California for one week so far. The first week has been stressful while we tried to find an apartment in the city. Luckily our phones could sync up with Google Maps and our GPS and we got around this new landscape. San Francisco, like Pittsburgh, is a city of neighborhoods. However, unlike my steel city, San Francisco's neighborhoods and their inhabitants aren't put off by the lines drawn in the sand. Folks from the Mission travel into the Lower Haight. People from Russian Hill visit the Castro and I have been to many neighborhoods, making note of their distinct characteristics, while also noticing the broader characteristics of the general city. People enjoy eye contact here. There is an openness to the people of San Francisco that has had me startled. Intimidated. There is not focus on what seems proper or expected, but on what is reality. Sometimes I feel I have to hide parts of myself in Pittsburgh: my queerness, my godlessness, my liberal politics and my artistic thinking. Pittsburgh might be fine with these things, but I'm not sure. It's like Pittsburgh is my mother. I'm not ready to be that person in front of Pittsburgh just yet. But in San Francisco, I can be whoever I want. And truly, no one cares.
By "no one cares" I mean, if I wanted to leave the house wearing a hot pink tutu and a tank top that reads "I like to kiss girls (and boys too)" no one would care. I can openly give affection to my current partner and know that while I might get some attention, but more likely the beautiful drag queen at the other end of the bar is getting more attention than me. And this is not meaning to sound stereotypical. There are plenty of just "regular" mainstream people here. Although I do find myself longing to either cut my hair, pierce my nose or tattoo something on my wrists.
After our apartment hunting excursion, we found the loveliest place in San Francisco, situated in a quiet off-street in the Lower Haight. The online maps were such a success, I've begun to create a map for all my excursions around the various parts of the city for my Beat Poetry studies. While doing research for my map, I was referred by a friend to the RADAR Reading series. Once I checked out their website I realized that the beat writer and poet Diane di Prima was reading at the main library branch in the city. Since we had yet to move from Mountain View, I decided to face my fear of public transportation and take the CalTrain toward the city, with a quick switch onto the BART system that took me directly to the library branch holding the reading. I got there so early I had time to get some dinner, sign up for a library card and check out the poetry section. I breathed a sign of relief to realize it was quiet extensive and that I would not have buy too many additional books for my study.
I went downtstairs for the reading about 10 minutes before it was set to begin. There were only three people there and they seemed to be the folks that organized the reading. I left, got a bottled water, used the bathroom and by the time I returned the seats were filling up. I quickly snagged a front seat and did not move from it the entire reading.
RADAR Reading Series featured Diane di Prima, Tony Tulathimutte, Mica Sigourney and Ryka Aoki, their first winner of the Eli Coppola Poetry Chapbook Prize. Diane read last. All of the readers were pretty incredible. The first thing I noticed about this reading was how prepared all of the readers were to do their writing justice through performance. Perhaps this is part of the beat movement rubbing off on them. Perhaps it seeps into the writers and poets in the air.
The first poet, Mica Sigourney, was irreverant, funny, sweet and overly-concerned with the volume of his speaking. His work was like little portraits of "a day in the life of a gay man" and later described his work as such. He said (and I paraphrase) that he steals his work from his friends and the things they say. He just wants to document the cool and funny and fun things he and his friends say and do. Document what it's like to be a gay man in San Francisco. A number of his poems were named "Faggot" and it almost became a running gag. His poems were narrative and surreal and funny and grand and specific. I enjoyed them.
Tony Tulathimutte, a fiction writer, read a selection from his novel. Tulathimutte will be attending the Iowa Writer's Workshop in the fall on the Truman Capote Fellowship. Bastard. He's really talented. His work was amazingly detailed and really peaked into the mind of a character who was so cut off from the human experience, so throughly obsessed with organizing and documenting his porn collection, yet somehow we had the greatest sympathy for him. Because this character had somehow taken sex and followed it around through pornography and digital re-imaging and back around again to real human experience. Fantastic.
Ryka Aoki was my favorite of the new-to-me writers at this reading. Her work was just SO honest and real and straightforward, yet also mired with familiar religious imagery and often taken to surreal landscapes in the sky, in the mind, in the emotions, in the voice, in the transitory places, in between things. Her honesty about being a trans-person and being an abuse survivor was so compelling. She managed to balance being overly confessional with just being real. There was no exhibitionism, it was just personal experience that was somehow made universal and mystical and wonderful.
To the final reader, I cannot do justice to her presence. Diane di Prima got up wearing a simply black cotton shirt that was falling off her shoulder, revealing the fact that she was braless at 72-years-old. She began her reading with a few songs she wrote earlier that day and some anecdotes about her husband, who's back had been thrown out and he was at home, lying on the floor. She sang in a voice that was gravely and too low for her vocal range. But it didn't matter. We were at story time. The room was packed, standing room only in the back, and people egged her on to read more and more. She decided to read primarily from her yet-to-be-published memoir about her life as an artist in San Francisco. Her first memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years, I have yet to read, but if it was anything like the selections she read from tonight, I cannot wait to pick up a copy. Her stories were funny, part how-to guide for artists, part grandmother telling you her life story, you could not stop listening. She only read for a few moments, but the story she told us was more than enough from which to glean inspiration about how to truly live a rebellious artists life.
Afterward, I cannot say how I felt, except that the room was bursting with intellectual questions for the Q&A session, bursting with personality, humility, hospitality and creativity. The audience was comprised of a fascinating mix of people that, were I to describe them, I would fail miserably by placing them into strange stereotypes of modern beatniks and hipster-queers and hippie-lovelies. I will say they were diverse and warm and I felt very comfortable in this space.
If this reading is any indication of what the current poetry scene is like in San Francisco, I cannot wait to get out there and attend another reading. This really set the bar high for me.
I'm a little behind. I'm also not traveling in any particular order. I might return to some places more than once. But to kick off my initial study of the Beat poets, I discovered that Diane di Prima, lady beat extraordinaire and San Francsico's Poet Laureate, was reading as part of the RADAR Reading series. RADAR is produced by Michelle Tea and places an emphasis on queer art. Below is my experiences before and after attending the reading on July 7th.
_______________
I have been in California for one week so far. The first week has been stressful while we tried to find an apartment in the city. Luckily our phones could sync up with Google Maps and our GPS and we got around this new landscape. San Francisco, like Pittsburgh, is a city of neighborhoods. However, unlike my steel city, San Francisco's neighborhoods and their inhabitants aren't put off by the lines drawn in the sand. Folks from the Mission travel into the Lower Haight. People from Russian Hill visit the Castro and I have been to many neighborhoods, making note of their distinct characteristics, while also noticing the broader characteristics of the general city. People enjoy eye contact here. There is an openness to the people of San Francisco that has had me startled. Intimidated. There is not focus on what seems proper or expected, but on what is reality. Sometimes I feel I have to hide parts of myself in Pittsburgh: my queerness, my godlessness, my liberal politics and my artistic thinking. Pittsburgh might be fine with these things, but I'm not sure. It's like Pittsburgh is my mother. I'm not ready to be that person in front of Pittsburgh just yet. But in San Francisco, I can be whoever I want. And truly, no one cares.
By "no one cares" I mean, if I wanted to leave the house wearing a hot pink tutu and a tank top that reads "I like to kiss girls (and boys too)" no one would care. I can openly give affection to my current partner and know that while I might get some attention, but more likely the beautiful drag queen at the other end of the bar is getting more attention than me. And this is not meaning to sound stereotypical. There are plenty of just "regular" mainstream people here. Although I do find myself longing to either cut my hair, pierce my nose or tattoo something on my wrists.
After our apartment hunting excursion, we found the loveliest place in San Francisco, situated in a quiet off-street in the Lower Haight. The online maps were such a success, I've begun to create a map for all my excursions around the various parts of the city for my Beat Poetry studies. While doing research for my map, I was referred by a friend to the RADAR Reading series. Once I checked out their website I realized that the beat writer and poet Diane di Prima was reading at the main library branch in the city. Since we had yet to move from Mountain View, I decided to face my fear of public transportation and take the CalTrain toward the city, with a quick switch onto the BART system that took me directly to the library branch holding the reading. I got there so early I had time to get some dinner, sign up for a library card and check out the poetry section. I breathed a sign of relief to realize it was quiet extensive and that I would not have buy too many additional books for my study.
I went downtstairs for the reading about 10 minutes before it was set to begin. There were only three people there and they seemed to be the folks that organized the reading. I left, got a bottled water, used the bathroom and by the time I returned the seats were filling up. I quickly snagged a front seat and did not move from it the entire reading.
RADAR Reading Series featured Diane di Prima, Tony Tulathimutte, Mica Sigourney and Ryka Aoki, their first winner of the Eli Coppola Poetry Chapbook Prize. Diane read last. All of the readers were pretty incredible. The first thing I noticed about this reading was how prepared all of the readers were to do their writing justice through performance. Perhaps this is part of the beat movement rubbing off on them. Perhaps it seeps into the writers and poets in the air.
The first poet, Mica Sigourney, was irreverant, funny, sweet and overly-concerned with the volume of his speaking. His work was like little portraits of "a day in the life of a gay man" and later described his work as such. He said (and I paraphrase) that he steals his work from his friends and the things they say. He just wants to document the cool and funny and fun things he and his friends say and do. Document what it's like to be a gay man in San Francisco. A number of his poems were named "Faggot" and it almost became a running gag. His poems were narrative and surreal and funny and grand and specific. I enjoyed them.
Tony Tulathimutte, a fiction writer, read a selection from his novel. Tulathimutte will be attending the Iowa Writer's Workshop in the fall on the Truman Capote Fellowship. Bastard. He's really talented. His work was amazingly detailed and really peaked into the mind of a character who was so cut off from the human experience, so throughly obsessed with organizing and documenting his porn collection, yet somehow we had the greatest sympathy for him. Because this character had somehow taken sex and followed it around through pornography and digital re-imaging and back around again to real human experience. Fantastic.
Ryka Aoki was my favorite of the new-to-me writers at this reading. Her work was just SO honest and real and straightforward, yet also mired with familiar religious imagery and often taken to surreal landscapes in the sky, in the mind, in the emotions, in the voice, in the transitory places, in between things. Her honesty about being a trans-person and being an abuse survivor was so compelling. She managed to balance being overly confessional with just being real. There was no exhibitionism, it was just personal experience that was somehow made universal and mystical and wonderful.
To the final reader, I cannot do justice to her presence. Diane di Prima got up wearing a simply black cotton shirt that was falling off her shoulder, revealing the fact that she was braless at 72-years-old. She began her reading with a few songs she wrote earlier that day and some anecdotes about her husband, who's back had been thrown out and he was at home, lying on the floor. She sang in a voice that was gravely and too low for her vocal range. But it didn't matter. We were at story time. The room was packed, standing room only in the back, and people egged her on to read more and more. She decided to read primarily from her yet-to-be-published memoir about her life as an artist in San Francisco. Her first memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years, I have yet to read, but if it was anything like the selections she read from tonight, I cannot wait to pick up a copy. Her stories were funny, part how-to guide for artists, part grandmother telling you her life story, you could not stop listening. She only read for a few moments, but the story she told us was more than enough from which to glean inspiration about how to truly live a rebellious artists life.
Afterward, I cannot say how I felt, except that the room was bursting with intellectual questions for the Q&A session, bursting with personality, humility, hospitality and creativity. The audience was comprised of a fascinating mix of people that, were I to describe them, I would fail miserably by placing them into strange stereotypes of modern beatniks and hipster-queers and hippie-lovelies. I will say they were diverse and warm and I felt very comfortable in this space.
If this reading is any indication of what the current poetry scene is like in San Francisco, I cannot wait to get out there and attend another reading. This really set the bar high for me.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Places
When I think about place on a very basic level, the places that I inhabit most can be counted on one hand. Home, my car, work and campus. By far I spend the majority of my time in the first two, with only a measly 25-30 hours a week comprising the latter two. This is product of my current lifestyle: I'm very busy and my work and class demands are stressful.
Home is always shifting. I have moved a lot in the last five years, having three different apartments. It takes very little time for me to settle in and feel at home in a new place. I come from a family of homebodies, so being in my home space is very comforting. I've only lived in my current apartment for 9 months, but it definitely feels like home. I also like the freedom I have in this space; living alone provides me the space to escape. My boyfriend sometimes says that I'm too comfortable at home, and that once I get there after a stressful day, it pulls on me, keeping me indoors for the night. I just really like being home. The outside world is chaotic and unpredictable, and after a stressful day I prefer to shut the world out.
My car is a strange kind of place. Mobile, transitional, temporary. Like a protective little bubble that breaks when I arrive at my new location. I have had my Saturn for almost 7 years now and I'm somewhat emotionally attached to it. I'm not sure if many people would consider their car a "place" but considering how much time I spend in mine, and how much I rely on it, it would be foolish to not reflect. I'll consider this place more actively now in future posts.
While I love home, this is not to say that I don't travel a lot. I do. However, for me, travel has rarely been about the place itself. I don't go on vacations to beaches or tourist stops just for kicks. For the msot part, I travel somewhere because someone I know is living there. My best friend moved to Portland when I was a junior in high school, so since that time I've been traveling to the west coast regularly. My other best friend lives in Chicago, so I visit there often too (and will be in just a couple weeks!). I travel to San Francisco and New York often because my boyfriend lives in the former city and his family lives in the latter. I'm traveling to Rwanda with him this summer as part of a business trip.Travel is almost always about WHO is going to be there, rather than what or where. If my people are there, I'm fine.
Now that I reflect on it, the place I spend the most time is inside my head. I tend to wallow around in my own thoughts, sometimes to a fault. Which is why this blog's title is important; it serves a reminder that there are places outside of my headspace. A reminder to come out and play more often.
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I'll be exploring place a lot more in the coming weeks. These posts will be part of my Nature and Environmental Writing course. I'll tag them with NEW so if you want to read just these posts you can click on the tag in the cloud on the side bar.
Home is always shifting. I have moved a lot in the last five years, having three different apartments. It takes very little time for me to settle in and feel at home in a new place. I come from a family of homebodies, so being in my home space is very comforting. I've only lived in my current apartment for 9 months, but it definitely feels like home. I also like the freedom I have in this space; living alone provides me the space to escape. My boyfriend sometimes says that I'm too comfortable at home, and that once I get there after a stressful day, it pulls on me, keeping me indoors for the night. I just really like being home. The outside world is chaotic and unpredictable, and after a stressful day I prefer to shut the world out.
My car is a strange kind of place. Mobile, transitional, temporary. Like a protective little bubble that breaks when I arrive at my new location. I have had my Saturn for almost 7 years now and I'm somewhat emotionally attached to it. I'm not sure if many people would consider their car a "place" but considering how much time I spend in mine, and how much I rely on it, it would be foolish to not reflect. I'll consider this place more actively now in future posts.
While I love home, this is not to say that I don't travel a lot. I do. However, for me, travel has rarely been about the place itself. I don't go on vacations to beaches or tourist stops just for kicks. For the msot part, I travel somewhere because someone I know is living there. My best friend moved to Portland when I was a junior in high school, so since that time I've been traveling to the west coast regularly. My other best friend lives in Chicago, so I visit there often too (and will be in just a couple weeks!). I travel to San Francisco and New York often because my boyfriend lives in the former city and his family lives in the latter. I'm traveling to Rwanda with him this summer as part of a business trip.Travel is almost always about WHO is going to be there, rather than what or where. If my people are there, I'm fine.
Now that I reflect on it, the place I spend the most time is inside my head. I tend to wallow around in my own thoughts, sometimes to a fault. Which is why this blog's title is important; it serves a reminder that there are places outside of my headspace. A reminder to come out and play more often.
---
I'll be exploring place a lot more in the coming weeks. These posts will be part of my Nature and Environmental Writing course. I'll tag them with NEW so if you want to read just these posts you can click on the tag in the cloud on the side bar.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Holy cow that's a lot of traveling!
Despite all the stress involved with packing, preparation, airports and schedule, I love to travel. I'm going to make a map of all the states I've visited soon. I'm thinking it's almost 20 at this point. I have a TON of travel over the next two months. Here goes...
Trips for the next few months
Trips for the next few months
- May 8-9th: Canfield, OH
- May 11- 15th: San Francisco, CA
- June 4-7th: Chicago, IL
- June 11-13th: Ohiopyle, PA
- Late June/early July: Kigali, Rwanda & (maybe also) South Africa
- Mid July-Mid August: San Francisco, CA
Saturday, January 16, 2010
New York here I come! Again!
I've been invited (or perhaps invited myself) to be a part of the Typewriter Girls show in NYC this Sunday. I'll be performing, playing the part of God (who else?) and perhaps running the Exquisite Corpse. If you are in the area, please stop by the Bowery Poetry Club at 6pm tomorrow night! Below is a fun video from the last TWG show.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
NYE in NYC!
I'll be spending the next week in New York City (queue Jay Z and Alicia Keys song) and I'm pretty excited. My boyfriend bought me this book as a supplement to my trip to San Francisco this summer. I'll be researching the Beats as a movement and exploring the city while visiting him for July and part of August. But for this week I'll get to do some boyfriend-family-friend bonding and returning a pair of boots I got from DSW. They make a weird noise when I walk in them. Like crinkling plastic. I can't have that.
I've been spending money a little bit lately, but I suppose that's just the holidays. Excess is the name of the game. I've bought presents for people, but also a lot of presents for myself. Mostly just things I've needed for a while now (like a new spatula) and also some things I could probably have gotten by without (like the car mount for my new Droid phone, but it's really sweet). Ok I just spent like 20 minutes updating my Amazon.com wishlist. I'm such a consumer these days. I think it's probably retail therapy. That's ok. I've had a shitty December.
I'll be posting some pictures of my trip to NYC and probably writing a bit about the experiences there. I'm driving there tomorrow so perhaps I'll manage to do some live blogging with photos and such. I've not tried that yet. Experiment! This will be a fun escape, as I've got poetry out to 8 journals and I've heard nothing from any of them. I need to write some more to send more work out so I can't stop worrying.
I've been spending money a little bit lately, but I suppose that's just the holidays. Excess is the name of the game. I've bought presents for people, but also a lot of presents for myself. Mostly just things I've needed for a while now (like a new spatula) and also some things I could probably have gotten by without (like the car mount for my new Droid phone, but it's really sweet). Ok I just spent like 20 minutes updating my Amazon.com wishlist. I'm such a consumer these days. I think it's probably retail therapy. That's ok. I've had a shitty December.
I'll be posting some pictures of my trip to NYC and probably writing a bit about the experiences there. I'm driving there tomorrow so perhaps I'll manage to do some live blogging with photos and such. I've not tried that yet. Experiment! This will be a fun escape, as I've got poetry out to 8 journals and I've heard nothing from any of them. I need to write some more to send more work out so I can't stop worrying.
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