Postcards from the Imagination

Grad school enrollment happens in 7.5 weeks. The online summer course I need lasts 5.5 weeks. I don't get paid (and therefore don't have the money to register) for another 2 weeks. Time for grading? Sending transcripts? Got me. I already sold what I could on eBay. I can't print money, and I can't put additional days on the calendar. Arrgghh.

I did manage to get into my apartment in Ithaca early, so I'll be moving again in 17 days. Good news since things are rather cramped and noisy here--though it's another logistical nightmare in the making.

One day I'd like to wake up and not feel as though I'm trying to build the Hoover dam with toothpicks.

Posted by Ginger at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted from email

Dear Friend,

Support Equality: Tell your Senator to support the Matthew Shepard Act.

Every morning, someone you know takes the long way to class. Someone you care about looks over his shoulder on the street. Someone you love fears for her safety.

All because some people hate them for being who they were born to be -- gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

I still remember standing on the steps of the Capitol on October 14th, 1998 - thousands gathered on a cool autumn evening - to remember Matthew Shepard two days after he had been killed in Laramie, Wyoming.

That night I said that "Matthew Shepard is not the exception to the rule - his tragic death is the extreme example of what happens on a daily basis in our schools, on our streets, and in our communities. And that's why we have an obligation to pass laws that make clear our determination to root out this hatred. We hear a lot from Congress today about how we are a country of laws, not men. Let them make good on those words, and pass hate crimes legislation."

Almost ten years have passed since that candlelight vigil - ten years too long for Washington to do what was so obviously needed.

Today we're closer than ever to passing a federal hate crimes law that includes sexual orientation and gender identity - the Matthew Shepard Act. I've supported this effort from the start because it's the right thing to do.

But we're not there yet. We haven't yet, as we committed to do that night, insured that "the lesson of Matthew Shepard is not forgotten." Right now, my colleagues in the Senate are being barraged with calls and emails from anti-gay groups. It's horrifying that the right wing would pick this of all issues to be against - but it's happening.

Urge your Senators to vote YES on the Matthew Shepard Act. http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/matthew_shepard_act

Think about this: Some members of the House reported receiving five times as many messages opposing this bill as supporting it. Those of us who support the bill need to work to make sure that that in the Senate it's our voices that speak the loudest.

Fight hate crimes-send a message to your senators today.

Senators are feeling the heat. You can be the voice of the 68% of Americans that support this bill. Tell your Senators that you stand up for freedom from fear for all Americans, and you hope they do, too.

Take action today!
http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/matthew_shepard_act

Let's turn the tide, let's reaffirm our faith that the strength of human justice can overcome the hatred in our society by confronting it. Let's make those words true -- starting right now. Thank you!

Sincerely,

John Kerry

Posted by Ginger at 09:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

And into the freakin' fire. No privacy. No quiet. No place to unload my homeless shelter on wheels. Lots of chaos, tension, even shouting. Sorry I don't have anything happier to report. I'm as tired of having things to whine about as you are of listening to me.

Posted by Ginger at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Slept in my car at a rest area overnight and arrived in NJ at 8:30 this morning. Long story. Woke up with the beginnings of a head cold too, so zzzzzzzzzz. Back in a day or two.

Posted by Ginger at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Birthday #32 + Leaving New Hampshire Day. No time for a more reflective post. I think I'm going to sleep for two days once I get to New Jersey. :-P

Posted by Ginger at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I realized today, in trying to sort the mine from the not mine, that I can instantly recall the acquisition history of nearly every one of the hundreds of books I own. I can't remember 75% of what goes on between the covers of those books, but the memory of how each came into my possession is indelible. *Sigh*

Posted by Ginger at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the things I won't have to miss when I move, because they're online, is the store here in Nashua where I buy my ink cartridges dirt cheap. The good people at Got Ink 4U have been supplying me with $3 black and $5 color cartridges for a couple years now. I was skeptical at first, but they print just as well and last just as long as the much pricier brand name inks. Turns out ink is the printer manufacturer's cash cow. They lock consumers into their brand with a $100-200 machine, and make their real money selling proprietary refills. Chalk one up to the power of advertising. The whole scheme would be a miserable failure if Americans didn't equate generic with substandard. I imagine corporate distribution agreements have something to do with it too. Staples sells its own version of my printer's cartridges for $25, the manufacturer's version for $30, but doesn't stock the $3 brand at all.

If you want to try them out, Got Ink 4U is offering 15% off most products now through June 21st if you enter DAD in the redeem coupon field.

Posted by Ginger at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The "Moving" (and other) posts are partly a creative and/or political mini-experiment of sorts. They're not poetry, but neither are they attempts to elicit sympathy. Not to discount your kindnesses. Not at all! But if these posts were merely about me, I'd never have the gall to publish them. What I'm interested in here is something like confessionalism outside the traditional ArtBox (even as, with this statement, I'm inevitably seeking refuge inside the Box). I'm interested in your discomfort and mine and what that says about the ways in which Art corrals or neutralizes the Real. I'm interested in pushing back against the several booming voices that have tried to blot the personal out of informal writing by deploying shame against its authors. Given how utterly ignorable most blogs are--this one included--the fear, aggression, and disgust expressed by those who hold themselves out to be More Relevant Than Thou seems to point to something more consequential than mere boredom. That's not a dig at people who choose remain impersonal. It's simply a response to those who militantly believe impersonality is the only valid mode of expression in this medium.

Of course, some of those voices object to the personal in poetry too--but not all of them. Which brings us back to the Box--a perennial poetic concern, and a topic on which I don't mind repeating myself. How does one keep one's Art from serving as a neat container for the messiness of being human? Is such a thing even possible? Are the various arts merely feel-good exercises devoid of any meaning beyond their capacity to evoke appreciation? If so, how does one explain the difficulty and confusion, the work involved in the experience, that some artists and some audiences not only consent to, but seek out?

These are all big questions to which I have no ready answers, though my instinct is to push against the walls of the container and see what happens. Therefore, my life and my self are the raw materials that go into this thing, but ultimately it's about whatever the people who read here take away from it. I don't have any specific hopes or designs for what that something is. In fact, I usually try to avoid thinking about it. To date I don't think I've pushed all that hard, but I am trying to figure out how one cultivates fearlessness without developing callouses.

Posted by Ginger at 05:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier I said, "There are good things ahead, to be sure, but..." Why the apology?

*

I haven't figured out yet how to prepare myself for this. It doesn't feel as though I'm leaving my home behind in five days. The brown couch. The green chair. The milk crate coffee table. All these things I've lived with so long stay behind. 

*

Coming with me: student desk, writing desk, file cabinet, 4 small bookshelves, some kitchen items,  shower curtain + hooks, desk lamp, stereo, bicycle, guitar, books, clothes. There's the wine-colored bookshelf I built by hand out of scrap lumber from my mother's attic five years ago. There's the easel with the picture I painted. The other day my daughter told me she missed the mural I'd done on her playroom wall when she was toddler. She's leaving a life behind too.

*

In six years she's attended four elementary schools. I don't win mother of the year for this. There are sacrifices I could have made to stay in one place, and there were good reasons to do so, and there were good reasons to leave, and despite the import of the decisions I've made, I won't ever know whether they were the right ones or not. Rootage is a great neutral concept. So much depends on what you find yourself rooted to.

*

The local supermarket is setting aside boxes for me to pick up later today. Maybe then it will start to feel real. I want it to feel real. J's dad is coming to pick her up Saturday and take her down to his place for the summer. I don't want to wake up alone here Sunday morning and feel the full weight of it for the first time. Five state-to-staters in seven years, and I still haven't figured out how it's done.

* 

Earlier I said, "There are good things ahead, to be sure, but..." I apologized. Because this isn't a poem or a photograph or fiction or a film & on Sunday morning I will wake up 32.  

(to be continued...)

Posted by Ginger at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

New poem up on the admiration wall, a short one. I was reading & listening to a little Coolidge when I wrote the draft below--mostly poems in the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry and excerpts online. Unfortunately, I had no idea where to begin with him the last time I was at the library and picked up Polaroid, which was for me, at this point, unreadable. Once I have some money or access to a good library again, I'll have to pick up different books.

My other current enthusiasm is David Antin. I made a several hour marathon yesterday of his recorded talks at Penn Sound. I didn't mean to. I just got sucked into the vortex. I came to him via the Norton too, and though he's impressive on paper, the recordings are something else entirely. Has there really never been a CD release of his work? All Google turned up was a smattering of university holdings. Am I missing something?

Antin's genre blurring/bursting is particularly exciting to me. As he was talking about an installation piece he did (during the Whitney talk), my mind was off in a hundred different directions about what was possible beyond the poem-journal-book-reading-rinse-repeat-die model. Much more to come on that, but not in this post. I'd be here for hours if I got started.

Posted by Ginger at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Had a little trouble paying rent on the place this month. ;-P

Posted by Ginger at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sew muscle & so never fatigue          or rarely         or balance
on edge of rolled glass       blue on kitchen         on before you
rose & only
                          after such effort as          
                                                                  charley-horser you
(        ).     Say we pulled          not and spent            not
& not one          butterfly w/aluminum wings             for which
                                                                  might oh'd & oh'd
                          & oh made cup with
hands
& saw anyway            daylight             orange through curved
palms        & saw through as              no formal gesture
no motion
                        slow photograph but
                                                                 opening & stuck &
carved into place          & diminutive gravities               us gap.

Posted by Ginger at 09:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Now I know at least part of the reason I've been avoiding packing. It's too close a cousin to death, this looking around, knowing I'll never set eyes on again.

*

There are good things ahead, to be sure, but they're just distant enough to slip from the foreground.

*

I think I'm beginning to understand the nature of "stuff." It's one way to externalize what's inside--give it shape and heft--make it real. One way to exercise dominion over space. What more startling visual for the great indifference than an empty room? So you accumulate these things, these abstract effigies of yourself, and no matter where you go, there you are. Bye-bye blank stare.

*

Maybe people didn't need as much stuff to create the illusion of constancy when they stayed in one place most of their lives.

*

I don't have much stuff, and between thoughts I'm throwing more and more of it away. Old bills, expired prescriptions, coupons I'm never going to use. Valueless things that are nonetheless physical manifestations of the life I've lived here. Down the trash chute they go. Like bits of straw the wind shook from a scarecrow.

*

How many times during an argument did I stare down the patterns in this rug? It isn't mine. I wouldn't want it anyway.

*

At some point, I realized I'd held on to so little I was living like a perpetual guest in someone else's home. Someone with enough stuff to colonize the moon. He'd accumulated all these things, these abstract effigies of himself, and no matter where I went, there he was.

*

. . .

Posted by Ginger at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Down to the wire now, and I think I can smell my brain working overtime trying to figure out how I'm going to pull off everything I need to pull off. The challenge du jour is that one last summer course I need to finish my B.A. The deans at BC have decided I can't take an online course, so I'm going to need an address from which to work for the duration of the course. I also have to pay for the course without credit cards or loans (because I'm not eligible for either). Every course I've seen runs either mid-June to mid-July OR mid-July to mid-August, each of which presents obstacles.

Problem #1: I won't have the money to pay tuition and related fees until July 10th, which eliminates the June-July course as an option.

Problem #2: I learned this weekend that my mother is moving to god knows where August 1st, which means I won't be able to use her couch beyond the last week in July. That takes a July-August course in NJ off the table.

Problem #3: The only way I'm going to be able to "move" on June 17th is to store most of my belongings here in NH, and take whatever will fit in my car down to NJ, because it's going to be a one-woman operation. I can keep a few "summer items" at my mother's house temporarily, but after August 1st everything needs to travel with me, including my car. Since my lease at Cornell begins August 1st, this is a strong case for taking a June-July course, but see problem #1.

Problem #4: Orientation at Cornell begins August 17th, so I need to finish my summer course by the 15th and arrive in Ithaca by the 16th at the very latest. Somewhere in there I also need to transport my belongings from storage in NH to the new place in NY.

Problem #5: Some courses are just plain outside my post July 10th budget, particularly if I need to pay for a place to sleep on top of tuition. Anything over about $1,500 to live and study ain't gonna work.  

I do have steady freelance work going forward, but it only pays once a month, thus the scheduling difficulty. At midnight on August 17th this ragamuffin turns into a self-supporting Cinderella with health benefits and money left over at the end of the month to pay down some student debt, travel a little, and maybe even start saving for a house. Sweet.

Posted by Ginger at 06:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We saw the orthopedist today for maybe 6 minutes. It took the nurse 10 minutes to the apply the cast. The remaining 74 minutes or so were spent WAITING. Sign in. Wait. See the receptionist. Wait. Move to exam room. Wait. See intake nurse. Wait. See doctor. Wait. Get cast. Elect not to wait. That is, after seeing the line to check-out, I decided they could bill me for the co-pay and left. I shudder to think what my daughter's insurance carrier will be charged for that precious quarter-hour of service.

Is there anything more arrogant than squandering patients' time like that in the middle of the work/schoolday (because specialists don't do nights or weekends, of course)? I should have known something was up when our appointment was scheduled for 9:10am. Clue #2: another patient arrived at the same time we did to see the same doc. Clue #3: the waiting room was vast.

If this were a small office doing it's best to keep up, I'd be more understanding. But it's not. It's a very large practice, with signs touting their switch to electronic medical records, and a highly methodical process for managing the flow of patients. It also happens to be only orthopedic practice recommended in the discharge paperwork from the hospital ER. What's that I smell? Monopolistic overbooking?

If poets keep flocking to MFAs and academics to PhD programs, despite the financial sacrifice, why do we continue to believe healthcare is doomed without exorbitant investments and compensation? I'm not just talking about doctors here. I'm talking about the entire industry--everything from medical research to bedpans to patient care. Is our historical memory so short that we honestly can't remember a time when scientific discovery wasn't profit-driven? To the best of my knowledge it wasn't venture capitalists who were responsible for The Enlightenment.

That's not to suggest doctors or nurses or chemists ought to toil in poverty the way artists do. But the system desperately needs an overhaul based in reality. I'd start by doing away with for-profit health insurance. There's just no benefit whatsoever to giving a portion of the funds pooled for healthcare away to insurance company stockholders. None. Then I'd take a close look at just how all those countries with lower GDPs and better healthcare systems do it.

Unfortunately, that's all the ranting I have time for right now. I'm making the 5-hour trek down to NJ this afternoon/evening so I can register my car there in advance of the move. Why? Got me. Not my decision or directive.

I did sign my housing contract with Cornell for August 1st. Woo hoo! I'm almost there.

Posted by Ginger at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)