this is a nice song that i listen to sometimes

but the trouble with water is/she'll always leave you for gravity

who couldnt love this

something abt us

paraodxy

how is it possible to be simultaneously too much and not enough

sexy, haunting

fist teeth money

la dernière

je promis

malade de coeur

comme si je n'existais pas
elle a passée a côté de moi
sans un regard, rien du ca va
j'ai dit aicha, prends, tout est pour toi

as far as i can tell jet lag does not cause profundity.

today is november 30. everything is different and yet exactly the same.

a one week surgery in which fantasies of amelie-dom were extracted. they'd been obstructing normal living and everyday functionality.

à la feuille morte

for paris

escape, non escape

le problème avec les voyages: vous êtes là.

I am in Paris at long last, jet lagged, in a little Montmartre apartment. My feet hurt because I walked miles today, but I can't sleep. So I went and got a pizza.

create

this is why art matters--mohammad assaf gave life-sustaining hope to millions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, using nothing more than a voice and a dream.

wooooo

essay done, a song to celebrate

there will still be lots of this

homesick

repurposing

i am going to use this space for story starts, in the hopes that i might achieve middles and ends.

swing

sad ECSTATIC dull numb tired

***

why doesnt the coffee shop ever loosen up and break into collective dance? i'd like to drive around in a hot car and blast fast songs.

***

yesterday was an emotional and expressive day. i stopped class to announce that i loved everyone in the room. it was misplaced affection for sure, but it felt nice and high

***

every dish in my kitchen sink needs heavy scrubbing. lots of microwaved leftovers and unrinsed plates this week, and so i don't want to go home.

......

writing is hard is writing

longing, leaving, not leaving

i have so many city lists in my word docs

slayed

sad girl

i am in a state of mind where what i do best is cross days off my calendar. this provides satisfaction, despite the fact that i am counting down to nothing.

***

it's funny how clothes are just clothes when they are in your closet, but suddenly become laundry when they are placed in a wicker basket. nothing else changes so rapidly from one spot to another.

***
why do i wake up every morning at 5 now? am i getting old? should i slice bananas into Muesli and check my blood pressure?

***

Wednesday is the worst day of the week, not least of all because people refer to it as 'hump day'.

***

I am in a bump vortex, my fall only interrupted by periodic hits of fluttery excitement.

down-hearted

a good bb king sample

dilution is the key

Home from Los Angeles.  In 5 days I traversed Santa Monica, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Sunset, West Hollywood, Palos Verdes, Redondo, Manhattan Beach, and paid a visit to Lacma,where I was uplifted and moved by the Archibald Motley jazz age exhibit. The city is my roots, I was made and birthed there, and though I prefer the unrelenting intellect of New York or DC, or even Iowa City--LA is interested in exercise and space and showbusiness, over ideas and literature and the world at large--I still like it.  It's a place that is eternally itself, not so malleable, it's still this.

remember how we used to party up all night

this is what makes us girls, ldr

in five weeks I will be in Paris. in three days I will be flying to LA. this morning I read about a plane that started to split open in midair. i can think of few worse ways to die than to be sucked from an alumnium tube into the atmosphere.

*

ahmed smokes in the front seat. from duty free i buy him cigarettes. he slicks his thinning hair back with what appears to be olive oil. his forehead glistens. he has five children, from two different wives, both of whom he is still married to. there is a third wife, his first wife, who produced no children.

i sit in the passenger seat. when my mother rides with him, she sits in the back, for propriety's sake. i am young still, i feel strange sitting in the back, like I'm Miss Daisy or a typical Ammani girl. I sit beside him and try not to notice when he glances at my leg. he thinks of me as a friend, he tells me his dreams--literal ones, as in, last night i dreamt that another man came and stole my wife. Which one? I ask. The one I love, he tells me.

writing, back to basics

i've returned to Sagan and Houellebecq to remind myself how and why.

"We had spent the afternoon in a café on the Rue Saint-Jacques, a spring afternoon just like any other. I felt bored, after a fashion; I wandered from the jukebox to the window, while Bertrand talked about the course given by Spire. At a certain point I leaned against the machine and watched the record rise slowly, then slant down to meet the needle, almost tenderly, like a cheek. For some reason a terrific feeling of happiness swept over me; I had an overwhelming intuition that someday I was going to die, that my hand would be gone from this chromium edge and the sun from my sight."

-- françoise sagan

beirut 2001

'in this white wave, you are silent'

i couldn't help but wonder

in a state of boredom and block i ended up re-watching seasons 3-7 of sex and the city this month. it's a poorly written show, but also a really good show. infinitely better than petty and privileged Girls, i would argue. possibly because SATC doesn't purport to be otherwise; like Samantha Jones, it is unapologetic. the women, while superficial, juvenile, sometimes aimless, and always fallible, are much more likable and relatable, more so now that i've entered thirties-dom. also now that i'm craving nyc desperately and romanticizing its chaos, rather than struggling to carry my groceries up to a fifth floor walk up apt. i've had one scene running through my head, this one, for no real reason other than that it feels so perfect and genuine. 

delicious

reminiscent of roxette, cyndi lauper, sinead o' connor, Pretty Woman, and all that late 20th C merriment: wildest moments

yes

i/you/we/they are not a robot

essentialism

there is something weirdly necessary and satisfying about the 'compose' field, something that makes it easier than writing in a journal or a word document, yet still feels just as noncommittal and unscrutinized. i have lately been unable to type a single word, or to write one by hand. this is depressing and frustrating, because i still wake up each day feeling like i have to write. it's the equivalent of dry-heaving: i feel like i need to but nothing comes out.

i've been going through word docs and reading old story and essay starts, ones that went nowhere. this morning i've reading from an old defunct blog, and stumbled upon this entry that caught my attention. recently a friend and i collectively wondered if we were progressing at all or just writing the same things and feeling the same feelings over and over. They say most writers continuously return to the same subject, they circle around it like a lion to a zebra, never able to fully attack or grasp or consume it. this is certainly the case.

:::

High Ceilings.
August 13, 2010

I got to Iowa yesterday, and I cannot say that I’ve been happy these past two days. I have no furniture. I have no car. I have no bed. I have no AC! I have internet, thankfully. I am sitting here on a hardwood floor in the middle of a big, empty, apartment, wondering just what exactly I’m doing. I have a friend who I’m scared of. I am trying to keep an open mind, as my morning meditation suggested, but even that’s eluding me. I wonder, sometimes, why I put myself in these positions. Ones where I’m starting all over, building a new life, entering an unknown. Why? Why not just do the simple thing and stay in one place? Stick to what’s familiar. By now I’d probably be a lot further along in life. Maybe I’d have a strong relationship. I’d have a circle of close friends that I’m comfortable with instead of scattered ones across the globe. I might have a successful career. But isn’t that why I’m moving around so much? Because I DON’T want a career? Instead I’m chasing a dream, and it’s taken me to Italy, Boston, New York, Kentucky, and now, Iowa. Please let this be where I pin the dream down. I’d love some roots.

Tonight I attended a very moving reading, one that had the effect of making me heart-wrenchingly sad in a cathartic way. My favorite accompaniment to sadness is usually writing, but after this particular reading, i did not want to write. In fact it confirmed a desire to not write. This negative desire--to refrain, to stop, even--was itself catharsis.

On self-fulfilling prophecies and role play.

" I rather wonder, until today, what I could possibly have looked like....I felt that if she found a black man so frightening I would make her fright worth-while." ~James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

i love this

'lord what must i do'

true faith

remix

a posteriori

typo cringe typo

artful, emotional

all of the lights

is it too late

to be excited for life

rumination

My best friend is an ob-gyn doctor, and when she works nights she calls me in the mornings, in the car ride home. She tells me about pre-term labors, about delivering stillborns, about women and men who weep and insist on holding their dead babies. She tells me about having to hold back her own emotions and show her patients no pain at the sight of theirs, while still managing to display and deliver empathy. She cries in the supply closet, she's found comfort in the arms of an equally emotional nurse.

I am a writer, or an aspiring writer. I don't know what it takes to earn the title. A book? A passion? My life feels shrouded in indulgence--teaching saves it from being completely so--and when juxtaposed against bringing life into the world, writing feels almost shameful.

Where does writing's necessity lie? In speaking for those who have no voice or means of expression? What of fiction, though? What of personal narrative? After the few readings I've given, people have come to the stage and thanked me for reading my work, the subject matter is important, they say. I cling to these moments, they fuel me, they allow me to see a light, or perhaps more apt, a finish line.

My best friend tells me not to feel guilty. She says to enjoy sleeping, and living, and creating. Medicine is not creative, it's like following a recipe, she says. But I can't help myself, knowing that she spends twelve hours days in hospitals and I spend mine in coffee shops.

People talk about the immortality of writers, but what of the immortality of doctors? Doesn't their lifeline extend into the generations that their deliveries help to give birth to? Both involve intimacy. The doctor is with you at your most vulnerable, the writer allows you to see your own weaknesses embodied and reflected in a character.

 I came to teaching because of an inability to compartmentalize, out of a need to blend the personal and the professional, a desire to be somewhat unrestrained, more free than other careers allow. I often feel shamed by my emotional displays, embarrassed by sentimentality--why is this allowed in music but not writing? My best friend reads my work, she tries to keep me from indulging romanticism. I listen to her, and when I read my work with her sobering words in mind, I blush and want to hide forever.

'tastes like amaretto'

fantastic dichotomy

revision causes blushing

best line ever?

'tell you the truth i prefer the worst of you'

seen, looking

where to emote publicly but privately

soundtrack

for bleeding

write revise, ribbit ribbit

slooowly

i am no poet

but inert.

what you on about

i feel it in my bones

By pure accident of birth and place, Palestinians in Gaza are subject to the worst crimes possible. Were any of us born in Gaza, we would be experiencing this massacre firsthand. That randomness says that something is wrong. 

en route to portland. sadly we hit a buck in the shuttle on the way to the airport this morning, but we only came in contact with his antlers, and the fellow trotted along. driver didn't even stop, told me this was common in iowa.

'how'm i gonna be an optimist about this'

but if you close your eyes....

last two weeks. most amazing. 

hoarse horse

last night we went to the cemetery to see the black angel. we told ghost stories, and then two kids actually disappeared. it began to thunder and lightning as we looked for them. we spotted a ghost woman.

best night so far, minus the bronchitis i caught over the weekend, in my little pied de terre at Burge Hall.

un nouveau compartimente

quelque fois je pense qu'il est plus simple d'ecriver en français. je ne sais pas c'est comme ça. peut être parce mon critique interieur n'existe pas ici, ou parce j'ouvre une autre compartemente dans ma tete. la derniere et le prochaine semaine, je travaillais au camp internationale, comprise des arabes et les russians. c'est formidable, ils sont tres maturees et curieux. moi, je sens qu'ils sont tres heureux d'etre ici, a iowa, et nous serons tristes a la fin de cette semaine. j'habite dans Burge Hall, et c'est le seul chose que je deteste! 

araby'un ana

last night was Arabic 101. We danced debkah, ate tabbouleh, learned about Mahmoud Darwish and Sahar Khalifeh and Khalil Gibran, counted to ten, learned colors. Fatima, a shy Palestinian BTLer living in Israel, sang a song about freedom. Yazan the Jordanian-Palestinian recited his own poetry in Arabic. We then walked to the bridge over the Iowa River, we took selfies together, and we watched night ducks.

Today we go to the FIGGE in Davenport and Wild Den State Park. And then the mall, which is all they really want to do. 

Turgenev girls

Last night was Russian 101 night at BTL. The Russian students taught us about the long history of suffering Russian writers, like Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Mayakovsky, and of course, Pushkin. We watched Russian cartoons, we learned how to count to ten. Later this evening Artyom, one of the more romantic Russian men here, recited his poetry in the original. We swooned. At lights out I knocked on one of the girls' rooms, and it opened to reveal twelve of them seated in a circle on the floor, including several Arabs un-hijabed. They are bonding inter-culturally, and it warms me.

shower caddy

Between the Lines, the international writing camp that brings together Russians, Americans, and Arabs, began this past Saturday here in Iowa City. I am one of four counselors, in charge of 34 kids total (22 girls, 12 boys. Why are women unequivocally more drawn to writing than men?) We worked all weekend, receiving them at the airport and bringing them to the dorm, Burge Hall, where we all live for the next two weeks. On Saturday I had my first scare, when I brought them downtown for a tour and lost every one of them. But as they are in high school, they managed to find their way back. Every kid is so far wonderful. The Russians all speak Russian of course, but for Arabs it's a bit different, as Arabic varies in dialect between the Levant and North Africa. I've found that I can practice both my Arabic and my French, speaking the former with the Levantees and the latter with the North Africans. One of the Russians recited some untranslated Pushkin to me, and now I am eager to learn Russian as well.

Tonight we karaoke with the Iowa Young Writer's Studio. The Russians have been preparing all late-afternoon!

Worst part: lofted dorm room bed. Several near-accidents already, must figure out how to get down without slipping.

deflation, control

there is always someone -er

thoughts to follow up on.

Isn't it arrogant to say there's no such thing as luck?

She looks like poet, N said this morning at the sight of a poet. Like she's been damaged by emotions.

"How maddening it was to have been born in a cotton field with aspirations of grandeur."

--Maya Angelou, writing about her father's upbringing in the Jim Crow South.

le bizarre

always

Weekend Recap, Ames, etc.

Iowa City---> Windom, MN----> Spillville, IA---> Decorah---> Cedar Falls---> Iowa City. Attended a 50th high school reunion in Windom and a wedding in Spillville, and the bride's friends sang her this wistful tune.

the reason.

La mia madre

circa 1991. I could write a novel based off this photo.

i may be happyish

but i will always need sadness strolls.

emotional intensity.

in writing about borderlines, i will henceforth use the term EID instead of BPD.

Press about the Jordan class

Umniah and WritersCell

and making music out of words

i care about sounds. syllables. songs. 

On Not Being Something Else.

i care about music and words

or maybe

i'll just spend the day here.

i attended my first Passover Seder on Monday night. the Haggadah was progressive and inspiring and hopeful, i loved the rituals and the company. pictures here.

speculate

several important matters:

in a state of stunned melancholy, i accidentally wore an all denim outfit and blue Van's to teach yesterday. by the time i realized my folly it was too late

i slept in two sets of pajamas and cuddled with Blue, Garfield, Grateful Dead bear and a space heater

today i must must must force myself to work work work

Surrender in G Major

it's been a battle of a day. for now, this lullaby.

striving

today was an especially fun teaching day. we read emmanuel carrère, an excerpt from lives other than my own. I indulged myself by telling my students about the professor, my favorite, who gave me the book.

we then workshopped two great essays before writing for ten minutes about expectations (i wrote about body expectations and body image issues but refrained from sharing this time). it occurred to me how much the expectations of my students drive me. through their inevitable expectations, a symptom of the classroom dynamic, the transaction between us, my students make me a better teacher and a better writer.

the expectations of others can be the best motivation. so can the song seven devils, which i am blasting as i edit an essay.

amazing harmonization

the civil wars

esthete

"he'd seen through everything in life and found it wanting"

-sk

6, 7, 8, 9

another interesting and different thing about teaching in jordan was that twenty minutes or so into class, we were served cookies and offered coffee or tea. this made things cozier, and i like cozy. i flew home on monday--13 hour flight, lots of turbulence, three movies, including a rom-com that made me cry called About Time--and when I arrived at the airport i was immediately chosen for special inspection, during which i again cried. "come with us", an airport security official demanded, "may i ask why?" i responded, "because i said so!", she snapped, it felt like i was crossing through israel into palestine, it seems i am now being antagonized in both my countries.

on tuesday i taught my class back in the states. Still immersed in the intimacy and intensity of my class in jordan, i found myself being especially forthcoming and open. One thing i have always appreciate about writing and teaching writing is the intimacy and lack of compartmentalization. it is an area in which vulnerability is welcomed and even beneficial, though sometimes it's difficult to know what constitutes too vulnerable, especially when i am the teacher.

jet lag, leave me please....

days 4 and 5

yesterday we read winterson and critiqued two essays. today we read amy tan and critiqued two more pieces. another difference: when we free write, i am encouraged to share mine, too! it's fun.

day 3

the main difference between teaching in the States and teaching in the Middle East is the ten minute smoke break at the 1.5-hour mark. i am the only non smoker, though if it didn't make me dizzy, i would join in, for the sake of camaraderie. 

Jordan class

I'm finally teaching the Jordan class, creative nonfiction, 7 classes in 7 days. 10 women, 1 male student, all lovely. Today was class 2; we read Didion, workshopped a piece, and wrote about fear. Last night, class 1, we ate pizza and talked about writing. Wishing I could spend 7 days in a row with my students in the States. It's exhausting but intimate, the way writing and talking about writing should be.

insight

if you blast dirty diana by the weeknd while reading your own writing, both will sound much better.

permission to death cab?

thanks.

we don't have to go

without

dont be afraid

to seduce your audience

indulge

in 1994 

say it

c hahn/destiny's c

this is the remix

"who knows what my spirit is worth in cold hard cash"

then there's this.

pussy riot members say prison emboldened them

This is my favorite song

of late

banks, sultry.

what if it only gets colder

Landlocked, Chris Peruka.

"we were hard weather
we were broken hearted
we were always forget-me-nots"