Haiku 6 (starting to come unglued) 5.21.2008

There is this Joyce Carol Oates story called “The Boyfriend.” Have you read it? Here’s the first few lines:

She hadn’t made any mistakes, at least any serious mistakes, in quite a while. So she’d become complacent.

Her name was Miriam, she was thirty-six years old, tall, long-legged, good-looking, with a pale smooth freckled skin and honey-brown eyes set sly and slanted in her face, as if in irony.

Eerie, huh? Sound like anyone you know? I believe that in six more years, I will be this woman. I lifted today’s haiku shamelessly from this story, figuring that if anyone recognizes the quote, if anyone responds to me and says, “Miriam?” that I will then have found my soulmate. Or something

Here it is, totally plagerized:

Haiku 6

Tall and long-legged
eyes set sly and slanted, as
if in irony.

I missed a day in the Haiku Project, which kind of throws my plan, a little bit, because the whole thing was based in building something consistently throughout the week. But, I find I’m divesting from it. I’m restless. I’ve grown bored of myself and my games and my projects. I think that I am coming a little bit unglued. It’s unsettling and familiar and sort of like comfort food, in that I know it’s not good for me to follow my dark knotted path into the depths of my crazy, but it sounds so lovely, like a vacation, to be there. Temporary fits of semi-psychotic instability are the macaroni and cheese of my emotional life.

There are other stories by creepy dark writers about women named Miriam. It’s a theme, you could say- the “Crazy Miriam” story that marks every reclusive and brilliant writer’s descent into madness. Joy Williams had a Crazy Miriam story about a woman (named Miriam) whose husband (who she hated) was paralyzed in a hunting accident, and so she fell in love with a taxidermy lamp made out of buck’s legs bound together. She took that damn lamp everywhere with her.

That just as easily could be me in a few years, except for the part about the husband, I think.

Anyway. There’s a long weekend coming up, which means that whatever structure and schedule is keeping me accountable to my remaining shreds of social acceptability will be soon abandoned. If you find me wandering naked and mumbling by the freeway with a taxidermy lamp sometime on Sunday night (HOW FUN!) don’t ever say I didn’t warn you…

I think that everyone should go back and read my Frankenstein blog again. It’s the only thing that makes me happy.

-M

Does the Dell Warranty Cover Damage Incurred while Smashing a Bottle of Champagne on my Laptop? 1.19.2007

Last night, I went to hear a writer read, and then, when the reading was done, she spoke and answered questions. This is sometimes the worst part of these kinds of things, but I enjoyed it this time, because the way she answered questions reminded me of the way my family might, if you squooshed the whole lot of us into one person. She was genuine and funny and passionate and compassionate, and she had no control whatsoever over her hair. She was disappointingly moderate and momentarily radical, and she kept taking her glasses off and then putting them back on. So, of course, I love her.

She urged everyone, as poets always do, to write every day.

“Are you doing that?” my friend asked.

No, I’m not.

And it’s such a given that I should, you know? So obvious. Just a day away can create these trenches in the way I remember, or don’t remember, how the letters are supposed to string together. The turning of feelings over into words. Hoping that I can catch whatever is lost in translation and stick it back on somewhere. With glue. Or prepositions. Or whatever’s available, really. But when I run off into the world of talking more and writing less, the talking part gets all jumbled up, and the writing part, well…the writing part gets lonely.

I once had a writing instructor (What was his name? I always think of him as “Mr. Kneecaps,” but I know that can’t be right.) who was not, per se, an extraordinary writer, but had some good ideas that have stayed with me. One thing that Mr. Kneecaps seemed particularly sure about, likely based on the feedback he’d gotten on his own rough ride in the heartless world of publishing, was “Do not EVER write about writers and writing.”

True that. The process analysis is so self-indulgent. Yet somehow when it comes from me, I think, “Well, this may be the exception.” And besides, this is a blog, and isn’t the whole point self-indulgence? (You all, loyal readers, by the way, are a great source of external validation for said self-indulgence. If a blog falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, it’s pretty much the end of the world. Thus, if I ever win an academy award, or whatever the blog equivalent may be – a Bloggy, or a Golden Blog, or whatever- I will be sure to thank the subscribed lot of you by name.)

My writing part is lonely. My writing part is a little pissed off and feeling kind of bruised and rejected. I pulled my writing part out of the back of some dusty storage unit in my brain, and said, “Come on, let’s give it another go, shall we?” And then I kind of left her hanging, a bit. My writing part is holding her little head up and saying, “Oh, don’t worry about me, I’m fine,” when the truth is that my writing part is sliding underneath the bed and can’t seem to dig her nails in the hardwood floor to even slow the stopping down. My writing part was recently kicked in the gut by my sleeping part, and although sleeping part is important too, we all know that I can live without her for a bit, and am in fact, somewhat more fun when I do.

So, sayonara, sleeping part! You can take your weird dreams about the box of orange kittens and my teeth falling out and crawl on over to the backseat! Writing part, we’re ready for takeoff, so put on your goggles! (and then take them off, and then put them back on, and then take them off again…)

I have never embarked upon deliberate insomnia, but I am really looking forward to this. I mean, this way, at least it’s my choice. Hurray for false sense of control!

Hence, I would like to welcome you all to the official reprioritization of the writing part. It’s intended to be very ceremonial. Those of you who were at that certain party a few years ago know that I may end up smashing a bottle of champagne against my computer to welcome her back to the top of the list. Except that I don’t really do things like that anymore. (Although I do have a lot of champagne left over from New Years. So maybe I might.)

I will see you at 3 am. Set the alarm clock now.