Nuts and Bolts

2008-08-15T01:45:00.000-04:00

This blog seems to be a slowly progressing creature. Last time I wrote here, I was still 19 and under the impression that all my roommates are cool. Now I'm 20, about to start my junior year of college, and am both secretly and publicly grateful that my roomie from Connecticut will not be returning, as she was an incredibly disdainful and condescending person. We held a little celebration in our room when she moved the hell out, even if she did leave half her crap behind.

A lot of why this blog is nothing more than advertisement for journals is because I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to write. Probably not a good thing to not know before you start publishing entries, but whatever. I knew I didn't want this to dissolve into a bitch-fest about my life. As my friend Peter has told me, most writers who are young and lack scope tend to be confessional. This is not a selling point, however. According to him, they need to become well-read, he said, as we did lunch at Dojo's, him eating a Philly lamb steak sandwich, me nibbling on chicken tenders, before they can write truly well-crafted and skilled things. He was referring to our discussion on confessional poetry really, but it occurred to me that Why yes, being well-read is the key for all writing. So this blog will be literary in nature, if only to provide myself with a frame of reference, even if I still think the confessional school of poetry is valid.

How The Blog Will Work

Every blog will open with the note Reading Cluster. Then I will list all the books that pertain to the entry I'm writing that day, e.g. Reading Cluster: Under the Roofs of Paris by Henry Miller, Little Birds by Anaïs Nin. Then I will extrapolate for awhile. If it's poetry expect a lot of long winded discussion, and if it's in another language, I'll translate/provide the original. If it's a graphic novel, I'll try to provide scans of what I'm looking at. As I read different books, I will respond to them, whether as a strict review, analysis, relation to events happening in real life (whether my own social workings or the wider political and social set) or even emotional catharsis. Perhaps I won't completely shed my confessional roots, but after all, people read the scut we throw out the door. Tabloid or not, people have interests in human stories/scandals/calamities... Either way, I'm hoping that something comes from the scut we throw out the door, because I would like to hear your responses. Even if they're to tell me that I'm a crazy chick who totally missed the point of Lorca's Romance de la Luna, Luna because I think the ambiguity of which boy died in the poem is suspect. I like discussion. It forces me to think more about what I write and defend it, if necessary.

But for now, I go back off to my notebook, some XKCD, and to bed...
Happy journaling everyone.

That first post

2008-03-02T18:52:00.000-05:00

I am a journal addict.

I collect notebooks, ballpoint pens, fountain pens, nibs, ink, and other accoutrements of writing. I have many half finished notebooks, where I write rough drafts of poem or rant about whatever drama has recently entered my life. I probably have at least 11 of these things floating around, ranging from the marble composition books you get at the drug store to the hardcover black Moleskines to my elegant Leonardo's women journal with the snapped binding (this has made its way into one of my poems. It's a nice non sequitor, I think). If something happens to me, I feel bad for the poor schmuck who has to clean out my drawers and bookshelves and haul those books to M, the current boyfriend who will receive these things because nobody else should read the dirty bits of my life, least of all my parents. I always feel so eager to start something new, afresh. I like the clean sheets, and trying to see how long I can write something without having to cross out because I wrote an e instead of an a.

I guess I have gotten there electronically too. I started out with a dilapidated Xanga, then a second one because I didn't like the username (those are long defunct now). I also started a LiveJournal when I was 14 on the insistance of some of my friends, so they could keep tabs on me. I keep a running journal on my DeviantART page (yes, I have a DeviantART account for my writing. Yes, I know this probably means that I'm stuck with the label of "emo wrist-slasher"). I even tried blogging occasionally on MySpace. Now I suddenly want to move away from it all and start fresh again. I opened this blog awhile ago for a possible cartooning project I was going to work on (except I don't draw well), but now I'm feeling the urge to write again, something more coherent than the ramblings on my LiveJournal or my dA journal. I think I want to try blogging as a formal approach, as something to think about, and not as "OH EM GEE, MY LIFE IS SO INSAAAAANE."

So, what is there to know about me? I am 19 years old and I live in New York City. I will be 20 in three days. I go to New York University, where I study English Literature and English Education. I write, mostly poetry, occasionally essays and stories, and I'll wind up teaching one day because that is what writers do. I live in an dorm down in Chinatown with four other women, all very nice (I'm getting to that age where we are women now, and not girls). When I don't live there, I live in Queens with my family, all very...interesting. I prefer reading to television and I fall passionately in love with music. I like reading Neil Gaiman, Mina Loy, Denise Levertov, Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, and Marjane Satrapi. I like listening to Interpol, Dead Can Dance, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Dresden Dolls and Faith and the Muse among others. I compulsively read The Sandman and my favorite of the Endless is probably Delirium right now, although Death is pretty cool too. I am bisexual and polyamorous, which is just a fancy way of saying that I like boys and girls, and I date/love more than one person at a time with everyone's knowledge, although I'm only with one person now. I'm more for Obama than Clinton, and tend to have a liberal swing on politics. I prefer using literary analysis to channel emotional catharsis than actually rambling unless it's too much (my best work on some poems comes from when I'm in the depths of despair and doom, and I choose to interpret a piece from that). I am mildly insane, but in a good way if you like to think of it in that way. I like sushi and caramels (not together) and plum wine and mead are tasty. I also only dress in black, with boots and trenchcoats a lot. For convenience, I call myself a goth chick, but I'm probably not really goth.

And now I will put on my bowler hat and bid you all a good evening...
Happy journaling all.

And now for something completely different...

Nuts and Bolts

That first post