It was the strangest thing . . . I've been having trouble writing my "teaching philosophy" all week. It wasn't until this evening, when my family all plopped on the floor of the living room all around me and started playing Rock Band on the PlayStation - full volume, shaking the windows - that I was able to focus and write something feasible. I think I worked better amidst the chaos. Maybe this is what I need to focus: Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ozzie, Blue Oyster Cult, STP AND off-key singing (sorry Matt) and the hypnotic tapping of drum sticks on plastic pads. There was also a needy dog nuzzling my feet and pawing at my keyboard. I have an awesome talent for zoning out all that is around me (I think the gift comes from my Dad - my sister is even better at it than me; Mom just goes crazy, likes her silence), but FIRST, apparently, there MUST BE something around me to zone out. It's like having to have the television on to fall asleep. This could be a problem once the teenie-weenies are out of the house. My four year old is not exactly loud and she entertains herself easily. Matt's a quiet man. How can I be expected to write in complete silence, minus the chaos??? There was NEVER a time when I have functioned creatively without the chaos behind me, without the sporadic interruptions and disruptions. My god, I will have to completely re-train myself . . . after all of these years . . . eighteen long years . . .

TODAY WAS my son's 18th birthday. We took him out for Taco Bell. That was the extent of it. Tonight, the girls did make their brother an instant cheesecake (while I was working). They put a package of frozen berries on top, and then served us upside down, mushy blobs of clabbored looking cheescake pudding stuff laced with blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries, crusted with wet graham cracker crust, and oozing the purplest of purple juice. Ashleigh named it "Toss Up Pie." I wish I had a picture, but it's all gone. It tasted alright. Tomorrow, my boy (man?) has to attend the wedding of his girlfriend's big brother. We found Matt's old three piece suit for him to wear (I swear to God Matt was once THAT skinny). I wish my son wasn't still missing his one front tooth, but luckily his girlfriend's father is a farmer who's lovingly accepted him regardless. From the bride's family, he may gain a few sneers. Albeit good or bad, I know my son doesn't much care. He would be happier in blue jeans and boots. He'll likely ruin the suit. Sunday, we'll have a Birthday "Brunch" celebration for him at Mamaw Great's - biscuits and gravy, hash brown casserole, egg casserole, orange juice. We only have to bring the Monkey Bread and the 18 year old monkey. ;)

Thanksgiving was appropriate. Several distant family members that we barely know were crammed into Mamaw Great's tiny kitchen as usual. Most were sweet, but there were a few who only offered half-smiles (not happy or semi-hopeful half smiles, but those little primpy smiles, those "oh it's you" smiles). Uncle Bud, in in his befuddled state of Alzeimers, said the prayer again, hummed while he chewed his turkey, and then sat on the back porch staring at the wall-hangings while the other men sat in the den, watching the worst-ever turkey-day football game. Bud seemed happy. Mamaw Great worked her ass off. We were given lots of left-over turkey for a pot of egg noodles tomorrow.

The tales of murderous tramplings at the new Wal-mart in New York this morning and the gunshots in the Toys-R-Us stores made me happy to be moneyless. The sales mean nothing when Black Friday falls between paychecks. Not that I have ever gone out on Black Friday. The materialism of the pending holiday reminds me of my first marriage. It makes my head ache. It makes me wish I lived on a mini island. I don't even want to put the tree up (and this year, I have a new one yet to be pulled out of the box - bought it on clearance last year). The man working the register at the Taco Bell told me all about his long tiresome day, and, as I watched him bag up the trash (a Volcano Taco in my mouth), I slumped and regretted putting my application in for seasonal work at Blockbusters.

Up, up, and up, Dr. Wefel and his colleagues at the frozen McMurdo Station sent a sheer white balloon, dangling from it, a cosmic ray detector. I read in The New York Times yesterday that Wefel and his buds have received mysterious “whispers” from “dark matter” just above (below?) the Arctic circle. These “whispers,” the scientists say, may be emitting back from a pulsar star (there is a heated paper war ensuing around the possibilities as I type and revise. It will still be there tomorrow.). A pulsar star just next door – just a hop, skip, and a jump – hiding in the shadows. Then we think, there must be whole galaxies within the shadows. The readings from the balloon were paired with the readings from a multinational satellite so lovingly named Pamela (after some forlorn scientist’s lover?). All Einsteinian and relative and bendable. I’m not sure what it all means exactly. It made me think of a horror movie I saw once back in high school about monsters that existed in alternate dimensions; if only our pituitary glands were large enough, we would see them. In the movie, one scientist goes mad in his quest to discover the alternative until, finally, his pituitary gland burst out of the center of his forehead all blood and snot like the baby on Alien (and then didn’t he grow extra arms or some shit? I can’t remember); it didn't end happily. Still, it IS the stuff chimeras walk out of. The Darkside. Not a “force” in the genes of the Skywalkers like in Star Wars. A place to visit. Regardless, the findings are further confirmation to the fact that there is no such thing as linear time and space. Relativity. Size is infinite. There exist layers. If nothing else, there exists something in the nothingness. A pulsar star even, i.e. “the magnetized spinning remnant of a supernova explosion” (quoting the article). Strange or not so strange.

When I read this odd story, I was affected by the concepts, and I grounded them because that’s all I can do, here and now:

There is no such thing as linearity (chronology is human survival strategy, sense-making, like the common God maybe);

There exist layers in time and space;

What of deja vu . . . these neurological tremors . . . brain sense or nonsense?;

The remnants of a supernova explosion spin in the darkness with irrefutable force and we catch its breeze and name it "a whisper";

The image of a half-inflated, white balloon drifting and bellowing, catching cosmic rays and turning them into numbers, with a mad green sun blazing and storming behind it, snow-pushing bulldozers and geniuses in parkas and gloves spinning below it, eyes up.

I think I can apply all of this to my proposal. At least conceptually.


Overbye, Dennis. “A Whisper, Perhaps, from the Universe’s Darkside.” The New York Times. 25 November 2008.

I need to write a proposal for my Creative Writing thesis. I am already behind on it. I have sat here in my robe, surrounded by the beeps of video games and the whimpers of bored teenagers, sorting through electronic files for the last two hours. Meanwhile, the sun in shining. I made cheesy omelets for breakfast again. I have two pork roasts de-thawing on the countertop (in plastic). Janie and Jerry, our farmer friends, gave them to us, and seeing as our freezer is empty, I took them. They said they bought boxes of roasts and steaks from a traveling salesman. Jerry bragged of jimmying him down on the price (I couldn't tell him that traveling meat salesmen - with their trucks for freezers - work just like used car shysters). We stayed at their farm house last night until 2AM, letting the kids watch movies together, watching Janie down her Miller Lites at the kitchen table, smoking, trading jokes and talking about parenting ("Kids shouldn't be cussin' their parents," Jerry said like it was profound philosophy. He was tired, but his new kidney is functioning well. They say they'll be removing his other polycystic kidney in procedures not unlike an abortion - a small tube will be inserted into his swollen belly button [his "french tickler" ha ha], then they'll "whip it up" and vacuum out the empty cavity. Jerry joked, "We'll serve slushies." Janie gagged a little and told him to shut the fuck up.). Janie is worried about finding a dress for her son's upcoming wedding on Saturday; she paid some lady to make her one with a sweetheart neckline and the lady fudged it. Janie said her sleeves weren't even even. She's cried about it, mostly because she really wants to look just as good as her son's other mothers.

My proposal has to be something all-encompassing, doesn't it? I've roped the nonfiction prof into being my thesis advisor because I know that there is something worthy in my "true" stories. But I'm not sure if I have enough nonfiction - at least not enough for a rough draft of eighty pages due mid-January . . . unless I probe into the depths of this blog maybe. Then there rises the question of "FOCUS." What a big question. There is none here.

There is:
The Past - I can go way back. I pulled up old aesthetic statements in which I refer to myself as "smalltown," and I've decided that I don't want to leash myself to such a claim anymore. I read the word "smalltown" and my upper lip sneered (automatically - I couldn't control it). The Past has so many sections. So many flash pieces. So many potentially epic novels. Sometimes the Past is all there is, and I want to asphyxiate it, kicking and screaming, or simply lock the door and slit its wrists and let it bleed out slowly in the bathtub - leaving one pale carcass limp in water not unlike cheap port wine (and let the water be book maybe? bottle and share it?). I know that sounds awful.

The Now - Here's what shows up on this blog. And I'm not sure what the story line is. The tricky thing here is that I usually only write when I'm feeling dumpy. This bloggish image of myself is as sounds. Bloggish. Blah. The other trick here is sorting and editing. Sorting and editing. My biggest issue of now: Graduating. The thought of finding a job outside of a college - working for a marketing firm or some shit - makes my eyes tear up. The thought of hanging on to take more half-interesting classes, gaining a PhD while we get farther and farther behind on the bills and the loans continue to stack up, makes me queezy. I've been thinking such things all weekend. This morning I paid the utilities - wrote out checks and licked envelopes and stuck an evil-eyed Betty Davis stamp on each one. I almost mailed them all, but decided I'd better hold on to a few (the ones that aren't quite as late as the others) because this week I've been placed in charge of desserts for Thanksgiving. It's been years since I've bought a can of pumpkin.

The Future - By this I simply mean: the things I see coming. How both the Past and the Now are morphing and changing everything as I sit. How I'm watching and preparing myself for the "empty nest." Sometimes depressed. Sometimes giddy.

Who Is Me - a question I guess. Not sure why anyone in their right fucking mind would ever want to read such a thing.

What I Know - an even harder question to answer. I guess there are a few patterns. But all resolutions are diluted. All plot archs are wavy lines - more like pond ripples errupting from a spot of dropped goose shit. Now what kind of proposal does that make? Without some divine source of wordly knowledge, what kind of a writer do I make? And there are due dates to meet, a timeline to chisel. And there is the "voice" issue. And the voices are saying nothing, not even whispers. And there are rules to follow . . .

Tonight, I took my daughter and one of her friends to an old school house in the middle of nowhere - The Fall Creek House on 200 East. It was almost lost in the dark and the fog. Several high school garage bands had leased out the old gymnasium and then charged a five dollar cover. They had hung gray curtains over the tall gymnasium windows. I peeked in, looked around. So very Nirvana. Almost Nightmare on Elm Street. But, no alcohol. No smell of pot. Kids with wild hair pressed over their eyes were spitting into the microphones: check, check, check. I ordered the girls to stay together. I told them they could only leave the building if the walls started bleeding. My daughter called me at 10PM to pick her up early because she was bored. I'm trying not to be disappointed.

Tonight, I grounded my seventeen year old for being as asshole. In two weeks, he'll be eighteen, and he'll try telling me I can't ground him. Can I? He might not even think such things. I know I'll be finding cigarettes - Marlboro Reds I bet.

Today, I decided I did not want a PhD and then I went searching for help (sending e-mails). I haven't found it yet. Maybe a little. Maybe I'm reclaiming myself "the creator" and willing and able to throw "the researcher" off of the top of some gold-plated temple naked and screaming. I am angry that, with all of this schooling, my best chances are a job in which I will not earn as much as what I would be earning if I had finished that two year degree to be a Graphic Designer back at Vincennes' community college in '93. When I was living in that little blue rental, on every form of assistance, two blocks from campus. With two babies. I am attempting to funnel the anger it into something creative. I never wanted to be rich anyway. Obviously.

Yesterday, my dog got hit by a Dodge Neon going 45 mph, and he lived. All he lost was a claw on his back foot and a little of his raw courage. He's not even limping. Probably bruised. We've been watching him closely. The car spun him around. He wasn't supposed to be out of the house, but, here, accidents happen. His hyperactivity and speed was his salvation. This was my salvation also; X-Rays at a vet's office would've mutilated all hopes of a Christmas. Stupid Christmas.

Tomorrow is my anniversary. One beautiful friend for six years. We married in the Madison county court house on a whim after dating for a little over a year. I wore a black skirt and had a handful of wild flowers.

What Mary Oliver learned in her early years:
"First . . . one can rise early in the morning and have time to write (or, even, to take a walk and then write) before the world's work schedule begins. And . . . one can live simply and honorably on just about enough money to keep a chicken alive. And do so cheerfully." (from A Poetry Handbook, p. 120)

I interject.
Early to rise means early to bed.
Early to bed means leaving much unfinished.
To rise early only means the work schedule starts sooner.
Sleep disorders lead to unrelenting dreams that let you drift through alarm clock warnings.
Some teenagers are early risers, and they steal your writing devices to check their MySpace and play music videos.
Four-year-olds have alot to do in the mornings that requires your undivided attention (like sitting on the potty).
Forty minute commutes mean out the door early early.
The dog will always hear you wake, find you, and whimper for his freedom as you make coffee.
The dishes and laundry are always whispering threats.
To-Do lists find you easily, first thing (as you've planned it). Inspiration killers.
To walk would mean leaving the house unattended and questions and requests neglected.
To walk would mean that you'd have to take the dog, and he's hyperactive.
To walk before the sun's up would mean you'd need to carry a flashlight and an effective protective device and a cell phone because you've been convinced that you're vulnerable.
To walk would mean that you'd probably have a teenager who wants to follow you and ask questions about love (and you could not bring yourself deny her).
To walk would mean coming home with possible ideas only to have them dissolved by distractions, things that didn't get done or fights between siblings that occurred while you were missing.
Sometimes, you have to live on just enough money to keep several chickens alive.
"Enough to feed a chicken" means applying for free lunches and accepting handouts when they're given.
The chickens cluck and peck, always in your vicinity. You let them pull you away from writing and leave you less than cheerful.
The Pen is often unruly and asks more and more of you because you've been elsewhere, in words and stories and visions, in mind if not in body. It's a vicious cycle you've slipped yourself in to. You're no rooster.
Chickens can't fly, and we're not tall enough to lift the hooklatch on the gate.


Can I, Mary? Maybe someday.

So what you'll see here is a rambling un-edited entry of thoughts before I finally make myself close the lid on this stupid laptop and go to bed. Matt's upstairs now, putting away clothes and probably grumbling because I didn't follow him up to help.

What has been cool about this weekend:

I got to talk with my lost lost favorite cousins: Jeff and Jerry. They have a cover band that plays cover songs at local bars in Martin County. Jerry does the drums and Jeff is lead singer. I think their little buddy Ricky plays a guitar. I've known them all since way back when, back when we were all dirty little hooligans running along the banks of the White River . . . or piled into the back of Mom's red Ranchero (Confederate flag sticker over the back window) summer after summer. Those were the good ole' days. I'll never forget that day we climbed the fire tower in Pike County to throw our shoes off once we reached the top, and little Jerry decided to throw off his socks. The wind caught the dingey things and they got stuck in a tree. My bad ass aunt, his mom, climbed the tree like she was fourteen, grabbed them, and then beat the shit out of him. Jerry called from his anniversary party at the Eagles in Shoals. It was Halloween Night and he and his wife had renewed their vows for their ten year anniversary. He was dressed as the greaser Johnny and his wifey was Sandra Dee. Jerry says he drives a semi now and his runs bring him up by here all the time. When I told him I lived in P-town, he knew exactly where I was talking about. Jeff, the older of the two, was Michael Myers from the Halloween movies, which was disappointing. When we were growing up he made such a good Jason (overalls, chubby, paper mache hockey mask all bloody), but, either way, I'm sure he had a machete. They invited us down to watch them play on New Years Eve. By golly, I'm doing it if it kills me. Jerry told me we could all sleep on his livingroom floor, even the puppy. Perfect.

Trick or Treating was absolutely lovely. Some witch must've called up a fabulous weather spell. I had a little dark toddler fairy who whined the whole time for us to carry her. She was, however, very brave when it came to getting candy. The teenagers (we piled seven in the car, no shit) all went on their way once we got into town. The best costume award definitely would've went to my daughter and her best friend (if they had had a contest), dressed as bride and groom who had slit each other's throats. I got to do their make-up. They were dead and pale and green. They found the bridal gown at a Goodwill. Perfect.

My mother still thinks I'm mad at her. I haven't called since I dodged her during our last trip down there. I was thinking about her this evening, thinking about how she lives alone but still locks her freezer, thinking about the toilet in her bathroom is sunken like it's ready to fall through the floor, wondering if she ever called my Dad to re-light the pilot light in her heater. Thinking: God, I'm such a horrible daughter. Mom is the subject I've been avoiding in my writing.

Reading Jim Harrison as fast as I can, but still barely getting through it.

Working on a new design for the English Department's website homepage.

Trying to promote CEllA and feeling like I just don't have the time.

I have done a lot today, but then I barely got up off my ass. Matt has done as many as twenty-five loads of laundry AND he figured out what he was doing wrong with his moon readings.

For now, I should just sleep. These days are making think that I need not be EVER doing so much in one week for the rest of my life. I want to go for a walk. I want to clean my bathrooms and rake the junk out from under my sofa. I want to go see a movie. My ass is throbbing. At least I gained an hour.