momebie

I'm calling this one Built Upon. I usually write (or steal from other projects I'm working on) a few lines to go with each of these, to give them atmosphere or context, but I don't have any words for this one. The whole world is the context at this point. The number of times in the last several months that I've cried while brushing my teeth in the morning is ridiculous. Democracy, sure.


[Click for 1280.]

I can't decide what the theme song for this post/year should be. It's somewhere between So Fresh, So Clean and The New Year. I'm open to suggestions!

You guys, I'm overfull. I've always been overfull. I don't sit still well. I don't clean up well. I don't organize well. I don't do anything adults should be capable of doing well, really. A few months ago I finally got so fed up with myself that I started going to therapy and now I kind of want to carry through on some of those meager gains by sort of cleaning myself up in the next year. Maybe getting a handle on some of these things will make me believe I'm not simply a thing that might happen to someone with drastic consequences! Maybe I'd believe myself worthy of adult relationships! Who knows!

( This is a list of things I'd like to clean up about my person, it's not required reading. )

Anyway, I'm feeling optimistic, as I often do before I give up and completely fail on something. I think I might want to look into a bullet journal, the format of which would help me track things on all these different fronts? Like, if I could have daily tick/info boxes for say budget, water drunk, exercise, flossing, writing, working out, and meditating? Or I guess not a real bullet journal. Bullet journals are overwhelming and stress me out. I don't think I have the spoons for maintaining a journal AND ticking boxes/inputting info. Maybe just get a pocket calendar and fill in slots every day?

Do any of you have experience with bullet journals or good day at a glance apps maybe? I need something easy and foolproof. I do not need to be distracted by washi tape because, as noted, I already own too many crafting supplies.

Help! I need an adult! Because really, all I want to do is turn myself into the best version of myself, and I'm currently so far from being that person that I'm overwhelmed by the thought of what it's going to take to be her. Pfah.

I did do a whole bunch of budget adulting things today, though. I took money from savings to pay off a credit card and opened a new checking account that I'm going direct deposit money into and then set up to autopay to the remaining credit cards. That way I know A) how much money is coming out for it each paycheck and I don't have to move things around or have the beginning of the month be so drastically front loaded spending wise, B) that they'll be paid on time and I won't be accruing late fees because I'm a ditz, and C) maybe I can forget about them like I did those loans the savings account was started for to begin with and one day I'll just wake up and wooo, they'll be paid off!

Wouldn't that be a miracle. This burst of adulting brought to you by me freaking out about how much money I'm going to have to put into my HSA every month to be able to afford therapy for the next year. My life sure is rivetting! Ugh, money has always been my #1 nemesis. How do people even?

It has been a month. HOW HAS IT BEEN A MONTH? I legit don't know how I got here. I suppose it was just one breath after another, but man, it feels like a lot of those are missing when I think back on them.


I have read a lot of poetry in that time. A LOT. Five books worth, give or take. And I've written some. I am never going to be an amazing poet, just like I'm never going to be an amazing novelist, but the more of it I write the more right it feels to be doing it and the more I feel I need to write. I don't know, there's just something about the act of writing poetry that makes me feel like I belong in a place or to a thing finally. It's helped me try to wrangle feelings I don't think I could do in prose.

For instance, when I was in Orlando I told theemdash that I take a lot of selfies because I'm still trying to get used to my face. Her response was a totally normal 'you've had that face a long time, dude, you should probably be used to it be by now' (paraphrased, obvs). And it's true. I have had this face a long time. I am old on the internet and in real life and you'd really think that in the last thirty-two years my mental image of myself would have lined up with the reflection I see every day. And yet, I am always vaguely shocked and disappointed by the facticity of my physical being. It's not even that I'm a fat kid. I mean, I AM a fat kid and I should really do something about that. I don't feel good about it or anything. But really it's to do with the shape of my face and the way all the bits of it are arranged. I romanticize them in my head and make them way more pleasing than they actually are.

And how do I manage expectation based on a distorted image of myself, or the feedback spiral downward that it causes. Like, I clearly lust above my station all of the time. How do I convince one of those people I'm worth dating if I don't think I am?

Also, some days I just look too much like my father for comfort, but that's a WHOLE OTHER truck of issues.

When I first moved to Boston I was telling one of the then roommates about how I want to be uploaded to a computer and they asked me if I was entirely disassociative. And I mean, no? I don't think I am. In my head the computer thing has nothing to do with my physical form being a hindrance and everything to do with time being a limited resource. I feel pretty good about being a lady and the things my body can do for me. I don't not feel at home in my body. I don't want to leave it behind. I just...want to tweak it a little so that it matches who I think I am. Though, real talk, there are a lot of things I wish I cold tweak about myself to match who I think I really am in moments of extreme hubris or whatever.

Anyway, it's a feeling I scratch at regularly, trying to understand it and I think I finally got a start on getting there.

Souls glare bright in the dim glow of living,
and easily fall prey to the glass
that would cleave them in two,
seeking out affinity in another shining surface
in vanity, letting it separate the stunning interior
from the gloaming shell,
which I think is why I never find myself
sitting in the beady eyes and pouch of a mouth
of my changeling self, as she stares
clinging covetous as mist to every mirror
and window, waiting for the invention
promised us by fiction of some
shimmering beam that might unite us again,
for the practical magic of a pure, smooth surface
to become a rippling pool she can reach through
and drown me in. I love her
more than I love myself,
for her patience and her desire.
How long has she been watching me?
My whole life, surely. Thirty-two years spent
waiting for discovery to catch up with desperation
while elsewhere we fling men into a space
just as vast as the millimeter that separates
the two halves of my whole when we reach
for one another, fingers against slick, cold skin.
How do I make myself worthy of this union?
If I had the opportunity I would swap out
every piece of myself. Rebuild the ship,
make me into something fine
and deserving of interest.
Would that upset the alchemy?
Would she know me anymore?
Would she come looking?
Finally crawl through the hard way, the shards
covered with thin, white web-like fury,
disillusioned dew glistening in the anemic yellow
bathroom light, the only evidence
there was ever any version of me at all.

So yeah, poetry. Cheaper than therapy! (I should really look into that too, though.)


And because we're already talking about poetry, here's a video Richard Siken made for his poem 'Why'. It made me laugh and it made me choke up a bit and it made me say 'yes' under my breath about a hundred times.

'Why', poem and video by Richard Siken w/ music by Marianne Dissard from Marianne Dissard on Vimeo.

HOTPANTS
HOTPANTS
HOTPANTS

Poetry is serious business, you guys.

I have, in rough estimate, written about 125,000 words this year. I'm going to end the year well short of my goal of 200,000 words and not having finished the one thing I wanted to have finished this year. That said, I don't think it's a failure.

I spent much of the first half of the year frozen and freaking out about a thing I shouldn't have been freaking out about. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be published, since I haven't heard back on it. That's not the reason I shouldn't have been freaking out about it. I shouldn't have been freaking out about it because it wasn't something to freak out about. And I think my freaking out is part of why it turned out the awkward way it did. I don't know why I get so caught up in my head about my writing and what other people want and what I think I can or can't do. I'd probably be a thousand times better off if I just ignored the rest of the world and wrote what made me happy. (Captain America cyberpunk-Last Unicorn AU, HERE I COME!)

ANYWAY. July happened. I had already moved and gotten the hard part of that out of the way. I finished and submitted that thing of which we will not speak. And I submitted a poem to a magazine call. That's really where the momentum took off. I got a rejection on the poem, but they also left a note listing three other publications to submit it to who they thought might take it, which is promising and probably part of why I've had the confidence to continue pursuing poetry, most fervently here at the end of the year. Out of three poems submitted to anything ever I've had two acceptances (one published online and one published in print) and one personal rejection. That's not terrible odds.

I still don't feel like I can call myself a poet, but I also don't feel embarrassed anymore to say that I write poetry. Progress all around, really. I'm currently getting help with a chapbook of queer fairy tale poems I'm going to submit to a contest in January. I still want to finish off the Sorry About the Robots chapbook and submit/publish that.

On the prose side it's been more about progress than completion, which I suppose is good in the long run, but it doesn't make me feel very accomplished. I had a breakthrough on Burst in the form of deciding to make it an all lady circus. I had a breakthrough on Dickhead Angels about the central conflict so that it's no longer just two dudes road tripping around the US ramping up sexual tension for no discernable reason. I wrote a fairy tale, which I should probably revisit to flesh out. I have had no breakthrough on Volunteer Vampires, which is what I told theemdash I'd send her a draft of by the end of the year. I am still going to try to rewrite the WWII AU in the BDESFN universe to send to by the end of the year so I don't owe her $50. (Because real talk, I do not have $50.) And I think a lot about Dupe City, so I want to try and get something under my feet on that one in the new year.

Which brings me to the public service announcement portion of my talk:


GetYourWordsOut: Year Seven!
Pledges & Requirements | GYWO.net

DO YOU ENJOY WRITING? DO YOU LIKE TRACKING WORD COUNTS AND BEING HELD ACCOUNTABLE? THEN getyourwordsout IS THE COMMUNITY FOR YOU. Going into its seventh year, the GYWO community is stronger than ever. We're trying out new things and getting people more involved. I'm running the community Tumblr. There are regular discussions and help posts and opportunities to share what you're working on. I can absolutely say that having the community around has helped me to get more done when I was feeling stuck. I highly recommend it to all you writerly types on my list, of which there are many.

So, all that said, it's time to think forward. I don't have a plan for the new year (though I'll work one out soon enough), but I do have a wish list of sorts. It looks like this.

• Complete Sorry About the Robots. Figure out if I can submit it or if I should self-pub it.
  
• Submit a poem for possible publication at least once a month.
  
• Complete a draft of Burst.
  
• Complete a draft of Volunteer Vampires.
  
• Make headway on Dupe City.
  
• Make headway on Dickhead Angels.
  
• Continue to think about the BDESFN and do absolutely nothing about it.
  
• Look at fairy tale and decide if it could be a YA novel.
  
• Continue to come up with ludicrous ideas for future stories.

I think I'll have my hands full in 2015 in the best possible way.

What about you? How have you done this year? What are your goals for the next? Will you be joining the fun at GYWO?

[Source.]


"Right," Jojo said. Her voice turned high as she mimicked Les's hopeful prods from earlier. "There's a fire! There must be people! They'll let us get warm!"

"When was the last time you saw a fire with no people?" Les asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. He wriggled his hands in the ropes, trying to pull them loose.

"Oh, I don't know, volcanoes! Lightning strikes in dry forests!" She was leaning against the board they were tied to, limp and accepting of their fate.

Les was feeling more hopeful, clearly. "The sky is clear and there are no volcanoes in these woods," he hissed.

"I bet you think there are also no fire sprites anywhere in the world, AND YET!"

"You're warm aren't you?"

The sprites danced around them, touching the piles of wood and moss clumped about the clearing. Jojo and Les craned their necks to watch them spark and flare. One of the creatures flew in close to Jojo's face and ghosted a hand over the contour of the air above her cheek. "I hope they eat you first. I hope you're delicious."

"Is that any way to speak to the man who's going to save you?" he said, finally snapping his hands free.

"Man?" She managed to look incredibly, powerfully contemptuous for someone tied to a burning pyre.

[Source.]

Her mother had warned her her whole life that the universe was cold and uncaring, but Meredith hadn't found it to be either. While most girls could only boast, doe eyed and frivolously giggly, of dancing all night under the stars, she had danced all night with them, engulfed. True, the universe hadn't said much, but it was incredibly warm, even the parts of it that were blacker than black where no fire burned.

It was silly, but she got the feeling that the universe was just lonely. She had assumed it was hard to be lonely when one was filled to the brim with people and places such as were collected in the books they'd made her read, but maybe mere companionship wasn't what the universe was looking for. Maybe it was looking for more. Something that could look after it while it looked after everyone else.

Even if there was a choice she would have let it take her. Once you look into the heart of a burning star nothing else feels heavy enough to hold you down.

[Source.]


Usually, they think he lost it in the war. He lets them keep the gruesome fantasies playing behind their well-meaning eyes, because it's not his place to take them. He's full up with his own anyway. In truth, he lost it when he was too young to fight for his country, but just old enough to start fighting for himself.

Jack and the twentieth century turned fourteen on the same day, a full six months before the war broke out abroad. The ground was hard, the lake was freezing, and man who raised him was trying in vain to claw his way back to the surface from where he'd fallen through the ice. It was the easiest thing in the world to hold him under. The cold even stopped cutting into this skin after a while.

When he finally ran for help, no one asked for questions about his limp, blue-tinged arm or how the crazy drunk had fallen through in the first place. They only wrapped him in blankets and put him to rest while the adults worked it out. They took his exhaustion for grief and in their willful ignorance taught him a lesson that would see him through into adulthood.

People who think themselves too important to look down, can trip over almost anything.

Today's poem is WEIRD. And not very poem-y. But you know, editing will happen in December. I'm not actually as enamored with this as I was with the others, but I'm putting it here because it's not only a response to today's Poetic Asides prompt, but also another square checked off my getyourwordsout setting table. So.

The prevailing theory,
said the tour guide
as it gestured with its pointer arm,
is that it was art that lead
to their downfall. All those years
with the ability to speak to anyone
and they couldn't come up with a single
way to see the world. It was all unclear,
right up until the end.

HEP7 looked at the paintings,
with his nostalgic, human-ish eye cameras.
I think you do them a disservice, he said.
Shuffled his flat, ungainly,
human-ish bases, and felt a very
un-machine-like tint flush through his coating
at the way the others in the group
all turned to look at him in accusation.

The whole room went silent. I think
we're losing something of nature, when we
discontinue the meaning of words like
romance, affliction, gestalt.
We needed to save this world from them,
but what good is it saved, if we merely
exist next to those things we curate?

The tour guide backed up, all-terain,
wide-tread feet, singing as they spun.
You misconstrue the purpose of these visits,
it said. Your education is to ensure,
we do not make their mistakes.

They thought that too,
HEP7 replied. A different vision made you
than made me. We're like these paintings.
We can't outrun their past.
They thought they were side-stepping
all the mistakes they'd made before,
opening up a whole new world
when they made us.

I don't know. I just like the idea of machines that fetishize the living as much as some of us fetishize machines. Bio-trans-machinists! Shut up, I'll make up any terms I want!

So, the Writer's Digest poetry blog, Poetic Asides, does Poem-A-Day challenges in April and November. I did not get very far in April and never caught back up, but I'm doing a good job so far with November. Six for six! I'd been planning on just churning out poems for Sorry About the Robots based on the prompts, but for the last several prompts I've been moved in other directions. My new plan is to write poems about robots when I can, and when I can't, to write queer fairy tale poems. Because if there's one thing this world needs more of, it's that. Clearly.

(Queer as in 'odd' and also queer as in 'gay'. I'm a regular in both boxes!)

Well, I like tonight's, so I'm reposting it here. I DO WHAT I WANT. Right now I want to write a hundred more like it, but we'll see how that goes.

Soon after giving up their child
the young parents moved to Niagra,
so that they could spend their lives
assessing other people’s faults.
And eating salads without feeling guilty.

Rapunzel knows this because sometimes
when the old woman who adopted her is drunk
on wine and years, she says things
that she’ll later regret. And also because,
the tower has wifi.

But maybe it’s for the best, that
in a world where even the roses are fickle,
she gets to keep the golden moments
she made up in her mind, and not have to
cast out any of the bad ones that naturally
build up when you spend to much time with people.

It’s not like it used to be, even the witch
agrees. Rapunzel’s had three boyfriends
and two girlfriends, and has never had to deal
with morning breath, or shaving, or sharing
the last slice of pizza. She owns a vibrator.

Life is good. Life is longing anyway,
if the one thousand and five movies viewed
with her Netflix account is any indication.
Just last week she learned she had a sister:
who’s on a swim team, who listens to Taylor Swift,
who also loves Sailor Moon. Who keeps her hair short.

Rapunzel knows it’s a betrayal, but
she can’t keep herself from befriending the girl
and talking to her on twitter. She types the words
I’m your sister and deletes them again over
and over. It’s a betrayal, but the thrumming,
warm box under her fingers is so inviting.

The night Damon Salvatore is locked in
purgatory, is the night she hits send. It’s
a moment of weakness she’ll pay for, but
there’s nothing that can be done now.
She needs to share with someone
who will understand, and even from her tower,
the sunsets are beautiful.

And then her sister comes and saves her and they drive down Route 66 visiting all the tourist traps and telling each other stories. LIFE GOALS, TBH.

The one from last night was also fairy tale influenced, but weirder and darker. Someone on the Poetic Asides blog commented to say they like it when poets 'have thoughts that are different.' I uh, I don't know what means, since I'm pretty sure we've been making up fairy tales since before cave art. I guess they're probably just noting the difference between emotional poetry and poetry with a fictional narrative, but those two things overlap for me so it feels weird and redundant to have it pointed out. Reminds me of the LJ Idol debates over biographical journal type entries versus fictional narrative entries.

I still maintain that you learn more about me from my fiction than you do from my life, but what that means in the light of this one I don't know.

[Source.]

Rene hadn't even had them back a day. They'd barely settled into his atrophied supracoracoideus muscles and the smooth skin that hadn't born the scabs of loss for at least twenty years, before the lightning stripped them away. He'd done it without thinking, placing himself between her and the fury, and he'd do it again. What was the point of being on this journey if he wasn't going to save people that needed saving?

He perched on the stool as she treated his burns. "If you hadn't saved me, I wouldn't be here to help," she said lightly.

Rene smiled and patted her hand, slick with warming ointment. Out of the corner of his eye he could see David, skulking in the corner, angry. Shoulders hunched up around his bowed face, he spoke directly into his crossed arms and Rene almost didn't catch the words.

"If he hadn't saved you we wouldn't need your help," David spat.