Ughuanas

theoretical pigeon poems

2012-02-27T20:31:00.000-06:00

I’m working on an ebook(???) tentatively titled Pigeon Poemsbecause I’m really interested in pigeons, conceptually. It won’t be anything really fancy, just somethings together in one place that I’ll have done by mid-march(???) They are not serious intellectual wordplaythings that I “usually” write or the kind of writing that I do that I end upliking. They will be the kind of writingthat I end up hating/think is “shitty”/feels unedited etc. But for some reason they have maybe anendearing quality like pigeons? (I mean,I like pigeons, so.) That’s the goal atleast. Artisticexploration/bullshit. Here are fourpigeon poems that may or may not be included in Pigeon Poems. They suck.

I need to get to the root

interjection I need to stop using gross phrases like that ew

root/rewt

of why I suck at interacting with people

I don’t think I know how conversations work

I think of ways to cancel plans as soon as I make them

I pretend this makes me interesting

had an epiphany watching the oscars

feeling so suburban

judging fashion, wearing sweatpants

lurking ontd:

bret mckenzie is figwit

I can’t

3/Sports Bras.

what even is this

how am I supposed to work out in this

you are just gently cradling my boobs

what else can I do in you except lounge and sleep

you lied

I feel so impotent

like the great penis of my life can’t even remember virility

I am ejaculating shitty writing

my motivation is an erection lost before I can put on acondom/do work

this is so phallocentric

I had a thing for a boy in college that reached its climaxwhen he exclaimed in class “oh come on, that’s so phallocentric!” in reactionto a professor’s analysis of plot

he probably has really awesome feminist sex

“great penis of my life”

what was that

2/23/12

2012-02-23T18:59:00.000-06:00

went to subway after work.

normally I don’t like going places where I have to make abunch of decisions about what to put on my sandwich.

also the workers might judge my sandwich.

but I have a giftcard, so.

I was the only customer in the subway.

ordered my sandwich with no major problems.

the worker started asking me about my day because he’sfriendly or required to make small talk to customers or something.

it was kind of awkward when he was toasting my sandwich andhad nothing else to do except wait for my sandwich to be done toasting.

I think we exchanged a few words about the weather.

mostly he said things and I nodded.

I picked out toppings randomly because I was too focused ontrying not to say anything too stupid in this conversation because if I saidsomething really stupid I’d still have to stand there and wait for him to wrapup my sandwich and then pay before I could leave.

that is a long time to feel awkward.

when it's time to pay I hand over my giftcard and he leans in and says, “so is ityou who smells like cocoa butter”

I mean. I am the onlyother person in this subway.

who else could possibly be smelling “like cocoa butter”

he handed me back my giftcard and just stood there smiling,waiting for an answer or something. Ididn’t know what else to do so I said “yup, that would be me!” and hurried outthe door.

moral of the story: Ithink maybe the next time I want to use the hand lotion from work I should makesure I’m not going anywhere like subway first.

writing from apathy

2012-02-20T20:06:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I find myself lacking in genuine emotion forthings that should elicit emotional responses. it’s like that episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (I know) where the students of Westbridge Highall go to Disney World, and Libby &co. are standing around lookingnonchalant as fuck and Sabrina says something like, “what is it with coolpeople and not getting excited about anything?” And that’s me, except I’m not actually cool. And there are a few things I get excited about, likebirthday cake oreos. Wonder if they arevegan like regular oreos.

Sometimes when I’m talking to “happy” people I see theirwords coming out lIkE tHiS, fUlL oF eNtHuSiAsM. Thinking like that makes me hate people more and I should probably stop.

I think itunes is forcing some kind of musical interventionon me.

(Actually something is probably broken but it is more fun toanthropomorphize itunes, obviously)

itunes is only syncing bands that start with “a” or “b” butnot even all bands that start with “a” or “b” to my ipod. As a result, I’ve been listening to almostnothing but the All American Rejects and Bright Eyes for the past twoweeks. I’d really rather not feel like I’m14 again but I am also too lazy to fix it.

Defective itunes syncing as metaphor for life.

I like saying that generally inconsequential things aremetaphors for life.

At work I try to think of things to blog about but I can onlything of dog related topics and

via altlitmemes

Rejected blog post dog topics:

-acceptable names for suburban dogs (rejected because listonly consisted of “cooper” and “lola”)

-reasons labra/golden doodles suck (rejected because ofdesire to not offend people with labra/golden doodles)

-thoughts trooper the labradoodle had during his bath thismorning (rejected because list of thoughts consisted of long chain of bulletpoints with nothing after them)

-comparisons between plato the goldendoodle in a bathtub and“the cave” metaphor from The Republic (rejected because it makes me depressedabout my liberal arts education)

I think that writing from apathy should be “characterbuilding.”

Skeptical of sense of accomplishment following clicking “publish”for this blog post.

~~Foal~~ Goal for the near future: submit actual writing to actual onlinejournals.

I don’t know what’s stopping me. That’s kind of a lie, I’m afraid of a lot ofthings related to submitting work and that’s what’s stopping me. (List of irrational fears as potentialhumorous blog post.)

I think “foal for the near future” sounds really optimistic.

fake poem

2012-02-12T18:45:00.001-06:00

haven’t actually posted any Creative Work here

even though you could argue blog posts (blag, bleg) are creative works

and they are actually

internet culture, etc.

but I’m not evolved enough I guess to not see a differencesometimes

so this is a combination.

I’m really into meaningful line breaks

If you want me to like a poem, use meaningful line breaks

I went through a phase where all Creative Works I wrote had linesfour words long at most

sometimes I broke a line in the middle of a word because Ithink I’m a douchebag(?)

none of these

are meaningful

linebrea

right now I am

definitely

being

a douchebag.

maybe that is being a writer

you have to be a douchebag.

pseudonyms, personas, anonymity, etc.

2012-02-09T20:43:00.000-06:00

I’ve been thinking a little bit about the pseudonym,specifically in relation to women writers, even more specifically I guess inthe alt lit community. Everyone hasalready said something about Marie Calloway and their feelings on her use of apseudonym, etc. but she’s not the only one, yeah? And obviously guys write under assumed namestoo, but Frank Hinton, xTx, Gabby Gabby? Are pseudonyms more of a female thing? I was wondering. I mean, I’musing a pseudonym too, but other than “my real last name is boring” and “I’dprefer if my parents didn’t find this if they google me” I didn’t put muchthought into why, specifically.

There’s the basic attraction, as Roxane Gay describes here(that then discusses MC and “Adrien Brody” specifically but we don’t need torehash that)

“And there’s the pseudonym. Writing pseudonymously isseductive. You can say whatever you want without consequence because no oneknows who you really are. That freedom makes it easy to be daring, to writeopenly or even transgressively. Some of my favorite writers do sopseudonymously.” (source)

And yeah, ok I agree with that. But there’s also this element of “persona”. Alter-ego, whatever. I’m not saying everyone that writes with apseudonym is doing Bowie/Ziggy or Gaga/Stefani stuff here. But we can’t dismiss the pseudonym use ofwomen in alt lit like anon hate on tumblr either.

Gabby Gabby said this about her use of a pseudonym:

“I was once told that it was important to ‘activelycultivate a mystique’ and so I took that to heart. That’s why I don’t writeunder my full name. Someone actually asked me on twitter the other day if myfirst and last names were really both Gabby haha. I think it’s really importantnot only to put out content that I’m passionate about but I also really wantpeople to read that content. So, with that in mind, I try to cultivate thisexperience around my poetry and writing to really get people excited about it.” (source)

And I think a lot of people can identify with that. Ok, at least I can. I like “mystique” because it’s not implying aseparation between writer and pseudonym; that’s what the whole “anonymous” thingwould be about. The “mystique” of thepseudonym qualifies the writer; itdoesn’t separate.

I also found this relevant:

“I think there’s a whole otherrevolution of l’écriture feminine happening on the Internet—I know that seemshyperbolic, but I really do believe it. The blog is such a fascinating,confessional, diaristic, form, that has something in common with the notebookform, Camus’ notebooks or Elizabeth Hardwick’s fictional notebook SleeplessNights, or Montaigne’s longform essays. I’m thinking less of Marie Calloway andmore the notebooking you do, or the subsubculture of writers who keep personalliterary blogs that comment often on my own blog, Bhanu Kapil or Jennifer Loweor Suzanne Scanlon. I think there is something particularly feminine about thisform—also that we can publish ourselves, and that it’s uncensored except whatwe choose to censor, that we can be pseudonymous or develop different literarypersonas. This sort of blogging is part process, part performance art. And Iwould connect it in a lineage to girls writing in their Tumblrs, and beforethat Livejournals.” (I found this on tumblr)

I will forever think my “friendsonly” livejournal entries are far more interesting than any of my public entries. Eventually, I’d like to bring some of that “quality”to this blog, and I’ll be able to do that in part because of anonymity, in partbecause of this persona thingy I’m working on. I had another really awesome quotation saved in my “likes” on tumblr andnow it’s GONE and that’s really upsetting because it compared the confessionalwriting that women are kind of owning right now with men owning the obsceneback in the day. I think it alsomentioned (lamented?) when girls become older and put all of these confessionalthings in “friends only” entries, because this kind of writing isn’t “allowed”to be public, or something. And if itwasn’t in that quotation then it was in another saved “like” from tumblr thatis also GONE and I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY POSTS ARE DISAPPEARING. Anyway. Basically, women bringing this kind of confessional writing back intothe open is kind of a self-aware naiveté (oh look it’s my bff metamodernism)and that is a really cool thing. I don’thave a neat way of tying this all together right now, (sorry) but I feel likethis is a topic I’ll return to at some point. Also if anyone knows what missing quotation(s) I’m talking about from myextremely vague descriptions, could you let me know? It would be appreciated.

during self-isolation

2012-02-06T19:58:00.001-06:00

I’m about 20 pages into “The Marriage Plot” and it isalready hitting a bit too close to home.

this will be fun.

this will be fun in a similar way to how re-watching wolf’srain would be fun.

I would probably cry and throw things and regret things.

actually I hated wolf’s rain and I only watched it becausemy friends wanted to.

so I don’t know why I have this impulse.

actually reading “The Marriage Plot” is weird because I feellike I’ve been reading so much “experimental” fiction recently and now I readthis and it’s like, oh yeah, people do still write things with cohesion andplots and try to make it pretty. andmaybe that’s not “intellectual” but it does make me feel less bad about thenovel I’m “working on.” sometimes Ithink that I’m being hypocritical by writing things that are “experimental” andother things that “make sense” but then there’s metamodernism, so I guess everythingis ok again. I think that it has been,and is still really difficult for people (including myself) to let go ofpostmodernism because it’s such an easy thing to embrace or embrace spitefully.

impulses resisted today:

-re-watching wolf’s rain

-spamming my tumblr with illustrated vulvas

-ordering this sweater for my cat

impulses I gave into:

-eating an extra clif bar

at work I had one of those ‘witnessing internalized misogynyand doing nothing’ moments. one of myfemale coworkers was all, if girls “have their boobies out” they’re “asking forit,” “have no right to complain,” etc. I work at kind of a small place, it’sjust the boss and six employees including myself so I felt like I couldn’t callher out on it because I work thereand I don’t want to make it any more unpleasant than it already is. it’s problematic that while I find sexism “uncomfortable”to say the least, it’s more uncomfortable for me to say something about it andcause some sort of conflict. so mycoworker was just standing there slut shaming and all I did was twist my moutha bit and glance at my feet. I have aneasier time calling out men (men I know, at least) on sexism than I dowomen. is that common?

I don’t really like my job but I’m not enough of a “go-getter”to find a better job.

(asking for references, interviews, etc)

also, I don’t really have any skills.

sometimes I read the word supplemental as supple mental

2012-02-02T22:19:00.000-06:00

I know this dog

who pees every time a stranger says his name

it’s something like Luke Duke or Casey

a standard name for a suburban dog

I don’t remember exactly because obviously the name isn’tsaid much

and it’s better that I don’t know because I’d probably slipand say hi luke all the time and have to clean up pee on the regular like Sisyphus

I’m having this thing with Sisyphus right now

but I thought what if humans did that

like you got so excited over someone giving you attention

that you pee yourself

how long would it take for you to get used to a new personsaying your name

I mean how would youmeet people

hi I’m Tara but you can’t say my name because I’m not usedto you yet and I’ll pee everywhere

I would make so many friends

I guess you could be mysterious and not tell people your name

but that would get frustrating

what if you started a relationship with someone andeventually you got used to them saying your name

would it be omg you didn’t pee this solidifies ourrelationship/trust/etc

or omg you didn’t pee I don’t excite you anymore you’rebored with this relationship

I mean I don’t handle attention too well as it is

I probably metaphorically pee myself every time I meetsomeone new anyway

Iguana Essay #1

2012-01-31T00:32:00.000-06:00

I was sick this weekend and started thinking about iguanasagain. (I work for a dog groomer.

I think I get sick when sick people have dogs and touch them

and then I touch their dogs.)

About two years ago I found a lot of iguanas in literature.

I couldn’t tell you what all of these works were (and I’vebegun to doubt my memory) but to me they were everywhere. I didn’t understand this obsession certain authors(spanning decades) had with iguanas. Ihad never found iguanas particularly inspiring, or more accurately, I had neverconsidered the iguana.

I’m a cat person, honestly.

In a poetry workshop at school, we read a poem (intranslation) by Dolores Dorantes that begins “Lacteal iguana/in Lou’s cloister.”An iguana in a classroomsetting.

After class I asked my professor why there were so manyiguanas in poetry. I guess I assumedthere was some big historical event I was unaware of involving iguanas, orlike, one famous author had famously written about iguanas and everyone elsewas doing so as an ~homage. My professortold me she hadn’t noticed an overabundance of iguanas.

I think maybe she looked at me with a “neutral facialexpression.” I cannot give or receive neutralfacial expressions without thinking “neutral facial expression” anymore. Actually I think I’m lying.

I was confused, and I thought about iguanas a lot.

I started to have dreams about iguanas. I woke up in the middle of the night becauseI thought two iguanas were pounding on the door of my dorm room. (I was mistaken; there were no iguanas.)

I thought, “this is getting out of hand. It is not healthy to think this much aboutiguanas.” So I wrote a poem called “Iguanas”thinking that if I wrote about them, I’d be “cured” or something. It’s the most popular poem I’ve everwritten. (Small scale. Popular among creative writers at my collegeand a few poetically inclined townies.) It’snot even “about” iguanas, arguably. Just“iguanas” in the abstract. I didn’t feelthe need to write about iguanas again for a few months.

I need to stop starting almost every section with “I.” I think that makes me a bad writer, or atleast self-centered. Both of those areat least sometimes true.

But sometimes I’d be writing and I’d think “you know whatwould be great here? A LINE ABOUTIGUANAS.” I was worried about poetictics though, so I’d edit them out. (Ialso didn’t want it to look like I kept writing about iguanas because it was sosuccessful the first time.)

I believe that sometimes writers have to purge themselves ofwriting just to get to anything of quality.

Lady Gaga also describes her creative process as “vomiting.” She says “you have to honor your vomit.” (Source.) I wrote my senior thesisy thing on Lady Gaga’s creativity in ametamodern culture because I went to a liberal arts school.

I think that “iguanas” build up in my body and I have to getrid of them (through writing, etc. this post is not a post about self harmor eating disorders, but I think you could argue that writing or being a writeris already kind of a self destructive thing, so. The iguanas are mostly benign. I just don’t want to be fat with them. It’s unfortunate that actual iguanas probablyaren’t cuddly. I think iguanas reallythrive on a variety of interpretations.)

As I purge my iguanas I’ll keep them here and call themessays.

thoughts on the necessity of "sexiness" for women writers

2012-01-28T01:21:00.000-06:00

Marie Calloway posted this on her tumblr recently:

I asked someone if a woman could be successful in the altlit world if she weren’t attractive:

“Yes but she would have to write like the boys. She wouldhave to write in a style that men find “worthy,” e.g. high level of abstractthought, aggressive or nihilistic view of society/life, “hard” exterior image,masculine.

She couldn’t write feminine or sexy material.”

And I’ve been thinking about feminine image in relation toauthorship and ~feminist things and my own self image. If I consider the women alt lit writers I’maware of (I’m kind of new at this, my apologies,) generally speaking they areall conventionally attractive by which I mean thin and feminine looking. And I think about Sylvia Plath, because everyconversation I’ve had about Sylvia Plath (I was an English major, ok?) at some pointinvolves a comment about how pretty she was. And I think about young Didion. And how Emily Dickinson only had one picture taken of herself ever and she hated that picture becauseshe thought she looked ugly. And as muchas all of this is kind of “well, duh” I think it’s still worth pointing out.

Because even though I identify as feminist, there arecertain knee-jerk reactions that I don’t know if I will ever not have. Recently I went to an open mic and aconventionally unattractive woman (overweight, not particularly feminine) reada poem about a sexual experience and my immediate reaction was aversion (closelyfollowed by shame for having felt that way and I AM A BAD FEMINIST.) In fact, I was so distracted by my mixture ofaversion and shame that I honestly couldn’t tell you whether or not the poemwas “good.” I am so not proud ofthis. But these things happen, and ifthey’re not discussed, they’ll just keep happening. So.

Last year I participated in a poetry marathon in Milwaukeewith three other women I went to school with (all conventionally attractive,btw) and I found the looks of the other participants I didn’t know kind ofsurprising. Generally speaking, they alllooked like regular Wisconsin people. Somewere downright rural, others suburban casual, a few academic looking ones. I guess for some reason I thought thatPoet-Wisconsinites would look vastly different from the townies surrounding mycollege campus. They didn’t. These poets were real people. One older woman(mid-sixties, maybe) read a kind of lengthy pastoral-ish poem, about a young snakecharmer. As the poem progressed, somesubtle word choices and imagery made me think “tee hee, unintentional sexuality” By the end of the poem however,I realized (along with everyone else in the room I think) that all of thesexual imagery was, in fact, intentional and I looked at this older woman withsome kind of awe because she was oldand wearing a cardigan. And I had specifically not chosen to readanything sexual at this poetry marathon because there were going to be oldladies in cardigans there.

Getting back to the quotation at the top of this post, there’sthis feeling or belief that only sexypeople can write sexy poetry. Or rather,readers only want to read sexy poetry by sexy poets. And I think I want to specify that further to sexyfemale poets, because Bukowski. I would lovefor unattractive women to be able to write sexy things and “make it” in alt litlike it’s nbd. But I’m skeptical. Personally I’m not sure I’d be able to “putmyself out there” if I didn’t fit certain qualifications for being conventionallyattractive. (Look, I know it’s not cool to think you’re attractivesometimes and now you’re probably all like ~lol w/e you’re conceited and hideous~) At least, I don’t think I would be able toput any kind of sexy writing “out there.” So in addition to “unattractive” women having difficulty being acceptedinto the community, there is probably also a fairly huge intimidation factor.

I guess I'm trying to be relevant now, or something

2012-01-26T21:53:00.000-06:00

Let's get this over with.
I'm Tara. 23, introverted writery/poet-type, living in a Chicago suburb.
Now with srs writr blog.
It's been kind of awkward when people are like,
Ooh, a ~writer, huh? Where's your fancy ~writer's blog~?
Ok, so no one actually says that.
But they do assume I have a real "professional" blog, and I feel silly sending people to my tumblr because honestly sometimes that just devolves into reblogs of Francisco Lachowski and Anxiety Cat.
And I can't show people my livejournal because I can't show you my livejournal. Seriously, I've had a livejournal since I was fourteen and that's embarrassing.
So. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be posting here, but I'm really really (two reallys means it's serious) going to make the effort to post regularly and with any luck you'll actually be interested in reading my potentially witty and/or self-deprecating and/or ~profound writery thoughts and it won't just be "ugh, Tara posted a link to her blog on facebook again. UGH."
I will probably also post pictures of my cat. fyi.
One last thing! I've made an accompanying tumblr for this blog not just because I really love tumblr, but because it's a lot easier to reblog and share things by other writery people who have tumblrs. (duh. ok.) It will mostly be the same thing as this blog except possibly with slightly more gpoys and cat gifs.