where the action is

I know I’m supposed to be “where the action is” — New York City OOO WOOO — and well-connected and… I mean I even have a creative writing DEGREE but… I had no idea AWP was even happening and that so many of my friends and acquaintances would be going and that it was even in any way a desirable destination. I feel totally out of the loop. Anyway, thanks to Anne Boyer for her report, even though it makes me feel so oddly clueless. It’s nice to know where the parties are, even if they’re in Texas.

Well, Thursday I’m going off to my own conference, the probably-even-dorkier-than-AWP TESOL conference in Tampa, Florida. I’m actually very proud of my profession, even if it is dorky!

The really fun thing was going down to the basement to look in my storage locker for warm-weather clothes and discovering that the bag in which I had kept my prettiest spring and summer shoes had been COMPLETELY INFESTED WITH RATS. The rats had gnawed through the leather and left a nasty layer of filth. I had to throw away the whole bag with maybe fifteen pairs of lovingly selected quality footwear. It’s OK, of course. I thought of Katrina and of how intact and copious my remaining possessions are…

and how I seem to be continually generating more…. Working on the rose skirt with the coordinating double layer of ruffles at the border. Laughingly thinking back to whoever wrote in one of Ron’s comment boxes that sewing one’s own clothes is the most radical thing you can possibly do. Radical?!? Most radical?!?* Self-immolation, for example, strikes me as being rather more radical. But whatever.

*Attempted this morning while riding the train to characterize the arts in terms of their levels of intimacy, since I had posited in the comments fracas that fashion was the most intimate art form because it is right up against the body, to which someone replied, “bullshit” — I’m paraphrasing — and while I don’t really think it is a bullshit assertion, the more I thought about it, the more I realized how difficult it is to talk about the proximity of an art form in terms of intimacy. Perhaps it’s better to talk in terms of invasiveness, or that which is impossible to resist? In that case, arts of fragrance and odor would be the most “intimate” (e.g. Heian incense competitions]– as we can block our other facial orifices for extended lengths of time without being vulgar, but we really need our nostrils; no one can happily breathe only through their mouth. Music and other sonic arts would come next, I guess… but then I started thinking, does the degree of “conceptualization” make an artwork more or less intimate? Does a highly conceptual piece of music, for example, trade intimacy for ideation? Or… does that work enable a greater intimacy with the brain? And am i buying into the old boring binary about “heart=close” vs. “mind=distant” even thinking in these terms? So… I gave up my little thought-experiment, thinking finally that it was sort of Victorian, like something I’d expect to read in John Ruskin.

p.s. I’m really wishing there’s something I could do to encourage SY and AB not to smoke… all of those toxins polluting such lovelinesses… so sad…