the start of the school year

i dont want to write explicitly about my class, because it's not fair, but i've begun my gig as a teacher (i guess you have to call me a professor?) at rutgers university while also attending class for my MFA in creative writing. it's not as hard as i guess i expected it to be...it's definitely hard when you're trying to convince students not to procrastinate, and to write in stages and not the night before, etc etc. but alas, it is helping me consider becoming a better student.

writing has been interesting. it is different, when you leave a place, then you have enough distance to write about it. i won't go so far as saying i miss the south, but i do, however, definitely feel its absence. the south comes up a lot more in my writing - more than it ever did before, and i wonder if its become a sort of exocitism to write here, where there is little southern experience? i wonder if it's because it is the one thing i "master" when i'm up here? i dont know. i dont know.

i have a poetry reading for my program at the end of the month. it should be exciting. i have to flash all of my good cards.

i want to be clear with you

i do not like nyc. i know. shoot me now. this is everyone's dream, right? well, i guess i should mention that i don't live in nyc, but i live close enough that if i felt like going to nyc right now, i could be there within the hour. and pay only 3 bucks to do so. so yeh. but anyways - i dont like nyc because of all of its hype, and its cost of living, and all of the backflips you have to do to just live and survive here. i hate that you have to live on top of people. i happen to enjoy my private space, and trees and grass and backyards with fences. it's so dirty here. i can't understand if it's because of the over population or if its just people around here dont like to clean up after themselves or what. i just know that i have a huge amount of sympathy for the grounds keep around the city. it's a never-ending uphill battle like sisyphus. then i think that if it weren't for the laziness of the people (i mean, literally. there's a trash can every 3 steps...if not, hold your cup for ONE MORE block) the perpetual laziness of hte people, perhaps they wouldn't have a job, and would be further unable to live here. i do not have a job cleaning up other people's trash, but i have a job that if i were living 6 states south, i'd be rich and comfortable. here, my one job barely pays my rent. so i don't know. it's an endless struggle. and i don't like it.

it was all a dream (rambling ahead)

(i'm thinkin of the biggie rap song....you know "i used to read WORD UP magazine, salt-n-pepper, heavy d up in my limosine...")

but i digress. yesterday i wasn't feeling well, and for some reason rainstorms come and go like sneezes here in jersey. i guess because the subways connect us all, i haven't gotten a grasp of the literal and physical distance (you begin to think in time like "i live an hour from nyc or 45 min from x stop on the path train") between my house and nyc, so when someone in the city was like "it rained all day" and i sit in my apartment and look out at the sunny sky, it's hard to imagine. so yes. it was raining in jersey city, and i didn't feel like stepping a foot outside of the apartment. so i didn't. i should also say i dont have a TV, so at first the thought of that may sound horrible -- that you sit in an apartment without a TV, then you breathe and say thank goodness for the internet, until you realize you can check your e-mail and facebook and myspace only so much before even that gets boring. so a week or so ago i was moping around, depressed from my move and my friend gave me a link that lets you catch TV shows online. i proceeded to watch three seasons of family guy (over the course of several days, of course) some Daria and even a show or two of the jetsons. so back to yesterday. i decided to look up some of the shows i've never seen before (i haven't had a tv for a while, and didn't watch it much when i did have it) and found ABC lets you watch full seasons of tv shows online. so i proceeded to watch "Ugly Betty". i didn't know what i was getting into. i heard a friend talk about it once, saying that it seemed like a show he could get into -- i think this is before it aired. he and i are equally cynical, so i felt that it would be a right match. can i just say that i laughed and cried and was hooked...until 5:30 this morning when i finished the newest season of the show. yes, i watched the whole season. all however-many episodes (43 minutes each) of it. it made me think. i guess that's why i kept watching it. it was a show with many layers, and i think the basest level of attraction/sympathy from me was this title: ugly betty, and what this girl represented: an average jane working in the fashion industry. now, i dont aspire to work in the fashion industry, but i could relate to this character a lot, because there are many times that i feel like i was the ugly girl with the glasses (yes, at a time i wore glasses. somehow i convinced myself that i could hide behind them and look better? this was when glasses were cool and people used to wear the fake ones to make them look more intellectual). in fact, i was the ugly girl with the glasses. recently a friend that i've known since 4th grade came up to nyc. she brought with her pictures from our beach trip the week after our high school graduation. it confirmed everything i thought i knew about myself from then. i was the fat, ugly, one of the group, heralded because of my abilities (being the uber cynical one, i always had a good comeback and nice joke)...i was definitely not there because i was cute along with the rest. anyways. so ugly betty. can i say as much as i like the show, i've come to despise the name? i do. i think it reiterates everything that is wrong and twisted in this world. i applauded the show's ability to keep betty who she is -- although admittedly sad when they didn't let her keep her long-time (and super-cutely devoted) boyfriend -- amidst this world she's in, this modeling world, this world of fashion and skinny and everything she is apparently not. i think i may like the title because it traps the show. it traps betty because unlike "the devil wears prada" when the ugly girl assistant becomes super-chic almost model-like herself, if she turns beautiful, she is bound to lose something: her optimism, her inability to develop the hard heart of the fashion world. something else will turn ugly. i just wish it wasn't her outward appearance. so then i thought about the concept of this show,and its purpose. is it saying that even the ugly girl can make it as the lowest-level assistant (and befriend, after some work) to the editor in chief of a magazine? even the ugly girl can find love befitting her -- of a guy who is equally as low on her level, with the only status of crunching numbers to produce everyone's paycheck. still though. it's a dream, this tv show. it's a dream. aren't all shows -- even reality shows -- dreams that we have when we watch them? i guess any sort of entertainment (reading) is a dream of sorts for the spectator: trying to imagine their life in the life of the protagonist or whomever they relate to most. so i'm ugly betty. i don't work for a high-end fashion magazine (yet ;)), but i do live in a city that i find is focused way too much on appearance. i've witnessed it snatch up a couple of my friends, and i'm finding that maybe these people aren't who they were four years ago...but then again, am i? no, i'm not the "ugly friend from high school turned knock out" (that has become such a cliche right?) but i believe i have stepped up my games (yes, plural) on several levels, and i wonder if by the end of the show betty will progress past this lowly "can i get a cup of coffee" type...especially considering all oft he work she does for her boss, for the magazine. it's interesting, too, if she makes a physical change. will the show then become a show of "remember when you wore glasses and braces" (i predict they will soon come off...and then her boss will fall for her)....and forever going forward looking back. i find msyelf doing that. thinking "remember when you were fat and ugly" or living this life like i lived it before. it's hard to explain. a habit i guess. so then, is this image of sankofa that i just got in my head (an andrinka symbol of a bird with its head craned behind him that suggests we must remember where we came from)...is this sankofa, this remembering, helpful? is it helpful to keep reminding betty (by the title, maybe?) where she came from? is it healthy for me to remember where i came from. i guess only in the sense that i work hard not to regress. but i dont know. where is the forward movement in the bird with its head craned to face his ass? where is my forward movement if i keep looking back to old pictures that surface from a friend? i guess i just gotta keep putting one foot in front of the next.

getting ish together

so today was mildly productive. after a couple of days of pouting my face off and being lonely in nj, i decided that i should make the best of my freetime. i have to come up with a syllabus for this class that i'm teaching in the fall. which is harder than it sounds. i had to come up with about 20 articles/documents/speeches that i felt slightly confident that i would be able to stand infront of a class and teach. i'm not confident in my ability to teach them, but they at least were partially/mildly interesting to me, so i figured that would lead me better to coming up with things to do with a class for an hour and 20 minutes (crazy right? longer than unc tues/thurs classes!)

so i came up with the 20 articles and the order in which i'm teaching them, as well as outlined when the bigger essays would be done. then i decided that i was tired of thinking about the syllabus today.

instead, what i did was put together four poetry magazine submissions. if i get these out in the mail like i plan to tomorrow, i'll have almost 30 poems out in the universe. my pledge is to make sure i send out new poetry submissions every month. i've designed an excel sheet that i plan to keep a log of poems floating out and about in the world.

the best new poets notifies tomorrow, supposedly. i'm nervous. it would be awesome to get this.

other than that, i'm just laying low in nj. trying to stay cool and sane. yep.

(p.s. i miss you all out there)

so i'm thinking...