spring cleaning

For the first time in our relationship, Tom and I had a spring cleaning day for a place we can call our very own--at least, our own as long as we pay the rent. Now, Tom doesn't like the term, spring cleaning, and he has various reasons for it, but that's what we were doing no matter what it's called. We are only half--if not less than--done with the job, because we're doing all those dirty little deeds you always push under the rug: really cleaning the grout, organizing the fridge and the pantry, filing away all those bills, rearranging our bookshelves, etc. We are going to throw out our street-found lamp that has stood gathering dust tomorrow, and have put up some attractive Chinese lanterns (bought at a store called Surprise! Surprise!) instead. We also bought a new shower curtain that has the words shampoo, wash and soap on it, as you see here in the photo. It goes quite nicely with our fake wooden Michelangelo prints (found on a street near Menno House--they were some kind of Louvre souvenir) on the bathroom walls, which are a nice communist red. I'm quite pleased with it.

you're hopeless, just hopeless, Charlie Brown

The picture on the blog is not hopeless--it comes from a site by a friend of Tom's, called Hobosoup. He plugged it on his blog as well, so really I'm being a copy cat, but what can I say?

Annie (the woman in the photo) is one of the coolest people I know. She's this kick-ass, I've Been Everywhere, Been There, Done That chainsmoker I've known (through Tom) since I've lived in New York. She's kind of an underground celebrity--apparently Bjork is afraid of little Annie. (She's so tiny! I feel like a lumbering ogre around her--you should see her with Tom!) I've been to a couple of her shows, and they were fun. She has this gravelly voice that can soothe and excite at the same time.

I've been feeling like a Charlie Brown lately. Nothing I do comes out right. I wander around in front of my computer, sure that I should do something but I can't think straight enough to know what that something is. I've gotten some writing gigs--one paid, the other not-yet-paid--but I can't even do that right. I think one editor hates me, the other doesn't communicate even though I'm constantly emailing and calling. No one wants to hire me for a job that has health insurance. My MFA is a total joke in the real world. You have to publish before anyone, even an agent, will glance at you. I'm afraid I'll just be a professional student because that seems to be the only thing I'm slightly good at. The list goes on and on.

But, never fear, life goes on and I'll figure something out at some point. Something's got to happen eventually. So, maybe I'm not hopeless after all. We'll see.

huzzah! sort of...

I turned in my thesis last Tuesday. It was a rather anti-climactic moment. My thesis advisor is on sabbatical and rarely comes on campus, so I just left it in her mailbox at the graduate center. It looked a little sad to be shuttled off in such a manner, but what could I do? I felt like leaning in and whispering: It's okay, Carolyn will take you home soon. And she'll be firm but right and loving.

I think it's also a little sad because I know it's still a work-in-progress that needs to be sent out to the cold cold world of agents and editors who'll toss it out without a second thought. But I need to just put it aside for awhile.

I wanted to add something to my earlier post about music. It started out as a note to a friend but my egotism got the best of me:

I was surrounded by music all the time growing up. I honestly don't remember a time I wasn't singing or was surrounded by music of some kind. Especially in church. Everybody in the Mennonite Brethren Conference could hold a note, it seemed. It wasn't until college that I realized there were churches (and some were Mennonite!!) that couldn't sing well. That couldn't hold a four-part harmony. (I'll admit, there was a period in my life that I believed praise music was more heart-felt than hymn singing (believe it or not, I was a Christiany-handy-clappy-Christian for awhile--if you are or ever have been a Christian you'll know what I mean), but I found myself drawn back into the fold, so to speak, though there are some praise songs I still like.) I sang at church, I sang in school, was in the elite choir in high school, etc. I took piano lessons and played in the school band.

In college I had a slight, shall we say, falling out, with music. Though I was in the "common" choir, it wasn't enough for me. I wanted to be in Chambers, but they didn't let first years in and the director leaned towards actual music majors as far as selection went. I could have auditioned for it my sophomore year, but at the end of my first year the director of Swing Sisters approached me after I'd sung a few solos in concerts and told me I ought to audition for his group in the fall. The way he played it to me, it was merely a formality--that I was in. So I didn't even try out for Chambers. Swing Sisters would be a change from what I usually did, and I wanted to try something new. And guess what, I didn't get in. (The director put a stupid rose in my mailbox, and a note telling me how sorry he was, how talented I was, yadah yadah yadah...)

To compound that situation, I received a C+ in a voice class that semester. I can't even remember why. That fall I edited the campus paper; I don't really remember a whole lot about that semester beyond staying up till six in the morning. I think it was because I don't sight read very well. Even with all that piano, flute and voice in my past I depend more on my ears than my eyes. I don't quite understand it myself. I think I get the general idea of what to sing, but it's only once I've heard the harmonies once or twice--sometimes more, but usually two times is enough--I can more or less "read" the music. Genius? Laziness? I must admit the latter is more likely.

So, for awhile I stayed away from singing other than the hymn sings at chapel or church. When I was on cross-cultural we would sing in the little nooks and crannies of holy places. My favorite memory is when we went into these underground caves and sang old 606:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above, praise Him above,
Praise Him above, ye heav'nly hosts...

The fellow showing us the caves was so drawn by the music that he demanded we sing again when we went above, but no one wanted to do it. Maybe we felt the holiness only there in a cave--maybe it was laziness, but who knows?

I slowly glided back into music after awhile. I did get into Chambers the second semester of my senior year. I heard through the grapevine that the director was quietly auditioning new people, and I got an audtion. I guess he'd heard enough about me to take me, because I sang for about a minute and the rest of the time had me try to repair this tiny fountain! As I left, he said, Well, rehearsals start next week. I'll see you there. And that was that!

blah blah blah

I've been feeling especially dried up about writing lately. And cynical to boot. I went to a reading on Friday that was made up of MFA students from around the city, expecting great things and came back with only a few bright moments. One of which was a classmate's performance--which, though I may be biased, but I thought went very well. However, the paltry scheisse I was forced to listen to beforehand was mind numbing. In particular, there was one reader (the first one (who goes to Columbia, of all places!)) whose prose was a wandering, self-absorbed nightmare. There were, I'll admit, a few sprinklings of insight, but they were dwarfed by the waves adverbs piled upon adjectives that were totally superfluous. (Not unlike this blog.) This story kept going on and on and on and I wondered if I would ever live to see act number two. And this is someone who beat me out of a place at Columbia!!!! If that's the kind of crap Columbia likes, well, I don't know what to think. Then I had to sit through another reading of poetry that was badly read by this traipsing little tight-jeaned, forward-motioning-breasts girl. As soon as I saw her I thought, uh oh, another perky one! She tried to do the poem nyorican style. I'm sorry, she was white as a sheet, and unless you're black or Spanish or just damn got it going on, it doesn't work.

The reading was scheduled for 7--it started after 7:30--the whole thing went till 9:40. Of course the person I had come to hear was the last of six readers, so I couldn't sneak out after she was done.

One bright spot was Palm Sunday. I sang with some folks at MMF and genuinely felt chills as the service and the singing progressed. I've said it before and I will say it again: the only time I'm pretty darn sure there is a god out there is when I'm singing and the harmony is blending and you barely need to look at the music because it's there inside already, pumping through the blood and muck of the body, ready to pulse out because the deity is out there tapping her toes.