everything feeds process

Goodbye cheap tomatoes.
Goodbye waking up after the sun rises.
Goodbye taking walks in the dusk at eight p.m.
Goodbye not feeling tired.
Goodbye sunburned noses.
Goodbye sweating in the shade.
Goodbye vacations…and vacations…and vacations.
Goodbye grilling on the  rooftop.
Goodbye seemingly endless free time and energy.
Goodbye flip flops.
Goodbye tank tops.
Goodbye leaving the house without a hoodie (or heavier coat).
Goodbye watermelon.
Goodbye corn.
Goodbye spending more time outside than in.
Goodbye.

I feel like I have a bit of catching up to do, in this space. My work responsibilities have increased, as the enormous machine of the college cranks up for another school year. So, I’ve been a little absent here. I’ve been blogging in my head, and thinking about creative projects, but I haven’t been recording all of this here.

First, the pictures. They have nothing to do with the subject of this post, other than they were part of a creative project from last weekend. I tried desperately to put together a photo essay for Longshot magazine’s 24 hour submission cycle. But I couldn’t get it done in time. My idea was “The Return of Real Food”. In Minneapolis, we’re embracing community gardening with a new fervor, so I took some pictures at my local community garden.  And then I couldn’t get them in on time. Oh, well.

Second, the interview. I’m several days late, but darn it I tweeted about it. (My twitter is always more timely than this blog.) John Hayes, who runs Robert Frost’s Banjo, is hosting a new writer’s interview series on Thursdays. His wife, Eberle, was the first interview subject and I was the second.  You can also see samples of Eberle’s writing here and my writing here, at his Writer’s Talk blog. Keep watching his blog for new writers each week, including my husband on September 16.

Third, my nefarious plans. Well, they’re not really all that nefarious. Or fully formed plans yet. As I mention in my interview, I have been considering self-publishing for quite some time. I’ve been dancing around it and I think I might actually do it. I’ve been spending a little time researching, chatting online with folks, and thinking and I may just go for it. The nice thing is that the cost is very minimal, even if I want to purchase my own ISBN, which I do. I have a manuscript that I really believe in, although I need to spend some time refining and editing, as well as hashing out a marketing plan. As I’ve been doing on Twitter and in email conversations, I’d like to ask you readers out there for advice:

• If you have self-published, what was the process like?
• What printer/POD publisher did you use?
• How did you market your work?
• What would you change about the experience?
• Did you set up a website for the book or use your own current blog/website?

Any feedback that you can give me, either here in the comments or via email at fox dot jessica at gmail com, is truly appreciated.

So, that’s what’s going on in my world. I still have a ton of August Poetry Postcards to catch up on, as well as two New Student Orientations to run this week. Oh, and school starts the following week. W00t! You can’t say my life is boring. That’s for sure.

Today marks my fifth wedding anniversary with my husband, as well as our thirteenth anniversary overall. If our marriage were a child, he would be going to kindergarten and telling poop jokes. If our entire  relationship were a child, she would be slamming doors, dying her hair blue and rolling her eyes at us. Put another way, Aaron has been my partner for more than a third of my life. I would have it no other way.

I am especially grateful for our anniversary this year, because I know that my husband and I faced extraordinary challenges this year. For approximately eight months of this year, he nursed me through my knee injury and surgery. He took the “sickness” part of “in sickness and health” seriously. The best part is that he did this without complaint and with great patience, kindness, and love.  I am lucky to have his support in my life.

This year, he also pushed the both of us to do more with our writing and art. He formed and maintained a writing group, supported me while I wrote a chapbook manuscript, and encouraged me to do more with my photography and collage art. I am blessed to have a husband who is so talented and who challenges me to nurture my own writing.

The scary (and awesome) part of marriage is that you never know what will happen in your lives. You don’t know if you’re going to make it, as a couple. You can only work and try and hope. I am so grateful that Aaron is willing to work and try and hope with me, after all these years. His effort and his love have never wavered. I love you, Aaron.

Have you read David Foster Wallace’s posthumous book This is Water yet? If you haven’t, you should.

The book is beautiful and simple, and not really a book at all. The text is from the only commencement speech that Foster Wallace ever delivered, at Kenyon College in 2005. However, the book designers spaced the text out as if it were a long poem. Each page only contains, at most, 4 sentences surrounded by white space. The effect is startling, because it both speeds up your reading experience and slows it down.

His book is framed by a koan, that I’ll quote here:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?”

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them goes, “What the hell is water?”

The message of the book is simple. We all live daily with the choice of how we react to the minutiae of our lives, of how we live in our own water. We can get frustrated with the little annoyances and live most of our time in a state of subsumed rage. On the other hand, we could choose to see things from another’s perspective (rather than the egocentric “default” perspective) and try to be compassionate with each other. We could try to notice the water and rise above it for awhile.

In writing this, I realize that it is not at all simple. Perhaps it’s deceptively simple.

Today, I had my first taste of what my job will be like once school starts. I had one of those days where I had back-to-back meetings. I had to prep for those meetings in between, to make sure that I was ready to help the students or talk somewhat intelligently with my colleagues. I responded to over 100 emails. I answered phone messages. I scanned spreadsheets, stuffed envelopes, and on and on. It was a regular day.

Throughout my day, in the little snippets of time I had in between meetings and tasks, I wondered how I could make attitude choices on days like these. I certainly was functioning on my default setting, rather than slowing down and taking the time to be a good listener. I think that being an artist or a writer should help you to be more sensitive and aware, since writing and art making requires a certain amount of awareness and sensitivity. Instead, I feel like I shut down this part of me while I work, just to make it through the day.  I realize, of course, that this is every day and I should strive for more than making it through.

I’d like to ask you, those of you out there who are artists and have day jobs. Do you bring awareness and compassion into your work day? Are you successful? Do you shut off and protect that part of yourself, so that you can save it for when you need to do your art?

I am so behind on posting (and sending) these bad boys. I’m hoping to catch up over the next few days.

Give Me America Anytime

We have the best government
money can buy. We  are rich

in values we barely know, in exported
aspirations we mouth silently. Our wallets

are empty. Still we are flush
with the rush of purchase

We imagine peeling twenties off a pile
like peeling the skin

off of a banana. We have yet to understand
the value of buying

(our carts full of necessities)
with a currency made of air.

As a break from my work and a treat to myself, I spent 30 minutes today doing something that I’ve done almost every August since I was 12.

I grabbed a pile of three-ring binders, a dozen sets of tab dividers and prepared myself for the school year. I made a list of all the academic committees and year-long groups that I serve on, compiled their various meeting dates, and began making labels. I carefully printed meeting dates on the white perforated strips and slid them into their correct, jellybean colored tab. I used a label-maker to permanently adhere the committee name to the proper binder. Then, I rearranged my work bookshelves, so that I could line them up together, weekly committees on the left,  monthly committees on the right and ad-hoc work groups in the middle.

There is something that feels so correct, so soothing about organizing my binders in late summer. Some people associate August with swimming parties and state fairs, but I always think of starting my binders for the year.  It’s such a contrast to the rest of my August.

At the beginning of the school year, I feel like I could this year, finally, stay organized. I can maintain my beautifully labeled binders, sliding the agendas and supporting documents into the correct section after each meeting. In reality, I know that by November, my desk will be a jumble of papers needing to be organized and post-it notes reminding me to Do Important Things. By February, I may have time to retreat to my email folders and reprint all of the now-discarded meeting materials, just so they can be filed in their binders. By May, I’ll have to write reports on the committees I chair or support,  and I’ll flip through my binders and handwritten notes to jog my memory.

This is the rhythm of my year. I truly dread August because I spend so much time rushing and preparing for the school year to open. I count enrollment, frantically schedule rooms for meetings, try to imagine the special events for the following nine months. I never plan enough, because I always run out of meeting rooms around November and forget to advertise events in January. Each year, I think I’ll be able to plan well enough and I always end up feeling behind.

I just have to remind myself that summer will end, school will start (whether I’m ready or not), and I’ll be able to breathe around mid-September.

Three weeks to go.

I am participating in the August Poetry Postcard Challenge this month. Each day, I send a new postcard with a poem on the back to a recipient on the group list.  We began on July 27, but I am posting these a few days late, so that my pen pal can see them first. Enjoy!

Sifting Millet

Seeds get stuck in my nails.
I find myself counting grains
to calm myself. I am baffled
by the sheer numbers. I think
of grain elevators dotting Iowa
filled to bursting with seeds this size.
I imagine fields that stretch
state line to state line, with stalks
that will be harvested and broken down
into seeds. I think of the thousands
in this bowl alone. How can I live
with all this abundance
and still spend so much time wanting?

Written in response to a postcard poem to me by Bobbie Ogletree.

I am participating in the August Poetry Postcard Challenge this month. Each day, I send a new postcard with a poem on the back to a recipient on the group list.  We began on July 27, but I am posting these a few days late, so that my pen pal can see them first. Enjoy!

On Working

Somewhere there is satisfaction
for something other than the close
of another interminable day.  There is

the sweat we carry in our skin, the stench
of our effort.  There is the heft
of the body, the tug of the line, the waking
from an hour long nap, only to find

that you hooked
a many toothed monster and he
is never getting away.

I am participating in the August Poetry Postcard Challenge this month. Each day, I send a new postcard with a poem on the back to a recipient on the group list.  We began on July 27, but I am posting these a few days late, so that my pen pal can see them first. Enjoy!

April Love Letter

I love your ridiculous. I love
your plastic molded flaws.
I love your obnoxious
colors, your fluorescent pinks
and pea greens. I love the prank
of you. You are the salt
in my coffee and the sugar
in my gas tank. I love
the surprise of finding you,
one morning, in the most
never thought of places.

I am participating in the August Poetry Postcard Challenge this month. Each day, I send a new postcard with a poem on the back to a recipient on the group list.  We began on July 27, but I am posting these a few days late, so that my pen pal can see them first. Enjoy!

The Woman I Wanted to Be

carefully picks tobacco leaves
from the tip of her tongue. She doesn’t care
that her nails are uneven and undone.
She wears black eyeshadow so often, residue
lingers on her naked lids. She doesn’ t work
behind a desk. Instead, she litters lines
of poetry on the floor of her studio,
knowing that no one will pick them up.

This is also in response to my Mindfulness Month exercise on the self-portrait as I want to be seen.