Feel the Burn

I've been a little out of commission this week. I didn't expect to be, but my car got broken into over the weekend, causing a helluvalot of unnecessary hassle. I think that everything's finally under control on my end, but I'm still pissed about it. I feel like I've been gritting my teeth all week.

On a related note, I've been going to the gym a lot recently. It cuts into my Buffy time and my writing time, but it's the best thing in the world to do when I'm feeling stressed or angry or frustrated.

I used to think that people who liked to work out were nuts--completely off their rockers. But about two years ago, after six months of daily bike riding through hilly State College, I realized that I was addicted. I needed those endorphins. I needed the release of pushing my body to work through tension and pain, that feeling of reaching deep and steeling myself against that burn in my legs.

So now I work out. I like the gym: I like the elliptical machine, I like free weights, and I think that I'm really going to like yoga, which I did for the first time ever last night. It burned (I can't hold my arms at shoulder height for more than about three seconds today), but it made me feel really strong to settle into a pose and hold it, and hold it, and keep on holding it, even when I was shaking and tired. Somehow, that burn helped put out the burn of anger in my gut. I feel a little less pissed today.  A little.  ;)

Curiosity

As you know, I'm working on putting together a chapbook out of some old poems from my thesis. Most recently, I've been grappling with a poem about Greek water clocks. It's a topic that I find complex and strange and absolutely fascinating, but I know that most people have no idea what a clepsydra is and, to be honest, they don't give a damn.

And that's perfectly fine. The problem is that this poem is dependent upon a knowledgeable audience or, even better, an audience willing to hit up Wikipedia when confusion strikes. It's also a poem that draws my attention to my own knowledge, to my own academic backgrounds. It makes me hyper-aware that I've spent more of my life learning about Greek history and literature than most people care to, and yet I still know so little about it. It's a topic that sounds very learned and obscure, but really I'm only scraping the surface of a whole fascinating field of study that some scholars of Greek archaeology have dedicated their lives to. I'm an amateur at best.

This makes me think about my other areas of "expertise": poetry, American literature, personal essays, baking, etc. But what I know about, say, poetry is just a smattering in a huge field that's bursting with poets and poems I've never heard of. I can name at least twenty people I know personally who know a heck of a lot more about poetry than I do. I know that, even in this, my primary field of expertise, it's absolutely impossible to know everything, and it's nearly impossible to gain mastery over even a fragment of such a wide field. For example, it would take a lifetime of study and reading and thinking to master a tiny category like Post-Modernist Midwestern American Poetry By Women written after 1960.

Sometimes, I find my persistent and unavoidable ignorance to be depressing, but more often I find it thrilling and even comforting. A friend once told me that libraries make her sad because she walks into the stacks and knows that she will never be able to read all the books that she sees. But this is the exact reason that libraries make me so happy: no matter how hard I work to learn, there will always be too much to know in my lifetime, and there will always be some work left for someone else to do.

There is a limit to what one man or woman can know. In a library full of hundreds of packed shelves and millions of volumes, each of us can only read a few shelves worth in a lifetime. No matter how boundless our curiosity is, the world is always much vaster and much greater than our aspirations, and this, I know, is a gift.

Skillz

Fact: Administrative work is hard and scary.

Maybe not in every office, but it's true in mine. Before I started this job, I thought that administration would be fairly easy: somebody else would come up with the ideas and take all the risks, and I would just shuffle the necessary papers. 

But that is absolutely not true. Somebody else does come up with most of the ideas that I implement at work, but I have to make them happen. My job requires a lot of flexibility and creative thinking. When my program director or one of my faculty members has an idea, the onus is on me to follow it through. I'm everybody's go-to girl. I'm the nitty-gritty techno-wrangler, the smooth bureaucracy surfer, and the (supposedly) omniscient fact-knower about how to navigate the university.

When I first started this job, this responsibility scared me. I didn't know anything, and I didn't know how I was going to learn anything. Now I have a little more faith in myself, and I know my most valuable resources: our genius office manager, our dedicated IT guy, the department's knowledgeable HR liaison, KU's Google-based search engine, and the University's plethora of help videos and training workshops.

Now I can hire a new lecturer in three days flat. I can school a scanner so that it doesn't flip pages. I can track down a student ID based on little more than a misspelled first name and a department. I can tell you how to enroll in or drop a class at any point in the semester. I'm good.

It's pretty great that I can do this stuff, but the most important skill my administrative job has taught me is how to problem solve, how to take a question that no one else can deal with and track down the answer. My new greatest skill is my dauntlessness, my confidence in my ability to take an idea and make it into a reality.

My 15 Albums

Have you heard of this? It's a facebook trend where you write a note listing 15 albums that "will stick with you" or that  "changed your life." My Aunt Janet tagged me in her facebook note, but I thought it would be more fun to share my list here.

The only constraint is that you have to write the list fast, in no longer than 15 minutes. My self-imposed constraint is that I have to pick albums that are personally important to me, that carry a lot of emotional weight with me, not just really excellent and obscure albums that make me sound cooler than I really am.  ;)

So here it goes!

1. This Fire, Paula Cole--Great music for dealing with 14-year-old feminist-ish anti-establishment rage. And (let's be honest) 26-year-old feminist anti-establishment angst. I still listen to it!
2. Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morisette--Could any female who grew up in the 1990s *not* include this in her list? I feel like I grew up with this one.
3. Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan--I'm pretty sure I listened to this every night of my freshman year of college. This is my official Favorite Album of All Time.
4. Astral Weeks, Van Morisson--Something about Van Morisson makes me feel more okay with life. It also reminds me of driving to Lawrence in my dad's truck.
5. Stunt, Barenaked Ladies--I listened to this album non-stop between the ages of 14 and 16. Don't judge me--"Light Up My Room" is amazing.
6. Moulin Rouge Soundtrack--I learned a lot about classic pop music from this soundtrack. If you want to judge me, see above. Also, how cute is Ewan McGregor?
7. Want One, Rufus Wainwright--I bought this album because I thought the cover was pretty, and I was completely enchanted. It holds up to zillions and zillions of listens, and it's still my favorite Wainwright album.
8. Everybody, Ingrid Michaelson--I started listening to Ingrid Michaelson really recently. Every song is awesome *and* useful.
9. Nashville Skyline, Bob Dylan--Connected to summertime and old boyfriends. 'Nuff said.
10. Dawson's Creek Soundtrack--Hey, I promised honesty, didn't I? I really liked a lot of the songs on this album. Thank goodness for cross promotion and The CW.
11. I Am a Bird Now, Antony and the Johnsons--Heart-wrenching. Antony goes after death and gender. Reminds me of KJHK and driving home in the rain.
12. Portions for Foxes, Rilo Kiley--I probably listened to this on the way to class every single day during my first year of grad school. Up-tempo and super-dark.
13. Bat Out of Hell, Meat Loaf--I can sing you every single song on this album word for word. Just ask.  ;)
14. O, Damien Rice--Another college favorite. Pretty, melancholy tunes. Good for rainy days and dorm rooms.
15. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams--I like all of Williams's albums, but this is the one I've listened to the most. Every single song kills.

Runners Up*

• ???, Steve Miller Band--I listened to a couple of old Steve Miller Band albums when I was in junior high about a million times, but I can't remember their names for the life of me. But they made me happy.
• Sky Blue Sky, Wilco--This didn't make the list because I'm passionately in love with about three songs on this album, but the rest are only okay. Those three carry a lot of weight, though!
• A Love Supreme, John Coltrane--This is the only jazz album I've ever loved. It makes my brain feel all buzzy and profound.

*Is this cheating? If so, it's pretty fortunate that I do not care.

Random Five for Friday

1. Dead Tired. I've been planning to write a blog post all this week, but I didn't expect for my travel hangover to last quite so long. I have been beat. My trip to State College was fantastic, as was my family reunion in Marion, but they made for a whole lot of traveling and not a whole lot of sleeping. So my post in praise of Susan Orlean will just have to wait until next week!
2. Spicy Food. This week, I attempted vegetarian chili, which is basically a bunch of beans with some spices and tomatoes thrown in. The problem with vegetarian chili is that meat adds a good deal of fat and flavor that is indispensable to the whole chili experience. I was forced to turn to lots and lots of red chili flakes to make my chili appetizing. My taste buds have been feverishly thrilled all week, but every day my stomach growls at me and says, WTF, Lesley! Are you kidding me? MORE of this stuff? Ahhh! Stop it!!! Where's the Tums?!
3. Good Reads. I finished two really excellent books this week: The Art of Losing (a collection of poems on mourning that I wrote about here), and Jonathan Franzen's How to Be Alone. I picked up Franzen's essay collection because I was curious about his writing, but I didn't want to commit to taking part in the Freedom "best novel of the century" hoopla.Though many of the book's essays are about reading and the state of the novel, How to Be Alone consists largely of an old-fashioned curmudgeon's complaints about modern society (its disinterest in serious fiction, its mindless passion for new technologies, its meaningless passion for privacy, etc.). It can easily be read as a work of late adopter naysayer-ism that frequently contradicts itself, but Franzen is so brilliant in his thinking and so adept in his prose styling that you're willing to growl and harrumph along with him, just for the pleasure of spending time with his voice. The collection made for surprisingly good airport reading material, and it's convinced me to put The Corrections on my to-read list.
4. Writing & Wranglin'. The last week's busyness has put a serious crunch on my writing time, so the writing has been going slowly. I'm in the process of radically revising my chapbook, and I'm trying to work my way through a new process of drafting and revising. In grad school, I had to write fast to keep up with the pace of workshop (I wrote one poem a week for years!). Now, I'm trying to write more slowly and to think more deeply. Instead of playing with images and making up the substance as I go along, I'm trying to clarify the ideas and feelings I want to express before I start worrying about image and diction and line length. I think that this will be an excellent method in the long run, but it's trying right now. Writing more truthful, more emotional, more intellectually interesting poetry is hard. I'm trying for a sort of clarity that is extremely difficult to achieve. So, like one of my Penn State MFA Reading Series t-shirts says, I "Just Keep Pounding Those Keys!"
5. Wedding Weekend. Last night, one of my third cousins got married. She's having her wedding reception in Abilene this weekend, and I'm going with my mom. Though I'm not thrilled to be traveling for the second weekend in a row, I'm really looking forward to it. Charlie's stepfather once told me that the quality of a wedding always depends on the feeling between the couple. If the couple is joyful and deeply in love, the wedding celebration will feel joyful and easy and sincere. Consequently, I expect this weekend's celebration to be an excellent one. :)