Class tomorrow, Halloween. More in the Poe spirit. I’ll get further into his messages, his rhetoric, next class. Love the 1A section’s reaction to “The Following” episode that I showed. Debating, near stressing, if I should run tomorrow morning or not. If I get home before nine, why not? But that’s time that could be spent on the books. With Friday off, I could fit in a run, one long, testing, redeeming Self for time I could have/should’ve spent in dash, tomorrow. That’s how I’ll play it, I think. 10 mile run, Friday morning. And after that, I need to shoot for at least 4 days a week in sprints. Going to re-join gym, Friday, as well.
How long should I keep the students, tomorrow? Just let it flow, as IT wants. 1A, keep them no more than an hour. And have that whole hour be lectured, on Poe’s multilayered passages, addressing and redressing the prompts I offered last night. I’ll just let it evolve, see how the class builds itself in Poe’s pendulum. Should probably re-watch that Poe documentary I the other night showed. Only an excerpt offered, but still…
Poured for a group of employees at day’s end, 38 total, from YouTube. Spoke to one lady about educational resources, usages with the website. Made me think, about implementing SOME, not too much, video on the teaching blog. Something to think about, definitely. Anything– well, almost anything, for student involvement, engagements.. INTERACTION. Don’t want to pull the trigger.. not yet. Want to keep my Literary/Teaching Life simple, so having to set up another YouTube account, demanding perhaps another new email account, would just complicate and dilute what’s already working for me. Want to act as though I’m living in Poe’s day, using as little tech as feasible. So why are you typing, on a laptop no less, you might pose. Exactly acute. I’m just in the mood to type tonight. But only allowing Self 500 words. Not a bloody syllable more.
This morning’s verse, reminding me of poetry’s prominence. No novel ambitions.. no serious ones anyway.. not at the moment. Want to lecture on poetry, just as Poe did; Why it’s just as, if not more, impacting that prose.
Waste basket bound,
not this page,
at least not in mine.
Sip what I can
if I upright land.
Lens letter in hand.
Into decaf. Only 1 cookie. One of the halloween-themed pieces Alice bought for her class. Can still feel the ’11 Matanzas Creek SB, but trying to ignore it. Getting low with energy, suddenly. This is precisely why I hate wine, anymore. It shuts ambition’s door. But I ignore. More poetry implored.
Lost igloo from colluded
cinders. Looking at letters, loving
alphabet bets.
10/31/13. 3:34am. After a dream peculiar, strange with its dangerous detail, I’m unable to sleep. Afraid to lay head again, actually. So I wanted to base touch with you, reader. Always have you, and for that I’m cosmically gracious. And humbled.
In the dream, I was set to do 3 years in prison. In the course of the hazy play, I remember my character thinking he only had 2 years before him. But after taking a second look at a sheet given to him, un-crumbling it with delicate irritation, he relearned it was 3. He spoke to a lady at a hotel, working the front desk with some inmates on a release program, or something, asking her questions about when to “report,” if that’s even the term, as well as her thoughts on a lecture he’d give in prison, on literature, responding to fiction. She said it needed to be more like the movie “Something About Mary.” Very odd. Think this dream shook me so, as I have always had an otherworldly fright of prisons. Still can’t shake what my character felt, knowing he’d have to spend three years of his life in that horrible place.
Should I try to get some sleep? And if I can’t, I can always nap after leaving little Kerouac at Ms. Lisa’s–
Think I know why prison would be in my conscious, or unconscious… A student the other night told me she went on some field trip with her class to San Quentin. That has to be it.
3:42am. This is like a more intense Barleycorn session. Early A.M., and harsh nightmare reflection, haunt… One multiplied. Met another writer yesterday, in that large group. He was kind enough to accept invite to view some of my work on the “blog.” Even standing kind, patient enough to read the verse I put together in the Safeway parking lot, yesterday morning.
Now I tire again–
Only dark in this downstairs.
Soundless, surrounding, safe.
Time for me, finally.
Halloween. So many recollections of Bayview Drive, San Carlos, childhood accomplices casing the neighborhood for sweets. Parents, all ours, accompanying in earliest days, only to grow more independent, mischievous later. Never participated in any shaking pranks, or vandalism, but I may know some who did. I just think the concept of Halloween’s fascinating: one day, assuming another identity, playfully; the innocence of spooking; then later in Life, looking silly if you enjoy yourself similarly. One day of the year where everyone is allowed to be a child, and just enjoy their costumed silliness. How could that ever be seen as odd, even at later age?
3:49am. Don’t think I’ve ever written this much so early. Will give me something to think about, for sure. Another detail from dream: my character was on a cruise, at one point, with knowledge of where he’d be only a day or two after docking, saying “I feel like throwing mySelf to those sharks,” witnessing a few expose their fins just off the boast starboard side. Think the shark is an obvious symbol for predators, or being fed to them, or knowing their around, or coming [for you, me.. in dream]. The dream felt so real, with my character saying to himself over, over, “I can’t believe this,’ or something like that. I’m here, in dark, telling mySelf as my mother used to when I was profusely young, “It was just a dream, it was just a dream, Mike…”
Funny, with even the mention of my mother, at this age–again, THIRTY-FOUR [shouldn’t have written it like that, now I feel old]–I become emotional. Probably the exhaustion, the dream. Should go back to pillow. But it’s too quiet down here. Will wait for either the heather’s hum or fridge’s jig.
What else can I accomplish tomorrow? OH.. don’t forget: NO MEALS at café! Only coffee, bagel. In fact, I don’t think I’ll allow the bagel– wait, yes I will.. don’t want to feed mySelf some fattening pastry. Go with bagel, cream cheese… And the fridge jitters in a kitchen I can’t see. Bonne nuit, mon lecteur agréable.
8:50am. Went to Starbuck in Safeway, down street, or Highway 12, from Lisa’s house. Writing in nook, kitchen. The ripples from this morning’s dream have left, but I’m left considering freedom’s concept, and what it means to have it from you stripped. Yes, even if you did something to deserve such circumstance. Then.. I connect, conveniently, POETRY.. how the form invites, nearly predicates lawlessness, separatism, strength. After this sitting, down here, in this stiff wooden chair, which I only sit in to feed little Kerouac.. I’ll fly upstairs, into my cozy office chair that was once Dad’s. Verse only. NO. PROSE.
The fridge, beginning its shimmy. So relaxed. Not tired. At all. Thinking of what I’ll write today, at café. Also, what I want from my 2day writing retreat, starting tomorrow [PTO days]. Want this first chapbook bloody finished. I’ve had enough with the delay. 41 pages, 20 copies. Done. Reading one of the pieces now…
Done. Need a break, I think. And maybe a nap. But I’m still sipping mocha. Maybe change scene. Or go to Petaluma early– OVERthinking. I know.
9:36am. And this morning’s early early wake caught me. Laying down, for an hour. Then to shower. Then to Petaluma.