Listen to this playlist: mercury retrograde

mercury goes direct

but not before my personal retrograde arrived. . .

do you know you have a heart murmur? yep. mmhmm.

my heart is so meta. it's saying something subtextual beneath the ostensible beat. that is all.

pt. 3: delving deeper into the narrative: finding the unexpected

it can't be forced. most movements and phenomena are only labeled as such after the fact. usually, you don't know you're in the middle of a zeitgeist while it's coming into being.

for months now, my intellect and my instinct have been sparring.

i am not someone who does this.

what is this? well, i've gotten into it a bit already, but more specifically, amidst the thesis making and dissertating on youtube clips, friendships have begun to emerge. i noticed that there were a handful of people whose thoughts i was especially keen to read, who i hoped would comment, whose perspective on the narrative snippets i trusted more than others'.

we were beginning to interact with a braided narrative structure: the content itself, the recasting of that content into a new context that allowed for textual commentary upon the visual, and we were also bringing our memory of watching these scenes in real time, twenty to twenty-five years prior.

We were kids when these dramas first played out, and we could see that in many instances we really didn't know what was going on then--and our adult minds were being a little bit blown by the implications we missed as young girls who simply wanted to see frisco & felicia kiss and make love.

to have the chance to go back and not just reengage the narrative, but to reengage who we were when the narrative first unfolded for us--in various parts of the country--has forged a bond i did not count on.

i am not someone who makes friends online.

soon the comments boards weren't enough. i began writing two of my yt friends via personal message--still not going beyond the parameters of the site--but we found there was just more to say than the 500-character comments limit would allow.

it was delightful. i found that i couldn't wait for the notifications to my g-mail account telling me that there had been some activity--a new comment, a reply to a comment, an upload, or a longer note waiting for me in my yt inbox.

lately, things have gotten even more meta. we've been dissecting some interviews and writings about the show and the actors, and sometimes you need to process from a more visceral place than a keyboard will allow. . .

one of my two main yt people wrote me in a note recently that after reading one piece i'd passed along that she wished she could call me to talk it through because her thoughts were going in so many different directions.

i sent her my phone number.

she gave me hers.

we didn't talk that day, but she called me last night. i'd already put her number in my phone, so when i looked down at the display and saw who it was, this whole thing became imminently more real.

greeted by her warm and cheerful voice, i knew i was in for one of those long, deep conversations that feels like finally finding a friend at camp, the first sip of a hot cup of coffee, and a breath of fresh air all at once.

there were no awkward moments, just a good, old-fashioned gab fest. we talked fast and animatedly about our feelings and memories about the characters. i was so happy, i was tripping over words, laughing, and saying things like "yes, absolutely," over and over again like some sort of babbling fool. and i didn't care.

i can't wait for the next conversation. or the effort that i and two other yt'ers are mounting. we're just letting the situation organically unfold.

whatever this is, i am someone who does this.

Co-opting the Soap Opera Narrative: dissertations in miniature part 2

I always know when I really love a book, because before I even finish it, I begin to dream in its syntax. I dream the narrative structure—beyond the page—extrapolating it to greater depth and distance. I conjecture the visceral, essential element of the words.

It is said that fluency in a language is hallmarked by dreaming and counting in that language. When you are able to co-opt a linguistic structure , to elegantly violate that structure if you wish, you have become entitled to call it yours.

It's the same reason poets are afforded license to verbify nouns, doff punctuation, and to privilege sound over meaning if they see fit to do so within a given poetic space.

Without fail, when a narrative place (book, song, poem, life-experience) becomes sacred, two things happen: there is first the ardent devotion to committing it to memory through repetition, and the inevitable desire to put it in relationship to one's own existence and understanding of the world. Part and parcel of the second step is theory-making, the commenting upon. Shortly after that, inference-making and the solidifying of opinions on the implications of the narrative—writers' intentions, ostensible meaning vs. subjective meaning –all come to the fore.

Narratives heal.

As I said in part 1 of this exploration, when I found my beloved supercouple construct's narrative footprints alive and well on YouTube in the summer of 2010, I was in a singularly terrifying place. I was desperate for some way to be tethered to the earth again. I'm an avid reader of books, but there were no physical pages I could worry with thumb and index finger at that time that would do a tenth for me what finding Frisco and Felicia again did to ground and reorient me to my life.

I started off passively. I simply viewed clips completely oblivious to what the comments said. Oddly, happily, I remembered much of the dialogue word for word, but in this new context, the experience created a sense of déjà vu. I knew what would happen, but it was still unfamiliar to navigate the serialized material this way. The serialization was happening on two levels now: as a soap opera, the stories unfolded in a recursive, clipped fashion anyway. But on YT, I had to determine which posters had posted the continuation of the stories, whether or not they had, or would, and where storylines crossed in one person's playlist with another person's clips. I was becoming a sleuth. I had to internalize the various naming conventions, comb my own memory for the year that certain narrative strands were in play, and search accordingly.

I was also a researcher. User handles made it clear what characters were privileged more than others in certain groupings. So I watched many videos on fast forward until I caught a glimpse of something or someone who interested me.

Then, it happened. I suddenly wanted to interact with the material. I wanted to talk to someone about it. I yelled at the clips. "Oh, Shut Up, Character I Don't Like!" or, "You've got to be kidding me, this is bullsh*t!"

I started to read the comments. Some of them were staggeringly astute, or simply said exactly what I'd been thinking. They were by turns funny, invigorating, enraging, or just plain stupid. I wanted to talk back to these people—whoever they were—but some of them had left the comments 1 or 2 years before. I worried, too, that it might be presumptuous. I could detect certain threads of relationship among the recurring commenters. They had a clear vibe going, and I was a newbie—someone whose understanding of F&F in particular, and of soap opera idiosyncrasy, in general was untested.

It also meant that I would have to get an account—commit to the idea of myself as someone who not only watched these clips, but who was invested in them—and play for real.

Something fairly significant was afoot. But how to explain this to my sister, who is also my roommate, and my best friend who were increasingly worried about my seemingly obsessive proclivity?

More to come in part 3.

the new spinsterhood

waking up next to a bottle of melatonin and your vibrator. seems like a girl just needs some sleep these days. . .

mercury retrograde 2

on march 30th--two days ago--mercury entered its retrograde phase just as my book of the same name was going to press. astrologically speaking, this is somewhat inauspicious. even less auspicious, perhaps, is that i actually sent the files today, april fool's day. but i choose to focus on this: the first photos of the planet emerged on 3/30--after 6 1/2 years of NASA's satellite hurtlling through space--photographs became available for the first time ever.

is it a coincidence that on the same day the planet begins to give us the illusion of its backward winging through space, is the same day that my book is being finalized? well, i'm a sucker for kismet things if that's not obvious by now. i like to think that mercury is feeling the love its always wanted to feel, and so is ready for its close up. my book was not always going to be called mercury retrograde. it was the first title that suggested itself to me, but i didn't even acknowledge it. it seemed too easy. nice to know that sometimes you get a moment back.

i hate to think of it now, that some other words came thisclose to living on my cover, but the truth will have its way. the right thing does tend to win out. in any case, my first experience of this retrograde (they really can be quite lousy with communication snarls) happened today, two days in.

it began when my contact at the printer's headquarters didn't confirm receipt of the files. given the import of all this, and my general impatience, i called them. i should say here that this printer has been fairly responsive up to this point. it was weird that no confirmation had come by the 2nd hour.

anyway, i called them. they had received the files. i was informed that production would start on monday, and that an invoice would be sent. good enough, right? then the e-mails from them started coming fast and furious. it seems that the estimates the printer has been supplying up to this point did not factor in color on every page. and this printer does C-M-Y-K, not Pantone, so that's a 4-colour spot everytime, not 1.

on march 7th, i sent an e-mail. note: this is a good 3 weeks before the retrograde began. that e-mail said that i wanted an estimate that assumed a bleed on every page. so, that's what i thought i'd been getting. no.

i was always taught that "bleed" automatically translated to mean "colour." not so, not so. so, the estimate nearly doubled when the actual specs were factored in. and because this book is so beautiful, and because the subtle, slate blue-grey and white palette i've chosen is so central to the design and connotative integrity of the book, i could not, in good conscience, tell the printer to print the guts of my manifesto in black and white.

tremendous miscommunication potential was realized in that moment. here's hoping this is as bad as it gets.

Write or Die: Coffee at Night

i am not a prairie chick. but here i was out in the middle of the goddamned badlands trying to get over a breakup which is just stupid. stupid. and there was a coffee pot engulfed in flames on the first night. i was thinking it would be hard to sleep. i imagined a coyote eating me alive. and i thought that would be preferable to the way i felt every day. i imagined myself becoming a wolf, maybe. but then i thought it would only be worth it if i was going to be an alpha mate. buck had been a beta male for sure. and i was an alpha girl. therein lay much of our trouble. shit. so, i was on this prairie missing my ipod and other affectations. i missed the starbucks cup that i would have been gently cradling in my hand if were home--fingering the edge of the cup guard, ruining its integrity. we weren't allowed to bring electronic devices on this outward bound for the lovelorn. what was i doing here? trying to remember or trying to forget? my lifecoach advised me against thinking through things too much with a specfiic outcome in mind. she said buck was buck and he was in my skin and my hair and my lungs and leftover like forensic evidence at a crime scene. he's just a goddamned fact of my life. take the good take the bad. whatever happened to that show? what was its narrative arc? how did it end? did tootie ever lose her virginity? there was some episode where it was implied, but then her jock boyfriend couldn't do it. were they trying to say he was gay? or was it some other secret? the 80s. situationally comic television scenarios were king. buck did not grow up watching television. it was another issue of ours. another one in a legion of thready, sticky problems. that all equaled i was still not going to be anyone's. i've always known that i'm not really suitable for anyone's long haul. he would probably couple up with that girl from his job. eventually. buck has this weird preoccupation with the appearance of propriety. he would wait the ceremonial month to six weeks before he even asked her for coffee. but i always felt her there like a smoky, disparate thought at the edge of who we were. he was too quick to leave her out of anecdotes and other places in his constructed narratives where she was relevant. negative space was the suggestion of her. karen. the coffee pot is in flames. i imagine it will taste like tar going down. my manuscript is stained at home on my desk. stained from the last venti americano i set down on it. the day before buck called and apologized for what he could not say. i had no reason to do anything except head out here to flatness, to a lack of man-made light. i am terribly afraid for myself. not of wolves or coyotes or even the big, big sky. i'm just going to fade right off the tip of his understanding. i'm going to be that unremarkable person he marked time with before karen agreed to have coffee with him.

dissertations in miniature

for the past several months now i have been caught in a youtube vortex. as is the case with most rabbit holes, it was some combination of accident and curiosity that made me peer in. and of course, what i started out looking for was not the ultimate point in terms of what i found.

contextually speaking, last summer, when i became tethered to the youtube experience, i badly needed an escape. after almost dying in car accident (with both of my sisters) and other uncomfortable situations related to my apartment, i was in a fairly constant state of anxiety and depression of the soul.

i'm usually too intellectual--far too rational a creature--for true down-in-the-dumpedness. what i cannot solve by puzzling out and analysis, i tackle with activity. there's something healthy in that. i'm also wonderfully capable of compartmentalization, which sometimes bleeds over into being denial's pusher/runner on the streets of my own perception.

anyway, i knew what youtube was before last summer, of course, but it wasn't a go-to venue for me. i'd watch clips people sent me, but i didn't hawk it for entertainment. it wasn't yet in the fabric of my paradigm to proactively search for things there. in any event, it became a delightful distraction.

i'll never forget the oppressively hot night (no central air in this apartment) this all started. a general perusal around the Internet like a turn 'round the parlor room in a Jane Austen novel, and i happened upon a thread of intrigue. oh, this thread i sought to worry might not tempt me today if i saw it. i don't remember exactly what it was, except that it was.

so, there i was looking for something very specific on youtube all of a sudden: "general hospital opening credits, 1963." suddenly, i was enamored of and overcome with the importance of my task. yt was not really forthcoming on this score. the search yielded all manner of "related videos" instances. the thing about that feature is that it is practically impossible not to click on something--even if you know it's not what trail you want to be on. yt is very meta in that way. and self-referential.

i have not watched general hospital since early summer 1991. and i have not thought to go checking on it in the interim. but there was a period of years prior to going off to college when i held court with a handful of characters--two in particular. this was roughly 1984-1991.

well, by way of that seemingly innocuous search i was portalized to the past. the lion's share of all the narrative pieces i cared about as a twelve-year old and eventually, a teenager, had been preserved and posted by a number of people who obviously still cared. i was soon to realize that i did, too, desperately. i thought i had rather nonchalantly let it all go 16 years before.

i was heartless toward my pre-college self and her preoccupations, and moved effortlessly into the next phase of my life. i had other worries: my own legion of heartbreaks, remarkable tomfoolery, and well, other rabbit holes it took years to climb out of.

somehow, though, on that night in july of last year, hours went by before i knew it, and i was deeply enmeshed in a gh storyline from the fall of 1985. at that time, those two characters were at the height of their fraught love affair, and this would all be further informed on a meta-level by a foreshadowed offscreen marriage and two children.

so. double-helix narratives, hinting at themselves, all twisty and presciently delicious. as a narrative deconsructionist, this was even more impossible for me to resist now than it had been when i was a child. i didn't have the vocabulary then to describe all that i was sussing out, all that was teeming beneath the surface.

then, it was about the sheer mystery and impact of watching two people kiss differently than other people were kissing on tv, it seemed to me. always an analyst, even at 12, i leveraged the rewind button on the vcr to try and determine the moment an unscripted look passed across a face, to determine the precise moment when a kiss left the page, and became about a transference of energy between two people that couldn't possibly be scripted.

so, in the summer of 2010, for weeks, i watched favourite clips over and over again--enjoying them on a purely visceral level, to be sure--with the informed mind of an academian and narrative poet now more solidly in place. come fall, i was still at it.

youtube is a curious thing in that it is about the visual narrative, but has made a way for the written, metanarrative thoughts of viewers to companion that visual piece. the comments feature is democratic. you can write any banal thing there you want, and most people do. you can write effusive appreciation for what you see, or express extreme disgust. you can also discuss the implications of the video, the poster's intentions as you conjecture them, and if you are dealing with serialized subject matter, those comments become a string of dissertations in miniature.

later, i'll get into what happened between me and a handful of metanarrators on these boards when after months i was still viewing, favouriting, and new posters began to emerge to post to meet the requests of those who clamored for the gaps in the overarching narrative of those two characters to be filled...

wakeful nights

i am awakened, without fail, between the hours of 2 and 3:30 a.m. each morning. antagonized by the thought of something i forgot to do, something that could go wrong, and the general ick of acknowledging my shrinking possibilities, i bolt upright and take to the Internet. there are five or six pet sites that i worry like a stone, the page impressions like virtual grooves. my whole world is sleeping, it seems, but i am already up looking for signs of movement and progress from somewhere.

i am hurrying myself out of rest and into the arms of even more waiting.

i cannot lie. there is something enlivening about all this. to be enmeshed and invigorated by the enmeshment is a lovely, drama-filled time. i don't have many emotional outlets, so when i'm up in arms over something it's my own little walk on the wild side.

but really, even when my emotions are going at full tilt, the filter is analysis and categorization.

when i am engaged on this level, it's so hard for me to let go, to be let go of.

i'm up a night proverbially pacing because of my tunneled vision. there is no zen to be had anywhere right now, but i desperately need some balance and some perspective. what's going to happen is that my project is going to come to an end, and it's going to be fine, and i'll wonder why i saw the process of getting there to be my nemesis when it's the very thing i should have been savoring.

i don't know. i just wasn't made like that, y'all. so i'm mainlining caffeine, violently checking e-mail for updates, and making mental lists.

waiting on all the stray parts of me to fly back together

listening to 'america' (simon & garfunkel) on repeat since 9 a.m. and have yet to grow tired of it. drinking the blackest coffee. the black beyond black. yum! my first conference call is at 11 a.m. and i am only hoping it's brief. otherwise, it's just a sussing it out kind of day.

back to blogging. baby steps. the character restrictions of twitter (@salimahp) and fb have ruined me for lengthier discourse.

but i feel exposition coming back to me.

mercury retrograde

i guess it's time for me to blow the dust off this thing, huh?

here's a tidbit for now: on May 6th, 2011, i will be reading from the culminating work produced during my last three years as a mfa student at the university of baltimore.

mercury retrograde, by salimah j. perkins, limited print run! only 100 copies will exist in the world (unless a press picks me up!)

featuring:

open letter to a soap opera supercouple
the six-legged dog
ringer

and many, many more!

o blog world, so long abandoned

i have cottoned to the concept of micro blogging. this space, clearly hiatused, is not really indicative of all that i've been up to. more to come.

the valley of [in]decision

everything has come to a head all at once. some things are ending. others are shifting. everything is a question mark. my current lease will be up in a month, i'm at a career cross-roads, and i'm beginning to feel the weight of a gnawing unrest with my lack of exercise and slipshod diet.

i have no sense of agency. it's all rather depressing.

most interestingly perhaps, i've put two very specific romantic feelers out into the cosmos and the answer has been resounding silence. it's not the time for this now. i know that. not perfectly, perhaps, but as much as possible i put myself out there without an agenda and without any investment in a specific outcome. my energy is too dispersed.

and so what of Christmas? it seems to have come too soon again this year.

So Much to Say

it's hard to know how to talk about the last several months. a few days after my last entry in May found my sisters and I upside down on the Jones Falls Expressway, having been hit by a motorist driving on a suspended license (cause: DUI).

we all got out. but we were not fine. i was not fine.

a month or so before the accident my birth father and i began talking to each other by phone. i was sussing him out, enjoying the exchanges, but keeping him at a reasonable distance. i know and do not know this man. i knew him instantly, and to an extent i feared his lack of knowledge of himself. so much more dangerous because his lack of awarenss masquerades as deep knowledge.

it is the one time in my life i have been completely aware of another person's motivations and fully committed to my own lack of desire for any specific outcome.

now, he is unreachable having fled his most recent wife for the blank whiteness of alaska. before this, though, he faithfully called me several times a week. ardent as a lover, more ardent still because while i welcomed his calls, i did not care if he called. eventually he asked for a loan. something black crept to the edge of my thinking.

June and July. a constant state of fear and mistrust. at no time did i not suspect my life of ending. i was frail and fragile and every interaction was tenuous. for several days i considered strongly that i did die. my days were a disparate essay.

to make matters worse, i hated the house my middle sister and i moved in to. the dog, too, could not seem to adjust. for a while eating required coaxing, great theatrics.

i started sleeping upstairs in the living room--the one room with an a/c unit--like a long-term visitor.

and then, well... things got even more unsettling.

The Particular Sadness of Everything

My birth father has been occupying a peripheral role in my life for the last 2 and half months. As with all long lost people, I've held him out at a distance, admiringly, but not really convinced of his ability to achieve permanence. I have negotiated my life without him up to this point, and we both agree that his not being in my life was better for me. In the least defensive way possible, I don't require much. I have always believed that this is the most advantageous position in a relationship, that if a relationship is going to take, neither person can come to it with needs that overburden the fledgling phase. at the outset I decided that if he ever stopped calling. . .

Chimneys & Tulips

My summer Independent Study has begun! In the context of that IDS, I am exploring five texts: The End of the Alphabet (Claudia Rankine), I Love You Is Back (Derrick C Brown), Otherwise (Jane Kenyon), Teahouse of the Almighty (Patricia Smith), and Chimneys & Tulips (e.e. cummings).

getting used to life on a tree lined street

i've been a bolton hill resident for about two weeks. here's the thing. it's not mt. vernon. do i have a significantly better living space? absolutely. but i can't get anywhere nearly as easily. if life were perfect, this house would exist in the cultural district of my fair city. also, what is up with my achilles tendon? makes life as a pedestrian tres mal.

here's the good news. grades are in: not mine as a student, but mine as a teacher.

i'm starving. no groceries, so i'll have to order something. that's another matter. who delivers to this suburb in the city??!!

also, something wonderful and delicious is occurring to me in waves. ah... ah.... ah...

Life in Boxes: Grading still to do

I've finally done it. I've had the busy grad school semester so many of my friends have bemoaned. During my first grad program, I faithfully took two courses a semester for two years. Even though I worked full time then, too, the workload never got to me; I finished without breaking a sweat. The degree was no cakewalk, but I was only truly time-stretched during the thesis completion semester, but that, too, was manageable.

As I did last semester, I took three classes this term. I continued to work 40 hours a week. And I taught one section of composition that met twice a week. That was the tipping point. Teaching is arguably the most fulfilling thing I've ever done, but in the context of my life as a student and office wonk, I felt filleted. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I have almost no short-term memory. At least I've gotten past my 10-day, lowgrade stomach ache. No nausea or suppression of appetite. Just an ambient pain.

It doesn't help that I'm moving--that by this time next week--I will have already moved. The packing is fairly far along. It's something of a miracle that I can say that; two weeks ago I wasn't quite sure I could see my way to assembling and filling a single box.

You have to understand. Usually when I move, there's a spreadsheet called the Moving Schematic that details by week and date when certain milestone activities should occur (e.g., call magazine subscription services to have address formally changed).

It's been a bit willy nilly this time around, but somehow I'm crossing items off the list of To Dos that exists only in my mind.

How wonderful would it be if by this time next week, I had also fully wrapped up all my grading and my own homework? Not to be. Grades aren't due until the 21st, and one of my own homework assignments isn't due until May 17th. That means I'll be taking grading and writing into my first two weeks at the new place. No clean slates till later in the month.

But. . . but. . . my students. I am always going to remember these 19. I am always going to remember how much they grew as writers, how brilliant they all were, how hard they tried, and how much they made me laugh. What I wished most of all is that I had had more time to give them.

Halfway marks, tearing up at work, and the comma

Spring break is two weeks away. Because I have a 40-hour per week gig in addition to being a student myself, and teaching one section of freshman comp., this doesn't really equate to any sort of vacation for me. It is an indication, though, that we are at the half-way point. I have to turn in mid-semester grades, so I guess I'll need to figure out the drop-dead date for that.

In other news, I've teared up twice at work this week due to some stuff that I blew way out of proportion. Going into it here would be cumbersome and impolitic. I've come back to a rational place and an appropriate perspective, which has made my boss happy.

In other, other news: Today is my half birthday. A coworker gave me a huge bag of Utz Crab Chips to celebrate.

Finally, for now, I've been schooling my writing students on the wonders of the comma. Somehow, they were not as amazed and intrigued as I thought they would be.