second starts and false footing

Alright. Let's get this ball rolling. The past two weeks or so have been way more hectic than I was expecting and unfortunately this blog had to fall to the wayside for a bit. But now we can have the triumphant return with parades and dancing and people rejoicing in the streets etc etc huzzah!

So I have returned to Boston from my ancestral lands with a renewed sense of vigor and determination. Already I have sent out a slew of resumes to various places across the country. Will anything come of it? I suppose time (and perhaps politely prodding emails) will decide.

Today I was asked by a friend to write a brief little bit on a cocktail with a theme for Ash Wednesday and/or Lent. How awkward. I just so happened to create a cocktail several years ago called Wednesday's Child, a little burning thing full of Peppar Vodka and Champagne and Goldschlager, and if such things tickle your fancy you can read all about it tomorrow, I'll post a link to the blog.

I was hesitant about putting actual poetry on here, but I've decided that since I am already rambling like a loon, I may as well give some tidbits of what it is I love most of all. Even if it does mean that random internet vultures might come and pick at the meat of me. I am no stranger to blogging, though this is admittedly my first fully public endeavor.

I wrote this quickly on the bus back from New York, it is not so much like my usual work but I like it. It's fast and jarring and maybe I am upsettingly preoccupied with my own demise at this juncture, but life has thrown me a curveball and I'm still trying to get the wind back into my lungs (somewhat literally as well, I have recently been diagnosed with asthma!).

Meat and Chemicals

Someday I will be
meat and chemicals
dissolving underground

calcium deposits
bits of carbon
iron and tooth
pieces of a life lived
on borrowed time
to be returned
before there is a fee

I will not let you take
this life
from me

I wake up each day myself
inside my own head

and when I am dead
with my meat and chemicals
buried underground

only I may decide
what words are inscribed
upon that final page

And love or hate it (especially if you hate it, as the poems are nothing like this one), you can purchase a nice solid book of my wordywords over here.

In which sometimes things start off awkwardly but build to a brilliant crescendo

A thousand apologies, dear internet. Some unfortunate health and family issues have waylaid the beginnings of this blogging endeavor, but I assure you, regular updates will begin tomorrow.

Let's get this party started.

In the immortal words of The Doors, the time to hesitate is through

Today is the coldest day of winter thus far this year. I find this fitting.

Today is my last day of working at Retail Job. I will fully admit that I am sad. I have loved this store and it's quirky merchandise and equally quirky customers, and my own ability to be as quirky as I like. I'm a gal who likes neon hair and wearing multiple layers of skirts with legwarmers and striped tights. I understand that the majority of well paying jobs out there shun this sort of behavior. I've already given myself raven tresses to dazzle and impress those at the unemployment office and any interviews that may trickle in. The time to appear Corporate Goth is now, and I am comfortable compromising things like "looking like I lost a fight with a highlighter" to gain things like "not living in a trashcan like a green muppet."

It's time for me to form a plan of attack.

Step 1: Apply for unemployment. Go first thing Monday morning to apply in person at their offices.

Step 2: Apply for freecare healthcare coverage. I am admittedly in somewhat of a hole in terms of medical debt thanks to having difficulty navigating the MassHealth application processes. It hasn't been fun and I have nearly choked on so much red tape, but with luck and diligence perhaps I can use unemployment to my advantage and finally fall under the grand umbrella of Having Insurance Coverage rather than Being An Uninsured Urchin.

Step 3: Begin applying for office oriented jobs and things to Pay Bills that would supply me with way more money than I've ever made as a retail monkey and provide a foundation from which I can springboard into writing things without also worrying how I am going to eat.

Step 4: (and this is congruent to Step 3) begin sending out as much writing as I can to any publication I can find that accepts submissions

Step 5: Research jobs that are writing oriented. Apply apply apply. Hound the writing world until my homuncular image rattles in their brains from waking to slumber.

Now if this plan of attack sounds hectic and ill-planned it is because, well, it is. I've never really been in this situation before. I have unfortunately suffered the slings and arrows of unemployment in the past, but never at the same time had to find myself a new apartment in only a few short months. This is very exciting. And by exciting I mean terrifying. Hooray! So I basically have everything crumblywumbling in on me all at once.

Ah, but what better way to start anew than to leave everything behind! Terrifyingly terrifyingly left behind. Yay!

And also, since this actually happened and I am still a tad in shock over its glory, you can BUY MY FIRST SELF PUBLISHED BOOK at LuLu.com. It is a collection of poems from the past five years of my life, bits of this and that and poems from my very very dear friend, and one of her friends. So, yes. Exciting. Everything is very exciting. Especially this book. Other such words of encouragement!

Alright, shameless plugs out of the way, it is time for me to start my day and say goodbye to this neat little life whose mundane coattails I have been fumbling to hold onto for so long.

So long little adorable boutique shop, and thanks for all the fish. I mean baubles.

Time to go brave the Fimbulvinter and be on my way.

Hello, the manifesto

Hello dear internet, I am not new to you, but this blog is. Today is January 19, 2010 and I have just been laid off from my job. It is a retail job at a small independently owned shop in a hip part of town. It's a place I have enjoyed working for the past two years, and it is a place that I would have continued working at for as long as I could. It hasn't been the best job, I admit. I am underpaid and under appreciated. But that's life, right?

For too long I have stagnated without putting proper efforts into submitting my writing to publication or making attempts to "break into" the writing and publishing industry. I have a BFA in modern poetry and creative writing from Emerson College and yet I am woefully inadequate when it comes to submitting my work, finding publications, finding jobs within my field, getting noticed, and getting PAID FOR WRITING.

In the past five years I have worked at a toy store in a busy tourist area that let me know it was closing by my showing up to see a "Closing in one week, everything must go!" sign, a museum gift shop in a basement full of rats, a porn and adult novelties store working alone long past midnight, a children's clothing store in a posh neighborhood that treated me like an animal, a gourmet food shop where I was screamed at daily, and a little shop of trinkets and baubles made by local artists that I loved, truly loved, but did not belong there. It isn't to belittle retail or retail employees. I was, and still consider myself one of them. I'm just saying that there has to be more than this. There has to be more than being yelled at by customers because you can't conjure some item from the back room, or have someone shoot eye laser death beams at you for using the word obsequious while on the job. Yes, that happened.

I have never, not once, been paid to write.

I live to write. I am, above all else, a poet at heart. It's something that I feel so strongly about I went to college for a degree in POETRY. I mean that's just wacky. What kind of weirdo gets a degree in a nebulous thing like poetry? Me. That's who. I should have known then what I was getting into. I mean obviously this is a path of the Victorian dandy clutching a pen in one hand and a bottle of absinthe in the other. Last I heard, poetry and witticisms and other Oscar Wilde approved endeavors didn't exactly rain in the dough. And gone is the era of just finding some well to-do monarch or rich person to fund your endeavors as you sip sherry in their parlor and "immortalize them in verse." Feh. Still, I love to write. I don't even think love is strong enough of a word. I NEED to write. At my best of times, at my worst of times (especially at my worst of times), writing both poetry and fiction has kept me alive. Sometimes pretty literally. It has brought me back from the edge of whatever it is that keeps us silly humans sane, and has been a saving grace in my darkest hours. See? Look at this purple prose. I couldn't stop being a poet if I tried.

And yet here I am, a few weeks shy of 26, nothing to show for myself in the world of writing save for ONE publication (Post Road Magazine, issue 8. And even that was in the "etcetera" section) and nothing on the horizon in this realm. (though I am self-publishing very soon! exciting!) I don't know what the hell is wrong with me, truly. A lack of motivation? Fear of failure? I couldn't say. It's ridiculous. I will stand for my own ineptitudes no longer.

So what's the point of this blog? To keep myself motivated. To chronicle the ups and downs of these attempts, and my general attempts to go on existing after being crushed by the soullessness of the American economy. To find out what happens after falling down. To pick myself back up and look forward. To climb back onto that horse of writing and ride off into the sunset. Other such axioms. Et cetera. Ad nauseam.

I already live to write. I am going to write to live.

Now the trick is figuring out how to do it. Stay tuned, intertubes.