1:07 a.m. x 2011-10-28

currently listening to: "after you get what you want you don't want it" by kathy brier

i went to california with kara and we heard amazing writer after amazing writer read, including one of my favorite living writers. i got to talk to her. i was soaked with sweat and heaving and crazy in front of all these people i wanted to impress but i did not care. i was totally ready to pour forth with all the "YOUR WRITING SAVED ME" but she went "you're a writer. what are you doing?" and i said "i have a chapbook coming out in the summer." and she knew the press. AND SHE WAS SO ECSTATIC FOR ME. oh my god! it meant the world to me. not only because i think she's amazing, but because my professor would not be proud of me like that and i have not quit longing for that. he would not be proud unless i got into somewhere very dusty, very staid and respectable, and got paid to do so. because he's cared deeply, and he's the only one who's cared to the extent he was occasionally disappointed with me.

i got autographs from EVERYBODY whose books i brought. everybody else i got to shower joyously with high-fives and nervous energy. california was as hot as i should have expected it to be. i had vegetarian tamales, greek pitas, hibiscus tea and bubble tea everywhere, every day. it was an amazing little vacation.

something about it: i knew that it was a conference, an academic thing, which i enjoy. it was itself a not very staid academic thing and aspired to be a festival instead, a celebration, which it was, it was joyous and amazing and full of ebullient energy. it was interesting for me to see as a fan of all these writers the very academic side of things, that is - i'm failing to characterize it - the way that this kind of assemblage was a thing for the CV, publishing as a career-building academic pursuit to stay relevant to an area of research, literature outside the academy looking, i guess, not being looked at, not derisively but anxiously.

my ideal working life: get an mfa from the one school i want to get into, get that teaching experience, publish, go to conferences and have fun and meet people and fangirl, research - do so outside of academia. to say nothing of the state of that job market, i assume there are people out there who WANT to teach for a living and i am really all right with doing so many other things. that's what i'm doing right now. but if i had an mfa i feel i could hoodwink people better into thinking i'm a serious adult.

we'll see.

i have started to fervently love "boardwalk empire." i still think parts are weak and it isn't "mad men" or "twin peaks." there is a lot of helium-inflated melodrama but it is nothing compared to the kinky, perfect, desperate, complex story lines that are not straight-up gangster. the run of the mill bootlegging things should really be macguffins. too much time is focused on establishing who is seizing power from whom, who is coup-ing who and why. angela darmody's secret lesbian life: yes. lucy danzinger doing absolutely anything but especially her completely batshit relationship with van alden: yes. margaret being a total evil genius: yes. van alden: yes, forever. gillian darmody and all the pedophilic, incestual overtones of her every relationship: yes and yes. steve buscemi and michael pitt are my favorite human beings together. the entire show could also be richard harrow walking through the woods and it would be my favorite thing on tv.

if anybody should ask i'm going to a seminar
pieces of the moon
JOBJOBJOB
interviewinterviewinterview
sensitive heart, you're doomed from the start
(& etc)