tavie.com

My quest continues, and my collection grows.

Man, I owe Jess some mail. She sent me the most adorable and thoughtful gift, but rather than tackle her long letter directly, I'm... blogging about it?

That's rude, dammit.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:17 PM | shower me with attention

Now my breath smells like bologna and sweet pickles. Everyone line up to kiss me!

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:59 PM | shower me with attention

I just slept 14 hours.

I smell.

Life is good.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:18 PM | shower me with attention

Friday, March 08, 2002

I just had a really nice lunch with my boss, Teresa, and co-supervisors Alex, Lauren and Arnold.

They are lovely folks.

And I actually told them that no one calls me Octavia; it made for an amusing anecdote.

I feel good.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:05 PM | shower me with attention

Today is my last day here. I am seriously considering going up to everyone and saying, "It was nice working with you. By the way, call me Tavie."

But no one would find it funny but me.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:18 PM | shower me with attention

Thursday, March 07, 2002

Tonight I heard Aimee singing "What the World Needs Now" in the background of a Calvin Klein Eternity commercial. It was disturbing. During most of the commerical some supermodel was singing tonelessly over her. Only at the end could you really clearly hear Aimee's voice.

It was weird.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 11:29 PM | shower me with attention

This makes me very angry.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 6:34 PM | shower me with attention

Yesterday, erin reported to me that the city was overrun by people in peasant blouses. She immediately thought of me.

Today, I read that the Village Voice is echoing her findings.

Which means two things:

1. Everyone is copying me. Yes, I, personally, invented the idea of peasant blouses, wearing of.

2. Now they will be really expensive. Goddammit.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 6:21 PM | shower me with attention

Ah ha. And now we get to it.

(They've given me no work today-- probably having me come in so's I can get paid for the last two days of the week, which is really nice of them, I suppose-- so I am sitting at my desk reading Bateson. I do so love Bateson.)

The following from "Metalogues", in Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind:

Daughter: Daddy-- has anybody ever measured how much anybody knew.
Father: Oh yes. Often. But I don't quite know what the answers meant. They do it with examinations and tests and quizzes, but it's like trying to find out how big a piece of paper is by throwing stones at it.
D: How do you mean?
F: I mean-- if you throw stones at two pieces of paper from the same distance and you find that you hit one piece more often than the other, then probably the one that you hit most will be bigger than the other. In the same way, in an examination you throw a lot of oquestions at the students, and if you find that you hit more pieces of knowledge in one student than in the others, then you think that student must know more. That's the idea.
D: But could one measure a piece of paper that way?
F: Surely one could. It might even be quite a good way of doing it. We do measure a lot of things that way. For example, we judge how strong a cup of coffee is by looking to see how black it is-- that is, we look to see how much light is stopped. We throw light waves at it instead of stones, it's the same idea.
D: Oh.

***

D: But then-- why shouldn't we measure knowledge that way?
F: How? By quizzes? No-- God forbid. The trouble is that sort of mesauring leaves out your point-- that there are different sort of knowledge-- and that there's knowledge about knowledge...

Well, anyway, I'm tempted to just type the whole damn thing here but I won't. I think I need to put this in my collection, though.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:56 AM | shower me with attention

An unbelievably cute guy just stopped in front of my desk, wagging an orange hiliter between his fingers and grinning mischieviously.

"I stole it from you last night," he confessed.

I picked my jaw up off the floor, attempted a dapper smile, said lamely, "I knew someone had been pawing around here..."

We exchanged a grin and a hiliter and as he walked away, I felt my first real sorrow that tomorrow is my last day.

Homina.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:16 AM | shower me with attention

I have three fine, mysterious scratches on my forehead just below my hairline. They were pointed out to me this morning by my mother.

Inspection of my soft, blunt fingernails informs me that I am not the culprit.

The question, then, remains: which of my cats was walking across my face as I slept? Which of my cats has a death wish?

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:01 AM | shower me with attention

Wednesday, March 06, 2002

Jesus loves me, this I know.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:53 PM | shower me with attention

Goose sez:

I have to write an article about my shoes, which are Converse All Stars in the stars-and-bars pattern.

This reminds me: between the subway station and my school, there is a store that has a little wooden goose statue in the window. The goose has its neck thrown back and its beak open, pointing to the sky. It appears to be hollow.

Recently someone has placed an American flag down the throat of this goose. Now it is a statue of a goose choking on an American flag.

A goose choking on an American flag.

Just saying.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 8:48 PM | shower me with attention

Now, I just called my boss. My boss-boss, the one who got my assignment extended in the first place and really likes me. She told me she came in today after being out two days and this was news to her too, but it makes sense, she says, because they've had so little for me to do lately and it's just been getting less and less and it's time to end it.

Which means, yay, it's not my "fault"-- but it also means that I have to go in tomorrow, and Friday, and go out to lunch with her, and smile at everyone in the office, and say, "Oh, it's okay, you know-- I really need to concentrate on my schoolwork." And although this is completely true-- although I've been wanting to leave for awhile-- it will now sound completely false. It will look like a brave face. Dag. Nab. Bit.

Uggggggggghhhhhhhhh.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:54 PM | shower me with attention

The theme for today is: not being able to enjoy the things one should be able to enjoy.

I've been temping here for over six months. It was supposed to last 10 weeks, and they kept stretching it out. I lost a semester of school due to many factors, one of which was exhaustion at working 8 hours a day. (Although I know many people manage to do this, I am someone who couldn't get out of bed regularly enough to finish high school-- ah, there that is again!-- and was not ready for working full time and being a part-time student.)

This semester I took only two classes to try and adapt to this, because having money is nice, but all the while I have been despairing about never getting out of school if I continue at this rate. And yet I haven't been able to go to my bosses and say, "Hey, it's been fun, y'all, but I really need to concentrate on school now." So I've just gone on exhausting myself. (And does the increased tendency towards self-loathing and overblogging correspond to this life arrangement? Possibly. These increases coincided with roughly the start of this job, but so did planes crashing into buildings a few blocks away. So it's hard to tell.)

At any rate, the problem was solved for me today. I called in sick, due to... feeling sick. Left a message on a supervisor's machine. (Same-said supervisor who'd recently complained about my latenesses, which I then tried my best to correct.) Slept. Woke up, checked my own messages and found one from my agency. "Due to cutbacks", it says, my assignment ends Friday.

Finally.

But rather than breathe my sigh of relief, rejoice, think of all the make-up sleep I can now get, and all of the free time I'll have to devote myself to getting schoolwork done, I get all paranoid and cranky.

"Is this because I was out today? Did she not check her messages? Are they finally tired of the lateness? Are they fed up with me?"

I mean, what the fuck? This job finally ends and all I can do is obsess over reasons why I might have been fired? Why not just accept what agency-lady said?

Because I'm me. And I've been there six months, and I can't let myself enjoy anything.

And also I'm a little afraid of going in tomorrow (and Friday) and finding that I have, indeed, been fired, and it's because I've done a terrible job and they're sick of me.

I know I really need to update the resum� and get a new assignment lined up, what with credit card bills and plane tickets and all, but I really need a damn vacation for a little bit. Can I return to slackerdom for a little while? Or will I not let myself enjoy it?

Speaking of not being able to enjoy things I should, someone evil posted to the newsgroup today. All I could think was, in Lisa Miller's voice, "It's never over, Dave."

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:32 PM | shower me with attention

Tuesday, March 05, 2002

I just did something phenomenal.

I checked a book out of the library. Two, actually.

I thought I could go the whole [skzzmfzzzm] years I'd be here without doing such a thing... I wasn't even certain that you could check books out of the school library, to be honest. I thought that perhaps there were no books in this school's library. But it turns out that one can, indeed, find and check out books.

I'd never done such a thing. I will probably not even read the books. I have more than enough source material from the internet. I don't think I've ever even written a paper using a real, live book as a source before. Not since that Confucius paper in grade 9, anyway. ("Bibliography" is a false term for me, if the word's roots are taken into account; what's the internet equivalent? Cyberiography?) But, since I am playing at being Good Student Girl today, I thought I may as well experiment with the fascinating process of book-checking-out.

It was probably a bad idea. I'll probably lose the books or they'll get torn or soiled. I'll probably be forced to pay for them, or forget I ever took them out and only realize it when they don't let me graduate or something because of my [skzzmfzzzm] years overdue library books.

Time for class.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 6:54 PM | shower me with attention

Flying ships are awesome.

Like in Peter Pan or Care Bears: The Movie or the big shoe in Wynken, Blynken and Nod.

They're really awesome.

I wish they were real.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:30 PM | shower me with attention

Spaz sez: I thought the cap was on the Snapple.
The cap was not on the Snapple.

Spaz sez: I picked up the bottle and shook it.
Iced tea everywhere.

Spaz sez: Got any tissues?

Spaz sez: Oops.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:22 PM | shower me with attention

Rather than delete my last post I am keeping it up as a reminder of what sickening self-indulgence looks like.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:12 PM | shower me with attention

I would give anything (except maybe my hair) to understand who I am and to trust my own judgement.

What do I know for absolute certain?

I am female.
I am a human.
I like plain yogurt.
I have a troubled relationship with food.
I taste some words.
I like to sing very much.
I do not like okra because of its slimy texture.
The human mind is capable of generating infinity despite its finite capacity, and this is one piece of evidence supporting Chomsky's theory of generative grammar.
I am hungry right now.
I have a sister, a mother, a father, an aunt, and an uncle who are all alive. These people constitute my family.
I am allergic to lobster, shrimp, crabs, and raw fish. They make my throat close.
I like harmonica music because it reminds me of the opening to "The Wiz", which invokes a powerful emotional response related to shared experiences with my sister.
My sister and I often do not get along, but love each other very much, in a way we don't love anyone else. We think of it as a twin thing but know it is probably shared by many siblings close in age.
I love a lot of people, although I occasionally have trouble differentiating between what our culture calls "the different types of love".
I have a tattoo.
I am very self-critical in ways that are sometimes harmful.
My friend Steph just called and I am now going to go meet her for lunch.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 1:03 PM | shower me with attention

Oh, more:

Ade mentions this Yoko exhibit, which reminds me that I saw her (recently reissued) book Grapefruit in the poetry section of Barnes and Noble this weekend (three guesses as to what I was looking for) and I really wanted to buy it, but had already spent too much money that day.

So if someone wants to send me that book as a gift anonymously, please feel free.

Unless you're Steve. No more from you, mister. (We're having a gifting war and I'm losing/winning.)

Why are you in Tavie's head? 11:19 AM | shower me with attention

Things, things, things to say that don't really matter to anyone else. And some things that do. Let's tick them off on our fingers:

Got more KITH tix in the mail yesterday. Front row Philly. Yes.

Mike's mom took him to the hospital last night because his back hurt so much. I am worried-duh. Francesca is worried-duh.

Poetry paper has been extended a week. Therefore I am going to allow myself to not think about poetry for at least a whole day. And yesterday I chickened out about asking my prof about what poetry is, but I did ask him to correct me if I'm wrong about wanting the paper to be more than just a personal narrative about my personal relationship with the poem (as others in the class seemed to think?). But I will certainly share if I do ask him, and my guru did explain it some to me.

For some reason, Kitana doesn't seem to see herself going to a U.S. grad school. But her Canadian inferiority complex, rather than a sense of loyalism, is the reasoning behind this. Tavie no understand. Tavie no understand. She can obviously go to any grad school she chooses. Obviously. Obviously. So I think she's actually just reluctant to go to school in a different country, but doesn't want to say so for fear of being booed at by her American friends. This is the only logical explanation.

I finally get Winter's on the Wing out of my head and someone brings it back...

Matt's biological clock is ticking. I must introduce him to Adam, who had a baby at age 20. That will sober him up. Babysit, child. Find some babies and play with them for awhile. Hm. Maybe I should introduce him to Nina...

Still no San Francisco tickets bought, but I am definitely going to Las Vegas (and so are my sister and Gina. So those tix better go on sale already.

Today on the 1 train the conductor was smoking some sort of crack, because he kept us at the 14th station for way longer than was necessary so he could repeat in a firm, slow, condescending voice, "The next stop on this train will be Houston street, and then Chambers. I repeat: the...next... stop... on... this... train..." (etc) "There is a train DIRECTLY BEHIND THIS ONE that will be making all local stop. I... repeat: There... is... a.... train...." He went through this several times, while some rolled their eyes, sighing, and others (like myself) snickered behind our hands and reading material. Finally we pulled out of the station, sped along... la-dee-dah... right past Houston and stopped at Canal.
He didn't even apologize, either. No "My bad, people... I'm on crack this morning." The guy standing next to me fumed, "After all that noise he made...! After all that noise he made...! He doesn't even apologize!"
Subway fumes rot your brain like it was crack cocaine.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:59 AM | shower me with attention

Monday, March 04, 2002

It appears that Atticus has been out there givin' legal counsel to the Cunninghams again, for I came home today to find a sack of hickory nuts on the table. Further inspection of the kitchen revealed that we have also been given innumerable jars of hand-labeled pickled somethings and home-made preserves. It appears my dad has been hanging out with the aging hippies again. (That would be Andrew and Asti and Adam's dad and wife Robin.)

I hope next time they bring a nutcracker. I finally got one of the nuts open (read: smashed to powder) with the aid of a hammer and a pair of pliers. From what I could manage to get on my tongue, hickory nuts taste pretty good.

I'm gonna put in a bid for wintergreen and a sack of potatoes next time, though. Calpurnia will make a tasty stew.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 7:42 PM | shower me with attention

For a moment I panicked, but they have computers in Prague, don't they?

Why are you in Tavie's head? 7:39 PM | shower me with attention

The ongoing quest to define poetry. I'm just gonna work out all sorts of crap here on my blog, of interest to no one, barely even myself. (Italics are him; non-italics are me.)

WCW says:

prose has to do with the fact of an emotion; poetry has to do with the dynamization of emotion into a separate form. This is the force of imagination.

Prose = fact. Poetry = a separate form, other than fact. So poetry is something else, something that has to do with imagination, conveying emotion. It's something that is trying to indicate something else. It is a... sign? A symbol? Symbolic representation of emotion? Expression of emotion through other than explicit description?

prose: statement of facts concerning emotions, intellectual states, data of all sorts -- technical expositions, jargon, of all sorts -- fictional and other --

poetry: new form dealt with as a reality in itself.

A reality in itself.
Okay.
The dynamization of emotion (by use of symbolic? means? is all poetry symbolic? what?) resulting in a new reality = a poem?

Please do not tell me these are easy concepts to understand, or I will hit you.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 4:09 PM | shower me with attention

With no immediate work to do and weary of reading essays about the poet, I decided to randomly search on Google for people I haven't seen in years. I discovered that my old violin teacher is now teaching at a college in Wisconsin, and that my old piano teacher, Anda, had her two children, my old playmates Peter and Mary, with a creepy psychopath.

It was innocent enough. I searched for "Anda" and "piano" and found a page that apparently contained photos of my old teacher with her children, who I remember from my piano lessons. (Specifically, I remember my friend Adam and I crowding into Anda's car with Peter and Mary on Wednesday afternoons, driving to Sunset Park School of Music, or occasionally Anda's house, which was better because she had Dannon frozen yogurt bars.) But for some reason I couldn't get into the page, so I IMed Steve, who told me how to view it. He added that the page was a Something Awful Link of the Day last week.

"What, Anonymizer?" I asked innocently.

"No, Sam Sloan's page," he replied.

This one is the creepiest of all. He got the picture on it from the court files. My innocent trip down memory lane has turned all ooky and curdled, like a Dannon frozen yogurt bar left out in the sun.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 3:18 PM | shower me with attention

To Elsie, or The Pure Products of America Go Crazy, or XVIII

by William Carlos Williams or Willy Williams, the Poet So Nice They Named Him Twice

from Spring and All, 1923

The pure products of America
go crazy--
mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure--

and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror

under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum--
which they cannot express--

Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood

will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder

that she'll be rescued by an
agent--
reared by the state and

sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs--

some doctor's family, some Elsie
voluptuous water
expressing with broken

brain the truth about us--
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts

addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes

as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:36 PM | shower me with attention

Today is all about Really Rosie in my head, words by Maurice Sendak, music by Carole King. (Woah, there's an album? I must get it. No, no more CDs! Somebody stop me!)

Really Rosie, familiar to me from the cartoon (not the original book nor the album) that aired on some CBS Saturday morning long ago when the sister and I were wee, is perhaps the simple most influential piece of music/video of my life. Rosie is a young girl in a New York brownstone with big ideas. She is going to put on a big production (not Godspell, but you see where I'm coming from) and is auditioning all the neighbourhood kids and crocodiles to be in her big movie. She, of course will be the star. She wears a long, slinky red dress, a fur stole, too-big high-heels, a large floppy hat. She is all diva. She is all star. She sings,

I'm Really Rosie,
and I'm Rosie real.
You'd better believe me,
I'm a great big deal!

She sounds like Carole King when she sings, of course.

Kirsten and I used to sing the songs together. They are wonderful songs; "One Was Johnny", "Alligators All Around", "Pierre", "Chicken Soup with Rice", "Screaming and Yelling"...

Really Rosie was my first diva. I still want to be her when I grow up.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:01 PM | shower me with attention

I have downloaded so many useful critical essays on WCW, and on "To Elsie", I wonder if I can get way with never picking up an actual book.

"Internet sources must be cleared with the instructor beforehand."

If I can supply the biblographical information (which I can), he need never know I got it from the internet.

I'm a wily motherfucker.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:50 AM | shower me with attention

Jen Pardilla is coming back?? You won't be at, say, the San Francisco shows, will you??? Because... because... I might go to those!

Oh, excuse me. Someone just came over and showed me a spreadsheet with confusing and inaccurate data on it as if that is somehow my fault. I must go apologize for things that aren't my fault now. More later.

Oh, and Matt is a total diva. Worry not.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 10:05 AM | shower me with attention

Hooray, sarah is back.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 9:10 AM | shower me with attention

Sunday, March 03, 2002

I knew someone (and someone else) would come through for me re:Outkast.

Now: I bought two CDs today online. Two CDs I shouldn't have bought, considering the extremely frightening balances on the four credit cards I now have to house all of my debt. Dast I buy a third? Dast I fail to remember that I just paid $1000 for KITH tickets for myself and various cronies?

I dasn't not.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 8:25 PM | shower me with attention

Djin asked about Lush bath products. I can only say, they are the most delicious bath products I have ever come across. I got a lot of Lush gift boxes for people as Christmas gifts this past Christmas. They're not available in the U.S. (my friend Asti tells me it's something about USDA standards) and so I can only order them online or stock up when I'm visiting, say, Sydney, Australia or London, England or Toronto, Canada. Phoo. But they're delicious. My favourite things are the solid shampoos that smell like gin-and-tonic (they also make good body bars) and the "Demon in the Dark" mint-and-apple-juice soap. It's very goth-looking so I got a chunk of it for Cheryl. They also make these amazing, creamy bath melts. I love bath melts.

Oh, and the customer service for Lush Canada is really friendly and helpful. When I mistyped my card number in my online order they called me up immediately and fixed the problem.

Also, they have a glittery dusting powder called "Bare Naked Lady".

I like that.

Boy, I'm girly. Why can't I speak this confidently about poetry? :P

Why are you in Tavie's head? 8:06 PM | shower me with attention

I'd like to say I don't usually agonize this much about a short, simple school assignment, but that would be incorrect-- I agonize just this much for every single paper, no matter how short or simple.

So please forgive the following.

I've been reading William Carlos Williams all weekend. He is, at times, utterly incomprehensible, and at other times really beautiful. I was really shaken (in a good way) by a poem in "Spring and All" that I have learned is called "To Elsie" (in my edition of Imaginations it isn't titled, but numbered... I read somewhere the titles were added later.) The poem, I have read, was written for a mentally ill woman that was working as a housemaid for Williams' family, and it is stark and haunting. I like it. (Not to mention the fact that my guru himself mentioned it as a favourite.)

But Toronto Steph pointed something out to me. Why, she asked me, are you agonizing over trying to make sense of new poets that you haven't even learned anything about yet, when you already know of a poem that you like (specifically, Yeats' "Second Coming"?) Not only do you know you like it, but you have more background information on the poet since you already covered him in class. It is often easier, she pointed out, to write about something that you already know you like.

Unbelievably, this knocked me for a loop. Why didn't it occur to me to choose "Second Coming"? Because it's too obvious? Too "easy"? Too famous? Too understandable? May be seen as a cop-out? Why? Why didn't it occur to me?

Well, and the problem is, could I find eough to say about "Second Coming"? Could I write a whole paper about it?

But, then, could I write a whole paper about "To Elsie"?

Tomorrow I know I have to go to the library and find some major study--biography, literary criticism, whatever-- to read about whatever poet I've chosen for my paper. I have absolutely no idea whether I'll be looking for a book about William Carlos Williams or about William Butler Yeats.

It's such a simple fucking assignment. Why is it torturing me so much?

Why are you in Tavie's head? 7:30 PM | shower me with attention

One more thing. I saw a group called Outkast on SNL last night, and I think I love them. Does anyone know the name of the first song they did? I really want to get it.

(Mostly I was just taken with that guy in the wig with the insane energy and the patchwork suit... he is so in my amateur imaginary production of "Godspell" now.)

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:36 PM | shower me with attention

I really need to document the dream I just had about Goose and Matt. It was a very vivid, emotional dream with crying and soaring, emotional highs. It involved me going to their school, messing up a soccer match that Goose was trying to get me involved in, and then going to an awards ceremony in a large gymnasium in the basement so that Lynne Thigpen could present Matt with some sort of Valedictorian-esque honour, and only I knew that after that she was going to call my name so I could stand up and recieve an Independent Spirit Award for best female lead in a motion picture. I kept glancing anxiously at The Wonderduo to see if they were noticing me, but they were Queen Bees and I was a Wannabe, and only when Lynne Thigpen called my name ("And now, for best lead actress in a motion picture, Octavia Phillips! Tavie, come on up here!") did they finally see me. I was hoisted upon the shoulders of some impressed high-schoolers and carried around the gymnasium as I wept tears of joy.

So, analyze away.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 12:02 PM | shower me with attention

Kirsten called me here last night and told me they found that guy and he's now in the hospital and he's fine. So that's good.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 11:56 AM | shower me with attention