too much for her

i'm very close to having to choose my advising professor for the semester. some measure of it is fate, some of it will. i do get to indicate a preference and while the dear poet i'm under at the moment is sweet, i think i might be too much for her. i might overwhelm her.

i know i can be a lot to take in one sitting. perhaps even in several sittings. but this education is about more than my idosyncracies. it is about the direction of my work. the larger picture. i'm determined after a drastic change of direction, to focus on the business of writing more than the craft of writing, ultimately.

the craft stuff is a lot of smoke and mirrors in my opinion. i don't agree with others simply because they are craftsmen. i don't agree with others simply because they are published. what i need to do is find out how to get my angle out there. to found a journal is still my ultimate goal in this life. while it has taken a backseat, it is not going completely unacknowledged.

this essential step of my mfa will ultimately put me in a position of exploring the innerworkings of running a literary journal. the unglamorous aspects, the business aspects. the whole shebang.

while i'm less tired today, i'm finding, it is perhaps because i've met my kindreds here. i've found my people, as it were. three hours aren't enough to talk about the poems we're scrutinizing. those conversations go on entire days sometimes. that is why we are here.

and in the process, we're planning a jail break tomorrow. some fine arts museum here in boston. while i thought i'd stay in and not venture out, there is a willing soul whose company i enjoy immensely, and she and i will take in a museum. i think it will rejuvenate me in a way lying in my uncomfortable noisy dorm room won't. an infusion of beauty. but not literary beauty, believe me, i'm infused. but an infusion of art.

when i go to museums, i need hours. i sit in front of one painting sometimes for twenty minutes, i cry. i write. i don't just run through and check off boxes for what i've seen. though when i have my girl with me, she has an affinity for picasso, and so we seek out any picassos we can. i've seen a few. not many, but a few. not to mention the ones i saw before she was born. guernica is something to see in real life. but i love woman sleeping, it is, perhaps my favorite picasso to this point. but i digress.

always digress.

now i have to bang out my coming semester, sort through and commit to a book list (tenative though it may be), find a direction to head in, that my advisor will sign off on. i'm not keen on studying only poetry. i've said this. i'm keen on exploring many things and creating from those things. maybe i could incorporate an art aspect, that would be the bomb.

works of art and poetry. hmm. why not?

anyway, my next lecture will begin soon. i'm eating decidedly less, but still probably too much and am sure there will be more of me going home than there was arriving. that seems to be the case since i'm having cake with every meal. and today for lunch i had cake and ice cream. it is not the first time.

we eat breakfast, scrutinize poetry for three hours, eat, have three or four hours of workshops and classes and then eat again. then have a reading. this is a bit much, i should like to have fewer meals, but there is something of a feeding frenzy going on and the piranahesque qualities of my nature are coming out.

the other day i wanted meat. there were ribs. i ate two plates of ribs and licked my fingers the entire time. i could smell the ribs on my fingers into the next morning. it's a weird thing having a buffet, while you wrack your brain. but that is how it is.

i don't eat much usually, so this is beyond normal. i should probably skip a few meals, and if i'm at the museum tomorrow, it's entirely possible i will.

we have our reading tonight and i'm considering reading a couple recent poems about my dark angel. i don't know why i'd read those except that i enjoy them. i do enjoy them.

what can i say. i'm broken. bent. unfixable.

some might even say, irredeemable.