Anatomy of a Dress

but moving day has dragged into moving week (let’s be honest: we all knew it would) and in the interim I have:

- Located a fantastic reading chair
-received my tax return
- Gotten an expensive traffic ticket
-Said goodbye to the dream of using my tax return to buy a refurb laptop, as most of it will now go to item 3;
-packed–and schlepped–almost all of my stuff to my new apartment alone
-watched dozens of hours of cable while I packed, mostly “No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain” (the world’s greatest food porn), then bid said cable an unceremonious farewell as Mano and I hurriedly removed the television from the wall to schlep across town during our previously scheduled heavy-lifting portion of the move, then ate mexican food an hour later in the world’s lowest stress moving day EVER
-worked, every DAY
-written nothing, but read almost half of Michael Dickman’s End of the West (and boy HOWDY do I have Thoughts)
-yoyo’ed through moods in such random and sudden jags that it would make your jaw drop
-called Rabbit, FINALLY
-NOT initiated the install of webternetz at my new apartment, and don’t know if I should, really.

Anyway, there are strange little drifts and moats of papers and miscellany all over my bedroom floor, and I’ve got to gather them up in such a way that they can be moved to the new apartment in the next hour, before friend boy shows up to help me dismantle and move my bed in the last and least fun part of a very long(ish) and unfun process. But whatever — I applied to graduate schools this winter! I know poor and unfun but good.

More later–XOXO–

Moving Day! Busy Busy Business.

Anyone who’s ever taken the hint and cracked one of the books also knows he’s many kinds of problematic–foremost in the disastrous unevenness of his prose, even within the space of a given page. He’s that species of great writer, the uneven-prose species: Dickens, Dreiser and Highsmith are others. Russians will tell you Dostoevsky is too, and that we don’t know this because translators have been covering his ass. Dick’s ass, though, is uncoverable. His sentences routinely fall down and cry “ouch”. In the words of Bob Dylan, another prolific and variable artist whose oeuvre offers pitfalls for newcomers, “I’m in love with the ugliest girl in the world!”

from the essay “You Don’t Know Dick”, Jonathan Lethem

BEST SHOES EVAR.

Except the toe box is awfully narrow. They’ll take some time to wear in…although I understand cobblers have machines they can use to stretch the leather of shoe uppers? Going to check it out before work tonight.

All my friends from college are having babies. I have a lot of feelings about this.

PS PS! I forgot two very important updates because I announced them on favebook and not here:

1. I AM OBSESSED WITH THE WEST WING.

2. You know those jeans you keep around because you used to look so cute in ‘em before you got fat? And once a year or so you pull them out and try them on in hopes that they’ll fit again? I was packing last weekend, found my store of skinny-girl jeans, tried ‘em on and voila! I have most definitely lost twenty pounds because girl I look gooooooooood (she said, pirouetting in those old school black cigarette pants that end just above the ankle). I am teh CUTENESSSSSSSSS srsly everyone you want to get next to this.

At some point, the quantity of Things to be Said outstrips the possible quality of the Saying — this being a blog, therefore not all that genuinely high quality anyway, there’s most definitely a problem there. But that’s a really paltry excuse for leaving you alone so long. I’ll make it up to you, baby. I mean it this time.

Also: ever feel like Facebook (I just typed FAVEbook, natch) siphons off the urge to blog? Here’s the thing. Instead of coalescing the progression of sensations and experiences in my life into a narrative, I just spew pithy one-liners at the internet all day long. I’m sure that there’s going to be some op-ed on this before too long. And then Twitter will destroy facebook, and the length and depth of discourse on the internet will be incrementally crippled — anyway —

Illinois has filled their final poetry spot for next fall and suddenly I am no longer even remotely diverted by the entire application/acceptance process. Which is great timing because since I’ve gotten home from SXSW I’ve been working 6-day work weeks and haven’t had time to give a stray thought to the DRAMA! that is hundreds of writers milling around while their future is decided. The work sitch is a bit of a frustration, since I took this job so I could work 3-day weeks and concentrate on writing, but there’s a discernible upswing in business and this is the first time in years that money (and the lack thereof) hasn’t held me in a terrifying vise, so there’s that. The lease on this apartment is up at the end of the month and could not come at a better moment. Things between J and I, as they disintegrate, are getting wildly unpredictable. So I’ll be starting the process of moving into my old apartment complex — probably into my old apartment, in fact — next week. Large chunks of my free time over the past few weeks have been spent dividing my books into “KEEP”, “STORE”, “MAYBE” and “SELL” piles in anticipation of my move to Alabama at the end of the summer, and the good news is that my books are now almost entirely packed. Which leaves just kitchen stuff, papers, clothes, and some odd bits of furniture. Dis girl doesn’t have much in the way of worldly possessions. I’m also dating a little right now, and it’s very nice but I am working very hard to keep it light and casual because between the working and the moving and the dating I haven’t had time for the WRITING, which is what all this is in service of, no?

Substance to come. For now, this funny exchange in front of the jukebox during a night at the pub last week:

Boss: Okay, who chose this Pet Shop Boys song?

Farren: MEEEEE!

Boss: Why am I NOT surprised.

Farren: I loooooove the Pet Shop Boys! This is my favorite cover! Ever!

Boss: You know who sang this originally, right?

Farren: Uh, yeah, ELVIS.

Boss: Uh, NO. It was —

Farren: Are you about to say Willie Nelson? Because before you do you’re wrong.

Boss: No it’s not! It’s…hang on, I’m going to look it up…

(general clamour in the group)

Farren: And this is the sound of a THOUSAND iPhones being brandished.

My Bloody Valentine at the Palladium — one of FIVE U.S. tour dates. YES YES Y’ALL