Friday, April 17, 2009

I survived the most horrible winter

Soon I will be able to add a Published Work section to my resume. It will go nicely under all the minimum wage retail jobs and the glossed-over lack of a high school diploma, until I fail to mention high school altogether and just mention that I'm working on a degree.

On Wednesday I got an email from White Wall Review. They are publishing two of my poems under the pseudonym Patrick Walker-Nelson. That makes me a published poet times 9.

Today I went to Grant MacEwan College to chat up a student advisor. I think they are going to let me in.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Woke up at two am to a house of dark, whippy, rainy air and two open windows, ate an orange in bed, which tasted very sweet on account of the dark, woke up again at seven to bells, pre-dawn and freezy floors, drank tea, got dressed, cleaned my rooms, and when the sun started warming up the floors I sat on them and wrote a bit. Then I played Bach, Dvorak, and Reger in the loud front room of the apartment, without the mute, and I sounded fantastic. Then I sat on the stairs to my door and almost finished a poem. Then he came and we left. The day has been full of delicious orange juice, milk, tea, and Starbucks [a slight lack of food, probably going to be rectified later] and a drenching of sun and three logic problems solved.

Friday, April 3, 2009

The anti human-chauvinism movement slightly disturbs me. It's true that human chauvinism, the idea that humans are the surpreme goal and best possible product of evolution, is simply uninformed, but the writers trying to correct this view in the common consciousness seem too often to swing to the other, just as stupid, extreme, ignoring that though it may not be the pinnacle of anything but its own history up to this point, human achievement and ability is a marvelous thing.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

At Chartres

by Katy Didden

Who wielded the chisel
at the left portal,
south porch, the scene

of Theo chained,
naked to the waist, leaning in
to the brutal hand

of what looks to be
an even younger boy?
What man carved stone

to mimic flesh
as it would look inside
the torture of its flensing?

How he must have held
the scene in his own
mind, thought it back

to the act itself,
modeling the lines
with his own limbs

so he would know
both how a body
bends in pain, and how

a hand extends the flayer’s rake.
While I realize how statistically plausible it is, it astounds and disappoints me continually how badly people misunderstand and misappreciate poetry in their attempts to "interpret it", as if this was some joke of an English class.

"What does the grapefruit stand for?'

"A grapefruit."

"But what does it mean?"

"What it says in the poem."

It is something of a hardship to revel in my own improved writing while people are asking such questions. [These past few weeks I've been working a lot, and am delighted to watch myself.]Most of them seem entirely unable to deal with the complexities and subtlties of metaphores that are not childishly simplistic, one-to-one and direct, but also entirely unable to take a phrase at face value before deciphering the metaphore which may be there. It's as if their set of mental catagories was less nuanced, less developed, and smaller than mine. As if they cannot easily relate physically unlike things by abstraction, except in common, popular cases. It disappoints me.

My poems are good.

Monday, March 23, 2009

I would have been proud to be an early American

The writ of habeas corpus is one of what are called the "extraordinary," "common law," or "prerogative writs," which were historically issued by the courts in the name of the monarch to control inferior courts and public authorities within the kingdom. The most common of the other such prerogative writs are quo warranto, prohibito, mandamus, procedendo, and certiorari. When the original 13 American Colonies declared independence and became a constitutional republic in which the people are the sovereign, any person, in the name of the people, acquired authority to initiate such writs.

Friday, March 20, 2009

1. x is the greatest prime

2. Form the product of all primes less than or equal to x, and add 1 to the product. This yields a new number y, where y=

[2x3x5x7x11x...x[x]] +1

3. If y is itself prime, then x is not the greatest prime, for y is obviously greater than x

4. If y is composite [not prime], then again, x is not the greatest prime. For if y is composite, it must have a prime divisor z; and z must be different from each of the prime numbers [2,3,5,7,11,...,x] smaller than or equal to x; hence z must be a prime greater than x

5. But y is either prime or composite

6. Hence x is not the greatest prime

7. There is no greatest prime

Thursday, March 19, 2009

I have left the windows open while I am at school.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Autobiographia Literaria

-Frank O'Hara


When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corder of the schoolyard
all alone.

I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.

If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out 'I am
an orphan.'

And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine!

Friday, March 13, 2009

I enjoy the prospect of continent-wide DC supergrids. I think they're a good idea.
Everything is fairly nice. I feel I have always lived on my own.

But my jeans ripped in the crotch. I sewed them up, and they ripped again. And then my other pair of jeans, the pair with sap on them that I was saving for the summer, ripped in the crotch. But that was the end of my pairs of jeans, and I am wearing the less-illegal, sappy pair at school before I go to Superstore for some intact pants.

I've written a very good poem.

I am employed. Tim is not the only one who can suggest to a former manager that he be re-hired, and asked when he can start. I can too. I will hate it. But I will have money. Money is a source of more pride and happiness than I initially thought, even though I thought it a considerable source.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Happy Birthday darling.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Annus Mirabilis

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

-Philip Larkin

Friday, February 27, 2009

Friday

A packed-up room is strange. It keeps spitting me out. I feel incredibly drifty-around-the-house, and unproductive. Two days, and tomorrow doesn't count because I'll be in Sherwood Park from eight in the morning.

I miss his brain terribly. Starbucks is my mortal enemy for stealing all his hours.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

I like the word 'catharsis'.

In which Lizzy makes a mildly arrogant, but heartfelt diatribe

The prospect of this Sunday afternoon petrifies me. This Sunday afternoon I will move out of my parents' basement [and more importantly, out of access to free internet, free emergency transportation and free use-of-a-telephone-number], and into a two-room apartment halfway across the city. After this Sunday afternoon, I will not be bothered by Kindermusik CDs played full blast through the thin floors, or requests for babysitting when I have things to do. I am petrified.

People keep telling me that I really have nothing serious to worry about. They point out the several thousand dollars in my bank account, my good grades, my cheap rent, my general self-sufficiency. They point out that I will survive. I know. I am not in the least concerned about eating or paying rent. I am terribly concerned about the animalistic tendencies that come with spending too much time surviving.

Is there anything in the world more depressing than a human who resembles a penguin from a BBC documentary? Doing nothing but moving from food source to food source, huddling away from the cold, and procreating like mad? Is there any factor that defines a level of civilization more than the time freed up from providing for one's survival for the pursuit of pleasure and learning?

The sight of penguin people makes me sick. I can think of nothing worse than being forced, through lack of intelligence or good money management or education or ambition, to spend most of my time on a job which does not utilize my mind or involve anything interesting. It drives people crazy, or turns them in zombies, and even their little free time is wasted because they cannot enjoy anything but cheap entertainment. I am very, very afraid of this.

I am not interested in becoming disgustingly rich. I am interested in earning enough, at a job I want to work at, to not have to worry about necessary expenses, to have freedom and money to study what I want in my [considerable] free time, to socialize with people I respect and enjoy,
to not waste hours on the bus, to buy healthy food, to plan for projects, perhaps to invest. I do not plan to spend vast sums of money on big houses or cars, vacations to dull tourist resorts, ridiculous clothing, gadgets, or pure-bred animals. But I do very much want to buy as much time and lack of complication as I possibly can, so I can read a lot of books.

Which is why I am afraid of moving out on Sunday, and of the job search next week, and of deciding what to take my first degree in. In my brief experience so far it does not seem like intelligence and hard work are very employable qualities, and it does not seem like most of the people who exist are worth talking to. The things I want most to do, even in the short term, require time and a relative lack of intruding stress, and this happy circumstance will take weeks at the least to establish even in a small degree. I am determined however. Wish me luck.

Monday, February 23, 2009

exhausted

"Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!"
hums the underconsciousness.
''Love and produce! Love and produce!''
cackles the upper consciousness.
And the world hears onlythe 'love and produce' cackle.
Refuses to hear the hum of destruction underneath...
until such time as it will have to hear.

The American has got to destroy!
It is his destiny.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

I am drained in a half-satisfying, half-restless way. I've spent the day applying for jobs, reading an Ian McEwan novel, knitting for my enormous project which is now almost one-quarter to completion, writing, preparing and tracking magazine submissions [if I don't keep track I could get in trouble], practicing, setting up my new printer, and failing to do math. I finished one poem, which is not very good but not nauseating. I can't wait for Friday. I am going mad.

New York by Valzhyna Mort

new york, madame,
is a monument to a city

it is
TA-DA
a gigantic pike
whose scales
bristled up stunned

and what used to be just smoke
found a fire that gave it birth

champagne foam
melted into metal
glass rivers
flowing upwards
and things you won't tell to a priest
you reveal to a cabdriver

even time is sold out
when to the public's "wow" and "shhh"
out of a black top hat
a tailed magician
is pulling new york out
by the ears of skyscrapers
Nevermind two days, it's The-Day-After-Tomorrow.

One of those

I am one of those simultaneous submitters. The few poems I think should be published by someone are sent to everyone, all at once.

I just adopted this strategy. We'll see how it goes.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

This is where I am going to live:

9806 85 Avenue

It will be my own pad. Suddenly it is quite clear that it is the most wonderful thing in the world that I will live alone, work and feed myself, amuse myself with whatever projects I like, not answering to anyone, study and work toward competence in the field of my choice, talk to people I want to talk to. For the first time it will finally be my acknowledged prime responsibility to produce my own happiness and build what will be my own life. I think this will be worth the considerable stress and trouble, and the necessary contact with unpleasant semi-morons and other frustrations.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Something beyond nice

20 - 12 = 8 days

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

"For the intellectual, material comforts are relatively unimportant; what he cares about most is spiritual freedom. The strength of the Catholic church has always been that it demands the sacrifice of that freedom uncompromisingly, and condemns spiritual pride as deadly sin. The Communist novice, subjecting his soul to the cannon law of the Kremlin, felt something of the release which Catholicism also brings to the intellectual, wearied and worried by the privilege of freedom."

-Richard Crossman


Monday, February 9, 2009

La Petite Vie by Allen Edwin Butt

Love is the kindest
expression
of absence—

Or else
is a day
by the river,

in which by
motion
it becomes clear—

there have been
in an hour an
infinite train

of rivers, & which
did you want
to see? One

comes slowly
to realize
there is no evading things

(the heart will have
its way, though
its will go

unfulfilled),
& there is no shame
in this.

The pleasures in this world—
soft breeze, soft
thighs, a bit of music,

words that make
a good sound—
suggest when taken

whole that the
thing
the body longs for

is not & never has been
some petite mort,
a true thing

known to grass
& the elderly man
with a kind word

in greeting. And
the woman saying
that she is about

to come, as in
going to arrive—
at last to fill

the body held so long
by stewards
in her name.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009



She's lovely.

Monday, February 2, 2009

My new address is close to the bus, the colleges, and the river valley.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Tom-Tom #4

Is out.

soup-fed

Today I am working on my cape and a new poem.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

I spent the last three days going through my drawers and cupboards again, and I have left myself with very few things. I've left myself with notebooks, a laptop, ice cream bowls, a microscope, a pair of jeans, headphones, the cloth for my cape, a sewing machine, books of poetry, a french press, a pile of sweaters, a saw, a tube of rare earth magnets, two towels, a baking pan, a box of tea, two boxes of envelopes - one for zines, one for business letters, The Book Thief, my pocket knife, the pod, my violin and music, a duvet, the secret compartment pillow, borosilicate glass cups, two lamps, a couch, a desk, a fountain pen, twenty ballpoint pens, two sketchbooks, two plates, my library card and my banking card, Jukebox by Cat Power, math books, thousands of dollars, one bra, one bookbag, one writerly dress, matches, a bird shaped cookie cutter, The Joy of Cooking.

I have no junk. I have a pile of library books. I will have great fun buying what more I need to set up house on my own.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Home is So Sad

Home is so sad.
It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back.
Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase

-Philip Larkin
I will possibly never look this pretty again.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

I have found a truly fantastic present.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Thoughts on BBC documentaries

I find the ability and freedom to work wonderful. It seems incredibly lucky and good that I do not have to spend most of my day securing food and shelter or caring for hoards of offspring like most other creatures, and instead can concentrate on learning things, and producing things strictly for intellectual and emotional pleasure. In my case, producing poems.

More News

I like practicing.

I'm going to be published again.

I bought some food.

I have another math test today.

I found a neat present.

I still rather miss Tim.

I'd like to make a quilt.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

News

I am trying very hard not to succumb to any more unreasonable panic attacks. Things are improving slightly since the horrible week-after-Christmas from which I am still not quite recovered. I want to sleep too much, too often, but I resisted it tonight and finished my first article for a publication I don't produce. I got my first ever math exam back today, with an 89. I quit Starbucks. I would like to see Tim. An empty house to myself for a few days would also be wonderful. If you all convince me that you want to get your hands on it, a new issue of Tom-Tom will be started this or next week. I have plans to make borscht. I find buying presents stressful. Other people in general are stressful. I wish I didn't have to go to school tomorrow. I wish air was less conductive so tea would stay hot longer. Soon I will make a major announcement. I have lots of borrowed books to read, and want one more by Ian McEwan. I am extremely stressed. I stayed awake for 46 hours this week. I haven't been eating too well. I am usually cold. I got to explain a percentage difference formula to one of my classmates yesterday, which I liked doing.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

White Night

I haven't locked the door,
Nor lit the candles,
You don't know, don't care,
That tired I haven't the strength
To decide to go to bed.
Seeing the fields fade in
The sunset murk of pine-needles,
And to know all is lost,

That life is a cursed hell:
I've got drunk
On your voice in the doorway.
I was sure you'd come back.


Anna Akhmatova

She is a genious

I wrung my hands under my dark veil. . .
"Why are you pale, what makes you reckless?"
-- Because I have made my loved one drunk
with an astringent sadness.

I'll never forget. He went out, reeling;
his mouth was twisted, desolate. . .
I ran downstairs, not touching the banisters,
and followed him as far as the gate.

And shouted, choking: "I meant it all
in fun. Don't leave me, or I'll die of pain.
"He smiled at me -- oh so calmly, terribly --
and said: "Why don't you get out of the rain?"

-Anna Akhmatova
Lap top!



4 GB

320 GB

Intel Centrino processor

15.4 inches

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

School!

Monday, January 5, 2009

By 'reason' I mean both the process of coming to logical conclusions from given premises, and the correct conclusions logically drawn from the true premises of reality.

People claim that because un consciously-worked-out intuitions are often surprisingly correct, reason is insufficient to explain everything. They decide that there is something mysterious above reason. As if reason was a fanciful human invention and not the way things are.

But the very physical connections made in human [and animal] brains must obey the laws of physics, which can be expressed entirely using mathematics, the most logical and reasonable discipline to exist. Furthermore, since a lack of reason [substitute logic, order] results in chaos not condusive to life but only to entropy, it makes sense that natural selection favors the survival of creatures whose intuitions and unconscious brain activity are reasonable. This seems painfully obvious. If the brain stopped sending logical messages to the heart, or the heart stopped reading messages logically, the brain and the heart would both destruct in very short order.

Much closer to the level of conscious deductive reasoning than the activity of internal organs, the intuitive conclusions that humans often jump to are similarly helpful to the survival of the human when correct, and just as likely to have evolved to follow logical rules, by which they would be most certain to be usually correct.

[I admit that this is not a original idea, but it is one I came up with in a rough form quite a long time ago, I think when I was about ten, and I am very happy to be able to finally explain it.]

Saturday, January 3, 2009

News Items

I read Animal Farm this morning. It was terrifying.

Math class starts on Tuesday!

My mother has quit her job. This is awful news. It means that she will be home every day. Though I am mostly excited to practice and learn more math, it is part of the reason I am so excited about school.

I need to go to the library and the post office and to buy a new notebook.