Author Archives: dousar12
E – Poetry Observed
E – Week 9 Log
Monday
4 hours writing term paper
Total hours: 4
Tuesday:
4 hours writing term paper
8 hours digitizing story
Total: 12
Cumulative total: 18
Wednesday
4 hours digitizing story
7 hours writing term paper
Total: 11
Cumulative total: 29
Thursday:
6 hours digitizing story
Total: 6
Cumulative total: 35
Friday:
8 hours digitizing story
Finally finished. Took absolutely forever. Figures that I’m such a perfectionist that I had to edit it a whole bunch. I hope it turned out well.
Total: 8
Cumulative total: 43
Saturday
2 hours writing poetry
Total: 2
Cumulative total: 45
Sunday
2 hours writing poetry, digitizing work, retagging post
1 hour poetry observed.
Total: 3
Cumulative total: 48
Couldn’t find the drivers for my camera, so I had to go and install a new program to use it. Took longer than I was expecting.
Grand total: 415.5 hours
Week 9 Poetry Collection
Says who?
I am owned by these fictional characters
They guide my waking life, rule what I have the chance to do.
I tell them what I want them to do.
They retort with what actually happened.
It’s usually much more depressing than what I
Planned (like real life I
guess) But they are strong characters
And shan’t do anything they don’t want
So I concede. Depressing it is.
Solidarity
There’s talk of teamwork, of
What it means to band together.
There’s shouting of political ideas,
Cries for more and more enthusiasm.
But it’s not really enthusiasm that drives this process.
It’s need.
It’s a need you can feel deep in your bones,
One that pulls the best out of people,
Encouraging them to shine and to change.
So maybe the word isn’t solidarity,
It’s need.
A need for power, for control, for wages,
For health insurance, for fair worker’s rights.
We give you solidarity when you have need,
I hope you can some day return the favor.
E – Week 8 Log
Monday
4 hours editing Your Journey Home
3 hours digitizing How to Survive Being Blessed
My handwriting is terrible
Total: 7 hours
Tuesday
4 hours writing poetry
Too sick to go to class, wrote a reverie on Perloff. Took a while to get it right because I tried to reference a fair amount of the chapter.
2 hours writing term paper
As I did last quarter, I have way, way more term paper than I need. I’m going to have to cut it down.
2 hours digitizing my story
This draft is nigh incoherent. I need to work on my handwriting.
1 hour editing my cover letter
Total: 9 hours
Wednesday
4 hours editing Your Journey Home.
2 hours digitizing my story
2 hours writing poetry
Not all of my poetry ends up being exactly on topic with the class, but it still fits in a lot of ways. Still often inspired by the class and reveries that I have.
Normally I’d have my meeting with Sandy but her mother was just diagnosed with cancer. She believes she’ll be able to meet with me again week ten. In the meantime, I will continue working on my publishing goal without her and check in when she becomes available.
Total: 8 hours
Thursday
2 hours writing term paper
Started incorporating pieces of my bibliography. I need to get less wordy about describing the books I’m using. I like the abstract, though I’m worried it’s a little bit hokey.
3 hours edits
Seriously, editing Your Journey Home just won’t end
Total: 5 hours
Friday
4 hours reading Neuro and writing reverie
This reverie was tricky because I wanted to do the conclusion justice. I hope I did.
2 hours editing Your Journey Home
Total: 6 hours
Saturday
5 hours editing Your Journey Home
And it is finally done. Passing it off to a friend to look it over.
Total: 5 hours
Weekly total: 40 hours
Cumulative total: 367.5
E – Week 8 Poetry Collection
Perloff – this poem is to make up for the class I missed on Tuesday.
A Rose by any other name would smell as sweet,
And Nikolas certainly makes Perloff sweeter.
How refreshing ideas and abstracts, no ties to the physical.
A great mass of free floating language begs for poetry
Because it is human nature to give birth to patterns.
Or do patterns give birth to human nature?
Traffic has a rhythm and a pattern, reports turning
Drudgery into poetry.
Poetry needs a revolution just like art.
This is not a pipe and this is not a poem.
But it is the idea of a pipe and the idea of a poem.
People make poetry with more than just words.
Here we conceptualize the unimaginable,
The quiet daily life.
Alien
A friend of a friend who is an editing intern
Offered to edit my story. She shattered my
Fragile spun forgetting, my hopes that maybe
Someday I will manage to be normal.
She didn’t understand my story, editing it
With all the finesse of a bull in a china shop.
It clattered to the ground in pieces, the meaning lost
Because she could not put herself in the shoes
Of this lost little trans* boy. Her edits made him
Sound like a butch girl, a woman who he is not.
Sometimes I go about my daily life and I get to forget
That I am an alien. I am an impostor, a conundrum that
Shouldn’t exist. I am transgender, a transcender of
Cultural norms. So unique, a zoo animal.
And then something like this happens.
I will do this with my story many times, if it gets picked up.
I will shelter this lonely little trans* boy and keep him from
Being turned into a butch girl. I will explain myself
Justify my existence before anything will ever happen,
Before my writing will ever be more than a pipe dream.
It’s just so tiring. Surely somebody would understand.
But maybe if people understood I wouldn’t need to write.
I ask myself would I rather be doing anything else and the answer Is no.
I would not give up the muse of my gender for a normal life.
I just wish it wasn’t so tired a bargain.
Cancer
It is a beast that roars in the night, eating
The people you love. It is not so easily slain
As a simple beast. Radiation changes them, takes away
Who they are and replaces them with someone
More jittery, more cranky.
Their flesh melts away, they are not there.
Instead, they sleep. They sleep, they eat, they need.
They tire, they hunger. Oh, but they survive.
It is hell and it is painful, but they survive,
Flirting with addiction triggers, defying this monster
Ripping away at their insides.
But what if it ever comes back?
Chains
The quilt I never made for you, a double Irish chain
Weighs heavily on me today.
You never got a chance to add your quilt to
All of the generations that came before you.
Even when your body was broken you engineered a way
To make sure that you could still craft, could still
Make beautiful works.
You gave me a job, gave me a chance.
But you’re not here any more, stolen away
By multiple sclerosis. Even when your body
Was breaking down, falling apart
You had the best sense of humor of anyone
That I have ever met. Will I still be able to make the chain for you?
Something to hold you to this Earth now
That you can no longer hold yourself. I don’t know.
You left behind your children and husband
And a collection of quilts that would be the envy of
Just about anyone. On me you left behind
The ability to stand up for myself, even when people
Are family, that blood isn’t any thicker than the loyalty
That comes with it. You taught me your humor, your management
The ability to look at people and laugh. I miss you.
I will continue to miss you when I head home
And don’t have you to talk to about my mother,
Or her boyfriend, or politics, or sports.
I will chain you to the Earth with my memories,
With your quilts.
I hope you found heaven, because you certainly
Deserve it.
Ink
I can’t read my own handwriting when I write quickly.
Which is a problem when I can only write by hand.
Eighty pages of chicken scratch to somehow
Turn into a story. The paper responds better
Than any keyboard, my mark left in the world.
My hands write better when they move, get rubbed In ink and marked.
I can touch the language here
It isn’t filtered by a screen or the perfection that is typing.
Here is where my drafts are born, because drafts are
Messy, imperfect and full of flaws.
On the computer, they will be edited and processed
Turned into something clean and pure.
This is necessary evil, because in its raw state of ink
And flaws, my story is not what it should be to others.
It is a raw idea I mold much like a potter, working clay
Until there is something beautiful and functional.
Except I can’t read my own writing.
Always an exciting adventure.
E – Reverie Week 8
“As for cognition, do we not think, literally here, with hands and eyes?” pg 230
“..there is nothing to fear in the rise to prominence of neurobiological attempts to understand and account for human behavior.” pg 232
Why does something physical
Have more weight than something
Ideological? If it exists physically
We give something more thought, more
Courtesy than if it is an idea.
A man does not have himself killed
For a petty distinction
You must speak to his soul.
But how do you do that if
His soul is neurons and clusters
and brain cells? Surely the same way.
With words, ideas. Sounds.
Sounds that are physical, waves
To be interpreted by a brain.
But their meaning will resonate long after
The waves have dissipated.
Ideologies have weight. Nazism, communism,
Slavery, sexism, racism, transphobia.
Weight, and
Body counts.
But we cannot see sexism, or touch
Transphobia. If it exists in our neurons
It is most likely because it exists in
Our culture.
So why so much emphasis
On what is physical?
E – Week 7 Reverie
“…your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules,” page 200
“…the self/nonself distinction provides the basis for consciousness,” page 216.
Who am I when I am not you?
Because I am neurons and fibres different
From you.
But when you leave where do I go?
Am I gone? But I am different.
I feel hollow. I search and I search
To fill this hollow space inside my chest
My head, my heart, but
You are gone and the hole is there
It is what I have.
I am gone. I feel gone. Where do I find myself
When I am alone?
You find me, put me back
Tell me who to be. But now
You are gone and I am alone.
I am gone, gone, gone
Where the goblins go,
Or the cobwebs the lonely
Toys in the attic,
The soul discarded to dust.
E – Week 7 Log
Monday –
3 hours reading.
Wanted to finish brushing up on Tawada before the seminar. Wanted to explore some more of the text. I’m starting to see Perloff’s delightfully dry sense of humor.
Total: 3 hours
Tuesday –
3. 5 hours of class
Class was amazing. I got great feedback for one of my poems. I’m glad that I can continue to write and develop as a poet and as a novelist. I love writing.
4 hours of writing
Finally finished the handwritten draft of Mauri’s story. It needs a whole lot of spit and polish, but it’s getting there. The draft is still going to be really rough, but it should end up working out alright. Letting it sit for a while before I start trying to digitize it.
1 hour of cover letter editing
I really should not leave this to the last second every time. Hard not to with all of the other class work and then it’s always fresh in my mind for Sandy. ‘
Total: 8.5 hours
Cumulative total: 10.5 hours
Wednesday –
1 hour meeting with Sandy
She did not actually get a chance to read my script. We edited my cover letter some more, talked about what my story might need in terms of editing. She really enjoys the flow of my story, asked me some questions about what was going on with it.
3 hours editing my manuscript
There was someone online who was volunteering to edit stuff, so I emailed off a copy of my story. I want to polish it more before I send it off. She added almost three thousand words of edits, so I spend a few hours pouring over the script and polishing it up. I’ll also have to do the utterly tedious business of putting it in the format that BSB wants it. And now the big question. To paragraph or not to paragraph.
Total: 4 hours
Cumulative total: 14.5 hours
Thursday
1 hour trans* talk
Went to the presentation what’s trans* about queerness now. It was alright, mostly geared toward informing people about why transgender studies is a necessary field. I didn’t really need convincing. I knew about some of the historical erasure but not all of it.
2 hours editing manuscript
So many edits. I have some quibbles with what the person editing wanted, but we’ll see how it goes. I never realized how consciously I make a lot of my writing choices. Or rather, I make them unconsciously, but I make them deliberately. I have a lot of reasons for writing the way that I do. That’s a nice surprise. Makes me feel less like a hack.
5 hours reading
Neuro is DENSE this week. Also reading some commentary on Tamora Pierce and her strong female characters. Trying to read some reviews of fantasy. Also found a great book that deals with abortion and the regulation of female bodies. I wanted to read stories about women who had gotten pregnant from rape in order to make sure that I was doing the story a service. This is a sensitive issue and I want to do it right.
Total: 8 hours
Cumulative total: 29.5 hours
Friday
4 hours reading
Perloff this time. I love the themes, the idea of taking the mundane and making it poetic. Makes me wonder if cities have their own rhythm and if the rhythm affects speech cadence.
2 hours manuscript editing
There are so many edits. I love writing, I really do, but the rewriting gets to me after a while.
Total: 6 hours
Cumulative total: 35.5 hours
Saturday:
4 hours writing
Mostly poetry for the ealphabet.
2 hours editing
These edits will never, ever stop. There is just no end. Oh well. Price to pay if it makes my writing better.
2 hours reading
Finishing off the reading for the week. Want to have a day off on Sunday, only want to do the cover letter on Monday.
Total: 8 hours
Cumulative total: 43.5 hours
Quarter total: 327.5 hours
E – Week 7 Poetry Collection
The Most Beautiful Thing – somewhat suggestive
The Most Beautiful Thing
Oh it’s dark. But a small light shines,
Illuminating what little I can see of her.
It’s blurry. My glasses are next to the light,
Left there to avoid getting dirty. Dirtier.
Oh, we’re sweaty and sticky. I am not allowed
To do anything. So I lay and compose poetry
Distracting myself from the goddess sticking
Oh so elegantly to my skin. Her noises drive me
Wild. They make me want to help. But I am not
Allowed. Shift hips. Slide into her. There, yes there.
Oh her noises. I melt against her. It’s so hard to lie
And do nothing when she’s making those noises. Poetry.
The way people flow together, flow apart. The way that we
Flow together and flow apart.
Oh she’s screaming. This is the most beautiful thing
As she falls onto me, weak, knees not working. I can move.
So I do. I hug her close, stroke her hair. My turn.
Oh, I’m looking forward to this.
Carving – self injury trigger
Carving
I wish it was as easy to see
The marks that not cutting
Leave on me
As the jagged open wounds ripped
By a dull knife wielded in shame.
Because scars are a reminder of what you did.
But I don’t have anything so neat for what
I don’t do.
I have a ring. Silver. It sits on my finger.
A reminder of how long I have not cut.
861 Days. (I had to look it up. I am not
Careful enough to keep count). Two years is
The number I remember.
The way the ring sits the lines remind me
Of a tree. Resting on my finger, breathing with me
As I hold on to my will power hold off this thing
That I will never be able to beat.
For the rest of my life I will probably
Count those days.
I’m fucking proud of those days,
All of them hard won.
Fast Lane
Fast Lane
My life is forever going to be slow.
I live at a different pace because my body
Demands. Its demands grate on my nerves.
I see people fly by me, doing things so
Effortlessly. Look, this person works
And goes to school. They work and they
Go to school and they never wear dirty underwear
Because they are too tired to get out of bed.
What a world that would be, so different.
How much could I get done if I was not me
With this disability?
Oh, but where my will, my will did it come from?
Would I still have my will if I did not have to shape
My body away from so much disability?
How much would I get done if I was not me
With this disability?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.
I have questions without answers (doesn’t
Everyone?) because what I want, oh what I want
Is to go into the fast lane with my peers, see them
LIVE.
But I can’t. I can’t live like them, my body (OH
MY BODY) will not allow it.
I sit in my chair as people speed by.
Fine, I huff. Fine, fine, fine. I will sit
And watch what I cannot have. I will paint
My chair wings, I will give it wheels, give it
Life.
I might not go anywhere, but I can make my own world.
If I must be caged, it will be a pretty cage
Made of language and stories, freedom from
My own little corner, in my own little chair.