Immortality suits me, I think.

Yeah. I totally went there. And it was awesome.

I vamped it up like an obsessive-17-year-old for Halloween this year by turning myself into Alice Cullen from Twilight:

Alice Cullen

Never let it be said that I cannot commit to an idea, people.  If there had been a way to make this costume more precise by getting myself turned into a real sparkly vampire, I would have done it.

Yes, I really did go to VampFangs.com and buy gold contacts and Vampyre’s Veil virgin white pressed powder.  (You would not believe the conversation I had with the secretary at my optometrist…)

And yes, I really did hunt down Alice’s velvet ribbon choker with the Cullen crest at the Illuminating Designs Etsy shop. 

I even dyed my hair black, because making permanent decisions based on temporary situations is a perfectly mature approach to life.  I considered chopping my hair, too, but I spent the summer too annoyed with the bob my stylist gave me in June (cute, but too short to pull it back in a ponytail for the gym, and after 2 years of super-long hair, I’m only now figuring out what to do with it), so I let it alone. 

And you know what?  Being someone else for an evening felt great.  October sucked really hard–what with the never-ending beat-down of a jobsearch in a shitty economy (still no income!) and getting into a could-have-died car wreck that means I have to deal with insurance shit all the time (pass the tranquilizers, please!)–but the instant I put those contacts in and started freaking people out a little,* I could forget some of the grown-up bullshit of the past few weeks and just slip into a beloved character’s skin and pretend… 

And no, the irony of becoming an immortal girl who can see the future and has a vampire boyfriend who is basically hot, boy-shaped Xanax is not lost on me.

I will say that the other pieces of my costume were A. found in my closet, among my normal clothes, or B. purchased because they not only matched Alice but were also things I would totally wear again in a non-Halloween context.  So while I may be a bit insane, at least its leavened by some measure of practicality, right?   Here I am hemming The Goddess’ costume at the Martha-Stewart style party I threw for the girls here in Madison (I found this fitting.  A big party with over-the-top decorations? Very Alice), before we all headed out to various house parties and the annual spectacle of Halloween on State Street:

my version of Alice would be crafty...

 *Okay, so…the contacts were totally terrifying.  The whole evening ended up being a pretty rad social experiment, since I was dressed in clothing anyone might reasonably assumed was my own, and most people didn’t really notice anything amiss till they got close enough to see the eyes.  When they did, though, I got the best doubletakes.  People broke off mid-sentence, blinked rapidly, and leaned in to get a closer look before pulling away with FA-REAKED OUT speed.  It was really fun to see who found the eyes compelling and who was unnerved by them.  Some people–people I didn’t even know– felt the need to strike up conversations with me that involved a lot of eye contact.  Like, unblinking eye contact.  And a few people were so freaked out they had to look away.   It was really fun, subtle, mind-fuck mayhem, and a great way to kick October to the curb!

apparently, this gold color says "I want to eat you." AWESOME.

Unholy Glee on All Hallows Eve

You’ll have to wait a few days for pics of the Most Obsessive Costume Ever, but in the mean time, a little preview of the insane Halloween decorations I unleashed on my apartment for the occasion… Enjoy!

My mantle, with ghost-white pumpkins, a tarnished silver set, and black candelabra and candles

Yes, I cut out all those bats by hand

I love how the candle light creates shadow-bats across the wall

ooooh, spooky!

My fave little candle-holders– ceramic laughing ghosts with space for a tealight!

Some farmers’ market gourds and autumn leaves in glass lamps with more tealights.

This might be the funniest thing you’ve never seen

Have a great Halloween weekend!

Laci K

I am a poetry bestseller…Let’s celebrate!

Want to know something awesome? My girl at Red Hen Press– the incomparable Stephtacular, the Stephtacular you all know and love– just sent me news that my collection Allegheny, Monongahela was listed on

Poetry Foundation’s Contemporary Bestsellers List for the week of October 11, 2009.

Now, that’s pretty cool– Steph and I both worked our asses off (and we’re still working!), not specifically for this, but to make sure A, M is as visible to the public as it can possibly be on a tight budget and with limited time (Steph works 12 and 14 hour days regularly–REGULARLY–for a whole fleet of authors, not just me).

But it gets cooler. Want to know some of the other names on that list?

Philip Levine. Mary Oliver. Louise Gluck. Sherman Alexie. Charles Bukowski. Yusef Komunyakaa. Michael Dickman. GARRISON KEILLOR.

And me. Holy Christ, right?

I bet you know some of those names even if you’re not a poetry geek. And let me tell you, writing poetry can feel like the loneliest, geekiest, most navel-gazingly pointless endeavor in the world sometimes. I regularly spend 12 and 14 hour days trying to make a metaphor that truly communicates what I felt or saw or realized about something–a metaphor that slices as close to the truth of the matter as the blunt edge of language can.

On a good day, I get so close I go to bed certain I’ve actually said what I mean. And for about thirty seconds, I feel amazing!

And then, I remember that A. only a few other people have learned to read that kind of language, B. even fewer actively spend time applying that learning by reading poems and collections, and C. an even smaller number among those will ever read my poem.

POETRY FAIL.

I know poetry gets a bad rap because people think it’s difficult. They think it’s obscure, and that poets deliberately try to be confusing or obtuse. With a few notable exceptions that I won’t go off on here, that’s simply not true.

If you don’t get a poem, it’s not because the poet is smarter than you.

It’s not because you’re not capable of getting it.

It’s because you just don’t know the language the poem is speaking in. You wouldn’t feel bad about yourself for not understanding a person who walked up to you and began speaking Urdu if you had never learned Urdu, right? And you wouldn’t assume that this Urdu-speaking person is spouting nonsense, either. You’d recognize that the Urdu-speaker, like most people, is probably saying something cogent and understandable…just not in a way that you can understand. But if you learned Urdu– even just a little Urdu– you totally would.

Poetry works the same way. If you read a poem every day, pretty soon you would start to understand the language of poetry. And yeah, you’d like some poems better than others. You’d “get” some poets more easily, because their language makes sense to you. But you’d see pretty quickly that poetry, at its very core, is about trying to communicate. And–let’s be logical here– if poetry is about trying to communicate, then it’s trying to be clear and precise, not incomprehensible.

I mean, when you tell someone who is important to you that you love him or her, does I love you really sum up what you feel? Do you want to say, I love you, or do you want to say, I love you the way water loves oxygen– you are part of me; I am not myself without you? If you add a metaphor to it, doesn’t that I love you get a little closer to the kind of feeling you truly have? Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s close.

Poets try to put into words human emotions and experiences that do not fit into words. Seriously. That’s what poetry is about. Maybe it seems like a fool’s errand to try to put into language precisely the things that language can’t hold, but unless there is some other way to talk about those emotions and experiences that I somehow missed, then writing is the only thing I can do, the only way I can edge toward the truth.

Any writing– poetry included– is an attempt at telepathy. When I write a poem, I am thinking of you. I am trying to reach through the time and space that separate us– the version of me who is writing, and the version of you who might one day read what I’m writing– and connect.

I try to do this every day. Every single day, I am trying to reach out and tell someone else: let me share something I know with you.

So yeah. This Poetry Foundation thing? I am pretty freaking psyched about it. This means Steph’s hard work at Red Hen is paying off. This means that my feverish typing is worth it. People are reading the things I’ve written! Maybe they like them, maybe they don’t. The point is, they’re reading them, and as they read, the version of me who wrote those poems is connecting with all of them.

And that feels pretty amazing.

The Suburban Mom Gene

I admit that when I was growing up in the North Hills of Pittsburgh–North Allegheny School District* to be ridiculously precise– I totally hated suburban life:  the necessity of driving EVERYWHERE.  The white-blonde moms in yoga pants with their Starbuck’s lattes and their Coach bags, who spent all day driving massive SUVs to the mall, multiple bulk food stores, the mall, soccer practice, and the mall, and were way too involved in their kids’ lives.   The girls with their new boobs for their Sweet Sixteen and the boys dressed all fratty in head-to-foot Abercrombie outfits that their white-blonde mom bought for them at the mall.  The lack of anything to do besides go to the movies or eat crappy food at TGI Friday’s on Friday. 

*Perhaps it would be enough to simply state that this is the SAME SCHOOL Christina Aguilera ”attended.”    You see what I mean. 

I’m really happy to be living in a city now– a nice, medium-sized city with beautiful lakes and lots of little boutique shops and restaurants, and a million things to do on any given day.  But every once in while, my deeply suburban upbringing freaks out over all this culture and risk and things not looking THE SAME!  It rears its monochromatic beige head and whines like a fashionable, mixed breed dog– a Labradoodle, say, or a Puggle– and I feel the need to drive out past the city limits and into the sprawl of strip malls on the West Side. 

Goddess of the Dawn and The Erstwhile Flaneur and I went on one such Suburban Nostalgia bender the other day, because we really needed 4 lb bags of frozen edamame, 769,872,346 granola bars, and million thread count sheets.  And there’s only one place to get such things…COSTCO.  Let me just tell you…renewing my Costco membership and then walking into that warehouse with a cart so big I couldn’t get it to corner was so satisfying.  There’s such comfort in the idea that you can buy 27 bazillion rolls of toilet paper in one go (you know, just in case the moon gets knocked off its orbit by an asteroid and we’re all stranded without TP), or a jar of knockoff Raisinets bigger than your head. That you can get a Greek salad that is EXACTLY THE SAME as the Greek salad you got four months ago in a completely different time zone, or walk up to a girl in a cute sweater, ask her where she got it, and then go there and get one for yourself.

Suburbia and its array of retail establishments make you feel secure because surely with that many chocolate covered raisins, you will never have to worry about the potential horrors of impromptu movie-watching sans Raisinets!  ::shudder::.

For a long time, I thought I didn’t have a Suburban Mom Gene, but turns out I totally do.  I freaking love Costco.  And I love Target with an unreasonable passion.  And Panera…I could eat there every goddamn day.  No, it’s not as interesting as Laotian food or sushi, and it’s certainly not as challenging as trying to cobble together a week’s worth of groceries from whatever’s in season at Farmers’ Market.  And yeah, sometimes I end up wearing the same sweater that everyone else bought from Target.  But you know why?  It’s because that sweater was AWESOME.  And sometimes one size really does fit all.  Bring it on, Suburbia!

The Mother Ship

Goddess and Erstwhile compare prices

I don’t like chain restaurants, but if I were Empress of the Universe, I would magnanimously allow Panera to live.

The carnage post soup & salad

We finished the day at Target, which was a pretty epic adventure all by itself. I mean… can you go into Target and NOT go down every single aisle?

Why I need to see Bright Star

 

The inspiration:

On this day in 1819, 23-year-old John Keats  composed what’s considered to be one of the most beautiful love letters ever written:
My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else — The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you again[s]t the unpromising morning of my Life — My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you — I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there — I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving — I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love — You note came in just here — I cannot be happier away from you — ‘T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it — I shudder no more — I could be martyr’d for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet — You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more — the pain would be too great — My Love is selfish — I cannot breathe without you.
Yours for ever
John Keats
“My dearest Girl” is Fanny Brawne; the two had met the previous autumn at the house of mutual family friends. In the spring, he and she became next-door neighbors, saw each other all the time, and fell in love. He dashed off playful sonnets to her in the midst of working on his serious verse.
They secretly got engaged, but Keats could not afford to marry her. Though his passion lay with poetry — and publishers were interested in his work — he decided he would write a play in order to make a lot of money quickly. He started working on a historical play about the true love of Elizabeth I.
But in February, months after he’d written “My dearest girl … I cannot breathe without you,” John Keats began coughing up blood. He had contracted tuberculosis, the disease that had recently killed his brother Tom. On a blustery February night, Keats had gone to visit friends in the city and returned late, riding outside the stagecoach and without a jacket. He was feverish and his friend took him up to bed, where Keats coughed blood onto the bed sheets, looked at it with a candle and said, “I know the color of that blood; it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that color. That drop of blood is my death warrant. I must die.”
He had a second hemorrhage and grew increasingly weak. He had worrisome, inexplicable heart palpitations, which one doctor attributed to hysteria. Keats wrote to Fanny Brawne to tell her that she was free to break off their engagement since he would likely not survive. She would do no such thing, she told him — and he was hugely relieved. But his friends tried to keep the two apart, lest passion make the young poet feel ill.
In June 1820, a book of his poems had been released, and it met with great critical reception and good sales. This news buoyed his spirits, but his illness continued to worsen. Some suggested that he should travel to warm, sunny Italy to get better, and he began making plans to do so.
Then one night, Keats was handed a letter written to him by Fanny, which someone else had inadvertently opened. For some reason this threw him into the depths of despair: He sobbed for hours and set off walking in the night, alone, crying, coughing, consumptive, to where Fanny’s family had moved — a mile away. He showed up looking weak and gaunt, and Fanny’s mother — one of the few people who knew of their engagement — defied convention and let the young man stay with them that night. He would actually continue staying there for an entire month, and considered it the happiest time of his life.
But soon after that, his travel plans for Italy were complete. A friend took him to Rome, where Keats died at the age of 25. He was buried in the Cemetery for Non-Catholic Foreigners in a plot next to the pyramid. He asked to be buried with an unread letter from Fanny and a lock of her hair. And he asked that his epitaph read, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
And he wrote her: “My Mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it. I never felt my Mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment — upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses.”

Tender Reposting

I have been meaning to repost this from another blog for some time now. I hesitate because while I am not taking any credit for the entry itself and am crediting the original author, I can’t help but feel a little weird reposting. 

But I love this post. It comes from a woman’s blog that I devour every single day and one that I go back to time and time again for comfort, encouragement and for the justification to be sad. And so, without further ado… 

TENDER

Bar-tender.  Tenderloin.  Unexpected tenderness from a newly-married, sentimental Letterman.  ”Tenderly” (the Nat King Cole version, please).  A surreptitiously tender glance from across the room.  Copland’s “The TenderLand.”  Tender calves and splinted shins from running hills again in spite of all the evidence against it.  Tender skin of overripe pears on the kitchen counter.  Garden-tender, heart-tender, extender.  Tending the fold, tending to business, tending to procrastinate. Tender spots on the body, ripe for acupuncture; less tender, post-needles.  Laughingly tender bromance hilarity from Rudd & Segel (see it!).  Tender new shoots fighting their way out of the crumbly spring soil, tender skin sunburned from too much time in this young sun, soft wood of a cafe table tenderized by years of scrawls spills mugs slammed angrily down on its exposed and vulnerable surface.  Tenderizing meat on the deli counter.  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s haunting Tender is the Night.  Tender bruise on the hip, tending toward morningtide.  Sternum cracking open in camel, in the wake of a good backbend (ergh, too-tender lower back) and all that anahata energy (unstruck) rushes out 

just in time

because 

then there is N sitting across the bar from you in someone else’s hair (eyes welling, yours) where she is staring down the barrel of the gun of the heretofore-unknown but creepingly menacing advanced ovarian cancer (there is so much suffering in the world), and the heart tends to swell and the hand instinctively reaches across the bar to clasp the one it shouldn’t clasp because of a too-tender immune system weakened by chemo (careful, so fragile), this now-delicate little bird across the great chasm (damn bar) pretending at levity, swimming in tender looks from the man at her side whose physical size belies the softness inside, betrayed by the weary eyes you’d not yet seen before that day

the haunting sorrow of knowing this is how she will die

now it is just when

no longer how 

Sondheim’s “Johanna” on repeat (the tenderest of songs sung by the tenderest of tenors written by the tenderest of composers) here in this quiet catch of silence

tender chamomile and valerian steeping, slowing the restless heart at eventide

tender hours spent in darkness

sans sleep

remembering

(the fallacy is in believing there is ever any separation in the world)

feeling her premature loss

his

her wounds still open, those tender hollow spaces that once held the potential for new life 

now 

riddled absent sick removed 

emptiness

remaining

same grief echoed the other day

Plath family suicides repeated (repeated, repeated) once again

fisheries, Alaska, a son, this time

(what fools to think we are separate from one another!)

the aching sorrow of the last remaining

still putting one foot in front of the other 

tending toward solitude

tending toward sunset

tending toward late afternoon sunshine flaming out in the south bay window

tending the plants

tending the weeds

tending the aphids

tending the heart

[tenderheart ~ karuna ~ compassion]

Tender is the Night, fiction but not (“Night the beloved”).  March, tender like a lamb, rolling out like a lion?  Tender twilight, soft cerulean sky.  Tending the prana, tending to grace.  Tending the tendency to tend too much. 

tenderize the meat

soften the heart

smooth the edges

explode the center 

open it up crack it there break the lobster shells scrape out the sweet tender meat roll it around on your tongue

fracture the sternum 

tenderly

tending

the spaces

in between 

read a line the other day that has not yet left the mind; the author writes that she rejoices she has a heart big enough to break over and over and over again, and i think of that, and break and fill and break again, and tenderness swoons inside

 ~
ten·der [ten-der] adjective, -er, -est, verb
–adjective
1. soft or delicate in substance; not hard or tough: a tender steak.
2. weak or delicate in constitution; not strong or hardy.
3. (of plants) unable to withstand freezing temperatures.
4. young or immature: children of tender age.
5. delicate or soft in quality: tender blue.
6. delicate, soft, or gentle: the tender touch of her hand.
7. easily moved to sympathy or compassion; kind: a tender heart.
8. affectionate or loving; sentimental or amatory: a tender glance.
9. considerate or careful; chary or reluctant (usually fol. by of).
10. acutely or painfully sensitive: a tender bruise.
11. easily distressed; readily made uneasy: a tender conscience.
12. yielding readily to force or pressure; easily broken; fragile.
13. of a delicate or ticklish nature; requiring careful or tactful handling: a tender subject.
14. Nautical. crank2 (def. 1).

–verb (used with object)
15. to make tender.
16. Archaic. to regard or treat tenderly.

Origin: 1175–1225; ME, var. of tendre

post courtesy of http://www.rawrach.blogspot.com/

I’m anchored

So ebats Tattoo post went up and I have to say, I’ve been writing a very similar one for some time, but haven’t been able to load the photos. So an extention to her post, hope everyone likes tattoos!!!

I’ve been fascinated by tattoos pretty much since I was in Edina High School. Mind you in high school I was far too large a wimp to consider getting one, but as I continue to get older I continue to realize that not many things in life are FOREVER. So, for the reason many do not get a tattoo, that is the exact reason I now wanted one so badly.

Soon after my husband and I started dating in 2005, we started talking about geting tattoos, or rather, I started talking about wanting to get them!  He was always so opposed to it and we couldn’t decide on the usual hang-ups…what and where? Then his perspective changed a bit.  As I’ve written about previously, two weeks before our wedding my husband’s father passed away from cancer and our whole outlook on life changed. We realized that the things you take for granted, going to movies with your dad or playing golf with him or expecting him to answer his cell phone just because, can simply disappear at any moment. I certainly want my parents to be in my life forever, but know that is impossible. I want to believe that my adoration and respect and obsession for my husband will last forever, but who knows. At any moment he could be taken from me by a car accident or a really hot stripper at Deja Vu, nothing is forever. That is why I decided to get a tattoo.

Now we needed to decide what to get. Some may roll their eyes at this but I am very proud to have been a member of my sorority Delta Gamma. My absolute best friends from college were all members and we all shared an amazing 4 years together. Our symbol is the anchor. To me the anchor means so much more than getting drunk and dressing up as slutty as possible at Halloween to impress the frat guys (which we did, and man were we slutty), but it is a symbol of where I come from and why I am who I am; to never forget to stay anchored in life and in love to family and friends. To have that forever on my body is important to me and I seriously COULD NOT WAIT for it and LOVE it.  Ted also has a connection to the anchor through the Navy, where he joined ROTC for his freshman year at Madison.  Even though he hated pretty much every second of the runs and the torture of a military life, but he did learn a lot of respect for values and the honor it instilled in him. 

Some may think I am crazy, my own sister didn’t even want to see it because she didn’t want to “condone my behavior.”  But I figure, when nothing is forever anymore, isn’t it kind of refreshing to know that you have control over something that is?  Now the only question is, what will be my next one?!?

 

 

Tattoo You

For almost ten years, I have not-so-secretly wanted to get a tattoo. 

This has mostly resulted in a lot of talking about getting a tattoo, a lot of sporadic fits of tattoo-related google image searches,* but not a lot of action, unless you count one half-baked trip to get inked that had to be aborted due to the extreme douchebaggery of the artists–and I use this word loosely– at a certain Madison tattoo parlor which shall remain nameless. 

I’ve always loved the idea of tattoos as adornment.  The idea that, if you work with a skilled artist, you can turn your very skin into meaningful art is incredibly appealing.  But I never thought I would actually get one, because there wasn’t anything I could conceive of putting on my body permanently. And then my mom bought me a necklace with my name in Ogham for Christmas one year, and when I saw it I immediately thought: This is something I could keep in my skin for the rest of my life. Not only because my name will always be my name, but because the design itself was spare and beautiful, and was a visual connection to where I come from, who named me, and why. I decided that if I still thought that tattoo design was a great idea in two years, that I would get it inked on my skin and carry it with me.

This isn't actually my name, but you get the general idea

Well, you know how things go– shit got weird for a few years in college and adorning myself with anything more complicated or permanent than a nose piercing got put on the back burner. The plan changed to me getting a tattoo for my Royal Birthday, when I would turn 25 on the 25th.  And then that didn’t happen, either. 

I started to wonder if, subconsciously, I didn’t really want a tattoo and had been sabotaging myself for years. 

But now, I’m thinking about tattoos again.  My sister recently got one on her wrist in white ink, and I feel like seeing it was what I was really waiting for all this time:  the white ink on the pale of her wrist was subtle and alluring.  It was both there and not-there, a mysterious design that welled up to the surface of her skin in the right light and then disappeared again.  I found myself staring at her in the car, in the grocery store, while we watched movies or ate dinner– Who was this creature whose skin changed like a hologram in different kinds of light?  I love her to death, but there’s such a familarity between us as sisters that I don’t think I had ever really looked at her before she got that tattoo.  And I only stopped when she finally smacked me and told me to stop being so goddamn creepy. 

So now, I have a design: I want to put a feather on my forearm in white ink.  

I can almost see on me already– sometimes I look down in the shower and I’m surprised to find that it’s not there yet.  I still love the idea of getting my name in Ogham, too, so I am thinking of incorporating it into the feather design, or possibly putting it somewhere else. I still feel a little afraid of the permanence of a tattoo, and I feel nervous about trusting an artist enough to translate my vision into something I would really want on my skin forever.  But I have a bunch of beautifully tatted friends who have offered to help me through the process and to recommend some artists to talk with, and so I think this might be how I celebrate getting a job.  Whenever that happens…

What do you guys think?

*The latest google image search turned up this skin-crawlingly amazing picture of a UV ink tattoo:

Under a blacklight, this dude turns into a walking x-ray

I ran across a couple articles about ultraviolet ink, which is apparently really unstable and hard to work with.  A UV tattoo doesn’t show up in normal light, but leaps to life under a blacklight.  It’s popular among the raver set (for obvious reasons), and illegal in most states (or just not done?  the articles weren’t exactly clear), so it’s mostly done in Europe.   I am completely taken with this image. I have a weird affinity for bones, skeletons and x-rays, and having that realized on an honest-to-god human being is so hot it almost hurts to look at.  

Minnesota Girls

Visit Erinn and me on Saturday!

 

(I’ll be rocking the bookfair booth all day long)