near wild heaven

This is now, this is here, this is me, this is what I wanted you to see.

Back again in my once and possibly future residence, Minneapolis. I've altered travel plans and will be departing this town late in the evening on January 8, by a train taking me through the Pacific northwest and south through California and to Los Angeles' Union Station on Sunday evening. A cool three day journey. I noted with some relief the other day that my stretched-out journeys to and from southern California are nearly at an end. Seriously, I think I have one more trip back east, in late March, before I hand in my thesis, get a hefty slap on the back from Mr. Wolff and others, and take my third and final post-secondary degreee and get on my way--likely to here, possibly to such locations as Louisville KY or Hamilton NY, depending on some luck and the will of a few people I haven't met who will be deciding who will be their universities' writer-in-residence next year. If one of them wants me--hey, I'm there. It would give me a great chance to finish this book I'm working on. Otherwise, I will happily make my home here in the Twin Cities and find ways to complete my project from here. Either way, I'm excited. When I moved to CA for the program last summer, I felt very much like I was taking a huge breath, which I've been holding ever since. I feel like if I let it out, then I won't have the strength to finish...or to finish in the way I would like, which would be with two years of solid graduate work. I took the deep breath because I knew it would be a burden--which is implied with opportunity--to move way away from everything and everybody, from where my life had happened, to a place that frankly seems like a foreign country. Hard to explain. I took a big gulp of air and told myself that when I came up again, I'd have an MFA, I'd have learned some things, and that I'd need my life to change somehow. I'm ripe for it now, I suppose. It's good to know that things will be changing, that graduate work will be done (and rightly, I'm hoping), and that some new and as yet unforseen part of my life will open before me.

posted by: zithereen at December 30, 2003 15:16 | link | comments |

I was chided earlier tonight by my friend Mike (whose pithy thoughts you can find at mjmarble.motime.com) that I had not updated my blog in awhile, even though I had given adequate notice to my meager (not in quality, only quantity) readership about faraway travels back home, lack of access to computers, and all the rest. Nevertheless, my pithy friend decided to chide me--and on Christmas, no less. But Christmas is also the time for crushing guilt, and his must have worked like a charm, because, alas, here I am.

In one Springfield, Ohio at the moment, home to my alma mater (see the undergrad link) and to a certain French professor of said alma mater who is also my close friend. He's probably hauling his Jeep back from Ft. Wayne at this very moment. He could arrive at any time with stories of Christmas cheer or Christmas misery. I've had, by all accounts, a fine holiday, spreading myself out fairly, I think, among the disparate members of my family. The reception last saturday at my sister's Gahanna home was wonderful. FYI: she was married, quick-style, last month and they delayed the reception until now. My new brother-in-law's daughter is a beaut, no kidding--but what's she to me? (Seriously.) Step-niece?  Is that it? Could someone explain the complex network of step-relations? What's my brother-in-law's daughter to me? Anyway, party was great. Parents avoided each other; my mother got so drunk that she nearly lost the ability to speak there at the end of it, but it was a happy non-speaking kind of drunk. I mean that. I've seen her grow dark under the circumstances of drunkenness, and grow violent, and it was nice to see her laughing and having fun, and stumbling happily to her car (with her husband, who was driving and not drunk) at the end of the night. My father made some funny jokes, as well, the funniest being at my expense. Something about spinning me on a rotisserie when I was a baby. He also dropped a sloppy meatball onto his shirt not ten minutes after he arrived. He cleaned it up but had a wet spot in the vicinity of his left nipple. Insert joke here. And my sister Kim looked radiant and happy. My other sister, Aleana, had a few beers and got loopy, which I'd never seen before but was pleased by. Me and my family tried to hook her up with one of Kim's co-workers, a nice man with a striking five o'clock shadow.

Man, it's great to be writing. Not necessarily this blog, but just writing. I've done very little of it these past couple of weeks, since leaving Long Beach, burnt out as I was. I like the writing. I can't do without it. Coming back to it is like remembering I had a secret girlfriend who is, as they say, dynamite in the sack.

posted by: zithereen at December 25, 2003 21:34 | link | comments (1) |

Oh! This too will be short. Hello from the upper midwest, from Minneapolis, home of the Golden Gophers, of many many lakes (now frozen), of low gray skies and tundra-like conditions...naturally I am loving it. To go from sunup Friday at LAX, a cool fifty degrees, to late afternoon Friday in the Twin Cities, a very cool 15 degrees...well, flying always causes me a little displacement. The ground below hardly seems to move--since I am 40,000 feet above it--but in fact I am clipping past at 500 mph. Did you know that a flight from Denver to Minneapolis, total time in the air, is barely 90 minutes? Remarkable. That's a day's drive, folks, and I did it in barely the time it took to scarf down some free pretzels (the attendant gave me four little baggies, and I didn't even ask! it was my smile--charming, disarming...the kind of smile that makes people want to give me free pretzels) and drink a Pepsi.

I won't blather on. Having a grand time. Off to Illinois on Wednesday, Ohio on Friday. I will be driving in Columbus, where some nut has taken to shooting at moving vehicles, the kind with people in them. Back to LAX sundown New Year's Eve, if I live past the shooting gallery in Columbus.

posted by: zithereen at December 15, 2003 21:45 | link | comments |

Okay, a final note. I couldn't help myself, and besides, I've got that nervous energy I get before any long trip. It's exciting to think that in less than a day I'll be in another part of the country (see teeth of winter comment below), so why not spend some of that energy here? I've just prepared for myself--and eaten--a nice steak, I've had some Tecate (a good Mexican beer common down here), cleaned (the apartment looks decent again!) and packed all but my tooth brush and whatnot, which I'll need to look at least normal at 4:45 am Pacific time, when I plan to rise and compose myself before catching my ride to LAX. You know, can't appear before the girlfriend with dragon breath...

I also have more stuff to fill my flight time than I'll need. It's likely that I'll nap, but if not, I have fifteen student stories to read, a collection of essays by the venerable Geoffrey Wolff to read (again), and a thin edition of Voltaire's Candide if I feel like comedy, and who knows, maybe I will. In any event, I'm all but ready to get a move on, as they say, and bask in the wintry beauty of Minnesota (they actually have snow there, and given the low temps, it's not likely to go away anytime soon). Safe journey, I say to myself, and let's get there already.  

posted by: zithereen at December 11, 2003 23:03 | link | comments (1) |

I am now in that pre-depature flurry that comes before a trip that will take you out of town for at least a few weeks. First I am putting the finishing touches on all that academic work that has so hurt me over this past week (nearly done...how well the work has been done I cannot say), then it's laundry, a quick cleaning of my apartment, packing, unplugging all significant things from their outdated outlets....you know the drill. I must have clean clothes (including sweaters!) with me when I travel into the teeth of winter, and I must not return to a place of abject squalor when I arrive back here later this month. My girlfriend will be with me, after all, and though she and I have been together for awhile, I haven't (yet?) reached that point where I can be arbitrarily disgusting because she and I "know" and are "comfortable" with each other. No way! I still have some pride left, er, I think.

Thanks to Trespass for providing me with my very first comment.

Anyway, today will suck me dry just like every other day over the past week, and then I will be away for awhile, and it's likely that I will not be writing any more blogs until 2004. Check from time to time, though...I may find time for a blog or two from such midwestern outposts as Minnesota, Illinois, and Ohio, which I'll be visiting during my vacation from California. Certainly I will have stories. The holidays for my family have equal parts joy and sadness, things worth enjoying and things I'd have rather never seen or heard. This might make for worthy blog material. I'll try to keep you posted; otherwise you'll get a big fat blog or two in early January.  

posted by: zithereen at December 11, 2003 08:06 | link | comments |

I really, really should not be writing. I say this because I have produced somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000 words of elegant academic prose since Saturday (today is Tuesday, right?) and I have reached a point where I dread the very sight of my computer. I hate the way it hums. I hate the mysterious clicking noises the innards of my computer makes when I ask it to perform a task for me. And anyway, nearly all my clothes are dirty and strewn on my bed (these I must wash before Friday morning) and my apartment is dusty and paper-ridden. I need a couple days to set things right in this joint, which I won't have until 2004.

I write for two reasons, though. First I was contacted today by an old Wittenberg acquaintence who now lives on a commune in rural Virginia and who has a blog of her very own, which I read with great interest. I've never been to a commune, not even close, so reading her account of her life nowadays was fascinating. Read it yourself at: trespass.motime.com. You won't be sorry. As of this morning I am a devoted subscriber.

Second reason: I have opened the blog to comments. I did this with some trepidation, perhaps because I didn't want to hear just what everyone thinks of my drivel. Or because someone who knows me will come across my blog and, as they say, "give me the business," pleasantly or otherwise. But I've read the comments on other blogs, and they seem relatively aboveboard, and very often they're interesting in their own right. Plus, I want more readers, and this seems like a way to encourage it. And despite myself, I am curious about what a bunch of strangers, old friends and new friends might collectively provide in the way of feedback and reaction. So, how about it?

Must read now. Then must write some more. At some point: must sleeeeeeeeep. I awoke at the crack of dawn today and could not fall back to sleep, so I was working on my exam by 8am and my second cup of coffee. I watched the sun rise over my monitor.

Minneapolis weather update: revised high of 13 balmy degrees on Friday, and a revised low of 4.

posted by: zithereen at December 09, 2003 14:25 | link | comments (1) |

I can hardly believe it, but I am dreaming of snow and eighteen degrees. That's the forecasted temperature in Minneapolis this Friday--the high, no less. Temperatures will bottom out at a cozy eight degrees. Man, oh man! I move away from the land of winter (read: most of the country) and it takes on a novelty to me. Trees with no leaves! Snow and ice! Dangerous driving conditions! Two weeks of gray sky! Freezing (below freezing, actually) temperatures! That's right, reader, that's a-where I'm heading this Friday. I think it must be true that overexposure to perpetual sunlight does have an adverse effect on a person. Southern Californians really are crazy--maybe I am becoming one of them, not in the official ways (driver's license, voter regitration, a car with CA plates, all of which I have), but in those intangible ways that indicate where somebody is from. Another reason for me to be glad to travel into winter--washing out the California. A great state, don't get me wrong, but utterly foreign to me all the same. Palm trees and the like.

posted by: zithereen at December 08, 2003 17:04 | link | comments |

I was thinking intermittently throughout the day that writing about my writing--and not just my writing (my fiction, with its possibility of being potentially of interest to somebody, somewhere) but my critical writing, my writing about a book probably not read by too many people--may not best inspire a readership. I dramatize:

"Sal, you've got to read Zithereen," she said, gnawing on a damp toothpick. "His discussion of his ideas on Oroonoko and the aesthetic gaze, and how the authority of the gaze is related to the use of the eyewitness, is stunning. I can't wait to read the finished product."

"Dude," Sal said. "I'm there."

See? That's funny, at least partially, because it is so abjectly impossible. It's a ludicrous scenario. There's a small audience for critical work, and an even slimmer readership for my critical work. Hell, if I weren't me but somebody else, I wouldn't want to read a paper by a guy who calls himself Zithereen. What the hell kind of name is that, anyway? The best thing I can do now--am doing now, I'll not lie--is circle the wagons and provide a little levity to the droopy-eyed realm of academia, particularly my most recent and modest contribution to it. See, because I could just delete the whole sorry episode wherein I discussed this paper, but that wouldn't be playing fair. The blog does seem to require some willingness to be spontaneous, even if, upon the perspective of a few days' time, the spontaneity is revealed only as foolishness. (I just now corrected a misspelling..."is" back there I spelled "id" instead, which I was tempted to keep because it was so apt. Alas. Not that apt, I suppose.) 

I'm glad I'm trying to be funny, since I spent most of my Sunday hunched in front of this very computer, writing aforementioned paper and listening across the internet as my Bengals were used to wipe the collective ass of the Ravens.

posted by: zithereen at December 07, 2003 18:27 | link | comments |

I just had to take a moment to congratulate myself, albeit modestly, for breaking the century mark! I've now had 100 visitors, on the nose..and who knows, maybe these 100 visitors have only been a few people, or (gasp) only one, visiting again and again. If that's the case, I thank you, One Lonely Reader, for taking at least a passing interest in me and what it is that I say here.

Last night I watched a double-episode of Star Trek, the one with Captain Picard. I know, I know...Friday night, what am I doing home watching syndication? I assure you, I do have friends, but as I am in that last, awful push toward the end of the quarter, I find myself somewhat housebound, returning again and again to my computer to work out in finer detail what I summarized in most disorganized fashion in my previous blog: a paper. After I finish that (which I hope will occur sometime tomorrow evening) I get to embark upon my take-home exam for the very same class. Oh, joy! I shouldn't complain; I asked for it, after all. And anyway, after all of this is said and done and I've added a few thousand more words into my academic register, I get to make the cathartic journey back east, for the holidays, to the land of snow and cold weather, where the leaves actually fall off the trees, where my girlfriend and family live. This will necessitate a long-term break from this very blog, as I will be nowhere near my trusted computer, thank God for that. 

Anyway, the Star Trek was a two-hour reprieve from my work. Problem is, I had some wine while watching TV, and when Zithereen drinks wine he loses a certain ability to focus; he relaxes, settles into the contours of his couch, and channel surfs. Not the most stirring Friday night I've ever had, but it was relaxing. Alas--back to Oroonoko.

posted by: zithereen at December 06, 2003 09:50 | link | comments |

Before too long, I am going to descend into the world of writing a paper. To those of you familiar with that world, it is a strange place indeed, sometimes frustrating but (hopefully) ultimately exhilirating, or at least satisfying. That you have produced a self-contained document that says something, something worthy and worthwhile of reading. At least, that's what I hope my professor will think. Anyway, I thought I'd give some air to my thoughts about what I'll be writing about, to crack the door to my brain, a sort of preamble or dry run to help get things in their order.

The book is called Oronooko. It's about a slave by that name, a slave who was a prince in Africa but is now just a slave in the West Indies during the exapnsion of the slave trade into the Americas. He is well-educated, fluent in several languages, and, according to the narrator, beautiful. The narrator spends much time describing this "noble savage," deatailing the ways in which he seems to move with ease among the world of his colonizer captors, the sheer beauty of his dark skin, his entire manner. This preoccupation we can call the aesthetic gaze--this objectifying of the "Other," this seeing Oronooko as an embodiment of tragic nobility, of an exotic beauty. One aspect of the aesthetic gaze  --an implied part, really, when you think about it--is the eyewitness account of the narator. What the narrator sees, what the narrator is preoccupied with, is an inextricable aspect of the aesthetic gaze. Right? It would seem so--except that, at certain points in the book, our eyewitness narrator relates things she has only heard about second-hand. In fact, she purposely chooses not to see certain things--such as, at the end of the book, when Oronooko is brutally tortured and quartered. The narrator chooses only to see that which can be fit into the paradigm of the aesthetic gaze: that is, of beauty. Because, naturally, the observation of beauty says certain things about the narrator, and in fact about the entirety of colonization. Think of beauty, of its observation, carrying with it certain morally acceptable ideas--of the observee and the observer. Where the eyewitness acount--and thus the aesthetic gaze--breaks down is where there is no beauty to see, only squalor or death. Where the eyewitness actively chooses not to be an eyewitnness, because in being a witness to squalor and death it says something about you that is not, shall we say, positive. This is all linked to the colinizer's guilt.

Or something like that. 

posted by: zithereen at December 05, 2003 12:46 | link | comments |

Time is moving faster and the blog reminds me of it. It was yesterday, right, that I sat down and typed a brief apology for not writing before going on about strike-related issues? But I see it's been five big days. This is hardly the way to encourage readership, even among those of you who may semi-regularly check this thing. Anyway I'll try to do better.

Thanksgiving was a comfortable pocket of time for me. I didn't go home. Home is 3,000 miles east of here (northeast, actually), and I haven't been home for a Thanksgiving since 1998. In the interim, Thanksgiving has come to mean less in the particular corner of America I come from. Not on a large scale; just for my family. My father used to, at least, gamely make the drive to his sister's house for dinner--and my aunt does make a pretty mean T'giving dinner, to this I can attest. Great noodles, for example, and they're not easy to make from scratch. But on Friday he called to say that he'd spent the day doing nothing. At Mom's house it was no better, maybe even worse: Thanksgiving was precluded by my stepfather, who mocked and othrwise berated my mother for not stirring correctly a pot of potatoes being boiled before being mashed. My sisters took none too kindly to this, good for them, and gave stepfather the treatment he deserved. End result? They and their children had Thanksgiving dinner at a local Cracker Barrel, a fine restaurant but not on a holiday meant to be spent with family.

Me? I was several blocks from my apartment, at the apartment of a colleague and his wife, along with several other of my colleagues. It was a pleasant dinner, really nice, but my holiday joy was lessened, somewhat, by news from Ohio. See above.    

posted by: zithereen at December 01, 2003 22:46 | link | comments |