update (in exciting outline form)

[zenithblue]

I. School

1. ...is awesome. I love school. I love the Michener Center. I love UT. Besides the bronchitis, everything has exceeded my hopes. Frankly I'm glad I had a six year hiatus. I am so much more appreciative of what I am being given now.
2. Fiction workshop is packed with obscenely talented writers. I'm learning a lot from them.
3. I read William Trevor for the first time the other day. My world was absolutely rocked. It's been a while since I've "discovered" a writer who made me this excited. I can't believe I've never heard of him before--everyone else in workshop talks about his fame as a short fiction writer, and usually I pay attention to these things. Well, I'm glad I got to read him for the first time. My William Trevor cherry has been popped.
4. For seminar I'm working on a presentation in which I trace a line of artistic influence through several different forms, and then write something myself for that tradition. I handed out my packet last week, and it consisted of Dante's Inferno, Canto XIII (the Wood of Suicides), Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" and The Metamorphosis, and the first 17 pages of Infinite Jest. We'll also watch twenty minutes or so of Memento. It's probably pretty obvious that I'm talking about body imagery and the struggle of expression. It's not like I'm obsessive or anything.
   
5. My story for the project mentioned in (4) is coming along nicely. I won't talk about it yet but suffice to say I'm going for a balance between melancholy, humor, and the grotesque. That balance is more or less my linguistic specialty so I'm having a good time.
6. For playwriting for youth, we've moved on to the unit on adaptation. I've never adapted anything before. I don't think it'll be my forte, but I'm still looking forward to it. I've decided to work on The Diamond in the Window, which was one of my all time favorite books as a child. It's a weird, complex story, and I think I'm going to have to break its structure completely and entirely to adapt it.  A challenge!
7. I have to take in a musical or visual artifact that captures the hoped-for tone of my adaptation next week. I'm taking in the Magnetic Fields' "Sad Little Moon."
   
8. I love my life.

II. Social life

1. I miss drawgirl. Well, everyone in Portland. But especially drawgirl. Luckily she's visiting in November!!!
2. I've been a shut-in for a few weeks, getting well from this stupid illness and trying to find my pace for getting all my work done. I think I'm almost done though. Time to leave the office again soon.
   
3. I alternate pretty wildly between heartily, terribly missing Portland, and feeling really happy with what I'm doing here. te_amo_azul told me about the "streets of gold" effect, where recent immigrants spend about a year finding everything unnaturally beautiful and wonderful about their new home. I unfortunately never get this effect. I spend at least a year, if not longer, pining for the physical and geographic nuances of the places behind me. It's worth mentioning that my first two years in Portland I found the city ugly and gross compared to Alaska, and now of course Portland looks like bloody Hobbiton to me from here. I think it'll just take time.
   

III. Love life

1. Hodge's job in Houston is really a good one. Plus with him gone four days I get a lot done. It kind of sucks, still; I miss him for sure, but it's far from the worst set-up we could have.

IV. Other

1. Cough still there but better. On the mend.
2. House a mess. Partially furnished. Boxes still strewn everywhere.
3. Cats on diets. Consequently cranky and irritating. But man are they fat.
   

Comments

[somethinghead.livejournal.com]

The program sounds fantastic. It's the choice I was rooting for initially, so I'm glad it seems to be panning out so well.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

My only problem has been remembering to do my own writing in the middle of all the stimulation...ha. But even that's starting to come now that I'm a little more settled.

[te-amo-azul.livejournal.com]

Portland is Hobbiton! With big dashes of Wonderland, Paradise and the watery Inframundo of the Maya thrown in for your inspiration.

At the end of her long and happy life, the writer looked back on the years in the dry desert with gladness in her heart. With even more happiness, she basked in the choice she made immediately after finishing her successful three academic years and not a minute more in Austin to return to Portland, the place where she would always live best and write best.

Not to predict you, just to say you're loved here. Among others, by me.

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

I am so afraid to try to predict where I'll end up from where I stand. But your vision is pleasing to me. I guess it'll mostly depend on if I teach, and if Hodgepodge is doing anything location-specific, and where we want to do the children thing.

Besides, I want a Victorian someday, and there just aren't any here in Texas. Of course I seriously doubt I can *afford* a Portland Victorian, but still. After Michael Bay turns my introspective domestic novel into an explosion-rich blockbuster I'll have the funds.

[choogy.livejournal.com]

this gives me hope. your classes sound really stimulating and you sound happy and stimulated just talking about them. i think that's awesome. i also just read something about houston and austin being the number one and two cities that are the most affordable for the cost of living. so, yay.

sending some chicken soup and some diet cat food. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

[zenithblue.livejournal.com]

Oh man the cats are so fat. Jack is like a lump of butter wrapped in fur. Remember that episode of the Simpsons where Homer wraps a waffle around a stick of butter and eats it? That's my cat. His face is really small too so it's even sillier. He looks like a sausage with a face.

I can't wait for you to get to do something like this.

[zanawake.livejournal.com]

Yay!

[lagizma.livejournal.com]

Cats on diets? That must be pure hell.

I love the outline style, This is often how I write entries in my notebook before posting them. I should organize them better and just do it this way!

[helpimarock.livejournal.com]

Sorry I didn't chime in earlier, but you know the story with me lately.

That's so awesome about your grad program. I seriously hope I'm as lucky as you are with UT when I get around to finishing school. And reading this reminded me of how much I want to go beyond my bachelor's.

About missing Portland, I'm normally like that too. In fact absolutely exclusively up until this past move. I really didn't miss Cincinnati that much this year. And when I did miss it, it was little things that didn't really effect my mood. On the other hand, maybe we should hold up life in Portland next to Cincinnati in the eyes of people like you and me before we go any further with this train of thought. ;)