I checked my email before leaving for work this morning, and what did I see?

An acceptance letter for a poem publication, waiting just for me.

And this is how my Wednesday begins. With an audible whooping of joy, a fist in the air,
and the cat jumping off the couch in fear of the unexpected outburst.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with cognitive therapy. Here’s a simple way to put it:
I’m learning to change my thought process, to work myself out of the well-worn grooves
of negative thought. I’m goingto be honest and tell you that I’m not very good at it. Not yet.
It’s kind of like learning to play an instrument. Youcan’t just pick it up and be magical and have
a verse-chorus-verse complete with dreamy interlude and devastatingstrum. You
have to practice. You start with the scales and you do them over and over until you can’t see
straight.Then you force yourself to do them some more. You work your way into it. A process
that commands patience. Oneof the most difficult forms of patience is the kind you have to
have with yourself. Hence my jerky, sputtering start.

My therapist insisted that when I walk through a doorway, I tell myself two things. Two basic
things which one,maybe, shouldn’t have to tell themselves. I say maybe because it isn’t
always a given. I walk through a doorway and tell myself: I am a lovable person; I am a
valuable person. It’s a belief that I have to hear from me—when my therapist suggested
this I was quite irritated and angry. I didn’t understand it because I didn’t think I could
do it. That is, until, the first time I did it. And even right now I lean back and forth slightly between
making this entry something private, or making sure anyone can read this. My growth might
strike you as ridiculous, but I’ve got to quit caring about that. See, you can put weight
to things—on purpose and on accident. And some things carry a weight we aren’t aware of
until we try to lift them, until we put them into our hands and try to step forward. That’s
the best way I can say it. No pivotal beam of sunlight found me instantly. No trumpets sounded.
But with my next step I believed it. You wouldn’t believe how many doorways one walks
through in a day, until you start counting.

I’m going to say it until I can’t see straight. Then I’m going to walk through some doorways
and say it some more. This isn’t for you, or for this, or for that. This is for me. In some ways,
this is for everything because sometimes one change can trigger a long line of necessary.

I received a rejection today, and I’m over the moon about it.

Maybe I need to explain. I started submitting my work to various publications last week, after that dream of epic poetic proportions.
Risks, remember? Plus it’s just good practice as a writer. I mean why not? I’d like my words to expand beyond the bubble of
this city. The words aren’t born for stage only or a few choice ears or my bottom desk drawer. Maybe it’s my class and the discovery of
process(I am, you see, still forming mine). If I love writing so much, why have we developed a commit-fearing-yet-the-sex-is-amazing type of relationship?

Oh pen I’m sick of the love ‘em and leave ‘em disposition. Let’s change our story.

That’s what I’m doing. I used my lunch breaks at work to send off poem after poem. Today marks my first rejection, from a press that
prides themselves on being notoriously tough. I’m waiting to hear back from nine other publications. I’m well aware of the odds, and that’s
part of why I’m so damn happy about this first rejection. There are going to be more “thank you but no thank you’s.” The sooner
I can get rejected, the sooner I get the green light. I have a thick skin. It’s plenty okay.

I just finished preliminary work on my second writing class assignment—a poem based on our reading of “The Lesson” by Forrest
Hamer. We have to tell the story of a road trip, tap into an experience that holds meaning and tie it to a national or cultural event.
I spent a few days thinking about the various car trips, bike trips, walks. I kept coming back to the Greyhound trip from Pittsburgh to
Ohio on September 13th 2001. It wasn’t the most profound, not really at all, but that’s what intrigues me in regards to writing about it.
The magnitude and proximity of an event like September 11th, and the disconnect I felt going home. Honestly, I tried to think of
another impacting road trip because I don’t know how I feel about writing about that time. Don’t ask me why, but my instinct was to fight
against that. I rotated a few options in my mind but came back to that one, and now I think I have a great structure for it. I’m very close to being finished and I’m surprised by what came out. In a very good way.

Which brings me to my lesson learned this week, a lesson I’m going to continue to acknowledge going forward. It isn’t just bullshit when people tell you to do what you love and to do more of it. Think about how doing what you love makes you feel. What feels better than feeling that?

Helping others makes me happy. Being there, listening. The things I am passionate about, becoming a little more hellbent on chasing them. We forget how lucky we are. We forget how many things move us. We push them aside for trivial, for what bothers us or what makes us tired. Simply put: time’s too quick for that. Do what you love to do, do what moves you. Do more of it. This is a bonafide way to beat the blues back.
This could mean standing outside somebody’s house with a fistful of flowers because you know they’re busy fighting the good fight. This could be discussions based around things in this world that enrage you—building that comraderie, talking. This could mean more theater, less drinking—more symphony, less bitching.

And as noted in the photo above, I am still waiting for my contacts to arrive(oh elusive UPS man, our paths not even star-crossed). I’m fighting the urge to feel like a shy middle-schooler again, and remembering to lean back when I take the lid off the boiling pot of water. Instana-fog.

I don’t really say much at all about what sites I visit, what blogs I follow, etc. It’s a wild
little mix. I’ve been following a few of them for months, maybe even weeks–some? For years.
Case in point: dooce.com.

I can’t remember how I stumbled upon Dooce initially, but at the time Heather(the author of
the site) was still living in L.A, was not yet married, and had no children. Now she’s married and lives in
Utah with her husband and two daughters–Leta and Marlo. So yeah, I’m a bit of a loyal reader.
Why? Because Heather is a great storyteller, and she is able to take her life and relay it to
others in an entertaining fashion. Because she struggles with depression and I can relate to that.
Because I admire her bravery and her humor. Her site? It’s a good time. Let’s just say I enjoy
it for many reasons. The source of my enjoyment isn’t really the point of this entry.

Heather has made a living from her website, which is phenomenal–a prime example of amazing
things you can do with the internet and the ability to communicate. Click here to read her story. Her readers
are all over the place, and large in number. So you can imagine the amount of feedback she must get–
feedback which includes what one could easily call “hate mail.”

Hate mail makes very little sense to me. I guess it means being so enraged with whatever is
making you mad that you just HAVE to tell the source. Personally, I think that somewhere in the far faaaar
recesses of the person’s mind, they know they have little ground to stand on in regards to their
anger. There are people with genuine complaints, but I’m talking about individuals that email you just
to say “you’re ugly” or “you are raising your kids completely wrong” or “you are stupid.”
And yes, people email Heather with this bullshit.

I want to be eloquent when explaining how that makes me feel, but sometimes feelings are best summed up with simplicity: it’s gross.

Heather, however, is awesome and decided to do something with her hate mail. Instead of just filing it
away, she’s putting it out there–on a page riddled with various ads so that the hate aimed
her way ends up making her some change. In her latest entry, she explains:

Anyway, while all this is going on people are sending me messages going, dude, do you see what is being said about you over here and over here? Oh, and right there in your comments section? And I’m all, no, but I can guess. Is it something about the way I look? My chin perhaps? The mole in the middle of my forehead? Is it about what I’m wearing, how unflattering it is? Or how I’m an awful mother? Or how I’m exploiting my children for money? Or how I love Marlo more than I love Leta? Or how my husband must be gay? Because it’s all been said. Every awful thing you can say about a human being, it’s been said about me and my family. Over and over again, like a broken record, and I guess with the intention that it will at some point hurt me so badly that I will throw my hands in the air and give up.

And I’m sitting there feeding Marlo, my abdomen wrapped in a bandage SO THAT I DON’T GIVE HER CHICKEN POX, and I’m reading an anonymous comment calling me an asshead, and suddenly I remember that conversation I had with Heather. And I’m like, you know what? I’m going to let that anonymous comment help pay for the therapy that Leta is so desperately going to need once she finds out what awful things I’ve said about her on my website.

Internet, let me introduce you to Monetizing The Hate.

Here I will be posting all the hate mail I get in my inbox and all the hateful anonymous and
not-so-anonymous comments left on this website. And let me tell you, it is a hoot!
And the money? OH THE MONEY! I am going to roll around naked in all that money!
Because that’s what assheads do!

Also, for your convenience, I’ve added a link to this project at the top of the page in the navigation bar, so you can stop by at any time and see the artful way that insecurity unfolds via the anonymity of the internet.

I read a few of the hate mail entries posted and really couldn’t believe it. Why do people talk to other people like this? Especially to people they do not know, have never met, and cannot physically see? What is it about the internet that brings out the bully in others? Is it the fact that someone is putting themselves out there and finding success from it? Are individuals that bothered by another person’s success and/or livelihood? Would these same people say those hurtful things in person? Do people feel their opinions are somehow validated when they are “out there” on the internet? I’m thoroughly confused. I’m also intrigued by how much attention someone will give something that makes them so angry. If you don’t like the site or the content or the person behind it(for whatever reason), then why not go to another site and never come back? That’s pretty simple, right?

So yeah. I made this entry to post the link to Heather’s Monetizing the Hate page. I think it’s a brilliant move on her part, plus I’m a longtime reader so why not share some love? Also, I think the things people say are pretty gross, underhanded, petty, and downright pathetic. I’m not advocating meanness, but I think it’s important for others to see just how absurd some people can be when it comes to the internet.

click here for Monetizing the Hate

I’m going to return with a dream.

I’m in a school hallway of some sort, and it’s early morning. The sun might
be coming up. It’s hard to tell because a group of us poets just finished a long
flight to here, our destination. There’s a team of us from Pittsburgh, arriving to
compete. Yes, after no longer slamming I am still dreaming of poetry slams. This
time, it’s the Nationals. What year? I don’t know. But in my dream I recognize that
specific kind of nervous, that anticipation from my days of competing…where you
walk around trying to take all the new in while simulataneously mouthing your
words, your familiar, over and over and over again in preparation.

I do not dream about getting on stage; I dream about that: the preparation. The arrival.
My unmistakable giddy youth, that feeling of being in a brand new city. I see writers
I remember from years previous, writers I admire and get nervous around–like Rachel
and Stacy and Marty and Dawn and Jason. I hear their voices echo in the school
hallways, see the luggage of writers piled along the walls.

I wake up missing the act of leaving town to speak.

I take a different route to work. There are a lot more hills to contend with, and I only
stop once to peel off two layers–the morning chill is deceiving and I’m pouring sweat
at the crest of the first decent-sized climb. I trudge my way up and float my way down;
I lock up my bike without really thinking about it. In the mirror I look like a crazy-haired warrior,
face still flushed from the spin to Oakland. There’s a banana sitting
like a rock in my stomach. I keep thinking about my dream, about that hallway full of
poets, how at the last minute my sister showed up to cheer me on.

There are aspects to the writer part of myself that I tend to forget. Sometimes the
years of experience escape me, in favor of a present confusion or lull or difference.
Times and lives change. How can I forget about the stage in Toronto, in Cleveland, in Seattle,
at Canal Street? What of this spark still going? What’s changed about the
things I toss into the burning to maintain it?

This, from a dream. I woke up a little stumped–going forward, how do I properly nurture
myself as a writer? Cultivation, thirst, persistence, and risk. Risk and risk and risk.
Risk it all, self. There is nothing to lose, even less time to lose it. You’ll never find the walls
to leave behind if you insist on sitting in the middle of the room, if you never push against
the boundaries of the space you reside in. And what’s in the space? How is your filter?
What about the images that make you feel like you’re burning from the inside out…what about
what moves you? Where is it? Is it near? Is it far? Are you aware, are you wondering?

And I ask myself, and I ask myself, and I ask myself: what on this earth are you waiting for?
What on earth do you think is waiting for you?

Changes, changes, everywhere. Please be patient with me as I tweak and re-tweak and get too busy for the tweaking and then tweak too much or too little, in regards to this site. The changes are a work in progress(here and elsewhere). Soon soon soon, I promise!

jim carroll died.

unplugged performance in the shallow end, july 2009

I am busy making changes. Wonderful, tough, and necessary changes.

Found via feministing.com & mediaed.com

War Zone

What does it feel like to be a woman on the street in a cultural environment that does nothing to discourage men from heckling, following, touching or disparaging women in public spaces?

Filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West believes that the streets are a War Zone for women. Armed with only a video-camera, she both demonstrates this experience and, by turning and confronting her abusers, reclaims space that was stolen from her.

War Zone is an excellent discussion starter for both men and women. It gives voice and expression to a disturbing daily aspect of being a woman in this society. It also gives men a direct personal feeling for what harassing behavior looks and feels like to a woman. Young men who may think such behavior is cool or funny will be forced to rethink their assumptions.

War Zone is a classroom, documentary edition of Maggie Hadleigh-West’s first film by the same title. Her film has been screened and applauded at scores of festivals in the U.S. and abroad. She has appeared to discuss the film on the Today Show, CBS News, 20/20, BBC, NPR, CNN, and Eye to Eye with Connie Chung.