the living’s uneasy/summer reading #4

All day long, I either read or watch movies. I’ve started working out because I’ve gained an inconceivable amount of weight, but even then, I read. It’s becoming very exhausting, though it could just be that I need to change my contacts. When I take a break from those two things, I flit about, pretending to write or pretending to clean or pretending to pack.

And the voices, they’re getting louder. I want to talk to somebody. Really bad. A good conversation, especially one at night, makes me less uneasy. Uneasy seems a constant state for me. I wonder if I can even add the “un” if I’m so comfortable being it.

I also miss encyclopedias. I adore Wikipedia, but I also miss being able to look at something for research and be able to see it and what I’m writing at the same time, instead of switching from Firefox to Word all the time.

Here’s the latest batch of books I’ve finished.

1. Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk To Other Poems, edited by Kurt Brown and Harold Schechter. I loved this book the second I saw the title, because it’s what I love about poetry. And this collection pairs each poem with the poem it mimics, responds to, makes fun of, or expands upon, so it’s at once an anthology of those famous poems that you should know (“La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” “This Is Just To Say”) and current poets (Kimiko Hahn and Meg Kearney are my favorites, since they were NBFers). And the book is just well put together, doing a good job at including writers of different genders, historical periods, ethnic backgrounds, and nationalities. It was a great vacation companion, and I read a few poems almost every night while I was away.

2. Sleeping With Schubert by Bonnie Marson. I really wanted to read this book for a few reasons: a) I wanted to read something by a local writer; b) my former boss suggested I read it; c) after seeing the play “Beethoven, As I Knew Him” I have a bit of composer fever; and d) the concept was similar to the novel I started working on recently, so when I read the blurb about this book, it sounded like it could either be a very good thing (inspiration and all) or a very bad thing (finding out my idea was already done exactly how I was going to do it). Reading it had neither of those results. Somehow, Marson never learned that whole “show, don’t tell” thing, and I just didn’t buy a lot of the story. The most interesting parts weren’t really fleshed out, and it read too much like chick lit trying to be literature. Not the best it could have been, but certainly interesting, and fun enough if you’re into classical music history.

3. Betsy-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace. I had the most beautiful old editions of these books when I was younger, and I stupidly got rid of them. Now I’m trying to replace them. So I realized that for the past few summers, I have devoted some of my reading to rediscovering children’s series. Last year, it was Little House. The year before that, it was Harry Potter (because I wanted to be prepared for the final book). Since I only ever read the first few books, when Betsy, Tacy, and Tib are all young, I have decided I’m going to start from the beginning and read all the way through. They’re some of the most fabulous children’s books of all time, and Betsy Ray definitely helped me want to become a writer, as well as made me feel at home with another child who loved to make up her own games. Plus, I need a break from all the heavier reading I’m doing.

4. Not a Matter of Love by Beth Alvarado. This spring, Beth earned a place as probably my second-favorite fiction teacher that I’ve had, just after Norma Fox Mazer. They have these honors for different reasons, but still. Beth was an excellent teacher, so obviously I wanted to read what she’d written. This short story collection felt first very familiar to me, and I loved that it was Tucson, because the only other Tucson book I can remember is The Bean Trees, and that was just terrible. Strangely, this was my Tucson and then it really, really wasn’t. Drugs and drug culture elude me; maybe it’s spoiled to say so. But what I really appreciated this collection for, aside from just well-written, good stories, was how Beth handled interracial marriages and relationships, biracial children, and bicultural communities. That really doesn’t happen enough in stories, and it almost never happens without it being the only (or major) plot device. Isn’t it funny how I’m always bringing that up?

is this it?

I am really happy that high school and middle school are left behind parts of my life. Like, really happy. Middle school was an unhappy, uncomfortable time when I got made fun of a lot, and high school was just way too much drama and angst and feeling inadequate. Even now, if I find myself acting or feeling like a 16-year-old, I feel supremely uncomfortable and I want to hit myself and remind myself to stop being stupid. Last night I felt like high school, and even though it wasn’t that big of a deal, it was bad.

That said, there are a few things about high school that I do miss, friends and simplicity of life put aside.

Dances. This may just be a case of the-grass-is-always-greener, but I do miss going all out, dressing up, having my sister do my hair and makeup, and feeling absolutely gorgeous. No, I never had a date in high school, and if I did things over I think I would have tried harder to be less awkward and have more guy friends, but then again, I probably wouldn’t have so many ideas for short stories and novels if I had had a better high school experience. I digress. There is something that is so, so much fun about looking hot and having a lot of fun with your group of girlfriends. Especially dances of my last two years of high school, where though I was dateless, I finally began dancing with boys and developed maybe a bit of a reputation for being a somewhat slutty dancer. In high school, I was desperate to be slutty. I got over it at the end of the last year, and now I almost miss it, because life without scandal is a bit dull. I suppose I could join a dance group again, but that’s not the same kind of dancing. And I suppose I could go to clubs, but clubs are less safe than proms. At prom, you were with people that you felt comfortable with, even if you didn’t actually like them, and you still had the freedom to show a bit of a new side to yourself. And that’s hard to do. You’re not allowed to change in high school. Nobody understands if you do. I suppose sororities and fraternities still have formals, but they also act like high schoolers.

Sleepovers. I just found a bunch of bags in my room that I should probably get rid of. I like having bags of different sizes, but the amount I have is ridiculous. And I realized half of these bags I only use occasionally to take things to class, and then to stuff things in for a slumber party. Why don’t we have slumber parties anymore? College introduced the idea of sleepovers with boys, as in making out with them and then falling asleep in your twin bed, and that is definitely good fun, but it has also deleted silly girls’ nights, when you just sit around in cute pj’s and giggle about things and watch movies. I don’t really understand why this isn’t a necessity to more college girls. How can you not still have a hole in your heart begging to be filled with gossip, bashing boys who treat you badly and swooning over the ones who don’t or who haven’t yet, and watching embarrassingly, unabashedly romantic movies that you don’t want to admit you actually life? College should be the place for even better sleepovers, because they can have all those things but better stories, because in college you have sex, and you can add liquor to the mix and make silly girly cocktails (because college parties may be about alcochol, but they are not about good drinks. Keystone is unacceptable), and you don’t have parents around so there’s no need to hush up when you talk about the really risqué things. I want to reinstate slumber parties into my life.

Discovering new places. I really, really love that I live away from my parents, because I still see them a lot, but I have my space. We get along much better. But it’s also turned me into a hermit. Everything I need is in my house, and everything outside of my house is expensive, so why go anywhere? I spend too much time inside, and I don’t go to places except to restaurants close to campus. In high school, you’re always trying to find places to go that are parent-free, but that’s not all those places do. It’s like how you need to read lots of different things to be well-rounded or to have good ideas for writing–you need to be exposed to lots of different places just to remember that there are different places, and just to see new things and people and ways of life. I miss nights at parks, in parking lots, outside on trampolines, at bookstores, at strip malls, just sitting in cars in driveways.

I’ve started ordering zines again, and I almost want to make one. I haven’t for probably three or four years. Strangely, now that I have a bit less angst and I’m a lot more comfortable with myself, I miss being emo. I’m sure I still am, but zines are invoking those painful but raw and inspiring moments of angst. Now if I could just have these other three things, I’d be good.