Yesterday I decided that I need a couch more than I need a bed. Priorities, priorities, and now I’ll watch my back. Hope that it doesn’t go out on me again. The end result however, is that I’m finally comfortable in my living room and have a couch to write on again. I put up my holiday lights, all sparkly colorful and lulling the room. My guitar’s on the wall and the coffee table is within reach, and I found some candles to light in the window. I snipped back my plants, which look about as dehydrated as I do these days.

On a side-note, it’s bitterly cold here… out of curiosity, I looked up the temperature on the internet and although the weatherpeople predicted 26°F, it was actually 16°F at about 10:30pm. That’s fucking cold. It’s supposed to be 20°F tomorrow, and snow again on Tuesday. It’s actually been snowing with a fair amount of frequency now—about every two to three days, but Saturday it really dumped a few inches on us. Not lots, but enough to dip your toes into. And I’ve been thinking that pretty soon, I’m going to have to ditch my fall coat and the extra down vest I wear inside of it, and the sweater inside of that, and find an actual bonafide winter coat.

Not that a coat would help with the way my eyes dry up and get achy, my lips crust over, my skin shrivels dust inward and my hair completely frizzes in the dryness of this cold. But it might help with the freezing to death.

Speaking of freezing to death, I went out to Chinatown today and froze to death. Enough so that I had to duck into a Vietnamese Pho restaurant and get myself some soup… such a shame. There’s nothing like steak, brisket, noodles, jalapenos, lime, sprouts, hot sauce, oyster sauce, and basil to get the nose running with the heat. By the time I was halfway through, I was sweating so profusely I had to peel off a layer and mop my brow. I’ve put myself on house arrest until I get home and can work for mum to earn a little mula, but in the friggin cold, that soup was worth it.

I did, however, leave a puny tip.

There were about 4 waitresses and about 5 tables occupied, so you’d think things would have been covered. Not so. I had to turn around and flag down a waitress to get my order taken, and once my food was deposited, I did not receive another piece of attention. No refill for my water, no question about whether things were good, no inquiry about whether I wanted something else to drink. Nothing. Just lots and lots of giggling girls in the background. At one point, the waitresses’ gossip and chortles got so loud that the chef came out and hushed them loudly. Not that it enhanced their service.

Just as I was getting a little cranky about it, I noticed a woman at another table who was looking seriously pissed off. She and her daughter had been eating when I got in, and now they looked ready to leave, but bereft of check. Both had on their coats, and finally they got up and walked back to the counter. I didn’t hear what transpired because I was paying attention to the soup, but I did notice the mother start to drag the girl out the door, and then she paused, turned around, and twisted her face into cross-eyed demon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a face pulled like that in a restaurant. She also swooshed her hands around in the air like she might be making fun of a cheerleader. Obviously a dumb-waitress parody.

I didn’t know mothers did that sort of thing.

She then spun her daughter out the door. As she passed by the window, she waved her finger in a circle to indicate that someone was seriously crazy. Although I sympathized, I wasn’t sure who was crazy after seeing that particular parodic motion. I looked behind me and saw one of the waitresses roll her eyes and then turn to yap to her friend again.

Puny tip. But the hot soup did the trick and got me back home, where I went back to reveling in my couchful digs.

The downside of having a couch, as I mentioned before, is having no bed. I’m wondering about this. Right now, I have a thermorest pad and a pile of blankets. I won’t have to rely on the pile of unread books to keep me company on the enormous hard mattress, but maybe my back will go out. I don’t want my back to go out, so I guess I’m going to have to start working out. Maybe I’ll do sit-ups on my new couch.

Anyhow, I’ve been an incredible homebody for the last few weeks—maybe because of the cold, maybe because I only have two weeks in Chicago before I get to go home, and I really want to go home. I miss the PN. I miss my family. I can’t wait to see my gold-friends (as opposed to my silver-friends here, all wonderful wonderful peeps). Or maybe because I put myself under house arrest for awhile. And so, I’ve been burrowing down trying to make myself do work, which seems to be next to an impossible task. I haven’t been a good student lately, and I haven’t been a good writer, and I’m hoping that a visit home will do the trick and make me a better person. But in the mean time, I lock myself up, skip bowling fun for instance, and do an ADD reading of the books I should be reading, a more thorough job on the books I shouldn’t be reading, and make decisions like “oh hey, I don’t need a bed anymore.”

Speaking of mood rings, I found one today for 99-cents. For that kind of money though, you don’t get the definition chart along with it. So, I was sitting here on my couch trying to figure out what my mood was. Very confusing stuff. So I went online, and just so you know, for the past four hours, I have vacillated between: “relaxed” (blue), “average” (green), “jitters” (bronze), “stimulating ideas” (orange), “excited/energized” (red) and even “sensual” (purple). Right now I am either “full of love & passion” or “very happy” (dark blue). All of which confirms what I thought: I’m a moody little girl. It’s a good thing I have this ring so I can figure out what I’m feeling – I’ve been missing that in my life.

Back to the discussion of procrastination (I once read the preface to a dictionary before I realized what I was doing), I also manage to send out emails that say very naughty things about being a dyke, and also very naughty teasings of my friend’s girl who I have dubbed “Snickers” because she wooed my friend with baggies of snickers… but instead of sending it to the friend for whom it was carefully crafted, I hit the “reply to all recipients” button, which, as he tells me, included a fair amount of Born Agains. I then paniced and manically begged for forgiveness, only to be scorned as an “innuendo laced lesbian beeeeeeaaaaaattttcccchhhhh” (cut n’ pasted). Fortunately he was also cracking up.

But, I still manage to get out every now and again, thankgoodness to my silver-friends who drag me out. (I promise I’m going to winenight tomorrow. And the Tea Party Wednesday after my… gasp… panel critique of the piece I hope I’m near done with. No classes next week! True—extra hours at the tutoring center in hopes for Jan rent, and true—a big presentation coming up next Monday that I’ve done hardly any prep for, but no classes! And only one week of classes after that!) So, here’s an account of some of my good fun:

--Pride & Prejudice--

Overall Assessment of Film: Yuck.

Some beautiful cinematography in interludes. Great acting from the mum (Brenda Blethyn), and pretty good from the eldest sis (Rosamund Pike) and father (Donald Sutherland). Kiera Knightly didn’t blub it as much as I thought she might, although her smile still makes my hair stand on edge. The younger sisters overacted, and the two main male characters were bizarre. I thought the cousin was sufficiently toady, and there was one dance scene I approved of. But any last scene that triggers esophageal fibrillations is a blah to me. I do so like a movie that leaves me wondering… or at least feeling ecstatic.

One that ends “Mrs. Darcy. Mrs. Darcy. Mrs. Darcy. Mrs. Darcy. Mrs. Darcy. Mrs. Darcy” is not likely to do that for me.

At least I enjoyed the company of my friend who took me with her and then gave me a baggie of scrumdilliumptious peanut-butter cookies with hershey’s kisses on the top of them. Sugar. Mmmmmmm… Cookies on a new couch. Mmmmmm… Movie with friends. Mmmmmm...

--Poetry Reading--

Frolic, licking lexical love—raking letters into leaf-pile, jumping in and burying ourselves, covered by this transfigured thick-flat land that defines the distance between

fat handshakes // old grudges; little knickerfeet mobilizing under a mountainous slide of down-coated warmth // a woman so old her gums don’t even remember the taste of dentine (wig askew, hands so large and graceful); “My mommy is my hero” // “Sometimes I think I’m becoming just like my mother”; chalkboard // desk; sanctity of marriage // legal protection; the airplane // the house // the splatter of concrete // how many wounded? // my son, my son!; ribosomes // vacuoles; chicago beebop bowling for citystreet jazz sweet subway, run // alaska wash fishing for pineneedle ash radio-news solitude beach, walk;

my life // your life.

What would it be like to climb right up inside?

Well, I went to a poetry reading unlike any poetry reading I’ve ever been to before. I went knowing very little other than I’m usually up for a poetry reading, and then Peter Cook stalked out with his buddy, Kenny Lerner, and they—honest to god, and I’m not being a smarmy little critiwiggler—made me think of language differently. To “speak” a little more precisely, they made me see language differently.

As an intro question to assess whether you’re primed to hear my poetry praises without skepticism: have you gone through a stage of being obsessed by sign language?

My introductory obsession took place junior year of high school and limited itself to a brief jaunt to the library, where I learned the alphabet very poorly and not even out of order. This intro obsession was due to a Florida boring class (American History) that happened to have a certain boy who was deaf and had an interesting-looking interpreter (read: hot) who sat at the front of the room, a little off to the side, and made words with her hands. Of course, this was really far more interesting than paying attention to anyone else in the class.

But once I realized that sign language is hard and I felt uncomfortable and silly (ah, second languages!), my obsession screeched to a halt and I forgot everything except:

pinky-swoop, four-fingers meet thumb in circle, fist with thumb to side, fist with thumb tucked two fingers in, fist with thumb tucked two fingers in, fist with thumb to side.

Yes, very egocentric of me. But now I’m once again ready to become a sign language guru because this ASL Poetry Performance was incredible, self-consciously incredible too. Think combination of miming, acting, film technique, dancing. Then add language. Put it all into one act, and think how amazing and completely distinct from any other language the words of sign language are.

They are: signifier. Certainly. Yes, certainly, Saussure would agree. But this language is also signified because it slides through the body, presses through the skin (and muscle and sinew and swinging of bones and dancity tap tap), and creeps out to the tip of fingers, hands, wrists, arms, face—the movement of the self in language, the ability of motion to mediate the distance between. If you disagree with me on theoretical ground, I will whup you into submission with a wet wet crunchy wet noodle.

The title of the performance was The Flying Words Project, and my favorite piece was a poem on language itself, in which letters (thumb out, pointing-finger high, three other fingers tucked—touch finger/thumbtips with other hand which is doing similar action) actually fly, words actually fly, the hands fly // the mouth cannot. One could conceivable cut up a book and throw the paper into the air to create other flying words, but the disadvantage of that version is that it wouldn’t make sense. Duh. Not Poetry.

The show got started with a Pablo Neruda poem interpretation (very different). Peter Cook’s the main performer, whereas his friend Kenny Lerner, who is hearing, narrates the poems breathily and adds some sound effects. They make a good team. Peter Cook is hard to look away from, he is so expressionate and bizarre looking. His face alone is sufficient to entrance. Add this to the sound effects he also makes with his mouth, and my jaw plopped open. I didn’t notice for awhile and then I closed it, feeling a little embarrassed of myself.

From there, we went into a “Déjà vu” piece, which recurred sporadically throughout the performance. This was enjoyable mainly because Cook & Lerner had made up a new sign for déjà vu that was totally sensical, long, and quite funny. I can’t describe it, sorry, although I will say that there is a “moment of recognition” sign built into the new-word.

A piece they performed later on almost made me cry. It was about a dog, Charlie, bought at a grocery store and trained to be a war dog. Cook spoke/acted his life growing up, and intercut this with scenes of Charlie running through the Vietnam fields to find the Ho Chi Mihn tunnels, which he marched through and attacked the enemy… but was in the end left by the too-full chopper. I felt like I was seeing Charlie’s life, hearing his life, and I chastised my friend, sb, who invited and went with me, for not having given warning that it was sad beforehand.

An audience participation performance had us all “being smoke” as a rocket lifted off from the middle of us, then signing the land flattening out, followed by spinning around in the space on Nasa radar, then an inter-galactic flirtation including a pen, and finally a black hole tried to suck everything in, in particular a large man who was forced to lift slowly out of his seat as he attempt to avoid our gravitational power. It was fun.

Also, a series of interpreted interviews about why students go to college. This poem involved beer (I learned the sign for beer, hopefully it’s international), puppy love, pot, sex, and so forth. Very funny.

All in all, with no good summation here, I’m going to have to say: go see ASL poetry if you like poetry and you like motion and you like words and you want to get excited about something. Both Cook and Lerner are suffused with enthusiasm for their language, and although Lerner’s voice was a little to breathily-dramatic for my tastes in poetry reading, their dynamic works well together, and half of what I was watching was their obvious affection for each other. Lerner’s gangling cute awkwardness and Cook’s complete submergence into performing, into speaking, into lexical negotiations.

--Too Late--

It’s too late for me to make this any more massively long. So, pitterpatter to bed I go.