So, today was again the day of the big critique... a collection of people from the writing department (all departments second semester) + one student participant + one outside writer participant. I mean, this is one of the unique aspects of SAIC that I think is wonderful but also can go poorly as all hell, or so I've heard. I haven't had a bad critique – one in which the participants think it's their duty to demolish the ego of some new artist – and instead have come away with my crits pleased to get to know new people and hear what they have to say. It's one hour of focused attention... on my work, and I know this sort of thing will rarely happen again. Yeah, and so, some people blow off the critiques because they can suck and it can be hard to know what to take away from them, but as for me, well, I think they're amazing.

So, I gave the group a piece that is still in process. I thought to give them another piece, but when I found out who was on my panel, I realized I could give them something more experimental--one I'm unsure about, and have lots of questions regarding how well it's working. So, I scrapped the piece I was working on to hand over and instead submitting a piece called "revise this," which I've posted portions of, but haven't worked seriously on for awhile...

[Have I worked seriously on writing lately? no. but will I? yes. I am so looking forward to Xmas break, 1/4 of the way for preparing the class I'm teaching, 1/4 of the way for reading reading reading, 1/4 of the way for being with friends, and 1/4 of the way for writing again and getting back into a newvoice. My writing mentality has been changing, and I think this semester could be honestly called "perspective" because I have backed away from the making process in order to take a breather and decide what I need to change and what I need to keep and how what I'm going to be investing myself in. Sometimes I think it's a fallout point, but most of the time I know things are settling in me, so slowly, so slowly, but very much changing, and I'm changing: letting go of a guarded living, being in my own head and distrusting others, sadness over a couple of lost friends I loved dearly "who done me wrong," and so forth. Lately I've been really happy, and my head feels like it is becoming my own again, and not owned by forces and memories outside of myself. And it feels like I can laugh over the past, and I can laugh at myself for how I reacted to the past, and I can enjoy being and being with others. I am changing and it is such a joy. Such a joy to release. To realize that I'm going to go home for a visit and I'm going to be fulfilled there—to see my family, to see my sister's new house, to fluff around with the animals, to love the PacNorthwest, to see Natalie and Donna and a few others. And all that other stuff is just not going to hold me again; it can't and there's this knowledge in me that it can't, maybe because I am so much laugh. And that's bound to change the writing, and my priorities in writing, because writing has been about salvation for so long, about holding myself and me and this I together, and I don't need it for that right now. I don't need to keep myself intact, because I am. And that's okay, but it means that my writing wants to become for another purpose, and I need to figure out what that purpose is.]

...although I did add some sections, rather hurriedly in order to give them the gist of what I'm thinking about in the piece, which is a braided essay/fiction/story thingy, metafictional, about revision and how I see revision in relation to life. I also realized in this piece that I simply love talking about water, which is a little silly maybe, but is about enough about how I see that I can hardly contain it sometimes. (water represents everything beautiful to me about life). So, I let myself write about it, and didn't question my instincts in that regard.

Anyhow, my crit panel was really wonderful, perfect actually: Dan Beachy-Quick (poet, sensitive, passion), Ellen Rothenberg (performance/writer, serious, blunt), Matthew Goulish (experimental writer, strange and beautiful), and Christina Pugh (outside writer, I don't know much about her?). The student writer was Matt Rieger, who is a friend in the playwriting department. I've seen his plays: he's funny and I like him. I also got the addition of a writer-observer, who startled me by coming in to take notes rather than participate - but she is the writer who is going to respond to my exhibit for the G2 Exhibition response-reading. She read some of her work in class, and it is intense, tight intellectual poetry and short-prose that I like but need to read more to fully understand, but I think I really should make friends with her because there might be that writerly simpatico—rather something to try to follow.

So, the commentary was actually really productive, because they gave me perspectives that I needed to hear, and maybe even wanted to hear – stuff about being patient with the work and giving it the time to come into fruition. But also ideas about which strands are working together and which might be cut out or re-arranged. (Basically, I started with five strands: kayaking in general, my experience kayaking, a focused meditation on different female artists who inspire me, notes on the writing process, and a fictional strand using a character—Deborah—to enact the life of the body). Their suggestions were to cut the notes section altogether, which I think I agree with—even if it's what got the piece started. And then they talked about the kayaking-general strand and the me-kayaking strand like it was one instead of two, which I think is right but means I need to consider how one evolves into the other. They liked the writer-meditation because I was being silly, but suggested that I might re-arrange and be strategic about how I use them, and also consider using pieces of the writers' language/work in the rest of the strands. DBQ really emphasized that I need to be patient and work through what I'm thinking, and Goulish suggested that I should allow the strands to be even more disjointed and not worry about connecting them too closely for my audience (instead trust my readers to make the connections they want to make) and also think about making a break in the pattern--allowing each strand to follow its arc but also to break out of its arc and do something unexpected. I liked that. Christina Pugh seemed to want me to cut down on the metafiction (which I'll take, but maybe not all the way) and was very thoughtful about how she saw the character Deborah interacting with aging bodies and seeing her own growth in relation to them. So, I've rambled on a bit about that, but I got some really wonderful ideas, and it makes me want to keep going with the piece, and it make me realize how important this story is to me (very) and how it embodies the ideas I'm trying to put into play.

I had a thought too, about how so much of my writing is modular and braided, of how the very first thing I ever wanted to really write and write well was like this. And how this started after reading a Russian short story about a boy named Alyosha that I thought was the most amazing story I had ever read, because how is it even possible to combine such different narratives and have them only make sense as a whole? That's what I want to do right now - combine difference and make it complete. But not easy, not easy, and thus a lifelong task along with so many others.

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on a side note: hmmmmm. hmmmm. hm. hmmmmmmm.

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The day was also interesting because I found a bat, a baby-looking fuzzy (I never have seen a fuzzy bat!) bat that was curled up next to the Michigan street building that I attend classes in, and I thought it was a piece of fluff that had fallen off of someone's coat and so I waved my foot at it, and it went: WRAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHW at me. And I jumped. But then I saw how cold it was, and curled into itself and huddled next to the concrete and I felt so sad for it, to be there and cold and maybe even dying of cold next to a building with people passing by it, and maybe stepping on it. And I just stood there, because really, what can a person do? I didn't have the humane society's number, but it couldn't stay there. And a bat downtown Chicago! It was a very startling element out-of-place and I can't help identifying with such creatures, and also being amazed that they're there, in this concrete hive.

So, I thought for awhile about wrapping it up in my hat and putting it in my backpack or my pocket until I could find a number to call and find the right place for it, but then I had crit, and could I really take a fuzzy bat into a crit panel? No, I decided not, and I also remembered the little feral kitten with the fucked-up leg that I found and thought to save and so grabbed and got incredibly scratched up over, which made me think that life like this just wants to be and doesn't always need us humans interfering and making it a person issue. But still, the bat was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and cold against the concrete.

I thought about calling my newfriend, lb, since she works at a shelter, and asking her if she knew what to do, but then thought that calling her might be silly. So, I was standing there contemplating it when she and ss showed up, and I was so relieved to see them that all I could do was wail, "there's a bat!"

And they came up with the plan that I put it in a cup and carry it somewhere better for the time being, somewhere where it wouldn't at least get mushed or bite someone, and ss asked if I had my rabies shots, which I thought was really funny until I realized it was a pretty genuine and important question that I hadn't thought about when contemplating putting the bat in my pocket. So they babysat the bat while I went and got a cup and then scraped it up inside (it hissed at me) and covered it with the lid that ss provided. I then walked it over to a park and put it under some bushes as close to the trunk as I could get it, but the ground was still cold and barren and the creature seemed like it was on its last limbs. I mean, I put the napkin next to it as a blanket, but really, what's that going to do in the Chicago cold?

I don't know. Maybe I still should have called the humane society--a bat dying in the country seems normal and okay with lifecycles and such, but a bat in the city throws me for a loop.

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I went later to G2 and hung all my pictures for the Exhibition, which means that half my work is done, maybe half, but now I have to put the text over it and make sure it works and is the right size and play around with all that business. This may seem like whining, but actually I'm so in love with this mode of working that it hurts. Arranging my writing by visual space. Love it.

And I ran into lb and ss again and grabbed a "torta" with them, and then didn't want to go home, where I knew it would be cold and lonely and boring and all of that. [See, more indication that writing has ceased to be everything to me]. So, it took very very little wrist-bending on their part to get me to join them with their installation, and I was rock-on happy they asked me to join them. I want to work together with more people, yes I do. I helped them build a ladder out of wire, which is fun and reminds me of all the wire "sculptures" I did as a kid (of dinosaurs primarily, but mostly of anything I could bend wire into). I was a little out of practice and did a non-twirled-wire job, but had fun and enjoyed being there and the music and you know. That.

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So, that's my very full day and now I'm out and probably off to bed, with the kitty to curl up with.