That Was The Week That Was: Week Three

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, classroom, creative writing pedagogy, education, edumacation, flickr, Found art, Free to Be You and Me, Georgia, Georgia Southern, gratuitous photos of whatnot, Inquiries into academics, instagram, It is ON 2012, learning, multi-tasking, pedagogy, Photo for the day, Photography, Play-Doh, poetry, Pre-semester prep, teaching, teaching writing, That Was The Week That Was, What Emma is up to, writing life, writing teachers

It’s that time again, folks.  It’s also almost time for The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills finale, and I am a.) not missing that and b.) making myself feel better about not missing that by writing a found poem from said episode, so c.) really I’m not addicted to terrible — I mean, the worst — television, I’m just interested in making artistic cultural commentary.  Really.  Also, I have some swamp land in Florida and I’d like to sell it to you.  Before I do so, however, let’s take a look at the week that was …

Day Seventeen: The first drive to campus this semester.

Day 18: My key chain. I've got one of these for every state I've lived in. I always get them at airports. Next flight out, I'm getting one for Georgia.

Day 19: I still can't figure out why this fire truck is always parked in front of the bookstore the first week of class.

Day 20: This is a combination of my photo of the day for day 20 of last year and this year. My photo of day 20 last year? A picture of a pillow when I finally got to sleep after many hours of airport delays and cancelled flights. What I couldn't take a picture of -- or talk about -- was where I was traveling -- to Georgia, for my campus visit! I took a picture of my bed here in Statesboro, a year later.

Day 21: As an educator, I feel it is important to post helpful guides and information such as this on my office door.

Day 22: Need I say more?

Day 23: Today was clay day, my favorite day of the semester! Thanks to Danielle for this little guy. If you're interested in reading more about how I use Play-Doh in a writing class, here's an article I wrote for Teaching Artist Journal's ALT/Space blog: http://tajaltspace.com/post/11024953694/the-first-day

 

And the finale is on.  Perfect timing.  For, you know, important cultural commentary and art and all that.

No One Suspects that I Am A Finn

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, A teacher's education, Academia, Academic inquiries, accidental confessions, Alabama, Amazing discoveries and wondrous visions, bad behavior in public places, Bizarre associations and other odd tendencies, Buffalo Rock Beverages, classroom, contemporary poetry, cool/not cool, creative writing pedagogy, disagreeable/agreeable, drafts, education, edumacation, Emma's Awkward Adolescence, Free to Be You and Me, Georgia Southern, graduate school, Grapico, Happy accidents, I really did go to a school called Our Lady of Sorrows, influences, inspiration, introductions, It is ON 2012, learning, plans, poem challenge, poems, poetry, Poetry Exercises, poetry superheroes, poets, reading, readings, Resolutions, Scenes from my childhood, teaching writing, The Thoughts of a Poetry Fan Girl, The Year of Projects, writing community, writing life, writing teachers and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

First things first, two things (which is, I suppose, two things first.  Or, perhaps, two things first and second):

  1. I hate introductions.  Every year, I approached the first day of school awash with nausea, not only because I knew that by the end of the day someone was definitely going to point at me and yell four eyes, but also because the first day of school meant that we’d be forced to introduce ourselves to our classmates in one of those round-the-classroom name-game-athons which were, at the same time, agonizingly generic and boring and high-pressure situations that could make or break your social life for the year to come — unless, of course, you were a four eyes, in which case your social life was already broken for every four-seeable (see what I did there?) year to come.
  2. I love James Tates’ poem “I Am A Finn.”  I first came across this in graduate school and it was like meeting the poem version of the man I’d like to marry: funny, smart, somehow wistful, even whimsical, and handsome on the page.  Love at first line-break.  I was so crazy about the poem that I photocopied it and put it in friends’ campus mailboxes with Post-Its that said something to the effect of “OMG I LOVE THIS POEM SO MUCH I DIE READ IT READ IT READ IT.”  Which may be a little crazy.  Regardless.  I’m going to do the Internet version of that right now by providing you with a link to a reading of the poem and a link to Distance from Loved Ones, the collection from which the poem comes, all the while reminding you that I love this poem so much, I die.  Read it.  Read it.  Read it.

As a professor, I still feel a wave of nausea about the first day of class and the fact that I’ll have to find some way for the students to introduce themselves because, really, I just don’t want to be responsible for that kind of generic boredom and/or pressure.  This semester, I suddenly realized that I could replace something I hate with something I love.  Instead of the typical name-game introductions, I passed out “I Am A Finn;” then, we all wrote introductory poems in the style of the Finns.

And by “we all,” I mean “we all.”  Part of my Free to Be You and Me Resolution involves taking every opportunity I have to write.  Thankfully, I am a writing professor, which means there are many such opportunities to take — especially if I do all of the writing exercises I assign my students.  In a show of solidarity with them, and with the Finns, I give you my in-class exercise and introduction, which isn’t anywhere near Mr. Tates’ poem but is important to me all the same, as it’s evidence of taking every chance to write and, well, writing.

I Am An Alabamian

I Am An Alabamian

I am standing in the deli, trying
to understand its spectrum of meats: shaved
pink ham to red pastrami to six peppered

turkey breasts.  Where are the olive
loafs?  Why is the baloney
unfried?  I am an Alabamian.

My middle name is Suzanne,
which means you will want to sing to me
about a banjo, about my knee.  Don’t.

Zelda Fitzgerald was an Alabamian, and she
guzzled bathtubs worth of gin
with the easiest speakers of New York, Chicago,

even Paris, which is in Europe.  When I ask
for vodka and Grapico after three martinis
at the martini bar on 12th Avenue,

everyone suspects I am a Southerner.  I am
not.  I am an Alabamian.  The most
common animals in Alabama are dogs

chained by chains and rust to tree stumps
and roosters who free-roam front yards.
Also, the stray cats my grandmother shot

with a BB gun for pissing against her back porch.
In Alabama, nature is never forgiving, and Alabamians
never forgive nature back.

I Am Still an Alabamian

I learned from sixteen grocery stores
that fatback and RC Cola aren’t
part of their regular shipments of stock,

which surprised me.  We Alabamians
are a people used to surprise.  In 1975, a worker’s candle
surprised the foamed plastic firestop at Brown’s Ferry

Nuclear Plant.  Because we are also a people steeped
in the sweet tea of tradition, the firestop remains
foamed plastic, though my grandmother, a transplant

to Alabama but an Alabamian all the same, always
said only fools borrow trouble and sugar, it isn’t
sweet tea, it’s just tea.  Alabamians, even transplant

Alabamians, spin language inventively, into phrases like
naked as a jaybird even though jaybirds aren’t jaybirds
but blue jays, and are never naked but feathered.  We

Alabamians are not liars.  We are innovators, a fact
upon which I reflect whilst stirring my reflection
along with two cups of sugar into a quart of tea.

That Was The Week That Was: Week Two

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, Alice B. Toklas (feline version), flickr, Georgia, Glitter (pretty version), Home, How the iPhone changed my life, instagram, It is ON 2012, Kentucky is the tundra, learning patience slowly, multi-tasking, Photo for the day, Photography, plans, Resolutions, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, shallow thoughts on shoes and the like, shameless cat photos, What Emma is up to, writing room, writing space

It’s the last day before the Spring semester starts, and therefore it’s the perfect day to go through my photos for last week to celebrate the break and mourn its end, and to get ready for new beginnings — and books and class plans and assignments and Diet Coke-fueled grading sessions — well, let’s just concentrate on pictures for now …

Day Eight: Ms. Toklas is certainly happy to be back home.

 

Day Nine: Sometimes you can kind of coast along and ignore a problem. Sometimes, though, you have to put on your big girl panties and start to fix the problem. Sadly, my problem is sciatica, and it is a major problem because it causes a problem with my favorite thing ever: shoes. I finally big-girl-pantied up and cleaned out high heels that I shouldn't wear again. God bless you, Steve Madden platform pumps. You served me well.

 

Day Ten: I think I was karmically rewarded, though, because I found out that my bone is healing beautifully. No more crutches! Boot for only four more weeks! That's plenty of time to amass a collection of super-fashionable flats!

 

Day Eleven: The bad news: it's almost Valentine's Day, Hallmark's hideous Frankenstein monster who pulls its hideous, glitter-coated body out of the black, black depths of a black, black swamp every year to drag helpless singles back down with it. The good news: CANDY!

 

Day Twelve: One of the things I love most about the 365 project is that it trains you to pay more attention to your surroundings and to look where you normally wouldn't look -- including up.

 

Day Thirteen: It's been a really long time since I've used the heat in my car. This just reminded me of how happy I am to be back in the South.

 

Day Fourteen: I will probably post about this later, but I re-decorated my study/office/writing room and it is too awesome for me to handle. I mean, I have two tables. TWO TABLES. It's my dream!

 

Day Fifteen: If there is one thing I need to learn, it's patience. I'm in the middle of a project right now that takes a ton of it -- putting together a twin reflex camera, out of these tiny, tiny parts. If anyone is betting, I might suggest betting that I'll give up soon.

 

Day Sixteen: As part of my resolution to live the Free to Be You and Me life, I've finally taken out my old Pentax K1000 to take pictures again. I used this when I was a yearbook photographer in high school; since I got this around the time I read The Inferno and "Rappaccini's Daughter," it's named Beatrice (pronounced BAY-a- tree-chay. Of course.). Pictured is the fab wide angle/macro lens combo I got from Photojojo. I'm remembering how excited I was when Beatrice and I took our first photos all those years ago.

Poetry and I: A Sordid Love Story

Posted by emmabolden in bad behavior in public places, Bad girls and good girls gone bad, books, creative nonfiction, Emily Dickinson = The Ultimate, Emma hits a wall, Emma's Awkward Adolescence, Epic Fail? EPIC WIN!, extended metaphors, Facebook, failed or otherwise, Failure Schmailure, False Dichotomies, Fear and how to face it, Fiction, fiction smiction, Free to Be You and Me, Friendship Is Magic, graduate school, gratuitous photos of whatnot, hopes and dreams, I really did go to a school called Our Lady of Sorrows, learning, literary practical jokes, living without linebreaks, mullings and ramblings, nonappearances, perfection is boring. period., Photo for the day, poetry, poets, Probably quite a bit TMI, publishing, publishing (or not publishing, reading, readings, Recharging the mental batteries, Shifting metaphors, submissions, The evolution of Emma, The Thoughts of a Poetry Fan Girl, Thoughts of a Nonfiction Fan Girl, writing and not writing, Writing Anew, writing life

So, here’s the thing.

Careful readers of the Blog will know that I have been in a relationship with Poetry that pretty much defines “long term.”  It started back in 1987 as a schoolgirl crush.  Poetry and I were introduced by our mutual friend Emily.  You know, Emily

This is the only photograph I could find of myself around the age I first met Poetry. In case you were wondering, yes, this is a photograph of me posing next to a scene of the Crucifixion made out of Legos, possibly for a project at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic School. And in case you were wondering, yes, the fact that that one cross is white was, indeed, meant to signify that it was Christ's cross. Also, you're welcome.

Dickinson?  The girl with auburn hair who always wore white dresses and hung out in the back of the English book, pretending that she wanted nothing more than for no one to pay attention to her when, in reality, that was exactly what she wanted?  That Emily.  And she was right about Poetry — Poetry was just so eloquent, so elegant.  Poetry was witty and charming and clever, and Poetry always knew the right thing to say.  Plus, I loved the way a page looked on Poetry — Poetry could make even the cheapest newsprint-quality-bargain-paperback-stock look good.

In a way, Poetry and I grew up together.  Poetry was patient, kind, and never jealous of my friendship with Fiction — and why should Poetry be jealous, really?  I might dally a little, exploring my options with plot structure and setting, but we both knew I’d come running back soon enough.  Even when, in graduate school, I abandoned Poetry for a year and took up with Fiction, who had shown up in a workshop wearing these totally hot asterisks and quad spaces, Poetry still didn’t mind.  Poetry remained cool, cucumber-like.  Graduate school was close enough to college for Poetry to be sure I was just experimenting, so Poetry went on with Po-business.

But after a while, I started to wonder if perhaps Poetry was a little too confident, a little too casual.  I started to wonder if I was putting too much into our relationship and getting too little back.  After all, I was spending every spare second and dollar and dime I had on Poetry, and what was Poetry doing?  Going on dates with, like, everyone else, including, like, all of my ex-boyfriends.  Poetry had, shall we say, a problem with commitment — or, at least, it seemed, a problem with commitment to me.  It seemed like Poetry had gone out to the bookstores of the world wearing a dust jacket for just about everyone I’d known.  We did get close to a walk down the bookstore aisle, but the ring vanished from my finger before I could even figure out what kind of flowers I wanted — and due to a natural disaster.  Which is basically the definition of a sign, and a sign so extreme it couldn’t be ignored even someone with the most delusional crush on Poetry.

I didn’t mean to start a thing with Creative Nonfiction.  Really and truly, I mean it.  Creative Nonfiction always seemed too brusque, too brutally honest, too willing to tell the truth and the whole truth, so help your mom.  If I saw Creative Nonfiction a party, I pretended I dropped something and turned around and away.  Otherwise, I knew I’d be talking about my most embarrassing middle school moments until we ended up on the sidewalk, Creative Nonfiction patting my head and handing me Kleenex while I breathed into a paper bag.

Okay, okay.  I had a brief flirtation with Creative Nonfiction in high school, but that was just because I realized that if I squinted and looked to the left and ignored the lack of line-breaks, Creative Nonfiction kinda looked a lot like Poetry.  Back then, Poetry had my heart and didn’t worry and just went off to smoke behind the high school with the kids who wore black turtlenecks and read Nietzsche. Which was, of course, typical.

When Creative Nonfiction showed up again ten years later, it was different.  Before I knew it, we were spending all of our time together.  I mean, Creative Nonfiction listened.  Creative Nonfiction cared.  Creative Nonfiction cared more about what Lauren said about my buck teeth than how buck teeth could become a metaphor for global climate change.  Maybe Creative Nonfiction and I would have the same problems, but at least they’d be new problems.  And Poetry didn’t seem to care — and was busy whisking people who wore black and read Nietzsche in high school off to Breadloaf anyway.

But Poetry is, if anything, sneaky.  Add to that seductive.  No matter how many times I swore we were finished and unfriended the fake Walt Whitman on Facebook and erased the Poetry Foundation’s website from my contacts, I found myself running into Poetry.  A poster on campus, a forward from a friend, in a centerfold in the American Poetry Review wearing white space too gorgeous to be believed.  Before I knew it, I was writing notes for Poetry — at first in the margins of my notebooks, then scrawled all over the pages.  Poetry sat on my bookshelf in the corner and grinned.  Poetry knew I couldn’t stay away too long.

I realized I had to find some way to make it work, with both of them.  I realized that I had put too much emphasis on PDA — Published Displays of Authorship — and needed desperately to build up my relationships instead.  I realized that Poetry and Creative Nonfiction and I needed to be just friends — and as soon as I realized this, I was happier.

I won’t lie: it isn’t always easy.  I still get disappointed when Poetry responds to my hard work with one of those generic notes Xeroxed on a half-sheet of paper asking me to subscribe to a magazine.  I still feel a twinge of jealousy when I see Poetry taking someone else out at Border’s.  Then I remember that this is just Poetry’s public side, which can really be a frog.  I remember that the most important thing is how I feel about Poetry — and how working on Poetry makes me feel about myself.

That Was The Week That Was: Week One

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, Cats in Bags, Ear Worms, Emma is very lucky, Emma's Awkward Adolescence, Emma's attempts at normal life, Emma's attempts at real life (failed or otherwise), Epic Cat Battles, family, Film, flickr, Found art, Free to Be You and Me, Friendship Is Magic, Georgia, Gertrude Stein (feline version), Happy accidents, How the iPhone changed my life, instagram, It is ON 2012, MLP, My Little Pony, My meowing roommates, New Fangled Technology and Whatnot, Photo for the day, Photography, Resolutions, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, Scenes from my childhood, shameless cat photos, Squee!, That Was The Week That Was, The evolution of Emma, This entry brought to you by Tender Buttons, toys, What Emma is up to, where are you going where have you been, writing life, You gotta have friends

If there’s one thing I love, it’s finding a good blog — like, a really good blog, one with an author who’s honest and creative and excited about being honest and creative, as well as about reading and writing.  I had a hunch that Books and Bowel Movements would be a good blog just from reading its title, and I am very, very happy to say that my hunch was right.  Cassie, the beautiful Blogstress, is a talented reader and writer — and photographer, as her new 365 series shows.

Cassie’s most recent entry inspired me to start keeping up with my 365 project on the blog as well as on my Flickr stream.  Every week, more or less punctually (okay, okay, y’all all know it’ll probably be the latter.  I may know how to use punctuation, but that doesn’t mean I’ll ever be punctual, though I’m always going to be pretty darn pun-ctual*), I’ll post the photos I chose for the week and write a little about why.  True to form, I’m already behind, so without further ado, I present the first week of That Was The Week That Was:**

Day One: My mother got a box of her godmother's recipes, which was full of wondrous things from the 1950's and 60's, including this coffee ad featuring none other than Tennessee Ernie Ford. FACT: just about every mix tape I ever made featured the song "Sixteen Tons," even if every other song was grunge rock and/or hip-hop and/or made by Britney Spears. There's really no better way to start the year than with Mr. Ernie Ford's hand.

Day Two: Through the chaos of the previous year, I've learned that if there's anything worth celebrating, it's the small, calm moments of peace and rest. Here's a picture of one of them, which also features a doily.

Day Three: Here's another one of those small, restful, peaceful moments. I really liked this photograph -- the light and the shifting focus. I especially like it because it was a complete accident: I took this shot unintentionally while playing with my new iPhone. I always tell my students that sometimes the best moments in writing are accidents and we should appreciate them. I think this photo proves that sentiment right.

Day Four: I've been working on an essay about Grey Gardens for over a year now. It's stalled time and time again -- and then, finally, I finished a draft. And there was much rejoicing. And a couple of racoons.

Day Five: My cousin brought her son over. I think the unbelievable cuteness of this photo is enough of an explanation of why I chose it.

Day Six: This was my prized possession as a kid -- my first My Little Pony. I had an MLP photo shoot to remind myself of my old fascination with mythical creatures, how I was willing to believe in what I couldn't see -- and also that, well, Friendship Is Magic.

Day Seven: Gertrude Stein, feline version. Cat carrier. Six hour car ride. Enough said.

That was the week that was — and thanks, Cassie!

* Yes, that’s right.  I just wrote a triple pun.  And I knew it.  And I didn’t erase it when I had the chance.

** I admit: I borrowed the title of this from a show that ran on the BBC and then NBC in the early 1960′s because, well, I’m more than vaguely obsessed with the 1960′s.  Every time I think about said show, the song gets stuck in my head, which means it is absolutely necessary that I direct you here so you can see what I’m talking about.

The First Day of the Rest of My Life (Or, at Least, My Year)

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, bad behavior in public places, Bad girls and good girls gone bad, books, Chchchchanges, creative nonfiction, De-Facebooking, Emma is very lucky, Emma miraculously survives another holiday, Emma's attempts at normal life, Emma's attempts at real life (failed or otherwise), Fear and how to face it, flickr, Free to Be You and Me, Gertrude Stein (feline version), Glitter (pretty version), How the iPhone changed my life, instagram, introductions, It is ON 2012, it is ON., It's the end of the world as we know it, Lana Del Ray, learning, Mission to Make Emma Cool, multi-tasking, music, My meowing roommates, nonfiction, Photo for the day, Photography, plans, poetry, publishing (or not publishing, reading, readings, Resolutions, Retrospectitating, Retrospective, revision, shameless cat photos, The evolution of Emma, The grind, The latest medical anomaly, the poem factory, training, What Emma is up to, where are you going where have you been, Who The Eff Cares?, wonders and apparitions, writing and not writing, writing life

A dear friend of mine once told me that the first day of the year is like a forecast, or like the primaries in Iowa or New Hampshire, I guess, if you want to be topical: what you do on that day determines what your year will be like.  It’s a day to enact the changes you want to last through the year, to see your resolutions sparked to life.  And I think she was right: I spent the first day of 2011 puking at Cracker Barrel and freezing cold and trying to sleep, which was really about right in terms of the rest of the year.  This year, at least, I didn’t begin by puking at Cracker Barrel because crutches + Cracker Barrel retail area = instant disaster.  That’s a major improvement already.

Yesterday, I started the year with a day of resolute action on my resolutions.  This meant that I also spent the day with a blogging project of sorts, as keeping better touch with the world in general is one of my resolutions.  I decided to take photos throughout the day as a kind of pictorial prediction of what 2012 might be like.  Let’s take a look into the future …

According to Bono, nothing changes on New Year's Day. Gertrude Stein apparently agrees, and so I awoke as I always awake: to her cat breath. Still, better than barfing in Cracker Barrel.

I started the day with all my resolutions in front of me: notebook for writing, book for reading, camera for picture-taking, and sweet sweet coffee for fueling it all.

This picture is important because it shows me actually doing what a doctor told me to do -- staying off my foot. I know, I know. Crazy, right? Apparently, it helps if you follow your doctor's instructions and don't, say, take out your recycling bin in your boot even though you broke a bone in half because you're a stubborn perfectionist.

Writing a poem? Check. Revising said poem? Check. Writing 1,903 words on an essay? Check and CHECK.

Oh! And I got excited about a sale on office supplies, as well as the office supplies themselves.

Lana del Ray,* revisions, and submissions -- the last of which was incredibly significant, for reasons I shall describe in a future entry which will also probably involve references to Super Mario Brothers.

Then my mom got her godmother's box of recipes from the 1950's, which contained many amazing treasures, including ...

... SPARKLE BANANA STICKS ...

... which was so overwhelmingly awesome I had to take a nap.

Then I beat Chapter Four of World of Goo. Chapter Five, not so much.

I then found it necessary to paint my fingernails. With, of course, glitter.

There was also some drawing business going on.

There was also some reading business.

Then I admired my fabulous glittery nails for the last time that day and said goodnight.

So, what does 2012 have in store for me?  Cat alarm clocks, coffee, obeying my doctor, poems, essays, scribbled revisions, video games, the gangster Nancy Sinatra, tigers, office supplies, sparkly banana sticks, pen-and-ink drawings, and glitter.  Oh, and the apocalypse.

Not bad at all.

* Here is the link to “Born to Die,” the Lana Del Ray video I watched at least seventeen hundred thousand times yesterday.  It’s not particularly safe for work or kid-friendly but man oh man is it good.  I’m willing to declare this The Official Song of 2012 ALREADY.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine — Enough for an Obligatory New Year’s Post, That Is!

Posted by emmabolden in 2012, 365, A festival of photos, Alice B. Toklas (feline version), Art and life and love and The Big Stuff, bad behavior in public places, Bad girls and good girls gone bad, balance, books, COLLECT!, Corrections, De-Facebooking, disagreeable/agreeable, disappearances, education, edumacation, Emma is very lucky, Emma's attempts at normal life, Emma's attempts at real life (failed or otherwise), Emma's dsyfunctional relationship with Diet Coke, Facebook, Fear and how to face it, flickr, Free to Be You and Me, Gertrude Stein (feline version), hopes and dreams, It is ON 2012, it is ON., It's the end of the world as we know it, learning, learning patience slowly, Losing courage and other freakouts, Movin' on, mullings and ramblings, multi-tasking, New Years, nonappearances, poetry, publishing, publishing (or not publishing, reading, readings, Recharging the mental batteries, rejection slippage, Resolutions, The evolution of Emma, The grind, The latest medical anomaly, the poem factory, The Year of Projects, What Emma is up to, where are you going where have you been, Who The Eff Cares?

Guys, I’m just going to say it: New Year’s Eve sucks.

No, no, I’m not talking about the movie, though, judging from the commercials, that’s got to suck more than a warehouse of Dyson vacuum cleaners.  I’m talking about the actual day itself.

This is a photograph of the most fun I've had on New Year's Eve. A friend and I drank Welch's Sparkling Grape Juice and watched a marathon of The Bad Girl's Club. It was also the first time I saw the Shake Weight commercial. It was amazing.

Look: I am thirty-one years old, and there are many things I’m not sad to say I’ve never done, including but not limited to riding a roller coaster, dropping acid, enjoying a Nickelback song, or wanting to try on a wedding dress.  As most New Year’s Eve events sound like a dizzying combination of all of these things, I am not particularly sad to say that I have never gone out for New Year’s Eve.  For me, New Year’s Eve generally means pajamas, Andre, bad television, and the comforts of my own living room — and I’m not sad about that, either.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that I am not excited about the new year.  Nor does it mean that I’m not excited about another New Year’s tradition: the resolution.  I mentioned in last year’s Obligatory New Year’s Post that I’m not especially great at keeping my resolutions.  A lot of this has to do with the resolutions I used to make, which were generally of the DO ALL THE THINGS! variety: LOSE ALL THE WEIGHT!  WRITE ALL THE BOOKS!  GO OUT ALL THE FRIDAYS!  I’ll make it all of a week and then end up eating a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cake Batter ice cream while watching a What Not to Wear marathon instead of writing on a Friday night.  And though that flavor is particularly delicious and I did learn a lot about how to hide under-eye circles from Carmindy, all in all, this wasn’t particularly effective.

Last year, my resolution was basically this: find some way(s) to stay sane while my entire existence changed, much as the way an egg shell changes if you put it in a bottle of Diet Coke.  Looking back, I didn’t do too badly with this.  I had a few months of feeling slightly-less-than-sane, as some of my 365 posts show, but I managed to pull out of it pretty quickly, as some of my 365 posts also, thankfully, show.  Really, upon reflection, I managed to keep my resolutions — and keep them all year.  This tells me that while my new method of resolution-making may not be as satisfying as doing all the things AND IMMEDIATELY, it’s much more effective.  Which leads me, dear readers, to my Resolutions For The Last Year of The World:

FREE TO BE YOU AND ME.

Okay, it’s more a Resolution than Resolutions. And I guess it’s more of a Concept than a Resolution. And, well, maybe more of a show featuring Marlo Thomas and Friends than a Concept. Nonetheless, that’s what I want to work on this year: learning to enjoy and appreciate my life for what my life is, concentrating on what I have rather than what I lack, what I can do rather than what I can’t control, where I am whether than where I could be — or, perhaps more importantly, where I have been — and learning to love it all.

At this point, you might be thinking, Thanks a lot for getting all New Age Crazy on us, Emma.  God.  And at this point, I might just agree, if I didn’t know I was about to write about actual steps to feeling Free To Be You And Me.  It’s not just all New Age Crazy up in here — I have some actual plans, people, and the first one is: far less Facebook.

I know, I know.  I’ll give you all a moment to take a breath.  But I mean it: here, at my parents’ house, the Internet is spotty and therefore so has been my Facebook use — and lo, that has made all the difference.  Or, at least, a lot of difference, and I will be honest about why.  Sometimes, I log into Facebook and it seems as though every single person on my friend list is getting married in a lavish and loving ceremony then moving into an opulent and immaculately decorated home, which they immediately populate with 3.5 precious children and an immaculately groomed, precious dog, all while publishing a seemingly infinite number of award-winning books and zooming their way to the top of the academic world.  And then I’m in the kitchen corner with my hands covered in mascara, eating Nutella straight from the jar and listening to “I Dreamed a Dream” on repeat.

But I digress.  The thing is, right before I logged into Facebook, I was dancing with my cat to MIA in celebration of finishing a draft of an essay and generally feeling very good about my life, as imperfect as it may be.  The other thing is that my friends list isn’t populated by people with perfect lives, either — Facebook is just built to make it seem that way, and, as I have a jealous streak so strong that the Wicked Witch of the West would tell me my complexion’s a little too green, I respond to Facebook that way.  I need to work on that, and work on appreciating what I have more — and since Facebook triggers both jealousy and an extreme feeling of failure, I’d best spend a little less time with it.

And with the time I’ll save?  I’m planning to act like it’s The End of the World as We Know It, Mayan calendar or no Mayan calendar.  There are a lot of things that I want to do, and I’ve spent too much time not doing them, saying I’ll do them later.  And so 2012 is, for me, The Year of Projects.  I’m planning to continue the 365 Project, taking a photo a day this year.  And reading like crazy, too.  I’m about to sign up for The Grind — writing a page or poem or such a day — to set the tone for the rest of the year.  I’m also going to try to fit in two other loves I’ve ignored, following the Who The Eff Cares? philosophy I mentioned in this post: art and — wait for it — music.  I’ve always wanted to learn how to play a musical instrument, and I’ve got at least six months of recovery ahead of me — what better time to try to learn how to play the guitar?

I guess, more than anything, it’s time for me to realize that the land where the river runs free, through the green country to a shining sea, is this one, if I want it to be — and it’s time for this girl to grow to be her own woman.

The Twelfth Day of Christmas: December

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December: may your new year be as bright and glittery as this bright, glittery wreath.

It’s the last day of Christmas, and therefore the last day of my 12 Days of Christmas series, and therefore – well, Christmas.  I thought it was only appropriate to end with my 359th photograph of the year – my photo for today.  For my photo, I chose this wreath in my mother’s house because – well, I mean, really.  Look at this thing.  I mean, really.  It is a deer covered with GLITTER, and therefore it is AMAZING.

It’s been an odd Christmas, but a good one.  Thanks to the severed halves of my talus bone, I can’t really get around much.  Okay, well, at all.  I couldn’t make it to the extended family gatherings, so it’s just been my mother and father and I.  Somehow, that seems appropriate.  It’s been a tough year for the Boldens, to say the least, and it just felt right to spend the day together, eating Panettone French toast and watching Cake Boss and basketball.  And, of course, talking.

At this point in my life, it feels like Christmas has become a time of remembrance, of celebrating the people who are no longer here.  This is probably because Christmas was my grandfather’s birthday; my mom always baked an extra coconut cake or pie to celebrate, as well as his favorite Sicilian cookies, cuccidata di luna and our family’s version of the cannoli*, and we all put our gifts aside to light candles and sing “Happy Birthday” to him.

I realized today that the meaning of the holiday has definitely changed, especially after my grandfather’s death last year.  It marked, in some way, the end of something unnamable, some extended moment of innocence related to my childhood.  But it marked the beginning of something, too – learning how to remember, learning how even the smallest moment or gesture can become the most important, can become the moment in which we and our loved ones live.  This is also what I learned from the 365 Photo Project: pay attention to the small things.  Those are the things that matter.  Even if they seem insignificant, one day, they’ll have all the significance in the world.

We may not have had a giant Christmas celebration, but we were together.  And as long as there is glitter in the world, I’ll be happy.

 

* Which is the best version of the cannoli ever. I’m serious. Mario Batali? Teresa Guidice? Giada DeLaurentiis? Y’all ain’t got nothing on the Lanza family cannoli recipe.

The Eleventh Day of Christmas: November

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November. I know, I know. You were expecting a picture of me growing a mustache for Movember. Sorry to disappoint everyone. Maybe next year.

 

Crayons, colored pencils, paste, construction paper, watercolors, and, if I was really lucky, markers*: in most of my childhood memories, I’m sitting on the floor surrounded by a circle of one or more of these things.  My mother and I would spend days drawing and cutting and pasting, and I was rarely so happy as when I was scribbling a self-portrait of myself with green skin and a mohawk.**  There was  something indescribably fascinating about drawing, a sense of all-consuming wonder.  I loved sitting down with a blank page and watching as a world appeared.

It’s not difficult to draw a line between this and my reasons for becoming a writer.  What’s always been more difficult for me to figure out, though, is why I kept writing and left drawing behind.  I’ve always said it was because of my education – I went to a fine arts school, which is exactly like a normal high school except everyone wears black all the time and smokes Cloves and talks very seriously about Nietzche/Marx/Days of Our Lives and spends Friday nights making hand puppets.  Also, we had majors, and we were expected to stick with them.  Mine was creative writing, which meant I was to write.  Drawing was okay in Geometry and Calculus class, but not so much elsewhere.  I even remember a teacher tsking at me for doodling in a notebook and reminding me that I was a writing major, not an art major. ***

It’d be easy to stop there and point my finger and blame, but life isn’t that easy, and my school doesn’t deserve the blame.  I did have a chance to take an art class in high school – every Wednesday, we went through a rushed schedule so we could take another art in the afternoon.  I never took visual art. If I do point my finger and blame, I can only point it at myself.

It was my choice to stop drawing, and I did so for one reason only: I was scared.  I knew I wasn’t very good at it.  Plus, I was surrounded by artists who were very, very, very good at it.  I was afraid and intimidated and felt like I wasn’t an artist and therefore shouldn’t draw.

But then, around November of this year, a very important thought entered my mind: WHO CARES?  Seriously.  WHO THE EFF CARES?  And I realized, well, no one – especially since no one had to see what I drew.  I wasn’t making the world a promise that I was the next Leonardo da Vinci.  My drawing wasn’t hurting anyone.  The only person who was hurt, in fact, was me – I’d stopped doing something I enjoyed because of a lack of confidence taken to a stubborn extreme.

And sometimes, I realized, being perfect isn’t the point – giving yourself the permission to be imperfect, and being okay with that, is.

 

* I say “very lucky” here because I believe there may possibly have been an incident at a certain point in my childhood in which someone allegedly confused the wall with a piece of paper.  I’m not willing to confirm this alleged incident, but I will say that pieces of paper and walls are both flat and white and therefore obviously easily confused.
** I’ve written about drawing often on the blog, and even described my childhood aesthetic vision (namely: DRAW ALL THE THINGS!) in this post.  You may recall that I mentioned a certain plate covered in ridiculous fish.  As a special holiday gift, I offer a photograph of the very plate itself:

Thank God my mom saved this wondrous piece of art.

And here’s a close-up of the fish.  My mom tells me that “Rock it to me, baby” came from Pee Wee Herman, which would make sense:

I'm actually kind of proud of this. Okay, not kind of. I am super proud of this.

*** At this point in time, my doodles consisted of one or more of the following: snakes, mushroom clouds, mushrooms, octopi, and cartoon versions of myself wearing black and smoking a Clove cigarette.  There were definitely problems with my doodling, but I don’t think the problems were my doodling in and of itself.

The Tenth Day of Christmas: October

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October. Surprisingly, this isn't Halloween-related, as I went to no Halloween-related parties this year. I plan to make up for this by celebrating Halloween every month in 2012. Nay: every WEEK.

            As a kid, I was, as all kids are, generally obsessed with toys.

            Actually, I’m going to stop myself right here – I mean, who am I kidding with the past tense in that sentence?  I am still generally obsessed with toys, and it would only take the briefest of brief glimpses into my office (at home or at work) or at my Flickr feed to know that.  Not only am I still probably as obsessed with toys in my adulthood (using that word with liberties here) as I was in my childhood, I’m still obsessed with the same kind of toy: the miniature.

            As a kid, I loved toys that came with smaller scale versions of themselves: I loved Rainbow Brite for the Sprites, My Little Ponies for the smaller baby ponies (and their tiny baby bottles and even tinier baby pony toys), those Hug-A-Bunch dolls for the hideous baby Hug-A-Bunches held by the big ones in a Velcro-sealed hug.  I loved toys who were supposed to live in our world, just in a scale so small we couldn’t see them, like Rose Petal and her friends, who lived in our very front yards and filled our watering cans with their tiny, fabulous hot pink furniture.

            Now I can say that I loved the idea behind such toys, the prospect that the very world was full of wonders so small as to be nearly invisible, full of beautiful things that would reveal themselves if you paid very, very close attention.  And there was something about holding a whole world in the palm of your hand, something about looking into a small space and seeing that whole world which shifted perspective in a dizzyingly beautiful way.  Also, these tiny toys were, well, awesome.  All the Rose Petals dolls not only wore sparkly flower outfits, they smelled like flowers they were supposed to be.  I mean, seriously.

            While looking through my Flickr feed to find a photograph for October, I realized I never left my love for the miniature behind.  My camera is almost always in the macro setting, and my photos from the month of October are a series of serious close-ups: buttons and necklaces and fabulous fingernail glittercures* and, of course, toys.  A lot of this, I think, has to do with my resolution to better appreciate the smallest of beauties which surround me every day.  The thing is, once you start looking for the small and beautiful, the more small beautiful things you see.  The most agonizingly boring moment will suddenly reveal itself as more full of treasures than I could imagine: the way the light hits a button, the holes in a swath of lace, the raveled head of a piece of thread.

            October is also the month in which I fell and broke my talus bone.  This, my friends, just plain sucks.  It means a lot of couch sitting, which means a lot of agonizingly boring moments.  If there is one thing I definitely, absolutely, without-the-slightest-slimmest-thinnest-shadow-of-a-doubt hate, it’s having to slow down.  Looking through these photographs, however, I realized that, despite myself, I’d learned how to appreciate the most minute beauty because I’d slowed down – and maybe I need to slow down more often.**

* Oh yes.  You read that correctly: glittercure, meaning A MANICURE OF GLITTER.

** You may have noticed that I managed to avoid a lengthy and probably agonizingly boring discussion of the miniature and poetry and punctuation and how that joke about poets spending all their time before lunch putting in a period and then all their time after lunch taking it out is neither funny nor a joke when you actually do that.  Instead, may I offer this link to my statement on compression on Matter Press’ blog.  You should check out the other statements while you’re there, too.  It’s good stuff.