Firsts

Today is the first day I've walked on campus as a faculty member and not as a student. I am currently sitting in my office which has high ceilings a view of the trees outside through two lovely tall windows and I've just said goodbye to an old friend with whom I will be sharing space.

I'm on campus today to get trained on some of the campus technology, or at least that is the reason I've told my family, but today is an acclimating day. A day where I find some sort of solid ground, the beginning of roots, in this my new life.

I gaze at the maple standing outside my window and I yearn to exist as it does, sturdy, tall, and aspiring ever upwards and outwards. It is my wish that I extend myself gracefully into this new earth, this dawning opportunity, and realize it's potential like the trembling excitement of a breeze through leaves.

Everything is Association

I'm at the bar tonight. Not a closing shift, so I'm home by 10:00, but its still a night at the bar. The drink list reads something like this: haymaker (a long distance pass in football), Boner (I get it), Blowjob (we're getting deeper), Pink Pussy...please. As I'm making all of these drinks, I'm thinking about how they are all insights into the people that drink them. Haymaker folk are good beer lovers, football watchers, blue/white collar workers who slave away to cut out a space for their families. Boner drinkers tend toward the female. These are usually staples of girls-night-out attendees, mothers, wives, girlfriends, also busy people who rarely find the space in their day to relax and hang with their friends. Blowjob shots tend to fall into this same category of drinker. It's later in the night and there have been a couple of Boners and now their ready for something a little stronger, a little more playful, so...Blowjobs. The Pink Pussy shots, strangely enough, are also a staple of the female crowd. Whip cream covered shots of pink liquor that slide gently down the throat and don't have a ton of alchohol in them.

I don't know what this post is meaning to say, just a meditation on the drinks of the evening. Enjoy. Recipes to follow.

Haymaker - beer (not much explanation needed).

Boner - muddle lime in the bottom of a pint glass, pour one shot of cranberry vodka over the top, fill the cup with ice, fill glass with equal parts soda water and Seven-Up/Sprite/Sierra Mist. Finish the drink by garnishing with a lime slice on the edge of the glass.

Blowjob - Pour half a shot of Kahlua into a shot glass, carefully pour a half shot of Bailey's into the glass, using the side of the glass to prevent the Bailey's from piercing the plane of the Kahlua and therefore layering the shot, top with whipcream. ***It's fun to make people take this shot without using their hands so they have to wrap their mouth around the shot glass.

Pink Pussy - Half shot of Buttershots and half shot of Tequila Rose (this shot is not layered). Top with whip cream. ***This shot can also be taken without using one's hands.

Addicted to Reading

I began Philip Roth's "Patrimony" on Sunday night and I only have 60-70 pages left in the memoir. I've begun to realize that I'm eating these books and eventually, sorry for the comparison, I'm going to begin expectorating.



Most of my semesters began with me being ahead on my assigned reading, only to fall behind when the creative work took hold. I'm feeling decent about my current routine and am settling into myself a bit. I feel like I've had a prolonged reaction to graduation, that I AM having a prolonged reaction to graduation, and it might be a while before I am able to come to the page without the baggage of the program and its inherent expectations keeping me awake at night.

Working behind the scenes.

As I sit in the cafeteria of my local hospital, staring at a blank screen, it dawns on me that graduation was barely a month ago. I have had nagging feelings of being a procrastinator over the last four/five weeks because I have yet to finish a single piece of fiction but I think I need to slow my roll a little bit and allow myself some room to breathe.

The ruminations on story are there, bouncing around in the back of my mind, coming forward as I'm mixing drinks, as I'm reading, or about to fall asleep. I need to understand that the impulse to write is not gone, it is merely in one of the more fallow periods. I have been reading voraciously over the last few weeks (a habit that tended to start every working semester in the program) and I am getting a lot of ideas from the activity.

I am trying to move into an entirely new direction with my writing, at least thematically. I want to leave the "Father" stories behind and focus on a new dynamic, "Mothers." I have really had to focus on the idea of motherhood a bit, in order to not recycle my father themes in a female form. I want to be true to the experience of motherhood. I want to have the women of my stories to be fully formed, dynamic forces in their own right, not in reflection to the men in their lives. I need to quiet my own masculine mind and delve into the feminine. It is an experience which will take patience on my behalf. I feel I am up to the task but I need to be patient, an attribute that is, historically, attributed to the feminine, so maybe, in a way, I'm already doing the work.