I have been back from Melbourne for almost a week now, but with nairy a moment to blog, as deadlines at work, with the MFA, etc, have reached feverpitch. It's been one hectic start to the year, that's all I can say. I hope it calms down soon (is it the year of the ox or something -- an industrious beast?)
Much of Ms Laura's nupshalls and the lush-us blogmeet at the Standard have been already been chronicled in other blogs. Since I'm coming so late to the party, I won't be giving an account here, except to say that it was lovely and highly memorable -- perhaps the most auspicious and memorable blogmeets to date in my experience. (My computer is also too virus-ridden for me to download phonephotos at the moment.)
Belinda has tagged me with the 'find out what you need' meme, so I might do that here. I'm sure anyone else who wants to indulge in this is welcome. The directions are: go to Google and type your name in the search window followed by the word 'needs'. Copy and paste the first ten search results that come up.
1. Eleanor needs Facebook.
2. Eleanor needs to calm the hell down.
3. Eleanor needs to contact her therapist.
4. Eleanor needs a savior and protector and only Alexander will do ...
5. Eleanor needs a home.
6. Eleanor needs to re-write a statement.
7. Eleanor need for speed carbon.
8. Eleanor needs to get out.
9. Eleanor's medical financial needs have been met...with God's blessing and your help, we can get the treatment Eleanor needs so badly.
10. Eleanor updated Eleanor's needs.
Some of these are scarily accurate: I won't say which ones, but not numbers 1 or 7.
In other news:
I have had a brilliant idea to solve (a) the problem of out-of-work stand-up comedians and (b) the boredom of the flight safety routine on planes: employ out-of-work stand-up comedians to demonstrate it. Most of us have seen and heard the flight safety routine ad nauseum (unless you haven't had to catch a plane in the last ten years) but since it has to be done...why not pay stand-up comedians to do it? If it was funny, it would be less onerous for everyone, and we might actually listen for a change.
Mystic Medusa says I should wait till after 22 April to 're-boot my systems'. Just as well, because I'm busy at the moment. I am spending the entire Easter weekend (a) writing a 5,000 word epilogue for my MFA in 1.5 days followed by (b) editing f*cking infr*structure for 1.5 days. So far, it seems that I have pulled off (a), which was necessitated by my whittling down my MFA MS to a wisp -- nay, 39,000 wds, which is too short, after it being too long at the beginning of semester (no, I can't put some of the bilge back in). Everything's so confusing with Americans, their US letter and their tendency to count in pages rather than words (my excuse).
My supervisor translated the deficit into 5,000 words, so after half a day's rumination, I sat down and wrote the epilogue like a little Pavlovian dog. At the moment, it seems pretty good to me, maybe just because I've finished it, tho I haven't printed the thing out and read it yet. I basically expanded a 6-page personal essay I'd written before the course into a 17-page one (as 5,000 words turned out to be): I hope it will do.
I am trying to pace myself here and not become too peevish, but I feel as though I'm working at exam-speed at the moment rather than homework-pace in this aspect of my life and others. I am almost a bit disturbed by my own capacity to behave in this automaton-like way and churn stuff out (no doubt that it's a direct result of my secondary schooling's exam mentality). I angst over whether I'm going to pull it off, but I always seem to be able to do so. It's true I have a repository of pre-munched over thoughts and observations about central Australia (many of them originating in this blog) from which I'm drawing on here, but I wonder how long I'm going to be able to keep up this seat-of-the-pants-ism. It has led to some ruminations on my behalf about the nature of writing, what spaces are most conducive to producing good writing and the possible usefulness of neuroticism along the way. (I'm still not entirely convinced by some Winnicottian ideal of healthy creative play: surely a modicum of unhealthy living and thinking is necessary to tap into some contemporary zeitgeists.) I think that rumination itself -- long rambling thoughts of the sorts in which one has the time to explore certain themes and ideas is highly useful, as well being the one of the pretexts for a form like the personal essay.
What else? There's a kind of Autumn thing happening here at the moment, which means I can wear jeans at last, at least inside the house. It gets very boring, wearing shorts and skirts all the time.
'is it the year of the ox or something'
Yes. (No 'or something' about it!)
Posted by: Pavlov's Cat | April 11, 2009 at 10:26 PM
That exam mentality does have a lot to answer for. But a lot of writing comes out of pants seats too. The good enough writing that is (Someone has told me Winnicott also spoke of 'good enough' mothers. What a ridiculously sensible person he must have been.)
Posted by: genevieve | April 12, 2009 at 12:08 PM
The good enough stuff that needs editing later...
Posted by: elsewhere | April 12, 2009 at 12:51 PM
And for some good news: http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/5492748/bad-mood-equals-better-memory-study/
Grumpiness improves memory. I knew negativity could be productive.
Posted by: elsewhere | April 12, 2009 at 12:54 PM
Apparently (I heard this on the radio) there's a You Tube clip of a flight attendant (male) doing a funny rap version of the safety guide on some American or Canadian airline - so someone else kind of got there first.
Posted by: Suze | April 17, 2009 at 09:53 PM
Lordy (regarding that negativity study.)I think I just forget everything anyway though.
Posted by: genevieve | April 18, 2009 at 06:43 PM