re-entry

has been a little bumpy. First of all, there is the weather. The transition between mild 70's and 80's sunshine to 30's and 40'd wet and cloudy has SO sucked. Our 6 months of winter has appearently decided to be 7 this year. The tulips look cold and frozen along Michigan Ave. I had to put away the flip flops I'd been wearing all week down south, though I refused to get my winter coat back out. Then there is the mounting pile of projects sitting at my door, the chaps to be finished and printed, the several to be laid out for the next couple of months, the etsy orders to be shipped that have come in over the interim. My apartment is still trashed, the dining room littered with papers, supplies, and slips (it looks a little like a brothel..) I managed to sort through the mail (this month's P&W's has an awesome article on the mix-tape strategy of organizing a manuscript by Katrina Vandenberg, you should check it out..) I still have several e-mails to respond to, and my answering machine is blinking at me maniacally. And then, of course, work, but it's reasonably quiet here gearing up for the end of semester rush...I get a little freaked out and just have to keep telling myself to do one thing at a time...

Thank you all for the birthday well wishes...I am going to use my birthday card monies from various sources for a splurge on art supplies at Utrecht sometime this week. My sister, god bless her, gave me a fancy copy of the Inferno and a Starbucks gift card which is burning a hole in my wallet as we speak...

birthdays and beaches..

The reading in Atlanta went fabulously (I must thank one Jenny Sadre Orafai and the New South folks for inviting me down to GSU to read..) We are now settled in Myrtle Beach, a block from the ocean. For my birthday tomorrow, I plan to do some shopping along the strip for cheap trinkets and tacky souvenirs, some lounging about ocean-side (years since I'd been in the Atlantic, I'd forgotten how much the sand slips out from under you as the tide comes in closer), and dinner somewhere with shrimp the size of my fist. And, of course, ice-cream cake, which may be a little difficult to manage in a tiny hotel fridge ...

starbucks is evil and my arm hurts, or why I am a chapbook making goddess

Tempting me with their iced caramel machiottos right next door when Dunkin Donuts is perfectly suitable and much cheaper just a couple blocks away. Today was an early day, stapling and folding (why my shoulder is killing me and I have a rather viscious paper cut between my thumb and forefinger) finishing up the Poetry Center chapbook. That was the most wham-bam-thankyou-ma'am chapbook printing I've ever done, starting with getting the poems on Wednesday and managing to finish the layout and both printing and assembling them in two days. I had initially planned on just printing and leaving them for my sister to finish and deliver, but I was on a roll, so I just went with it. Of course that involved getting out of the house by 7 or so to squeeze in a couple hours before work in the studio today. So they are done and etsy orders shipped and I am out of here.

april at dancing girl press

Fresh out (so fresh the ink is no doubt still drying) is Melissa Crowe's Cirque du Crève-Cœur, a stunning collection of prose poems. This the first of two chapbooks due out this month (the other from Maggie Ginestra.) As with all our chaps, I found myself surprised and pleased at every turn that we were actually getting the chance to publish such awesome work. Buy it, read it, love it!

seaward

I did mention before about the nightmare of finding pet-friendly hotel on the beach in the south did I not? I am taking my parents once again in tow and well, there are The Persians, Isis and Glorificus (who is much larger now and the only cat I've ever met who hates me), who they do not leave home without. Mind you, my cats wil be resting at their house while we are on our trip, but The Persians will be accompanying us to Atlanta and henceforth to Myrtle Beach. Well I had found a hotel, which I had recommended, and since my dad is savvier with travel arrangements, figured we were all set. He wound up finding something else suitable, or so we thought until this evening I checked out the reviews online of the place with growing horror (and the psycho theme mounting in my head.) Now I'm inclined to take these reviews with a grain of salt. Some people expect way too much and get pissy when every little detail is not to their liking. As long as a good number of people can testify to a clean, orderly hotel going experience, I'm willing to give it a shot. This was AWFUL, review after review. I saw mold, theft, and roaches referenced twice an freaked out, canceled the reservations. Of course, finding a pet-freindly motel that was not a nigtmare this late in the game, or even at all, was impossible. Hence we've wound up a bit further from the beach than I'd like (about a five minute walk..) but the Persians can rest easy. I'm starting to get excited about the trip, even though there is so much to do beforehand. I will be leaving next Monday, then will be in Atlanta Tuesday and Wednesday for the reading at GSU, then Myrtle Beach Thursday through Saturday.


And just in time, I finally got around to posting my sea-worthy peices in the shop I finished a while ago. Plus the perfect beach bags (I had to convince my self to sell it and not keep it..)in the wanderlust section.

Another Saturday in the library. What's worse, a rainy, cold Saturday to have to roll out of bed so damned early and have to be at work. I managed to tend to a few e-mails, put a page up for the next chap, planned out this weeks schedule (which exhausts me just looking at it..),and made a dent in the new crop of wicked alice subs, which reminded me I actually should be starting to get up the April issue before I head out of town. Add in the Poetry Center chap, finalizing the Darger chapbook, and re-stocking the etsy store, which involves not only making things, but alot of photographing and listing them, and I will definitely be needing a vacation in a serious way. Of course, it's technically a working vacation, since I'll be doing a reading, teaching a workshop, and if I'm lucky, doing some writing. But it's somewhere different and a brief reprieve from both work work and poetry/press work.

I’ve gotten a couple of awesome opportunities to sell my stuff in actual, brick & mortar stores/galleries over the past couple of months including some unmentionables that just went off to this cool little boutique, Bella, all the way up in Alaska, A couple weeks ago, some art that was sent off to this rather lovely looking gallery, Papercuts and Gluesticks, in Ohio. And today, I just had a wholesale order for some of my poetry pendants. Things are going pretty well in our little etsy shop, which of course means that I can pay the rent at the studio and buy more paper and art supplies, all very good things. Including our lovely banner for book and craft fairs that I’m super excited to use and paper for the next couple of chaps. Busy, but fun…of course I may have to add another shipping day (I usually can manage about two hours twice a week to filling etsy and main website orders, but I’m still perpetually behind on one or the other. ..)



In chapbook news, watch for the April offering this weekend, Melissa Crowe’s Cirque du Creve-Coeur. I’m in the midst of a staplethon that I can hopefully finish by Friday.

addendum

Embarassing confessions aside, I did a quick little bit of research into the video's director Sophie Muller and found that not only had she directed another Dixie Chicks video I love for it's creepy victorianesque (if not the song), but also this, another favorite of mine from Maroon 5 and this one from Faith Hill, which I used to watch over and over and had an inkling might be the same director, similar style. Also this and a bunch of other videos I remember being better than average . I can only say all of these videos had something about them that made me want to watch them again and again, a certain cinematic feel, almost haunting, whatever the genre of music.

tragically unhip

Okay, so I've admitted I have an odd tendency to like country music. My fifteen year old self, who sullenly clamped her hands over her headphones in the car while my parents blasted it from the front seat would be horrified. I've never been a big music person. Among the classics, I tend to like very unhip things like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. My general musical tastes sort of stalled out in the nineties--girl bands and grunge. Folk-rockish and "alternative-lite" as we used to snidely call it. Edgy, but not really all that edgy. And even now I tend to like stuff that is not too unlike the stuff I liked back then.. I don't even really follow music except what strikes my fancy every now and again.

And the country stuff, we're not only talking classic, rather trendy stuff like Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, but stuff like...well..in this case...the Dixie Chicks. When I'm working on other stuff on the laptop at home, I like to intermittedly watch videos on YouTube, and yesterday, after I'd played another one of their videos I clicked on one I'd never seen before. Seriously, no joke I watched it and just lost it and was sobbing by the end. Three times. Now I am never one for emotional manipulation, but somehow this just tore me up. And of course, I watched it again (my mom says I used to make her play a song on a record about a little lost, abandoned Christmas tree, and then stand in the living room and cry.) Apparently I still have those tendedncies.

Actually, it's cinematically a rather cool video, atmosphere and scene-wise. It's apparently a few years old. I was a child pretty much deprived of MTV, so I'm oddly drawn to music videos, particularly those with a narrative (true to the song or otherwise.)

Of course, I probably less embarassed to admit I cried through that than I am to admit I had this on perpetual replay a few weeks ago at the height of my relationship drama. I'm not at all a Rod Stewart fan ( know mostly as a scary old guy who marries women way too young for him), but this song kills me...