Sometimes I feel like each week is a deep pool I dive into on Mondays planning to swim the entire length and then stall out and drown sometime before Thursday. The weather is getting cooler and there are mornings when I really just want to sleep and sleep and sleep. I get a three day weekend coming up though, so I intend to indulge the impulse to linger in bed all day and read novels without guilt.

Meanwhile, I am about to move into turbo mode to get the last of the 2011-2012 dgp chaps out before I start the next season sometime in November. I have streamlined my workflow a bit and shaved some production time off with the new printer and it's ability to do booklet printing (as opposed to the old departed Brother with it's even/odd manual flip) so we'll see how it goes. I feel like I've been behind the production schedule nigh upon 5 years but there's always hope I'll get it pinned down (I've learned to give authors a window rather than an exact date.) It's all about chiseling away at it little by little.

I am still working my way through the thick of the moon project, having momentarily abandoned yet again, my the houses and bees thing. Sometimes, as the JF poems illustrate, my distraction projects turn out interesting in an of themselves. (ie, the projects I cheat on my other projects with.) I am trying to keep at it daily, but its harder as the press makes more demands on my time.

In other, non-poetry news, the Theatre Bizarre / Detroit trip is all lined up and booked. I am looking forward to not only festivities, but also the trip there (while I try to avoid the el in favor of the bus, I love actual train rides, especially since the trip through Michigan is sort of pretty this time of year.)

Today was an odd day in which I swiftly wrote several pieces of the moon project and then got frustrated in planning my Detroit trip itinerary next month and left work feeling like I'd whittled away the whole day like a dull pencil, but was actually in retrospect pretty damn productive. The prose poems need work and it's just a tiny series that may, god willing, one day be a chap, but I like them and the concept behind them. Yesterday, I did wind up spending a good chunk of time giving a last look over girl show, which occasionally feels like something someone else wrote a long, long time ago, and certainly not me. It will pass, the dijointedness, but for now it's sort of freaky and unfamilar. Five years is a long time, especially when you consider 5 years before that I was writing the bulk of the fever almanac poems and how they are very different from the 2006 poems. Meanwhile, there are promotional questionnaires to be answered, hype to build, buy-my-book dances to be performed (I do intend on having a big release party possibly with both bread and circus aplenty.) And this, the cover design which turned out so ever lovely.

Another early Saturday morning in the library, but I do have a double chocolate muffin and some coffee, so I'm content. It's been dreary and raining and fallish the past couple of days. I am determined to pin down the final version of girl show for Black Lawrence today, as well as maybe work a little on another shorter project. I am also making plans for our next open studio event the second week of October (providing I can actually find the floor and counters amidst all the paper trimmings and chapbook fixings.) In other non-poetry crafty related undertakings, I am working on some more vintage costume jewelry hair accessories, bobbies and headbands and maybe some new soaps (I have some lemon lavender base that's been sitting around for awhile that I've yet to cut into bars and package since I'm trying to think up a new packaging scheme.)Since the press has been going full throttle since the second half of last year, my crafty urges have taken a backseat to the bookmaking, so I'm hoping to at least accomplish a little in that arena to stock up the shop before the holidays.

So I waffle, and fuss, reconsider, then dismiss. Meanwhile am matting and framing things for the alumni show in a couple weeks (see above), designing covers, laying out books, reading manuscripts. It's colder now, and I realized today I have a lack of wearable footwear on the scale between sandals and riding boots, so I binge shopped six discount pairs of various styled/colored ballet flats (they are delicate, thin soled and lovely, but they never last long with daily wear and the amount of walking I do on concrete on a daily basis.) I am getting ready to pull out the tweeds and retire the sundresses. Swap my iced raspberry lattes for warm ones. Already, the city is different. All summer I did alot of nightly walking up Michigan, and last night, even the sidewalk passing Millenium Park was mostly a ghost town after 10. It was cool and clear and beautiful though. I am thinking about sweaters. I am thinking Halloween costumes and Theatre Bizarre (possibly some peacock-esque feathery regalia). I am thinking about poem projects I want to finish before the end of the year. I am thinking I had better get to work...

So in the midst of Friday's romantic meltdown, there actually was bit of culture (and well later there was copius amounts whiskey at Kaseys with my favorite library folks) but earlier there was a trip to the Art Institute since I had yet, despite a couple years since completion, been inside the Modern Wing. I knew they had moved the Cornell boxes, so we went in search of them, and I was sad to see how they wound up, all locked behind a glass case that not only didn't allow you to get that close, but also didn't allow the sort of one on one experience the previous display strategy had. It was like they lost something by all being grouped together, like the eyes couldn't focus on them individually anymore. I remember my first encounter about 10 years ago, coming upon the tabletop boxes, wandering into the blue room, the separate boxes wall mounted in a brighter room. Each box it's own little room. This case felt chaotic and dark and dissappointing. Overall, I found myself eager to leave the modern wing and go see the impressionists and all the vivid colors of the older paintings and the furniture galleries...which is where I usually end up on most visits...

pedestals and cages

So it's been a weird week. Every once in a while I complain about men and how I feel I'm always chasing, never really being chased. (it's a control freak thing and probably a Taurean thing) I've been pursued occasionally in a sexual way, but it never felt all romantic and flowery and heart fluttery (well maybe except with R , but we all know how that turned out) And maybe that's a myth anyway, instilled by Disney and fairytales and old movies. Maybe it doesn't exist and maybe it's all about mashing our bodies together and taking comfort where we can, But there's a teeny little romantic in me that wonders if it does exist. Something else. So when someone starts off the relationship by saying outright they really want a serious exclusive relationship, it catches me off guard. In those first few dates, usually I'm still wondering if I want a relationship, mostly whether I want a relationship with this particular person. And then said person says all the right things, like they love poetry and art and know about architecture and estate sales and old trains, and suddenly I'm swept up in it. And the e-mails are probably the most beautiful letters anyone ever sent me. And the physical chemistry is sweet and tenative in all the right ways. And its all so serious so very fast and I fail and keep failing, am not engaged enough, invested enough. There are still difference between us in ways we see the world that clash and grate. He gets impatient that I am still trying to figure things out. A friend says women always dump nice guys for jerks, and sometimes it's true. Nice men seem breakable, like eggshells. They crack. It feels better when someone fails you than when you fail them. It's far worse to hurt someone and know it than to deal with being hurt yourself. Still, it was probably the most intense breakup for the shortest relationship I've ever undertaken. So we move over and on and begin deleting numbers and messages (its too painful to read them again, so I want them gone.) I try to distract myself with disaster movies and house cleaning and by Monday, I'll just move past it and get on with other things..

happy friday

at work, we are in the midst of making a gazillion paper flowers for an upcoming Day of the Dead event. I was in the studio the other day and decided to play around with some of the old dress patterns in my paper stash and they turned out really lovely. I am totally making some for every party I decorate for in the future..

Sometimes my head feels a little bit like the inside of a cotton candy machine, whirly and pink and full of fluff and spinning so fast I can't keep up.

Otherwise, I am neck deep in dgp manuscripts and have finally cracked the last 100. there is so much goodness there, I think you will love the books we'll be publishing next year so much. I'm hoping to have all decisions made by the end of the semester. There were a little over 500 total, so I've actually done a decent job keeping up as they came in so things aren't too hairy as of yet. In other press news, there is an interview up with moi at side b magazine, as well as a number of books coming soon that are in the layout process.

I was excited to learn that some pieces had been accepted for an alumni show at CC, all segments from my anatomy series project (it's going to be an interactive/pop-up sort of project with text and image.) And in other visual goodness, I finally got a sneak peak of the girl show cover, which I will share soon. It's just one of my collages, but the designer did such lovely things with it I loved it even more than the original.

Today was the first cool sort of blustery day that really felt like fall and had me scrambling for longer sleeves and an extra blanket for the bed. I am working all weekend (I prefer to get most of my obligatory weekend shifts out of the way early in the semester when getting out of bed at 7 on a Saturday doesn't make me hate my life). There are good poetry things afoot, however. Maverick Duck Press has just agreed to publish my chap beautiful, sinister (aka the narrative project) next summer. They make a lot of gorgeously designed books and covers, so I was thrilled. Between that and the JF chap, which will be rolling out soon, and girl show's release next fall, it will be a busy year in getting work out there, which I need after a couple years of sitting tightly on things and submitting work getting sort of lost in the melee. There are other projects that are nearly there, dreams about houses and bees, a little chap of moon poems, plus full length book #4 and nearly #5 completed which I will be sending out sometime next year.

Another Labor Day weekend come and gone and there's another slow impending slide into autumn..well at least I hope it's slow. And despite unearthing my fall clothes from the back of the closet, I am planning on holding out in my sundresses and flip flops for as long as I can anyway (we won't even think about winter, I have no clue where my coat is). Otherwise it's been a laid back weekend that began with a friends birthday celebration and a little too much whiskey, but is finishing with some house cleaning and movie watching most likely. Yesterday, I procured some groceries and attempted my own bbq chicken pizza, which turned out deliciously. I did a little poem notetaking, but I'm a bit too scattered of late to actually make something coherent and poem-like (or even incoherently poem like). I will be back to working evenings finally, which means I will be back to being more awake in general, which is good for the muse who tends to shut down when I don't get enough sleep.

I finally caught up at work but the next few weeks will be a steady flow of reserve processing (and since I am officially claiming it as my own, it will continue to be like that). This week is always a frenzy with everyone back on campus and actually excited (for a little while) about their classes. Inevitably, I start looking longingly again at the Book & Paper program and idly toying with the idea of enrolling. Mind you, I usually talk myself out of it by the time the deadline comes around for applying. About midway through my Poetry MFA, I decided I was really too old for this shit, but I finished it off anyway, even though I questioned whether it was worth all the the bad stuff for the kernal of good. I have to remind myself of that whenever I gaze logingly at the Book & Paper Center brochure.