Friday poem (Sunday): Ratty Go Batty

25 04 2010

I fucking hate money.

I may have mentioned this antipathy previously, but as I’ve spent the past few months working 1 & 2/3 jobs and actually saving money and am still—STILL—awoken by fears of debt and bills, it’s worth emphasizing.

Yes, money is useful—I get that. Unlike Sue Lowden, who thinks bartering livestock for splints and surgery is a good idea, I find it much easier to stuff a few pieces of green paper than chickens into my wallet, and coins are certainly a more durable form of change than eggs. Even an anti-capitalist like me can agree with Adam’s Smith’s observations on the ease and convenience of a common currency.

But I hate having to think about it, having to worry over it, to be shaken from sleep by it. I work—more or less hard—and certainly a lot, but months of unemployment years ago have left me in a hole which narrows my views and shortens my breath.

Piss and moan, piss and moan, I know. Get back to work!

But before I do, a bit more kvetching, over the top and angry and sly and funny for being over the top and angry and sly, courtesy of Caroline Fraser:

Ratty Go Batty
Look what your God has done to me. —Dracula

What a joke, this planet. The inmates
running the asylum. See them
in their little cars, whizzing? Stop
and go! Riding the escalators, flashing

their shiny finery, hoarding,
hawking. Wearing dark glasses
indoors. The rest of the animals
continue rational, sleeping in caves

or nests in winter, pursuing food, marking
territory clearly. None of this
petulance. What can be done
to restore order? Give the government

over to the insects, for the tidy digestion
of all that dung, give the infants
to the higher mammals
with the softest fur. Let it be done.


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Friday poem (Friday!): Little Fugue

2 04 2010

Anxious and scattered; words keep running away from me.

I need to write—and yes, need is the correct word.

A physical need, like that for air or water? No. But I feel it, physically, if I’m not doing the one thing I know I can do.

And then it builds, of course: I can’t pull my mind together, which means I can’t string words together, which exacerbates the entropy.

Chicken-egg-chicken—doesn’t matter which came first; my sternum contracts, regardless.

I wasn’t sure what to pick: a poem which reflects my skittering, or something to distract me from it. Picked up this one, then that, then came across this poem by Frank Bidart.

Not quite sure why I set this one aside; the poem itself seems incomplete to me, in need of one or two more goings-over to get it right.

And yet I set is aside, and yet I’m using it this week. Something is right about this.

Little Fugue

at birth you were handed a ticket

beneath every journey the ticket to this
journey in one direction

or say the body

is a conveyor belt, moving in one direction
slower or swifter than sight

at birth

you were handed a ticket, indecipherable
rectangle forgotten in your pocket

or say you stand upon a moving walkway

as if all you fear
is losing your

balance moving in one direction

beneath every journey the ticket to this
journey in one direction


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So when they ask me later, I won’t tell them how it’s going

8 11 2009

So much to do, so little inclination to follow through.

Grading. A kajillion papers. Or 70. Somewhere in there.

The papers aren’t long. If I start grading now, do some tomorrow night, then Tuesday and Wednesday, I’ll be fine.

Or I could just wait until Wednesday—night—and stay up too late and get too little sleep and plow through and end up kicking myself for being such a procrastinating idiot.

Hmmmm, wonder what I’ll do.

Then again, I punted on dealing with the whole credit thing, but  that’s taken finally been taken care of. For now. And If I get a real job, there’ll be no worries at all.

Of course, there are all these worries over getting a real job.

And I’m doing all I can to get a real job—ja, you betcha. Sure.

That’s on the list, eh? And we all know how well that whole list thing is going, right-o? Sure.

If only I were motivated by free-floating anxiety.

 


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Categories : Musing

Money money money

10 09 2009

I hate worrying about money.

It’s so dull.

Yes, I find money unbearably dull, and only think about it because I have to. It is not an end, to me, but a means to an end: housing, travel, entertainment, etc.

But money for money’s sake? I’d rather have a nap.

Unfortunately, I can’t not think about money, mainly because I don’t have enough of it.

Why not? I work—two jobs, even! But paperwork got screwed up at my main job and what should have been a bump in my bank account is a message from payroll that ‘we don’t have your PAF.’

And there’s not a goddamned thing I can about this. Oh, I mentioned it to the chair, and the secretary got on the phone and left messages, but, really, I’m hosed.

Do what you’re supposed to do. Follow the rules. Fill out the paperwork, sign your name, do the work.

And still, you’re hosed.

I’m not the only one, of course. Anyone whose ever been ‘downsized’ or ‘outsourced,’ the people who paid for insurance only to have discovered when they needed the coverage that, really, the coverage was. . . not. The workers who invested in the pension fund only to find out, too late, it was looted, or built over fraud. Hosed.

I’m lucky, at least. I will, eventually, get paid (tho’ I’ll get nailed in the taxes for a double paycheck), and I do, at least, have work.

(The whole Bank of America thing? I may be well and truly fucked, there. But I’m beyond anxiety on that, and thus utterly unable to talk about it. After. . . .)

Even knowing my monetary anemia is temporary, however, does little to dull that horrific combination of rage and despair, otherwise known as helplessness.

Do what you’re supposed to do. Follow the rules. Fill out the paperwork, sign your name, do the work.

And don’t be surprised if none of it matters.


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And I’ve fucked up so many times in my life

2 07 2009

I’m slowly getting used to being a failure.

It was a little hard on the ego, at first, but after that first nip of recognition, things have been much easier.

I’m not being glum, or trying to elicit an ‘oh-you’re-not-a-failure’ response; I’m simply recognizing that by any of the standards I’ve set for myself, I haven’t done much.

I’m alive. That’s one point in my favor.

Didn’t use to be: To be alive was evidence of failure. I was supposed to be dead, and was not.

Now I’m all right with that. In fact, it’s downright fine that I’m not dead.

Okay, so now that I’m alive, I’m off charging up the professional ranks and blazing new theories and astonishing my colleagues with the discipline of my thought and the brilliance of my prose. Tenure? Hah! Why, I’ve already attained a full professorship! Students are scrambling to study with me; other universities are recruiting me. My articles are must-reads.

Oh, wait, no. That’s someone else entirely. I’m an adjunct professor at a CUNY college, with no job security beyond the semester.

What about the writing career? Two novels! Two more in the pipeline! Short stories! Plays! Pulitzers and Tonys and National Book. . . oh, sorry, that’s not me, either.

I live in a junior one-bedroom on the far side of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, with wine boxes serving as bookcases and drawers and end-tables, chairs covered with fabric remnants because I can’t afford to get them reupholstered, socks kept in milk crates, and Trader Joe’s beer in the fridge.

I’m forty-mumble-mumble years old and I live like a grad student. Only I have fewer prospects than a grad student, what with consciously turning away from any attempt at a tenure-track position and not caring quite enough about money to live otherwise and all.

And I’m all right with that. When I was in SmallTown I ran into a cousin I hadn’t seen in, oh, a decade, and each of us mentioned that our lives may not look like other people’s, but they work for us. We nodded at each other. I’m not rich, I mused, but I am free.

And I am. Not free of anxiety (especially not anxiety over—natch—money) or dissatisfaction or anger or any of the other nonsense that comes with a messy (i.e., human) life, but free of the sense that my life belongs to anyone other than me.

So by most American standards, I’m a failure; by my own standards, I’m a failure. But I’m also free to laugh about it, and let it go, and maybe, someday, not to think about success or failure.

It’s not so bad, this failure thing. Feels kind of like freedom, actually. Not bad at all.


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Stupid with stress

21 01 2009

So I’m moving tomorrow.

Ready? Nah. Will be, though.

Have to keep telling myself that. I will be ready I will be ready I will be ready.

All the books are packed. The clothes. (When the hell did I get so many clothes? I don’t like shopping for clothes! And yet, there they are.)

Most of my kitchen stuff is still packed from the last move, so not much to do there. Ditto with rugs and towels and all that miscellaneous crap that I forget about until I have to pack or unpack it.

Have to pack the printer. Various bedroom stuff. Various office stuff. Pull the rubbermaid bins out of the creepy basement, the bike from the back yard, oh, the other bike from the creepy basement.

Easy. Really. Plants—got that.

No problem.

Of course, my sternum has been steadily contracting for a week, so that it is now bunched tight in the middle of my chest. And the movers—yeah, yeah, confirmed the movers, they’ll be here, really they will. Syllabi? I can do that Sunday. Filled out the address change at the Post Office, but my New Yorker, the bank, credit card, other jobs, whatelsewhatelsewhatelse.What if someone breaks into the old apartment and hauls all my stuff away? What if there’s a fire before I get home from work tonight? What if there’s a fire at the new place? Storage unit, don’t forget the storage unit. Credit card—do I have it? What about the cash for the movers’ tips? Do I have a number for a car to take me and the critters to my new place? What about the charger for my cell god knows that battery is shit. Where the hell’s my black agenda? JesusMaryandJoseph I had it Monday it was in the green bag didn’t I transfer it to the blue bag did I pack it where the hell is it it has all my access codes I don’t know my passwords to all my accounts what about the yellow index cards with the access codes where the hell is it did someone steal it did I throw it away ohmygodohmygodohmygod.

Yeah. I’m fine.


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Someone yell Timber, take off your hat

14 01 2009

It’s all falling down. Secretly pleased?

Some of us are. Maybe. Partly. Kinda.

I wasn’t in New York in the 1970s, but to talk to some New Yorkers who were, you ‘d think I’d missed the last, best time in the city.

You know, high crime rates. Graffitti everywhere. Distrust and malaise. Son of Sam. Bankruptcy. The good old days.

I’ve only been a New Yorker 2 1/2 years, but even I curse a scrubbed Times Square and the relentless pursuit of money. Still, I won’t claim nostalgia for a time not mine, and I’m skeptical of those who claim that New York a generation and a-half ago was a period of glorious artistic expression, unfettered by high rents or the (art) market. As if the artists and punks back then weren’t all on the hustle.

New York is a hustling town, mean and generous in turn, indulgent of those on the make and unforgiving of those who don’t make it. (Except, of course, when it does forgive. Crazy place.) So underemployed white kids get shoved out of the east Village and the Bowery and into Queens and Brooklyn and somehow this means New York ain’t what it used to be.

No shit. This city ain’t never what it used to be.

Still, amidst my squints and skepticism, I, only half-ashamedly, admit to a secret pleasure at the fall. Yeeeeaaaaaaah, a part of me thinks, now we’re gonna get real! Let it all fall apart!

Silliness. How nice to get on the train at midnight and not have to worry (except once) about robbery or assault. Air conditioned subway cars in August? A lifesaver. And I’d rather stroll by  store windows full of clothes or food or paint cans than those hidden by plywood or graffitti-ed gates.

I love ruin, I do. I thrill to the old and abandoned, the crumbling and fading. But it is an aesthetic thrill, a delight in these old and sad connections to pasts hidden and forgotten. The delight and the sadness are sincere, but limited: I want to enjoy these unreconstructed ruins, not live in them.

As for that secret pleasure? Maybe we’re (or maybe just I’m) high on our finally-unleashed anxiety. Yesss! We get to worry! Fuck that happy talk. . . .

Angst. Back in style.


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Movin’ on up

4 01 2009

Let the great apartment hunt of 2009 begin!

Yes, it’s official. I will ONCE AGAIN be moving. Lessee, that’ll be 1, 2, 3, 4, ah, my 5th move in 2 1/2 years. I’m about on the same schedule in NYC as my first years in GradCity.

I’m also almost twice as old and have more than twice as much shit. And I don’t have grad school friends who are willing to move me in exchange for 1) pizza and 2) a willingness to help them move. Which means movers. . . .

Sigh. Actually, I’m going to try something new, this time around. My last couple of attempts at both finding and moving into an apartment have been terrifically stressful—which made no sense to me, given how many (25? 30?) times I’ve moved. There’s nothing new to this: get boxes, pack boxes, find movers, move, unpack boxes. Simple.

But the last search left my stomach muscles bunched and the move itself led to a brain-crushing migraine that let up only slightly over the following few days. I would like to avoid that.

So this time around, I’m going to avoid all mention of the search and the move, treat it as just another set of tasks for the month. Hey, I don’t mention trips to the grocery store, do I? Making the bed? (Okay, so I bitch about grading and laundry and the cat box, but. . . pssshhhhht, let it go, all right? Allow me to pretend that I greet each day with equanimity—please?) Yes, I understand that talking things out can lessen the emotion around those things. I don’t understand how that works, but I know that, sometimes, it does.

But not always. My transition into my current apartment was difficult: however straightforward my roommate and I thought we had been with one another, it was clear that what each heard was not necessarily what each had said. This was upsetting to me, and I mentioned to a few people how unreasonable I thought she was being. Then I reconsidered: well, she probably thinks I’m being unreasonable, too. So I stopped discussing it, saying only that it wasn’t a good fit. The situation was tense enough; why feed it?

And then, at some point, things eased. Yes, behavioral changes on each of our parts were key, but I don’t know that I would have been prepared to accept those changes had I not stopped fulminating against her.

Similarly, in grad school: my adviser and I were not a good fit. Oh, at one point, I took too much pleasure in the thought of leaping over his desk and strangling him with his tie, but once I settled down, I turned my attention from him to the dissertation. He was polite, I was polite, and I got through my defense.

And the lesson is? I don’t have a damned lesson. Sometimes it helps to talk, sometimes it doesn’t. I couldn’t shut up about the last move, and had a miserable time, so this time, I’ll try the opposite.

In a few weeks, I’ll let you know how—if—it worked.


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