imaginarycanary

I have finally (though I returned from my travels across America in August) started to conceptualize “Self-Portrait as an Atlas.” I began working on the book back in 1998 when I was still completing my undergraduate work at the University of Alabama. I was taking a class taught by Bruce Smith, the author of Mercy Seat and Songs for Two Voices. During his class, he helped me see that the things I was writing were much more meaningful, and had a much deeper purpose than I was assigning to them. Until then, I had only been creating stories: putting myself in other people’s places, making up their emotions and their circumstances. Imagining how it would feel to be them. And let’s be honest, that’s a part of the writer’s job. But it’s not the biggest part. It turns out that the biggest (and hardest) part of being a writer is to be honest about your own feelings, your own circumstances. At the time I started envisioning “Self-Portrait as an Atlas”, I was barely 21, not sure of where I was going and unable to remember where I had been. Not much of that seems to have changed. But, I am trying to learn to think more specifically about the things that have happened to me, to assign them a place in my writing that makes sense on the whole, that gives my life and my circumstances meaning. That is a very traditionalist view of writing. The language poets would have my head on a literary platter. But the kind of writing that really turns me on is the kind that can make me feel like my life has purpose. It is from this place that I must, once again, start envisioning “Self-Portrait as an Atlas.” Now, perhaps, I have more the means to do so since I have traveled so much and have seen so many things. I wonder though, how large is the task of assigning meaning to something like the deserts of Nevada, the Great Salt Lake of Utah or the geysers at Yellowstone? How am I supposed to ascribe personal meaning to public places? Some people have the gift of travel writing. I am thinking of Michael Martone’s Blue Guide to Indiana or Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. As much as I might try, I cannot recreate what they have done. It must be something new. And therein is also another challenge for writers. The constant pressure to create something new and exciting: a challenge I am rarely sure I can meet. What makes my thoughts important? Anyone else could do the same things that I do. I do not have any particular kind of talent, though perhaps in some ways I have more drive to actually put my thoughts on paper than most do. Originally, Self-Portrait as an Atlas was going to be an imaginary landscape I created. But after I started traveling, the need for an imaginary landscape gave way to a need to understand the real landscape. Not just the actual physical nature of where I am in the world, but the emotional nature of where I am. I need, now more than ever, to understand the rich depth of everything I have encountered emotionally. These past few years have been supremely emotionally challenging and draining for me. I still don’t feel like I have my life completely back in the 100% range. I have not been pushing myself too hard to change the way I feel. Rather, I’ve been struggling to cope with it, to understand it, and most importantly, to write it. However it gets rendered, in poems and stories or even songs, doesn’t matter. The necessity is that the rendering gets done. I’ll be honest: for the most part, I am a coward. I do not like to talk about my personal feelings. When I write poems, I often try to conceal those things that are really the most important to me. It is hard to let other people in. Especially a third-party reader that you may or may not know. (It’s harder with the people you know than with the people you don’t. At least for me.) I have written a few poems that I plan to keep. Many of the others must be axed because they simply aren’t emotionally true. I suppose that in order to conceptualize the Self-Portrait, the best place to start is with what I know. Perhaps, all the rest will come later, when the time is right.

I found this article on AOL today. . .how apropos. Is it possible to have one manager that embodies ALL these qualities? I think I have one. . .


Article:

Sometimes, the man in charge shouldn't be. Learn how to deal with your incompetent boss without getting fired.

By Dimitri A.C. Ly, Career Advisor

It's no secret that poor leadership can leave a business in ruins. Consider General Motors' former C.E.O., Rick Wagoner, whose questionable guidance cost the company approximately $82 billion in the past four years. Is it any wonder President Obama demanded his resignation? Managers come in all shapes and sizes, and you need to recognize their different attributes when dealing with incompetent bosses.

The Corporate Bully

Characteristics: Rude and drunk with power, corporate bullies will go out of their way to humiliate you in front of clients, colleagues and, of course, their own superiors. Their management strategy consists of making condescending remarks during performance reviews and threatening to fire you every time there's a problem, whether or not you're at fault.

How to Handle This Boss: Dealing with incompetent bosses like the corporate bully can be challenging. The trick is to fly under your supervisor's radar while drawing attention from the higher ups. Always stand up for yourself, but be subtle about it -- a disapproving look can go a long way -- and find a mentor who can expose you to new opportunities as well as shield you from your manager's temper tantrums.

The Micromanager

Characteristics: Everyone is familiar with the saying, "If you want something done right, do it yourself." Micromanagers live by it, nitpicking every aspect of your work, including the number of seconds by which you deviated from your scheduled break. Granted, they provide great support if you don't mind having someone constantly checking on your progress, but if you value your independence, you're in trouble.

How to Handle This Boss: When dealing with incompetent bosses of the sort, it's important you never appear as if you're trying to usurp their authority. Micromanagers are typically insecure, so it's best to keep them apprised of all your actions. However, only do so after the fact. The idea is to give your supervisor the illusion of control while remaining reasonably autonomous.

The Office Politician

Characteristics: Cowardly and duplicitous, office politicians always put their needs over those of the team. They may act like your best friend, but they'll stab you in the back the minute you get too chummy with senior management. Broken promises, misinformation and stolen ideas are all par for the course when dealing with incompetent bosses of this kind.

How to Handle This Boss: The best way to protect yourself against an office politician is to communicate in writing. That way, all your questions, requests and proposals become official record. If your boss tries to finalize the agreement verbally, follow it up with an e-mail confirmation, making sure to CC at least one other person in the company.



The Senior Enforcer

Characteristics: Usually promoted because of seniority, this type of boss is devoid of common sense, following procedures to the letter and shutting down every effort to innovate. Terrified of making a decision, senior enforcers also have trouble with the notion that maintaining employee morale is among their duties, so don't expect any sort of flexibility.

How to Handle This Boss: It's important you remain solution-minded when dealing with incompetent bosses, especially those lacking initiative. However, keep in mind that senior enforcers are notoriously resistant to change, so don't bother introducing any groundbreaking ideas until you have a few allies ready to back you up. It's also best to wait for a large meeting before making your proposal.

The Drama Queen

Characteristics: The term refers to managers of any gender who spend most of their day complaining, turning every mild inconvenience into a full-blown problem. Self-centered, disruptive and incapable of forethought, they reject the most obvious solutions just to prolong the situation and make every confrontation personal. Drama queens are never satisfied.

How to Handle This Boss: Don't let yourself get sucked in by all the negativity. It's crucial you remain positive and solution-minded, offering your counsel in private, so as not to offend your supervisor. Another way of dealing with incompetent bosses like this is to ignore their tantrums. Avoid eye contact whenever possible, and schedule your breaks according to their peak complaining hours.

The Silent Strategist

Characteristics: Silent strategists often make the workplace unbearable because you can't tell where you stand with them. They rarely provide feedback and tend to make important executive decisions without informing their staff, relying on a select few to carry out their master plan. As a result, the left hand never knows what the right one is doing.

How to Handle This Boss: Dealing with incompetent bosses of this sort can be unnerving, but it's important you keep your paranoia in check. Silent strategists usually don't realize what they're doing wrong, so don't be afraid to voice your concerns and share your innovative ideas. You may become part of your supervisor's inner circle and bring about real improvements.

Speak Out

It's easy to feel powerless when dealing with incompetent bosses, especially when they're running the office into the ground, but it's crucial that you assert yourself and try to affect change. Denouncing your supervisor can be delicate, but there's no reason you shouldn't suggest ways to streamline the company. When all is said and done, it may well save your job.

Today at lunch, I saw this man with those thick, black-rimmed mad scientist glasses on. . .and all I could think about was yanking off those glasses and making out with him.

That's normal. . .right?

Two Travelers to a River
Mahmoud Darwish, translation by Fady Joudah

I see love five meters away. Sitting on a bench at the gate of those who travel to unimprovised destinations. The airport is crowded. The French young man and the Japanese young woman are strangers in the crowd. Wrapped up, it seemed to me, in one blue cloud. Swapping sleepiness without turning to what’s around them. She looks at him, when he lays his head on her shoulder, with a silken look, careful not to pierce him. As if she doesn’t want him to see her see him, as if they were at the beginning of love, embarrassed to let him know how much she’ll love him. Then they alternate the watch … He looks at her when she places her head on his shoulder, the look of one who’s vigilant over an antique fragile crystal. And when the looks meet, diaphanous and longing, she gets up to get a bottle of water. She gives him a drink as if she were breastfeeding him, he gives her a drink as if he were kissing her. I fold the novel I was reading for the journey, to see love from a distance. A tremor goes through me and revives me with a wave of a secret fragrance that blew my way from a Japanese woman and a Frenchman. Both are as delicate as a gazelle and a doe. He said nothing to her. She said nothing to him. They were satisfied with the interludes of silence in Japanese music. Maybe they are not old enough to speak about their state of vanishing, one into the other. Or maybe she did say something: The river that we will cross after this journey passes by our house. And he said something: The river we will pass after this journey is our house

(From the current issue of Gulf Coast: A Journal of Arts and Letters)

A shadow, the length of quiet:
nightfall on Ravensbruck

the gash of dawn

this halved shell:
brutal grooves

percussive hooves
of a photograph

The halfshell of a mother's loud arm
soothing her child

a hammering of bullets
so many birch trees

naked on a dead hill


(work in progress)

Geez is it freezing in here! I can't concentrate when my hands are cold. . . not on work anyway. Instead, after updating a review on Paul Celan's Collected Works, I started thinking about my current assignment for Truong Tran's poetry workshop. He suggested that I write into my pieces on Schumann a dark silence. Since yesterday, I have been pondering on how to do this. He thought it would be interesting because the poems are about music (specifically Schumann's 'Carnaval') and I wanted to do this project for the class since it's something I put on the back burner and seriously wanted to finish. The bigger design is that it's going to be part of my Master's thesis and I wanted to get started on it now so that I don't have that much work to do. Anyway, for the moment I'm stumped. Writing silence into music, though not in an overt way, is something I'm not sure how to attempt. Perhaps I should begin with Schumann's Opus 9: Esebius. Since Esebius was the "quiet" side of Schumann, perhaps there will be some inspiration there. Every effective pianist knows that dynamics are the core of accurate expression in music. And of course, dynamics is a comparison of loudness and silence as well as urgency. Perhaps something will start to take shape soon. . .

So, it's a little late to be posting reviews of 2008, but I've been thinking through what I wanted to say for a couple of weeks now, so I guess that counts. 2007 was a really, really interesting and seemingly crappy year for me, so my only hope was that 2008 would be better. I feel that it lived up to that one, small expectation. In 2006, I began felling a little boxed in. I had a good, relatively well-paying job at which I rocked. I worked from home, which was really great, especially since gas prices were just beginning to rise. I was building up equity in my house, working here and there at a Master of Arts in English at UNF and, in general, coasting along. But, suddenly, I realized just how much I was compromising myself. I had always wanted to be something more, do something more, ad now I had settled into a relatively quiet life, without a whole lot of excitement. I began to feel like I was anchored to the earth and I really wasn't sure which direction to head in. It was a really strange and disorienting time on a multitude of levels. I had two choices: 1.) either stay where I was, living a life of comfort, but unable to advance any further or 2.) Make a really big gamble, sell everything I owned and chase my dream of earning an MFA and becoming a writer and a teacher of creative writing. So, I did just that. August of 2007 found me moving to the West Coast to attend college at New College of California in the Mission District of San Francisco. At first, things went well. Classes were good, my grades were awesome. I finally felt that others were starting to appreciate my abilities. I felt like a valuable part of a team. I had set up two main goals for myself. One of them was to finish the MFA and the other was to get a job with certain criteria. I wanted the job to be at a non-profit company. I wanted to do the same kind of work (quality, compliance, and regulatory oversight) that I was doing at AOL since I felt I had a really good aptitude for it. And I wanted to make more than I was making in Florida. At the end of 2007, I found myself one semester deep in the then-crumbling and now defunct New College of California, no closer to my goal of earning an MFA than I had been when I left and I still had no steady work. Enter 2008.

So, the school thing didn't work out at first, but one week before the application deadline for Mills College's Fall 2008 semester, I managed to apply and get accepted for the program. I was late getting in my reference letters, so they must have accepted me on merit or out of pity. Then, in February, the temp agency I was working for sent me to Sutter VNA and Hospice (a non-profit home health nursing organization) to take a one-month position as a scheduler. I never saw the scheduling office. As soon as I accepted the assignment, the Performance Integration Department Assistant suffered a collapsed lung and went on medical leave. Seeing the quality and compliance background on my resume, the company decided instead that they wanted me to fill in for the assistant while she was out instead of scheduling. The position was only supposed to last for three weeks, or until the assistant got better, which was disappointing, but the company was under a restructure, which I knew was the ideal time to prove to a company how much they need you, even if they may not know it yet. So, I set about trying to work my way into the company. I went above and beyond on every assignment, never complained, and made sure to be extra friendly. I used my skills to fix things that I knew were broken and to design processes. I always pushed the envelope. What started out as a three-week assignment turned into a three-month assignment. And then to a six-month assignment. In September of 2008, I was made a permanent employee. The Chief Clinical and Compliance Executive created a job that fit my special skill set: the Performance Integration Department Analyst. So, in 2008, I did manage to make the first of my goals happen. I love my job even though it can be trying at times. I'm never bored. I'm constantly challenged, and things are always changing, which keeps me on my toes and helps me keep thinking on my feet.

As for the MFA, my first semester took a huge emotional toll on me. I had never quite experienced so much angst regarding school. In the South, poetry is considered a hobby mostly. Peoplle don't get all worked up about it. But in San Francisco and the Bay Area, poetry, along with everything else, is intensely political. Friendships have been forged and broken from poems in San Francisco. Some of the wounds are still so deep, my mentor, Sharon Doubiago, can't even bring herself to talk about it. Still, I pressed on, and even though the semester was the most difficult of any school I'd been in (same work, more emotional baggage) I still came out with all A's. This is the first time I've ever done a full class load in a Master's program while carrying a full work load. I'm still surprised I managed to survive so well. Not only that, but I managed to turn out a really good body of work in the poetry workshop I was in, a book called Memory House. I intend on shopping it to see if I can land a publisher. I at least want to send some of the poems from the collection out. I think it's worth a try. Also, I wrote a piece of literary criticism on which my teacher wrote the following note:

Heather--

What a good [crossed out] great paper this is! Really well-written (Happily!) and well/carefully thought out and through. Perhaps you should send this out as an essay on Happily maybe to Jacket or some other online magazine. Nice work. --Stephen

So, even though it seemed like Stephen and I didn't get along all semester and it felt like he was making it harder on me than other people, I feel like I really came through. This really set the stage for a better 2009. So far, I really like my classes (even though I've only been to one session of each) everything feels more communal and laid back. Truong Tran, the poet teaching my workshop this semester, is going to start making me submit every week as part of class assignments, so I can no longer be lazy about getting my work out there. I suppose I will start by taking stephen's advice and submitting the essay, "Along Comes Something: Mapping Motion in Selections from Lyn Hejinian's Happily" and perhaps by submitting one of my favorites from last semester "Crossing the Street in Chinatown." I have had to select a project to work on for Truong's class this semester (a project which will almost certainly be "Number 9" a series of poems about Robert Schumann with a particular emphasis on his "Carnaval"). The writer's group I co-founded, the 9st Conspiracy, is starting up again, and in 2009, the school's literary journal, 580 Split, will be publishing the poems I helped select as this year's poetry editor. Still, being in school again, being around academia, has caused me to reconsider whether or not I want to work in this environment during the years to come. It is too soon to make a decision either way, but I am strongly considering staying in business and writing during the time I'm not working. Among my future goals are buying land in the east and eventually moving back out that way, and I feel like I will need to have a steady work plan and a real paying job lined up to make that goal. Also, teaching doesn't really seem to grant teachers the time to work on their own things and the pay is usually despicable. I'm not sure now about the course of my future, but who is? Often we end up doing something totally opposite of what we first set out to do. I'm looking forward to wherever life decides to take me.


I started out 2008 on a good note, joining a gym and amping up my workout schedule. There have been slips and slides due to a busy schedule, but I feel better for my small accomplishments. This year I plan to focus on eating less white flour and drinking more water. :) I am losing the weight, albeit slowly, but these things take time.

Personally, things have been more difficult. I made some very difficult personal decisions in 2007 and 2008. Ultimately, I feel that they were the right ones. Choosing to move away from one's family and friends is a decision that affects everyone who cares about you. More than once, my parents have expressed anxiety and sadness over my choosing to live so far away. Personally, I felt like it was time to test my mettle and my ability to jump without a safety net, to make a decision not knowing the outcome. I also decided to admit my athiesm to my friends and family. This was a hard choice. When one "comes out" of the godless closet, a certain amount of angst will necessarily be generated. First of all, people believe that there is something inherently "wrong" or "stupid" about a person who decides to admit to living a life without God. There is a general feeling that the athiest is a naive and sad person who has lost their way. But, I do not feel that way about myself. I am mostly a happy person. I laugh a lot, and I laugh from my soul. But I also feel that sadness, loneliness, anxiety and doubt are part of the human condition. Ignoring it, pretending it's not there and/or saying that we know what is going to happen in the future to me seem a bit naive, though hopeful. Admitting that I have been an athiest since the age of 19 made my parents feel like they had failed me in some way. This hurt me on two levels. It made me sad that they felt that my athiesm was their "mistake" and it also made me sad that they considered me to be "broken" or wrong in some deep sense. It hurt me to think that my parents feel my choices and beliefs or unbeliefs are their responsibility. There is a general belief between them, I think, that if they had not sent me off to Bob Jones University, I never would have become an athiest. But that isn't true in the least. I do not regret my time there and that is not why I don't believe. Still, my hope is that they've come to terms with who I am and that they don't feel responsible for my decisions.

I did learn some things about myself as well. They were not good things. I learned that I am not a good person. I am a self-involved, self-righteous and I am not a good friend. I am lazy, often unjust and hopelessly flawed. But the good news is, I can work on changing those things and I can try harder to become the person I would like to be. Those are my challenges for 2009.

So, kind of a crazy day. Started out normal. On Sundays, Tim works, but I'm off. I had a busy day planned. Even when I'm off work, there's so much studying to be done, it's hard to get my arms around it. I had a project due today by midnight, so I needed to go to the library at Mills to look at copies of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern in the special collections room. I have to do an annotation of this journal for my Contemporary Magazine Production class, and of course, I had no time for it until the last minute. When I get there, I find out that the Rare Books room is closed on the weekends, so it ends up that I don't even get to look at the journal anyway. I did the best I could with the annotation. I hope it doesn't suck. I spent several hours at the library from around 2 until after 6 when I get hungry and decide to surprise Tim by coming home early. I thought we would go out to get some food and maybe see Religulous at the theatre. When I got home, though, I noticed that there was a cab in the yard of my apartment complex. Now the apartment is one building, no back doors, and all of the apartments face the parking lot. The parking lot has enough for say, 15 cars (I think). It's a rather small lot and it faces the street. The street is a U shape, and my apartment building faces the bottom of the U. And Telegraph, the main street, runs across the top of the U. Anyway, when I get home, someone has driven a cab through the fence surrounding our apartment's parking lot and yard, bounced off a tree and crashed through the other side of the fence and into our neighbor's yard. I get out of my car and people are standing around the apartment complex looking bewildered, though not as bewildered as I'm sure I looked. The door to my apartment was wide open, the TV and computer were on, the lights were on, and there was no Tim. I called his cell phone and he didn't answer. Called again and again. No answer. At this time, I remembered that he had said he was going to paint his armor and sometimes he does that in the lawn. That's when I started to worry that Tim had been run over by the cab. Moments after I arrived at home, a fire truck appeared and after that, the police. I kept asking them to check under the car. Finally, they did and said that there was no one under there. I breathed a sigh of relief, but then, where was Tim? My upstairs neighbor was standing in his front door eating some cereal from a huge bowl. I went upstairs and asked him where Tim was. Mark said that Tim and some other people went chasing the driver down the street. Not knowing whether or not he could be in trouble, I took out after him, but as I walked, I called him again. He finally answered and said that he was in pursuit of the driver who had gotten out of the cab and taken off down the road. He kept following her and following her while she begged him to stop, to think of her children. She tried several times to alter her appearance and throw Tim off, but Tim kept pursuing her.  Finally, I had called him and asked him if the police were following her too. He said no. The police were in the yard, so I told him I would tell them where to find her. I ran back to the yard and told the police to go get him. They would not let me go with them, so a neighbor drove me down there, though I would have gotten there faster on my own, I was already down the street and their car was closer. We went and picked Tim up, then found him with the police. The girl was in the back of a cop car and the police told Tim to go home and wait for them so that he could give his statement. So, it turns out that Tim isn't dead after all ( no death cab for cutie, lol) and everything is okay. The cab is still in the lawn, and the fence is down, but life goes on.

Article in the local free paper "East Bay Express" Volume 30, Issue 42 July 23-29, 2008:

So That's Why People Live in Piedmont

Between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. on July 5, Piedmont police records show reports of a house being egged, a loud leaf-blower, a blocked driveway, two off-leash dogs, a car parked too long, "a suspicious person carrying a plastic bag", a dead rat, and a dead cat. That's it. Within those same hours in Oakland, police records show five shootings, an assault with a deadly weapon, three armed robberies, a strong-arm robbery, an assault with a deadly weapon, and an unexplained death. That's it.