Adventures in British bodywork... Write on!
Man, my work is disembodied in comparison. I've been hired to rebuild a web-site (http://www.muohio.edu/english). I share a sweaty windowless office on the third floor of Bachelor hall (picture) with a young women, recently out of Yale, who is in the masters fiction writing program here. She works for the university press, but had for some reason been working all fall semester without voicemail and without knowing whether she had a mailbox. (It turns out that she did, and that it was overflowing with letters she'd been expecting for months!).
Fortunately, I don't have to check in with anyone, or be at my desk in my block box if I don't want to be there. I spent most of today at the university's "Special Collection" listening to the head librarian describe a sparkling trove of literary treasures, and later this week I'm hoping to wade through Shakespeare folios, Dickens first editions, Gutenberg bible pages, illustrated manuscripts, a Book of Hours and miscellaneous leatherbound beauties for delicious textured pictures for my web re-vision. I'm digging the rearranging, tweaking, prettifying, editing-type tasks that this project entails. I find it very satisfying to tear things apart and put them back together -- even though all of this shredding and such is entirely non-tactile.
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Chris needs a haircut. ;) He and I are on a high plateau, or in a fizzy nutritious drink, or bicycling on a pedestrian street, or something else that is both easy and secure and exhilarating. We spend a lot of time cooking and eating together, and reading on our crappy Wal-mart futon, and observing the cat. And o my god eating way too much boursin cheese. (It went on sale for $4.00 for a case of *12*. heaven help us).
Sunday we hit a major milestone in our relationship: bread. Our first loaves taste mostly of honey, because we forgot to add salt to the dough. It tastes a little funny raw, but it makes lovely toast.
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You write of the difficulty of opening, of speaking truth (however bitter) to loved ones, of trusting Charlene with the depth that you hesitate to articulate. I am thinking about this. It sounds scary -- although I'm not sure whether the scary is on behalf of others or self. I'm pretty blunt with people, including Chris, with my thoughts, anyway. I think that the wells that I teeter around are mostly filled with the rest of me.
There is something I really like about being unfixed and undefined in the world. It's much easier for me to be affable, and light, and goofy, and clever while holding people at arm's length, and for a long time I was pretty pissed off at Chris for persistently grasping at my heart, for wanting to get deeper and rawer. I felt like it was cramping my style. This came out when he arrived in Georgia after I'd been there for a few weeks, adventuring and skating on the shiny new surface of circumstantial friendships. When Chris landed, unattached and easy-breezy me was rudely punctured, deflated, degassed -- the arial persona was impossible to maintain in view of someone who knew me more substantially. I remember being really angry. Hmm.
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Your intellectual percolations sound intriguing. Where are you writing? Are you sending anything out? is everything on your hard-drive? are you still storming in those expansive journals I remember seeing on your desk in Warren?
When last we spoke (I think) you mentioned that you and Charlene might share a house -- either with her mother or with friends. Has that worked out? I imagine you with lots of colorful pillows, for some reason. And plants. Hmm.
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I go for now. Love,
Karen
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Here are a few pictures of our apartment. It's small, but the futon doubles as a guest bed. (Hint hint).
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