Well, after one blown tire on the moving truck, one missed flight to Cali, a bunch of (possibly) valuable boxes, shelves, lamps, etc., left behind at our rental because our truck was too small, and various other minor emergencies, including many hours of listening to crying kitties, we are in California. Thanks for all your good wishes and thoughts.
I was feeling a little stressed and weepy yesterday after our walk-through seeing how very small our little one-bed-one-bath apartment that we’ve committed a year to was, although I still love San Diego and love the neighborhood we’ll be living in. I wondered if I was going to die of claustrophobia. Then I went to dinner and had “tiny plate” food and they played that OC theme song about California. It made me laugh.
On the plane I sat next to a woman who works for the Navy and on the side volunteers with homeless and troubled teens. She works with hovercrafts, which I thought sounded very futuristic. My father was stationed at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside when he was a young marine, and he took his very first college class (he ended up getting a Phd in Engineering) a couple of miles from our new apartment. It’s like I have nostalgia for my Dad’s early adulthood out here. I think I know what he loved out here – the people walking around in bathing suits at the end of September, the flowers everywhere (even had a little hummingbird come up to my window yesterday) and the interesting landscapes. On the downside, my hair looks terrible in the high, high humidity. Hope the high humidity goes away soon or I’ll need a pixie cut or a lot of hats.
Tomorrow is the first day of my new class at National University. I’m still a little apprehensive since this is my first time teaching an online graduate poetry class. My brain is absolute mush from the stress of the move. Hope I’ll be able to string a couple of coherent sentences together!
- At September 25, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In California, moving pains
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Note to self: Moving sucks. Especially all by yourself. Quit moving so much. Also, why oh why don’t you ever learn your lesson and start packing earlier?
Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
California, here we come…
PS Thanks for your kind words on the previous post. I’m nervous!
Well, I guess it’s official, so I can finally tell you:
I’m going to be teaching a poetry seminar for National University’s no-residency, all-online MFA program starting in a week! I’m really excited and have been trying to teach myself the software and update my class content for the last two weeks. Incidentally, my mother, who is a PhD in Education with a specialty in educational technology, told me about National University’s cutting-edge program and educational software, and how they’re the ones being held up as an example of how online universities should work. They’re very strict about grading and their MFA program is criticism-heavy, although it only lasts a year and a half.
(A little bit of a stress factor: I thought the start date was October 6th, but it turns out it’s September 29th, the day we move in to the new apartment – eek!)
So wish me luck! I’m very excited about this foray into teaching, but nervous.
Also, Seattle-ites, tune in to KUOW today – I believe the show I’ll be on is called “Sound Focus” at 2 PM. I’ll be listening, as I missed the live show last time because I was out of town.
UPDATE: Here’s the link to the show!
http://kuow.org/program.php?id=15860
I’m definitely in a melancholy space. I’ve been running around like mad doing last minute things before the move – a physical, a haircut, getting prescriptions filled, then getting the stomach flu – not fun! Of course, we’re taking loads of things – books to the used bookstores, clothes to Goodwill – out of the garage since we won’t have a garage in our next place. After a dazzling set of sunny September days (during which some of my Ohio family and friends were without water, electricity, or internet because of hurricane-wind-storms!) the rain and grey skies have returned to Seattle. And all the goodbyes to friends are a little hard. I hate goodbyes.
Oh yes, a shameless plea: my dear Seattle-area friends, if you’re free on the 25th, we’d love some help loading up our truck! Pizza and love to all who apply 🙂
And a little good news – on September 22nd, the autumnal equinox, Seattle NPR affiliate KUOW will re-broadcast the show “The Beat” that features me reading Becoming the Villainess at Open Books. So tune in if you missed it the first time!
I’m also re-reading Rachel Zucker’s Bad Wife Handbook and Beth Ann Fennelly’s Unmentionables for an upcoming essay. And, I’m still trying to figure out the ins and outs of the software used by the college where I’ll start teaching in two weeks.
I’ve had so little poetry news, either electronic or snail mail, lately…although the stack of “to review” poetry books on my office shelf – now to be packed up until goodness knows when – makes me a little depressed. I can’t review the books as fast as they’re coming in! It’s madness, I tell you! Seriously, there are a lot of good books on the shelf. But they’ll just have to wait til after the move.
I can’t believe in a week we’ll be on our way to San Diego! We’re renting a little one-bedroom in a northern suburb, about two miles in from the ocean. Hope there won’t be any wildfires this year. Crazy sunshine, here we come?
Yes, on top of finding a new place to live in a new city in a new state, plus starting a new job, I’ve been re-designing the web site. I’m going for a kind of whimsical-yet-subversive-feminist thing with the wonderful art of Yumiko Kayukawa, who kindly gave me permission to use “Zen Cracker” which we altered to make a banner (it’s actually more rectangular – here’s an online version –http://www.sweetyumiko.com/files/zencracker.gif) Her other art work is great too – I encourage you to browse her art work.
I used to have a technical site and a poetry site, and now I just have one, more writing-centered, site. (You might want to update any links you have to my poetry site, by the way…)
Yesterday was a mournful day, with the passing of Reginald Shepherd, and the eerie memories of another sunny September 11th. I spent most of the day getting rid of things. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It turns out I’m not as attached to most of my stuff as I thought – except my books – and maybe my shoes. At night I played hooky for an hour from packing and sorting to see Peter Pereira and Rebecca Loudon read at Port Townsend’s Northwind series. They both read new work that I really loved. Peter has so much good energy it just radiates when he reads, and Rebecca is always electrifying (plus she had really great hair last night – I was all, how does she get her curls to lay like that? I know, a really serious poet shouldn’t have been thinking about hairstyles.) So that was a nice poetry break in my insane-moving-world of right now.
And I have to learn new educational software for my job and read two textbooks before the class starts! OK breathe, breathe, breathe…
So, let me know what you think of the new site, and if you find any problems or missing links, tell me!
So, here I am back in Port Townsend, with not an apartment/condo to my name in San Diego yet. And we’re supposed to be out of here by the end of September. I’m not a person who likes to be unsettled like this, which you might not believe from the evidence of me moving around so much, but it’s very true. So I hope a home rental opportunity of some sort comes to us soon…(Remember, any friends in San Diego’s Northern County, keep your eyes open for me!) Yes, I’m on Craigslist for hours a day already…
It’s hard to concentrate on the poetry world with the new job, new place to live, packing up the house, redoing my web site, etc, but I wanted to post a couple of things:
One is, Kate Greenstreet has interviewed herself for her series of first-book interviews!
The other is quick mini-review of Collin Kelley’s chapbook, After the Poison from Finishing Line Press. (Incidentally, follow that link and you can also pick up Anne Haines’ new chapbook, Breach.) Collin angry, passionate take on Reagan-and-Bush-era politics hits hard and fast, but as you might guess, my favorite two poems were the bitingly funny “Fairy Tale Eating Disorder” (“No food is safe in a fairy tale,/ a single bite enough to stop your heart”) and the persona poem called “Patty Hearst on the Occasion of her Presidential Pardon:”
“Mama’s got her x-ray sunglasses on,
her thought control beehive sending signals,
her noose of pearls ready to lasso me home…”
Update: Check it out – Steve’s getting his first book published! Break out the confetti!
- At September 04, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In baby seals, San Diego
- 5
Here is a pic of the baby seal waving at me from “Children’s Pool” at La Jolla’s Torrey Pines State Park. Click the picture to enlarge.
PS I don’t have an apartment yet, despite extensive searching over two weeks online and three days in person down in SD. Apparently they are more expensive and harder to find than PO Boxes. So, know a good and affordable condo to rent in North County? Let me know!
San Diego is beautiful and hot. Suddenly my Port Townsend August (mostly 60 desgrees and rainy) has disappeared from memory – my head is swimming with blooming jasmine and curious trumpet vines along the road, the orange blooms of a pomegranate tree and the continuous trill of hummingbirds. We didn’t make it to the zoo or many of the tourist things since we were mostly checking out neighborhoods and rental places but we did go to the Quail Botanical Garden and the beaches at Torrey Pines State Park and La Jolla’s “Children’s Pool,” a quiet cove amid large waves and rocks where the seals line up with their babies and loll in the sun. I ate duck tacos (yes, they’re good!) for the first time and had a lot of California salads piled with things like nectarines and local goat cheeses and lettuces. Also, here the Mexican food has mahi mahi in it, right alongside the carnitas on the menus. Plus, everything has avocados.
I am scared of moving to California. It is expensive. They have high taxes. (Seattle’s income tax = 0% versus California’s = 9%) But moving here seems right, solid in my head as a new home-place. (As a kind of sign, my tonsillitis seemed to magically get better once I got here. Plus, I’m pretty sure the baby seals were waving to me with their flippers and smiling!) Holding my breath and taking the southward plunge next month. We look tomorrow on an apartment (right around the corner from 1. a huge library and 2. a huge post office) and I’ll try to sign up for a PO Box before we fly out tomorrow. Having an address makes it possible for me to start submitting poetry again!
Ready for the Fall?
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
