Banking

     I can’t sleep at the moment, so I will blog instead. I am questioning the validity, the effectiveness of my experiment. I’m questioning as to whether or not a truly unique self exists in any person; are we really ever anything more than reactionary to our life experiences? At the moment my inclination is to firmly reply No. Never anything more than reactionary. Or are my expectations simply too high, like trying to adjust some of my personality traits in a year? I must acknowledge that as a possibility as well. Should I even be trying to change? Yes. Will I ever stop asking these questions and then answering them myself? Yes, for this post at least (well I hope so anyway ).

The Experiment

     Everyone wants to know how I ended up here, how I picked Royal Holloway as my university of choice. I feel as though I don’t have a satisfactory answer for those in my program. Let me clarify. I love poetry; I love writing it, I love reading and critiquing it, I love learning and expanding my craft. I chose Royal Holloway because it suited my idea for a social experiment: a personal experiment in social integration.

Royal Holloway, University of London

     I drank beer tonight; to be more specific, I drank an Adam’s Bitter British Ale. A half pint’s worth. That is more beer than I’ve ever been able to stomach. Not only did I drink Ale, but I sat in a pub, squished to the end of the bench between a fellow poet and a railing along a steep carpeted set of stairs. We talked literature, jobs, living. The basics of finding common ground in a large group. Sometimes I was silent, my mind heavy with the alcohol; other times I tried to participate – pushing my ears outward, hoping to understand every inflection and tone in voices that were unfamiliar in more than their accents.

Hurrah!

My visa has been approved and delivered! What a load of stress off my shoulders. My timeline has been getting shorter and shorter and I was beginning to worry. Royal Holloway here I come!

Moping and Coping

     I simply haven’t felt like writing lately. I think about it, but my motivation just doesn’t reach to the point of action. Honestly, I just feel like reading and escaping and not thinking. Things have been hectic here. My parents are in the middle of moving back to Arizona, because my dad got another job. My mom has been an emotional wreck due to this. She doesn’t want to move. She’s happy in New Mexico… sort of. She likes this city and her house. My dad doesn’t want to move either, but he’s sucking it up, because he recognizes that he has to do what he has to do. My mom isn’t making this transition easy for any of us and I have too much residual anger with her right now to have patience with her constant crying and complaining about how she doesn’t want to move.

Maybe I’m just a dumb-shit

     …I don’t know, but this Visa application stuff has my hair in knots and panties in a twist so to speak (as well as my blood pressure up and my moods swinging). Frankly, sifting through all the information and necessities to apply for an overseas student visa is like reading bad literature. What I mean is that I am trying to skim through pages and pages of stuff that doesn’t apply to find those few lines of information that do. This reminds me of reading the writing of a meandering author, someone that begins a paragraph and goes through so many tangents, references, and jumps, so that I don’t know what the hell they are talking about by the time I get to the end of the paragraph. Except the visa stuff is pages and pages and pages of that. Not to mention things link all over the place and by the end of it I have like twenty windows open and, if I’m lucky, I’ll have figured out at least one thing for sure. I’m usually not that lucky. So I’ve just gotten to the point where I’m sending in what I’ve got and hoping it’s what they want.

Student Visa

     I’ve been trying to get my school stuff in order, and naturally part of that means applying for a Student Visa. First I had to get all the necessary supporting documentation and then I had to try to figure out some money issues – as in, would I have enough. The stress (primarily from monetary concerns) had me to the point where even beginning to think about all of this sent me into a near panic attack. My poor brain just got to the point where it couldn’t handle the stress anymore and trying to handle the tedious details of some of the application stuff was just too much.I’ve had this happen before, but usually not for as long as this time. Of course it doesn’t help that I’ve been dealing with other stresses as well in my current situation.

Literature of a different sort

     Albuquerque has this neat little section that comes with the newspaper that is called “Venue,” which provides information for the entertainment on-goings of the city and others nearby. I like flipping through, reading reviews on restaurants, seeing what musicians are performing, plays, and other things. Then I mope for a moment about how nice it would be to have some money to go see small time performances at coffee shops or small clubs, or to go see a museum collection or independent films; especially since I actually have the time for once.

Crumbs

     I’ve been working on a chapter in The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry that has to do with rhythm and repetition and rhyme and such. So tonight, or this morning if I’m being technical, I wrote a sestina. I haven’t written a lot of poetry with strict forms and structures, so I was happy that this one came out decently. Of course this could be that I haven’t actually slept yet and it is near my bed time. Anyway, thought I would share it either way (i.e. good or bad):

Healthy equals happy?

     There are a lot of changes that I have been wanting and trying to make in my life. Things like eating better, exercising more (though my motivation has waned since I’ve been back in New Mexico), and getting rid of crap I don’t need. Living with my parents again has made me realize how many truly bad and icky habits I have learned from them.