Invitation to the Game

In 6th grade I remember reading this book "Invitation to the Game" and discussing it in the "advanced placement" class that I had been in since 4th grade or so. That year, we read several science fiction novels and went to the Kennedy Space Center -- we were all about space and the "final" frontier.

I didn't think how...odd it was, space, until I was riding the A train and the advertisements there are showing this Discovery Channel program about space travel and they've titled it, "When we left Earth" and then it makes me think how...amazing. How...out of this world (literally) the concept that we decided through some efforts and years of being discontent with where we were to leave the place designated for us and venture out.

Anyways. Last night, citing boredom and after I finished my first-ever graphic novel (more on that later) I decided to watch several episodes of Lost. I know. I'm behind. I don't have a TV and the only shows I watched were Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty. I remember reading a review and someone was speculating that they were all dead and it was some middle world between Heaven and Hell. Looking at this, though, I thought about this book that I read back in middle school, and how...it reminded me so much of it.

So this book. It's about some kids who graduate either from college or high school. It's set about 150 years in the future so robots are doing most of the work, and so there's little work for humans to do. Kids graduate from school and are automatically entered into the unemployment bucket, and must live in a welfare area. This is the status of most, not a few, people. While here, and living a pretty meaningless existence, they receive an invitation to "The Game". I should also mention that despite being on welfare and without jobs, they were the brightest kids in their class (although, I suppose then, it is only relative, right?). They go to this room where they sit with glasses on that project this world where their only efforts are to survive. Each session it gets harder and harder. If the player should hurt themselves or die, they wake up. Each person is placed in this game according to their worth, where their separate uses can combine. After a while, I forget what event happens that should have sparked the end of the "Game" for that session, but they don't wake up. It isn't until they try to look for recognizable constellations that they realize they're on another planet, in another world. And now they must start all over, using the skills, I guess you could call them, they recognized they had during the simulation.

I dunno. All of this reminded me of Lost. Starting all over, another world/realm/

I'm sort of using this blog for multiple uses. Mainly, right now, I turn to it to chart how I am coming with yoga.

Today was day 6. It hasn't been straight and in a row, these days, but it was the sixth day that I entered that 105 degree room and stayed there for 90 minutes and asked favors of my body.

There is only one pose left for me to master. Today I breathed through the pain for one that had been bothering me for a while -- one that I knew I should be able to do. I can't recall the pose names, but just know that I hope within the next couple of sessions to be able to walk away saying: I've done all 26 poses. Another difference I noted today was I didn't require or desire as much water as I have in past sessions. I believe that has something to do with hydration before the workout. I'm learning, I'm learning. Today, though. Today in the first backward bend, we're asking our body to bend over backwards in a standing pose, and go as deep and as far back as you can, keeping your eyes open, focusing on the back wall. Something in my back and chest opened up and in the second set, I leaned so far back that I was able to see where the wall met the carpet. I came back up smiling.

I've discovered, though, that I need a new hobby. Something to invest myself creatively in. Well, maybe not invest like do, but participate? I'm not sure -- but yesterday I found myself wanting to get out of the house but not really feeling like writing. And I was at a loss of things to do. Going out by myself is no longer that much of a hindrance. I just need to find places to go, things to get into and enjoy -- maximize my full creative potential.

I leave for Cave Canem in a week. Yep. Exciting.

Then 19 days in the mountains, solo.

seven days to a new me

today was my last day in the trial period for yoga, and i'm sad. i want to have money that flows and flows so that i can just have this place to go to whenever i want. but i understand that folks gotta get paid. everyone has to get paid. the place has to get paid in order to stay available. yes. i know.

it's interesting to think about the transformation between last week and this week. I don't know what the click was, but I was just ready to do some things differently than I have in the past, and these new patterns are ironically freeing.

Don't get me wrong. I am aware that this honeymoon phase will be over, and there are still some rocky roads coming up, but...i have faith that things will get better and better, and I can resurrect my mantra: every day a little closer.

And it's interesting that mantra that I adopted at the beginning of the year and seeing it put to work. In yoga, especially, I see it in work. I see it in the body, how everyday you ask the body to do a little bit more, to bring your back to curve like a c so that you can bend your torso back over your butt and touch your heels. and you'd never thought that you could bring your eyes to see the back corner of the room while the rest of you is pointing forward. and four days ago you got nauseous when you attempted this, but today, today was the day you get a little bit closer. yep

everyday a little bit closer.

rachelle ferrell

If I've ever gotten into a music conversation with any of you, you'd know that I absolutely love Rachelle Ferrell. That is interesting for me to admit. Honestly, I can't remember how I got a hold of her. I believe it was my early days surfing the web afterschool, and reading a review of her album. Then, somehow, I was looking for CDs and found hers, and bought it because I remember the review and the rest, is history.

My friend in the city, Jennifer, was walking by the Blue Note on Friday and told me that Rachelle Ferrell was playing there and she remembered how much I liked her. What good friends I have. Granted, I walk by the Blue Note a lot. I do. I even sometimes look in to see what's going on, but I never figured anyone that I'd really want to see would be there. But Rachelle!

I contemplated the next two days if I would go. It was too late for Friday, Saturday I had to work. Sunday was the last day. I decided on Sunday, if I were to go, and even still it was a toss up because I am in no position to splurge on a concert, however, tickets weren't that much if you sat at the bar...

Did I mention that it was my first NYC show? Did I also mention that it was, in fact, my first show going to solo? Yes, I called two people to see if they would be interested in going, but I had made up in my mind that I was going solo. I did. So add that to the list of yoga, bars, concerts solo.

Later on, I'll update with my thoughts about the concert, but let me just say...amazing. I wished she had played my favorite song, but there's (hopefully) other chances to see her, enjoy her.

Cassandra Wilson is playing tonight. I can't afford it. Too bad.

boundaries crossed

An amazing thing happened today. I went for my third day of bikram yoga (that should say enough..) and got in there and thought, I'm really sweaty and hot (note to self: NEVER stand under the lights, as if the heat of the room isn't enough already) and my tanktop, sticking to me, is getting on my nerves. So. I took it off. I contemplated it for a good first 25 minutes of the set. Then I thought: we're all in here sweating and focus should be on ourselves only and not anyone else. I took off the tanktop and focused my eyes on my body as I watched it go in and out of the poses.

It was an interesting freedom I was afforded just then - the freedom to take off my tanktop in a space where I felt I had room to. It was mostly for comfort - the shirt was soaked through and wet on my skin, and I didn't like the feeling. It was also to see if I would do it, because i could...I could have started with the shirt on and kept it on. I could have started with the shirt off, then I wouldn't have to go through the whole agony of deciding on whether or not to take it off. Still, I decided it's my comfort, my body. No one else should be looking at it at this moment but myself. And I have to be able to look at it.

So, I'm hooked to this bikram yoga. I've gone three times and had three different teachers. I've decided that I like the teacher that talks really fast, that goes through it motorcycle-style and revs up the engine. He, however, teaches at 6:30am on tuesday/thursday. When my trial period is up, I'm going to have to figure out a way to do what I want...so that I can be there like i'd want to be.

Early morning yoga, growing up.

So Thursday was a day of firsts for me. Yep. My coworker invited me last weekend to try this yoga class that was/is right around the corner from our houses. I agreed. It meant waking up at 6am. It meant going to do yoga for 90 minutes in essentially a sauna, heated to 105 degrees.

I've done some yoga practices before, but not in a studio, not with a real, live person in front of me. There is something to be said about that experience, but I'm not sure what yet. Maybe that, I don't listen well (but I knew it) and need someone to actually do the poses so that I can see it. I have to see it.

I also know it was an interesting experience to look at yourself, full-bodied, in a mirror for 90 minutes. It felt good to sweat though, I love to sweat. It's interesting to watch yourself contort into the various poses, like standing on your right leg while you reach behind you for your left ankle, and you raise your right arm in the air and then charge your body forward and your left ankle towards the ceiling and you see, almost for the first time, the sole of your foot in the air, in the mirror.

Here I am, sitting on my couch, a bit sore, but proud of myself. I didn't know my body could do some of the things I asked it to do. I thanked it for bending my forehead to my knee, thanked it for bringing my hands, clasped around the ball of right my foot, raised in the air while my left leg stayed planted straight into the ground to hold me up. I went again today, and learned that I prefer yoga if there are less people, and already have made in my mind what kind of teacher I like...yesterday, the guy was talking too fast, today the woman was talking too much, too slow. It made the 90 minutes feel like 90 minutes, and what's interesting is that the one today was later, and I was more tired today than yesterday. Tomorrow I rest.

Another thing about growing up and doing things you never thought you'd do would have to be going to bars by yourself. Add on to that, going to bars by yourself in NYC. I set in my mind this week that I was going to go to a bar by myself. Tuesday, my friend was DJing around here and invited me. I agreed. He said he'd be unavailable to talk so I thought, perfect. So I went, his equipment wasn't working and so he was down in the lounge, and immediately I didn't want to be there anymore. I pulled out my moleskin and started writing. Some friends were eating dinner around the corner, and ended up meeting up with me so I wasn't really at the bar alone.

Thursday, after my yoga success, and after work, I decided to go to a bar, by myself. I was tempted to call people. I was, I'm not going to lie. But I wanted it to be a conscious decision that I go to the bar by myself, not for the situation to be that I was going because there was no one to go with. Anyways, I walked a good distance and went to three different places before I decided on a bar. It was a place I had gone to with a friend a few months back. I remember their happy hour being late and nice and so I said I could go there and do my alone bar time with some cheap drinks. And lo, the only seat in the bar available was next to this lone guy with dreadlocks down his back, and I thought, how ironic. I sat down and ordered my drink, and sat. Just sat. Then I was like, this is boring. And I looked at the guy next to me. And I didn't say anything. Secretely I wanted him to notice me and speak to me. He didn't. Finally, halfway into my Jameson, neat, I decided to speak up and say something. I spoke to him, asked him about his locks. We just went from there....I ended up staying in the bar for a couple of hours. It wasn't so bad afterall. I didn't die.

LouderArts

Monday I had the chance to feature at Bar13, LouderArts. It was fun. I basically had all the poems I was going to read in this green folder with me and I paced around and around until it was time for me to go up. As soon as I step onto the stage, my eye starts to freak out, just one eye, and it waters for a good five minutes. Luckily, God has given me two, and the ability to see without needing both, and so the show still went on.

Before my reading, I was supposed to have a poetry elective class. My student and I were headed to the Starbucks - because it's only appropriate that one should hold a writing class in a coffeeshop - and got onto the elevator at my job and ended up getting stuck. For an hour. Yes. Stuck. Being the traveler that I am, I had plenty of reading material that I needed to focus on to keep from freaking out. I am mildly claustrophobic, and it is sparked when I can't see or feel or hear air flow. So to keep from thinking I was going to suffocate to death, and my last time on earth was going to be in this damned elevator, I decided to read some of the things I had with me. Of them, an essay about the Holocaust and how poetry - the embodiment of poetry - helped some of the concentration camp prisoners survive, how it sustained them. I thought it interesting that I should choose this essay at this time to read, and I pulled out some excerpts to frame my reading. It worked relatively well.

So. I read a billion poems. I don't believe it felt as long as it was. Everyone in the room was quiet and listening. My roommate came and recorded it, and it sounds amazing, and I hope to find a way to get it up here so that others can listen (if only in parts) if they want to.

I have this thing with poetry readings...it's why I like to have a weekly spot to read at, or why I like to do a lot of poetry readings - I want to read new work in front of an audience. New work. But then I realized, this is a prelude into what my own readings will be like when I have my book out, so I figured it only fair most of them come from there. So I did, but I still read new work...and I loved it. They loved it. Patrick Rosal and Aracelis Girmay were there. My roommate and several of my friends were there. It was a nice and lovely and just grand time.

I'll let you know if I get the audio up and running.

process: interviewing poems

I love reading writer's blogs. I do. I love reading blogs that have some substance. This includes Palestinian blogs, though I haven't read them in a while, but I will return to them as I am about to return to my project of telling that story through poems. But back to my original thought: I've decided to utilize this blog more about process, to start a dialogue about process and what's going on in this mind of mine, and hopefully yours.

There's this thing that I've begun to do with poems as I am starting them. First, I have to have an idea. Once I have the idea down, but not much else, I sit down with the poem and interview it. I write out the five W's and an H. Who, what, where, when, why, and how (sometimes not applicable)...and because the majority of my poetry is narrative, this framework works, because it establishes the story I wish to tell. It helps me get a better view on placement, on characters, on why this event is happening, what sparked this event, etc. It sets up the world for me, this world I will be attempting to describe a little more poetically later. Generally, this is my second-stop approach. If I can't decide how the poem is going to start, then I ask it questions, demand it offer some information if it's not going to give me a first line, and generally from there -- most times a half a journal page or a whole journal page of notes -- I can find an opening to the poem I was wanting to write.

Now, this process only comes when I am wanting to write a poem but can't find a way in. This, I find, is happening more and more as I am working on this novel, but I started this before I started writing my novel. Really, I got it from the summer I worked at a newspaper. I spent my days asking people questions in order to get quotes and ideas with which to find an angle into a story that should be written from the answers provided. How writers find a way out of no way, yes? Who would have thought I could use that summer, now. I thought that was 8 weeks wasted, save for the clips that I have saved, but have not found a job with which to use it yet. Who knows.

Anyways, I always suggest this too, with my writer friends who find themselves stuck. I ask them if they've interviewed their character, or their poem. Have you?