(dried) terror of the deep

My sister came to visit Greensboro last weekend! We went to The Green Bean, in my humble opinion the best coffee place in town (good brew, vegan muffins). We strolled to my favorite shop downtown, Terra Blue; Sallie tried on some fairy crowns and frou frou scarves and I bought some incense.

Then things got kind of fishy…
Thera had told me at a party the night before about a huge Asian market that I thought would be cool to explore with Sal, but I think Sallie and I got bad directions from Google. Well, we pretty much just picked the first Asian market we could find. We ended up at this really dark place on Spring Garden that had huge dessicated dried fish in it, bigger than any I’d seen in an Asian market before. Big as gargoyles. The deformed fish faces sent us scurrying about nervously, with the store owner following us in the crepuscular dimness and urging us “not to be scared,” and offering drinks that would “improve the the study brain.” We respect enthusiasm, so we decided to buy two drinks: aloe green jelly goo and tamarind surprise in a can. Sal was woozy, but I did a little sampling. The tamarind juice was pretty good and the aloe would have been passable had it not been so…chunky. Anyway, come to find out that Thera was talking about a different place entirely. Dong Huong’s: an excellent store for the attic hoarder in your life who loves dried seafood? It’s possible. I’m sticking to my tamarind juice.

By the way, I started Grad School  Pretty good so far. I miss my sister! I’m hatching plans to take the train to Gotham City this fall.

ymca sheepishness

yesterday i copped out and joined the Y. i actually have to pass by a prayer board and chapel with a huge american flag in it before i can get in the pool! including uncg and nearby community pool (suitably named Grimsley), i just can’t beat the hours, size, number of lanes, and lack of decaying refuse at the bottom. i get the college price so it’s pretty cheap. it’s ok cause i know all those motivational posters basically translate to this, right?

zzzz. i’m so glad for a 3-day weekend coming up. i’m thankful for my assistanceship, but cubicle work is startin’ to get to me. lowercase typing with left hand cause I got some kind of weird carpal tunnel thing with the right hand and it feels like a claw.

MFA: on the bright side

So, I got into an MFA creative writing program. For a year and half before this I wrote and edited like an insane person, read books about programs, visited websites that told me how slim of a chance it was that I would get into any programs at all. I don’t know where all of these scare tactics came from, but there are a lot of them out there. That attitude of exclusivity is a major turn-off to me about the writing world.

So I’m in, right? Where are the streamers and dancing girls? Now I’m bombarded by messages that MFA programs won’t get me a job, even though from what I can tell it can be just as hard to get a spot in one of the good programs as to get into a decent medical school (or harder).

I don’t need a 400k/year job. Just a little charm. And just moving to a bigger place and trying something new has brought back quite a bit of it already.

Girls! Girls! Girls!

Taking West Wendover out towards I-40, I emerged from the tree-shaded residential roads around UNCG to an area thick with car dealerships, chain motels, and some kind of weird cabaret called Twilight Fuzzies or something. There was a picture of an airbrushed blond lady on the sign with gigantor yellow hair and a scary expression.

Turning off from that strip, I found the Best Buy, and browsed the laptop section. On my way out, I picked up ”Exile in Guyville,” Liz Phair’s album of 1993 that was recently re-released with a few B-sides. I’ve heard it in bits and pieces and always wanted to own a copy.

See-monkeys, do-monkeys
Story of my life
Send three bucks to a comic book
Get a house, car and wife
Send three bucks to a comic book
Get a house, car and wife

“Gunshy,” above, seemed especially still relevant, despite the fifteen year gap, when I was navigating the monstrous consumer-driven boxes of West Wendover. A lot of people focus on the novelty of a woman using lots of cuss words and writing a songs like “Fuck and Run,” but beyond that, I think these songs are challenging to notions of empowerment and gender today. That Phair can present as femme and use domineering, base language directed toward male interests (but not in the silicone dominatrix way) still shocks. That she can reveal vulnerability and not be a total jerk while doing this is also refreshing. Even the cashier at Best Buy pointed to one of the album tracks on the CD insert and said, ”Aren’t you surprised they didn’t ‘bleep this out?’”

(I’m eliding Phair’s next turn to Capitol Records, which was less subversive…but she’s back on an independent label again so that’s cool.)

Instead of a pop-ish trip to strip mall America, this husky, lo-fi album is better suited to a golden late afternoon sipping bourbon & water and giving it your undivided attention. Wish that was today, but I still have a few more hours to log in my cube until my weekend…

weather and other patterns

5 minutes ago on weather.com…preparing myself for another pair of soaked shoes.

This Saturday I’ll celebrate my three week anniversary of living in Greensboro! Already I’ve been pummeled by hail twice, caught twice and soaked by two thunderstorms, and seen two rainbows.  With no mountains to guard us, the weather here is more problematic and delightful than in the Shenandoah Valley. The wild, sometimes dramatic nimbus clouds giving way to intense heat and light– all of this suits my desire for excitement and variety well.