Oops

Ha.

I just re-sent my paper for Psychodynamics.

Turns out that the e-mail I sent my professor did not have my paper attached.

This lady can write a scintillating amazing theoretical paper and forget to attach it apparently.

Jesus on a pogo stick.

I actually don’t think this was my issue, it’s the system, no I’m not passing the buck, I’ve had this issue before when I have directly responded to this self same professor through the school’s platform–Canvas.

So.

I just sent it off again through Canvas in case it was user error and also through my own g-mail account, just in case.

I had a horrid moment, but it passed quickly, when I thought, please let me have saved that paper, which of course I had, and then realized I know how to retrieve something from the trash had I accidentally trashed it.

Which was not the case.

So.

Now I’m officially done.

Just slightly anti-climatic.

Ha.

I am just a little tired, having not really had a weekend to decompress, just doing all the papers and finals and such, and now back to work today.

But that being said I realized a whole bunch of stuff.

Number one.

I’m going to New York in three days!

Fuck I’m so excited and I have resolved that this is the the grand way to incentivize myself to get through each semester–plan a trip somewhere two weeks following the last weekend of classes.

This gives me a carrot and also forces me to complete the work before leaving for the trip.

It’s perfect and I am just over the moon that I am letting myself take the time to do this and go.

Last time I was in New York I was still coming off that horrible ankle injury I had.

I really couldn’t walk as much or nearly as fast as I wanted.

It was bad.

It blew up a few times.

I remember my friend taking a look at it and demanding I sit down.

Yeah.

Like that.

Now.

Well.

I’m in some fine health.

Feeling sore, but that’s just from having done yoga today, three days in a row people, yes.

Tomorrow I’m probably going to take the day off, sleep in.

I can actually sleep in.

I don’t have to get up early and read for school or work on a paper, I can just get up and do my writing in the morning and then, off to work.

Second big thing that I realized.

It’s Memorial Day the 30th!

I will have a three day weekend right after my four day weekend.

I’m basically getting two Mondays off in a row.

Hallelujah!

I’m quite excited for that.

And third.

The boys are in school until June 3rd.

So the rest of the month I will be working my “normal” 35 hour week.

I’ll have mornings off for the rest of the month.

Come summer vacation for the boys I will be switching up my hours for the family–10a.m.-6p.m.

Although the mom wants to keep one day a week with me starting late so she and the dad can have a date night dinner night out with out the boys.

We haven’t figured out what night that is yet.

But it makes sense that’s it’s probably going to be Friday.

I ain’t gonna fuss my head with the logistics right now.

Suffice to say I have some spare time this month that I was not expecting since I’m done with my school for the year and the boys are still in theirs and there’s a holiday in the month.

I am very happy and very grateful for that.

I feel like I have earned some down time.

I’ll get my fill of doing yoga and sleeping and oh!

PLEASURE READING!

Oh.

How I have missed reading whatever the fuck I want to read.

I have a friend who just sent me some work to read over and I was like, ugh, I don’t have time, then, wait, ha!  Yes I do, I can totally read this whenever the hell I want.

Plus, I’ll have it on the plane with me to New York, it’s a bit of a long piece.

I’m always super flattered when he wants me to read his work, he’s a great writer and I find no little satisfaction in being asked to read what he’s working on before he sends it out.

I suspect he’ll get a publishing contract for a book long before I do.

I’ll get mine too, but I’m not worried about it.

Not right now.

Although, it would behoove me to write somethings that are not scholarly pieces over the summer, some poetry, some short stories, or even go back over some of my work that I haven’t gotten published yet.

I want to actually put together a chap book of poems including the pieces that I did last fall for my patron I met at Burning Man.

He gave me permission to submit it out into the world and I have not since I have been so busy with school, I have not submitted a thing all this past year so focused on school have I been.

It’s beginning to sink in.

This not being in school for the summer.

It feels really nice.

The break will go by fast, I am sure, but I am going to suck every last drop of juice out of it.

I’m going to have a full, busy, playful, raucous summer.

I’m going to see friends.

Go dancing.

Hit up museums.

Write poetry.

Dye my hair pink again.

Just because I can’t go to Burning Man doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have a hair party.

I’m going to date and get laid and make the fuck out like a school girl on summer break.

Because I am one!

There’s got to be a drive in movie for me somewhere to go to!

I’m going to walk on the beach, hike, play in the sand.

I’ll have a bonfire.

I’m going to go to shows.

I’m going to hang out in coffee shops.

I’m just going to have fun.

And be light and let whatever happens happen.

I will meet my life with joy.

Happiness.

Freedom.

All the things.

Yes.

Darling.

All the things.

 

School’s Out For Summer!

I’m done!

I’m done!

I’m done!

Take that Psychodynamic Lacanian theoretical paper, I see you, raise you a parental confrontation, a castration complex, and further, you can’t squash my jouissance.

Ha!

I slay you paper dragon.

“That was fast!” my friend in cohort text me back after I gleefully texted her to let her know I had finished my Psychodynamic’s paper.

It was.

And still I am surprised at how fast I can write.

It doesn’t always mean it’s good, I’ve some modicum of humility, not much, but some, but it does mean that I am capable of doing the work in an efficient manner.

And.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

I had done the reading.

I had taken good notes in class.

I participated in class.

So when I needed to review the material and I did not know what I was going to write on, I did not in fact, write on the topic that I was going to, I google searched it and there were too many theoretical papers already out there.

So.

I used an experience from my youth and wrote about that.

I actually thanked God after the paper was finished for being able to use the traumatic event to write a positive piece.

I am amazed.

Constantly.

By how the wreckage and dreck of my past can be put to use.

“Carmen,” a famous writer once told me, “most writers would kill to have the material you work with.”

Meaning that I have lived a lot of life and have had a lot of experiences.

Some of them dramatic, traumatic and packed with pain.

Pain that I have been able to turn to something else.

If not gold, a kind of beautiful word garden that I can pick and choose what I will present in this bouquet of meaning and language.

I love poetry and words and sonnets and prose and sex and eros and flowers and life and apples and culture and French and travel and all these things add up to something, more than who I am and all of them inform me and build me and shape me.

I am so many things.

I am over the moon to be finished with my first year of graduate school.

I am officially a second year student now.

I am proud of the effort I put in and aware that I did not do any of it on my own.

It was with joy and humor that I spoke with one of my friends today from my cohort.

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said, so and so and I messaged and text and I know people are skyping, I’m totally fine with going over the take home with you.”

We did it together.

I had already turned in my final but I was more than willing to help my friend.

And when I think about all the help I had getting through this first year I am blown away with gratitude.

Friends who bought me groceries when I had to go down in hours at work and I hadn’t gotten my financial aid disbursement yet.

Friends who let me study in their living room when there was a kid’s birthday party here at the house with some many children it was like being inside a bouncy house trying to study.

Friends who bought me readers from Copy Central.

Friends who gave me rides to and from classes.

Friends who commiserated with me about the amount of work involved and how they did it, my nurse and doctor friends, my lawyer friends, my fellows in cohort.

My employers for being flexible and once a month letting me have off on Fridays so I could go to classes all day.

All the people who cheered me along the way and said, you can do it!

I did it.

Thank you friends!

I couldn’t, really, have done it without you.

That is not to down play the amount of work I did.

I did a lot of fucking work.

I showed up consistently, I didn’t miss a single class (which also helps me in writing the papers, let’s be honest, it’s a lot easier to stay on top of things if you are in the classroom, the importance of every class when it’s an intensive full time program taught on the weekend is huge), I did all my readings, well almost all of them, I may have missed an article here or there, but I really read all the books and texts and the majority, over 95% of the readers, I turned in every paper on time and I showed up for every project I had to present on time and prepared.

Yeah.

I know.

Fucking perfectionist.

“Now you can relax,” a friend text me.

Yeah.

Sure.

How though?

It’s going to take me a minute to unwind from all of this, I already know that, it feels very surreal to have all the work done when I consider that over the past year there was always something I had to be working on.

Going back to full time work is going to feel like a vacation.

Speaking of vacation.

New York in four days!

OMG.

I’m fucking going to New York.

I can finally get excited about it.

I have all my work done.

“That paper isn’t due yet, though, not for two weeks,” my friend text me when I said I was going to do the Psychodynamic paper today.

Yup.

Except that I will be in New York next weekend and I don’t want it over my head and I didn’t want to have to worry about carving out time after I got back from the trip either.

Although.

Heh.

I was a smart cookie.

I’m going to be coming back really early on Monday morning, flying out of JFK at 7:30 a.m.

What with the time change it will be 9:30 a.m. or something like that, and I asked off for the whole day from work.

Yup.

A full day to decompress from the trip and not force myself right back into the grind.

I’ll get to ease back in.

Super grateful I planned that out.

I have also made loose plans for the trip.

Friday I will get up and walk around Clinton Park, the area I’m staying in, grab some coffee and eat some breakfast and then make my way around Brooklyn.

I’m just going to wander.

I have an 8p.m. date with a friend to go do the deal in Williamsburg at Northside, so I figure  I’ll just mosey about Brooklyn all day Friday.

Hit the vintage shops.

Hit the coffee shops.

Wander around the Brooklyn Botanical garden.

Maybe pop into the Brooklyn Museum.

Go to book stores.

I’m very tempted to also hop over to Green Point and see if I can get into Three Kings Tattoo for some fresh ink.  I wouldn’t be able to get a tattoo that day, I’d have to go back after the consultation but they’re open late and I was thinking late Sunday I could get the work done.

It’s a thought, I have very tentative ideas about a piece.

I just like the idea of getting a piece done there, as I have in Paris now twice, it would be fun to add New York to the geographic map of my meandering travel life.

Then Saturday hit the city.

I want to go to the Guggenheim and the MOMA.

I know that’s a lot of museum to do in one day, but I’m on my own and I’m good company and I walk fast, I take the subway into New York, I hit the MOMA first, it closes earlier than the Guggenheim which will be open later, then onto the Guggenheim.

I drink lots of coffee.

I see art.

I buy notes books and take pictures of graffiti and get stickers.

I walk.

I soak it the fuck up.

I eat what ever I want.

Raw oysters.

I drink bubbly water till the cows come home.

I go do the deal somewhere if it makes sense to do so.

I plan on doing the new Whitney on Sunday and then walking the High Line Park and wandering around the little independent galleries around Chelsea.

If I decide to get a tattoo I head back over to Green Point and do that.

Part of me also wants to go to Coney Island.

But I’m not sure.

And I think that’s something to do with another person, ride the Ferris Wheel, go on the tilt-a-whirl, ride the Cyclone, seems like I would want a person to do that with.

Museums and walking about and exploring though.

That’s the deal.

That is my celebration.

I gave myself a trip to New York when I headed into the beginning of this semester.

I am so glad I did.

I am so excited to do this for myself.

I’m so grateful I made it through the school year.

Here’s to the beginning of my awesome summer vacation.

I have no idea where it’s going to go.

I just know I earned it.

And.

It’s going to be fucking awesome.

It already is!

You Get Around

I do.

“I follow you on Facebook and read your blogs, it’s good to see you in person, you really cram a lot of stuff into your day,” he told me as we were filing out of the room tonight.

I smiled.

I believe I thanked him for reading.

It’s nice to know that folks read these things I put out into the Universe, so often without much thought or effort, it would seem.

Although there is always much thought.

The effort really has to do with sitting down at the keyboard and figuring out a title.

Once I have a title, I don’t need anything.

I knew I was going to be writing “Inbound to Richmond District” the minute I saw it on the NextBus app.

There was something really musical about it to my ears.

And I do get around, but I suspect, many of us do, I just happen to document the getting around.

This brought to mind all the places I have lived in San Francisco as I enter my second year of residing in one spot.

It’s about a year and three-quarters, Labor Day weekend, just after Burning Man, will mark two years here in my little studio by the sea.

I can’t remember the last time I lived in one spot for two years.

It must have been when I was up in Nob Hill and technically I did move, albeit across the hall, but that was a move and challenging in its own ways.

I also may have resided at 23rd and Capp for two years, but I’m not certain I did, it feels like it was two years.

But as I explained to my charge today, “feelings are not facts,” I said with a smile and also relayed the message that “this too shall pass, the good news is you will have feelings, the bad news is you will have feelings.”

Then I tickled the grumpy out of him.

He is just such a sweet pie.

“Carmen! Carmen! Carmen! You have a star in your hair!” He excitedly reported to me.

“I do!” I replied, “what color is it?”

“Glittery!”

Heh.

Close enough kid.

“Silver,” I said, “you like stars, don’t you.”

“Yes!” He said and picked up his stuffed cat, “Meow Meow really likes stars too,” then he began to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, replacing the twinkle twinkle part with meows.”

Oh my god.

The cute.

Stop.

Wait, don’t stop.

“Stars are beautiful, you are beautiful,” he continued, “you must be a star.”

I just about fell out of the bed.

I was waking him up from his afternoon nap.

“You must be a star too,” I said and squeezed his little paw in mine, “Meow Meow is definitely a star as well.”

“Meow!” He said and kissed me.

My job might tire me the fuck out, but it is surely satisfying, yes, yes it is.

We had adventures to the park, both Dolores Park–in the morning, and Mission Playground in the afternoon, plus a trip to BiRite and to the market on the corner.

It made me remember when I discovered all these places when I first moved to San Francisco.

All the sites, the personal treasure map of love that San Francisco has imprinted on my heart.

The first time I went to Dolores Park was before I lived in the city, so that must have been in 2000 or possibly 2001.

Or The Elbow Room.

Blondie’s.

Casanova’s.

Kilo Watt.

Dalva.

The Roxie Theater.

When the New College was still the New College and I could still go to Osento and take a hot tub.

I still say I need to go to Osento sometime soon and then realize once again that it is gone.

It actually, or where it used to be, abuts the property of the people I work for.

I might have been naked on the roof of the spa soaking in the steam on a wood bench catching twinkling stars in between the clots of fog moving over the courtyard, the two wood barrel saunas, the outdoor shower, and the cold plunge–my current boss in her backyard hanging out on the other side of the fence.

I remember times when I was the only person there.

It was lovely.

You may have gathered that I lived a good portion of my time in the Mission.

My first residence in San Francisco–Labor Day weekend–it’s like my personal version of New Years, was a two month sublet at 20th and York.

I stayed past my two months and when another woman moved out of the room downstairs, I took it over.

I think I was paying $650 with everything included.

Granted there were five ladies living there, but we each had our own space carved out, technically the house was a three bedroom–all three upstairs–but one of the girls had carved out a weird little bedroom out of the kitchen pantry and then there was the studio/inlaw in the basement that I had.

It was great.

Until the house was sold and there was an owner move in and in less than two months we had to all get out.

I think it was actually 45 days, it happened so fast.

I found a room on craisglist, for less than I was actually paying at the house with all the girls, on 22nd and Alabama with a wild woman from Northern Italy who had been living in the house so long that she basically paid her rent by collecting from the two room mates and turning around and paying the landlord.

I could have cared less.

I was paying $500 a month for a huge room and access to the kitchen, bathroom, the gigantic glassed in back porch, where I spent three agonizing weeks drifting in a hammock, sleeping like the dead, out sick from work with Mono when I was 31.

MONO.

At freaking 31.

And it was my second time having it.

I had it the first time when I was 17.

Good times.

While I was living at 22nd and Alabama I had a friend turn me on to cocaine and his dealers number.

After some months of battling a rapidly growing habit, I decided, like a truly rational addict, that I should move out because I had the opportunity to move into a big beautiful house on 25th and Potrero (you would have never guessed how lovely the house was from the facade on Potrero–wood floors, Italian marble, skylights, pocket doors, fireplaces in two rooms, an office, two bedrooms, one and a half baths, laundry in the basement and the prettiest garden in the back) for $1100 a month.

That’s what my problem was!

My rent was too cheap!

If I just moved somewhere that was more than double my rent then I wouldn’t spend as much money on blow.

That didn’t work out so well.

But I did subsequently hit my bottom.

And the rest.

Well is his (her) story.

And I got around a lot after that as well.

Living at the following places:

Kingston and 30th.

Potrero and 26th.

Palou and 3rd.

Capp and 23rd Street.

Washington and Taylor.

Not once, but twice–the infamous move across the hall.

Homeless for three months couch surfing when I quit my high paying nanny job and went to work at bike shop in the Mission (crashed in the attic of a former family I nannied for on 25th and New Hampshire, “housesat” for a month at a friend of friend’s house that I met only once at a wedding, where I did her make up for the ceremony on a tiny side street at the bottom of Bernal Hill, and then on the couch of my friend who lives in Nob Hill on Clay Street) making half the salary I had been used to.

Then a teeny tiny box of an in-law in the Mission on 22nd and Folsom.

My bathroom was my kitchen was my garage (I hung my bicycle on a rack above the toilet).

After that.

Graceland in East Oakland for two months.

Then Paris–Rue Bellefond–in the bobo (bohemian bourgeoise) arrondissement, the 9th, just between Square D’Anvers and Cadet Metro Station for six months.

Then back to East Oakland for two, maybe three (?) months.

Can you say culture shock?

And finally.

Here.

46th Avenue between Judah and Irving Street.

And yes.

I moved in right after Labor Day weekend.

Where the hipsters meet the sea and the surfers rule the coffee shops.

And one wild woman with curly hair (pink!) rides out each day (well five out of seven anyway) six and a half miles, right back to the Mission, on her sparkle-pony whip of a bicycle.

I may be living in the same spot for a little while.

But.

I still get around.