zoëtrope

David Sedaris is a Good Man

2009-06-18T20:42:00.002-06:00

This afternoon I had to good fortune to be able to see David Sedaris read at Santa Fe's local bookstore, Collected Works. I arrived early, as I knew there would be hoards of people there, around 4 p.m. I purchased my copy of When You Are Engulfed in Flames, as well as two other books, and headed to find a seat. I waited a few minutes with some friends I met there and David appeared, doing a "sound check" with the very simple PA system (a tiny amp). He proceeded to announce over the speaker, to the then small crowd, that he would pay someone $5 to mend a pair of pants he had with him (not the ones he had on). My hand automatically shot up. He told me also that he would sign my book first. So I went over to the table where the pants were kept and he got out a tiny sewing kit and signed my book, handing me the $5 tucked inside the book's pages.

"Are you from here?" he asked me as he drew in the pages of his book.

"Yeah, I live here. Just graduated from the college."

"Oh yeah?"

"Creative writing."

"Cool. Zoe, I have a graduation present for you." He reached below him and pulled up a plastic bag containing several items: tiny shampoo from a hotel in LA, a pink knitted pouch.

"I'll go with the bag," I said at the request of my friends who still sat in the audience.

He slipped my signed book inside and smiled at me. Then I went to my seat and worked at mending his very expensive trousers. I did a fine job, if I say so myself.

The store filled up and the reading began. He was hilarious, charming, and real.

What a great evening!

Graduation: Spring 2009!

2009-05-23T23:18:00.003-06:00

Greetings. I know it has been a while since I last posted. Forgive me, for I have been very busy moving into my new apartment. [Post with pictures to follow!]

Graduation was a week ago. May 16th. I attended the official ceremony at the Community College. Many of us chose that route, rather than the unsanctioned, on-campus ceremony. I was glad to see at least half of us there.

So here are some facts: I graduated, according to the graduation program, with the highest grade in my department's class.

I received my BA in Creative Writing, Magna Cum Laude (not quite perfect, but almost!).

Also, despite this past semester being completely insane because of Glyph, the school closing, life in general, I received a 4.0! Wooooooo!

The ceremony itself was mostly uninteresting. However, the administration did well to choose Greg Glazner (founder of the Creative Writing program at the college, current faculty member, published poet, beloved member of the CSF community) as the faculty speaker. His speech felt mostly directed to the Creative Writing students, which was fine as I am one, but it spoke beautifully of the school in general. He choked up and so did I. Although I only had him as a professor this term, I really grew to appreciate him and the work he's done for the school I love. Matt Donovan was also there, however, the other Creative Writing faculty did not attend for various reasons.

I felt really badly for the CMP (music) students. There were only 3 of them there! And that department is large--all the other ones were at the on-campus ceremony and so were there teachers. I'm sure they felt weird about that.

After the ceremony my bff Maggie and I bopped around doing a few things, and then we had a huge party at my house. Tons of people were there and we even had these two musicians who were super cool and cooky. I had a great time. :)

Oh, and a note about my photograph above. You'll see some Mardi Gras beads around my neck. I began my college journey in New Orleans, at Loyola University. My family felt it was only right that I ended my college journey with a hint of New Orleans present. I was really touched by that. You'll also note my Magna Cum Laude silver cord. ;)

Told Ya So...

2009-05-10T22:27:00.004-06:00

I told you my plans would change, didn't I?

Well, while working at the Lensic the other day (a rather slow day) I perused grad programs online and realized what would be an excellent next move for me. Publishing! DUH!

I got excited because I found a certificate program in Publishing at Harvard, but they're phasing it out! Ugh!

However... there is an M.S. in Publishing at NYU, and that seems most likely and doable. I also saw programs at BU and Emerson. I definitely want to be on the East Coast. I'm sure there are other fine programs, but I haven't fully investigated this new avenue yet.

This semester I was the co-editor of CSF's literary magazine, Glyph (the current issue's cover is posted here). Although it was a crazy, hectic and often times frustrating experience, I really do value every minute I spent creating it. I was so pleased when I was chosen to co-edit the magazine, as editing has always been something I was good at and enjoyed. I also don't get that many leadership opportunities, and it was fun to be in charge. :) My co-editor, Rex, also worked really hard on the endeavor. (He, unfortunately, had put up with me being a bossy, madwoman! Hah). We didn't always get along during the process, but the outcome was really great. Not only had we created a tangible book with great writing on its pages, but we also formed a friendship. Yay!

Creating Glyph was extremely time consuming. We only had 'til February something to complete the whole thing, and we only started choosing the work late January. Scheduling was nuts! 95% of my time was spent doing something for the magazine in that month. All other school work took a backseat.

Rex and I, and the Glyph class, and Robin and Don, the Glyph professors, had to choose what work would get in the magazine. Then the chosen work went to copy editors, proof readers, etc. and then finally back to Rex and I for our final eyes. There was also event planning, ad-getting, designing and assembling that had to take place.

The best part of the process, I think, and I believe Rex would agree, was getting to work directly with the authors of the chosen work. Rex took the prose writers, I the poets, and we met and discussed edits and revisions. While I met with my authors, I realized how much I enjoy talking about writing and helping people improve their own without being too directive. I think this process really ensures the quality of the work going into the publication.

Several trips to Sunstone Press (the publishers) were made where Rex and I thought we were finished, and then we were sent back to fix formatting issues. Finally we worked everything out, we waited, and then we received proofs.

When the finished copies of the magazine were distributed in Glyph class, I was not notified to come to class that day, and I didn't get my first copy until the following afternoon. I got a few texts from people in the class telling me I had missed out. Boo. I wish I'd have been there for that moment. But when I got my hands on my copy of the magazine I beamed with pride. This was like my child, I had birthed this thing, this beautiful magazine.

Then there was the Glyph event, Glyph's 21st birthday party, the unveiling. Rex and I played emcee and we also both read our work, as we'd both received prizes that the Creative Writing professors award to a select few of the writers in Glyph. I got honorable mention in poetry and Rex got 2nd place fiction prize. We introduced each other as well as the other readers--writing intro's isn't as easy as one may think.

After the reading we all headed over to O'Shaughnessy for the party--food, dancing, smoking cigarettes with professors! What a great night!

It was a great relief to have the magazine completed. I had done the same thing in high school: editor in chief of Prism. I look back at that thing and see how much I have grown as a writer and editor. How I have grown as a human. Nevertheless, I am proud of both publications.

Back to the main point of this post... So Publishing seems like the right field to enter into. I will go and get that MFA in Writing someday, but for now, Publishing seems practical and interesting. Hopefully I can bust out some decent GRE scores and get into one of these programs! Wish me luck!

A Current Update of Future Plans

2009-05-01T11:25:00.002-06:00

Every 3 months or so the plans I make for my future change. Not long ago I thought I was going to run away to Spain. Then I thought it'd be a fine idea to take some psychology classes and then apply for an MA in Counseling at Southwestern College here in Santa Fe.

The current future plan is to go to South Africa sometime in the Winter, as it is their summer, and explore a culture much different from my own. I have family friends there. The thing is, I need to find some sort of program to attend during the day. It is still a very dangerous country, and apparently I can't just explore Capetown, as I wished.

But for now, I am staying in Santa Fe. Hopefully over the summer I will get my act together, decide what I want to attend graduate school for, and apply in the Fall. I'm having a hard time figuring out what to study because I have a lot of varying interests. I know I don't want to go straight into an MFA program in Writing--it's not recommended for fresh-out-of-undergrad writers to do so. I am going to have to wait on that. But I know I can't stay out of school for long, not because I wouldn't go back if I waited too long, but because academia is a very safe (financially and otherwise) environment to be in and I enjoy it.

It is difficult to decide on a future career at this point in my life. There are many avenues I wish to explore, but some, I realize, will just remain curiosities/ hobbies. Dance, theatre, photography and music are all in that category, sadly. But I could see myself studying psychology, or literature, or philosophy. If only I could find an amlgam program: blending literature, philosophy and creative writing. A friend suggested I look into Comparative Lit. Not something I had considered before, but may be the right program for me.

I thought, for a time, that studying philosophy (contemporary mostly, though the pre-Socratics and Socratics do interest me highly) would not be that beneficial to my future career, and would merely be an intellectual indulgence. But now, as I am reading more and applying philosophical thought to literature, I really do see how studying these philosophers more closely would benefit me as a writer, a poet specifically.

Can't quite think about these future plans yet though, as the semester is "winding"down (more like hurtling) and I must fry these fish before I can fry the bigger ones.

Senior Reading

2009-04-30T01:32:00.004-06:00

Edit on 5/23/09: Above is a photograph of my Senior Reading manuscript. Not only did I write the words inside, but I also handmade the book. :) The manuscript's title is "Broken Pieces of Church."

Last night was my Senior Reading. At CSF, in the Creative Writing department, each senior participates in an evening where they, and several others, read some of the work they've been crafting over the years. I read with Lauren Gray, my wife and future roommate, Liz McLister, and A.J. Sexton. We were a very diverse group, not only varying in subject matter, but style. I think everyone read beautifully and the audience seemed really receptive to all the work.

I can't speak much to my own performance, but I, at least, felt very good about it. I read for 20 minutes that included two poems, two prose non-fiction pieces, and one cross-genre piece. The first four pieces are heavily drafted, but the new piece, currently titled "Baptism," is brand new.

I have not really worked in the cross-genre modality before, but taking Greg Glazner's Cross-Genre Writers class has really open and expanded my mind regarding form. We began that class by reading cross-genre work produced by famous writers: Dave Eggers, C.D. Wright, Nick Flynn, Ben Marcus, Milan Kundera and more. I'd read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius before, but never had I read anything like Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being--what a fascinating, compelling project. I have tended to be most interested in philosophy lately--so his "novel" really appealed to my reader sensibility.

Back to the point of this point... it really was a wonderful reading. I felt comfortable at the podium, orating my creative work to a rather large audience. I was nervous but I think I did a pretty good job at breathing and making sure to read slowly and clearly.

I would like to share with you all the work that I read at my Senior Reading. As a note, I may repost these pieces shortly, depending on how my final revisions for my Senior Manuscript take shape. Forgive, also, any strangeness in formatting--poetry and html do not always mix, I fear.

Mémoire Involuntaire or, Upon Noticing a Woman

Her heavy scent rests in the air before your nostrils

Take an easy breath, send the particles flying

Pique the olfactory, the limbic—

A bowl of potpourri sits on a doily,

On an end table full of pictures of you—

The candy dish

A tiny bible

A lion and lamb statuette

Your grandmother’s living room:

Peppery sweet, scripture-soaked walls

The woman stands in her bathroom: marble-white

Soaks herself in French perfume,

Drinks it like holy water

Grandmothers shrink

Hug them

And your face is buried—

Your grandmother’s house is toxic:

Cinnamon bark

Dried rose petals

Ammonium

The woman’s husband searches

Tucks his snout into every possible crook of her body—

Nuzzling all the places that smell of clean skin

Try renting your grandmother’s apartment—

You can’t

She fingers her way through the walls

Soon as you step off the elevator

She exhales—

The wall paper dampens, peels

Run a hot bath

She pours oil into the water

And when your eyes close—

Family Portrait Pt. 1 Grandma

Breakfast is scrambled eggs, bacon, buttermilk biscuits, from scratch, and white peppered gravy. The dark haired little girl picks up a piece of the oily bacon and takes a meager bite. Every time her vegetarian mother sees her doing this when she too is having breakfast with Grandma, she slightly scolds her with, “You’re eating Wilbur, you know.” The little girl swallows the bacon hard, her grandmother noticing the guilt on her face.

“Now, what’s wrong with that bacon?” She inspects hers. “Looks fine to me. Eat it. It’s good for you.” The little girl pokes her tongue at the salty strip between her fingers, then decides to chew and swallow it quickly, gratefully moving on to the squishy eggs and still-hot-in-the-middle biscuits.

The grandmother decides the little girl must take a bath before her mom picks her up. The little girl feels clean enough, but her grandmother insists. In the small bathroom she makes the girl sit on the toilet and grabs a pair of nail clippers from the medicine cabinet.

“Hold still,” Grandma says, not yet making contact with the girl’s thin toenails.

“Ow, ow, ow.” The girl bounces her feet up and down in an effort to fend off her grandmother’s attacking clippers.

“You know,” Grandma says, “if you don’t trim your toenails they will grow out through your shoes.” The girl’s eyes narrow in suspicion, and then widen as she imagines gnarled toenails inches long poking through a pair of Reeboks.

Grandma draws water for the bath and the girl hops in, her tiny naked body goose-bumping all over with the adjustment to the hot water.

“Wash your twat,” says her grandmother over her shoulder and takes out her dentures to brush them. The girl slides a bar of Dial soap up her arms, her chest, down her stomach and lower. A little white film remains on her skin with each pass of the soap, resembling the slimy trail a snail leaves behind.

The girl steps out of the tub and sits on the toilet to pee. It burns. Everything is different at her grandmother’s house. Everything smells strongly.

Many, many years later her grandmother passes away gently. Her mother, cousin and uncle take her grandmother’s cremated remains up a Santa Fe mountain. The hike is long , for her, and she sweats hard, slipping occasionally in a worn pair of Converse, no socks. Five crows land in a clearing, a sign to the girl’s mother that this is the right location to give her mother eternal rest. The girl’s uncle digs in the earth, and she and her cousin collect rocks to adorn the space. They pour most of her into the red soil, sprinkling the rest of her remains around the clearing. The four trek back down the mountain, less one member of the family, and the girl looks up, unsure she feels right about leaving her grandmother up there. The girl not anticipating her future move to Santa Fe, and the closeness she would soon have with her grandmother again.

Self Portrait as Frida Kahlo

Crowblack above the eyes—

My face

as I become Her:

All flowered and hands

Where the garland of thorns—?

Or where

The other me, that me holding

Myself

A buck stock-still in a tree tunnel

No—

Me as deer woman

Pricked to bleeding

Arrow tips, or hand carved nails:

The acupuncture

of a cracked landscape

(torso )

Metal encircles the spine

like ribbons

A halo of my undoing

Family Portrait Pt. 2 Big Mama

Some distance outside of Memphis’s city limits lies the sprawling suburbia known as Cordova. There is a house there, not unlike the ones that surround it in a mostly tree-less neighborhood. Inside the house are needlepoint psalms, praying angel statues, heavy, floral drapery, and the kind of white carpet that usually requires a shoes-off policy. A teenage, dark haired girl sits in a hospital-style bed along side her 90 something year old great grandmother in one of many bedrooms. The young girl holds tweezers up to her Big Mama’s chin, gripping a hair and pulling timidly.

“Eesh, sorry, that must have hurt,” the girl says.

“Just grab hold of one and yank it.”

The girl uses one hand to smooth out the deep grooves in Big Mama’s chin, and again grips a wiry hair with the other.

“Okay,” she says. “One, two…” On three she pulls at the hair, but ends up giving it a nice curl, rather than extracting it from the skin.

“Just pull harder.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“It won’t hurt me.” Big Mama takes her rippled fingernails to one of the hairs and removes it from her chin with ease. “See, it don’t hurt.”

The girl takes a breath. Readies a hair protruding from a mole between the two sides of the tweezers, and smoothly uproots the thick thing.

“Keep going. I don’t want any of those buggers left,” Big Mama states, wiping white away from the corners of her mouth with a tissue, as all old ladies seem to do.

Just over a year later the girl sits in the pews of a small chapel in Tiptonville, Tennessee staring past the Baptist minister to the open, horrible casket of her deceased great grandmother. It wasn’t supposed to be open, the girl never understood the fascination people seemed to have with corpses. The girl stares down the pew, noting the child-like nature of her grandmother’s sobs. Her grandmother and great grandmother were only 16 years apart, more like sisters than mother and daughter. Big Mama is laid to rest, her soul already in Heaven with Jesus, according to the sermon being delivered by the generic southern minister.

For a dead body she looks rather comical, her face molded into an unnatural grin, eyes shut and dusted with blue powder… her cheeks rouged as though flushing with embarrassment. Perhaps she’s embarrassed that her grand daughter thought it was a fine idea to lay her out all exposed like that, on display. And for whom, really? The people who fill the small chapel are unrecognizable to the girl, anyone comes out of the woodwork for a funeral, she supposes. Perhaps her great grandmother is a trophy given to the family as congratulations for dealing with death. Or is it something else, a human need to see death, but in a softer form? Painted up, powdered, sanitized.

The girl is transfixed on the bit of her Big Mama’s face that protrudes from the coffin. Bits of “Jesus will meet her at the gates,” and “she was a kindly woman” flit by her, but she thinks of Big Mama hacking snakes up with shovels, of Big Mama patching the roof at age 80 something. Of the five dollar bills she would slip into the girl’s hand after a visit. Or Big Mama’s tongue dipping into a tin of snuff. These things, to the girl, are what need to be said, these are the snapshots best remembered and cared for.

Baptism

That heavy water—

Water like blood,

Salt-tasting—

I have no hands to press

Against you

No teeth

How many times will I be born?

Changed with morning,

Floating on pieces of broken church

“I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Mark Chapter 1, verse 8

Walk me down

Rough stone steps

Breathe the water, you say

I am with you, you say

“In many sources, the term [baptism] was used metaphorically to connote a sense of

being ‘overwhelmed’ or ‘flooded.”

In a washbasin

Or among the Cyprus knees

Or that deep, deep river

Rushes so fast nothing could live in it

Could suck you right on under

“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life.” Romans Chapter 6, verse 4

—

Fifty or so Mississippians dotting the bank of a shallow creek, or some at the bridge, umbrellas in hand. One could, at any moment, jump right off, slide right into—

Petticoats soak quickly, grab at the soft middles of the women, feet just beginning to sink into the delta mud.

Those too young look on from behind trees, or dip timid toes into the brackishness, only to be shooed away by the pastor, or his rotund wife, her bitty feet poking out beneath her Sunday Best.

The ladies hike their skirts as they wade to the other side, to be greeted by the open arms of the Lord. How obscene He must find them when they arrive there, all mud-covered, all skirt-flipped and exposed. Weeping, or perhaps what streaks their face is merely sweat for their effort. “Hallelujah!” they wail at their Birth.

Later that summer, when the heat of August has sucked up every bit of water in that creek and sent it, particlized, into the atmosphere (to suffocate), dainty once-white lady’s heels begin to show through the mud like clam shells.

—

Child of Mine
I call you in the water
And put my name on you

Child of Mine

Child of Mine
I claim you as my daughter
And you will always be
A child of Mine

Walk me down, Jesus, walk me down

First ankles, then knees, waist and armpit

The head breaching the water

Mmhmm, claim me as your daughter, mmhmm

Walk me down, Jesus, walk me down

One foot in front of the other ‘til they won’t grip the bottom of the lake

Tilt the head back, open mouth, suck deeply of the water

Mmhmm

Water hits larynx—a gasp and holding of breath

Throat spasms—a lack of oxygen to the blood

Hypoxemia—functions cease, blood turns acidic

Cardiac arrest—heart fails, brain swims

Larynx relaxes—water passes to lungs through nose and mouth

Aspiration—water soaks the lungs, the alveoli, like a sponge

—

Wall Doxey, Mississippi, 1992

My tiny body struggles to stay afloat in the dark lake. The water can only be 6 feet deep at the most where I thrash and gulp it down; and the dock is so close but I can’t quite reach it.

Water hits larynx—a gasp and holding of breath

Throat spasms—a lack of oxygen to the blood

And I’m gone. Mmhmm, claim me as your daughter, mmhmm… but momentarily, and then somehow brought back again on the shore. Water rushes back into my mouth and out through my nostrils. The tall cypruses wade in the water, their knees jutting up through the bright green film that sits around their waists like a skirt— they shadow the shoreline from a mostly clear sky.

And a big hand dipping into the water.

Keep on trusting in the Lord

Pulling the small thing up from the scruff of its fatty neck.

No matter what you face

What is this child to be called, the hand demands.

And keep your eyes on Jesus Christ

He is to be called Aaron. More hands. They reach to steady the baby’s kicking legs, not knowing that even this water can burn the eyes and throat.

And live in His sweet grace

—

You are walking through a heavy New Orleans rain. Night. Wet blacktop. At least the weeds growing through cracks in the sidewalk will flourish in the downpour. Puddles are unavoidable, deep. You trip into one and you feel your shoes flood. Flood like a storm cellar. The water, as it fills, is measured but devastatingly fast.

You arrive at a dank bar, stand in the doorway and drip your way to a stool. There you sit in soaked underwear, shifting uncomfortably in the wet-cool conditioned air.

Throw back a vodka, inhale it, come up from it—sputtering like the first time you swallowed too much water in the lake. Feel that burn in the back of the throat, that lurch in the pit of the stomach.

You swim back home that night, splashing. And in the morning, you are somewhere different. A field, a cracked open church. You sit up, bleary eyed, the stained glass windows a mere confetti sprinkled about you.

Scoop the fragmented glass

fine as the sand it once was

Pry the mouth open with the left hand

pour in a palm-full with the right

Fill the lungs with these disintegrated saints

an amalgam will form within you

heavier than lead

heavier than blood

You will be altered

A Recent Annoyance: The Graduation Debate

2009-04-30T00:27:00.003-06:00

In the devastating decline of the College of Santa Fe, a debate has emerged among students, faculty and administration over the plans for this year's commencement. For the past few years the college has held graduation in the tennis center, but this year, due to the financial crisis, we cannot afford to pay to hold it there.

The Santa Fe Community College has most generously donated their recreational facility to CSF so that we may hold graduation cost-free. However, many of the seniors (myself not included) are up in arms over having the commencement off-campus. They, perhaps, do not realize that many colleges do not hold their graduations on campus, and that it was only the recent past that CSF did. They wish to host the graduation on campus, on the quad, and then have a big party afterward. It's a nice idea, but I don't think they're taking into account the kind of planning it would take. Where are they going to get enough chairs, a P.A. system, a stage, etc.?

Recently I was at my workstudy job in the Greer Garson Theatre Box Office when a Santa Fe, New Mexican reporter, John Sena, asked if any of us were graduating seniors. I piped up and said that I was, so he took a few moments to get my opinion on the issue. I told him that I had received the emails from the rabble-rousing students, and that they'd made me roll my eyes. To me it seemed like they just wanted to cause trouble for the sake of it. I, for one, haven't the time to protest an off-campus graduation. Just a month ago we were worried we wouldn't be able to have a graduation at all. I am grateful to the community college that they are allowing us to use their facility.

Sena's article states:

Sullivan said the college spent $50,000 for its commencement ceremony each of the last two years, when it used the Shellaberger Tennis Center, which is on the college campus. This year, because the community college is waiving a rental fee and allowing the use of its equipment, the ceremony will cost $10,000, Sullivan said.

So you can see that having it on campus is not feasible. I'm sure it wouldn't cost quite that much to have graduation on the quad--but I have not heard one mention of how it would be funded.

I am quoted in this article:

"This e-mail made me roll my eyes a little bit," said Zoe Etkin, a senior in the creative writing department. She said seniors she's talked to agree with her and are glad to have it at the community college because more people will be able to attend.

We learn, when we are quoted by journalists, how are words can be misrepresented. I mentioned MANY other reasons why it was better to have it at the community college, which I later outlined in a rather lengthy comment respond to the article's online version. Unfortunately, the comment board quickly became a CSF bashing fest. I did my best to defend the school, and my experience there. Please check it out to see what kind of muckraking and hatefulness is most ignorantly directed at our beloved school. What is gladdening to see though is that there are New Mexico community members who do love and support our school.

I feel like, in my response to the negativity, I made it clear how positive my CSF experience has been, despite the recent disappointment and difficulty. I will always value the education I received at this school. I wouldn't be the writer I am, the human I am, without the guidance of not only wonderful Creative Writing professors, but also the invaluable friends I have made here (not only students, but also staff and faculty members). Nothing can change the happy memories I have made here.

College of Santa Fe Plans Off-Campus Graduation to Save Money

Click Here to View the Maddening Comment Board Associated With Article

Welcome! What This Blog Shall Be About

2009-04-29T23:49:00.002-06:00

Welcome to my new blog, ZOËTROPE!

This blog will tend to function as more of a journal. I want to use this to explore the process of stepping from the safe world of academia, to the "adult" world.

I graduate college in 2.5 weeks. I am at the point where I can hardly believe that a) I'm at this point in my life, b) it went by so fast, and c) I have to take on the responsibility of being on my own. But before I get that diploma handed to me, I have a lot of work to do to complete the semester. Overwhelming, really.

In addition to functioning as a journal, I want to use this blog to get some of my writing out there. So expect to see a mix of daily musings and poetry, non-fiction, etc.