The New Year

Today, I stumbled upon my prompt box.  The one with the pretty strips of paper all folded up and full of interesting prompts upon which to write.  Well.  Things to think about writing about.  Because you know what, I'm going to end that sentence with a preposition...and everyone's going to like it.  So there.  Anyway, I pulled a prompt:

"Turn to an entry in your journal or diary from a year or more ago.  What has changed and what has stayed the same since then?"

Naturally, that brought me to look at this beauty from a little more than a year ago.  As far as attitudes go, I'm pretty much in the same place.  I relish the idea of growing old versus growing up because it makes my brain hurt in a not quite unpleasant way.  And I wholeheartedly agree with Past Brianna that I would much rather grow old.  There will be no growing up here.

As far as life goes, this time last year, I was living in Florida.  I was packing my bags to get ready to come back to Illinois.  I had no job prospects, and no idea what I was going to do with my life past move into my childhood bedroom in my parents' house.  I was newly single, I was irrationally bitter, and I knew that I was going to miss the support and friendship I found in my flatmates.  I had also just finished off a tiring week of work, and was excited to get to a more normal work schedule for my last week.  I was also writing angsty and/or conflicted poetry, some of which turned out well.

This year, I still (unfortunately) have no idea what I'm going to do with my life.  But today I'm at home in Illinois temporarily because come Saturday, I will be driving back out to Nebraska where work has taken me.  I have a job, I have my own place to live (rent-free), and I have excellent co-workers who I'm looking forward to getting to know even better during the next couple months of 2014.  I'm staying in touch with the majority of my flatmates, as well as classmates from college and high school.  I'm just finishing up a relaxing week of rejuvenating "at home time" and there's a part of me that's itching to get back to Nebraska.  Today I find myself irrationally optimistic when I'm not choked with terror, and making Shrinky Dinks, because that's what a 23 year old does with her free time in her childhood home before she gets back to her "big kid job."  Though I can't classify under a specific heading or genre...I'm still writing poetry that echoes way too much of my current life experiences.

My one conflict with my past "journal entry" is that though I agree with it and want to put it into practice, I'm currently in a job that requires me to act a mite bit older than my true age...because I manage college students.  And I'm no longer a college student, so I can't buddy-buddy with them.  So I find it more difficult to not grow up, or to do justice to my desire to never grow up.  I wouldn't say that I think my soul has died and I'm now an adult, but I will say that I can't run around coloring on walls with crayons or rolling around in the snow in front of my Nebraska home.  Frustrating, yes.  But I'm sure the universe has its reasons for putting me through this.  (Oh gosh, that sounded a lot...I don't know, but I'm leaving it because I'm too lazy to find a way to re-phrase.)

Onward to create more Shrinky Dinks!

Happy 2014, let's make this one a great one!

"When you grow up, your heart dies."

- The Breakfast Club

The City Slicker

It was a while ago in the dining hall over plates of lukewarm chicken and waffles (mine with maple syrup but sans the hot sauce because I forgot and wouldn't have known where to find it anyway) that a student staff member asked me if I was writing a blog about myself being "a city slicker in Nebraska."  [This is where I remember that it's Friday and that I could totally do a Poetry Friday thing.]  I told her that I wasn't, thinking that I am writing a blog...kind of...and that was a kinda mishmosh personal blog mixed with poetic things and writing things, all of which no one reads.

So this leads me to the question "Should I start a new blog exclusively for my Nebraska adventures?"

But maybe I should rewind.

A long long time ago in June, I interviewed for and got a position at a college in Nebraska.

Things you should know:
1.  I'd never been to Nebraska.
2.  I'd never heard of this college.
3.  When I looked up the town on a map, there were two major roads that intersected in town and the rest was blank open space.  Presumably, cornfields.

I had three weeks to pack up my worldly belongings, load them into the rickety gray mini van that my brother and I grew up in, get my affairs in order, and voyage to small town Nebraska.  The stress of preparing for my voyage was more personal than it was professional--for instance, I discovered that the only dress pants that I owned no longer fit (because I lost weight).  I also discovered that a very small amount of my make-up was work appropriate.  I had a second stage break-up with the boy, and every single one of my friends made fun of me for moving into the middle of a cornfields.  In fact, my friends wrote a scavenger hunt for me of things that I need to find while I'm in Nebraska.  Unfortunately, I'm not doing very well keeping up with that.  Oops.

Anyway.

When I told people that I was moving to Nebraska, they asked me, "Oh yeah?  Omaha or Lincoln?"  My answer?  "Neither."  For people who don't live in Nebraska, Omaha and Lincoln are the only two names you'll probably know, and both of them are on the far east side of the state.  Everything else (just about) is small towns and cornfields.

So I've been here in small town Nebraska for a little over two months.  Based on my observation that I get restless weekly on Sundays, and the tendency for business establishments to be closed on Sundays, I have begun to learn that the pace of life is indeed slower here.  I'm not pretending to know everything about Chicago, especially since I only just started exploring and meeting the interesting people right before I left the city, but I do know that on a Sunday, it wasn't really a question of "Oh, is that place going to be open?" unless we were talking about Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-a.  I'm not saying that being closed on Sundays is a bad thing, I'm saying it's different and it's an adjustment for me.

It also occurs to me that I don't really know what a "city slicker" is.  But thanks to Wikipedia, I now know the technical understanding of the term.  I like to think that I don't fit this type.  But that could just be me.

Small town life is interesting.  I'm not 100% enmeshed in the town life because I work at the college, but I do frequent the same grocery stores and coffee shop as the locals, and I like to think that maybe one day the checker at Pac 'n Save will recognize me as "the girl who buys SO MUCH TEA" or "the girl who buys plain yogurt and asks about jasmine rice because she's dumb."  I'll take what I can get, frankly.

For now, I'm still getting used to Nebraska life, but according to the welcome sign on the highway, Nebraska "...the good life."  (and it's also the home of Arbor Day)

"One of these days I'm going to leave Nebraska, cut all those strings and ties and travel to the other prairies of this earth.  I must know if the people who live on those other prairies feel the same way about their horizons as we do about ours."

- John Janovy Jr.

What's a Shiv?

"Don't worry, Anna will protect you in the dark across campus."

Anna looked up from her half-painted fingernail at the expectant face of one of the younger girls and the sarcasm traipsing across the face of her co-worker.  Being one of the shortest and scrawniest people on staff, Anna was probably the person least likely to be able to defend anyone much less herself, if the occasion called for it.

So she nodded solemnly.  "Oh yeah, of course!  I've got pepper spray.  And a shiv in my purse."

The girl asked, "What's a shiv?"

Anna laughed in that Pssh, you don't know? sort of way and explained that it was a makeshift knife that could be used as a weapon.  The girl's eyes widened while Anna's co-worker smirked.  Of course, if this were a real rather than fictional shiv, it probably wouldn't have been allowed.  Anywhere.  Outside of prison.

"Have you ever used it?" Anna's co-worker asked, feeding the story but interested to see where it went next.

"Of course I have, on my ex-boyfriend's car."

Anna's favorite part of the whole storytelling experience was to watch the faces on her audience.  She could tell that the younger girl immediately believed in the maiming of a car but wanted to figure out for sure if it was true.  And her co-worker was giving her a look that said, Okay, but seriously now.

"Did he have leather seats?"

"Not anymore he doesn't."

"Did you carve your name into them?"

"Of course," Anna said, grinning wickedly.  Her audience went quiet, a mixture of skepticism and respect floating in the air while Anna bent her head down to finish up painting the nails on her left hand.  It was a couple minutes before anyone spoke again, and by then the conversation revolving around Anna's destructive streak could have dissipated.

A pause.  Then, "Did you really do that to your ex-boyfriend's car?"  Not the younger girl, but Anna's co-worker.

Anna just smiled and shrugged.  So what if I did?

"And though she be but little, she is fierce."

- William Shakespeare

You're Such a Doll

Last night I went to the Dollhouse Reading Series in Chicago because when I saw the name Matt Guenette on the list of people who would be reading, I geeked out.  Like a lot.  Because this is the type of person I am.  I love poetry.  I also really love this community that I've stumbled into, the community that gathers in an apartment and settles onto hardwood floor to listen to some fantastic poets read their work.  When my friend tells me, "You've tapped into the Chicago artistic community," I can no longer deny that that's probably true. Plus I now own an autographed copy of American Busboy.

Also last night, I realized that I'm getting a little behind in Poem-A-Day poems.  Again.  So...I tweeted about the poetry reading and received a challenge for a poem.

@BriannaKratz You should write a poem about this. #poemaboutapoetryreading
— Polly Yukevich (@PollyYuke) June 16, 2013

And I never really can back down from a challenge.  So here is a draft of a poem about a poetry reading for Polly Yukevich.

June 15, 2013

The dolls come to the dollhouse
where they gather in clusters
on the dusty hardwood.
All facing the same direction,
toward the empty picture frame
clinging to the plaster
with a determination rivaled
only by the doll in front of it.
Her painted on mouth smiles
at the gathered collectibles
as she clutches at her paper
with the left-aligned text
and no stanza breaks.
She speaks
into the silence,
a glassy-eyed attention trained
upon her.
The dolls are supportive,
welcoming of the new
with porcelain fingers snapping.
She exhales a sigh
after it's read
and settles down
with the teddy bears.

And tonight I'm going to the Poetry Made of Diamonds reading series, which I'm also really excited about.  I'm particularly interested to see how many people overlap between readings during this poetry packed weekend.

I think this just might be heaven.

"Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions."

- Stephen King

Aaaaand...look, distraction!

It looks like we're nearing the end of the month, which means a lot of people who are participating in NaPoWriMo will be done with their challenge to write a poem a day for a month.  I'm really excited to go through everybody's blogs and read what they've come up with, because that'll no doubt give me more ideas for my own poems.  Plus I'm really excited that I'm not the only one out there writing poems daily.  Is that selfish?  Maybe a little bit.

Anyway, Poem-A-Day April has been going really well.  I only fell behind that one weekend when I went to camp, but I caught up pretty quick because it was only a couple poems behind.  As for the zodiac challenge, that I've failed on.  I had every intention of writing them, especially because I have people who were excited to read a couple specific zodiac signs.  I'm really sorry!  I'll probably use the whole zodiac/horoscope thing as inspiration for random poems rather than a month challenge.  And there we go again, learning what challenges work and don't...

Poem-A-Day May promises to be exciting because every month is cause for excitement.  but I'm looking for a challenge.  Something that I can do weekly.  No ideas yet.  I'm thinking back to a couple older challenges, and one of them was to start one poem a week with "Where were you last night?"  That was a really neat concept because I got to play around with different ways of handling that.  Kinda similar to the challenge to write drunken poetry.  So I'm thinking I should find some sort of challenge that will be like that, because it might make me think more.  Or try forms.  Which might break my brain, but who knows, maybe I'd learn something?  Learning is good.

On Monday, I visited the Poetry Foundation downtown.  First off, I took the El into the city and then had to take another line north of the Loop.  Because I had a lot of time on my hands, it didn't ultimately matter, so that adventure was fun.  Except that I thought I could transfer at one stop, and it turns out that you can't, so after getting off the train and making my way onto the street level, I walked a couple blocks to another station where I had learned I could make my transfer.  Luckily it was a nice day.

Once I got to the stop where I needed to be, I went the wrong direction on the street and had to turn around, but I finally got to the building.  [this is where Brianna realizes that she's told this story in a previous blog post, oops?]  Anyway, it was closed until later.  So I went to Starbucks to get a drink.  That's when a woman came up to me and asked, "Did you just try to go to the Poetry Foundation?"  I shuffled my feet a little and said, "Yeah..." She was very nice when she said that they didn't open until 1 PM, and I was bashful about her having witnessed my embarrassing door-pulling from the other side of the gigantic glass windows.

Clutching my iced mocha of joy, I took the El back in the direction I had come from and met up with my friend for lunch.  He bought, because he's a nice person and knows that I'm unemployed.  It was underlined by the fact that he was on his lunch break from his job that he's pretty happy with.  I'm not going to hold that against him because he bought me lunch AND dessert.  Hey, I can't complain about a toffee cookie, that thing was delicious.  Actually, the whole sandwich was delicious.  There was cheese and vegetables and pesto, and yum.  I should have taken a picture that I could post here.  Darn.  Missed opportunity.

Yesterday, I visited my friend who's involved in drag shows.  She was looking for costumes for another show that she's going to do, so we went to a couple costume shops in Boystown and another shop that I shouldn't mention because this should be a family friendly blog, but let's suffice it to say that there was a lot of lace, silk, and rope.  Special rope.  Then we went to get food because Brianna had eaten a pocket of trail mix for lunch (and learned that M&Ms and the letter M are trademarked by Mars, Inc.  Though I feel like the letter M shouldn't be able to be trademarked...that shouldn't be allowed.).  All around it was a really good afternoon and it was really great to see her because I hadn't seen her in person for close to a year.  Craziness.

And then another friend came over and we watched Woman in Black.  It's a miracle I didn't have nightmares, but it was my idea, so...

I really should never complain about having no friends again [Brianna goes back through her post and sees how many times she mentions "my friend."].

And tomorrow, tomorrow I'm going to C2E2 with my friend (aha!) because she's going for her work.  Yeah, her work is paying for her to go to a comic book convention.  I suddenly find myself wanting a job that would do that for me.  That would be really exciting.  Anyway, I'm super excited because I've never been to a comic book convention, and I'm looking forward to shamelessly people-watching.  Because that's what I do.  Should I bring my TARDIS notebook?  Hm, the possibilities...

That's all I really have to say, so that's all, folks!

"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

- Mark Twain

Living in the Library

Source: writingprompts.tumblr.com via Katie on Pinterest

There are definitely perks to living in each of these places.

Library  --  You get to read to your heart's content.  You can travel wherever and whenever you want through the power of the written word.  You can use the strips of paper and the golf pencils to write your own novel or leave notes in the stacks.  Sleeping in the children's section on a bean bag or curling up in the reference section because it's always quiet.  If you live in a neighborhood library, then there would be movies and music to entertain you as well, you would just have to find some place to play them.

Museum  --  There will always be a food court or some sort of snack-y place here, unlike the library.  You can sleep in the exhibits and explore and learn to your heart's content.  You can play with the ancient toys or musical instruments and you can compare yourself to the height of mummies because I swear they're smaller than contemporary humans.  You can leave notes and play around with the security guards.  Living in a museum reminds me of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.  If I were to live in a Chicago museum, I'm not sure which one I would pick, though I feel like it would probably be the Field Museum.

Zoo  --  Living at the zoo might be the most terrifying prospect if only because predators could eat you if you went exploring in the exhibits.  Then again, there would be an endless supply of food and you would be able to cuddle with the cuddly animals.  You could climb around with the monkeys and go swimming with the penguins (or the fishes), and then of course you could pet every single animal that looks so soft, but you're always separated by glass.

I would love to live in a library.  As it is, I spend a lot of time at my local library and the libraries of the surrounding suburbs because sometimes the suburban libraries just have a better selection.  Sorry, Chicago Public.  I could easily live in a library because I'm curious about so much, and I would love to read about everything.  I really want to learn more about just about everything with the exception of lots of the sciences because I'm bad at learning about them in the first place.  I know that living in a library probably wouldn't be the most social life because well, you have to be quiet in the library, but I can always invite friends over after hours and we could bask in the silence.  I can just imagine how cozy a library is in all its quiet.

"A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort.  A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered.  Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book."

- E.B. White

House on the Rock

So I'm pretty sure that I never talked about when I went to House on the Rock with my friend at the beginning of last month.  For those who don't know, the House on the Rock is one of those human oddities that you really need to see to believe.  In a nutshell, it's a collection of just about everything.  And it's magical, which is probably why it appears in Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which may or may not have been the basis for its appeal to us.

My friend and I are on a mission to go on adventures to give us more material for our writing and also to get us out of the house because we tend to be the type of people who like to laze around the house for long periods of time, which...you might have noticed if you read my blog with any regularity.  Not the point.

Going back through my Poem-A-Day February, I found this poem that I wrote after we visited the House on the Rock.

February 3, 2013

Snakey road, covered in snow
leads to the upside down house,
everyone's play land.
Dolls and guns and
paper weights.
Stuffed owls and
pinned butterflies and
music boxes.
The air pumps through the hallways
like breath from a million lungs,
sending drums thumping heartbeat
and flutes whistling,
ribbons flying like sassy tongues.
Far saner than anticipated,
but the low ceilings
and dim lights remind us of twilight
evenings where maybe
we'd sit by the fire
and curl up on a rock.

Posted for Poetry Pantry #140!

"All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want.  But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them."

- Neil Gaiman, American Gods