Conversation overheard at local spa (it was a Christmas present, ok)

The Relaxation Facilitator prepares the client-in-white-robe’s feet for the soaking bowl.

RF: I’m Audra. Let me know if you need anything else.

CIWR: Audra. That’s a pretty name.

RF: I renamed myself, actually. My original name was Cassandra.

CIWR: That’s nice, too.

RF: Well, I’m a singer so I wanted something different. And Audrey Hepburn is my favorite actress.

CIWR: So it’s a stage name?

RF: No, I actually legally changed my name.

CIWR: That’s so funny. I legally changed my name, just a couple of weeks ago.

RF: What to?

CIWR: My whole life I’ve been Jill. But I’ve been getting into writing lately, so I thought Isabel.

RF: That’s so perfect.

CIWR: Yeah, thanks. I’m totally excited about it.

I sing the body inflated

I have two chicken pox scars on my belly. I've had them since I was five, about two inches to the left of my belly button (my left). They're an inch and a half apart. Well, they were. Now they're four and a half inches apart.

We don't have any naked mirrors in our house, so I hadn't really looked at it. But we were in Vail this weekend and everyone was out skiing, so I got to hang out in the condo by myself and walk around naked. And I finally got a good look. The belly. The distension. Distensibility. It's amazing: the network of blue veins from my neck to my hips, the nearly translucent skin, the taut oval more bulgy at the bottom than at the top, sort of like a Weeble.

On Monday we went for a swim. They had a pool there the size of a giant bathtub. I mean, they had a bathtub the size of a pool. They had a pool. It was very warm. So I wore the only swimsuit I have, a bikini (courtesy of Amy, my neighbor and personal maternity clothier). Even Paul had to agree that the belly was pretty exciting. I said, my belly never looked this good in a bikini, and he said, I don't think I've seen your belly in a bikini. He has a habit of forgetting the things I need him to. He is the perfect mate.

Baby H is moving around a lot these days. We have little games. I discovered this one in the tub: If he kicks, I poke my belly, and he kicks again. He seems to follow my pokes. (He just kicked now.) Some days it works, and some days it doesn't. Mostly, I think he's playing me, the hopeful mother already trying too hard to connect with her son.

I did figure out a way to get him to move. For some reason, he enjoys hanging out low in the torso, which I'll tell you now is pretty uncomfortable. Imagine a pair of 3cm-long feet kicking around in your bladder and cervix area. Ech. But I was lying in bed the other night and figured out that if I put my hand (it has to be warm) closer to my ribs, he will move up under my hand. When he does that I like to sing to him, unless Paul's trying to sleep next to me. We have a couple of songs so far. I try to sing the same ones, so he'll recognize them when he comes out, and enjoy them until he's a preteen and figures out they're stupid songs.

I've definitely hit the phase people kept talking about. The one in which you finally have energy and can stomach at least a few cooking smells and feel ok about everyone wanting to take care of you and weep whenever you fold the tiny tees that people have already started to give him. On Saturday, naked day, I thought that I might want to stay pregnant forever. Well, talk to me in about a month.

More books than you can possibly read in a lifetime

Paul and I were sitting around one night, talking about moving the furniture around, which always brings up the topics of The Books. Paul tried to get me to admit that I have more books than I can possibly read in my lifetime. This is not something you ever want to hear, right, because it's a naggy little reminder about how short your life really is. Plus, you know you've built up this library because you are constantly coming across new recommendations and offshoots and influences of the things that you have read and what about all those books you won't get to read in addition to the books that are already in your house that you haven't read. (This is where I have to breathe.)

So, I'm starting the MBTYCPRIAL (mab-tic-prial?) project. I came up with a dorky die rolling system to choose the next book. Whatever book I end up with, I have to deal with it. I can read (or re-read, as the case may be, although this seems at odds with my goal... what is my goal?). I can also choose to sell the book. Or give it away. If you see a book on my MB-PRIAL list that you really want, give me a shout.

My hope is that I can get through everything in less than five years (I have a little over 1,000 books and have read about 400 of them start to finish, so that leaves 600 or 120 a year). My first roll: 3-1-4-5. The Bostonians by Henry James. I bought this book in 2004 after reading Colm Toibin's The Master and was prepping for my Henry James phase, which was interrupted, most likely, by my Martha Gellhorn phase.

As a kickoff celebration, I found this Italian DVD cover for James Ivory's film version. Enjoy. Henry and I are off to a dinner party with someone named Olive.

To begin with, I’m pretty darn fat…

and whenever I say that, people say to me, “you’re not fat” or “it’s not really fat.” A reflex, no doubt. Of course, when I say “I’m so fat,” I mean, isn’t it hilarious that I have this baby crawling around inside my body, and there’s this big belly, and isn’t it great and weird? My nephew gets it. He’s three. We were out to dinner and I proclaimed my intention to order the peppermint ice cream. “You can’t have ice cream. You’re too fat.” And this makes a cute three-year-old story but I guess it also makes him sound a bit size-ist. He’s thin and tall and he knows a lot about sharks. And he’s excited about his pending boy cousin.

We’re at week 24: the baby is about 12 to 13 inches tall and weighs 1.5 lbs. He has all his muscles but no fat on his body yet.

It’s hard to know what to say about being pregnant that hasn’t been said. Or is it? On the one hand, the CDC reported 4,163,000 live births between May 2005 and April 2006 in the U.S. So, that’s about four times the size of Seattle and about 2,175 times the number of people in my hometown, where women regularly have four to eight kids. But this is one kid, and the nine-month combo of the two of us is unique. More unique than anything I could write. Unlike a story idea that revealed itself magically at 3:25 am (voila! out of the collective unconscious), and that I might have worked on for months then abandoned, I won’t see it on HBO or in The Believer in two years and think, well, I could have done that. I did do that. Nearly. And (best part) there are no critiques: “She doesn’t have quite the irritability that we expect in these sort of collaborations, but we’ve definitely seen that waddle before.” I guess there'll be plenty of criticism after he comes, but for now I'm on my own.

So far, everything has been completely normal: the sickness (months 2 to 4), the exhaustion (better now, but still a factor), and the belly rubbing (I never saw myself as a belly rubber, but it feels pretty good — highly recommended). It’s nice to be able to eat doughnuts and sit on the couch watching movies for four or more hours a day.

It is strange to be walking around with a big poochy belly — conspicuous and then quickly invisible. People notice, obviously (except the people on my crowded morning bus, who pretend to look away as I’m trying to steady myself in the aisle while they relish their seatdom). In my neighborhood, the quick response is a vague non-response, a sorting out that may go something like this: Girl. Lady. Pregnant lady. Um, what’s in The Stranger this week? I can remember sorting in this way, hungover, on a Friday morning. One of us, not one of us.

The Center House is full of birds this morning and I can’t decide if that’s cute or really gross. It’s hard to imagine the SC food court being any grosser but there it is. Guano. GUANO. (No, I didn’t see guano. It’s the thought.)

And I sort them out, too. Converse, cords, hoodie. Yup. That was me. Now it’s not. My hoodies are too tight. Then something else happens, especially with boys: Boy. Really young boy. Son. Son? Hmmm. Where did that come from?

A woman just came and sat down at a table near me. She’s meeting a man here. He pulls out some photocopies, which seem to be galleys. “I don’t want a bunch of title shit on there,” she says. “I’ll take it off,” he says. “Dang it.”

I was walking to yoga Saturday and this harlequinesque goth kid, 19ish, passed me near SCCC. He did the quick look. Then he kept staring as we passed each other. This I’m not used to. I spent the rest of the three blocks trying to figure out what it all meant: he hates breeders, he loves bellies, he hates mommies, he hates his own mommy, he wants to kiss me, he wants to stab me, he's hungover and hates the idea of a vaguely rotund, chipper mama bouncing off to morning yoga class, readying for her unapologetic contribution to the too fat belly of the earth.

The Bus is Back

The Poetry Bus is back! Actually, despite Paul's and my fantasy about the bus pulling up to the Space Needle fresh from the road and full of unshowered and bewildered poets, they actually came back yesterday. The final pobus reading is tonight, though, at 8pm on the Skyline level of the Space Needle. The lineup is astounding, plus, you get to go up the Needle for only $5. I know I'll be there. I'll probably be gagging from the buffet, but I'll be there.

And, yes, I've been back for almost a month and not writing. This has to do with the new job and The Sickness, which keeps me on the couch crocheting and watching ET (Want details about the big Tomkat wedding? I've got it all!). My friend Jen has encouraged me to share details about what Paul is now calling "the miracle of life" and "my journey to the center of womanhood," so that will all be coming soon. Meantime, the "blossom of my future happiness" has me in a stranglehold. Unfortunately, even thinking that word pops the song into my head. Now it's like a tiny Ted Nugent, fierce from a diet of fresh blood, is stabbing my uterus with its widdy-biddy hunting knife. Yogurt smoothie? Unh-uh. Vomit that, bee-atch.

Where did you sleep last night?

I slept here. It’s my last night on the bus. I’m still here on the floor of the service stop (using the only outlet in the place… my battery is shot), and am finally caught up (!). In five minutes, we drive to New York City.

Providence is...

Lovely. You'll have to take my word for it, because I have no photos. I was too distracted by the fact that I walked around for two hours (Brown, RISD, historic settlement houses), in pain, looking for a public (or any) restroom. As a bonus, I did find the Roger Williams memorial park, where he used to gather the settlers, and I remember that I had a little crush on him in elementary school. Oh, those 17th-century, colonial crusaders for religious freedom and church/state separation.

Battle in Boston: Typewriters v. Johnsons (Thursday)

This week we’ve been listening to Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour. On the drive into Buffalo, we heard the show on weather. On the way to Boston, we heard a show on dads (when he said happy Father’s Day, I panicked before I remembered it was September, and a Thursday.) Driving through bucolic central MA, we heard songs about weddings. When Bill was maneuvering through the Harvard campus and Somerville, MA at the height of rush hour, we heard the divorce show, and about Bill’s divorce. He’s got a rough job.

During the intermission, a twitchy guy in his late 40s/early 50s came up to the table demanding to know who was in charge. His band was coming on at 10:00 (it is now 8:15) and we “need to get that shit off the stage so they can load in.” (“That shit” was the set and props for The Typing Explosion.) A guy asked about his band, who they are. “We’re a cover band,” he said, “The Swinging Johnsons. We play here Thursdays.”

Eight of us slept in a giant loft in Southie with Michael Brodeur and his neighbor with the repeating car alarm.

Life on the Bus

What do we do on the bus?
Talk about poetry.
Laugh at Bob Dylan on XM Radio.
Sleep.
Write poems together.
Eat trail mix and apples from the snack coffin.
Drink Jack Daniels and/or VO from giant bottles.
Hug bus friend (see photo, left).
Sleep.
Read.
Update our blogs.
Talk about how great/strange the reading was last night.
Stare out the window.
Sleep.

Two days in Western Mass (Emily, the Girls, and Three Little Boys)

Smith College
Walking around Smith is like walking into a campus melodrama from the 1950s. If it weren’t for the day-glo green and orange triangle furniture in the seven sisters’ equivalent of a student union, it could just as easily be 1925.

Quick Tour: Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire College, Amherst Commons, UMass
At each location, the poets read outside the bus with a portable PA. At Hampshire (Joshua Beckman’s alma mater), we weren’t authorized to come on campus. Bill drove us through the grounds, while Joshua shouted through a bullhorn, “Students of Hampshire College, come and listen to the poets.” By the third curve, campus security was already on us. Joshua got off the bus to talk to them and we were all laughing about how we were busted, but the officer said, “We have a place for you, follow us” and they led us to the middle of the lawn. We’re pretty subversive.

Emily’s Room
I hate it when people refer to great literary figures, who happen to be women, by their first names (Hemingway, Proust, Shakespeare… Emily), but it’s common with ED, and generally from the mouths of women. I caught myself doing it. The bus parked in Amherst five minutes from her house, and I said, “I’m going down to Emily’s house.”

I had this fantasy about standing in her room: how I’d be paralyzed with inspiration, how I’d look out the same window she did, how I’d weep from the tragic, claustrophobic isolation. Like many author houses, you have to take a tour to see The Room. I just missed the 2:30 30-minute tour and spent 25 minutes trying to convince the docents at the Dickinson Homestead that I needed to see The Room.

I studied her in grad school.
I know all about the fascicles and variants.
I’m here with the poetry bus.
I’m only in Amherst for 30 minutes.

The first docent explained that I could look at “these three rooms,” which consisted of a display about publication history (which was really just pictures of her literary executors), pictures of life in the kitchen, and a gift shop. She pointed me to the window so I could see The Room from outside.

The 90-minute tour guide, a patient woman with a slight English accent, agreed that I could just go on the first part of her tour, the main house, but that would be 50 minutes. I asked if she could just tell me a little about The Room. She pointed me to the window so I could see it from outside. Then she spent three minutes telling me the real estate history of the house. I am now glad I don’t have time for the tour. It reminds me of when I volunteered for the Hemingway Museum and Birthplace Home in Oak Park, IL, where many of the docents were retired moms who spent most of the tour talking about Hem’s poor, maligned mother.

This is as close as I got to Emily’s room.



When I got back to the bus, no one was there, so I wandered down to the cemetery.


I came back to the bus again and no one was there. I made the bank deposit and handed out a bunch of stickers and tattoos to the youth punks hanging out in the park. One of them informed me that “poetry is cool.”



At the UMass quick stop, two boys, Matt and Jimmy, showed off their tattos.

I stayed in historic Turners Falls for two nights with Janelle, the Eastern Wave Books version of me. We ate here and found this poem

Montreal, Too Quickly (Monday)

My favorite stop and, sadly, I have to make it quick to keep up.

As usual, we are starving when we arrive.

bon jour, un cream of broccoli soup si vous plait

Matthew found a teahouse with wifi, so I camped out there for about two hours. If you got an email from me a few days ago, that's where I was.

(Montreal walk-ups)

Our local helper (awesome poet/organizer Kate Hall), arranged for me to stay with her friend Fiona on the French side of the city, by the old Olympic stadium, built in 1976, which the city is still paying for. All cities really are the same.


In the morning, Fiona and Leroy walked me to the Metro station. We ran into Fiona's neighbor, who told us a lively story in French about Janet Jackson. Apparently she was dancing on the Oprah show. "Oh, that crazy family," she said in English.

On the rush hour green line, I rode seven (or so) stops to Place-des-Arts, and got a two-second look at the contemporary art museum and theater district before I had to hop in a cab to get back to the bus.

le bus, le autobus, ici ici

Travis recapped our border adventures nicely on the pobus blog.

Oh, Canada; Oh, Blurry Pictures (Sunday)

In Ottawa, the poets read across from the glowing House of Parliament at sunset. Between the load-in and everyone clamoring to buy our fabulous books and t-shirts, this is the best photo I got.


(Linus interviewing Joshua for the pobus film)

Toronto’s New Bohemians (Saturday)

One of the guests at the pre-reading bbq told us this is a working class neighborhood. I believed it at first: the rows of old houses, kids and old people in the yards, the apparent lack of an ATM that works.

Our reading was at Stones Place, a Rolling Stones theme bar with the requisite collection of Mick posters, signed copies of Sticky Fingers, and paintings of Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan (?).
One of our local helpers told us Keith Richards painted them, and all became clear.

We parallel parked and slept in front of Damien Rogers’ house on the bus. I woke up every couple of hours (because I had to pee) and saw a red light glowing from a white building at the end of the block. In the morning, I walked down to see what this spectacle was all about. This wasn’t a bar, or a brothel, it was a condo building in progress. Watch out, Meritage.

Enjoy the fine copy:
Anchoring the west end of Toronto's hippest strip comes a condominium so stylish and cool, it promises to redefine the way this city's hipsters live. Join the ambassadors of hip on Queen Street West at Gladstone, renowned for the famous Drake Hotel and home of the soon-to-be equally eminent Bohemian Embassy. … the ultimate place for culture-loving urbanites to BE.

Obviously, a very close replica of the original Bohemian Embassy, a coffee shop from the 1960s where Margaret Atwood used to hang out and where some Beat-ish people had a Dada-style happening in 1963.

Come on Back to Me 22 (Saturday, September 23)

Tired of Vegas?? Try Niagara! The Canada side, that is.

Monica F.'s really nice Georgia mom treated us to lunch at the Fallsview Casino Resort Grand Buffet. I had a cheese omelet, potsticker, creme puff dipped in chocolate fondue, small salad, an apple danish, and veggie lasagna.

Convergence and Buffalo Wings

After slowly waking up in my posh Bucknell guest room (tv, wifi, shower, privacy... thanks, Betsy!), I missed breakfast, but the poets in residence packed up a fruit salad for us, and we were off to Buffalo--through the beautiful Susquehanna Valley--land of motion sickness.

We pulled up to the Albright-Knox Gallery 40 minutes before the reading. Gallery is a loose term. This is more like a largish contemporary-ish art museum. I hurried in with my good friend, box-of-t-shirts, made a wrong turn, and ran into Pollock's 8'x13' Convergence.



After the reading we went to a bar and grill near Buffalo State College for a little food, including Buffalo's specialty... the 8-inch high pile of wings.

Encounter with drunk girls in the bathroom taking phone-camera pictures of each other:
Girl1: Come on. That's enough. I want to go flirt some more.
Girl2: I really hope Carrie isn't here with Michael. That bitch stole my vocabulary. I started saying Snoogy Snoog five months ago and now she says it all the time.

We slept on the bus. Around 2am it was pouring rain and I had to pee, but we were in the middle of a parking lot. Bladder-denial would become a familiar trend, at least for a few days.

In the morning I became obsessed with this vintage DONT WALK sign. (To give you an idea, I have 10 pictures of this and no good pictures of my friends on the bus yet.)


It was still raining. While Joshua and I sat in the cargo space under the bus counting the books to prep for crossing the border (of course, they never asked us about them, but we had no idea), Anthony catches a cab to the airport. (We're sad. Monica, Monica, and Betsy get on the bus, and we try to make them feel a little less disoriented, although we all know that's impossible.)

**This all happened a week ago. We're in Boston now and off soon to Providence. More soon.**

one more quick story from Pittsburg

Two poets are in the alley just around the corner from the bus...

Cop: Where are you from?
Joshua: Seattle
Cop: Sorry about the Superbowl, man.

Let's all move to Pittsburg

Hundreds of cheap, old buildings=affordable artist studios. That's what I'm talking about. (Sorry... just watched Dazed and Confused a few times before I left on my trip.)

Our reading was part of the Gist Street Reading Series, which has been going on in this amazing space for about five years.








(actual poets, actually reading poetry... Anthony and Joshua)

In fact, we liked it so much, we slept there.

Michigan seems like a dream to me now

The whole day in Ann Arbor, I was dealing with smug students--they took up all the plug-in spots at the Internet cafe to read or take naps, they were rude to me when I asked for help in stores, and they seemed generally intolerant of anyone not in khaki shorts and a sweatshirt. (Argh... I hate college students.)

At the reading, most of the audience was between the ages of 18 and 21. I was outside the whole time, peddling the wares, and the fact that I was standing behind a table + my age put me in a position of apparent authority b/c they kept asking me things like

how long will this last?
can I leave and come back?
can I go in now?

I found myself tempted to mess with people over the last question, guarding the door and choreographing their entrances. This reminds me that students still tend to defer to authority, even though they'll complain about it constantly. (I love college students.)

After the reading we went to Baps, a basement bar that "looks like a dentist office" (according to the guy who invited us there). Their entire food menu consisted of Goldfish, so I snuck across the street to the Fleetwood Diner, where I sat at the lunch counter and enjoyed a tuna melt and a glass of milk. The waitress was leisurely smoking and grousing to a yellow-orange-haired girl at the end of the bar about her woman studies classes ("I'm trying to get into grad school; I need a rigorous academic program; it's heartbreaking me, it's absolutely heartbreaking me.") And this reminds me of another thing I love about college students, the absolute vision of a hopeful future, and the complete indignation toward anyone who would get in the way. When I paid, I finally got a good look at her face, black eyelined and completely wrinkle free. I was looking at someone from another universe, one I can't inhabit but can appreciate from a distance, sometimes even without condescension. (Love KOs hate every time.)

When I got back to Baps, our local helper introduced me to Julia, a first-year MFA student in her second week who was generous and flexible enough to let a total stranger enjoy her comfy couch--anything for a writer, she said, and I felt sad to tell her I was just an intern, and that I hadn't read.

Americanese Made Easy

An enthusiastic Milwaukeean near-poet (too shy and/or drunk to open mic) approaches me at the merch table at Linneman's Bar. After testing my interest in the literary theories he's invented (words are symbols, hmmm, that is new...I'm working, I'm feigning), he wants to show me "the longest poem ever written." (Homer, Dante, Milton, Milwaukee bar guy). He brings over a bound stack. It looks like a script for a six-hour film. He tells me to pick a common phrase, flips to the w page, and orders me to read:

waiting for the other shoe to fall
waiting in line for no one
waiting in the rain

"It has over 163,000 phrases and 1300 are my own. I call it Americanese Made Easy. I also thought about Phrases for Dummies, but that's not as good." I try to engage him in a discussion about OULIPO. I write it in Sharpie on the back of a poetry bus sticker. He tells me he doesn't really go on the internets. Then he tells me a story about how he cut his toe a few months ago on the lid of a cat food can and bled all over the kitchen.

Night two: on the road, Milwaukee to Ann Arbor
Morning two: no shower

arrived at Ann Arbor, Michigan around 8am and drove around for an hour looking for a place to park the bus... Now in a wireless cafe with all the college students and my electronics plugged in and charging (except the camera... its cord is buried with my big suitcase on the bus, which is currently closed so the driver can get some sleep).

where the bus is now...

Night one: Yogi Bear campground, Ft. Atkinson, WI

We left the Green Mill Sunday night around 11:30pm and drove until 2 am. I woke up a little after 7am here.

Morning one: nice shower (ahhh... using my wash rag and last night's t-shirt for a towel)

Highlight: While a few of us were out for a round of mini-golf, one of the remaining poets saw a family drive by in a golf cart. The 8-year-old girl said, "Mommy, that bus is creepy."

just a little routine messing up the minds of the citizenry en route

and a few photos near Blackhawk Island, which isn't really an island...