Saturday Shenanigans

I'm in the process of reading several books. Each has its designated time to be read. While riding the bus to and from work each day, I'm reading The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison. While building up my knee strength at the gym, I'm listening to Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach. During lunch, I'll pick up Possibility of Being by Rainer Maria Rilke. And before I close my eyes and nose dive into dreamland, I'm reading The Reenactments by Nick Flynn and In Praise of Messy Lives by Katie Roiphe. 

I can now bend my knee to 138 degrees. In case you didn't know, this is what 138 degrees looks like:

This morning I started working with a personal trainer to more fully rehabilitate my knee (and the rest of my body, which is a bit out of whack). My limbs are feeling wobbly and weak, flaccid and frustrated, puny and pulverized. But it's happening. Progress. 

TBA is happening right now. Though I usually like to overcommit and see too much, this year I've chosen to see Cynthia Hopkins, BodyCartography Project, Mammalian Diving Reflex, and Kim Gordon's new band, Body/Head. Because I know the melding of art and activism are vital, I'll probably check out THIS forum. 

A few friends from my former Goddard MFAIA program are gathering tonight for the first time in quite a while. There will be wine, hummus, pickles, pita and discourse on domestic choreography, ass wrangling, cyborg feminism, and juggling motherhood with art and work. 

Nick Flynn

About a month ago, I came across poetry by Nick Flynn while flipping through Tricycle magazine. Soon after I picked up his memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which ended up being one of the best memoirs I've read in the last five years (My other recent memoir favorite is Jeanette Winterson's Why Be Happy When Could Be Normal?).

I've considered (and still consider) putting together my own little memoirs about certain periods of my life (my 15th year of existence on planet earth, the various jobs I've taken, my 3-month trip to India, my first year of motherhood, my public and private experiences with social-based art practice, and eating food with strangers around the world.) Reading memoirs like the two mentioned above certainly help move this proces along. 

Here is a poem from Nick Flynn's debut poetry collection, Some Ether. 

Cartoon Physics, part 1

Children under, say, ten, shouldn’t know

that the universe is ever-expanding,
inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it
acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock
only he can pass through it.
Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds
should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,
ships going down — earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run
back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come
with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,
& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point
the bridge will give, who will swim to safety
& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff
he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.