Please don't leave me (dream post)

In my dream I couldn't get my glove on. You'd been missing for days, we'd asked around, my mother and her brother and I, but no one had seen you. So we went looking, and I gave up on the glove eventually, I think. They found you before I did, under a tree in the snow and I knew you were dead before I got there. Your throat was slit, very little blood, and I knew you'd done it to yourself although I also knew I had no proof of that.
I woke up at six in the morning and it took all my energy not to call you and make sure you were fine. But you wouldn't have answered and you'd have been pissed if I'd woken you up over a dream, so I e-mailed. I felt like an idiot, but a happy idiot regardless, when you replied this morning saying you were ok and apologizing for not checking your e-mail sooner. No one should apologize over me being a ninny who's not quite sure of what's reality sometimes.
It's the anniversary of Jay's death in under two weeks, though I don't think that has anything to do with this. Just my fear of being left and my fear of not getting to be in control of a situation. 8 days to New York.

The Summer Reading List

Fiction
The Blind Assassin (No seriously, I've never read it)
A Confederacy of Dunces (I don't even remember if I've read it anymore)
The Magic Mountain (I think I bought this copy to read in high school.)
2666
On Beauty (No I don't know how I haven't read it. Again, it's been sitting on my shelf for 5 years.)
The English Patient
Gentleman of the Road

Non-Fiction
Vygotsky - Thought and Language
Hofstadter - The Mind's I
Johnson - The Ghost Map
Watters - Crazy Like Us
Merton - Science, Technology and Society in 17th Century England
To Finish:
Martin - Bipolar Expeditions
Hilgartner: Sceince on Stage
Helprin: Winter's Tale (only when I am in New York, which is the only time I am inspired to read it.)

To parse through:
Philosophies of Social Science: The Classic and Contemporary Readings
List still not complete

A rather large reading list, but it will be a rather long summer. I am already excited. The list of course is only books, and doesn't include the many articles I have in my "personal reading" or "thesis" folders. God save the queen.

Another poem

To Someone Who Claims He Is Not Romantic

She knew it was spring when he came but did not come
when the suggestion of his lips and hands and cock
began to press into her side.
He whispered poetry into each curve and cavity
and slipped inside her as she laughed.
He crept between the gaps of her teeth when she smiled
when he came to her.

She lays herself out in the bed he's never seen
and plays with her body in an echo of the way she
remembers him touching her
which is not at all how it was because
She cannot unknow herself
she cannot deny herself pleasure or wait on herself

replicate the tension of pressing against his mouth
the uncertainty and overwhelming sensation of his effort
which was still not enough
not meeting the need of her mouth separate from
the need in her clit or brain.

She knew it was spring when his words came creeping
across her ribs like fingers or daddy long legs or ghosts
and snuck into her chest as she exhaled.

A catarrh, claimed the doctor
No, she said, it is a man
and at night he whispers dirty words.

That is the fever, the doctor replied.
Come back in a week if it does not pass.
But what will I do if it passes she wondered
passes to some other girl fingering herself where she
thinks the fingers go.

New Poem

I am going to Troy

She leaves a pen uncapped
it bleeds into the bed
what a big bed
she buries in possessions mostly books and laundry
so she doesn't get agoraphobia.

She herself is seeping out
her skin tears or dissolves

who knew she could be so wet?
and so loose
not at all how she seemed in pictures

and not at all like you remember

though she was open then
she has changed directions
hypotonic now in her age

in need of barriers and containers
and borders

I think of the weight of her.
how once she held things
like me.

The first poem I've written in ages

A one off, no editing, inspired by Sharon Olds' Sex Without Love

Jeffrey

I wonder how you’re doin
How’s the love you’re makin

Sitting reading a poem you read me
you didn’t write

I wonder bout the sex you’re giving
your stretched frame
dark and tight and symmetric

I remember the bruises you gave
from your pelvic bones.

They call it
shooting from the hip

I remember you said
this poem is about me

No, this poem is about me.

Poetry is the only art
not given away to consumption
which is not free at completion.

It’s been awhile are you still
refusing to read poems out loud?

Makin love like that?
Dark and tight and quiet couplets?

Less than a year between updates, so that's good right?

Sometimes I think to myself, I need to start blogging regularly. But then I never even manage to make that first post, let alone be periodic, let alone regular. But here is a first post and bare bones update.
Incase you didn't know, I am a first year MPH student at Emory University in the department of behavioral science. I focus on mental health, preventative health practices, and holistic models of wellness which incorporate mental and physical health. I don't seem to study enough and at the moment, as I blog from a plane to Chicago, I find it hard to care. I know I have to set an alarm for 7am tomorrow to work before a deadline. So be it. Gradschool is a work in progress.
The purpose of writing this evening was to try and explore, at least in my own head, my options for research and what I want to do for the foreseeable future. I have been offered an internship position at a community health center which serves a large community of mental health consumers. I will be allowed a certain amount of autonomy in choosing my own areas for work and research, and could in theory find great opportunities to publish.
Of course, I have no idea how to direct my own research or publish. I've never written a grant and I've never just been given free reign with a bunch of data. This is what gradschool was supposed to be about, but I always thought somebody would give me a little more practical instruction. I would be expected to *work* in this health center, but nobody has said what they'd like me to do and quite frankly I have no idea how I could be helpful. Sure it is more fun and more exciting to play with data and run an experiment, but I'm pretty sure I should actually be working. I would want to receive practical training, even as I furthered my own academic career.
Things I will maybe get to work on in this internship: Bipolar disorder. Comorbidities. Obesity as a comorbidity. The different ways in which physical ill-health affects mental health. Surely that's a semester or year right there. But there's so much more.
All this and I might also get to work with the directors of an autism center next semester. The ultimate chronic mental illness, as it were.
I say all this to say that gradschool is terrifying but there are some wonderful opportunities here, and I look forward (at this very moment) to spending my whole life floundering around in academia.

Week report

Weekly Roundup:
Things we liked: Goth dancing at Nocturna, corsets and fishnets, American Apparel, painting our toes, recovering from Shingles, our own bed, packages, clean apartments.
Things we failed: Seeing A Separation, finishing the process, being classy.
Things we hate: Rush Limbaugh and not being as good a person as I want to be.

A public blog is hardly the place to go into a personal failure that happened this week, but let's just say I have some things to work on. I am just not as good or as disciplined as I want to be. I don't even know how you "work on" personal failings, except to be aware when they happen and then figure out how to prevent future scenarios occurring. The personal discipline is something I have struggled with my entire life, and to be honest I'm not sure I've gotten remotely better at it. Making yourself sit down and work when the only deadline is self-inflicted? Other people do it. I've seen them.

In other news, there is no other news yet. But if I ever get into a gradschool, believe me, I will be letting everybody know.