Headcheese and Other Misadventures

I tried headcheese. Actually I am fond of the flavor but the texture leaves something to be desired. It doesn't look or feel like it should be food to me.

In more serious news... I am quite frustrated with my current adviser/schoolwork. Also, the wedding planning is finally getting to me. I think partially I have been conditioned to think by Cornell that anything can be done in one month, which is to some extent true. Weddings are planned in a day all the time. Lectures can certainly be written in a month, manuscripts can be put together in a week, I know this from Cornell. And as for poetry... comments like "maybe you should just keep this one to yourself" or "nice language but beyond that?" or "why should the reader be interested?" serve to piss me off and even when I come back around and try to tackle them calm and rationally do little in the way of helping me improve my poetry. How arrogant am I, these days?

My arrogance is not to be underestimated. I feel like I should have her job. A large part of me knows I am being unfair. I have so much to learn, and perhaps I am just too scared to learn it. If I don't know how one learns to write poetry from someone else, then how can I claim to be able to teach poetry to someone else? I don't. But I would never tell anybody to keep their favorite poem, a poem another adviser had said was in its finishing stages, to their self.

I feel that is already the problem with most beginning poets. We keep too much of our poetry to our selves. The manuscript that I am pushing for this poem to be included in will only be seen by perhaps if I am lucky a dozen people ever. Even if the poem were utter crap... I feel all right letting twelve people see the piece of crap in with all the other mediocre to aspiring poetry. That piece of crap, is my piece of crap, and I care about it deeply.

Now the wedding, I am being unreasonable. I am glad we have put so much planning into it. I just get frustrated because people are so far apart and it is so hard to keep everybody on the same page, so I keep answering the same questions. I never feel like I get one step ahead.

So this is a short school month. Two weeks to get together my next packet, which is to include my finished lecture and a fairly chiseled out manuscript. In that time, I also have my birthday, and a pre-marriage counseling session with the Reverend.

I have been calm amid the storm this past month, but I think it is finally getting to me. But I can't let it. Not now. Too much to get done...